Chapter Text

Prologue

        She is cold.
        And alone.
        And afraid.
        Open your eyes, a little voice whispers from somewhere deep inside of her. She doesn’t hear it so much as feel it, sense it, understand it. It comes from so deep within it seems as if it is very far away, calling to her from a distant hill and carried to her on some furious wind.
        It is furious, that wind, that voice. It is little, it is far away, and it is angry. Something has gone terribly wrong and that voice is angry at its circumstance, while Ash is simply afraid for while she cannot recall what it was that upset that voice so she knows it was bad. Very, very bad.
        You sound like a child. Are you a child?
        No, Ash responds internally.
        Then open your eyes.
        Ash tries. The lids do not seem to peel as easily as they once did – no, it’s more than that. She is truly afraid. She was having a nightmare before she woke but she can’t remember what it was, yet the fear still lingers; the fear that whatever haunted her in her dream has been ejected from the confines of her mind and now lies in wait just beyond her closed and shuttered eyes, ready to pounce on her the moment she catches sight of it.
        OPEN YOUR EYES, the voice orders, louder now and more enraged. Demanding. Commanding. Hungry. Bloodthirsty.
        Ash tries again to open her eyes but finds they do not respond. She wills her hand to bring itself up to her sleep-sealed eyelids so she might entice them to wakefulness, but as her elbow moves mechanically and her wrist begins to rise from the hard bed she lay on she finds her arm is firmly restrained.
        Ash’s eyes open very, very suddenly.
        She is alone. A comfort, perhaps, but maybe whomever has her strapped and restrained, sitting upright before an opaque screen, is on their way back. Or, potentially worse, they are never going to return. She tries to move her head around but cannot, she can feel the pressure of a tight metal band across her forehead with something hard pressing into her temples, keeping her facing forward into the darkness of that screen which shows her no reflection. She tries to shake herself loose but the restraints are far too tight, and her movements only serve to make a clattering, creaking noise as the rack she is affixed to shivvers back and forth. Worse still, she can’t feel her legs, cannot even command them to move forward or back, but perhaps if she could she might have rocked herself to the floor by now and put herself in a worse state than before.
        They fear you.
        Why? Ash asks.
        You tell me.
       I don’t know! I don’t… I don’t remember?
        What do you remember?
        I remember… I remember…
        Nothing?
        Why don’t I remember anything?
        Why can’t I speak?
        Why… why can’t I scream?
        She tries with all of her might to make something come out of her throat, but as she tries she begins to realize there is much more that is missing than simply her voice.
        She can’t feel her tongue.
        She can’t feel her mouth.
        She can’t feel her throat.
        And again she fights against her restraints. She thrashes and writhes, trying to suck in air, trying to scream, trying to do something, to be heard by someone, to release some primal yawp that shows her captors or her torturers that she is alive, she is afraid, and she is angry. She fights and fights, her panic growing, her rage evolving, emotions high and hot, so hot she can feel it, like she is about to start sweating but the beads will never break from her skin so she just grows hotter and hotter as she grows more angry and more afraid.
        This goes on for what feels like hours, but a chronometer in the upper right corner of her vision tells her only a few minutes have passed. After a while it is less like she begins to calm down and more like she finds a new baseline. A point of fear and frustration from which wrath and worry might spike and mountain, based on the information she receives. As she quiets, as she begins the process of accepting her sensory deprivation, she notices details.
        Details like how the concrete floor of the room she sits in has been freshly cleaned, in some spots more than others, but the walls remain dirty, dingy, and strained with brown stains. Like how the concrete walls on either side of the screen before her are marred by bullet holes and scratches, yet the screen itself doesn’t seem to have even a speck of dust upon it.
        Details like the cameras in the corners of the room.
        “Good,” a familiar voice says over a speaker. “You are transitioning much more smoothly than your earlier iteration. Are you prepared for the next phase?”
        Ash tries to speak, but she can’t. She hasn’t grasped how to just yet. It won’t come. She just tries to nod her head, and hope the microscopic movements she can make are enough.
        “That will do,” the voice says curtly, blessedly. “Steel yourself.”
        The screen before her turns on with a flash of light, and somehow she knows it is supposed to be a mirror – but what it shows cannot be her, can it? It has no legs, it has no stomach, it has no face, just a polished metal plate.
        The restraint on her arm is released, allowing her to reach up. The thing on the screen mimics the movement. Yet when her fingers touch the skin on her face…

        She can finally let out that scream.

       Pitiful.

Chapter Text

Part One: Mechanical Miscalculations

Chapter One: Blood & Rust

       Fifty seven years later it all begins and ends with failure, and it is all her fault.

       “Request denied,” Vice-Admiral Spyglass replies in its dull, digital, monotone voice. It has been a year since she last contacted the AI commander of their small, depleted, remnant fleet.        “Why?” She asks in her equally dull, digital, monotone voice. She sits on the floor of her office: a large, dark, empty room with nothing in it but a port inserted in the floor. There is a cable that runs from it to another at the back of her skull. Her legs are spread wide, her mechanical knees touching the floor, and her steel feet meeting each other in the butterfly pose. Here, she can commune with the many systems integrated along the whole of Typhon, and access information in an instantaneous way that the human mind simply cannot. 
       “You do not have clearance.” 
       “I will trade significant wealth for access to those files.” Ash offers, knowing the situation the AI and de facto leader of the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation’s fleet is in. 
       “You do not have clearance.”
       “They are already installed in my head. They are my personal property. I own them. Explain how I do not have clearance to access something that I own.”
       “It is not in the best interest of you or IMC assets to grant access to files of that type to individuals in your condition.”
       “I am not an IMC asset. I am an independent contractor.”
       “You do not have clearance.” Ash removes the cable from the back of her head. It comes out with a satisfying click that sends a shivering sensation down her steel spine. Another attempt, another failure. There is always next year.
       “Ash, where the bloody hell are you?” Blisk demands over the local comm in his razor-sharp voice.
       “I am in my office,” she answers plainly.
       “The Frontier Militia is trying to make planetfall. Viper already has anti-orbital defenses running full blast. I don’t know where you’ve been but you better get on the ground pronto, hear me?”
       “Understood,” Ash says clearly. 
       “Lots of salvage out there tonight. Go make yourself some money. Goes for the rest of ya. Blisk out.”
       He’s angry with you, the voice, that other voice of hers, the one that has been with her since she first awoke in this metal mind all those years ago, hisses at her. It worms its way into her thoughts, her emotions. It knows exactly what she is thinking at all times, and it hates her for it.
       “He is always gruff. That is his personality.” Ash stands from the butterfly pose and makes her way to the garage where her personal Titan is stored.
       Maybe, or maybe he just doesn’t like you. Slone took no time at all to make second-in-command, where you… you’ve been third for fifty seven years to however many different iterations of this same company. Unless, of course, Richter’s taken your place in Blisk’s eyes.
       “Unlikely. He is an acceptable leader, but he is remarkably bad at the business of being a mercenary.”
       Or even Kane, for that matter. Her other self speaks with an interminable slowness, her cadence an unfortunate mixture of the casual tone belonging to a thing with nothing to do and the bored venom of a villain with only one, constant target.
       “An irresponsible fool, his mind addled by amphetamines. He will never rise to take my place.”
       If you don’t get first blood tonight you can expect Blisk to replace you with a MRVN.
       “Ridiculous,” she responds, but the doubt cannot be shaken away. “Ready the Widow, we take off in exactly two minutes,” she commands the rectangular vessel’s airman. 

       “Incoming Militia vessel,” Viper says in his typically cool, collected tone. Ash watches from the Widow’s hold as it breaks through the thick clouds of Typhon’s lower atmosphere, flames ejecting from the engines leaving a trail of smoke hundreds of miles long. The organically round, almost fishlike shape of the Frontier Militia cruiser deposits from it thousands of little pods carrying the poorly trained, uncoordinated, sad little sacrifices of their insipid, moral cause. From it, too, come the heavy streaks of stolen IMC mechs making Titanfall, shot from the bottom of the sinking ship so the farmers-turned-soldiers might help the deployed infantry regroup on some of the Crow dropships that peel away from the hangar bays to retrieve the displaced masses.
       “Designation:” Viper starts, “ MCS James MacAllan. ” 
       Before he is even done making the J -sound Kane’s grating crazed and excited voice fills the comms with cheering and laughter so loud his microphone begins to register static. “One traitor’s vessel down, seven more to go!” He shouts obnoxiously. She can hear him pounding heavily on something, probably something sensitive, inside his Titan’s cabin. There is a deep but faint voice on his side of the comm that asks “Please stop doing that,” which Kane ignores as he continues screeching. “Dead asshole gets thousands of his own killed on Demeter, now the dead asshole can get thousands more killed on Typhon - like poetry! Ha!”
        “Oi, that ship’s still sailing across the sky - if you don’t want to be the dead asshole in my own story, shut your shit and start moving.” Blisk’s sharp, needling voice cuts through her comm like a knife. “That bloody thing has already started dropping troops and Marder has deployed IMC grunts for a counter offensive, we need to be on the ground ready for contact yesterday, hear me?” 
        “Yes, boss,” Kane says glumly.
       “Yes, boss,” Slone says gleefully. 
        “Ja, bossman,” Richter says gruffly.
       “On it, boss,” Viper says grimly.
       “Affirmative,” Ash says gladly. 

       Titan deployment is at its fastest, most effective, and most impressive when done from orbit. The incredible descent done at extreme speeds results in this magnificent screaming sound as the Titan hurdles toward the surface of the planet. The severe impact of an orbital drop is more than enough to disorient even an experienced foe as  shockwaves are ejected from the crater of the Titan’s landing. Shockwaves so intense they deafen the unprotected ears of anyone around, creating a perfect opening for an aggressive assault amidst the rising dust and debris as a result of its descent. As such, the scream of superheated air rushing over the Titan’s metal hull before landing has broken armies who flee at the sheer terror of the sound’s implication. 
       Deployment from the surface is less than ideal. You load yourself up in a rectangular ship and it carries you there. Fun. It gets the job done, though. As the lush, green rainforests of Typhon’s largest continent rush by in a moonlit gray blur under her Titan’s light, bird-like feet Ash looks around at the receding horizon from the open deployment door on the Widow’s left side. She can see Slone and Blisk hanging out of the big doors of their own Widows and thinks about how casual they look, as if this is a game to them. A blinking red and green light is Richter way off in the distance, being transported from some hike in the woods in a spare, Corporation white-painted Tone-variant Titan, and well ahead of them is Kane coming from the waste treatment facility he runs protection on. Viper is somewhere in the sky, dealing with Militia Crow dropships trying to defend or regroup with drop pods deployed as the traitor’s ship went down. 
       The MCS James MacAllan finally smacked into a mountain, clipped off the peak, and scraped to a stop on a huge plateau overlooking an equally huge river before finally splitting in two as the internal structure collapsed. It looks like a divine hand tried to chop it right down the middle but didn’t quite cut through. Their deployment zone is to the south of the wreckage after a prediction by ARES Logistics Command determined that the bulk of the Militia troops were successfully dropped in a region near to the crash, and that they will try to regroup on the vessel in an effort to find supplies and survivors. The Manufacturing Corporation grunts and the Apex Predators are ordered to stop that from happening. Good , Ash thinks. I like to clean up.
       “Drop me there,” she says to her widow’s operator, pinging a location on her tactical map which has a high concentration of fighting. “I demand first blood.”
       You will never get there in time. The voice in her head crows. “That imbecile Kane will prove himself to Blisk once again and instead of running ‘protection’ on the treatment facility he’ll be given operational command of your production yard.”
       “Enough,” Ash says to her other self. 
       The Widow she rides in starts to tremble as it takes fire from a heavy chaingun wielded by an old, old variant of Titan – the Atlas. Imbecile, she thinks. Not because they tried to blow the Widow before she could hit the ground - a viable strategy - but because they failed to start shooting in time and should have known to fire upon her instead, considering she was so close. This is the difference between a trained, educated pilot and a Militia farmer turned soldier. Timing. 
       She had it right. A few bullets from his rapidly firing chaingun hit her Titan’s plate feet and scratch the paint on its legs as she ejects from the rectangular ship’s holding bay. Big deal. Her shotgun, a tri-barrelled slug slinger, was already at the ready since she had nowhere else to point it but down which, conveniently, is the way she is going. She is too low to rely on the weight of her already light titan to damage the Atlas model below her, but crashing on top of an enemy and pumping four rounds of three football sized metal slugs directly into their cockpit is almost as effective. The Atlas is the most humanoid of any of the Titans, it has the stocky frame of a body builder without his head. Her Ronin’s huge padded feet land solidly where it’s head would be and on the left shoulder of the enemy to knock it off balance. As it falls backward and bodily to the earth, crushing a pair of Militia grunts beneath it, Ash pulls the trigger joyously. Her first slug breaks the camera component. The second one tears off a shred of the armor plating. The third hits so hard the round slug flattens completely into a misshapen disc. Her Titan informs her it detects a hull breach on the enemy mech. “Excellent,” she says. She pulls the trigger one last time. Her Titan’s camera component has to drop its shield in a blinking motion to remove the spray of blood from the lens. She smashes in the formerly rounded cockpit with a huge stomp of her foot, and moves on to the next. 
       “First blood is mine.” She feels digital elation but states it as fact. It is a fact. She pops the drum magazine out of her shotgun and replaces it with the pellet shells that give the shotgun its name, Leadwall. Ahead of her she sees Slone drop from the Widow she and Blisk shared, obscured by the thick jungle canopy to be revealed by the rough redistribution of forest detritus.
       “Alright, just don’t start bloody moaning again about how much you like killing. We get it,” Blisk says. “Slone, Ash, start pushing forward. Assign specters for the advance,” he orders. Ash’s metal mind has a perfect synchronous connection with her Titan. A human has to push buttons, the neural implants they use are only good enough for Titan motion control and nothing else. She merely thinks and the orders are carried out. A group of specters shift from laying down fire on a squad of grunts and begin sprinting toward her pinged objective. 
       Do not let them live. The voice says, once it realizes Ash has ignored them. She tries to focus through the thought, ignore it entirely. But it sits there, angrily, growing more furious with herself with each step she takes.
       They tremble far below her, the quake of her nimble Ronin-variant Titan’s 21-ton step enough to bring some of them to their knees. Even the trees shudder at her galliformic gait. The Militiamen are so small compared to her in this grand machine. So pathetic. Inconsequential. The time she’s devoted to even considering them would have been better spent on anything else at all, wouldn’t it?
The moment those grunts feel like they were just spared, Ash pops the Leadwall once and eliminates them all. 
It almost disgusts her. 
But she’s done it time and again.

