Saint Joseph School

This is the collected personal development of Aeon Quisling (now known as Karakuriya) and is continued in "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer." This thread is closed. Rather than commenting here, please direct any praise, concerns, critiques, or questions over to the discussion thread, or PM me for further information.



Contents

Issue #8: To Protect and Serve

• Introduction (off-thread)
• Moving in (off-thread)
• Holiday
• Security Override
• Balls
• Ultraviolet
• Ashes, ashes
• Misery's company
• In hospital (by Nox)
• My valentine (off-thread)
• Hearts and minds
• Dasein

Issue #9: Breakthrough

• Being and Nothingness
• No Exit: Hell is other people
• Mauvaise Foi
• Who Am I? (off-thread)
• Chords and Strings and Things (off-thread)

Issue #10: Invasion

• An OOC discussion: Being and SJS (off-thread)
• Zero Factor (off-thread)
• As cold as any stone:
  • Star-cross'd
    Make vile things precious
• An OOC i10 update: Student Information (off-thread)
  
  Post-war
• 2006-2007 Annuus (off-thread)
• Habitat, Habilitation, Humanity (off-thread)
• Operation Barbarossa
• Rebirthday
• **PEP RALLY** (off-thread)

Issue #11: A Stitch in Time

• Dust to dust:
  • Old alchemy of the brain
    Like city lights, receding...
    Art wasn't quite crime, crime not quite art
    In the bloodlit dark behind her eyes
• Feast of the Winter Solstice (off-thread)
• To Kali Jade, With Love - Merry Christmas Baby (by Stasis Kiss, off-thread)
• An OOC discussion: Being and SJS (off-thread)
• We all fall down
• Welcome to the doll house:
  • À la mode
    En passant
    Le jardin secret
    La nausée
    Les demi-vierges
    Fièvre du printemps
    De l'autre côté du miroir
    En face
    Une réunion de famille
    La licorne
    Le croquemitaine (part 1, part 2)
    Horologium (part 1, part 2)
• Vile bodies:
  • Angst, neurosis, and panic
    Ruined, bogus, vapid, bogus, and worthless life
    Bright young things
    Dénouement

Holidays weren't about family anymore. She took the opportunity to go see a neurosplicing specialist, a team so dedicated to their field that they could fit her in over Christmas weekend to tune up her nervous system for her recent speed-boost and run a gamut of rigorous benchmarks and performance tweaks. It bothered her that she found herself casually talking about tune-ups and system lag in reference to her own anatomy. It wouldn't be so strange for someone with only a limb or two mechanized, but for her... So little of her was still biological, incapable of living on its own, she felt her very humanity was in question every time she acknowledged the machine.

But admittedly, she enjoyed her time in the lab, its single-minded sterility, strangely validating as she was fussed over by important people. Monitors and nutrient tubes connected, she was lowered into a narrow vat of blue-tinted buffer fluid. Everything became very cold, she tasted the faintly bitter skin of a honeydew, and then it was as if slipping into warm milk.

Hard shut-down.

Sometimes she dreamed. Whole galaxies of color. Oceans of rippling ultraviolet reflecting an imperceptibly purple sky. The whole world vibrated near 735 THz. She was a hint of wind through gradating fields of violets, from the almost-red of burning lithium to royalest of Technicolor near-indigos--a gamut of colors she could exhume only from her memories of before the accident.

She could feel her kidneys. Her nerves were on fire and electric fingers crawled over her organs, seared her lungs, clawed her heart. Her eyes screwed into her skull, vibrated her carbon enamel teeth deep in their sockets; and suddenly it was all gone as an electric whine, like an old flash bulb, ascended out of her perceptible range.

She couldn't listen to orchestrated music anymore, the least of all concertos. Tchaikovsky... A week earlier she had passed the music room and was compelled to pick up a violin. It wasn't that she couldn't play. Fine-tuned musculature handled the instrument with a delicate grace she had never known. But it was then that her fears were confirmed: it was the millions of tiny imperfections in movement, like painting on canvas, that textured the music--made it human. For the first time since the accident, the film of numbness over her emotions broke and she was compelled to cry, only to find that she could not.

The hollow chords of Phillip Glass pounding in her head, unfinished phrases teasing, screaming for closure, she hit the streets. She sped down the highways, blades skipping and sparking along the concrete, hockey puck rubber soles of her boots slamming into the pavement, driving her forward. It wasn't fair that she was such a marvel of combat technology, cat of a murder machine. It wasn't fair to her, a little high school girl; it wasn't fair to anyone else who would want this kind of power; it wasn't fair to whoever had put the care into her design only to have it run away.

Win their trust. Be good.

The voice didn't seem to be her father's, but it carried that paternal edge. She felt compelled to obey, to make him proud.

A skull buckled between her palms, its victim dissolving from her grasp before its precious contents were crushed. Next. Sticky and red to the elbows, a glint of steel on the other side. Next. She spun, slashing both flanks as she hit the ground, raising a fine mist of ice shrapnel from the chest of a lucky Troll. No matter, the next hit would find him and his teeth transported separately to the Zig.

There was no doubt in her mind now that these thugs, villains--whatever, however evil and bad they were, would die in seconds if they were not zapped neatly away. But she wasn't the only one...other heroes and kids held devastatingly fatal powers. How was this "being good"? From her vantage point here, as she rinsed a paste of blood and dirt from the treads of her boots in a wet gutter, good looked just like evil in its means, only with a crown of altruistic rhetoric as justification. But then she knew she would go back to Atlas and see the clean streets and the St. Joe's kids sitting on a wall, smiling and chatting, and she would see what was worth protecting, just like all the famous heroes said.

Security Level 20. Attaining it was near obsession now, like a meagre foothold in the path toward validation, truth, self-actualization. A clue to the grail.

The emergency band alarm sounded, flashing little red letters on the inside of her left eye: SECURITY OVERRIDE. Sunday, noon. Time for the weekly meeting. Black fuzz boiled into her vision, music fading as if falling into a chasm far behind her. The last thing she felt was the pound of the pavement, legs carrying her toward King's Row and a white truck. Her thoughts grew heavy, like sleepy eyelids, melting into dreams of indigo snow drifting over a wreckage of twisted steel, a purple lipstick smile, and a violin laying naked in a ditch.

She thought the last thing she would ever wear would be a cape.

The city representative said she'd earned one, and her newly upgraded suit (in a less annoying shade of purple) had the proper attachment for it. Serge smiled so wide... She couldn't say, "No." She had gone in for a dress to the dance, but something was keeping her from making up her mind about what it was she wanted. All she saw was a five-foot-two Barbie doll in a disgustingly garrish array of cocktail dresses.

So it was back to the streets, cape tugging at her in the wind--not like it made a difference--but it wouldn't let her forget it was there. She was really a hero now, by choice, not just following the path of least resistance.

Persiflage, the weird little cat girl, full of lies...had asked the one question, least of all now, she didn't ever want to answer.

quis·ling [kwiz-ling] –noun
a person who betrays his or her own country by aiding an invading enemy, often serving later in a puppet government

How stupid to name a model of a combat doll something so obvious. How pompous. And that was what scared her. From the perspective of the stereotypical egotist villain, the double entendre became blatantly clear. Stripped of her memory, without purpose except for the hint of a directive--earn "their" trust--what exactly was she intended to do? Was being dumped in Paragon a mistake? Or part of the plan?

She ripped the yield sign from the torso for a stumbling minion and put it through his friend's chest. They were bearing down. She hadn't been paying attention. The combat programming was flawless, but her body was slow unless it had guidance from the streamlined searching and sorting algorithms provided only by a human brain. A stray shot from a Rikti laser gun had alerted another group down the hall of her presence, and now she was flanked, meaty fists and hot plasma quickly boiling through her polymer skin, chipping at stainless steel bones. She punched herself beneath the left collarbone, breaking the thin glass vials nestled within. Blue and red panacea trickled into her veins as she wound up for a final blow, an all-or-nothing whirlwind of steel and limb and topical coolant three bodies deep.

SECURITY OVERRIDE

The world began to fade red, high-pitched screaming causing her to mentally recoil until she realized it was her own and that shutting her mouth wouldn't stop it. But it soon did, once all the bodies had fallen still, and she was off running again, the mechanical sensation fading to rhythmic body static.

Ever since the upgrade, she had been more aware of these events, rather than simply losing the time. Often it was synesthetic, confusing, like lucid dreaming steeped in so much metaphor she might as well not have control. But she did, in a way.

She had seen her brain--well, tecnically a video of it--being removed from her skull. Perfectly organic, though the lobes were separated, woven together again with cypher of multicolored wires and little numbered flags, the whole aparatus cradling a gleaming lozenge of chilled silicon. The primary motor cortex was the biggest maze, and the cerebellum was pretty much unrecognizable, the hypothalamus replaced. The limbic system...practically gone. The specialists thought that was what was giving her the most trouble. While her organs didn't run on hormone regulation, she was missing all the emotional ties to her memory, and behavioral therapy to overcome her motivation problems wasn't working--couldn't ever work again. In its place was an annoying sub-migrane tingling as the impulses fell on nerves that were no longer there, the signals skittering out of the would-be synapse and evaporating in the buffer on the surface of its silicon replacement. It was the equivalent of a high-tech lobotomy.

They had poked at it for hours, noting the tiniest singe-marks all over the surface of her prefrontal cortex and less over the rest of the frontal lobes. Was it indicative of removed engrams? they had postulated. But memory was distributed and reconstructive--holographic. Only scarring the surface triggers didn't make sense--unless it was tied somehow to the machinations of the master cyberbrain.

In their curiosity they must have jostled something. The regular and increasing security overrides still rendered her unable to do anything other than think, just as in shut-down, but something was allowing her to still patch into some of the input. It was dreamlike and odd, often requiring, when she felt up to it, unravelling some epic abstraction of a puzzle in order for her to reach a monitor in the back of a closet or a snipet of answering machine tape containing information from the outside.

Androgenous bodies, gleaming chrome in blue and red laser light. Synthetic voices, short sentences. The familiar, yet still unnearving, sensation of a 40mm gold cable slipping into her spinal cord. Purple lipstick smiling from the face of a PDA.

What was happening during these overrides? And more questions: Where was her money coming from? Why was it that something so advanced would have Crey standard limb sockets?

She didn't really care what it meant. She didn't have the capacity. She found it hard to think of herself as human, especially after looking at her own brain through the visual input line, the doctors poring over her like archaeologists over a mummified cat.

It was almost cruel that her personality was left intact. Perhaps "they" depended on it. Maybe they expected she would come looking for them one day--be their quisling. Or was she already executing their orders?

She was standing the a living room of a house with broken-down walls. It was night, wind whipping up through the frozen marsh, blowing an eerie red mist up the hill where the lonely shack sat and through her sundress. In one hand was a blue-handled screwdrive, in the other, a telephone receiver. The cord lead nowhere. Another dead end.

Screw it.

The metal point shattered pale blue lenses, driving chilled steel and tears of powdered glass through synthetic occular jelly and into grey matter. Drive it down, drink your poison, stab the memories you can't find and they'll be gone for good, no one to blame but you. Kill yourself a thousand times in your sleep and it won't change a thing. Silicon doesn't care.

But security does. She didn't want to die, and she knew that if she tried, her vision would just go red again.

She came to in the lobby, a few unconscious Lost laying disheveld right where she'd left them. How considerate, to bring her right back to her mission objective. It wasn't like her to be cynical, but it was growing on her--steel-heeled stilettos making slurping sounds as she strode...heroicly, through puddles of coagulated blood. She had a hacker kid to save--and a cape, after all.

Who knew what a little flap of rip-stop nylon could do to a person.

It all started with a simple question: "Why don't you go to the dance with Nick?" Bryan had asked. They looked out for each other somewhat--bolstered each other.

She didn't have feelings about the boy either way. She didn't have much in the way of feelings at all. By most definitions she was a sociopath. But Nick was nice, and nice was good for a girl whose only barrier between heroism and cold blood was playing by the rules. And the rules stipulated that good girls went to the high school prom with nice boys. Why not go with Nick?

Because Nick wasn't the one she had her sights on. Him. They had met only briefly, but she had seen him in the halls: quietish, cynical, strangely confident. Maybe it was because they seemed to have so much in common.

But that night she learned he was already going with someone else. Already "taken." The match sounded most unlikely. Spite stirred the circuits on the surface of her cyberbrain. She would go to the dance with Nick. They dressed to match.

But he never came.

She wondered if she had ever been so close to being miserable. She tried to be social, talk to friends, dance a bit. But everyone was with someone, too nervous to chat with friends. So she sat, morose, for the first time in her life: the wallflower.

Then he showed up. Made quite the splash. Looked fantastic. And Kali waved to her. Waved her over? Just being near was nice enough.

Just when things were turning for the better, the plot thickened. Franky had apparently made a bet with Tolliver, and suddenly the lines were drawn, so clearly. That--that girl, tugging his lapels, jumping, making him cringe--she saw it... So that night she shook hands with the devil, the Regent of Revenge.

Until now, that word was not in her social vocabulary, let alone her arsenal. It had no place among nice girls except in hair care and periods and she had neither. Still, the electric worm of spite crawled through her brain's buffer solution, unextinguished.

She wasn't sure how the fight started, or even that it was happening until she was fully into it, calmly, icily, intoning words that were undoubtedly not nice, to her own roommates. The Quad 5 Curse, eh?

Before the accident, she had been nice. A confidant to all, popular through sweetness alone. Never once had she thought to turn that information on her peers; she knew the power it held. And tonight she broke that vow. Wide open. Because her friends were hurting and would not speak. In a backward way it was almost heroic. But she was quickly learning that in the real world, good ends justified cruel means.

Her private channel on the comm crackled. It was him. She was so engaged, brain near boiling, she couldn't even remember what he said. But the message got through: he was on her side. An iciness crawled over her organs, her skin's micropores tingling. This whole evening--it was so wonderfully, terribly, horribly...perfect.

Nick showed up just in time to miss everything. So they hit the streets--their common language. He dispensed justice like nothing she'd ever seen, and together they never even had to rest, doling out dark violence by the clawful. It helped, cleared her head. Through a wordless understanding, a cynical trust for the slightly creepy boy bloomed.

Nice-boy-Nick was a technophile. She wasn't quite sure of the context, unsure as to whether to tell him that she lacked hormones and--parts. But he was content just to grill her about her hardware, her AI.

That is, until the dark closed in again, like and electric fog running up her spine. The override; it was coming. She could visualize the loose circuits in their otherwise pristine matrix of grey matter and silicone, exploit it. She dug her heels in, quaking, real self-preservation instinct riding the programed one. Every muscle rigid, she harnessed the spite and the dark disruptive energy that had been slowly seeping in and she hung on, clutched the dirt like it could save her soul, oblivious to Nick's worried pleas. The radio trigger now gone, initializing sequences aborted, the world washed back in: the alley, the warehouse behind them, Nick's undoubtedly worried face beneath the mask of his secondhand armor, kneeling with her in the dirt. How utterly embarrassing.

But he didn't run--not like she had tried to, from herself. Technophile. He wanted to bug her clothing, help get to the bottom of the overrides, where she went, who her controller was, what happened. The thought had never occurred to her. Burned-out engrams.

She was monitoring her processes now, and saw someone patch into her optics from a security back door, probably to find out what was keeping her. They saw, but they did not know. He was innocent.

"I think...they can see you..."

"Through you?"

It was stupid to resist; she could see that clearly now.

"...I should go..."

And now she had endangered a new friend.

"I'm sorry."

He was such a nice boy.

"I'm so sorry."

She took off running. She knew where she had to go. When the security override initiated again, she let it take her, wash away all the thoughts and worries and that little worm of rage. They knew what they were doing. Pawns shouldn't think. It was in the rules.

She sat in the passenger seat of the sedan with the beige interior, hands resting in the lap of her white sun dress next to half of a cucumber and turkey sandwich on a napkin. A stray crumb bounced out of the napkin's crease and into the abyss between the seat and the door.

"Your grandfather on your father's side--he was a scientist, too, you know. His wife died when your father was very young and he devoted his life to studying the science of souls."

She made an incredulous face, gaze drifting out the window at the last of the New England countryside washing by.

Her mother looked over and smiled a little bit, pushing a rogue strand of black hair back behind her ear. "I know it sounds very 19th century, but with the work the Germans were doing during the war, and the popularity of Jungian psychoanalysis, there was a resurgence in the field. Some very important work--most of it mythbusting, came out of it. But that's how your father became interested in genetics."

The woman smiled fondly to herself as she adjusted the sun visor to block her eyes from the morning sunlight. "My parents... Mom was a trophy wife while my father was--and still is--a businessman; he worked for one of the great British taipan of his day. And he was the son of an indentured English nurse--a...a 'comfort woman'--during the war. A Kempeitai soldier helped her escape; I knew him as Grandfather. He might have been..."

There was a lull as both women were lost in thought. Somewhere a penny rolled from one hiding place to another.

"Why did you quit social work, Mom?"

She sighed. "The hours, having a teenage daughter, that sort of thing. And I could never choose whether I preferred public service to business. So why not teach piano?" She laughed at her little joke. It was a young laugh.

At her feet, nestled between patent leather shoes and the foot heater was a blue canvas violin case. She wondered why she had bothered to bring it along. She didn't even know how long they would be visiting Paragon. But she would have to practice at some point today if she ever wanted to tour with Tchaikovsky's op. 35. She didn't care how hard it was, how young she was. The musicality was what mattered.

"But I suppose where I'm going with this is that our family has a long tradition of human discovery and betterment--and something special: in my grandmother's touch, my grandfather's and father's grasp of people, Grandpapa's research, your father's work, my--"

"--pedagoguery?" She sniffed. "Look, Mom, I don't understand why this matters now. Why, when you--you kept me from Grandmother and -father and Grandpapa until just recently. Why we're going to Paragon. Why you and Dad are being so...weird." As she got more frustrated, she felt her voice, instead of raise, slip away, become thin. Her dress was the lightest gauze, like the weakest wind would turn it into a sail and carry her away. The sandwich fell to the car seat.

"Violet, sweetie..." The world seemed to slow. Her mother reached for her, her hand resting on her linen thigh, thin, tangible as clouds. "I know you're in pain. But what you have is a gift. A gift you have because I, and your father, and our parents...our family...our vision..."