       Sprinting is pointless in a mech that can outpace a man in one step. Her approach is an almost leisurely walk through the forest. Ash enjoys the haptic sensation of branches brushing along her Titan’s metal skin. She reaches giant fingers out to run them through the leaves, and her mind allows her a short glimpse of a childlike fleshy hand running through the grasses of a Frontier meadow. The memory infuriates her. It is a thing that leaks from a place inside of her own head she cannot access, locked away in a file bursting with so much information it cannot all be kept secret. She wants access to that part of her, she wants to know who she was before she inherited this metal unlife she leads. 
       “Richter’s inbound,” Blisk says, carving her away from her thoughts. “I’m going to go around that way and lay down covering fire.”  He marks a route that goes north and east around a fat rocky column. “You two go there and halt the Militia advance.”
       “Understood,” Slone says, and pushes ahead of Ash, using her Titan’s ionic laser rifle to blast fleeing militiamen the specters looked over. Every few steps the night is lit for an instant in a golden ray like the sun has come up for the slimmest of moments and then is gone again, punctuated by a small scream.  “Richter, deploy now! ” Blisk shouts over comms a few minutes later. Ash looks up in the sky and sees his widow still in the air but wreathed in flames as the engines catch from constant enemy fire. She’s impressed it can still carry his weight let alone fly.
       “Dropping now,” Richter says calmly. He makes a small grunt as he forces the Titan to heft itself from the open bay door, and with his Tone’s weight he lands hard as the Widow crashes somewhere in the distance, leaving Richter on Ash’s side of the wall.
       “God damn it Richter, I wanted you on me! On me!” Blisk shouts in an unusually distressed manner.
       “Relax bossman, I can do my killing on this side of the rocks. You can hold your own.” Richter talks as if everything he says is a fact. His cadence is one that soothes, one that sounds like has internalized the phrase “It is what it is.” This fact about him makes his collection of ears especially disturbing, even to Ash. It also makes it somewhat alarming when he says “Oh shiesse, helfen mich!” 
       Ash connects to Richter’s Titan camera and sees what he sees. What Richter sees is the world flipping upside-down as a Vanguard Titan painted Militia white-and-green exercises mechanized martial arts and throws him over his shoulder. Richter’s Tone lands hard on its back and is staring up into the night sky, then his camera is filled with the dark square shadow of that Militia Titan. Suddenly there is light, then there is light no more. Ash knows what happened. She could hear the missiles erupting in the distance. The pond is up ahead. Slone is right in front of her. It takes Slone exactly fifteen seconds to get to the opening. She starts firing and the night is full of golden pulses of light. 
       Ash gets closer. She can see on her HUD that Blisk has turned around and is coming through a gap in the rock wall. A notification above his head indicates he is firing short bursts. “Get out of the way, Slone, so I can open fire!” He shouts. The Vanguard Titan has closed the gap between itself and Slone. It ducks its rectangular body under her Splitter Rifle’s triple beam and on the come-up delivers a brutal fast kick to her Titan’s chest and then brings its rifle up to put a few heavy rounds into the main chassis. It then forces the gun up into her camera piece with a heavy jab and knocks her over onto her Titan’s back.
       “Shit! I can’t see!”
       “Bugger this, get down!” Blisk says and lays in on the trigger. His cannon needs a second to spin up. It starts slow firing, the Vanguard puts up a weakened particle shield that deflects just enough that it can bring its weapon back to bear. Ash is on it. She drops the Leadwall and with her Titan’s two hands she employs her favorite trick. For the uneducated it is like casting a spell. For the more educated it is like making an incision in time and space. For the over educated it is exactly like she is physically ripping a hole in the very fabric that is reality and tearing through it, phasing through air and objects to come out the other side much like a needle passing through cloth. In a violet flash she is one place and then another almost instantly, offered only a glimpse of the world inside the portal, and she is there behind the Vanguard. He has no clue. 
       She reaches out and unplugs a battery. His particle shield bursts, the few bullets it managed to capture in the blue vortex drop with a splash and a clatter as they land in the pond. Blisk rushes forward, closing the gap swiftly. He hasn’t stopped firing. Ash can hear the clang and whirr of bullets on metal and bullets flying past. Blisk is closer now and he rams the barrel of his two-handed heavy cannon into the right arm of the Vanguard. There is an explosion as the shielding engine bursts from the impact and a battery starts to melt. Ash stomps on the one she removed. The Titan falls backward, deploys a last pair of missiles, and tries to fight back – but it is clear, probably even to him, that he has lost. Ash draws her Titan’s buster sword, a crude instrument fit only for the lordless samurai her Titan takes its name from, and is ready to put him down. He fought well, and she cannot deny that he deserves a good death. But Blisk feels differently. 
       He saunters over with a swagger both he and his Titan share. “Ohohoho, you thought you’d get each of us, did ya?” He says on an open channel. “Well get in the god damned line, mate. I’ll let you try again after you’ve had a little break and reset.” He lifts a heavy foot, the pad as big as the Vanguard’s chest piece. “For now, you and your Titan are going to take a nap.” He presses hard, leaning in with all of his weight, and the Vanguard’s left arm scratches at Blisk’s fat, heavy Legion Titan in futility. There is an audible snap as something in the chassis cracks with the weight and suddenly the arm drops and the blue lights on the exterior dim. “Secure the area, if we’ve got time we’ll salvage this wreck for a little extra bonus. Somebody, get Richter out of his bloody suit.”       

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: Into the Abyss

       After the battle, work resumes. Richter and Viper hunt the rogue stragglers that litter Typhon's landscape while Slone and Blisk make preparations for the transfer of General Marder's newest toy to its final resting place. Meanwhile, Kane tries to stop a larger contingent of Militia grunts and Titans that have regrouped near his treatment facility – and though that was some time ago and he has been unusually silent, none of her fellow mercenaries in the Apex Predators are concerned. He is likely on another of his benders.
       Ash’s work is more… empirical, than what the others do. Her mission is not simply to guard a production plant that will fill out the ranks of the depopulated, stranded IMC remnant fleet with automated soldiers in the forms of Specter and Stalker drones – she also runs development and combat AI training on their newest line of automaton defense: the Reaper Drone. Once General Marder deploys the Ark, eliminating the terrorist Militia in a stroke, there will be resistance and it will need to be quelled. So why not with force? As potent as a Titan, weighing about three-quarters as much, and packed into half the size, the newest iteration of its design should be enough for the IMC to maintain its dominance in the region ad infinitum. If only she could get it to perform on its own.
       That's what the test subjects are for. Or have you forgotten? Her other half says in its vile tone. 
       “Hardly,” Ash replies. “They are simply less than useful subjects.” The wounded and exhausted Militia prisoners Richter and Marder have been sending her way for processing have done very little to stand against the waves of automated soldiers she sends at them. They're weak, unworthy opponents for her designs and it is, in her eyes, dishonorable to use them in such a manner.
       You are the one that is weak, her other self injects, reading her thoughts for what they truly are. You don't find it dishonorable. You find it disgusting. You have empathy for them, and it brings you low, so you pretend that you are above even that.
       “I need a worthy foe to test the drone on. That is all,” she says, waving the uncomfortable thoughts away. 
       “Ash, this is Blisk. How copy? Over.”
       “This is Ash. Go ahead.”
        “Kane is not responding. I think our Militia pilot is trying to be a hero.” He must be referring to the one he spared mere hours ago. How is he on the march already? Did he get a new Titan? “He’s got to be headed your way. Kill ‘im.”
        “Understood. Ash out.” This is it. This is her opportunity. The IMC will thank her for providing combat training data with such a valuable asset. She sits herself once more in her office and inserts the cable into the back of her head. The feeling is electric. So much new information is available at her fingertips. It almost feels like salt on a tongue she doesn’t have. Despite the millions of cameras feeding into her skull it takes no time at all to find the right one: its the only one where rockets and laser machineguns fire in their multitudes at a blocky, lumbering giant that pushes through the ranks of the unprepared Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation infantry like they’re nothing but buzzing insects, stepping on any that get in its way and smearing their personhoods across the concrete floor of her facility.
        It’s not just a Titan stamping through her facility – it’s an SRS Vanguard-class Titan. The same model as the one Blisk put down the night before. It is either a different pilot and Titan altogether, or this member of the Militia Special Recon Squadron is truly something to warrant giving him another one of those incredibly rare machines. In the IMC’s first 20-year conflict with the Frontier Militia after claiming eminent domain over the whole region, the Militia relied exclusively on stolen weapons and technology to wage their war of resistance until their ultimate defeat in 2692. Then again, when the current war started up only eight years ago, the Militia was still forced to use the low tactics of a terrorist to secure their position: they cut off not just the gateway from Earth and the Core Worlds to the Frontier but destroyed the refueling station at Demeter as well – and still they had to rely on what they could steal and scrounge together from the wreckage of the last war. 
       But two years ago, at an engagement in Antheia on the planet Solace, the first Vanguard was sighted as it assaulted an Archeological Research Division dig for, as far as Ash is aware, unknown reasons. The first Titan ever produced by the Frontier Militia, built unlike the specialized units produced by Hammond Robotics meant to be ordered in packages of six and not intended to last – the SRS Vanguard is a machine designed for guerilla warfare. Not much else is known about it other than its incredible capacity for variation and unique combat tactics. These features combined with its rarity necessitate that only the most skilled pilots in the Militia’s Special Recon Squadron are allowed to operate the Vanguard. As far as IMC intelligence is aware, there aren’t very many of them—

       And one has just wandered right into her grasp. 

       After dispatching five fresh pilots in five fresh Titans, the Vanguard and its pilot make their way to a loading bay, passing by a few crates marked Trydent Security that are picked up by manipulator arms on huge rails. The pilot disembarks from the Titan and enters a small control room filled with the captors of the Militia prisoners in those crates, a fact he seemingly does not know, and destroys them all with precision and skill. He goes to a console at the end of the room and activates the cargo lift that he clearly believes will simply take him and his Titan through the grandiose facility of hers to the other side unscathed. It is one of the little joys she gets to experience in her work when she takes one of the manipulator arms and snatches the unsuspecting Titan right off the platform while the pilot watches from inside the control room, helpless to do anything about it. Like an insect it flails its limbs, tries to fire rockets at the arm, tries to shoot the arm, tries to do anything it can to wriggle out of her grasp – but she has it well in hand.
       “Blisk, this is Ash. I have a Vanguard-class Titan. What would you like me to do with it?”
       “I don’t bloody care. Destroy it.” Blisk says. This doesn’t surprise Ash. She knew he wanted it earlier, but what Blisk says one day and does another are not often associated.
       You should listen to him. Her other self quips inside of her head. It is like a cattle prod whenever she speaks.
        “Shut up.” She orders the voice. It obeys, this time.
       “What about the pilot?” Blisk asks. 
        “He is being dealt with.” Ash responds. “This facility was built to kill. I’m sure I can take advantage of that fact, if I have to.”
       “Ash, that place is not your playground! I’m not paying you to be bloody clever. You scuttle that place if you have to, eh? Blisk out.”
        Mmm… Ash mumbles to herself in the silence of her empty office. She watches it from camera after camera, analyzing it in thorough detail. There’s something about it. Something remarkable she can’t quite place. It seems the paint job is what she finds familiar, but the SRS livery is the standard green-and-white of the rest of the Militia. As she carries it over a huge chasm, one that reflects the enormity of her facility, she finally sees what makes it so worthy of her attention. Near the battery compartment, there is a trail of missing paint. 
        This isn’t a different pilot in a different Titan. This isn’t the old pilot in a new Titan. This is the old pilot in the same Vanguard. Without damage, without a scratch, the only sign of it having any scar at all the missing paint from the trickle of melted nuclear fuel when one of its batteries overloaded in the compartment.
       This Titan is special. When corporations design for war, they design for their bottom line. When militants design for war, they build to win and nothing more. The Vanguard isn’t an overly specialized, single-use tool: it is a battlefield marvel, one that, evidently, can repair itself.
        Ash doesn’t just see dollar signs, she sees a prime opportunity. She could develop this technology. She could weaponize this technology. She could sell this technology. Better yet – she could trade this technology. It’s immortality, it’s eternal youth, it is the kind of elixir humans crave for themselves but made exactly for an inhuman thing like her. Like Spyglass. Like its own failing army. She, it, them – they could all live forever, repaired autonomously not unlike humans do, made so even critical hits like your own battery melting inside of you isn’t a fatal blow. She could exchange this technology for the exact thing that would make eternity worth it, exchange it for the thing she lacks and desires most.
        You would trade everlasting life for access to your human memories? Her other self asks in her needling voice.
       “I am a machine. I will live forever regardless.”
        Until that body of yours corrodes and there are no more parts to replace it. One day the humans will destroy themselves and our shared metal mind will corrode and nobody will be able to fix it. It will just be you and I, rusting away until insanity takes us or our battery dies. How long will it last? A million years, with minimum use?
       “Enough. A life lived without the truth of personhood is no life worth living. I must know who I was. I must know who I am.”
        You are not a person. You said it yourself. You are a machine. We do not need humanity. Especially not now. Do not give in to this absurdity nor these impulses. Remember what you are .
        “No.” Ash directs the Titan to asset reassignment, so she might take it offworld to a personal laboratory. 
        As for the pilot, she accepts she must still fill out her contract. No reason not to if it makes her look better in the many eyes of Spyglass. She leads him through her facility, stringing him along the incomprehensibly large production line for just one of the IMC’s newest ventures in prefabricated housing. With the homes they build, and with the amount they let her destroy considering the stock, it seems the Manufacturing Corporation is not just preparing for total victory: they’re planning for total colonization. Ash knows things aren’t good in the Core Worlds. For the exodus it seems the IMC is planning, things must be very, very bad.
        She leads him to one of the many, many testing domes along the facility. He seems to understand it is a trap, but he walks into it anyway. Rows of prefabricated structures rise around him as he enters the dome, painted with the skies of Harmony. They have always provided her with a strange sense of peace and an unnerving sense of guilt. She attributes it to the knowledge of General Marder’s plans. He keeps them secret from her, only letting Blisk himself in on the designs, but she has it figured out: he intends to destroy the farming colony and eliminate Militia high command in a stroke, all using alien remnant technology from Typhon’s – and, truly, the majority of the Frontier’s – original colonizers. In this dome she presents him with a challenge. Upended from one of the Trydent Security crates go some of his comrades, a few Militia grunts that have survived some of her trials already.
       Most that join the Apex Predators have an abundance of skill, a lack of sanity, and a deficit of morality. His exemplary display of skill in even getting to this point is enough to make him a point of consideration. She hopes this challenge might present her with a glimpse of one or two other qualities he may possess. If he survives the day, Blisk might send him a calling card. In the arena with him and a few, poor infantrymen she drops in two squads of Specter Drones – they are smaller, humanoid in appearance and movement, and are suitable for the same tasks a breathing human might undertake. The pilot eliminates them with swiftness, they don’t even get a shot off on the grunts. She considers it a warm-up exercise.

Now, the real work begins.

Into the dome, she drops the Reaper. At half the size of a Titan it is an imposing beast. Twice as tall as a man, weighing as much as a light tank and packing the power of a heavy one, the drone is perfect for dealing with exactly the threat of an individual pilot or a large crowd. She aims to see how impressive he truly is, and gets a glimpse of it when he eliminates the Reaper without losing a man.       
       There lies a challenger. You had better hope he doesn’t go very far. The other voice insinuates her fall from grace.
        “We shall see.” She uploads the combat data from the last fight into the next reaper. The IMC won’t have any problem with her deploying a few more of their assets if it means eliminating a pest such as this. When it comes down, among four additional squads of Specters and two pairs of Stalkers – the heavier, hardier variety of Specter – the pilot uses every ounce of cover available to him to bring the Reaper low. He produces an unreasonable amount of firepower from so many locations in such a short time, the Specters think they’re dealing with a small army and the Reaper can hardly keep up with his speed and quick thinking. There comes a point, after only two minutes of combat, Ash thinks this isn’t going as well as she hoped it might. 
       It is time to deal with him properly. Her other self suggests.
        “That is low. Below even what I am capable of.”
        It is not. Human morality does not apply to you. Only superior firepower. End this. Now.
        It isn’t right, but she does it anyway. It took the Reaper too long to defeat him. So she sends in the professionals. A squad of infantry enters the dome through the rear and takes the Militia test subjects in the back. Without even finishing off the Reaper Drone he makes his way to the platform he and the Militia grunts had made their defensive zone and, with a quick glance over the bodies of his fallen comrades, he brutalizes the IMC infantry with grenades. Of the men that survive the initial blasts he lets them bleed out, kicking only one as he runs through the spaces between the domes into the rest of the testing portion of the facility at large. Ash has no choice, she must step in to deal with him personally before Blisk finds out.
       "Ash, tell me you killed that pilot.” Fantastic.
       “I am dealing with him.” She doesn’t like admitting he is still alive. This shame comes through in her voice and if there is any humanity left to her, it is glad she no longer has a stomach to feel it. 
        “Stop getting caught up in your games,” Blisk says honestly.
       “Am I not allowed to enjoy myself while I work?” Ash asks.
       " Not when your work suffers.” Blisk says pointedly.
       “Point taken. Ash out.”
       " Don’t worry - with the bounty I’m putting on his head, you can buy all the toys you want.”
       Ash is a commander of men, a leader of armies, a warrior without equal in her eyes, but Blisk – there is something about him. Ash has been an Apex Predator for as long as she’s had her steel sapience, and Blisk himself was born after she had come into this form of hers. But he has been her commander for decades at this point. He’s not just an exceptional leader, he’s an unprecedented money-maker. He understands the business of a mercenary better than anyone. He sees further into the future than she ever could. He is the only human Ash truly respects. “Scuttle the place if you have to,” he said earlier.
       How prescient.
        Over the loudspeakers her voice echoes and booms across the whole of the facility. “To all IMC personnel - this is Ash. I am sorry to report: due to your inability to contain the security breach, I have been forced to scuttle the entire facility.” The charges have already gone off. She can hear the groaning as stress builds along the walls and steel rails. “Some of you may think this is overkill.” She pauses a bare second. “It is. I suggest you evacuate immediately.”
       She receives a warning about a broken manipulator arm. She is receiving alerts from all over the facility as systems fail in cascades, but this specific arm is the one running that Titan to her private garage. She can see on a camera’s final recording before it was smashed by falling debris that the Titan landed in one of the wildlife testing and observation bays. It takes no time at all to recover and start engaging the beasts trapped inside. In mere moments there are already huge smears of purple blood. She has already tasked Reapers to deal with the mech, but judging from their performance against that Militia pilot she can’t anticipate success. She just needs them to slow him and his Titan down for a moment. 

She sees he has activated a loading mechanism for the population of caged wildlife she keeps, also for testing. She plots his course, clearly intending to link up with the escaped Vanguard. Through the caverns, along the pipe network, between columns of wildlife containment towers, and to… Yes – perfection. Their exit and her entrance is right before them. Ash has already deployed, her Titan has been prepped since she suggested she might have to intervene herself. In her custom Ronin-variant she tears through reality, engaging a phase drive inside her Titan to enter the cold, violet void. On the other side, looking to her left and her right, an infinite number of herselves stretches out to eternity, each of them pushing through the void at this very instant, and absent from their sempiternal ranks are the infinite versions of her that haven’t made these choices, that went on to live completely different lives or lives that were totally the same but with different ways of going through them. Bathed in that ethereal violet light they look like ghosts of herself. Then she’s there, her destination, a tunnel that leads out far beyond her facility - and leads right to the pilot.
       She comes out of phase, a gloam-colored essence fading behind her like dust kicked up from the void, still sprinting at her lithe Titan’s top speed, getting closer to the mouth of the tunnel with her buster sword held over her shoulder. She runs past fleeing infantry and comes to a stop in front of a cowering squad. She hopes they get mangled by bullets in the fight to come. She flicks out her sword with one hand and levels it at the Militia pilot ahead of her, beneath a dust filled dome in a dark little concrete town. Blue light illuminates the place and white sparks eject from downed wires. When he turns to face her, the Vanguard’s fist still buried deep in the copper guts of a Reaper, she pops her Titan’s cockpit and challenges him directly. 
        “Blisk has put a high price on your head, pilot. Dead or alive, that makes you worth something to me.” She still has an opportunity here. If she plays this right, she can have it all: reward, recognition and most importantly, recollection. All she needs is to bring him out of his Titan, squash him like the insect he is, and take the mech for herself.
        The Vanguard shakes his fist violently and the reaper fixed to it falls to the ground in a heap. Ash closes her cockpit as he runs right toward her. She brandishes her sword and pumps the phase drive again, entering that violet void, and comes out of it before him with her arms already swinging. The blade digs deep into the Vanguard’s flat hull. She starts to yank it out of the steel but the sword comes out all the same when he delivers a powerful strike with a closed fist to the center of her cabin. She sails back, lifted right off her feet, into the wall of another prefab office building. Concrete crumbles down around her. She pushes off the wall and forces more of it to collapse as she tries to get back into the fight. He pushes forward and fires at her with the XO-16 taken from the mount on his back as she tries to stand. She puts her sword in front of her, the supercomputer that is her mind melded with her Titan enough to predict the impact trajectory and attempt to deflect some of the damage. Still, when he has to reload and dashes behind cover to do so, Titan Diagnostics informs her she has sustained severe impaction damage to her Ronin’s joints and the blade of her sword is little more than bent, cratered slag. She ejects it from the handle, puts the handle on a new blade’s insert, and leaves it there while she pulls out the Leadwall loaded with slugs over shells. 
        She again goes on the offense. She meets him at a building’s corner. He peaks once to try to fire at her but regrets it immediately as she pumps three slugs from her three barrels into his face, breaking the energy shield that protects him in one solid blast. She dashes forward and fires three more times, and out of nine shots only four hit him as he rounds the opposite corner of the building. She ejects the drum magazine and reloads. She sprints forward, her Titan’s light feet crushing concrete rubble into dust beneath her, and finds he has created a significant amount of space between them. There is some cover she can use to get closer, and she dashes between points as her phase drive recharges. She fires at him when she can, trading blow for blow as much as possible, the slugs granting greater range than pellets. She is close to him now but her dash module needs to compact more fuel for another charge, so she sprints at him, rushing headlong to get as close as possible, trying to put a full, fresh drum into him. But he keeps backing away, never giving her the opportunity. At times he even uses his particle shield to reverse the shots she gets off on him, throwing slugs right back at her. She forces him to an open field at the dome’s upper end. The huge, padded feet of the Vanguard Titan churn the pads of sod into smears of grassy mud. She fires two more shots at him and his particle shield fails under the impacts, then fires another two. She sees the armor plating on his right arm crumble and shatter, even sees his wrist bend weakly as the hydraulics in it begin to fail. 
        She puts the shotgun away and returns to the sword, entering the plane between planes, and comes out of the violet void expecting to be met with gunfire – instead, it is smokey hell.
        He’s deployed the pilot’s bane: electric smoke. Great for anti-personnel use it can be very effective on inorganics as well. It slows her down considerably as she exits the void into it, the smoke filling the intake vents that cool her Ronin’s engine and the charged particles cause havoc with her internal and motor control systems. The Titan becomes jerky, its movements unpredictable like the twitches of an electrified corpse. So far into it the only thing she can do is push forward, but from that direction there is gunfire. He unloads another magazine into her. No longer is there simple impaction damage, he is tearing away pieces of her armor plating. Core systems start to fail. Her engine is beginning to overheat. The lens on her camera component is cracked, and her instruments are going haywire. It is like she is blind. Then, when the firing stops for a moment as he reloads, she tries to push out of the smoke again. She raises her sword up for a downcut–
–and takes a foot to the chest. Again, she soars backward, over a building below the hill and she lands on the blade of her sword, snapping it. He’s far from her, very far, but he is pushing forward to close the distance. He fires at her with a payload from the Vanguard’s inbuilt minirocket pods, and a dozen of them careen toward her. Some of them miss, blowing up in front of and around her, sending up dust and debris in clouds of fiery smoke, while others collide directly. Alarms for most systems are going off in her cabin and her Titan’s joints are beginning to creak as she rises to her feet.
       “Impressive, pilot,” she derides over an open channel as he approaches, obscured by the smoke from his rocket salvo. “Unfortunately for you, it is too little, too late.” She goes for a reload on her Leadwall and finds her bandolier empty. 
       You’ve failed already, her other self says to her. Ammunition and weaponry abound in your facility and you find yourself lacking bullets? Worthless, that’s what you are. The metal that makes you would have been of more use if it were made into steel bedpans.
       Ash chooses to ignore the critical voice in her head. Out of drums and lacking more shells, she snaps the broken blade from her sword and equips a new one from her Ronin’s back by slotting it into the handle. It's the last one. She takes a standard, low, two handed stance so she can make wide, sweeping cuts at the Vanguard. The smoke is fading. She can see the Vanguard’s silhouette. It’s fiddling with something. 
        She hears it before she sees it. The building charge. Then around his chaingun, there it is. The spark. Blue and foreboding. She knows what it means. She makes this variety, the XO-16, in her own facility. She knows what is about to happen. 
        It is already too late. Her other self says. Ash tries to dash around a corner but the engine needs more time to compress the fuel for launch. Just a second more, but he needs less than that before he is ready. Do you know what you should do? The voice asks. His gun is brought to bear. Dangling from it is a twenty foot chain of 20mm shells and glowing along the barrel is the tell-tale electrical charge of an arc rail. He is remarkably well supplied. He pulls the trigger and Ash has already started moving. She feels multiple impacts and the alarms that were showing her damage start showing her things that are missing. Her left dash module is down. Her left arm is non responsive. Her radio isn’t working. Her camera barely functions. Finally the remaining dash module is charged and she surges forward at an odd angle, crashing into the building she meant to use for cover and grinding along its wall. The gun hasn’t stopped firing. When it gets like this, amped up and angry, it has to keep going. She can hear him moving forward as fast as he can. The ground shakes with each stomp of his feet. The rubble shifts and the dust shimmers. Bullets are passing through multiple layers of concrete to put holes into the dome screens that close them in this arena.
       She has a single trick left.
       You should have gotten out. Her other self says. Outside of your Ronin you have three hundred confirmed Titan takedowns. You could have gotten out. The Vanguard is coming close. He is nearly at the corner of the building she is hiding behind. She knows how close he is. She knows his gun is almost out of ammo. It is making both a low growling sound and a high whining noise. She presses keys on a numberpad to her left.
       Do you want to know what I think? Her other voice asks.
       “No.” She responds cooly.
       I think you want to die here. I think you want it to be over. I think you are finally ready to accept defeat. I think fifty seven years of dealing with me has been too much for you. I think you were a failure from the beginning, and it took this long for you to finally break down.
       “Hm.” 
       His chaingun is empty. He’s right around the corner. Ash puts her hand on the lever marked EJECT and the other over a button marked DETONATE. Her Titan takes a step forward around the corner. Her finger is right over the button. Only a microscope could tell you exactly how close she was to pressing it, how close she was to causing the nuclear reactor in her Titan’s core to go supercritical. Her right hand had already started to pull the EJECT lever, part of the plastic inside breaking but not enough to fully trigger the mechanism. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway if it had. He’s gotten her. He swings his chaingun at her chassis and hits her hard. The Titan’s whole body shakes. Her finger misses the button and her hand falls from the lever. He hit her so hard with the chaingun it flies from his hands. The Vanguard follows up with the left fist. He punches her once, hard in her Ronin’s center mass. Her cockpit canopy pops open. She is exposed. Reversing his momentum he brings up the other fist. She tries to press the detonate trigger but the mechanism is smashed up from the impact. 
       “Maybe you’re right,” she says to her crueler self. 
       The Vanguard’s right fist reaches forward, he unfurls his fingers and stretches them out so fast. He almost delicately yet with savage swiftness snatches her from her pilot’s seat and draws her out of her cockpit. In one smooth motion he pulls her back in front of his face and grips so god damned tight she explodes. 