The woman's eyes slipped to the dashboard clock, her skin paling, turning cold. "Oh, Violet..." She looked at her daughter, so full of questions and hurt, her glassy green eyes standing sharp against the rest of her form that, more with every passing day, evaded sight and touch, as if attempting to run from itself. And she had all the answers. She wished she could explain everything, kiss it all better. But she couldn't. It was too cruel.

The girl looked to her mother, brows knit, searching. She looked so sad then. She had seen a child pulled from a car accident die in her mother's arms, but the face she made then was nothing compared to this. "Mom...?"

She smiled the tiniest bit, which only painted her features with tragedy. "I am so proud of you, Violet. Don't ever forget that."

In the glare of the sun, the girl found herself standing in a ditch among the wreckage. Had she been thrown? Had she survived intact? Had her mother seen it coming? Her violin, freed from its snug coffin, tumbled off the shoulder and landed awkwardly at her feet. She bent and scooped it up, mechanical fingers and synthetic skin holding it with surgical delicacy, cold. A chilled breeze blew the acrid smoke of burning oil into her face, snapping her cape across her arm.

It wasn't real, but it wasn't a dream. Her mother was dead, and so was her little girl.

"I know, Mom. And I won't."


* * *


The GPS had indicated that she went nowhere unusual on override, so she wasn't surprised, when she had tapped back into her hi-jacked perceptions, to find herself in Pocket D. Universal neutral ground.

Down in the VIP room, in the glow of festive torches, a meeting, no matter how strange in appearance, could be conducted in privacy and comfort. In a dark corner booth, three figures lounged, two in segmented chrome armor, and a man in a navy business suit, dark hair slicked back with no-nonsense, balancing a tiny laptop on his knees. The bartender had, with a knowing nod, wandered to the other end of the bar to shine crystal and backlit glass filled with jewel toned liquids.

She entered then, armor sheening darkly in the flicker of the lamps, face blank, and strode purposely, mechanically to the booth.

"Take a seat," the suit offered, and she did, sliding in next to the chrome soldier on his right. A cable appeared in his armored hand, connecting first to the laptop, and then, breaching skin, to a small port in the back of her neck. Laptop now open, the suit began to frown, twin reflected torches engulfing the scrolling streams of data flowing across his corneas.

A woman's voice from the tiny computer: "Let me speak to her, Steven."

The suit furrowed his brow and placed the laptop on the table and swiveled it to face her. Pictured on the screen was the lower half of a woman's face. She was clad in a severely cut suit; a lock of black hair arced down her cheek, framing perfect, purple lips.

"Miss Violet, dear." Her tone was motherly, stern. "You know our meetings are very important. You cannot miss them. We had to contact you via radio to see what had kept you--that is very dangerous. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now, I know you have been having bad dreams. I am sending someone to your specialists--a man from Crey Industries. Your men from SERAPH are very curious--they should be cooperative... Now listen carefully: your specialists are not to tamper with your brain anymore, is that clear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"This man from Crey: you will defer to his judgment in all things. He can fix you--your arm, your eye. He can make the bad dreams go away. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You are a good girl, Violet. You are doing a very good job, and if you can hang on a little longer, everything will get better."

The woman smiled coolly, pursed her lips, and paused. "Is there anything else you would like to tell me?"

"No, ma'am."

She took a breath, satisfied. "Alright, then. You may go. Thank you, dear."

The suit reclaimed the laptop, scowling, and the cable was removed. She rose from the booth, saluted smartly, and made her way out.

Back in Talos, she peeled the little Velcro-backed chip from the inside of her collar, dropped it on the pavement, and crushed it beneath the steel heel of her stiletto boot. She was a good girl.



(Some vital information and not-so-vital spelling have been edited to reflect current events. Basically I forgot what I had written here and had to change it to fit.)

"Us bots have to stick together."

An innocuous comment. But still, she froze, wordless, half glaring, half lost in the shock before the storm of ontological anxiety. Nick came to her rescue again, the android--the real robot's face plate glowed with the heat of simulated embarrassment.

"She's not a robot."

* * *

"You're not a robot, you're a girl." The boy shook his head slowly, smiling, ember-red eyes partially closed in affection. He stroked her cool cheek with the backs of his fingers. "The most beautiful girl I know."

* * *

"I think you're really cute."

She smoothed her dress, feeling awkward. What do you do when you're praised for something you have no control over? Nick wasn't just complementing her make-up or her dress.

"...Thanks...I guess. Not to put down your complement, it's just..."

* * *

"I do like it...it's just..."

She stood in front of a full length mirror, stiff, clinically examining the image she saw. It was recognizable, to be sure, but at the same time wholly alien. But her new shape, she had begun to come to terms with by now...

She wore a strapless vinyl leotard in black and pastel purple, cinched with a low belt, wired to her with a few bundles of cable. Thigh-high leggings, over-the-knee boots, a visor blinking a myriad of HUD printouts, an arm band filled with emergency trans-dermal stimulants and analgesics, fingerless gloves. All of it was wired in, able to use her own battery to render itself invisible at the flick of a switch. But she hadn't even got the hang of controlling that sort of thing on her own yet. This was too complicated. And a bit trampy.

He placed his hands on her waist, long, gentle fingers curling around the front of her hip bones. He was a head taller than her, long, plum hair, like an Autumn Purple Ash, swept back, falling about his shoulders. He was warm, smelled like Christmas spice and matches. His playful smile was infectious. As they stood there, regarding the image together, his chin resting against the side of her head, she knew he was right. Everything fit.

* * *

The girl was latched onto his lapels, jumping up and down excitedly. He blanched and, from across the room, she seethed.

* * *

"The boy has been here for quite a while, and now we have our first resident girl..." The assistant director flipped through the chart containing abridgments of each of the subjects' files. He stood with a man in a dark navy suit on the main observation deck: a giant gray room dimly lit by a long console full of surveillance equipment, laid out in front of a wide Plexiglas window that overlooked the training room below. Otherwise it was empty. "When can we expect the rest?"

The suit, clearly an outsider at this complex--part laboratory, part assassins' playground, part orphanage--straightened his tie and brushed a slicked hair back behind his ear. "There were no other survivors."

The scientist balked, frazzled grey hair wafting like goose down in the still air. "From the strain? Yes, we know."

"From the entire 'Aeon' generation."

The scientist blinked and stumbled backward to sit heavily in a chair at the console, metal file hanging limply from his hand before clattering to textured rubber coated cement floor. With the other, he cradled his liver-spotted forehead.

"The two subjects you have are the only of this generation to both survive and to express the target genes. It is not a fault of the splicing, however, but of the genetic donor specimens. It was too volatile. I assure you, neither you nor your lab are to blame, Doctor. However..." The suit straightened his tie, his Adam's apple lifting as he filled with authority. "Should anything happen to the subjects in question..." He shot a steely cold glare at the open doorway that spilled a barely shifting fluorescent light into the room from the hallway beyond.

The scientist held fear in his eyes, darting them quickly to follow the man's gaze.

"Violet!"

The slight girl startled, visually re-materializing in the doorway where she had been, until now, semi-invisibly eavesdropping, and scurried away down the hall.

* * *

"Please, come in." Doctor Conrads gestured to the comfortable armchair in his office. His desk was pushed against one wall so there could be sitting room without having to speak over an authoritarian symbol like a big oak desk. He swiveled his own chair away from the file sitting on his blotter, smiling, receptive to the timid girl.

She took a seat, sitting stiffly, ankles crossed, hands folded in her lap. Her face, which he expected to show some trepidation, was blank.

"I'm Doctor Conrads--David Conrads. You can call me whatever you're comfortable with."

"Okay."

He waited a moment, but she said nothing. Her face held no clue, although her eyes moved past him to the window. Something unsettled him a little. But no matter, she just needed a little prompting. Soon he would get a sense of her emotional resonance and she would ease up. "What's you're name?

"I don't know."

He glanced back to his file. Admissions didn't know either. "Well, what would you like me to call you?" He smiled reassuringly.

"I've been going by Aeon."

"Alright then, Aeon. Would you like to tell me a little about yourself?"

Her eyes drifted to a motivational poster on the wall, and then out the window again. "I'm fifteen. I play the violin. I like blueberries and my favorite color is light purple. I don't like pets except for fish. I have a hero license, security level 10, and SERAPH referred me here." She recited it as though she was trying to convince herself of the same information. "I'm a cyborg," she finished after a pause, her hands clenched a little.

Conrads smiled. "Level 10 already? That's quite the accomplishment."

"Thank you, sir."

He glanced at her file again. Cyborg? Not an android? SERAPH wouldn't make that mistake; but now he could place what bothered him: her emotional signature was so faint--it was there, but...she could have sat there all day and he might not have even noticed.

"I think..." he began, threading his fingers together, "Ms. Atwood could be of better use to you."

* * *

"This strain is expressed through the ability to perform psychokinetic molecular excitation. Both subjects report that manifesting this effect is extremely intuitive--emotional in nature. Brain scans indicate that the use of these abilities is marked by intense arousal of the limbic system, especially in the amygdala, hippocampus, and mammillary body in the girl--Alpha-17, and in Alpha-13--the boy--in the hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens. Planned cyberization of Alpha-17 has been successfully completed; however, the progress of Alpha-13 has been postponed indefinitely due to the trigger for his manifestation lying in his eyes and hands. Prosthetics would likely cause dissociation and apraxia, resulting in the loss of control over his abilities.

"As far as manifested abilities, the girl is able to resonate her own matter; and, upon admittance, she was able to camouflage herself by subconsciously reflecting photons in order to appear as though she is not present, similar to the projections of optic camouflage. Since the cyberization, she has been able to extend this effect to her prosthetics. She has also been able to arouse her own mental processes to, in conjunction with the cyberbrain, move and react very quickly. And, despite her weight, she has a natural understanding of moving in silence.

"The boy can, in a less refined manner, agitate any particles within his line of sight and a certain range. He has, using only this ability, caused numerous fires. Through the years he has spent training at the facility and much study of anatomy and psychology, he has begun to fine-tune this ability in order to affect the efficacy of neurotransmitters and other cellular processes. Because of the intuitive nature of his abilities, his studies have also made him capable of, consciously or not, biologically influencing thought and emotion. In, perhaps, coincidence with his natural charisma, he is a 'spark' in every way."

* * *

Nick screwed up is face in serious concentration, moving toward her. She leaned in slightly as he reached toward the collar of her suit. Access port D106R popped open with a little snap, creating lesions in her microfiber skin from the inside, and it sprang back a bit with the tension broken, allowing the small hatch to open. Her pelvis was wired internally, acting as a giant antenna for radio frequencies, so the audio feed ran up her spine and right past this port. Nick worked a pair of pliers, splicing the frayed ends of an audio jack to a little red and white insulated wire on the bug, tinier than a dime. The capture device hot-wired to her audio input, he fed the wires through a hatch on the access port's closure and snapped it shut again. Rough edges of her synthetic skin back in contact, the microfibers re-knitted themselves into a contiguous sheet, save for the bug sticking out of her neck. The other side had a layer of Velcro, which he stuck to the inside of her collar, tucking the short wires in.

He smiled. "All set."

* * *

The inner security doors of their ward hissed shut as the boy returned. He was covered in red and black body armor, his hands encased in protective steel gauntlets that once shone, but were now marbled by heat. They clacked together as he removed one and pried his red goggles from his face, perching them in his long, plum hair. He swaggered with exhaustion and a little bit of pride toward the equipment cache. He almost passed her before he noticed she had been standing there, half girl, half flickers of light, watching him.

"Hey, fire starter." She barely spoke above a whisper.

He managed a grin through the fatigue and tedium of the job. "Shrinking violet," he teased, poking her lightly in the ribs with his bare hand.

She was a skinny little thing in a cream sweater and a denim skirt, reverently peering up at him with big, green eyes, almond shaped--like his--someone had said that the strain donor had been ethnically Korean.

They had gotten along quickly. Even though he was a year older than her, rattling around in a facility meant for the augmentation and training of eighteen more children like them, they were the only kids in the place by a long shot. And he was sweet, under his disarming and ironically cool exterior.

"What's shaking?" Another inside joke, at the expense of their common bond.

"More pins in my brain, the usual. It's starting to look like one of those sewing tomatoes..." She picked at her scalp where the stitches were, and scuffed the floor with the toe of her sneaker. "'For security,' they say."

"When do they plan to transplant you?"

"Tomorrow."

* * *

"Aeon, you need to start thinking about your future. Your truancy is stacking up---it will go on your permanent record and affect your schooling and career options."

Valerie Atwood looked her over the top of her sketch pad, purple colored pencil pressed to her lips, concerned. Already drawn there was what appeared to be a burning hand, clutching something.

"I worry that you are living in the past. I'm not saying that it wasn't important or that you should try to forget it, Aeon, but you have a good life now, friends, and a future as a powerful hero. You've only been here a month, and your dedication to the city..." She shook her head in mild amazement, smiling. "You're already almost security level thirty. I haven't seen progress like this since... Oh..."

On her pad, extending from the hand was a vague suggestion of the neck and body of a stringed instrument, and over it lay its hurtful bow: a thin assassin's dagger.

* * *

Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D. It poured out of her, into the bow, her fingers. So fast and precise, she didn't even have to think. It filled the empty halls of the facility, echoing down corridors and into labs where scientists smiled to themselves. She could feel his eyes on her, intense, spurring her on, filling her with music. She showed them. She showed them all. She could play it. She was barely fifteen.

The spite began to boil up, boil over, and his eyes went wide before he shut them tight, cringing, guilty. He had pushed her too hard, hadn't expected so strong a reaction, and her incensed emotion had combusted.

The bow went flying, impossibly spinning, splintering against the wall and she screamed in frustration, a beam of red light, knife--no, laser-sharp, shooting from her eye sockets and slicing into the far wall of the recreation room.

* * *

Holiday music played cheerfully, filling Galaxy Plaza with nervous happiness as kids in white and blue milled about, chatting, dancing. She made sure no one was looking, pulled out a compact mirror, and checked her appearance for the third time this hour. Her glass eye was listing again--up and to the right--and she hastily poked it back into position.

* * *

She and Nick stood in iCON, originally to coordinate clothing. He had asked about her arm. They all, always asked about her arm. She didn't mind answering his question, but how would she explain, exactly, that she was, all that he could see, artificial?

"Give me your hand."

He complied and she took it, both of her hands enclosing his. Her skin was cool and dry, soft and slightly waxy. His eyes slowly grew with understanding.

"It's all...like that."

* * *

"Please, Sydney...? Come in..." She kicked with powerful legs fitted with flippers, still only barely able to keep her steel-boned frame afloat.

The boy sat on the pool deck, his back to the wall, knees tucked under his chin. "No."

"It's not going to hurt you."

"I'm not afraid," he said quickly. Even scowling his face held a charm that made him difficult to tease. "I just don't like it."

"Fine. Sorry."

She heaved herself out of the pool, water pouring off her skin in sheets, then rivulets. Droplets and her form-fitting leotard clinging to her waxy skin. His gaze, hungry sixteen-year-old eyes followed her form intently as she climbed onto the tiles, kicked off the flippers, and made her way over to him. He fought not to shrink away as she sat next to him at the wall, still wet. She casually held out her hand, palm up, and after a moment, he took it in his. He looked intently at her, ember red eyes concentrating, and the water began to evaporate, her body channeling his power to excite the beads hanging on her skin and hair, inspiring them to take flight. Soon she was dry again.

"Is that better?"

He nodded, now safe and dry and here with her. They remained there, trusting, acute palms facing, hand in hand, instruments of death intertwined.

* * *

Jack Tower lounged in the hot tub, taking up far too much space, as she eased onto the ledge, feeling practically naked in her strapless swimsuit. He tucked one arm around Kali, extending the other, comedically large, over the edge of the pool. He smiled good-naturedly.

"So, what's the story behind your arm?"

* * *

Alarms blared, wailing, the whole compound washed in pulsing red light. Scientists ran, yelling, grabbing samples, shredding hard copy, pocketing data discs. The small army of chrome armored soldiers was already deployed; they patrolled the halls, initiating lock down.

Should the perimeter be compromised, security was of the utmost importance. Gamma Stage subjects were to aid in defense, Alpha and Beta were to be "relieved of evidence." They could not fall into enemy hands. Beneath the euphemisms, the orders were austere: destroy yourself or disappear.

She hadn't been briefed on this particular situation.

She sprinted to the equipment cache and found him already leaving, suited up, gauntlets on. She seized them and his attention, desperate.

"Sydney!" Her face held terror. "What do we do?!"

He looked too calm, grim, saving his energy for the fire. "We run."

"Let me get dressed. We'll go together--"

"No." His plum brows knit beneath his goggles. "I have a job to do. I have to hold them off or all these scientists are going to die in their search for me. But you..." He blinked, swallowed hard.

She shook her head but held her gaze. "No." Her resolve was strong. Her new body had granted her a fear of herself, and thus, confidence when matched with him. "I won't leave you."

She could see the future unfold before her, unrolling like a rug, tapestry embroidered with twisted bodies and faces, their expressions drawn with circles, depicting horror. The building would soon be overrun. He would die.

The tips of her blades scratched his metal hands, threatening to sever his focus of power in order to relieve him of the evidence of his abilities--to force him to stop, to save him from the fight.

His resolve, his affection equal to hers, the metal heated, beginning to blister her skin, promising to do the same she would to him. She had been expertly trained, to be sure. She was a machine made for speed, an engine of death, but she had never seen the field--and these were Longbow. He knew: if she didn't run, she would die. If she ran, she might die, too. But he knew where her powers lay--he could burn them out, turn her into an innocent.

They were locked in stalemate, twin gifts committed to undo the other in order to give their friend the chance to live.

In the red glow of the alarms, his ember eyes drowning in sadness, something in him unfurled, wrapped around her, and filled her with warmth. Palm to palm: their deadly bond, bittersweet, he bent and kissed her. The memory burned through her mind and locked itself there, cloistered among the folds, her own, no pin to tag it.

"Run. Hide. Go!"

He gave her a little push and she was off running, faster than ever, filled with his strength. Turning a corner, the first PPD SWAT saw her, identified, shot, missed, and she was gone. A nearby lab exploded and the blast carried her down the hall. Torn nerves screamed, but she dared not look at the damage. It was time to run.

She was bursting through fire doors and sliding down stair wells, shedding clothes on her way to the sewer. Time to hide. She was down to the strapless leotard--her second skin, now, and she focused, imagining a little purple flower lost in a field of clover; a penny forgotten in a pocket; fading away, warm in Sydney's arms.

The infiltrators didn't see her coming. No one did. The blades appeared, bristling from their chests, invisible except for their jackets of blood. The more she dispatched, the fewer he would have to encounter, the longer he could last. If she killed enough, he would live.

It was too easy, now that they couldn't see her. Much easier than the infrared-sensing drones in the training facility. They swept their weapons in wild panic, not knowing where the next slice would appear. They fell in a scattered pile, bent pick-up-sticks, blood spreading out on the linoleum tiles to create a small pond of red. So much blood, some of it hers.

She felt weak, sick. If she had had anything in her stomach, she would have tried to reject it. These were men. They had families--daughters--maybe just like her. Like the scientists who had cared for her every neuron, coaxing her soul, brain and stem resembling a germinating seed, to take root in its new casing, to bloom...these men were only doing what they thought was right. But she wasn't a villain. No one here was. Why was she evidence? For what crime?

The blood was on her hands--all over her. It wouldn't come off; not without a shower, anyway. But as long as it was on her, she couldn't hide. It would have to become part of her, she realized slowly, stomach churning, and then the guilt, the evidence, the crime, and the girl could slip away into nothingness, together.

In the distance in red and white, he came down the hall...flying? Even Sydney couldn't fly. And this was just one of the "Longbow." She furrowed her brow and set her stance wide, barely disturbing the bloody pond, determined to stop him.

The man scanned the hallway, saw the carnage, and flew over to assess the damage. Blades, not fire: someone else was here. He turned the wrong way down the "T" intersection and she maneuvered behind him, curled near the ground like an angry spring. She struck, so fast, and the blades went deep, but he had noticed her before the impact and she missed the vital point. He turned, tearing himself on the blades, not caring, and she watched in horror as the wounds closed behind them with a faint green glow. His self-righteous sneer was the last thing her right eye saw as his darkly glowing fist crushed the orb to a dust.

The impact knocked her visible and the Longbowman was briefly shocked to see her as she was: mostly nude, impossibly feminine, covered in blood, glint of a wolf mother in her remaining eye: protective to the death.

He wound up again, but he was so slow. She leaped, scissor-locking him about the waist with her thighs, and swung back and through his legs, using her near two-hundred fifty pounds to drag his face, chin cleft and all, to meet the tiles. Disengaging, she skidded on the blood slick, disappearing back into the glow of the florescent lights. They were flickering now, which was tricky to keep up with, but the accompanying shadows concealed any waver in the air.

The man rose, spitting teeth, pulverized nose and brow ridge growing back out of his face, almost comically, like an inflating balloon, the popping noises reverberating through his wet sinuses. He scrutinized the hallway; he knew what he was playing with now. He could go like this forever if he just protected his vital points--and even then, chances were those would grow back, too.

He saw! The briefest flicker: she was on the ground again, inching to her left, coming in on his weak side--his right side. She had noticed.

Yes, she had noticed, but he was still wrong. She had feinted, he lunged, and she leaped again, clearing his lowered shoulder height, body twisting into a human-shaped spring. Feet tucked up, her knees locked about his head as she flew, carrying his torso into a dangerously weak backward arch. The coil unwound and took his head with it, grinding cartilage, tearing skin, ligaments snapping back like rubber bands. She missed her feet but rolled, unhurt, turning to make sure he was down. She wondered if he could regrow his spine.

Her left eye still fully intact, she walked over and surveyed him. His neck was mush, head at an impossible angle, bones sticking out. Then he twitched. How? Paralyzed with fear, suddenly he was upon her, holding her arms, carrying her into the wall, his head lolling insanely in attempts to look at her.

Finish it.

Their gaze locked and the line of red penetrated his skull. His mouth formed a perfect "O" before his head exploded--popped like a grape, the hot, wet pulp splattering her face. She fell next to the crumpled body, wanting to cry. Why was this happening?

Time to go. She collected herself, inspecting her arm. The flesh was gone but the hydraulics were intact, protected by spun steel casing. There wasn't anything she could do about it now. Back down the hall, just a little farther. It was quiet over here save for the whine of the alarm as she slipped into the sewer access and took off running, leaving her second life behind her.

She knew when she hit the border of the complex because she heard a pop within her skull, like a miniature flash-bang, thousands of pins detonating at once. Deep within the labyrinth of her cyberbrain, the kill switch cut the circuit to her primary limbic system and she was falling, tumbling into the water, rolling down the sewer shaft in a catatonic daze.

Somewhere in her dreams he kissed her, silently wished her luck with ember eyes, but she couldn't remember his name.

* * *

When the fugue dissolved, she was screaming. Some monster Clockwork had her arm--her whole goddamn arm in its mouth, concentric circles of jagged teeth grinding away at what little soft material was left and starting on the steel. She went for the pack of combat drugs, but it was gone. Her whole left side was torn open to the ribs--which meant her Medevac badge was lost, too, scrap for some stupid Cog. Terror gripped her, for the first time she could ever remember, really feeling it, as she watched her arm slowly disappear into the thresher mouth, dragging her with it.

Screw the arm! She spammed the release command. Nothing. Panicking, left side screaming in pain as she moved, she went for the emergency release lever. The socket hissed, spat, went dead. The arm, her one good arm, too high-tech to properly repair, was finally jammed. The irony was not lost on her. At least she couldn't feel the teeth anymore.

It couldn't end like this. Not when she had just begun to remember, brain tissue remapping to reconstruct the singed data. She had been a super before the "accident," and her mother had known it--maybe even seen her fate in those last moments. Violet. Her name was Violet. She was fourteen, now fifteen. She played the violin. She could disappear.

She had to remember how it worked. Her body was failing her; the only thing she had now was her gift. It wasn't difficult to visualize becoming nothing as she witnessed her form dissolve before her eyes, harvested by the Clockwork. She wondered if they remembered their former lives as toasters and corrugated siding, if she would remember hers.

Given into despair, it hitting her like a truck, she wasn't terribly surprised to be falling to the ground, supposing that her arm had been chewed off finally. But there it was, mangled, but not broken by the serrated aluminum shark-toothed thing. How...?

Another one, a Tesla Prince, closed in for his share of the spoils and swung. But nothing happened. His mammoth claw passed through her as if air. She was up then, scrabbling, slipping in her own blood on the already oily floor, praying for purchase. If she could just run... An oscillator charged its EMP beam but she was already gone. Hide. Behind a box. Anything. They were looking for her, wanted her bones for their bread. Go. Legs still worked, no excuse not to try. She took off full tilt, uncontrolled speed sending her on wild trajectories, careening into shelves of parts and shipping crates full of scrap. Out. Where was out?

She dove through a window covered with brown paper, took a few blocks to decelerate, and collapsed, half rolling, half sliding down the smooth cement incline and into a canal.

* * *

It was all a blur: the street, the lab, the dreams. The specialists tsk'ed; she would be alright. But the arm could not be saved this time.



Edit: reworded a bit of the sixth scene to correctly reflect the situation as well as clarify.
Edit2: retconned some details to be in keeping with current continuity

She sat in detention in her usual seat near the back left corner of the room, trying to finish her trigonometry homework. As she was completing algebra tests as quickly as her pencil would let her, they moved her up. There it was pretty much the same story, but it took time to learn the concepts, anyway. But once you understood, it was just algebra again. Back to ten-minute homework...until this week.

The exposed steel frame of her fingers slipped over the painted wood pencil, making it difficult to grip. She'd dropped it a dozen times on this page of problems alone. Mentally bored, her forehead creasing with concentration, the frustration was beginning to well up. She was normally so cool-headed, even with the provocation of a fully-functional limbic system, so she found herself becoming frustrated over feeling frustration in the first place. It wasn't exactly constructive.

It had only taken a little jostling to upset the careful balance that kept her memories locked down and her emotions at the minimum for functionality. As soon as those few memories had slipped out and suspicion about the security overrides had been seeded, the biological remains of her amygdala seemed to have been kick-started. And with nothing to keep it in check, it hit hard, refused to calm, and reminded her that she was out of practice emotionally, after these few months with all but none.

She readjusted her grip on the pencil.

x =

"Pi over two," she mumbled to herself, the tip of her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she prepared to commit it to the paper. The tip went down, the pencil rolled slightly, and she tightened her hold; but, it only caused the pencil to slip into her palm where it met its end in a vice of angry steel, splinters showering a few of the surrounding students. They turned, glowering, already not in the best of moods.

"Miss Quisling." The attending nun frowned, bored. "Come here, please."

She rose slowly, her reconstructed left side still sore, and approached the desk at the front of the class. The nun, instead of rapping her knuckles or sending her to someone else's office, handed her a note. "You are excused from detention. You can serve the remaining hours another day."

It was from the biomechanical ward at the hospital. She was due back for a post-op check-up, but they would receive bad news--she had been released to attend school, not to fight, and now she would have to be committed again, take more absences, and face more detention. But she hadn't been able to resist the opportunity, not when he had offered.

She gathered her school things and plodded back to her quad. It was empty, which was normal, but especially relieving right now. Her bag was still mostly packed from her last stay at the hospital--Stasi had been so nice as to do it for her, but she hadn't been able to thank her yet. She hunted down a few stray items and her toothbrush, tucking them in the bag among some extra clothes. All she had, in a little bag. Her broken body, a suitcase for her soul. She didn't want to leave. Not now. She didn't care if he went missing for a few days--she wanted to be here to welcome him back.

She was listing then, overstimulated amygdala tunneling her vision. She fell against the wall, and slid down between her bed and the closet, her knees tucked up to her forehead.

They had all been in Pocket D, like most Fridays, but this gathering was refreshingly drama-free. She was jumpy, just out of the hospital that day, evading curious eyes. That was the problem with trying to not be noticed: people caught onto it. He practically dragged her into the conversation, but, as strange and raw as she felt then, she was grateful for the hand. It made her feel better to know first-hand that before the accident, when she had almost no problems to speak of and tried her hardest to be compassionate, those with an abundance really could appreciate the help.

Bryan was excited to hang out at the "Gene Pool" in Faultline; something had infused him with self-confidence like she had never seen in him before, and his exuberant mood was catching. Once there, they all grilled him on his date with Nennya, teasing him in good humor, sharing their own experiences.

It was more than a little awkward, sitting on the edge of the pool, staring across at his--shoes. She couldn't bear to look anywhere else. Conversation began to stray. The "perfect date"? He wondered if there could be such a thing. Before even considering, she nodded internally.

She remembered once, while on tour with the Young Performers' Something-or-Other, a boy and a park. There, a whole map of the U.S. had been built in cement, stratified topographically in little steps, and every river they could fit was shaped into little canals and filled with clear water from springs in the concrete mountains. They had splashed there, talking for hours, dipping their toes in the Bear River and letting the Mississippi tug at their ankles. Finally, sitting on the bank of the tiny Gulf of Mexico, he had showed her how he felt.

But that was a date for a girl who no longer existed. What would the Perfect Date be like for her now? It would need the perfect person, but beyond that...she wasn't sure it would even matter.

It was like a breeze picked up suddenly, and then there were three: her, Rooster, and him. The scrappers were of the same mind and itched for a fight. She was certain she was already pulling stitches just from laughing, and she had to reduce the load on her left lung so her breathing wouldn't be so ragged--but how could she refuse? She didn't even consider it; not really.

The results were mildly disastrous. Between Malta and Carnies and GPS errors, she felt like she was kissing dirt more often than not, her mending body so quick to throw her into life support mode to minimize tissue damage. She overrode it again and again, cursing the slow reboot process. The boys could take any sort of hit thrown at them and just simply get up again.

"I hope this isn't your idea of the Perfect Date, Aeon."

He teased. He knew.

She caught her breath and spat thrice, ejecting old internal coolant. "...I plead the fifth." If he received video over the comm, he saw her relish. She might as well have said it was the best day of her life as far as she could remember. Although, admittedly, behind the smiles, she had been pretty miserable ever since the accident.

Bank crisis averted, they moved on. Inside, now, Arachnos. He gave her a hand up, they stuck close, moving in tandem, eight blades flashing. He really was incredible, efficient to the last fraction of a percent, striking critically, but mortally wounding none. She was more--sloppy? Well, less calculated, taking more low-risk shots, not being so concerned about what happened when the foe went down.

Once the citizens were rescued, even Jade decided to turn in for the night. Misericorde looked overstimulated and, after a slightly uncomfortable pause, suggested they go somewhere to talk.

In an old, overgrown compound on a little island in Peregrine, they had settled among the trees and large bleached bones. She was anxious to know more about him, what made him tick, what drew her to him. But what could she possibly offer in return? It felt weird to talk about herself.

He admitted that he wanted to hear her "sob story"--that it was comforting on some level. Reassured, but nervous, she stumbled around her memories. The conversation remained steady but the narrative was sparse. She felt she could trust him, though, and found herself slowly stripped of the apologetic mask, for once speaking unguarded and sincerely.

They were so similar, uncannily inverse: denied their childhood, created to be the tool of another, now ronin (sort of), always an outsider, wearing a mask. He'd seen that in her, extended a hand, hating to see another suffer the same way he had. Taking it, soothed, she found herself just being, for herself and for others--there was no conflict; despite the subject matter, her anxiety was gone. Even in the lulls, she was at a strange peace, resigned to what she felt blooming: a friendship, but just friendship.

She fell happily into her natural role: listening, encouraging, counselling. It was strange to be giving advise to someone she looked up to--advice that she, now in a similar situation, was having difficulty taking herself. But, unlike other people who came to her for comfort, he reassured her in turn, acknowledging what she said, making it more real and easier for her to swallow. But still, she felt that he was returning from that dark world while she was only now descending into it. Not yet reconciled with herself, she felt the itch for not only justice, but revenge. He asserted that she was a good person--better than him, even--and that she would never find herself there.

He breathed slowly and massaged his face.

But there was something more: Franky. The other girl wasn't supposed to come up in conversation. It was supposed to be a non-issue. She was supposed to go on loving him in secret. She felt that the delicate thing they were building, the bud of friendship, was out of season. Too early or too late, either way, she could see where this was going: they were to connect briefly, he'd say thanks but no thanks, and everything would return to how it had been.

But he smiled. He admitted it before she had even mustered the courage, before she could politely disengage and save them both the trouble: you can't control who you're attracted to. As much as you'd like to at times. And if it weren't for Franky...

"When you leave a place, you leave someone behind."

She reminded him of a girl named Sophie--even looked like her. She didn't quite understand what he meant at first, but it was coming back to her now. The gleaming of his claws had sparked something in her memory: another boy with metal hands and a warm, green glow. She had left him behind. Because of him she was here.

"The last thing I want to do is come between you and Franky."

That was a lie--the only one. She wasn't fond of the girl--something about her set her off, completely unrelated to being his girlfriend. They didn't seem to fit somehow. But what she had meant was that the last thing she wanted was to ruin something actually good in his life. And Franky had been good to him.

But still the hand--the offer--remained. He wanted to help her to look forward, break free. Michael mussed her hair.

She wanted--she wasn't sure. She wished she still had her jacket and pockets to stuff her hands into.

He had escorted her back to the safe part of town and said good night, saying her name in three parts: Vi-o-let.

Fashioned in the image of a doll--a woman's body, a child's mind--the perfect girl: she could blush, but she couldn't cry. It was cruel. Even good things made her miserable now, but at least she had found company. Curled up against the wall, she hiccuped uncontrollably into her knees.

(( Posted here with permission from Aeon. This takes place when Aeon was in the hospital a week or two ago. It is written from Nick's (Nox Veratis) point of view. ))

"Excuse me, where can I find room SB-412?"

I thought it was simple question, a way to ask, "Where is my friend's hospital room?" Instead the guard at security station tensed and looked me over with a critical eye. What he'd see was a young man in a black trench coat carrying a vase of flowers.

The guard was professionally dressed, blue uniform with sharp creases and hospital ID prominently displayed below his badge. “Sir, what is your business here?”

“I’m here to see my friend, Aeon,” I replied. “She told me that was the room she would be in.”

“Hold on while I check, sir.” He picks up the phone, dials, and starts speaking to the person on the other end. A nod, and he hangs up. “Sign in here and step through the security arch.”

I never had to go through a security scanner to get into a hospital before. An arch big enough for a person to step through that concealed detection equipment - metal detectors, chemical analyzers, and other scanners for detecting weapons or explosives.

“Sir, go down the hall, take any elevator on the left side. Press SB-4 and it will take you to the correct floor. Then follow the signs. Do not deviate from this.”

A few minutes later I’m at the right room. It turns out that “SB” stands for “sub-basement”. The elevator went down instead of up to my surprise.

There’s a lot of high tech equipment down here, stress analysis tools, micro-welding lasers, a rolling cart with robotic arms and so on. It almost looks like someone put a hospital ward on one side of an advanced machine shop.

The door’s open so I knock on the frame to announce myself. “Aeon, are you in there?”

“I’m over here,” she answers.

I pass her roommate with the prosthetic leg, take a look and whistle. Aeon’s lying in a hospital bed, the head of which is raised so she’s almost sitting, with a neck brace that looks like a wide collar on her. It supports the back of her skull and extends from just under her chin to below her collarbones in front. It doesn’t look tight enough to hold her head still and she proves it by turning her head to look at me. Tubes and diagnostic wires run from the collar to a cart with drip bags and equipment on it. More tubes and wires are attached to her left upper arm. The ocular that usually took the place of her right eye was missing, leaving the open socket.

“Wow, that’s some getup. How’re you feeling, Aeon?”

Sarcastically, “Oh, I’m just peachy. Really.”

“Well, I brought you flowers. Seemed like the right thing to do when you’re visiting a friend in the hospital. Do you like carnations?”

“Nick! That’s sweet of you. I’m just glad you came to visit, no one else has.”

She takes the flowers gently, and sniffs them before putting them on the table next to the bed. Then reaching lower, she opens a drawer in the table and pulls out some photographs.

“I’ve got something for you too. Remember how I told you I’d seen video footage of my brain? I got some prints for you, thought you’d be interested.”

That’s not something you see every day. The pictures showed Aeon’s skull without the wig, folded open and forward like an intricate origami. Her brain, enclosed in a clear silicone bubble, lifted up and back for easier access. The cable connecting her brain’s platform to the inside of her skull looked sturdy enough, stark contrast to the exposed grey matter.