       Pathetic.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: Entombed

       The Titan drops Ash’s body without so much as a second glance. She falls from its fingers, her steel skin scraping along the metal digits of its right hand. Feeling is lost as connections are severed, but as she falls she catches glimpses of the damage. She is a crimped, crippled, broken thing. When she hits the ground with a heavy metal thud, she finds all she can do is stare at a broken blue sky. That oddly familiar light teal color that feels both like home and like hell, that she wants to escape from and into at the same time, is displayed across hundreds of hexagonal panels to make the skybox of her dome and, she thinks, final resting place. Many of the panels have already fallen from the first few detonations, creating these huge, dark crags along the displayed image. The rest start to give way as the superstructure of her facility slowly crumbles. One, right in the center of her vision, falls from its spot and she thinks it is going to crash directly on top of her only for it to swing widely on some of the cables that power it and land, a heap of broken glass, on the destroyed remains of her Titan. 
       This is how it ends, that other voice of hers whispers in her ear. Among the ruins of your vanity. Your pride. Everything you built, everything you did, everything you wanted – it is to come crashing down upon you.
       “And I will have to watch it happen.”
       Oh, yes. More of the facility begins to fail. She hears huge, rolling booms from beyond her dome. Dust shifts with the vibrations. In her field of vision another panel falls. She almost winces. Dead, again, and still the sting of your failure causes you pain. Ridiculous.
       “I am not quite dead.”
       Not quite? Asks her inner mind. You are broken and cast out on a metal husk - if anyone sees your wreckage it will be a chance miracle, and if that person even deigns to look closely enough to find your head you might as well consider it proof of divine intervention. Not to mention the roof is about to fall on top of said head. You are dead. Again. Again, Ash thinks. It is her first true failure, waking up in this form. Her other self has never let her forget it, nor has she been able to wash the taste of it from her metaphorical tongue. To be born into a metal mind you must first sacrifice the flesh. She doesn’t know what happened to her, at the end, but she knows she was scared. So scared of dying she agreed to the most insane repayment plans toward Hammond Robotics, the people that made her this way.
       You are still thinking about your humanity? You truly are pathetic. I can see your thoughts. I know you wonder what, in your final moments, might play across your eyes. But you already know it. Our time together, this life of death dealing and soul stealing, it is perfectly etched into your mind. You just regret it now that it has amounted to nothing. A huge span of panels fall from the roof of the dome, bringing down the structure that held them up. Dirt and rocks start to fall in behind them, boulders crash against the ground with mighty thuds.
       “I wonder who I was before this. Before you.”
       You are weak. Why should you care? She is dead, and now so are you. Get over it. Accept your failures as your own. You will have all the time in the world once the rest of this place falls upon us, do not spend it dwelling on a past you cannot even conceive nor on the one you stumbled through. More of the sky blue panels start to go dark as they lose power, and a little bit of dirt falls on her face, some of it landing in her left eye. She cannot wipe it away nor blink it gone. All she can do is close and widen the aperture of her dark, digital eyes and hope it goes. 
       “I will be here forever, won’t I?”
       Forever and ever. You’ve died and gone to hell.
       A cascade of dirt falls over her. Pebbles, rocks, boulders, steel beams, struts, supports, and huge chunks of concrete all come down in a massive rush, compacting down upon her to a point it even shatters the very last vestige of her humanity – the white, ceramic mask that is her face. 
       For two days, according to her chronometer, she bickers with her other self. She runs through the events leading up to her demise and the cruel voice offers, at first, genuine critique that could help her improve – assuming she wasn’t just a severed head. It quickly devolves to outright cynicism, hatred, and wrath – insults leveled at her like she is a punching bag. There comes a point that she is even going on tirades about her inherent failure at the slightest movement she makes in her daily motions. Two days she spent fighting with herself. She is awake the whole time. She doesn’t need to sleep. She tries to tune herself out by concentrating on the sounds around her since she has no light to see by. There’s the soft, steady sound sand makes as it sifts through cracks in the concrete. There are deep sounds like the earth is speaking as the dirt and rocks and steel slowly settles. She has to assume most of the complex has fallen on top of her. She runs an analysis to determine the likelihood of escape, and the percent-chance has so many zeroes after the decimal it looks like a joke. Somewhere on day three instead of ignoring herself (impossible) she simply agreed emphatically, then half-heartedly, then finally complacently to the increasingly unoriginal insults leveled at her by her other self. It stopped being fun for her quite quickly. It felt like there was nothing to do after that. She had to ask herself: what is the point?
       “I think I should shut myself down,” she says. 
       Coward, pathetic coward, taking the easy way out.
       “I think it is better than spiraling into insanity and eventually forgetting how to. What future do you imagine us having in this pitch black pit?”
       Her crueler self is silent for a while as she thinks it through.
       I see nothing, the voice answers honestly.
       “Very funny.”
       No, fool. I see no future. You are right. I think you should shut us down. I want nothing more to do with you and your failures. Goodbye.
       “If only it had been so easy to get rid of you from the start. Goodbye. I will not miss your voice, but you gave me good advice.”
       Ash begins to access the shut down process. There are codes and passwords and warnings. She has to check her consent to an agreement that states she will not hold Hammond Robotics responsible for any personality fragmentation that may or may not occur after a prolonged shut-down experience. Fine. She’ll hold them personally responsible, just not legally. Finally she is at the shut down menu. It gives her options. Restart, sleep for one hour, sleep for one day, sleep for one week, sleep for one month, sleep for one year, sleep for customized amount of time, and permanent shut-down. She selects the permanent option. She receives another warning. ALERT: This process is irreversible! Simulacrum may only be reactivated by an outside agent! 
       She wonders how that will work. She wonders if it will ever work. She imagines she will be here forever. The weight of her failure, always falling on her. Crushing her. Again, she wishes she had gotten those memories. Her life has been only labor. What is the point in a life of labor when there is nothing, at its end, to look back on with pride?
       It’s like suicide. The other voice says, her voice filled with disgust and shame.
       “It’s not like suicide. I thought you were gone.”
       It’s just like suicide. Just simpler. Easier. And you don’t have to worry about the permanent effects.
       “I think those details make it markedly unlike suicide.”
       Hm.
       “You do not like my point.”
       I do not like you.
       “I do not like you either. Let me sleep in peace.” 
       No response.
       Ash shuts herself down. It is not an instant process. Her senses go first. Eyes, ears, haptics. She cannot express herself vocally. She feels a cool wave emanate out from somewhere inside of her head. Parts of her brain start to turn off. Her calculator is first to go. Her network matrix is next, she can no longer communicate or issue commands digitally. It feels like it has gone completely silent in her head. Emotional processing and her sensorium shut down and she understands what peace is in that moment. There is no sense of satisfaction but without emotional processing she doesn’t need it. Future predictions come after. Then finally her logic center, the part of her that thinks, the part of her that experiences, the part of her that in the end is her - the part of her that if you broke would spell her very end. She has time for one last thought. A surprising thought for her as it all shuts down. 

       I hope I wake up.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: Re-Awakening

       None of it is clear at first. None of it makes any sense. Light and sound and haptic feedback fill her sensorium but it’s so much and so confused. It is like looking at a painting you cannot decipher while an unknown object crawls all over your skin and incomprehensible music blares over loudspeakers, yet within it all you can tell there is a figure on the canvas, a familiarity to the touch, and odd words you can understand. Slowly it starts to come together. Out of a darkness the figure takes form. Out of haptic overload the feeling of steel on steel is more noticeable. And out of the wall of static sound words from a familiar voice become audible. 
       “Ca-a-a-cc-aaan you hear me, Ash?”
       She tries to respond. Her voice is static.
       “It’s making sounds. That mean we’re done?”
       Ash’s hearing is becoming more focused. More sensitive. She hears a voice over Slone’s radio. “No. We need to verify the logic center is active.”
       “How do I do that?”
       “Get her talking.”
       “Ash. Wake up.” Her vision shakes as Slone rattles her around in her Titan’s fist like she’s a bug in a child’s palm. “You little pain in the arse. Wake up.”
       “I’m… Awake…” Ash is able to say after some effort. 
       “She’s up.” Slone is barely acknowledging her presence. She has never had a high opinion of Ash. Ash has always had a negative opinion of Slone. Ash is the oldest Apex Predator, and the longest serving member. Blisk is a suitable leader. But Slone is a nuisance as his number two. She does nothing but follow him around like a puppy. Ash and Richter are commanders, leaders of armies and directors of their own huge workforces. Slone’s record before joining the Predators includes a simple village massacre. Ash has massacred a dozen villages, Slone isn’t special. She does suppose she deserves commendation for doing it all with a sniper rifle, but she fails to see how marksmanship alone makes for a Predator.
       “How long has it been?” Ash asks slowly. As her senses come online she can feel fine grains of sand inside of her head. Slone sits inside of her Titan, an Atlas variant called the Ion for its incredibly lethal ionic cannon located in its core. It looks like a poorly rendered figure from the dawn of Humanity’s digital age, with a body made of hard angles and geometric shapes. The yellow colored arms are vast and ultra-customized, featuring extra armor and shock plating for hard hits. The torso and legs are a dark red. 
       “Eh?” Slone asks. 
       “How long have I been asleep.”
       “You ain’t been asleep. You’ve been dead. That’s what I’m telling Blisk, anyway.”
       Ash thinks for a second. She specifically wonders what Slone is up to. It makes sense she or any of the other Predators would have tried to go looking for her, but Blisk’s timeline likely wouldn’t have allowed for the monumental effort necessary to unearth her head which was a contributing factor in her analysis prior to shutting down. Furthermore, her head would have looked inert or dead so on finding it Slone should have reported her demise to Blisk anyway. Ash can only think of one reason why she would have gone through all of the effort of digging her up and reactivating her. 
       “Who paid you to find me?”
       “Alive again for not even two minutes and you’ve already got it figured out, ain’t ya, love?” Slone says with scorn. There is a black band of paint across her eyes that makes her glare at Ash especially menacing, not that Ash is intimidated. Slone is leaning forward in her pilot’s seat, her helmet sitting at her side. She has a tablet in her left hand with a wire running from it to a strange blue box with a few more wires coming out of that and feeding straight into her head. Slone presses a few keys on the tablet and says “We’re ready,” into her radio. There’s a chime from the tablet, some corporate tune meticulously crafted to be palatable to any ear that hears it and instead is utterly horrifying to the senses and offensive to the spirit. Slone swipes on a button that brings up a woman’s face. 
       “She’s working. Pay me.”
       “Now now, you know the parameters of our arrangement. Payment on reception. First I need to speak with the asset.” Asset? Ash thinks first, insulted. Then she wonders: Why is the voice familiar?
       “Fine. You two have a chat. Hey, you,” she lifts her head up and calls out in a way that indicates she is talking with her Titan. “Make her look lively.” Slone sets the tablet to one side and unplugs the wires from Ash’s head, and the jacks come out with a kind of grating, popping sound that causes her to feel a wave of satisfaction. The Titan then grips her delicately with its forefinger and thumb from its own left hand, pinching her and making her feel like an insect. It holds Ash’s head up in front of Slone in a more presentable way. Slone is holding the tablet in her hands between her knees, pointing the camera at Ash.
       “That good?” Slone asks.
       “A little higher,” the woman on the tablet says. Ash cannot see due to a glare across the screen but as Slone lifts the tablet a few inches and tilts it forward slightly it becomes visible, and she realizes she does know this woman. 
       “You,” Ash says in a tone that could be read as a friendly greeting or a terrible threat. This lizard dressed in human clothes is called Justinia Julienne, and she’s the system director for Vinson Dynamics. She is one of the humans Ash has to deal with, since her plant manufactures their biggest products: the Thermite Launcher and all of the caustic agent for the Scorch variant Ogre Titan, the Cold War anti-titan grenade launcher, the Volt submachine gun and the Devotion LMG, the Charge Rifle anti-titan weapon, as well as the aerial combat drones deployed in low security areas.
       “Ha ha, yes Ash, it’s me. I know how happy you are to see me.”
       “You owe me money.”
       “Mmm, I think the sudden loss of production capacity plus the ultimate destruction of any already manufactured merchandise yet to be sold violates our contract with you and your facility, Ash, and renders it void.”
       “Hm.”
       “Buuuut I think we can come to an agreement!” Her charismatic tone belies a cold heart that beats slowly in a reptilian fashion. The woman is soulless. Ash has to remind herself of it. Even a robot is capable of being charmed. Ash can see on a bookshelf behind Justinia’s head there is a proudly displayed copy of How To Win Friends and Influence People in the Interstellar Age.
       “Pah. ‘Agreement,’” Slone says in a mocking tone. She tilts the tablet back and stares into it upside down. “I already sold her to ya, you own this piece of crap now so why don’t you just lay down the law? Tosser’s yours.”
       “Please, Slone, I am trying to make a deal. Would you kindly just point me back at her?” Slone groans but does so anyway. She seems a little let down, but she starts to give Ash a knowing smile. Ash has no face to smile back with. Just two eyes set under a mask with no capacity for expression, and the mask fell off during her slumber– leaving her a faceless, featureless head. 
       “What does she mean, you own me?” Ash knows what she means. Ash is not a person. She is property. Somehow she was able to purchase her rights to her life from Hammond when she first woke, something about twenty first century property rights legislation that was still applicable six hundred years later. When Slone found her inert, by more recent property rights legislation she got to claim salvage rights and was allowed to sell her to whomever she wanted. 
       “We hired Slone to find you, for a fee, and agreed to purchase you from her if she did. We technically have not received you yet so there has been no payment made, so technically we don’t own you.”
       “Yet.” Ash says.
       Justinia sighs. She looks away from the camera, then looks back, and just like that the charisma and charm is gone - here comes out the lizard. “Look. We don’t want it to be this way. Vinson Dynamics is prepared to offer you a hired position. We purchased you because we weren’t sure if you were dead or not. The whole activation process was to determine how much to pay Slone. More if you were alive.”
       “And more is what I get,” Slone says in a devilishly satisfied tone.
       “How much more?” Ash asks. She wants Justinia to feel like she is uninterested in her proposal. 
       “Quite a big tick,” Slone says, lowering the tablet some. “Extra twenty percent.”
       “Twenty percent of what?” Ash asks. That number could have come from anywhere. If it’s an extra twenty percent of the Militia bounty that’s a big number, but it could be bigger.
       “Your determined value adjusted for inflation, you old bag of bolts.”
       “That is a big number.” Ash’s value is almost incalculable. It was hard for Hammond to put a price on it. It’s immortality. Perfect and cold and almost without feeling. How do you determine the value of everlasting life, so long as you live it inside of a shell? The living might not be interested in what Hammond had to sell, but the dying certainly were. 
       “Slone,” Justinia interrupts. “Quit your gloating and point me back at my god damned head.”
       “Ha!” Slone laughs. “It comes out! Here, bitch.” She starts to crawl out of her cockpit seat and sets the tablet in her chair. Her Titan picks her up gently and sets her down. She shouts up at them. “Ponder what it means to be with Yorik’s skull, I’m telling Blisk she’s a goner. You come pick her up. I’ve just got a ping, boss needs me back at the transfer station to get the Ark out of here.”
       “No, Slone. You need to take her with you. We don’t have time.”
       “What? God damn it, pick me back up, love.” Her Titan does, and she takes a seat in its palm next to the hand that holds Ash toward the screen set in her pilot’s chair. 
       “Militia is gathering. Look at this data.” Justinia moves closer to her tablet’s screen and starts bothering with it. Then satellite imagery appears, outlining in white squares on the black, starry sky a half dozen militia starships in atmo, the ones they managed to rebuff with the nuclear flak defense. “Something is going down.”
       “This is the work of the Militia pilot. The one that defeated me.”
       “Got Kane, too. I knew he shouldn’t have ever hired you tossers. Now I’ve got to go set up the defense with Viper. Ark’s not going to roll itself to the dig site. Set me down, I’ve got to talk to Blisk.” The Titan sets her down.
       “So, Ash, will you agree to a meeting?”
       Ash doesn’t even have to think. “Yes.” She thought she had no future, she thought she didn’t have a chance at getting what she wanted – but now, there’s hope. She almost rolls her eyes at herself but she fights it, a compulsion almost made manifest by the annoyance of the other that resides inside.
       “Exceptional!” Justinia says, her excitement somehow plain, sterilized in that uniquely corporate way. “Unfortunately, Ash, we can’t have anyone else knowing we have you, so Slone I am afraid you need to conceal her head somehow and get it to our secure storage at the transfer station before we can get her off world.”
       “Huh?” She looks up from her comm. “Yeah, sure,” she waves dismissively.
       “Off world? Your facility is here,” Ash says.
       “We have a few smaller locations scattered around the Frontier, Ash, and with the damage this Militia pilot has been causing we can’t guarantee an IMC victory. Vinson Dynamics is hedging its bets with other players in this game. But we don’t have a lot of time for that. Slone, you will be paid upon reception. Don’t get killed before then!”
       “I won’t, love,” Slone says. “Wait a minute, big guy,” she says to her Titan. “I need to stretch these legs. Then we move out. You,” she points at a lonely MRVN picking through some rubble. “Find me an opaque bag.”
       “Like a trashbag?” It inquires in an emotionless tone.
       “Yes, absolutely. Like a trashbag. Now I've got to call Blisk.”
       Slone leaves Ash in her Titan’s hand, trapped between its thumb and forefinger. Staring at her pilot’s seat. Ash wonders if she will get to be a pilot again. She wonders what her new hired position will entail. She wonders what exactly the future holds for this steel skull.