“Geez, I hope they’re careful when they’ve got you open like that.” What else could I say? “What are you in here for anyway?”

“Lung transplant. The old one was failing.”

“I thought your lungs were artificial?”

“No, organic ones work better for now so that’s what I’ve got. They also wanted to retune my specifications to the balance and weight of my arm as it is now. It seems I’ve managed to out-do what they designed me for.”

What was left of her right arm was now bare metal framework and fresh primer paint. I could see the blades she used in combat between the struts that made up the skeleton of her forearm. They didn’t look so large in their mechanical sheaths though I am sure they looked much larger when they were pointed at you.

“They clocked me at 85 MPH. They said I should only be able to do about 60.”

“No kidding. I always said you were ridiculously fast.”

“Well, they’re worried that the extra stress will make me wear out faster.”

“Are you wearing out faster?”

“No, not that they can find. But I hate being stuck here. I’d rather be out ‘arresting’ villains.”

“No worries, you’ll be back out there in no time. I’ve seen how much you enjoy a good fight. I’ll be there to admire the way you move like greased lightning too.”

“Yeah, it’s what I’m good at.” Looking down at her hands, she says in a quieter voice, “I’m wired for combat.”

I respond with enthusiasm, “And you’re really good at it. I’ve never seen anyone else pull off what I’ve seen you do!”

“I just wonder if I’m at it so long, will it become all I know?”

“What? Hey, what’s wrong?”

Her face goes blank, a look made stranger by the gaping socket on one side, and her now glassy eye on the other.

In a monotone she speaks, “I heard about what Mana did. I know that he’s an android and I’m not. But I keep thinking about it anyway. What if I lose control of myself? Look at me.”

She raises her arms, forearm length blades flashing out of their housings. A moment shining in the artificial light of the room and they retract, hidden again inside her arms.

"I don't want my friends to be afraid of me. No matter how damaged I get, I won't lose control like that--I won't hurt anybody but myself."

Her face animates again, she turns and fixes her good eye on me.

“I’m a person not an android. I’m not like that.”

“You said it Aeon,” I respond, “You’ll be fine. The fact that you even worry about it is a good sign.”

She looks serious for a moment. Then a soft chuckle escapes her lips, as does the hint of a smile. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“So how about those Flyers?” I say and go on to catch her up with as much gossip as I can.

After all, gossip is what high school is all about.

The security override was unexpected. She had gotten quite used to them by now, the feeling of uncontrollably drifting to sleep, finding herself in a gray mist, then punching back into her senses to find herself running, portaling, on a tram, going somewhere. She was even getting used to being able to simply observe without panicking, although she was completely unable to control her perceptions. But what surprised her more than having her breakfast interrupted, was where she seemed to be headed: not the usual rendezvous point, but across the city to her specialists' lab. What could they possibly want with her there? and at this emergency-level pace?

The man from Crey. He was early.

He was not a tall man, dressed in a nice black suit with his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up. His hair was a mess of medium brown, shocked with terror white, arranged in a short mop on his angular skull. He pushed round, smoky lenses up the bridge of his nose with hands she recognized immediately: hands like hers. His name was Dr. Vosk.

He was talking to the lab chief, standing protectively over a black doctor's bag and a large, flat case when she came in. Mission objective fulfilled, security again relinquished control. It seemed unnecessary, all of that, until he turned to regard her.

His mouth turned into a thin, wide line and his brows knit together, one of them twitching slightly. He didn't move for what felt like ages.

"What, on God's green earth, have you done to her?"

"All we could to keep her alive, functional--and quite functional, if I do say so myself..." The chief withered under the dark man's sideways glare.

In the next moment he was upon her, waxy fingers digging into the manual release latch of her right arm. With a hiss it was severed, thrown, flying through the air, clattering and spinning along the slick poured concrete floor. She could only there, three-limbed and wholly stunned.

Nostrils flaring with the exertion, he turned back to her. "I apologize. I just hate to see such marvelous artwork so thoroughly trashed." He spat those words at the chief, who flinched, genuinely injured. "Prepare for the synaptic harmonics tank, please. I intend to correct this as quickly as humanly possible."

* * *

She was completely stripped and fitted with at large, corset-shaped collar that docked into all her neck ports, a thick bundle of cables tied with color-coded bands tethering her to a hammock of processing equipment suspended over the tall Plexiglas vat of bluish fluid. She sat upon a platform on the top of it, bracing herself with her one arm, watching the discourse unfold on the floor below.

The chief's two partners had joined him and Vosk to glare at each other over a very important-looking laundry list, printed on heavy gray paper, that had been recently exhumed from a metal folder with a locking bar. Vosk no longer looked angry and the chief had his game face on; they were united by a mutual frustration.

"It's just not going to happen," Vosk was saying. "She's going to have to lose at least one-hundred pounds before we can even think about most of these upgrades."

"And for that..."

"Her bones. They're solid stainless steel. Any lighter alloy wouldn't be able to take the strain."

"What she needs is a carbon fiber skeleton...but that sort of operation..."

"We just don't have the facilities for it. We'd need to keep all those organics alive for hours while we make the transplants."

"It would almost be easier to build a whole new shell and transplant the organics into it."

"Except that I can't even conceive of a neuron culture lab sophisticated enough for that kind of work."

"Exactly. Her body was cast around existing nervous systems and then spliced in."

"So a skeletal upgrade is impossible, then, given these facilities?"

"Actually, we were planning to giving her an infusion of zirconium..."

"And make her heaver? It defeats the whole purpose."

"Well, with the damage she regularly sustains..."

"And, actually..." There is a sparkle in the chief's eye. "It's becoming quite apparent that this girl was well-chosen for housing in this particular shell." He looked up at her and winked. "Her weight has never been an issue as far as speed and agility are concerned--in fact she goes much to fast for her original frame to support. She is quite exceptionally gifted..."

Vosk peered up at her, too, his eyes narrowing behind his smoky lenses. "Is that so...? How--how fast can she go, exactly?"

"Just shy of eighty-five miles per hour, given a particular combination of circumstances that we have yet to determine."

Vosk began to smile. "In that case...let's go ahead with the zirconium infusion. We have a new agenda."

* * *

She floated at equilibrium in the tank, thick liquid cradling her form, lapping at her exposed nerves, relaying their signals to a processing unit. She felt her consciousness diffuse, scattering like light through prisms of conducting fluid and fiber optic cables. She observed herself from one of the surveillance cameras, gray and grainy, her hair wafting violet seaweed framing a sunken porcelain treasure. Electrodes dropped into the liquid quaked in time with her slow, steady pulse. She found it didn't frighten her--she didn't have much attachment to her body; and, if anything, it felt more natural to slink through the network of diagnostic equipment, all-seeing, unseen.

Out of the corner of her many eyes, a figure slipped into the lab. Light top, dark pants. He glided across the space, weaving between benches and picking through messes of alloys slick with silicone. Up to the tank. First one hand, then the other, against the front panel of the glass.

The substance rippled and his hands slipped through, the clear window parting like hot glue. A machine beeped, acknowledging the foreign stimulus in the synaptic conducting fluid as he reached for her, taking her new hand, index finger circling the external switch to release her blades.

She opened her eyes, half-conscious and dream-like, lashes sending micro-waves through the blue fluid. Through the rippling and the distortion of the rounded glass, she could see his lips moving.

"Sydney...?"

The sound echoed dully, six ears layering a symphysis of spoken memory. The figure looked up and her face, new skin over newly perfected cheekbones. His gaze penetrated the distortion and bore into her; pained, understanding. His fingers disengaged, surgeon's tools retreating back into their black bag. And away he slipped, into the maze, into the night. Only two eyes turned to watch.

* * *

The obstacle course was a joke. She laughed to herself, recalling running missions with Misericorde, how they converged on enemies, between them crushing chthonic fear into a rough little diamond in the hearts of those who deserved their flavor of justice.

Run up this, jump off that, slide, reknit skin on the roll, dash up the wall, leap for the final ledge...

She missed it; sailed far. Cartwheeling in the air, she landed flat in the pit of temperfoam, slipping down, down, between the blocks, her weight carrying her near to the bottom. She laid suspended there for a time, limbs splayed in the sea of polymer, her eyes adjusting to the light that filtered through the jagged chasm she'd made.

"AQ, what's going on? That's the third time you've missed it. It's not a calibration problem." Vosk sounded frustrated over the local channel.

She sighed. "I guess I'm bad at doing trigonometry on the fly."

"What's to do? The program should take care of everything. It should be no different from targeting vital regions, which you obviously do fine."

She waded through the foam blocks to the wall of the pit where she was able to use the grooved wall to haul herself out again.

"Dr. Vosk...can you do me a favor? I want to try something."

"...Okay."

"Turn off the tachymeter's input to the path-finding program. I want to route my calculations into it manually."

Across the room, standing behind a bench laden with obscure equipment, Vosk frowned, his eyes narrowed. "...Alright... Give me a moment. Come here so I can sync."

The neck cables removed again, she returned to the beginning of the course: an imbroglio of steel girders and cables and checkered metal platforms. She rubber her hands together in a subconscious focusing ritual as she walked, watching the path-finding program's neon ghosted trajectories snake over the terrain, shifting weights and colors as her intent calcified. Memories of previous battles played out across her mind's eye: intercepting for Grav, mopping up for Nox, flanking for Mis...from the shadows, shifting in the flickers of a master bedroom in flames, she struck, unseen--and thanks to Sydney, unknown.

Her skin crawled. The aurora of trajectories shifted and snapped into a single, blue line, a bead of glowing white riding it only a moment before she was off at record pace. Up the first ramp, vaulting onto a platform, skidding. Too fast. The new path locked in, monkeying through the trusses to the slit. She flew through, not even scraping, hitting the wall at full speed. She sped across, spanning the gap, coiling for the final leap. The line flashed red, arcing out into space, an orange pulse rippling from the projected disengagement point.

Supercharged muscles contracted, pressing enhanced legs into the metal, buckling it as she launched into the air. She whipped down the line, hurtling toward the final bar suspended over the foam pit. Mechanical hands clamped down on the steel pole, feet meeting it, too, bracing against it. The whole apparatus groaned as she made four clean revolutions around the bowing metal. She came to a stop perched atop the bent steel bar and peered down at the observation bench, a pale gargoyle, though metal rather than stone. Vosk gaped. The specialist at the end of the station began to quake. In his hand rattled a radar gun. All the room's eyes turned to him. Her face slowly cracked into a spreading grin.

"E-e-eighty-nine..."

A brief pause swept through the room before the lab chief erupted in excited chatter and congratulations, his colleagues immediately joining him.

Vosk rounded the corner of the bench and met her as she climbed out of the foam pit. He looked her over, his handiwork, his treasure, his dream. But she was something greater. He had only built her shell. Project Daedalus had taken his art and transmuted it into a tiny god. The Aeon.

Vosk hander her her leather jacket and a pair of radio receivers. The boss will want to see you."

"Dr. Vosk?"

He nodded.

"Why do I still remember everything? I would have thought--when they said 'fix'..."

He shook his head, pushing his glasses up his noes. "I wouldn't know, AQ. We're all pawns in this--you especially. Just bear in mind that even though your limbic system is back in balance, it's severely blocked. And your old memories are still remapping. You'd do best to try to stay calm. I don't think I'll be available to repair you again should you sustain further trauma."

"Why not?"

He smiled sadly and lightly ran a hand across her cheek. "I've already said too much." He tapped his ear. "Boss' waiting."

With that he was slinking away again, bag and case in hand.

She fitted the receivers over her ears, plugging them in. One by one her comm channels came alive with a quiet pop: the local channel now rerouting, the PPD scanner, the chatter of St. Joe's kids complaining about sewers. She was retreating to a far corner of the lab to cool down when her emergency band chimed. A small window appeared in the lower left corner of her vision, and in it, a now-familiar face--half of it, anyway.

"Good afternoon, Miss Violet," the woman crooned, purple lips curling like a greedy vine. "Isn't this pleasant? Your new communications equipment? It's so nice and intimate."

Aeon scowled a bit; this was her first chance to actually interact with her controller. She cut to the chase. "I thank you for having me repaired. But what is it that you want, exactly?"

"Oh, eactly what you have been doing, sweetie. I must say, some of your work has left us quite in awe."

"But my memories--I don't understand why you've left them intact. I obviously haven't needed them to be competent in combat."

The woman seemed surprised, lightly touching the corner of her mouth in mirth. Red varnished fingernails. "Oh, Violet, dear. You're not out there to fight, you're out there to gather data and trust. And you have done excellently. Perfectly played: the nice little girl, torn up about her new body, standing up for comrades, instigating drama. I especially love how you have taken advantage of the precious opportunities to hold the most private conversations with those boys--playing hearts and minds like a violin. It's quite masterful."

Aeon suddenly froze. That faceless encouragement: "Be good. Earn their trust," echoing in her mind. Had she really, subconsciously succumbed to some prime directive? Had she, knowingly, on some level, manipulated all those people? Jack, Nick, Aussie, Mana, Bryan...Michael? No, he didn't fit the now-obvious pattern: wedge herself into conflict, offer a shoulder, match their opinions, appear vulnerable herself, reach some "new realization"...and then, like magic, they seemed to trust her--or even like her--implicitly. And she felt nothing for them. But she did feel vile, herself having been compulsively manipulative.

The woman was continuing. "And that is why your memories remain. First, so that all your friends don't come looking for us in the name of justice, but mostly as a sign of good faith. We trust you, Violet. You are like a daughter to me. And dear Dr. Vosk..."

She patiently awaited Aeon's reaction. She looked down at her hands, her perfectly remade form. "I just..." The woman was right. She owed everything in her new live to the Boss Lady, and with the exception of Misericorde, she felt no particular attachment to any of her so-called friends. So this was how she really was. The past was passed. The little girl Violet was dead. All she was now was what they had made her. So she might as well not live in denial.

"I just want to know what role I play in all of this."

The woman nodded, smiling, satisfied. "You are our fallen angel. You will remain in the field until further orders, gathering data for us, gaining us friends. And on the day of reckoning, you will return to the fold and you will understand your true purpose. Is this a satisfactory explanation for the time being?"

She pursed her lips. "Just one more question."

The Boss Lady smiled. "Of course, sweetie."

"Where is Sydney?"

She sighed. "We do not know what has befallen the subject codenamed Phoenix Ashe. It has been more than a year since anyone has seen him--the night of the raid."

Aeon nodded to herself. "Thank you, ma'am. With your leave, I'll return to the school now."

"Of course, dear. I will always be able to contact you, but for security reasons, the initialization is one-way. Also, aside from standard radio communication, you will only broadcast when using this line, so your little ex-Hood friend shouldn't be getting nosy."

"I trust him."

"I know, Violet. And for the time being, so do we."

The window snapped shut and the emergency line went dormant. She pulled on her jacket, over a strapless leotard that reminded her of another time. She thanked the specialists for their help, retrieving her new Crey armored suit: a present from Vosk.

As she sprinted along the yellow line rail, a kaleidoscope of paths played over the city scape. She understood, now, that her gift wasn't just unbridled speed, but something more, tied to her real self, her soul in this shell. She left a trail of afterimages flickering in her wake as she followed smooth arcs through space, despite everything, feeling truly free.

(These events actually occurred in April and early May of 2007.)

As she slid into the underworld, the first thing that registered was the cold. An all-enveloping chill her skin did little to buffer, seeping into her bones, hardening muscle. It held her, womb-like, weightless, yet pulling her steadily away from the world above. All sound was instantly muffled save for the blood in her ears; but there was no panic there, only calm, inevitable surrender. The dark closed in, too, the salt stinging her eyes and lips as she lifted her head to the retreating light: a quivering halo of life that was so quickly slipping away.

Breathe.

Human self-preservation and the silicon fought, but the machine won in the end. Yet again. Her diaphragm spasmed and quieted, the warmth of sedatives, the only comfort she knew, spreading through her core to the tips of her nerves where it tingled and died in numb resignation.

Faster now, heavy limbs tugging down, organs sinking, systems depressing. The above was a tiny lightening that she only knew because it was up--its fingers of life no longer reached her. Just a memory. The dark closed in, pressure hugging her in a greedy vice, the narcotics doing little now as she felt her eyes begin to give. It rushed in, swallowing her as she swallowed it, and as quickly as it came on, it was over. Equalized, senses overtaken, she watched the last of the world she knew dissolve as the silicon commanded her to sleep, lay down in her ever-sinking cage. The end would rise to meet her eventually. A week, maybe two, could pass, before they could find her dooming bones at rest, but her sleepless ghost missing.

* * *

How long had she been here? An hour? A week? She had only dreams to pass the time, but they were always the same. He wouldn't come. No one would come.

Was this a coma? She saw nothing, felt nothing. There was a distinct lack of proprioception. The only sense of self she carried now was remembered--constructed--and even that was slipping now. Occasionally something would wash over her and it was like being blinded by light. Every bit of self felt tugged, faintly burning as though being peered at by some all-seeing eye. Although there was no space to speak of, it felt as though it originated from a consistent direction, and she found herself reaching there, trying to visualize an aperture in the darkness, a portal, a word, anything.

She recalled a short story she had read once about a man who had had his brain removed, and he struggled, as he stood there looking it floating in a vat, to perceive his consciousness as originating from it and not some space just behind the eyes of his remotely controlled body. And when the link was severed and he was plunged into darkness, he felt himself existentially transported to that vat, thousands of miles away. After a time, she began to suspect that the tale was less than fiction.

The last thing she remembered perceiving was something like a neural electrical storm. She had been on a mission, which wasn't unusual, except that it was by her own prerogative. Ever since February when the Clockwork had ripped her a new one, she had felt driven to locate "the other subject" from the project: Sydney. And now that she knew his code name and abilities, she set to finding any trace of him. So far there was no luck among the hero registry or S.E.R.A.P.H. Next on the list were Crey subsidiaries and affiliates. This was one, under the umbrella of the infamous Revenant Hero Project. She actually hoped to find no trace of him here, but the clues offered no such expectation.

She had broken in easily enough. She was getting better at finding where these groups kept all their important data. It was feeling more natural to just plug herself into the hardware and use her own tools to circumvent the security. It was getting harder to resist "diving in" and dealing with the data on her own terms, instead of constantly battling her frustrating lack of computer savvy. She didn't need anyone to tell her it was dangerous, hence why she didn't even consider it. That is, until the EMP came down. It was in or out, and her body, already suffering a continuous jolt from a high-powered taser as well, all but ejected her out into what it assumed was safety.

She could only guess what they were doing with her now. They probably thought they killed her with the EMP and were now trying to figure out where she came from and why. When they saw all the Crey parts, they probably panicked, running background checks on all the serials. Finding that they weren't marked "for internal use"--set aside for proprietary and confidential Crey projects, implying that they had killed one of their own--they probably sighed and put down the coffee and went home to a late dinner with the wife and kids. But more questions would roll around in the collective brain of Genometric Solutions, LLC. Had the parts been supplied to a subsidiary? Were they a grant to an outsourced project? Were they stolen? Was the whole cyborg stolen? Were they dealing with a rogue project? She knew there would be no trace, not on the parts, the wetware kits, or the software, and if a "for internal use" flag might not have made the company piss itself, its distinct lack certainly would. How long, then, before they try to jettison the evidence of their mistake?

Something told her that they knew she wasn't quite dead, however. She felt watched. She needed to try to be patient, to wait, to watch them back. It felt silly, imagining that her consciousness was sitting in a computer somewhere; she worried that she might be right. How big was a consciousness, anyway? Since human brains were hard to simulate at best, and a consciousness was a function of the brain's workings--basically a high-level model of itself--she assumed it was pretty big. No sneaking, then. She hoped her body was okay being brain-dead, that the master AI's functions could keep it alive. She wished she had a foot to tap impatiently, just to have something to do at all. It was hard to keep from dreaming. She sang a concerto or two to herself in the meantime and recalled what things tasted like.

The cyberbrain. That was the whole reason she was trapped here at all, she supposed. It made back-ups of new information she acquired--a change log of sorts. When interfacing with external software, it used those back-ups to simulate a copy of her brain to protect the real thing. So when she got hit with that EMP--was it only the copy that was sent? Was this sentience just a function of the program running itself? Was the "real" Aeon out there and kicking still? Did it know she was in here? Even when interfacing normally, even with the copies, she felt that she had only one consciousness at a time...however, like that sci-fi story, the man had had a simulation of his brain made and as long as they both had the same input and made the same output, there was no way for either to tell which was making the output signal, who was the "real" one, or even that there was more than one at all. She began to panic. Funny that it took until now to set in. But what was it that bugged her? that she was possibly trapped forever, or that she wasn't "the real one"?

It came again, that tugging, and this time she rushed toward it, imagined being swept away and leaving nothing behind, not another copy to suffer what she had. Nothing happened for a moment as the tugging continued, and then suddenly she felt she was somewhere else, like the brain in the vat, her soul transported from there to here when the former dissolved. Trying to launch some of her tools, she found they worked; for the first time since the EMP, she saw: little characters that appeared to be printed on the surface of her eyes. She tried to remember what Dr. Vosk had taught her about computer architecture. She must be in RAM now, she was a process, allocated cycles, and, provided nobody noticed, she could do what she liked with them. The question was, who's box was she on? Where was it? And what would happen if the power went out? This was not the best plan ever.

But something more basic nagged at her already insecure sense of ontology. If she was in the RAM now, and she hadn't been before, and assuming she was just digital version of herself--just a program--how could she have been running--thinking--before? She was wasting cycles. She didn't have time for this.

She worked quickly, monitoring the jobs herself to make sure no one was onto her. She scoured the machine for weaknesses or any sign that it had been compromised by someone else. She was at it for fifty-three minutes and twelve seconds (she had the clock, now) when along came a spider. Recognizing it, she would have laughed out loud. It was Nox Veratis' to be sure. She hadn't even known Nick was also investigating Crey, let alone the same project, but she fed the little spider a crumb and went back into hiding, waiting again.

* * *

Darkness cloaked him as he worked, analyzing the array on the glowing laptop screen. Nick was in one of his haunts--the places where he could find some privacy and receive a decent wireless signal for his laptop. He had scouted the various "hidden" places on the school grounds where no one else seemed to go: the crypt under the chapel, the garret rooms over the dorms, some of the rooms in the unused section of the boys dormitory, the entrance to the stairwell at the roof of the MECCA building, and any other nooks and crannies he had come across. He would pick randomly from the good spots when he needed to be alone to work.

A few months ago, Nick had become sharply aware that criminal groups could exist almost anywhere. Many of them were using computer networks to communicate--either ones they had built, or, more likely, the normal, public channels. Picking up clues from missions he'd been given, Nick had taken to inserting eavesdropping programs of his own when he had access to, for instance, the Council's bases, the Family's operations, or Crey Industries' more shady locations. It had become a sideline, leaving stealthy programs that would record what looked like vital information and then send it to data stores to be analyzed as time permitted. He envisioned them as little spiders crawling slowly through systems, catching data "flies," then wrapping them up and taking them home to be consumed.

Most people failed to understand, or even notice, the difference between data and information. Data was available in overwhelming amounts, a constant torrential flow. Data was the stuff that moved at light speed through fiber-optics; packets routed by switches, passing through relays, filters, and firewalls to reach its intended destination. At each step the stream could be intercepted, duplicated, and redirected. That's what Nick's spiders did when they found their particular flies. But gathering the data wasn’t the hardest part.

Data alone had no meaning. It needed to be reassembled correctly to show its message, to yield information. One couldn't determine what picture was on the puzzle if the pieces weren't put together in the right way. Secure communications were encrypted--coded such that simply having all of the pieces was still meaningless. It had to be decrypted, essentially putting the puzzle pieces together so the real picture showed itself. The usual methods for cracking encryption took more computing time than anyone was likely to have, but Nick had "negotiated" access to his physics lab's computer and an experimental adaptive algorithm. The combination sometimes yielded impressive results, at other times garbage. He had to check it himself to see what the result would be.

Tonight was nothing unusual as he tackled the data dump from Crey. Some evidence of embezzlement, erasure of some security tape that revealed a CFO indulging in the fruits of an extramarital affair, the genome mapped from an illegally obtained mutant blood sample, a memo to politely brush off any concerned officials visiting on behalf of Ziggursky Prison. And a single character string: "! $ ) Ծ)3KL ɤv;гY r*] #Sc,! ;VITW@h SOS. GENOMETRIC SOLUTIONS. LISTENING ON 161.64.111.96 PORT 80. -AQ z IHø)m Wex/܅(} > eS c%3UY L-MiUQ3 ǪK"

What was this? There was a message embedded in a string of seemingly garbage characters. Someone was trying to make contact, indicating that they would look for any communications sent to the machine at that IP address. Further analysis showed that the "garbage" would make fitting encryption keys for a response. It was a good scheme, pretty solid for an S.O.S.: a situation that would normally eschew protocol and secrecy. So was it a lead or a trap? Was someone trying to find a way make contact in spite of Crey security or was it a honey pot?: a scheme to catch unwary hackers.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought. Replying with the address of a blind message drop and a message confirming that he was listening, Nick could only wait to see what would come next. Until then he would gather everything he could find concerning "Genometric Solutions" on the Internet. It was best to be as prepared as possible if this led to anything.

* * *

Aeon had been gone for a while now. She had a way of disappearing, sometimes for days at a time, only to show up in patrol or detention as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Nick had been concerned about her disappearances before, but she had repeatedly indicated that some things she needed to keep to herself. He liked Aeon's attitude and wit, and was fascinated by the prototype technologies composing her artificial transplant body. But as the days turned to weeks, Nick couldn't help but wonder what she had gotten herself into this time. He had teamed with her in combat before and doubted that anything conventional could have touched her. Perhaps another mysterious security override? Maybe they wanted her back for good.

Nick's mind drifted back to the S.O.S. message he had intercepted. It turned out that Genometric Solutions was a wholly owned subsidiary of Crey Industries. Aeon always seemed ambivalent about Crey, either busting them or begging them for parts. He wondered...

Tucked into a darkened corner, he opened the activity log of the message drop box he had set up. It wasn't empty. A single message, left minutes after he had released the address to the mysterious distress call: "ГxЛ╗hгYЙ╗ zгЙ∙YЙ RKzx INFILTRATED v[Мp TRAPPED Й PLEASE SEND HELP lк{гz CANT TALK MUCH ■v {ЕYЙ{г [еьvflЙ ~ж┤" Nick furrowed his brow. They wanted him to come in person, and that definitely sounded like a trap.

One more try. He sent, "Who are you?" encrypted as instructed.

"»‡¤z‹Y‰ HAVE R#z)2 YOU p£x HAD rnŠoÜ»x YOUR {¥Övf CAR [{ƒz WASH {p TODAY Rt4y, ? ýýo òx£{z‹p‰""

Hidden inside: "Have you had your car wash today?"

Of course, it was Aeon. It had to be--that was one of their inside jokes. Consulting the first message, Nick realized the "-AQ" wasn't garbage at all, but a signature. He felt a little dense for not noticing, but then again, this looked pretty serious, so that was probably the point. He sent off one last message before closing the laptop and hurrying to suit up: "On my way. Over and out. -Nox"

* * *

The first stages of a well-planned operation were the slow ones. Gather information about the target--this was a task normally performed by contacts or whoever sent him out to do their bidding. Once that was done, a plan of attack could be formulated. In this case, there was little time and no one else to go to. He'd done his best to memorize what was useful from the Internet; but, like all of Crey's less than legitimate operations, there was no way to tell what was truth or lie without looking for yourself.

So scouting the area was next. See what was there, what kind of surveillance and security was on the outside. Look for ways to get in unnoticed and alternate ways to get out.

Being an energy warping mutant, Nick hid himself in a field that reduced any trace of himself--light, sound, temperature changes were all masked. If you were close enough he would look like thin smoke. A little further, and there was nothing at all. So really, under most circumstances, he could just waltz right in.

* * *

Plastic creaked as the security guard spun sleepily in his chair. There was only an hour left in his shift, thank God; another hour of nobodies in lab coats and suits wandering down white halls. It was his nine-to-five to watch other men do theirs. What a useless sack of meat he was. But the pay wasn't half bad, and he got to wear a gun.

The little woman had promised beef stroganoff tonight if she got back from their son's soccer game in time to cook, before the, "It's been a long day--can't I just have a glass of wine and unwind a bit, honey?" set in. It was something to look forward to, but made the minutes crawl. There was a joke among the neighborhood that he had married her for her cooking, and considering that neither of them were quite as thin as they had been in their youth, maybe it wasn't far off. But he was beginning to regret sneaking that cookie dough from the batch she had made this morning for the PTA bake sale. Maybe he hadn't refrigerated it as well as he could have.

Had he heeded his wife's warnings of salmonella on the rise, the security guard might have felt a little more vigilant tonight. If he had not been wiping the beading brow sweat on his cuff, he might have noticed one of the cameras blink out and on again. If he had not already known about the random electromagnetic fields occurring throughout the facility, including the emergency pulse only a few weeks prior, he might have thought more of the second camera's signal flickering. If he had not turned to eject his late-afternoon snack, cookie dough and all, in the wastebasket under the desk, he might have noticed that the automatic doors closed in the wrong order as one of the scientists left for the day.

But someone was else was watching, and she smiled.

* * *

One, two. Pop. One, two. Pop. Breathe in, breath out, pause, step.

The plan executed in calculated rhythm accompanied by a conditioned detachment. Now out of the eyes of the thin blanket of security provided by the six main surveillance cameras in the building, Nox Veratis allowed himself to relax a bit. This was far too easy; he smelled a trap. Or, perhaps Aeon had just been grossly careless, or her captors had gotten lucky--or both.

There was then an incoming transmission on one of his open frequencies. He prayed it was who he thought it was as he accepted the communique.

"Boy, am I glad to se you--er, not see you, rather. Switch to 14.487 megahertz in NTSC."

He sighed in relief at the familiar voice, opening the channel she had listed. A little avatar accompanied the audio feed, popping into the corner of his helmet's HUD: a young, high school girl with straight black hair and brown highlights, and large, green eyes. He'd never seen her before, but she seemed familiar.

"Aeon?"

"Yeah." Her eyes darted around. "Thank God you're here. I didn't think anyone would come."

"Just tell me what I need to do."

She fidgeted, looked distracted. "I got knocked out with an EMP. My body's in 6B249--it's a hard copy storage room. I need you to go there and make sure it's still alive."

"Still alive? Then where are you?"

"I'm not sure yet." She shifted again. "A server somewhere in the building."

Well, he'd certainly heard of stranger things. He easily avoided analyzing the situation any further to focus on the task at hand: rescuing his friend.

"There's a door between us that requires a key card. All the employees have them. I'll wait for you to contact me again on 12.603 when you find the room."

Simple enough. His intelligence had panned out; this was why he came on the tail end of working hours: so there would be someone to get a key card from. He moved like a thin shadow past reception and a waiting area, offices for client consultations, and billing offices, and came upon the door in question. It was solid, covered with a camera, armed with a motion sensor, and alarmed for tamper protection. No teleporting through this one without either compromising the mission or possibly becoming one with a cinder-block wall.

In, out, pause, step. Into a dark board room outside the scope of the final camera. To wait.

The foundation of Nox's training was that combat was nothing more than analysis and execution. Reduce everything to the most basic elements and analyze it in a looping cycle: OODA--Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Observe: scan the environment and gather data. Orient: synthesize the data into information. Quickly identify SWOT elements--strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Decide: consider options and select a course of action. Act: perform the selected course of action. Repeat the OODA loop until it was no longer needed.

To get to Aeon's body, he'd need to pass the door. To pass the door he'd need a key card. To get the card, he'd need a "donor." Thus, the plan became:
1) Remain undetected.
2) Minimize damage.
3) Locate a key card holder--Aeon had informed him that anyone should do.
4) Disable the person bearing in mind (1) and (2).
3) Take the key card.
4) Hide the disabled key card donor to satisfy the longevity of (1).
5) Get into the secured area and locate room 6B249.

He'd have to hurry afterwards because there was no way to rely on the incapacitated staying unconscious and undiscovered for very long. However, this was the most reliable permutation of the plan since he had no experience attempting to lift an object off a person unnoticed. And in order to do so, he would definitely have to be close enough that he would be noticed anyway.

Nox monitored the security door, paitiently waiting for someone to come through it; and it wasn't long before someone did, the card in a holder attached retractable cord on a belt clip emblazoned with the company logo. He timed the encounter to ten paces out of view of the camera. One, two, three...

Triggered by an NLP anchor--a deep breath, held compression, and release--his muscles warmed and adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream while deep breathing kept his mind clear. As his target rounded the corner, Nick shifted, stepping through dimensional space to appear next to his target. Extending his arm in a practiced gesture, negative energy flowed from his fingertips to shock the target. This was a trick: the sudden energy drop in a target's nervous system often caused paralyzing fear as well as interfered with coordination. He followed with a negative energy field that held the target in place and soon the target was unconscious.

Taking the key card and dragging the target into a restroom stall finished the job. But now the clock was ticking.

Nox waved the card at the lock and the steel doors clicked open. One, two, and the camera snapped off, the door opened, shut, the camera online again in a blink. In the shadow of an alcove, he found an emergency escape route map and located the stairwell.

A whisper of a rustle as he vaulted the steel railing and floated down the shaft of the stairwell. Boots tapped the railing a floor below and skipped him back to the safety of poured concrete. Listening first, moving next, he slipped through the fire door.

The hall extended in three directions, as the floors above. Before him, the pulsing energy fields indicated a refrigerator and microwave--a break room. To the left, the personal computers of offices. To the right, a vast data center. But before that, the dormant potential, the slow decay of magnetic tape, stacked in neat rows, packed tight in storage.

* * *

A heat-blackened metal glove joined it's mirrored twin on the linoleum floor. Hands, now bare, reached to be reunited with what they had missed most. He carefully pulled the doll girl into a sitting position, arranging her limbs, straightening her jacket. A knight humbled before his lady, he knelt, examining her with practiced gaze. How long had it been since he had last pushed her ashy wine hair from her eyes? She had changed since then. No longer a frightened girl at a madman's tea party, but a young woman on the path to becoming a queen of bedlam.

Reluctantly, but without a second glance, he moved swiftly to the terminal.

* * *

It was the tugging again. Had she been found? She clawed at the empty dark, uselessly.

* * *

Near the end of the hall he found 6B249, a converted office space with a safety glass picture window. The overhead fluorescent lights were on, spilling a bent rectangle of yellow-white into the darkened hall. He inched nearer.

"Aeon?"

Silence met him on the frequency she had designated.

"Aeon? Are you there?"

Inside the room, a figure suddenly moved into view. A violent sheet of purple hair, black and red armor slick with leather oil, supple with use. He bent, fussing with something--Aeon's still form, armored, skin singed at the corners of her mouth.

The figure--a young man--turned; and, in a moment of realization, they moved in tandem. He smiled, full of arrogance. Nox lunged for the door; the knob went soft, fusing with the melted material of his own suit in his hand. The man snapped the blinds closed and Nox heard the familiar pop of dimensions ripping and rejoining.

His hand already badly burned, Nox steeled himself for the blind leap and shifted past the hot, sagging door. Safely within the room, he quickly took stock of the interior: rows of locked filing cabinets, a console with a few monitors streaming from the closed circuit anti-theft cameras in the room, a computer terminal, and, slumped in the aisle, he was relieved to find Aeon still there.

"Nick?" Aeon's little picture blinked into his display.

"Where have you been?"

"I moved. Make sure it's still alive."

It. Nox moved over to the cyborg girl and checked her pulse. Nothing. He pried open an eyelid with the quiet whir of a motorized wheel. Unresponsive.

"Check if I'm breathing."

He leaned in, listening hard. After a moment, he felt the hum of capacitors draining to allow every draw of air, each a clock ticking away the seconds to death. He sighed inwardly, relieved. "You're fine."

"The manual reset is under the occipital bone, beneath the skin--you'll need to puncture it. The key is behind the left ear. Depress the area and it and it should pop out."

Nox pulled her toward him, putting her surprising weight into his shoulder, and located the depression beneath her skull. What clockwork god to pray to that he didn't do it wrong, that she had enough power to come back? He squeezed his eyes shut, felt the polymers tear.

Systems surged back to life, beeping warnings in quiet protest. She sucked air. Blinded, terrified, the pain of electrocution still on her nerves, she screamed: loud, tinny, inhuman. One second under a taser gun, the next in Nox's arms, alive, alarms deafening.