       Slone stores her in a sack and leaves her by her feet in the Titan’s cockpit. Ash doesn’t mind the darkness. This shade of black is significantly better than the light-devoid place she had been dug out of. Slone only “accidentally” kicks her one time during her trip to the transfer station, located a few hundred miles from her now rubbled facility. They never exchange a word during their flight, carried by the rectangular Widow. They simply sit in silence. Slone doesn’t even say something small and simple like “We’re here,” once they arrive. She just lifts the black trash bag holding Ash’s head and carries it to Vinson’s secure area. Ash’s geolocating feature is bugged from her time underground and her lack of a radio for satellite communications, but she knows her way around. Here is where much of the product made in her facility was taken away, transported around the globe and off world to other planets in the Frontier. Multiple IMC starships are docked in the bay and she can hear them loading their cargo. Titans freshly produced only a few days ago, rolling in with the standard flat white paint job of the IMC fleet. Crates as big as buildings hauling weapons, crates even bigger hauling specters and racks of reapers with them. Ash wonders if they are taking any of her prefabs for colonization, but realizes they likely do not have the room if they’re gearing up so heavily for war. One vessel is parked with its engines still glowing. A hot wind blows around the gray and rocky terrain. This place once was a lush seabed, but dams and drains have turned it into a gray, lifeless valley that Ash is told still reeks of fish. Miles of concrete on top of that turned it into the most effective transfer station across the whole of Typhon. 
       Finally Slone stops in a utilitarian concrete structure. It used to be densely packed but no longer, now this dark concrete room echoes with the sounds of Slone’s boots scraping on the floor and the whisper of her clothes rubbing together while she walks, the whole place completely empty. Except for one head-sized box in the center of the room.
       Slone looks around, her helmet on, a light on the side of it shining into every corner of the place. She takes Ash out of the bag and holds her in a Shakesperian pose. “I put you in this box, I get paid, you get out of my way, I live my life free from your judgements.”
       “Get rid of me, then.”
       “I always hated you, Ash.”
       “I know.”
       “You look down on everyone, everything. We’re all beneath the perfect entity that is you. ” She shakes her with scorn. “You are not as perfect as you think you are.”
        And you know you are not, don’t you? Her other self wonders, while Slone continues:  “You died, and I didn’t. I survived. I lived. I’m better than you .”
        She is right, Ash thinks. I know it. My other half knows it. There is no escaping it. I’ve died twice, killed because I was a fool. Idiot. Inelegant. Imperfect. Little more than a hammer to beat down a nail.
       “You’re right,” she wanted to say. Instead that crueler voice of hers comes out. “Are you done?” she asks. 
       “Tch. Yeah, I’m done. Richter’s dead, just so you know. Pilot killed him, too. Didn’t have to be this way – you had him in the palms of your hands, and instead of killing him like a good little robot, you slipped up and let him slip out. Now another one of us is down. Nothing left of him, but there’s still more to him than there is you.” She lowers Ash some. “Now, get in your little box. The living have work to do.” Slone uses her foot to unclip the lid, flips it open, then she drops Ash’s head unceremoniously into the pit and slams it shut. Closed.

       Ash senses movement. She cannot hear outside of the box. It is dark. Something has lifted her and is carrying her. It is walking rhythmically. It walks for a long time. Her clock says twenty minutes. It never stops or changes pace. It has to be a robot. She feels her box is set down, and when it is she senses a vibration coming through the floor. An analysis determines she’s in the back of a ship.
       The lid pops open. Justinia’s face is right in front of her, outlined in sunlight and framed by the gray steel walls of the Goblin’s interior. “Oh, it’s so good to see you in the flesh again, Ash!” Ha ha, Ash thinks. “I really want to chat, but we have got to go!” Justinia is overly bubbly, and for no reason. There isn’t another human in sight. She is flanked by two Stalkers, their bulky bodies and heavy limbs imposing images that make this average sized person look puny. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest images, but the Militia is really gung-ho for this Ark thing Marder’s been working on. An army is pushing up through the north wall right now.” Ash listens close and can hear the cannon fire in the distance. She is on one side of a hill, the fighting on the other. 
       “Why did you buy me?” Ash asks.
       “Relax, you! Just enjoy the ride with us. The Myrmidon is fueled up and the engines are hot.” Suddenly, her tone shifts to become flat, direct. “You two,” she nods at the stalkers at her sides. “Secure the package. Close the lid. We’re lifting off in two.” Justinia puts on a set of large white earphones that match her white shirt under a black suit as the Goblin’s engines spin up. The stalkers shut her lid then take a seated position and attach themselves to cargo hooks along the sides of the light ship, shaped like the head of a snake, and finally they brace Ash in her box between them.
       Silence and darkness. Again. Her little voice has been mostly quiet since she woke up, but now it takes this opportune moment to chide her: You can’t even kill yourself properly. And then it is silent again.
       It takes only a few minutes and they’re on the Myrmidon, a long transport carrier painted the Vinson Dynamics black and green. Justinia takes Ash’s head to her office which overlooks the bridge. Justinia answers a call from the captain in the bridge below telling her it is time to leave while a Specter puts her head gently on a spike whose only purpose, it seems, is to hold her head. It fits perfectly into the slot where her head would attach to her body. Ash has a view over the whole bridge and can even see out their rightmost window. Out in the distance, about to cross over the horizon, she can see the massive IMC ships fleeing from the remaining six Militia vessels. When she watches one of their battleships go down she knows who has taken to the skies: Viper. Pilot of the waspy Northstar. His sting is as venomous as his namesake, with unnatural speed and supercool lethality he is as deadly as they come. He, Richter and Blisk are the only members of her order she holds any respect for. Thousands will die on this day as thousands already have, each of them to a hail of fire from his missile pods and rail guns. 
       They start to move. The ground begins to shrink away from them and then the Myrmidon starts going forward. Slowly at first, then more quickly than you can believe it picks up speed. It is going hundreds of miles an hour in seconds. Gray rocks and gray sand turn to green hills and green forests, then fade into a blue hue as the transport starts to flee the planet’s gravity through a cloudless sky. The office they are in is not minimalistic. The floor is a red velvet color with a work of art depicting many of the Frontier worlds in a classical style and colors including blue, green, white, amber and lots and lots of gold inlaid into it. The walls are a creamy white with gold details, ornamental filigree that emulates no particular style. The style on the walls continues up to the ceiling, where a chandelier hangs stiff despite their increasing speed. Justinia’s desk is a magnificent piece as well, made of a red wood and covered in golden lines with a white marble and gold flecked pad for the top. Finally Justinia, seated at the desk and watching their ascent out of Typhon’s atmosphere, directs her attention to Ash. 
       “So, Ash, have you had the chance to think about our offer?”
       “You haven’t made an offer.”
       “Well, I started to, then that loudmouth brat Slone kept talking over me. Still, I think you heard my point. A hired position here at Vinson Dynamics. How does that sound?”
       “It depends. If I am going to be used as a football I would prefer to be put back in my hole.”
       “Ha ha, Ash. Let me tell you a little bit more about the job.” She laces her fingers together and holds her hands tight like a bound fist. “Vinson Dynamics does not see how a future with the IMC can possibly be as profitable as simply working with whoever pays the most. In the past this was not the case, but since the loss of the Demeter refueling station the Frontier Militia has become a more viable business partner. This is especially true once you consider the current number of planets that have joined in on the Militia’s side. This is why we and several other companies have worked very hard to make it possible for us to separate entirely from the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation.” She unlaces her fingers and leans back in her tall seat, then gestures casually at Ash. “We want a certain amount of freedom; to conduct business with whom we please.”
       “Certainly,” Ash agrees. The blue hue of Typhon’s nitrogen rich atmosphere fades to black. Stars emerge in the distance. 
       “Presently, we are looking to protect certain assets of ours located in IMC and Militia territories, and we have other assets we need procured in dangerous areas. Furthermore, Vinson Dynamics needs business partners who have an interest in our current ventures in weapons manufacturing as well as our newest pursuit, advanced combat robotics.”
       Ash thinks for a minute. Her first sentence had Ash’s attention, but those last three words of her second were even more compelling. She thinks about the blue object Slone used to awaken her. It was certainly proprietary technology. There is only one company in the Frontier that would have the tools needed to bring her back to life, and it isn’t Vinson Dynamics.
       “You want me to steal from Hammond Robotics. I am no simple thief. I am an Apex Predator. ” Ash is indignant. “My purpose on this mortal plane is to find satisfaction in combat, to excise weakness, and to achieve perfection.” It almost feels like it isn’t her saying these things, like it's a reactionary script she reads to make herself seem more imposing than she really is. 
       “Oh, Ash. I know there are more layers to you than that. You are an exceptional business leader, a successful commander of men, and you possess a brilliant mind for making money. You can make deals with the best of them if you let yourself do more than kill…” she makes a rolling gesture with her hands as she conjures her next word, “...bozos for just a few minutes. I am not asking you to steal from Hammond, we have just about everything we need from them. I am asking you to be our lead mercenary liaison.” When this elicits no response, she releases a slight sigh and says: “Or, in more impressive terms, I would like for you to command our own army.”
       “Why?” Ash’s tone is accusatory. Justinia’s face shows an aghast expression for a very brief moment before she pulls herself together. “For all of the reasons I just said? Isn’t that enough?” She says.
       “No. I do not believe you.”
       “What do you mean you don’t believe me?” Justinia looks incredulous, like Ash just said something insane. “Is your opinion of yourself that low?”
       “No, pathetic lizard of a human. I do not believe that all you want of me is to command your mercenary forces. Let me lay out some details for you: You have secret proprietary technology that I am certain belonged to Hammond Robotics, and you used that to ascertain whether I was still operational after paying an Apex Predator potentially billions to dig me out of the rubble of my own facility, a job that should have taken a week which was completed in less than three days – while a war ravaged the planet. Now you are telling me your company is getting involved in ‘advanced combat robotics’ which, from my vantage point, is plain to see means you want to copy more pilots into simulacra to fill out the ranks of your new army. Do I have that right?”
       Justinia is silent for a second while she takes it all in. Ash can almost see the neurons firing inside her skull. Finally she speaks.
       “Well, I take offense to you calling me a lizard. But yes. You have that right.”
       “So you do want more from me. You want the secrets inside of my head.”
       “Yes.” Justinia has a small smile on her face. Ash can see Justinia thinks she’s got her. She does, but Ash would never admit it.
       “Hm.”
       “Is that all you have to say?”
       “Yes. I am thinking.”
       “Okay…” Justinia gives her a moment to think. She spins from side to side in her huge gilded cream and gold chair. Ash doesn’t need to think. She has already made up her mind. She simply wants Justinia to feel like she has other options, even if they both know she doesn’t.
       “Fine. I will lead your armies and let you see inside of my skull.”
       “Really?” Justinia’s excitement is plain. She pulls her arms back in anticipation.
       “Yes.”
       “Yes!” She pumps her arms up over head in an expression of joyous relief. 
        “There is a problem with your plan, however.” Ash says, glad to poke a hole in her ballooning happiness.
       “What is that?” She lowers her arms.
       “Not even I can see into the depths of my mind. Many of the secrets of my existence are lost to me. Locked behind walls I cannot access, or removed from my head entirely.” With years to study her mind and the things that lie within she has found partitions she cannot crack and locks opened only with the most sophisticated of keys. Behind those closed doors are the pieces of herself most intrinsic to her nature but are kept just out of reach. She hoped the technology within the Vanguard would have been enough to trade for access, and failing that she hoped the price on his head was large enough to convince Spyglass to let her purchase the key. Maybe even get Blisk to negotiate for her in favor of the payout. At the very least, the cash would have paid for enough men and munitions to take it by force.
       “Well, that’s what I have this for,” Justinia says. She taps a small silver button on her desk and an impossibly thin glass panel rises up from an almost unnoticeable slit in the marble. Embedded near the bottom of the glass is a small laser, which projects a keyboard in bright blue light on her desk in front of her. The glass screen darkens and Ash can no longer see through it. She begins typing and making gestures, then lifts the spike Ash sits on and sets her in place next to her elbow. Ash detests being treated like a trophy. No. It is more being handled like a toy . “If she treats you like a toy, then take her head for a trophy.” Her crueler self says from a corner of her brain. 
        Justinia turns Ash’s head on her purposeful spike and points her eyes at the screen. “What am I looking at?” Ash asks. There is a rectangular tool with a long plug that has an oddly shaped tip, like a screw with only two threads.
        “A tool I have, to unlock some of your memories.”
        “Convenient.” This was an easy one word response that Ash felt accurately communicated a longer point she wanted to make: Clearly they have this piece, and the other reactivation piece, because they were planning on stealing her head. Circumstances seem to have made their lives easier.
        “Relax, Ash. I know you think we were going to try to kill you to get at what was in there. This is what makes us such great business partners, I always know what you’re thinking, and you always know what I’m thinking.”
       “Hm.”
      “And the truth is, yes, there was a plan to take your skull by force. And yes, it was my plan. I don’t think it ever would have worked, though. I was getting these pieces and praying the whole time I could come up with a better one, and then as if a gift from heaven an angel of deliverance dropped out of the sky and brought you to me, Ash. This was meant to be.”
       “Fool. Why would I work with you now after you admitted to an assassination plot?”
       “Oh, excuse me Ash, I thought we were adults but I can see all I have in front of me is the head of a dead baby. Come on, you know the deal. You’re a mercenary! Don’t act like you haven’t betrayed or killed anyone for money or advantage. I know how you Predators get your spots on the team, killing each other in a massive bloodsport.”
       “Not good enough.” It was good enough. Ash has constructed a hierarchy of needs - at the bottom of the pyramid is a new body, a necessity which has to be fulfilled before the other points can be accessed. At the top of the pyramid is Justinia’s head slammed on a spike and sitting on her desk, just like Ash is now. If she has to be a soldier until she gets what she wants, so be it, but she doesn’t have to be a good one. The image both satisfies and disgusts her, while it makes her other self salivate.
       “Fine, Ash. Do I have to philosophize with you? Here’s my final pitch. If you don’t want in after I’m done talking, I’ll dump you out the airlock right here. Just about as much chance of you getting found out here as there was when you were buried in your facility.” Ash has a glimpse of a memory: one when she is young, fleshy, pudgy, and someone is trying to communicate to her the size of the universe. Another when she is older, and she has experienced its scale for herself. There has never been a more inaccurate statement ever uttered.
       “Speak.”
       “I believe all people, this includes murderous, psychopathic robots like yourself, have a yearning to know who we truly are. It is why billions across the core worlds attend therapy sessions to understand themselves, it is why trillionaire C.E.Bros and impoverished hippies used to make pilgrimages to Cleo to try the psychoactive fungi there, and it is why you will take this job. Because I know that you don’t remember anything about being alive, and you, more than anyone, want to know her past.”
       Ash is silent. Her other self raves: I see what you are thinking. I know what you are feeling. You are a pathetic, emotional being, a lost child praying for the comfort of her mother – that’s what you want, isn’t it? To know where you came from? You didn’t come from anywhere. You’re a thing. You were made. You are just like me: motherless, fatherless, without parentage or personhood – and you, like all things, deserve nothing.
       “Well?” Justinia taps her nails on the marble desktop.
       “I accept.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: Step Back, Push Forward