"What? Who--what are you doing here? What's going on?" Her eyes darkened in panic, dilated, logs scrolling across the inside of her lenses, blinking red.

She was awake. Cognisant, even. Then who was the girl in the computer?

"It's okay, calm down. You got taken out. I came to rescue you."

It was as if she had simply awakened from a bad dream. "Oh, well let's get the heck out of here." She went to stand and fumbled, finding her muscles atrophied. She gave him a hard look. "Nick, how long, exactly, have I been here?"

"Maybe a month." He gestured to calm her so he could elaborate, emoting crudely through his helmet. "Someone contacted me--you contacted me, told me you were here, and helped me find you."

Her face showed only puzzlement. The Aeon in his helmet looked more terrified than relieved. "Nick...? Tell her to download me and she'll understand everything."

"Listen, Aeon. It's like you got separated from your body with that EMP. But it looks like you're still in there. But...anyway, the--the you that contacted me, she's in the network here. She says you can download her..." He didn't exactly understand what he was saying.

"It's a trick." Her eyes darted to the terminal. "It's a trap. If they were clever enough to deactivate me, it's a trap."

Nox shook his head. Something about the little computerized girl told him she was genuine. The same person on a different time line. It was Aeon as she saw herself, trapped in yet another mechanical prison. "No, Aeon, this place is barely secure. They got lucky. That's all."

Aeon began to shudder, a frightened understanding washing over her features. "Alright. Can you scare up some food? I'll take care of this 'other me' thing." Her words rang with the bitterness of her sense of utter violation.

As Nox disappeared into the hall, Aeon stood shakily and moved to the terminal. Augmented musculature began to repair and thicken, depleting the last of her reserves. She overrode the warnings. The access cables still dangled from their place in her cervical vertebrae.

Panic struck. At the first instant of connection, she felt it invade. Before she could yank the cables free, her arm had been frozen, the nerve impulses belayed by the cyberbrain. An image painted itself onto her field of vision, followed by a flood of memories. If she could, she would have cried.

"You're going to listen to me. I didn't think there'd still be a you in there when you came to. Thought you'd be brain dead. But I was wrong. Looks like I'm a copy after all. So I just want you to know what I've learned. That's all."

She was struck dumb, staring at this girl she once was, this precious, sacred, inner self, a being of memories...now mentally battered, resigned, aged not by time by by experience. They weren't so different now, the memory and her.

"These Genometric Solutions guys. They're tied to the Revenant Hero Project. They do custom-order-baby type things and were tapped to help Crey out with debugging genomes. They've got ties to Hong Kong that match up, so I think they might have done work for our project, also. They buy a lot of research from shady groups, too--the same sort of stuff that's turned up in the wake of Sydney."

"So it's a solid lead?" She couldn't help but be a little excited, even despite the circumstances.

"It looks like it, but I need more time to dig. These guys are just a front."

A deep pause hung in the cycles between her brains, gray matter and silicon.

"I can stay. Now that you're caught up--you have a memory dump--I can stay here and keep working."

She considered, but the look in the electric girl's eyes pleaded for closure, stronger than anything she had felt, or even imagined feeling from before her emotions were shut down. This girl, even if only the imago of her cyberbrain, was still a part of her. Even if they had been simulated emotions, they were full strength, and the solitude had been real.

"No. You don't deserve that. I want to thank you. For everything." She told her brain to rejoin the data as it would have if she had not been separated, although it would take time to propagate. Then she told the terminal to erase the AI. And that was that.

Klaxons blared all around her, tattling on her lack of computer savvy. Nox popped suddenly into the room with an armload of vending machine fodder. She quietly wolfed it down, stretched, and tested her blades. Nox hastily erased the storage room's security tapes and terminal access logs, taking note of the mystery boy's activity.

"So where is she?"

Aeon looked at him coldly--the second time today. "She's gone."

"What? She saved you. She was you--"

"It was a copy." Even over the alarms her voice echoed off the aisles of filing cabinets. "I got what I came for. Let's get out of here."

Genometric Solutions was depper in the protective pockets of Crey Industries than either of them had anticipated. The building was swarming with Riot Guards by the time they had reached the first floor, Nox flying, Aeon clambering up the shaft with long limbs spidering over the rungs.

Determined to see Aeon safely rescued, especially in her weakened state, Nox grabbed her under the arms, carrying her the last floor, and they stepped together past the door. Whereas previously Aeon had only been ripped through the fabric of space, yanked against the will of physics from one discrete location to another, being on the initiating end was completely different--like turning sideways, looking again, and finding the path clear, the distance trivial. Her path-finding program glitched out, as confused as she was, resulting in a neon aurora over her vision, the colors playing off the pinching of space in smooth fractals. In the moment it took to traverse dimensions, she realized it wasn't very much different from her own "shrinking."

Somehow she saw clearly, now, in the shimmering neon trajectories that erupted from the spacial fissure and fanned out over her field of view, the suddenly recalled dogma of Project Daedalus sending a shiver over her frontal lobes: the marriage of love and reckless abandon inherent in what she was made to be. She saw reflected in her genes, her gift--their gift, the soul of the donor, the one who had given everything to see the dream made manifest.

* * *

In minutes they had the exits covered. The alarm had been tripped in the basement by, it seemed, only one infiltrator. A Super, no doubt. Self-important, spoiled, loose cannons, all of them.

They posted down the hallways in neat, tactical caterpillars, scanning infrared and UV. From Mob Specialist Barry Meyers' position guarding the rear of his squad, witnessing the array unfold in perfect synchronization, he imagined the Countess herself donning special commendations on the squads for such a timely and well-executed defense of a lowly subsidiary. "Crey cares," and all that.

A signal from one of the eyes that there was motion in the stairwell. The three squads convened from their own hallways to cover the door, spreading out in a lattice, each node protected by two others. He steadied his breathing, his sights on the center crack of the double fire doors, chest level.

The door didn't move, but suddenly he--they were on the other side, stepped out of thin air as though the door hadn't been there at all.

"Freeze! Don't move!" On cue, the Lieutenant barked protocol.

The smaller figure in front had already seized the larger one from behind it and flung it into the hall, over the heads of the center squad, where it dematerialized into a wisp of black smoke and was gone.

"Open fire!"

They unleashed upon the remaining infiltrator. It bent and twisted grotesquely under the hail of ammunition, but didn't fall. The Lieutenant reluctantly called a halt. The figure, a girl, and young, still stood at the door, straightening and rearranging her frame. After all that, she had only been grazed in a number of places. Meyers took his eyes from her for only a moment to see the Lieutenant dumbfounded, considering a course of action. Just as he began to call for net guns, pepper spray, and caltrops, the girl smiled and leaped for the ceiling. A tile rattled, barely disturbed: the only trace of her passing.

"Behind!" The yell was followed by a gurgle as the Riot Guard slumped over the shadowy man's fist. The other hand carefully raised in a "stop" sign. Meyers felt a deep, unholy pulse in the base of his skull--somehow it came from that extended palm, though he was thankfully out of range of the worst of it. A few men fell down in surprise, others dropped their arms to clutch their heads, seizing in pain. The Lieutenant's slacks darkened with fear. The rest, merely terrified, fell back and sprayed wildly at the figure who seemed to bend space itself to advance through the center squad, taking men out with a single punches, each hit emitting that fearsome boom. He obviously didn't care that he was moving into a position of being flanked by the remaining squads, but he paused briefly, making a gathering motion, and Meyers swore he saw the bullet-riddled armor begin to reknit itself.

The remainder of the center squad and the majority of the other two took the opportunity to flee, jamming the hallway, crushing Meyers in a terrified stampede for the only exit not blocked by the shadowy man. No. Stop. They couldn't just break like that. What would the Countess say? After all those years of training, clawing his way through the ranks, putting off the chance for a family... And now his hand had just been broken by the retreating boot of the Lieutenant himself.

Behind him the ceiling exploded in a hail of cardboard tiles and aluminum shreds, the girl returning to the fray like a meteorite, some sort of blades flashing, cutting down the retreat. Men flew in every direction and she chased each of them down in turn. Falling, all of them. She was laughing, the sound coming not from her, but the air of the hallway itself. The other continued his advance, knocking men out cold, gluing them to the floor with primeval fear. Meyers feigned unconsciousness.

As they met at the junction, mere feet from Meyers, the girl slowed, shaking her head, and turned to her partner. "Do I seem slower to you?"

The man chuckled. He was young, too. "How should I know? I can't even see you half the time."

As the infiltrator stooped to MedEvac a few of his squad mates, Meyers heard the familiar "fwump" of a canister gun, and somehow found the presence of mind to pull on his gas mask.

The tear gas can bounced between the bodies of his comrades and rolled to the girl's feet, beginning to hiss a stinging smoke. She made to kick it back, but it exploded unexpectedly on her boot, staggering her. She sputtered and choked, and as the chrome clad man-turned-tank entered into view, she lost her lunch of yellow cake and corn chips into the lap of an unconscious Riot Guard. Then the hall beyond the junction was a swirling wall of cloud.

Black smoke parted white as the boy rushed forward to make contact with the Power Tank. His fists ran on its polished hide, subsonic booms shaking the puddles of blood cooling on the floor. It only lasted a few moments, and the infiltrator was slammed to the ceiling and dashed to the floor on the rebound to the accompaniment of a sprinkling of cardboard chips.

The Power Tank stepped unceremoniously over the boy, and toward the wall of smoke. It stood silent, waiting for a moment, patient, vigilant. Meyers adjusted his mask, positioning the windows more properly over his eyes. The air in front of the Power Tank shimmered, and, although the smoke did not stir, the girl materialized into view in a play of light. Her eyes cracked open, testing the fresh air, and snapped wide when she realized what now stood before her. She dashed for the wall, and actually seemed to move into it, a third of her body obscured by taupe cinder blocks; but, a metal hand clamped down on her exposed upper arm and yanked her into the other wall, breaking the multi-layered paint. She looked dazed but still conscious.

Behind, the boy struggled to his feet, the shadows bending, gathering around him, repairing him. He staggered forward, as yet unbeaten.

The Power Tank turned to him, still holding the girl. His voice came metallic and booming. "You both will leave now." He pointed at the MedEvac badge on the boy's chest, stabbing him with a metal finger for punctuation. The infiltrator went to raise his palm, and, as a warning, the girl was slammed into the wall again.

The boy conceded, dropping his arms. "Her first."

The Power Tank thrust the girl at him and he activated her MedEvac, then, after a pause, visored eyes searching enemy visor, his own.

Over the ringing in his ears, Meyers became vaguely aware of the pained moaning of his comrades before the chrome man and the whole world faded into a silver blur, and then, somewhere in the future, a nightmare.

(These events actually occurred in May of 2007.)

There were lots of things she liked. Getting god marks. Hardware upgrades. E-books and MP3s. Strawberry-banana-blueberry smoothies, especially when her mom used to put a bit of white rum in. Hitting her adrenaline trigger in the middle of a rough fight. Jogging before sunrise. Woolly socks. Receiving her new SL pin with her name embossed on it. All her quad-mates safely asleep in bed at the same time. And of all of those things, if spending time with Michael was something she looked forward to the most, why did it make her so miserable?

Was it the unyielding knot in her stomach? Was it the lack of things to say? Was it because he reminded her too much of the boy she'd left behind? Was it that he was intimidating--perhaps calling into question her own combative worth? She did look up to him, but she didn't mind being scraped off the pavement as long as he didn't mind giving her a hand. So why did being with him bring so much terror?

Because it wasn't her place to be.

That place was taken by another girl. And some days, to be honest, she wished Franky would just accidentally hocus-pocus herself in front of a bus, instead of conjuring some cute little bat wings or something else equally non-fatal. But if something horrible were to happen to the girl, Michael would not be very pleased. Besides, it wasn't a very nice thought to entertain in the first place. She didn't harbor any ill will toward Franky personally. She just felt threatened by her somehow. And certainly she wasn't jealous.

No; no she wasn't. For better or worse, she didn't have the least bit of romantic interest in Michael. The cyberization specialists and neurosurgeons had made sure of that, and the replacement hormones weren't all that potent--just enough to keep her sanely female.

Her stomach dropped. Was that what everyone thought? That she had a crush on him? Followed him around liked an unwanted puppy? She felt mortified. Was that what Michael thought? Even still, they were friends regardless. When he actually was around he seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with her. If he knew the truth...she wondered if he might not be a little offended...

But if their friendship was solid, what was it that was bugging her?

"Aeon, you still with us?" Valerie peered at her over the large sketch pad.

She nodded. They had been discussing the EMP that had so upset her life. Ever since, she had been unable to tap into the unnatural speed that had been so important to her, so...mentionable. Her body was now only doing, well, exactly what it was supposed to be doing.

"Well, you appear to be profoundly depressed, Aeon, and since your abilities are emotionally linked, I think that's our culprit. Have you considered anti-depressants? It's not a long-term fix, but they can get you thinking normally again so you can work through your issues."

"I'm already on them." Courtesy of S.E.R.A.P.H.

"I see. Give me a moment, please?" Valerie began paging through her stack of notes and sketches. Almost musing to herself: "I noticed you were nearly this distressed when we were talking a lot about Mana Cannon--you were worried that others would view you like him and also want to 'delete' you if you made a mistake."

The event was still fresh in her mind, even though Mana's own robot days were over. But the month-long coma could be responsible for that.

"Would you like to hear my theory?"

She nodded. It couldn't hurt.

"I think what might be the thread between all of these issues is that you're insecure, existentially. Do you understand what that means? You feel you need to have an exclusive place and a purpose in order to be valid, and so when anything calls into question the qualities you regard as 'yours,' that make you, your personality, that you're proud of, it causes anxiety." She gave a reassuring smile. "Now stop me if that doesn't sound right."

She felt paralyzed, sitting demurely in the chair with her mouth slightly agape. Was this why she was afraid of Michael? Because he and his independence and his completeness proved she meant nothing? Not even by comparison, but by default.

"This may sound impossible to you right now, Aeon, but if this really is what's bothering you, all you have to do to fix it is to realize that you, as a person and an individual, have intrinsic value."

She commanded her lips to move. The truth couldn't be that hard to bear. Valerie just said how simple it was. Of course she had value. Why else would she have been involved in Project Daedalus? Besides, she had a soul--a real one; a whole one. That's where her powers lay. At least that's what she had been taught in the project.

The digital copy hadn't had any powers... Or had it? How else would the copy have invaded her so quickly? Where was her speed now? Her stomach lurched. Had she inadvertently done to herself exactly what she had been fearing? Had she deleted a part of herself, her soul?

From somewhere distant, past, in a fuzzy memory tucked away, terror spilled forth. The girl Violet had grown thin, transparent, barely tangible. The cyberization--rebirth--had ensured her a permanent physical form, but... She was still alive, still biological, still made up of the very genome that had threatened to kill her. Was this transplanted power, this viral elusiveness, really the sickness she had seen reflected in the sadness of her mother's eyes? Were these genes really a cancer, corrupting her mind, the seat of her soul? Would it stop at nothing to diminish her to nothing still?

Held by fear, the meaning trickled through her grasp. All she could remember was her mother and that final car ride. The girl wasn't dead yet; she was still dying. A piece at a time.

"Aeon?" Valerie looked concerned. "Aeon, I could be wrong." But something in the girl's face assured her assessment was painfully accurate. "What do you want to do?"

For the first time in the better part of a year, she felt afraid to be herself. Without the careful guidance of the Daedalus team, how could she feel secure about what lay in store for her? The Boss Lady hadn't contacted her directly since her appointment with Dr. Vosk.

She had been soothed once before, but between facing Michael and the threat of being slowly undone, which of the fears she now faced was greater?

Valerie smiled sympathetically. "Why don't you go talk to him. You can come back and we can continue when you feel better."

(These events actually occurred in June of 2007 and are an excerpt and reinterpretation of in-game role-play.)

Obsidian Seraph made her nervous. Not for any overt or really any good reason in particular; but, he reached out to her--she felt his eyes on her, little prying fingers--it made her automatically defensive. Especially the way he commented on her clothes. Since when was it anything worth comment? Why did everyone look at her like she was so risqué? It wasn't real skin. Less cloth, less weight, less to phase, to make dodge, to render invisible.

But he insisted that they were friends either way, that he didn't judge her by her appearance, that she was more than just her shell and he saw her as a whole person. She didn't believe him. She didn't get his angle.

"See, that's why I was saying you're a tough bird to figure. You start to get close, even friendly, beyond just casual friends, and then you push back to arms length again."

She had been keeping a close eye on Misericorde the whole conversation, not really paying attention to Oby, be he genuine or not.

"I'm not saying we'd be lifelong buds, or blood-brother and -sister, but..."

Now he was withdrawing; she had to catch him. She had to shake Oby, but she didn't want to be impolite, insincere--moreso.

"I... There really isn't anything...for you to be more than casual friends with." That, at least, was honest. It would be better for all if no one got in that deep. Who knew what lurked beneath? Even she didn't.

"That's a pile."

She shook her head, frustrated. His voice came over the comm, for her ears only: "Come to Atlas. Meet me under the tram." Her nerve endings sparkled.

Oby set his brows, tried to explain again that robot or stone, they were all pink and squishy on the inside, or some equivalent touchy-feely thing. But she saw the disconnect between the girl that once was and the machine that was now--moreover she could tell which one people were talking to. It was easy for them to say things like Oby was insisting now. Because they didn't know her before.

She slipped away as politely as possible, not really caring about his sob story at the moment, not wanting to lose the friendship they were building, not wanting to get in too deep like with all the others she'd deceived.

* * *

By the time she made it to the Yellow Line station in Atlas Park, she was pretty late, gritting her teeth over making him wait. Michael sat near the reflecting pools, wiggling his feet idly over the corner of the cement ledge.

"What's up?"

She flopped down next to him, hard. "Do you believe in souls?"

Unsurprisingly, he didn't flinch at the left-field question. "Well, seeing as I fight ghosts and demons, yes. Plus the Catholic angle."

"Right. I didn't know if you were into that. A lot of kids here aren't."

"They're more worried about rubbing up against things."

Aeon made a vaguely disgusted face, too tired of the topic to will the muscles to express any more distaste. She sighed, steeling herself. "Well, I guess I'll just cut to the chase, since you're probably busy and all."

"Not really, but go ahead, chickadee."

So she laid out the run on Genometric Solutions, weirdness and all:

"Okay, so back in April, I made a run on this Crey subsidiary. Chumps, really, no security. And I was doing the whole, 'I'm in your computer, stealing your data,' thing. And they had this EMP. I swear, the only special sort of security at all.

"An imp? Oh, ee-em-pee."

"Yeah, so, I don't know what it was exactly, but that plus some radiologist with a taser...and the next think I knew when I came to--now this is weird...it was a month later, and some AI thing on one of the machines was telling me it was me, and it'd been trapped, and Nox was there, and it had told him to spring me."

"Was it you?"

"Yeah, I think so. A digital copy, though, like the one my wetware makes for interfacing. And so, she was there for so long and it was, well, pretty traumatic. I got some of the memories and things back, but I thought it'd be best to delete it--her." She readjusted her skirt over her legs. "And this is all a super roundabout way of explaining that I lost a ton of my speed and I was thinking that maybe powers are tied to your soul and maybe, you know...I kinda...deleted some of that."

She'd never been good at storytelling, wasn't surprised that he looked a little lost.

"...So you deleted the copy?

"Yeah. She offered to stay and keep digging for information, but it was obvious she didn't want to. I mean, it was me, and I know me. It was like she was saying, 'I want to get out of here, but if you're the "real" one, I'll stay, for us.' That's what I would have done."

"Are you worried you're the copy?"

"No," she shook her head, "we were both pretty sure that wasn't it. But I'm wondering now if the copy wasn't just a copy, but a little piece of the whole. I mean, how can you have a real consciousness without a soul?" She laughed, a little uncharacteristically, a little forced. "I'm totally bonkers, aren't I?"

Ever-reassuring, he smiled a little. "Hm. Probably. But at least you're clever and cute, which both count for something. Also, you have super-powers."

She rested her cheek on her knee, gaze drifting over the water "I suppose."

"It wasn't up for debate. I guess," he sighed a little, "here's my advice: A guy goes to the doctor. He flexes his arm like he's showing off his biceps, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"So he says to the doctor, he says, 'Doc, it hurts when I do this!' and flexes again. You with me so far?"

"So the doctor says, 'Then don't do that'..."

"Yeah, exactly."

She chuckled and shook her head. "Yeah, you're probably right, as always."

"Aeon, have you considered that your loss of speed may be completely unrelated? Maybe it was the EMP. Or the taser."

She had. She'd combed the lab data, the readouts of her tests, her obstacle course times. Sure she was fast, but that X factor, the speed that had been throwing off her trajectory calculations, was gone.

"Well, I've sort of got the hang of what makes me fast, and it's also the same thing that makes me dodgy and invisible." And able to phase through solid objects. Yeah, that was new. "And my body doesn't do those things. I do. And now only the speed is gone."

Michael squinted at her. "Wait, you had powers before you received the prosthetics?"

She nodded. "It's why I got them."

"...'Why'? Can you only use them with the prosthetics? Or your body couldn't handle the stress?"

"I--uh...I don't know why exactly." She kicked a pebble. Something tickled her brain. She did know, once. But she couldn't remember if she knew now. Something was making it difficult to think about.

"Aeon, honey, no one ever told you why they replaced your body?"

"Not that I can recall..."

"...Doesn't that bother you?"

The forced chuckle returned. "Of course it bothers me! Every goddamn day."

"Then you need to start asking questions, dollface."

She frowned at the nickname. "That's why I was poking that Crey place. I'm looking for...the other one like me. The one I left behind." Syndey. She didn't want to bring it up. It would be insensitive to remind him of the one he'd lost.

The evening breeze started, chasing bits of litter over the plaza.

"So, I guess you know the whole thing then...but it's not like I've got the big picture myself." Something burned of her, and it hinted at mental blocks. Thousands of little red pins detonating, dead limbic organs keeping her disinterested in answers.

She was ready to call it a night, give up, and hope a night's worth of sleep would make her feel better, but Michael pressed on, her surrogate curiosity, trying to reason through the situation. "I mean, the instant the copy split, it's not you anymore. It sort of stopped being a copy then, too."

"But it was me--it felt that way, anyway. It was a situation I didn't decide on, so we started out the same. The copy was living a different life, and sure she changed, but she was still doing exactly what I would have done in that situation. She was still me. Still real." And looked more real that even her physical body felt. "I'm sorry, I don't need to bug you with this."

He shrugged. "I don't mind. I'm always willing to lend a sympathetic ear. For certain friends, anyway."

"As long as you're not just saying that."

"Mostly, I'm glad you're okay."

She smiled in spite of herself, magically warmed by honest kindness. She still wondered why he didn't make her paranoid, how he was immune to her compulsion to be manipulative.

"And...it sounds like you can take care of yourself, even if you don't realize it. You made a copy to go get help, help came, and here you are."

"Oh...uh...I never looked at it that way..."

"You're probably going to find out some things about yourself you don't want to know. You sure you're ready?"

She scoffed. "It can't get worse. The way I'm wired, it's pretty easy to stay calm."

Michael leaned back on his palms. "Yes, it really can get worse. It's easy for me to give advice, Aeon. I haven't had an emotional investment in anything until a year ago. You talk about how these cybernetics turn you into some kind of robot, but if you could hear yourself, you'd know you are still a teenage girl...and you're a kid, like the rest of us. Someone took your body and replaced it and they won't tell you why. That's not right. You should be pissed."

"To be honest, I'm freaking terrified right now--like, mortally so--but you wouldn't know it by looking. At least, I guess I'm terrified."

"It's easy for me to be fearless, I know I won't die."

"Well I'm afraid enough for both of us. You're...my best--maybe my only real friend, and you scare me the most, I think."

Michael patted her on the head, brushing her hair into her eyes, thankfully hiding her pinkening cheeks.

"Aw, I'm not scary."

"You are to me."

"Why is that? A lot of kids at school are scared of me. I can't fathom why."

"Well, for me, anyway, Valerie's theory is that I feel ontologically threatened."

He gave her a strange look. "...What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She fidgeted, shying away from eye-contact, and let the evening breeze blow her hair into her face. "Like, you've got stuff all tied down and you kick a lot of ass and you've got Franky and you're pretty much complete and stuff...and then, like, I'm all...not." The words tumbled out like marbles, tripped over one another, confused and scattering, frightened.

Michael only laughed. To spite her. No, not really, but it stung just the same.

And they wouldn't stop. "And not just that but...it surprises me you even give me the time of day."

He rubbed his forehead. "Aeon, oh goodness!"

"Oh, don't laugh..." She died a little, toppling sideways onto the cement. She couldn't help but smile in embarrassment, but it was still mortifying. God, she was so stupid.

He dug the claws of one hand into the concrete for leverage and slowly tugged her back up. "Aeon, c'mon. I'm not the coolest dude in school or anything."

"I mean, it's not just that you're you, or that I'm less than you, but rather that you regard me at all and I just... It makes me have to consider where I fit in--in the grand scheme of things."

His eyebrows knotted sympathetically. "Dating Franky doesn't mean I don't have friends or feelings or stop caring about anyone else."

He didn't get it. No one got it. It was as bad as she'd feared. Maybe worse. She massaged the muscles of her forehead, accomplishing little. "No no, that's not even it. God, I knew this was stupid. I don't care about Franky, for good or bad. Honestly. I don't have the capacity."

He backed off, insistent. "I believe you, now don't get defensive. I'm not so arrogant to assume all girls are interested in me romantically."

"Well, I'm pretty sure that's what everyone else thinks. It's so embarrassing..." She pushed her hair back behind her ears. Hurry on, get past the subject. "Eh, enough about my crap. I do feel better, though. A little bit."

The sun dipped below the horizon, the wind picking up. She fingered at a claw scratch in the cement.

"I'm sick of this. You wanna do something, you know, not depressing for once?"

"...I'm not depressed. I'm...'ontologically scary'?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Fine, be difficult." She nudged him with her foot.

"Aeon, you're my friend. I wouldn't let you just die or give up or do something stupid...even if there's no rubbing involved."

She offered up half a smile at the attempt to be witty. "Okay."

The silence seemed to circle around them now, creeping in like a vice on the bubble of comfort she had chiseled out of this constant gloom. But she couldn't find anything to say. Not anything honest.

He shook his head at her. "Jesus, crawl out of your head for once."

She unplugged one of her receivers and mimicked pouring her brain out. "There." She grinned, kind of. "I...actually feel pretty good now--about the soul stuff--all things considered. So don't fret about me fretting, okay?"

He nodded a bit, satisfied enough that he wasn't going to find her at the bottom of the port in the morning. "Alrighty, fair enough. Well, think of something fun, okay? And let me know."

"I'll give it a shot. Usually fun for me is beating up Freakshow." And then beating herself up, because they really weren't all that different in the end.

He stood and stretched an eyed her over. She looked put-together, calm, maybe even less tense than before. "You look good."

She smirked dryly "Thanks. You don't look half bad yourself, Mister I'm-so-cool."

"Yeah...I better go before this gets awkward again. I'm worn out and kinda loopy." His hand found itself in her hair again. "Later, tater."

"Sure thing."

* * *

Her eyelashes danced like fronds of seaweed in the flurry of tiny bubbles. It pushed at her lips and displaced the air in her nostrils. All around her face the water pressed in, baptizing her in purity, in shimmering, in silence.

Aeon lifted her head from the sink, water rivuleting over her delicate cheekbones and nose, off her chin, sticking her hair limply to her face. She patted herself dry with the soft towel, stained with blood and mud and grease, regarding her countenance in the bathroom mirror. She smiled to herself, prettily.

Just a normal girl. Just a kid. Just as worthy of a bit of peace.

(These events actually occurred in July of 2007.)

Aeon made her way to the rectory, smoothing her skirt self-consciously. So she wasn't exactly Catholic, and she wasn't sure what "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" had to do with existentialism; but the way Billy had been so adamant...here she was.

She rapped lightly on the office door, combing through her hair with her other hand.

"Come in."

She turned the old, bronze handle, the metal worn to a warm sheen with many hands, and the door crept open on well-oiled hinges. Father Bob stood as she entered, smiling with pleasant confidence.

"Ah, good afternoon, Aeon. I was beginning to worry you weren't going to come."

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to reason a logical excuse for her tardiness.

"Make yourself comfortable, please."

Obediently, she sat.

"Now, it's my duty to nag you--" he smiled good-humoredly, "I haven't seen you in mass in some time." Seeing her expression, he held up his hand in a reassuring gesture. "No need to explain. I'm sure you have a very good reason. I heard you were missing from class as well." He rose again to fuss with the tea set. "May I offer you a cup?"

Tea in hand (cream and two sugars), sunken into an old, red velvet, padded arm chair, seated in the cozy office with the afternoon sun streaming cheerily in, Father Bob pleasantly regarding her, she felt somehow, miraculously, peaceful.

Father Bob settled himself in his office chair and sipped gingerly at his own tea. "So what can I do for you?"

Aeon was pleasantly surprised that he skipped the formal pleasantries of pries-parishioner conversation. Maybe he sensed she didn't have much to offer comfortably.

"I was wondering what you believed about souls."

Father Bob chuckled amusedly. "I figured you wouldn't be one to bother me with easy questions. So I suppose that means you won't be content with any of the easy answers, either." He winked a blue eye and sipped his tea with more confidence, contemplatively, regarding her receptive, pensive expression. "We believe that the soul is an immortal object, substanceless, that is given to us by God at 'conception'--though we could debate about what 'conception' is." He smiled a bit, though the cyborg girl was all business today. He continued. "It is our spirituality as humans, our divine connection to God, the part of us which is in His image. A soul offers us free will, free thought, and the ability to know God, as well as the freedom to remain ignorant to Him, or to reject Him. The soul transcends death and will be judged and given a place in the Kingdom of Heaven, made to atone for the sins of an earthly life, or punished for our immortal sins against God."

It wasn't enough. She was probing, looking for something more particular. "Is the mind a part of the soul?"

He tapped his chin. "The Catholic Church attributes the 'intellect' and 'imagination' to the soul... I can understand your concern, Aeon; but, as well as being a man of faith, I'm also a man of science. Our understanding of medicine leads me to believe that the brain seems to be a part of the body, whereas the 'mind' seems more at home in the soul. Would you agree? Following that, I would believe that 'intellect' could be interpreted as our freedom of choice and the essence of logic. And 'imagination' the grace of God."

There were only a few reasons why a young hero, exposed to physical and mental trials regularly, would be concerned about the mind's relationship to the soul. He took a leap, guessing at what she was probing for.

"Unfortunately, just as the body can be disfigured, the mind can be damaged to impede the soul's ability to live in the world and witness God--" And her expression was telling, now. "--but that's not to say that harming the flesh harms the spirit. That damage is self-inflicted--giving in to despair and abandoning faith causes weakness of mind and body; sin invites the harm in."

She shut down, then, adopting a protective cynicism. "Is that why you want to see me in church more often?"

Father Bob sighed. "I was just answering your question, Aeon. But if strength is what you're looking for, you're in the right place. Absolution, too. Overcoming what others have done to you, forgiving them, comes from here." He placed a hand on his chest.

Father Bob had a point. She didn't have to go out and be a vengeful hero and look for answers that she already had. And, intellectually, forgiveness would be a fairly easy thing to do. She didn't blame Project Daedalus. They, themselves, believed heavily in the Catholic dogma. They were only doing what they thought was coming closer to God. What she blamed them for was equipping her with a tool of free will evolved beyond her understanding. And now she had unwittingly tampered with God's gift to her. She was damned.

Or maybe not. Maybe the soul was just a construction of the mind, a high order reflexive model. A knowing consciousness. Just chemical data striped holographically across a matrix of neurons.

It was all relative. One path required that she embrace her fate but showed a clear path to atonement. The other absolved her of guilt but left her adrift in meaninglessness.

"And you really believe all that? It's not just a model?"

Father Bob smiled in a strangely serious way. "Yes, I really do."

Aeon sipped her tea. It had started to go cold.

The table was suddenly upset, delicate china and cloud-like pastries sliding uglily into chaos, the table spinning on one ornately spindly leg. Dark-haired Molly snatched the tablecloth and, like a heroin-chic model turned matador, she whipped it at the bodyguard's face, the heavy beaded edges spinning around his neck to secure it. Primavera, white teeth gleaming, lunged animalistically at the taipan. Another Molly appeared behind the man, restraining him, and moments later, a third tackled the bodyguard from the side. The first Molly stepped back, observed the situation, formed a complicated hand seal, and disappeared. Once Primavera had managed to sink her teeth into the microchip baron's flesh, the second Molly released him to repeat the gesture and vanished as well.

The pair on the floor struggled. Screaming in terror and exertion, he attempted to roll the girl into the once-priceless shards of china, but she only dug deeper, searching.

The automatic rifle coughed in a shower of ceiling plaster; and, once the third Molly had managed to wrestle the gun from the guard's hands, she popped out of existence to be replaced with the first, standing where she had been moments before, the rifle now slung across her back. She grinned at the bewildered thug who wore the torn silk tablecloth as a scarf, ten thin razors sliding from beneath her lacquered fingernails.

A spray of the bodyguard's blood darkened Primavera's flaxen, springy curls as she topped the Hong Kong CEO once more. He whimpered in horror and ecstasy as she found the target memory and drew hard on the artery, tearing the information from his blood.

Molly wiped her hands on the curtains as her partner finished with the extraction, disengaging from the target's throat with an undignified smacking noise, the whole front of her white party dress washed crimson. Molly sighed at Primavera's sugar-coated animal grin.

"Did you get it?"

The taipan groaned, stirring among the soaked cakes, bleeding weakly into the overly expensive Persian rug nearby. Primavera nodded.

Satisfied, Molly approached and seized her wrist, pulling the blonde to her feet, and turned. "C'mon Violet, we've got to split."

Father Bob folded his hands. "Surely you have your own ideas about souls, so I'm sorry if I disappointed you with my answers. But Aeon, how you choose to find God in life, in Creation, in the decisions you make--it's a very personal experience. You're a smart girl; trust in His gifts and you won't be lead astray."

She nodded to herself. "Thank you, Father." She rose, placing the barely touched cup and saucer on the desk.

"If you come up with any more hard-hitting questions about the meaning of life, you know where to find me." He smiled.

She returned the gesture. "See you Sunday."

(These events actually occurred in late July 2007.)

She jogged through the warzone, picking over rubble and hopping cracks in the street. The sky was a constant gray now, choked with smoke and an invisible lattice of psychic oppression. Just the thought of stepping across an invisible line to find one’s mind invaded was enough to make the landscape appear darker.

Why was she to make the pick-up in the warzone? Sure, it was a place where the conflict between heroes and villains was not an issue, but wasn’t the Rikti threat an even greater danger? Especially to a defenseless child?

"Of Generation Beâtus, twelve children survived to birth, and all of those twelve had survived until the first Rikti War. There are now only eleven. Their generation is named after the Beatitudes, of which I’m sure you’re familiar, and each child’s powers curiously correspond to the eight beatitudes and four woes: four of Luke, (originally) four of Matthew, and four of woe."

But then again, perhaps the eleven-year-old wasn’t defenseless at all. She and Sydney had developed amazing powers. And this was the next generation, five years more refined.

She picked up her pace, following her coordinates, heading to a more remote area of the zone. As she hopped a cement barrier, a figure moved into her peripheral vision off to the left: someone in dark clothing, equipped with a Raptor Pack, was skimming close to the ground, course set to pass in front of her in a few moments. She slowed a bit to get a better look.

A man, slightly built. Bright hair. Armored hands. It couldn’t be.

Time seemed to stretch and buckle as he passed, turning, himself, to look at her, their gaze locking for a moment that dug its claws into the timestream like a cat on silk drapes.

She knew that frame, that soft scowl. He was the key to all she had forgotten. She took off before her thoughts could catch up, stumbling over herself, her feet, her mind racing, starved for answers and significance. A portal tore open nearby, probably a scout checking why there was a concentration of Vanguard’s allies in that remote of an area. He changed course to intercept it, and she turned to intercept him.

Automatically her blades deployed and found their way into Rikti flesh, but her eyes were on him. Flames erupted from a nearby Conscript and it screeched inhumanly, fell, and sputtered on the ground. The portal closed, leaving a Drone between them.