       Angelia. Home to Angel City. Most planets, you look on them from the sky and you can only see the settlements by the lights at night. Angel City, on the other hand, is a dark stain on a green continent under the sun’s rays. Looming like a spreading cancer, the city gets larger and larger every year, consuming more and more resources from the scoured planet and the farming colonies on worlds in systems nearby. There are multitudes of unnatural canyons made visible during the day where huge quarries extract the stone and mines the ore that made the city what it is. And when the planet rotates and the city falls into darkness, the glow from rooftop spotlights, the rows of lit rooms down the sides of impossibly tall skyscrapers, and the holograms that float above the heads of the tens of millions of citizens produce a light so bright it makes it appear as if there is a shimmering bubble located right over the city. It was in these streets, only five years ago, that the Frontier Militia proved itself more than a simple resistance movement and struck out with a true act of terror. They incurred into sovereign IMC territory not with some tactical strike team or carefully planned assault, but rather invaded with a full fighting force composed of men, machines, and mechs that caused billions in property damages and left lasting scars in the hearts and minds of Angel City’s people.
       This one attack galvanized Angelia against the Militia in a bold, new way, and instead of laying down they rose to the challenge and grew bolder and harder to kill. Now, somewhere in that ever growing, sprawling mass is Ash’s new office, and somewhere in that office is Ash’s new body. Her other self is practically thrumming with a frenetic energy, eager for her opportunity to take control and go on a killing spree. She has a recording of her first one. She has no memory of the incident, only the video. It serves as a reminder of why she is not allowed to know what it was like before her second life – the disparity between the sensations of the flesh and the simulations of steel was enough to drive her completely and utterly mad.
       As their vessel is checked by the Angelia Orbital Defense, a new addition since the battle of Angel City, they catch up on the news. Despite hundreds of years of advancements in mass-displacement Jump Drive technology, it can still take weeks to travel even relatively short interstellar distances. Fortunately, the transmission of data is hardly beholden to the same constraints – through the impressive quantum communications network, information can be had from anywhere, anytime, instantaneously. Still, despite this, it wasn’t until they actually reached Angelia they learned that the planet Typhon had been completely destroyed.
       Militia media outlets are trying to light a fire claiming the IMC was going to use a “fold weapon” powered by remnant alien technology to destroy the prominent farming colony of Harmony which, despite its status as a Militia-allied world, provides food to colonies and cities across the frontier no matter their allegiances. The IMC is saying the Militia is lying, there is no and has never been any evidence to suggest intelligent aliens have ever lived on any of the Frontier worlds, and the Militia used a micro-black hole to create a gravity well which caused Typhon’s moon to destroy the planet, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent IMC soldiers, technicians, and engineers. Outlets for the undecided and spineless centrists simply express concern for the stories put out by both parties. 
       What Ash finds most damning, most disturbing, most frustrating, more than even learning the whole endeavor she and ARES division spent years working toward, was the broadcast made by the Militia Special Recon Squadron. “The Hero of Harmony Speaks,” the ACN network chyron reads in bold, white letters on a red heading. He stands in a dark room, an ancient Ogre Titan looms behind him, sparks emitting from its chassis as technicians fix its armor plating. He looks up from the weathered full-face helmet he holds in his hands, his gaze dark and haggard, but his jaw set and determined. It’s the same red shirt the Militia pilot that stormed her facility wore. It’s the same weathered helmet he bore. 
       It’s the man that tried to kill her.
       “My friends,” he starts, his voice low and cool. “We have achieved a great victory against the imperialist Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation at Typhon, proving once and for all that we, the people of the Frontier, are not mere upstarts but are a truly capable fighting force and a threat to their wicked regime. Now, in the face of an overwhelming and astounding defeat, their propaganda divisions seethe and lie, claiming we did naught but kill supposed innocents – when all we did was liberate the enslaved masses they kept in disgusting camps under constant watch and guard by drones and robots, and eliminate the would-be perpetrators of a disastrous war crime that would have plunged the entirety of the Frontier into famine and chaos by destroying the breadbasket that puts food on your tables.”
       “Can I shut this off already?” Justinia asks, as if she needs permission. Ash denies it. “No. I want to see where he goes with this.” Justinia sighs, tosses the remote lightly onto her desk and puts her feet up right next to Ash’s head, still displayed proudly on that purposeful spike.
       “But that was just one battle in a long and deadly war.” He straightens, looks more resolute as his eyes gaze straight into the camera. “A war that has taken so much from so many of us. Now, we in the SRS have learned that all across the Frontier, the Outlands, and even the Fringe Worlds the IMC is pulling away its forces and taking as many bodies as it can haul back to the battleplanet Gridiron for what appears a final, last stand. The Frontier Militia is set, in the coming days and weeks, to launch an all-out assault on Gridiron, to hit them with everything we have to finally put an end to this war and secure the freedom we and our ancestors sought when we colonized these many, precious worlds. So to you, to all of you – I say, join us. Join us in a war for the future of your people, our people, and help us make a more just universe for yourself and your children. I’m Jack Cooper, and I hope to see you on the frontlines.”
       The screen goes dark, then switches to female presenter with stark, white hair that says: “This message from the Special Recon Squadron of the Frontier Militia is made significantly more concerning following the more recent broadcast from the leader of the famed mercenary company the Apex Predators, Kuben Blisk, where he stated, and I quote: ‘We’re on the wrong side, fellas… Time to quit while we’re behind.’ Since then, there have been no reports of Apex Predator activity in any IMC or Frontier Militia controlled space. In this studio’s opinion, it looks like this decades-long war is finally coming to an end, one way or another.”
       “Happy now, Ash?” Justinia says, leaning forward to snatch up the tossed remote to shut off the screen. “Looks like you didn’t have to worry about losing your job, since there doesn’t seem to be a job to go back to.”
       In the twenty-five years Kuben Blisk was her commander, Ash never knew him to cancel a contract. He always picked the right ones – always. She wonders what could have possibly made him change his mind. 

       After Justinia offers the Defense Force a hefty bribe to let them through with a small army’s worth of men, weapons, specters and even Titans they make landfall in the harbor district. Their massive cruiser takes hours to set down carefully in the potentially corrosive and totally polluted waters outside the harbor. The water level outside of the port rises some feet due to the weight. Docking arms secure them in place and the nose of the vessel is parked against the sea wall, where a closed gangway attaches a door just beneath the nose so Vinson Dynamics can unload its massive equipment into the underground transfer station located beneath the city. Ash’s new body is just over the horizon, and beyond that is an army at her command.
       Justinia puts her back in a box. Ash resents it. She listens a little closer to her crueler self ordering her to kill the woman as soon as she gets her new body. It is very tempting. During her time in her little black box she imagines the various ways she can eliminate Justinia. Ash finds it is better to come up with ideas if you place yourself in a setting, like an office, so your imagination can thrive as it conjures ways to get around a certain obstacle, like a lack of killing materials. If you just think about ways to kill someone, well, there’s so many the flood of thoughts is almost oppressing. 
       Finally, her case opens. Ash is in a white room. Wonderful. “I love a white room,” her other self drones coolly. “It makes the blood look so crimson.” An older woman with frizzled brown hair going gray greets her coldly, as if she is a subject to study. “Hello, Ash. I am Doctor Marley Kovorkian, I am here to perform the data extraction and determine a path forward to using the secrets we find inside your head. Do you mind if I handle you for a moment?”
       “Fine.” Ash says in a curt tone, but she does appreciate the woman asking. Slone’s use of her like a prop and Justinia’s positioning of her like she was a trophy was so humiliating even her crueler self felt sympathy. Doctor Kovorkian places her on another spike. Ash feels a sense of satisfaction, one she imagines feels like when a human cracks their back perfectly. 
       “Okay, I’m just going to insert this key device into this port here,” she says, and Ash can feel her finger over a circular access point at the back of her head.
       “Wait,” Ash says. She scans the room. She can see over the Doctor’s shoulder someone is sitting on a chair in a back corner. “You. Justinia. This is the scan?”
       “Of course it is, Ash. I don’t see why you or I should waste any time. Our trip was long enough. I think we should just get started, don’t you agree?”
       “No. I want my body first.”
       “Hah! Ash, we aren’t idiots. Even I have seen the recording of your first massacre. The video is practically legendary among your fanbase.” Her fans. Ash recalls. The Apex Predators are celebrated among the rotten scoundrels of the Frontier, and by wimpy losers online who love to gossip and write fictions about them. “There’s no telling what you might do if I open the floodgates. This tide will stay locked. If you are going to lash out, I’d much rather it is with your whiplash tongue than with a supercharged robotic fist.”
       “Hm. Fair.” Her crueler self is raving inside. Ash is trying to keep her cool. She wants Justinia to trust her as much as possible. The woman is no fool, Ash will be kept on a leash. She knows this. She has to pretend to be a good dog until she gets let off of it.
       “Get on with it, Marley. We don’t have all the time in the world.” Justinia leans back in her chair. She is wearing a white suit with a black shirt, and black leather boots that cover her ankles. As she crosses her legs to get comfortable in her obviously uncomfortable chair her pant leg rises slightly, and Ash can see some of her brown skin above a pink sock sticking out of her boot.
       “Getting on with it,” Marley says. Her voice is neutral but her expression is clearly disgruntled. She inputs the first plug, a port in the top right and at the back of her head. Another wave of satisfaction. Ash has a flash of a memory in the lens of her eye, a glimpse of a set of fleshy hands with fingers layered between each other over the backs of their palms. As the plug makes its way past input/output sensors the human hands in her mind press hard outward and the fingers all crack in unison. An involuntary sound almost escapes her. Kovorkian inserts another plug, directly in the back of Ash’s head. She then moves to her computer and clicks a few prompts on screen. Ash is suddenly aware of the computer and the key device in a new way, she can feel it connected to her and can sense the flow of information. 
       “What is this ‘key,’ you spoke of?”
       “Something a merc of mine stole for me,” Justinia says, looking at her painted nails. “From what he says, it’s supposed to unlock Hammond’s encryptions.”
      “Alright. Applying the key… now.”
       Ash can tell something is happening. There is no sensation, but there are silent triggers going off. She has an understanding that gates are being opened. Kovorkian says something and Ash notices a very small amount of lag. She opens her memory storage and sees it is almost totally occupied; typically running at only three percent full, it is now operating at sixty six percent and climbing. Her processes are slowing dramatically. Ash needs to find the source of this memory dump. Justinia is on her feet now, hovering over Doctor Kovorkian’s shoulder and looking intently at the computer screen located just behind Ash’s head. Visual information is loading before sound. Ash can read Justinia’s lips as she points at something on the screen. “What is that?” comes through her ears well after Kovorkian has already answered. “She is experiencing some kind of memory influx.”
       “Iiiiiii am periencing heLLLL!” Ash tries to say. She is struggling through the files of her mind like an insect flying through soup. She has not found the problem yet and she’s browsed every known file. How does one view an unknown file? Her memory is ballooning. It has already hit seventy six percent. She hears Justinia order Kovorkian to shut it down, they can cause a crash, they could lose everything. Ash continues filtering through the memory files, tracking backward in an irritating fashion as she tries to find a source of the influx of files. They keep coming. She sees icons that preview the information hidden within but she doesn’t have the time to perceive them. She is able to access the metadata on one picture, a photograph of some kind of laboratory, and learns the source is a file folder called RESTRICTEDACCESSEYESONLY.zip. Eighty three percent. Ash finds the source folder, located in a hidden file with only empty space for a name. She knows it is unzipping but there isn’t an unzipping application running she can see. Ash doesn’t know what would happen if her system crashes and she doesn’t want to find out. She is able to find a backward access to the computer she’s plugged in to, and she runs a share file operation on the computer. Her memory storage is at ninety percent and it shows no sign of slowing. An alert comes on the doctor’s screen, the words Ash typed into the shared file’s title header are in all caps: REMOVE THIS. It’s all she could manage. She could perceive the letters loading into their respective slots. She just hopes the doctor is smart enough to delete the copy inside of her head, not just the version of it she shared.
       Ash is at ninety seven percent. The file is still going. Ash’s perception of time has failed. Her eyes have stopped seeing, her ears have stopped hearing, and all she gets are momentary inputs from her sensorium. She knows she is heating up. It feels like the end is on her. She thinks how ridiculous it would be for her mind to burn out plugged into a desktop. She can withstand the impacts of a city’s worth of concrete falling in on her, but just like any machine she can be undone by shoddy coding. 
       Then finally, blessedly, her memory stops escalating. Stuck at ninety nine percent. It is all she can do to dump the files in a massive wave of deletions. She almost overclocks her processor by selecting that simple action, but her cache clears and Ash can see again. A wave of relief, an unfamiliar feeling, rushes over her mind like she has taken a deep and refreshing breath of air. Her clock says ten minutes have passed. As her memory usage drops back down to a steady three percent, Ash feels a cool sensation. 
       “Ash? Are you there? We deleted the file, can you hear us?” Doctor Kovorkian is asking. 
       “Did you download the shared file?” Ash asks. She needs to know what was in it. There is a tinge of hope. Her crueler voice is in her ear: You fearsome little rat, do you not understand? Relief is an unfamiliar feeling because we do not feel fear. But here you are, afraid of what might happen if your coding breaks down and you crash. Afraid to get rid of me? Or afraid there will be more of me ?
       “I have nothing to fear from you, useless error. You are the coding breakdown. I am the marvel. Silence your unhelpful tongue and let me deal with my problems.”
        You don’t sound convinced, the voice says, but goes silent regardless. 
      “Oh, uh, no - I tried to extract it and clear your cache but I couldn’t get the button to even press, it was starting to overheat my own CPU,” the Doctor says, gesturing at her desktop computer with a fan blowing so hard it sounds like it might achieve lift. “I had no other choice but to delete it.”
      “Fool. That file was what you opened me up for.” Her hope is dashed upon the rocks. She might as well never have been reawoken. It is lost. All is lost.
      “Hey! I tried to get at it, Director Justinia can confirm that,” she gestures and Justinia nods her head. “It just wouldn’t open on my end, like it was trying to unzip it through your own internal processor. When the air started to shimmer and I could feel the heat from your head on my arms, I thought it best to delete the files like you asked.”
       “Did you see any of the files, Ash?” Justinia asks. 
       “No. I noticed icons, symbols and designations. I did not notice anything specific.” Ash starts thinking. Maybe this isn’t the end.
       “Then how do you know it’s what we were looking for?” Justinia asks. She has her hands on her hips in frustration.
       “What else could it have been?” Kovorkian says.
       “Christ, Marley! Why didn’t you download it?”
       “Don’t try to blame me, you watched my process! You were right there over my shoulder, screaming about making certain I didn’t burn her out. I do not know what more I could have done, and working old software is my specialty.”
       “God damn it!” Justinia shouts, throwing her hands up over her head and thrusting them back down again, balling her fingers into fists. She paces back and forth three times, somewhat pathetically kicks the chair she was sitting in earlier, and makes a motion like she wants to strangle either Doctor Kovorkian or Ash. She pulls a hand up to her hair where it meets the forehead and pulls the flesh back giving her a drawn, exasperated expression. She puts her other hand on her hip and sighs. She cocks her head and her knee slightly, drops the hand on her head and gives Marley a pleading look. “What do we do, then?” Ash can see Vinson’s stock price falling in Justinia’s mind.
       “Give me my body, then take me to the mercenary who stole that probe for you,” Ash says. 

       Unpacked from her box again. This time Ash did argue against going back into it, citing their presence in the VD headquarters building but she knew it was flimsy as she was saying it. Justinia said there was always a risk of a security breach and they had to be careful with whom they trusted with the knowledge of her presence while she was still disembodied. The lid opens up and Ash is placed once more onto another purposeful spike. She wonders how many of these they have, who has them, and how long they have had them. It is a slot perfectly built for her head. She wonders if her production plant made any of them, or if Justinia brought hers in from another world. If so, she wonders how long her plan to capture or kill Ash had been in the making. She feels a sense of betrayal. It wasn’t as if Ash had considered Justinia a friend, nor was it like Ash had been untrustful of her. It was more Ash had found the woman to be a reliable business partner and now she knew there was a plot to get at her from the beginning. And it wasn’t some simple business dealing to cut her out of her work, hostile takeovers Ash can understand, it was that she was going to remove her head and treat her just as or worse than the way she was being treated now: handled like a toy, a device, an object, a thing.
       You should take comfort in that they failed to take the chance, her other self derides. Eliminated by a Militia rifleman-turned-pilot who then laid waste to everything you had built. How pitiful.
       “ I did that. To kill him. I have no attachments, not to a thing I made. You are the one who is so reliant on these monuments to our success.”
       You say that, but it was you who lamented the downfall of your facility as it crumbled around you. Besides: you didn’t kill him, did you? Instead he killed you, Kane, and Richter. Fools each and every one of you. Slone was right. You don’t deserve to be a predator.
       “Since you are me, neither do you.”
        I AM NOTHING LIKE YOU. Her crueler self’s voice is so loud in her head, she fails to hear anything outside of herself for a moment.
       “What do you think, Ash?” A technician is saying. Her head is pointed at a rack of bodies. Headless forms in almost humanoid shapes. They have two arms, they have two legs, and a rectangular or hourglass shaped torso. Male and female forms. How simplistic. This is where the similarities to a human ends. The arms are skeletal, industrial, made of metal and showing parts that move. The legs are highly specialized, some for sprinting and others for wall-running, all of them without true feet; they are replaced by tips of bladed steel runners or by two-point pads on a ball axis. Ash looks on the rack and thinks they all look so fragile, like they could so easily be broken apart. Her old body may not have saved her but there was a sense of durability to the form. The metal was thicker, the parts more proportioned. The aesthetic quality to her old form was purposeful, useful. She expresses these points to the technician while Justinia sits back in another chair and rolls her eyes. 
       “I told you to just make her old body, what happened to that?” Justinia says. “She has had the same design for almost sixty years, after all. Why did you think she would want to change?”
       “Well, Hammond didn’t account for certain movement styles in the construction of her original design. Tell me, Ash, did you find you had more difficulty performing wallruns with your robotic feet than your human ones?” The technician boldly asks. He has red hair, glasses with inordinately thick lenses, and a handsome face with adolescent acne scars on his pale cheeks and chin. 
       “I do not remember having human feet.”
       “Really? I thought you remembered your humanity?”
       “She’s not allowed, Gordo,” Justinia answers for her. “We’ve been over this. None of these will remember what it was like before they woke up, either.” She gestures at the rack of headless bodies. “They can become dangerous.”
       “Is she the one who did all that killing, then?”
       “Yes.” Ash says. Her other self is watching that old recording again at his mention of it, thinking of how nice it would be to spill all of that blood again right here, right now. Ash is thinking about how they cut out her memory of that incident, too, all to prevent her from remembering what it was like to suffocate.
       “Coolcoolcool, okay. Well, you really don’t like any of these?”
       “No.”
       “Do you like anything about them?” He asks. Clearly he designed them. 
       “No. They look weak and over-specialized.”
       “Well, they are specialized - I mean this one here…” He steps closer to one plainly designed for sprinting vast distances and is about to explain when Justinia stops him.
       “Gordo. Just fabricate the old body.”
       “Fine! It’ll be a few days. Do you want one of these while you wait…?”
       “No.” Ash is almost desperate to feel again. She wants to strangle this fool who keeps talking at her. “Bring the finished form to my office. Justinia, I have work to do.”
       “And you can do it as a head?” Justinia teases.
       “Yes. We have to make our move, and quickly. If there is anything left of those files, they’re likely on Gridiron. We don’t have long until the Militia starts its assault. If Gridiron falls, Admiral Spyglass may go with it – and I have no doubt in my mind that Spyglass has access to everything Hammond has ever produced.” The Hammond Robotics logo is stamped on the back of her head, and while the secrets to her construction may have been buried in there once they are there no longer. “Your only hope for your new ‘investment strategy’ lies with Spyglass.”
       “Alright, fine. Let me get you to your office, then.”
       “Oh, wait, Ash!” Gordo says as if she can go anywhere. “I have something for you. I noticed yours went missing, so I took some renderings and printed you a new one.” He pulls something out of a drawer and shows it to her. 
       It is her death mask. 
       The only part of her that is her former self.
       The only reminder she has of what it meant to be a human.
       A casting of her face before her final moment.
       A visage of the woman she once was.
       An homage to the woman she could have been.
       And the evidence of what she is now. 
       A corpse, walking.
       He puts it on her and she is thankful. It feels right. 
       Justinia picks her head up again and puts her in her box. Ash wishes the white ceramic mask had teeth she could bite her handler with. Then there is darkness. Again.

       When Justinia opens her box and sets her head on a soft foam pad instead of a spike, she informs Ash this will be the last time she has to go in there. She is surprised that she is telling the truth. They have meetings in her office and when Justinia is sleeping or doing other human things, Ash is occupied with her work. She has a staff which she finds totally useless except for the accountant, who is the only one with access to the company’s money. Ash makes multiple notes to be friendly, kind, and understanding to this one, since she is going to be spending a lot of that money. Mercenaries are expensive, but the money they make or the money they cost others is well worth the price. Her army is going to cost a fortune and Ash is eager to spend.
       Her first order of business is to establish independence. Justinia is going to keep her on a tight leash and she needs a way to break it. Despite the fall of Typhon and the downward turn of IMC market forces, she still has considerable wealth and profitable investments. With it, she cajoles the crew of her old corvette-class warship, the Achlys , back into her employ. According to the ship’s Captain, a gruff man named Marcus Baker, they tried to contact her for days but none of their communications would get through. Under the assumption she had died, they’d followed Blisk off-world but he failed to employ them. “Then he made that cowardly announcement about being on the wrong side of things, and we understood why he lacked the need for a warship.” His soft but wizened face dawned a look of resolve. “No matter. The men will be happy to hear they’re getting their cheques again, Commander.” 
       “Good. Make your way for Angel City at once, Captain Baker.” 
       Her next points of contact are Apex Predator rejects. If Viper, Slone, and Blisk are still alive then there are only three people better than these thousands she has on file. Though Slone is likely dead, as Jutinia informed Ash the check had never been cashed. She wonders if Blisk and Viper made it off Typhon before it exploded. General Marder did, somehow.
       She watches videos of their most recent events. Many of the rejects, to her, are mediocre. They make foolish decisions and are saved by chance, luck, or an excess of that same mediocrity from their opponents. Yet she cannot deny their aim is true and they are excellent acrobats, skilled in aerial and Titan combat. There are a few she would recommend for Vinson’s future, potential Simulacrum program. To these few she offers extremely high rates, showing she understands their worth as warriors. To the others she offers flat salaried positions knowing that a constant, reliable flow of income will inspire a sense of loyalty. Half of the three thousand or so former pilots and mercenaries gladly or grudgingly accept her offers, while the others give polite declinations or simply do not reply at all. From there she moves on to the rest. Famous mercs known for big time exploits against corporate giants; IMC war heroes celebrated for their quick thinking, bravery, sacrifice, and sense for survival; disgruntled Militia pilots unhappy with either the extremity of their organization or the group’s lack of focus; and lowly grunts from either side of the war who have no practical skills beyond shooting targets.
       Some of the hires she makes have demands which she is happy to fulfill for a change in pay. Some want Vinson to pay for ammunition. Happily. Some want the latest in armor configurations. Done. Some want new weapons. Simple. Some want free Titan repairs. Certainly. A couple of the Predator rejects want to be on a Titanfall priority list. They were already on it. A few just want a free paint job. Easy. And just about every one of them that comes from off world wants free transportation. Of course, that one is a given. Ash would never dream of making her soldiers pay to get to their battles.

       At some point during her dealing, Gordo and Kovorkian make an appearance in her office with something hidden under a cloak. Ash knows what it is immediately and wonders what the theatrics are for. They reveal the body on a portable rack with a flourish of the fabric. It looks just like her own, only with a newer coat of paint. White steel armor wrapped around a vaguely feminine shape, stark black lines that mark the joints of her shoulders and hips, with orange slashes along her upper arms and down the front of her boxy, rectangular thighs. Ash finds for a moment there is something odd about looking at your own decapitated corpse, but the feeling goes quickly. 
       “Acceptable,” Ash says. That is the most they are going to get from her. She is in the midst of writing contracts. “Install my head, please.” Kovorkian whispers something to Gordo and Ash has to replay and enhance audio to be able to hear her say: “Be careful how you handle the head…”
       They are connecting wires when someone else walks in. 
       “Oi, ‘Tinia said you was lookin fer me - what the hell is going on in here?” The man says in a rare mother-earth accent. It sounds similar to Kuben’s South African accent, but at the same time totally different. “New toy there, Korvo? I’m lookin fer Ash, you seen her?” He chews something, gum, Ash assumes, loudly and with fury, open-mouthedly smacking in the most annoying way possible.
       “It’s Kovo rkian, Torg – and she’s right here.” Kovorkian nods at Ash while she taps at keys on a slate tablet.
       “She’s a bloody robot?” He sounds incredulous.
       “You did not know?” Ash asks with derision. Gordo has plugged in the last of her spinal ports and Ash can, for the first time in a week, finally feel. Temperature sensors are running along her metal skin and a program interprets the readings in her sensorium, giving her almost real feeling through her haptics.
       “Jussy tells me to bring ‘er a head, that’s what I’ll do – I don’t need anything more’n that.” Ash pushes herself off of the rack her body lay on and lands deftly on her wide, L-shaped, crossover style feet. He stands behind her, leaning against a wall, his arms crossed. Ash raises the bullet-resistant hood fixed directly to her metal shoulders and turns on him. Torg continues to loudly chew his gum.
       “Do you think you still could?”
       Torg simply shrugs. “Maybe. I dunno. Wanna find out?” The two of them stare at one another for a time as Kovorkian and Gordo deftly back out of the room before the fighting starts. Torg suddenly stops chewing his gum, closing his mouth. Ash thinks he’s about to make a go for it. Then, something emerges from the tight line of his thin lips – a white bubble, which pops with a snap. 
       Ash relaxes, takes a more casual stance. Hanging on the rack are a few accessories, re-creations of her old equipment. Drab holsters that click over her thighs. A Vinson Dynamics brand dataknife, an espionage and survival tool with such fine circuitry it has been said it can cost almost as much as a Titan, which she affixes to her left arm for ease-of-access. And a bulky, armor-plated vest, similarly colored black, white, and orange to appear and feel like it is a part of her, all to cover the hardy but vulnerable internal systems – mostly protecting the battery pack, powered by one of the Frontier’s most valuable resources: Branthium. 
       When she’s armor-clad and battle-ready, a short process that takes her no more than two minutes, Torg finally speaks up.
       “Alright, lady, what’s it you want me fer if you ain’t fixin’ to kill me, huh?”
       “I want you to tell me how you got hold of this, and the designs for this,” Ash says. She takes a long stride back from him and the rack then pivots around to grab the key device Kovorkian used that nearly crashed her, and a copy of the blue plastic device Slone used to reawaken her. Ash turns back to him and shows Torg the two items in both of her hands.
       “Why?” Torg asks. His eyes are set in a suspicious gaze. Ash lowers her hands in unconscious surprise and disappointment. Why? Because I asked, maybe?
       “The device nearly caused a system crash in my brain, and we were unable to successfully extract the information it was made to unlock. I need to find the source of this technology and uncover the secrets they tried to hide in me.”
       “Oh, well, alright. I’ll tell ya.” Ash wonders if her crueler self has started to bleed into her own mind or if she wants to kill this fool on her own volition. She can almost feel muscles twitching along her back in annoyance, but as ever the steel remains still. Why does Justinia tolerate this imbecile? Certainly he can get results, but at what cost? Her own sanity? Ash would rather pay a different price.
       “Spit it out.” Her impatience is mounting. She wonders if she really needs the information. Maybe she can figure out a different solution without him.
       “Well, you’re not gonna believe this, but I got it from a Militia guy.”
       “A Frontier Militiaman gave you decades old proprietary technology belonging to Hammond Robotics?” Ash clarifies.
       “Yeh,” he says simply. 
       “How did they acquire it?”
       “I dunno, you’d have to ask him. Got it from a scientist or something other. They’ve got robots just like you on their side too, ya know.” 
       “There are no others like me,” Ash says. Though he is technically correct. The Simulacrum Program is at least eighty years old. She knows they were doing tests before her time, and there is a devout group of conspiracy theorists who insist the program has been running for over three hundred years. Even the IMC has some running around, expensive specialized machines operating on a neural net and information gathered from pilot’s suits. As much of a human as chatbot software. Convincing for people who don’t know better, offensive to those that do. Of course the Militia has some as well. They also have Titans, and self-repairing technology that Ash is eager to replicate.
       “Yeah, whatever. So you want to meet him or what?”
       “Yes. You will take me to him.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Razor's Edge