The boy peered at her, around the side of the Drone, almost nonchalantly. It upset her. How could he be so cool?

"Hey, Quizzie, Long time no see." He grinned wryly, though without cynicism, and turned to the Drone. He drove the gauntlets in, tearing the armor open, and blew fireball into the casing. The drone shook violently and dropped with a clang.

She faltered. What could she say? How long had it been since they’d seen each other? Did he even care? He just stood there, neutrally vigilant. She swallowed, struggling to put thoughts into words.

"Where have you been?"

The grin returned and he reached out with that charred claw, touching her cheek. It was somehow chilly.

"Threat Level Forty."

Sydney? The enemy?

As she stood staring and agape, her skin warmed slightly and she felt her bruises dissolve away. And then he was gone again, skimming over the landscape with a tail of blue jet fuel.

Instinct forced her stunned paralysis down and she rushed after him. He wasn’t getting away again. She wouldn’t let him be elusive and cow her with charms. She knew his game too well.

"Ashe!" An unpracticed anger growled out of her voicebox, echoing across the broken cement. "Ashe!"

She was gaining on him, and as he dodged into a maze of rubble, she simply slipped through it. She dove, her hands clamped on his upper arm, and she kicked the Raptor Pack away. For the brief moment they were free in the air, he craned to look, in genuine surprise, at her and her expression of blank determination. She clutched him as they hit the ground, shielding him from stones and shrapnel as they rolled to a stop at the base of a pile of broken bricks. She landed on his stomach, knees on his wrists, the tops of her feet on his thighs, hands pinning his shoulders. At last. Now what?

Here, finally face to face with Sydney, the old feelings began to well up. Despite her progress in forming an ego and learning to trust others, her laboratory sibling, the one true link to her past, crumbled all of that. She was as fully exposed and raw as that year they were together, bonded in genetics and circumstance, perfect negatives. Her quivering lip gave way to rage.

Because of him, she had run. Because of him, she had lost her memory. "Why did you tell me to run from the Project?"

Because of him, she had sought refuge in S.E.R.A.P.H., who had ultimately failed to repair her. Because of him, she had wasted a year of her life playing school. "Why didn't you contact me when you knew where I was?"

Because of him, she had lain comatose in a laboratory storage locker for nearly a month. Because of him, she was a shadow of the girl she had been "Why did you leave me in that storage room when you knew?:

All because he knew. He knew and she didn't. "Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I thought we were friends!"

Because she didn't know, she would go on shaving away parts of herself to find the truth. Why couldn't he just tell her if there was anything there to find? "Because of you I deleted a part of my soul, Sydney! You damned me!"

She pounded half-heartedly on his Kevlar chest with one of her fists. "And now you’re a villain? Why…? Why didn’t you let me help you that day…?" She hiccuped, teeth clenched, her head drooping. It wasn't like she could remember if she'd ever felt it then, but it was something remembered. All her misery orbited around that day he abandoned her and betrayed his promise. "I thought you loved me."

He seemed moved by her pathos in spite of himself and sighed, partially in sympathy, partially in exasperation. He felt sorry for her, how she craved answers that would ultimately harm her. He had to stay detached--they all did…but this was Violet. He had loved her once, perhaps, when he’d gotten carried away with hubris, when he didn’t realize what was at stake.

She would have to do it, too. And the urge to give into abandon gnawed at her; he could see it. What was she clinging to? What could she possibly care about in this state? He shook his head. "When are you going to just let go? Give in, already."

She knew what he meant, and it frightened her. "Give in to the Shrinking? Are you mad?" She needed the laboratory. She needed the scientists in their crisp suits and their knowing nods. She needed direction. "We’re in the field. Or do you want me to completely dissociate into free-floating molecules?" A distant memory tingled. The lone boy, raised from birth in the lab. The mistake. The darkness that made the light shine brighter. Her eyes narrowed, spite edging into her voice. "Are you really that sore about being a boy that you’d rather get rid of me than have to stand in my shadow?"

His face hardened, but he tried not to show it. How did she know these things? How did she even recognize him? He saw the detonators they’d placed in her brain. Had they gone off as planned, he was surprised she wasn’t a vegetable.

The rote answer followed, the boss' words allowing him to ignore the ones he'd rather say. "It’s all part of the Plan, Vi. Have faith." He frowned, adding, "You really don’t have to torture yourself like this." Remain a blank canvas. Then everything would be easier.

"’The Plan’?" She scoffed. How could any of this abuse have been intentional? "Surely you don’t mean God’s plan. We’re fucking with God’s plan!"

Sydney tried to mask his developing horror. Who--or what exactly was he facing? Wasn’t her limbic system supposed to be inhibited? She was starting to shake, her grip on him tightening. It was hard to tell what she did and didn’t know anymore, but no doubt the partial explanation she had wasn’t helping anything except her self-destructive streak. His continued presence was obviously only fuel for the fire, and he’d have a lot more to worry about than a broken heart if she blew up on him. He had to shut down, get away. He couldn't risk becoming any more involved.

"We’re above God’s plan, sweetheart. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to continue killing Rikti to cover a serious lapse in God’s judgment so there will still be a plan to be above." He tried to get up and failed to affect any change at all. "Jeez, Quiz, what’ve you been eating?"

He used to carry her, drop her through windows in the silent depths of night. Now she was a one-girl industrial blender. Daedalus was really playing with fire here.

She sat up and contemplated his shallow expression and hollow words. He still had all the answers and wasn’t sharing. Maybe he wasn’t rogue after all; maybe it was just a cover. Now she was just intensely annoyed. And wasting time. Forget this boy, this dead end decoy. She didn't need him.

"Fine. But I have something for you." She stood and poked in a pouch on her belt as the boy clambered to his feet again, brushing himself off. She handed him the letter. "It’s from the Boss Lady."

She crossed her arms over her chest as he unsealed the paper and read it, frowning slightly. "Well, looks like I’ve got work to do. See ya ‘round, girly." He tossed her a casual salute and made to leave.

She couldn't stop herself. She couldn't bear to see him leave again. She couldn't bear to miss another opportunity. "Let me come with you."

He looked her over, resolve softening, seriously considering the idea. Together again, like old times. His eyes undressed her again, remembering the soft chill of her polymer skin. The letter burned to ash in his hand.

"Sorry, Vi. It’s Generation Zero business. Mama wouldn’t be too happy if you got involved--if I got you involved…"

Molly and Primavera. The ones who came before. He saw the recognition on her features, his own brow creasing.

"You shouldn’t remember that."

"Why not?"

He brushed his hair from his eyes with a gauntlet. "Look, Vi, I gotta go." With the other hand he gestured to the pylons in the distance. "They’re all yours." He passed her to go retrieve his lost Raptor Pack, turning his face away. Parting again was hard enough. He’d forgotten that. And the way she disarmed him.

She watched him as he shouldered the battered pack. "You’d better call me, Ashe!" she called after him, her expression serious.

He turned back and, considering, smiled sadly in spite of himself. "I’ll see what I can do."

(These events actually occurred in late July 2007.)

She was shaken by her chance encounter with Sydney, almost forgetting she was still deep within the war zone. Refocusing on her coordinates, Aeon picked up her pace toward the drop point: a dilapidated three-story office building caved in on one side. She clambered up the rubble and found herself on the second floor.

Long tiled hallways littered with ceiling panels, rows of doors with drop boxes nailed next to them. Windows for checking in and checking out, places to wait, places to wait for those who were waiting. Charred magazines, blasted paint, an overturned gurney, an abandoned doll.

Near the stairwell a grenade or a rocket had blown a whole library of files, each with their many colored tabs, across the festive geometric carpet. She stooped to examine one. A little boy named Charles. They were all children. In an oncology clinic.

They were all a bunch of bastards: Sydney, the Boss Lady he called "Mama," Daedalus, all of them. What they might have intended to be poignant simply rang like a sick joke to her ears.

Aeon made her way to the first floor as she had been instructed. Her charge and two attending agents were in the main waiting room, the girl idly playing with the toys. She was dressed in a green plaid skirt and a black pea coat buttoned despite the warm weather.

The agents straightened at her arrival, obviously perturbed by her tardiness. "You're late," one barked.

"I know. This is my charge?"

"You are to transport her to the Forgotten Forest at these coordinates." He handed her a slip of paper. "Under no circumstances is she to fall into Rikti hands or come into the custody of the emergency medical system. Is that clear?" He neglected to mention death.

"Sir."

The girl approached and Aeon took a knee. She tried to look sympathetic. She and the girl likely weren't all that different. "What's your name?"

"Purity." She smiled.

Aeon nodded and smiled in return. "You can call me Violet."

Ignoring the agents, she rose and held her open hand to the girl who took it, and together they pushed through the broken glass doors into the late afternoon glow. Aeon chose a path back to the Vanguard base, where she hoped to be able to pass Purity through as a rescued hostage--the Rikti and whoever else was operating in the zone grabbed them all the time--and they set off at a brisk walk, hand in hand. She hoped the girl felt safe this way, because she certainly didn't.

"How old are you, Miss Violet?"

She smiled down at the girl with a mask of pleasantness. "Sixteen."

"When I'm sixteen, will I be as pretty as you?"

A nervousness crept into her features. "Oh, you're already pretty, Purity." And she was a remarkably lovely girl. "You have a pretty soul. That's why I'm here to protect you." The girl took the comment unflinchingly, contrary to Aeon's own relationship with the dogma she found herself spouting from time to time.

On further thought, Purity had an interesting accent--not quite British. She wondered what Daedalus had in store for this generation, and in particular why they were already well groomed for life as murderous dolls.

"Where are you from, Purity?"

"Avignon." France.

"Really? That sounds so exotic."

The girl bloomed with pride. "Mama and Papa wanted me to lead a picturesque life. We had a little cottage with ivy and a kitten and I learned to dance and write poetry and do needlepoint."

Didn't she feel bitter that it was all constructed? Didn't she hate them all for taking that life away?

"Don't you miss your family?"

Purity nodded. "A little." Her voice grew dreamy, her gaze following the horizon. "But I know that there's something bigger for me. I'm going to be like you some day." She met Aeon's somewhat horrified expression with her own beaming face. "Like Jeanne d'Arc, with all our sisters we'll head the revolution into an new era of perfection and romance for everyone."

Aeon couldn't quite believe what she was hearing from this girl. Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake last she remembered. Was Daedalus engineering fanatics? What bothered her more at that moment, however, was how everyone seemed to be privy to this information except for her. She hadn't even been aware of this apparent manifesto until now.

So much she didn't know. Sydney was operating as a villain. They were to Bloody Bay to transfer Purity to other hands... Then Daedalus' new compound must be in the Isles. Suddenly the secrecy became quite obvious: she was a cape. It wasn't Sydney who was rogue. He was simply protecting her--they all were. The inside girl. Purity wasn't the subversive one, the Joan of Arc. It was Aeon who would be put to the stake for their transgressions should she let the truth slip. That's why she hadn't known anything, couldn't know. She gulped subconsciously.

"Is something wrong, Miss Violet?" Aeon forced herself to smile at the girl. "I'm just nervous to be transporting something so precious."

Purity batted her eyelashes demurely. "You flatter me, Miss Violet."

Not someone. something. Aeon hadn't caught the misspeak and neither had the girl. They were all pawns in this, willing, like sacrificial lambs. Aspiring martyred saints.

She felt the lattice of the Rikti's psychic surveillance bear down, followed by the ominous sound of space being torn behind them. She looked grimly down at her charge. "It's time to run."

Aeon scooped the girl into her arms and took off as fast as she was able given the terrain. Anywhere but the main supply lanes of the war zone was treacherously littered with all manner of debris laying in wait to trip her and send the pair sprawling, the unarmored girl crushed beneath three-hundred-odd pounds of steel, zirconium, and human parts.

A plasma shot barely missed them, but careened into a nearby building, bringing a chunk of the facade and its signage crashing down to intercept their path. At just shy of eighty miles per hour, she didn't have time to think.

Aeon clutched the girl to her and the world faded to a dull roar washed in grays as her molecules fell out of phase. Widened, time dilated, and they slipped through the cracks like underwater air bubbles through mesh. Clear of the hazard, she reached out with her toes, probing for purchase on a solid surface. They skipped once, twice off the ground before the world came crashing in around them again, her feet striking the pavement, forcing them forward, again, and away.

Purity quaked in her arms, seizing from the sudden, unexpected transformation. But they were alive, and aside from missing a little hair and patches of Purity's heavy coat, they were whole.

She had told no one of these powers. Not Sydney, not Nick, not Michael, not Ms. Atwood. She was barely aware herself that she could, it seemed, phase through other objects, squeezing through on a molecular scale. And she wasn't sure why she hadn't told anyone, but it made her feel safe having such a precious secret. To everyone else, she was an ordinary girl with a designer body, and that protected her from the reality: an extraordinary girl in a designer cage.

She stole a glance over her shoulder at the collapsed building quickly shrinking behind them, very now and very real, and it began to work its way into her mind that she had somehow brought this girl with her through the purgatory of dissociation. It was remarkable, and whether that meant more for Purity or for herself, she wasn't certain.

From somewhere off to the left came grenadier fire. She knew it well. She shuddered to think what an explosion might do to her in a phased state. Purity was already badly shaken from a simple pass. She couldn't risk it again.

She dodged the fire mundanely as best she could, stopping a few gatling gun rounds in her arms and back, acting as a shield for Purity. Then suddenly a hail of red blinking, brass grenades plinked on the ground in front of her, bouncing off the asphalt in random trajectories. She ducked through the field as many sailed past, but an explosion near her head sent her flying off her feet. In desperation, she threw Purity clear of the blasts into some shrubs on a tree lawn waterlogged by a broken water main, but suspected the outcome was grim as she hit the pavement herself, bits of black powder propelled shrapnel pelting her flesh like brass flocking.

She spat a slurry of blood and coolant and dragged herself to the roadside, finding Purity full of sticks and scrapes. Her collarbone was probably broken the way her chest looked crumpled and her arm hung strangely. With the Nemesis repositioning and Rikti still far behind, Aeon quickly shredded the rest of the coat to immobilize the girl with strips of felted wool, praying the bushes would conceal them for if only a minute longer.

A woman in military fatigues, cradling an assault rifle in limbs that terminated in giant mechanical appendages tromped toward her, the tattered remnants of an American flag tied about her torso. "I got this! Get the kid out of here!"

Aeon saw the contrails of a few more rocket-propelled heroes as she picked up Purity and took off again, every muscle of her lumbar spine screaming, the slick on her neck an indication that she was bleeding (blood and possibly other, more important fluids) from the head.

Purity was breathing shallowly, going into shock. No MedEvac--no hospitals allowed. Where was a damned empath when you needed one?

She hadn't realized how far she'd run already. They were nearing the Vanguard base and before it a small outpost of ragtag heroes. Dare she ask for help? They weren't wearing Vanguard colors...

"Medic!"

The team perked up, turning to look her way, one of them rushing toward her, instinctively charging a ball of energy into his hands.

"Not me, the girl."

Don't ask questions, she prayed. Just fix her. Please fix her.

The man, dressed in black, a fierce, orange sun emblazoned on his chest, furrowed his brows and channeled his power into the girl, warm and golden. She stirred but didn't awaken.

"Where did she come from?" A pretty obvious firebug asked this. From toe to head, he was the color of a flame, red hair, red cape.

"No idea." That was sort of true. How did they get Purity into the war zone in the first place?

A big guy near the back dressed in black leather with spikes and painted flames piped up. "Portal accident, probably. If you brain scramble a Mentalist back, who knows what he'll pull through."

"Jesus," breathed the firebug.

"What's wrong with her?" Aeon looked to the defender. He frowned and shrugged. "She's a super, that's all I know."

Some escape sequence had been triggered in the girl from which no amount of healing could bring her back. To the horror of the onlookers, Purity's white blouse began to rustle seeming of its own accord. She jerked slightly and the wool tore and fell away. The flesh of the girl's chest was turning deathly gray, a pucker resembling stitches appearing across her sternum. The pucker deepened into a jagged fissure, and then the edges crumbled inward to form a crude void. Bristling rows of gleaming white shark's teeth sprouted along the rim, creating a nightmarish maw in the center of the girl's chest.

The fire-themed team of heroes stepped away from the horror Aeon still cradled in her arms. She couldn't bring herself to look away even as the girl's body twisted to accommodate the growing abyss.

Purity stirred then, dark, blotchy stains bleeding through her skin, all over her body, and she began to recite.

"Incline unto my aid, O God. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

She began to pray the meditations of the Chaplet of Saint Michael the Archangel, as the sucking began: a strange vacuum from deep within Purity's chest, tugging at, Aeon swore, her very soul, touching at horrific memories, long repressed. She watched the faces of the heroes pale as dark gray wisps were drawn from their skin, shadows of wrongdoings and regrets passing from them and into the girl. With each second it grew stronger, reached deeper, calling upon the husks of burned-out memories, moving on. She felt it would never end.

"O glorious prince, St. Michael, leader and commander of the heavenly host, guardian of the souls of men, conqueror of the rebel angels, steward of the palace of God, our worthy leader, endowed with holiness and power, deliver us from every evil. With full confidence we have recourse to you, that by your gracious protection we may be enabled to make progress every day in the faithful service of God."

Eventually, the empath collapsed. The firebug had begun to weep. Aeon could feel a deep probing, the shadowy fingers of Purity's power rifling through memories that were so lost, she couldn't even call them her own. But nothing was taken, not like the others. Why was she immune?

The girl's own bruises began to creep and spread, her skin further darkening with...it must have been some kind of sin she absorbed. Was that her power? But not this way--this was out of control. Purity had truly died ten minutes ago when Aeon had torn her apart. That lit the fuse, this was the bang. Her last rite.

"Pray for us, most blessed Michael, Prince of the Church of Jesus Christ, that we may be made worthy of His promises. Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen!"

At that last word, the her body flared a brilliant white, the stain gone, the maw quiet. Intercession by the Saints or no, the girl seemed well and whole again. Purity turned her gaze to Aeon, her eyes glassy and aware, as if to say, "You know what's next."

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

Purity smiled weakly and then went limp, the maw disappearing as quickly as it had come, leaving no trace.

The heroes were badly shaken; they appeared relieved yet drained, stripped, their faces white. The defender looked on as Aeon moved numbly through them, carrying the girl back to the portal to Paragon, every fiber of her a failure.