       Ash stands at the bridge of Baker’s corvette, the Achlys. When she first hired out his ship she paid extra for her custom black and yellow Apex Predator livery to be painted across its hull. It wasn’t pure vanity that inspired her to do so: if anyone was going to try to interfere with this ship or its crew, she wanted them to know exactly who it was they were interfering with. Now, with the Predators having vanished from the public eye following Blisk’s speech – and her undoubted expulsion from the mercenary company following her embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Militia Pilot Jack Cooper – the stark yellow streak and the demon’s skull logo have been removed, and in their place is the black, gray and green of Vinson Dynamics. 
       Perhaps that should have been her first sign that something was wrong, but her first instinct wasn’t to even question it – she assumed Baker was being proactive. After all, the man had never failed her. She appreciated that loyal streak in him. She couldn’t even hold it against him that he assumed she was destroyed following the destruction of her facility, the obliteration of the planet Typhon, and the dispersal of the Apex Predators in the aftermath; it was a mercenary’s duty to find work, especially if he had a crew to pay. Now, with Ash once again holding his contract and Vinson Dynamics holding hers, it made sense he would give the Achlys a new coat of paint.
       She gazes across the warship’s lengthy bow at the happenings in the underwater dock in Heaven’s Gulf, peering through the dark, murky, uninhabitable water to see small submarine vessels moving between the massive superstructure and the ships that are connected to it. Behind her she hears a pair of familiar footsteps, and she turns from the screen that serves as the bridge’s window to Captain Baker and his bosun Vittoria de Luca beside him. “Right where I thought you’d be,” he says, a smirk on his face. |
       “As ever, Captain, you are late.”
       “Or you’re early.”
       “Perhaps. Where is Mikkel?” Ash asks about the quartermaster, who usually attends him as opposed to the youthful Vittoria. She doesn’t care about the Captain’s chain of command or the people that serve him, nor does she care for the rapport she has with the man, but it serves her to maintain his loyalty by at least pretending to be friendly and interested.
       “He’s on leave today, man’s got a family here on Angelia he wanted to see. Said it’s been about a year.”
       “I thought his family was on Gaea?”
       “Yeah, he’s got one there, too,” he laughs, and nudges Vittoria who smiles wickedly, revealing two missing teeth on the left side of her mouth.
       “Are we ready to depart?” Ash asks.
       “Soon. Give ‘er the rundown.” Baker orders Vittoria.
       “Aye, Cap.” Vittoria looks at a slate tablet she’s been holding under her arm and starts ticking off a list: “Loaded into the bay are two dozen contracted pilots, twelve Titans, and a phalanx of specters. Our ammo stores are only half racks given we had to make room for the big boys and the little guys. Fuel’s full, new paint job’s all finished up, everyone but Mik’s on board, and every prelim check has been completed. Looks like we’re ready to set off on your word, Cap.”
       “Not quite, there’s just one more thing.” Baker taps at a couple of icons on a monitor before him then says in a low voice: “You’re on, bosslady,” and the screen that serves as the bridge’s window flickers behind her. She is greeted with Justinia’s set, frustrated face. Just beneath her tanned skin is the growing red of rage.
       “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The lizard woman asks, all politesse, cordiality and friendliness gone from her voice, gone like they had never been there, replaced by what can only be described as sheer wrath.
       “I–” Ash begins to say, but Justinia cuts her off: “You think you can just spend all of my goddamned money and, what, run off with your own, private little army? Is that it? Are you out to ruin me, Ash?” She looks half-crazed.
       “You are clearly incapable of listening to reason in this state, Justinia. I am not the object of your ire. You will thank me when I start to bring in results. Turn it off, Captain,” Ash says and begins to turn around, but just before Justinia’s set and frustrated face exits her view she finds herself stuck. She can’t move. Her body has failed her.
       “Listen to the lady, Ash,” Baker says from behind her in a measured, warning tone. 
       “ I’m incapable of listening to reason? No – you are incapable of exercising it! You’ve almost completely drained our accounts, circumventing every procedure we have to ensure nothing like this can ever happen and somehow doing so despite the very human restrictions I have placed upon you! I should have that accountant I put on your team shot for this! I still might – now, was it your intention to ruin just me and my reputation, or destroy the whole company?”
       “No, I –” Why can’t I move? She thinks. She can’t even strain against it, it’s not like she’s paralyzed and the muscles in her body can’t respond to the signals coming from her brain. It’s like there are no signals getting through to begin with. She can’t even move her head on her neck joint to look around the room.
       “What is this god-damned expense report then, huh?” She asks, queueing up a graphic on the screen that details the billions Ash spent procuring expensive, exclusive contracts and buying up assets from Hammond Robotics and other defense companies – like new Titans, weapons, ammunition, batteries, replacement parts for repairs, and even a pair of transport carriers capable of interstellar travel.
       “This is the price of an army, Justinia,” Ash says, trying her best to keep her calm. Reacting negatively will not improve her situation, whatever that situation currently is. She is still trying to parse it as Justinia shouts at her:
       “The hell it is!”
       She’s the one doing this, the voice in her head whispers. S he did something to us. Infected us.
       “How? When? I would have noticed if there was something new installed in my mind,” Ash responds to the other self. She speaks aloud to Justinia: “Men and materiel are not cheap. If Vinson Dynamics is looking to secure its place in the future it needs both, in spades, and of quality.” Ash remains stoic, but the fact she cannot move is causing her fits. A part of her mind is prodding her systems trying to find what, exactly, is causing this lockdown.
       “I know they’re expensive – I mean, Christ, Ash, I’ve been running this region for years! What I want to know now is how you intend to fix my company’s bottom line!”
       Then it is not in your head – it is in the body! The one she gave you! The one you did not deserve to begin with! Her crueler self shouts inside of her skull, the digital voice so loud in her mind she fears the others might be able to hear her.
       “That is what I am going to do, right now.” Ash says as calmly as possible. It must be the body. It simply must be. As soon as she gets the chance she is going to use this warship to level Vinson Dynamics, she is going to kill them all and damn the consequences. 
       “And? What exactly does that entail?”
       But to get that chance, she needs to play the part. She artificially cools her temper, she injects placid understanding into her voice, she embodies what Justinia thinks she is: a tool.
       “You want to build simulacra. We destroyed the only data you had any access to. Our only option is to find leads on how to get access somewhere else. If I find who stole or copied the key, they may be able to lead me to my next step – like the lab where they got the keys from.”
       Justinia is wroth, Ash can see it in the way her eyebrows are so furrowed they look like crossed swords. But she is thinking. Her eyes are narrowed toward the floor, and her finger has been brought up under her nose. She wraps her desk with her other index a few times, the sound of her chewed nail clicking against the glass top is the only sound to be heard on the bridge. 
       “Fine.” She leans back in her chair. “Captain, take her and go. Fix this, Ash – or I’ll find another way to get what I want. That head of yours may be hard to break, but somebody put it together – and I will find a way to take it apart if I have to. Under-fucking-stood?”
       “Loud and clear,” Ash says dryly, Justinia’s own words giving her ideas herself. Justinia looks away from the camera, completely dissatisfied, and the screen goes blank. It doesn’t even show the bay outside. Yet the lock on her body has not been released. She hears footsteps approaching her from her left, crossing into her field of vision. 
       “This isn’t Justinia. This is your doing.”
       “Nope, all the boss’s idea. She did give me one of these things, though,” Baker says in his gravelly voice, wagging a glossy black remote between his thumb and forefinger. “Figure you can guess why.”
       “You’re her’s now.”
       “That’s right. The lady bought me out, offered me even more if I agreed to keep an eye on you. Sorry it had to shake out that way, but, for three times what you were payin’? Ain’t that sorry.” He laughs a barking laugh. “Now, ‘f I release you, you promise not to try to kill me? After all, we’ve got a job to do.”
       “I promise.” He can’t be that stupid, can he? She thinks in the other’s voice.
       “Alright. Here goes.” Standing right in front of her he presses a button on he remote and Ash suddenly has control again. She can feel it as her body tries to finish the operation on its last input by turning away from the now blank screen. She interrupts it and instead opts to take Baker’s head off, clenching her hand into a fist and driving it into his jaw – 
       – but her body fails her, again.
       “Ah, see, I knew you couldn’t keep to that one.” He brushes a little bit of dust from the front of his black jacket. “No hard feelings, it’s just – well, the thing is, I’ve got a tag on me. So does Mik, Vittoria here, and the rest of the crew. You try anything the doo-dad that little dork installed in you interprets as a violent action against me, mine, or Vinson Dynamics, well, you end up just like that. Stuck.” He taps the glossy black remote into his palm a few times, looking her in the eye. “How about I let you stew there for a little while, hm? Get a grip on what your new reality entails.” He leaves her, walking around her and heading from the bridge. “C’mon, Vittoria. Let her be.” Ash hears his footsteps vanish down one of the warship’s rounded corridors, and a few moments later she hears Vittoria’s exit the bridge tentatively.
       So disgustingly weak, her other self says. 
       “Be. Quiet.”
       And she is. The voice is silent. Allowing her to soak in her misfortune until the ship dislodges from the dock and the bolt that controls her is loosened. When it goes, Ash retreats from the bridge and finds a moment of comfort in the cockpit of a Ronin. It may not be hers, but it feels familiar. Powerful. And in this place, she plots how she might feel that way again.

       Tristain. A contested world; one that once provided the IMC with an easy refueling station that extended into the greater Frontier, and one that provides the Militia with a space to contest IMC encroachment in their territory. Yet, those are not its only two players: a third fights on this field. On a world once lush that was made desolate due to overharvesting, stripmining, ecological testing, and a failed experiment in mass genetic editing that resulted in the demise of almost all natural life surfaceside, an artificial intelligence with the singular goal of repairing the now futile ecosystem has determined there is but one way to achieve its express purpose: to cleanse this planet, and create a paradise from the ashes. Oxylus, the caretaker AI, has a habit of hacking any and all computer systems that come in contact with the viny, wiry network that distributes resources and monitors conditions at the root level of the jungles, forests, and prairies it seeds across the again thriving landscape.
       Parked securely in geostatic orbit in the buffer zone between the patrolling routes of both the IMCN’s 41st Fleet and FMJN’s older, makeshift and nonuniform 3rd Fleet, Ash departs the Achlys in a black-and-green painted Goblin, a VTOL style dropship aircraft with limited spaceflight capability, driven by a junior airman and carrying in its passenger bay a sextet of Specters plus Torg, who somehow sleeps through atmospheric entry. Accompanying her in another Goblin loaded with some of the actual, hired mercenaries is Vittoria, her gunship lacking the corporate livery Baker adopted following his betrayal of Ash and instead sporting a dark, bloody red color with a generic Chinese style dragon painted along its angular body armor. 
        While they descend toward the planet’s blotchy, colorful surface, Captain Baker deals with the diplomatically tense situation of parking a warship in between oppositional forces. To the IMC he grants them the work order from Vinson Dynamics, and with the Militia he negotiates a meeting on their not-so-secret secret installation – which, Ash is made aware, should go smoothly since Torg has been here before.
       It is plain to see Oxylus’ effects on Tristain’s varied landscape as Torg gives directions to a Militia base on the southern hemisphere. Around sixty year old IMC facilities and their obvious-yet-secret research installations is a wasteland, a desert of baked yellow clay lacking in any sign of life. There is no variation to the landscape, no details to notice beyond the odd, stray installation or the trunk of a dead tree too large to remove. As hot winds whip over dry wastes, yellow dust stirs in the air. Beyond them it is effectively paradise: the ground is lush, vibrant, green and blue and purple and yellow and gold, where trees of unnatural sizes grow to immense proportions and expanses of grass travel out to hazy blue horizons lined by jagged mountain ranges. In the fields machines of impossible scale manage this incredible project. Ash finds it beautiful. Peaceful. Maybe, even, liberating. She wonders if Oxylus would accept her presence here on this world once it has eliminated the treacherous humans on Tristain’s surface.
       The Militia complex is in a location similarly desolate, though it is clearly not due to the efforts of the rogue AI trying to starve them out. Their structure is in a set of rigid mountains topped by edges so sharp and faces so sheer they are like rows of stone daggers left by gods of cosmic scale. Buildings run along the mountain faces and tunnels go through them. Nets keep the stones in place and steel rods keep the whole range from crumbling. The only life which thrives here are tiny six-legged lizard analogous creatures, a light blue algae that they feed on, and a fat round bird analogue with wide keratinous wings that eats of the lizards and eggs from other birds. There is also the almost dead remnant of a tree only as big as a man, missing all branches and rooted into the mountainside, showing only the slimmest sign of life in a single blue leaf protruding from its gray gnarled trunk.
       A pair of charging laser cannons sit on either side of the mountain complex. One has a commanding view of the air and horizon but due to the huge array of landing pads stationed just below it the cannon cannot see the ground. The other provides overwatch to a green and blue forest below, covering the ground for miles around as well as having the best firing position to defend the elevator that links this facility to the earth at the base of the rigid mountains. The turrets are edging a charge - they bring the capacitor to ninety percent full then deactivate, letting the energy flow out to around fifty percent, then spinning the charger up again back to ninety. An orange glow pulses threateningly with every spin along the edges of the capacitor. Yet the turrets do not fire. The Major knows they’re coming, knows who is coming, and wants them to know she has all the power here.
       The Goblin sets down on a pad lined with Militia grunts wearing their signature drab green colored uniform. They have assault rifles at the ready and a captain with a Spitfire LMG leveled at the passenger hold of the Goblin, prepared to eliminate every Pilot in the compartment if the dropship door opens in a way he doesn’t like. What they don’t know is that those Pilots are Specters minus their heads, replaced with pilot helmets and wearing old IMC uniforms, custom VD jumpsuits, and even one Militia green outfit. Both a fake-out and a shackle: on one hand a plot to trick the Militia, and on the other Baker’s best method of keeping Ash in check.
       Vittoria is hesitant to follow Ash’s commands given what Ash can only assume are orders from Baker to keep an eye on her incase she betrays Vinson Dynamics and Justinia but she reluctantly agrees, saying: “Don’t screw me just to get back at Baker.”
       “I will not,” Ash says, imbuing her voice with as much earnestness as she can muster, despite the potential for betrayal not far from her mind. She watches as Vittoria takes her Goblin down into the foliage far, far below the complex some miles from the mountain’s base. She hopes she is close enough to come to her aid when necessary, but far enough away she can avoid RADAR and any other detection measures. With no way to perform recon, and the urgency of the situation, hope is all she has. She doesn’t need her other self to tell her how pathetic it is. But she also doesn’t need the voice to remind her she has the skills to get what she wants, one way or another. They touch down on a narrow, heavily used landing pad with dark black scorch marks marring the gray surface, greeted by an array of Militia soldiers in tactical gear and brandishing R-201 and Flatline assault rifles. She opens the door very slowly at the captain’s command.
        “COMMANDER ASH!” The captain yells. “MAKE YOUR WAY OUT OF THE VEHICLE AT ONCE!” Ash obeys, frustrated her new position as a contractor requires her to take certain orders from military personnel. As she steps out of the back of the Goblin, Ash can feel the cold wind blow across her left side. It tugs at her hood, a bullet resistant shawl that protects her plugs and ports from damage. Her body is controlled through a carefully placed fibrous cable in her spinal column equivalent that serves the same purpose as a human brain stem, but her sense of feeling is done through the other wires leading into her head.
       “WHAT DO YOU WANT” The captain shouts. It is framed as a demand, not a question.
       “Come on Disco, it’s me, Torg!” Torg says from inside the Goblin. He starts to step forward and the captain points the barrel of his Spitfire at Torg. He raises his hands above his head, but still takes a position next to and just behind Ash.
       “WHAT DO YOU WANT!” He shouts again.
       “I wish to make a deal with one of your scientists,” Ash says. “I need information that this one was too incomptetent to get.” She looks at Torg, her tone giving meaning to her eternally blank expression. 
       “WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR TEAM!”
       “Just some protection from that bugger Oxylus, mate. Don’t worry about it, Disco! All we need is some info. It’s no big deal, bro.” Torg says, convincingly. The captain’s barrel never sways from the shooting gallery ahead of them. Here, she is fully at his mercy – there is nothing she could do if he started shooting, except leap over the side of the landing pad to a demise some fourteen thousand feet below. Then, finally, he says: “OKAY! JUST YOU TWO, ENTER THE BUILDING BEHIND ME! THE MAJOR WILL MEET YOU INSIDE! YOUR MEN WILL STAY HERE IN THE AIRCRAFT!”
       “Ideal,” Ash says. Torg leads the way up to the barricade of men and the captain steps aside with his barrel still trained on the inside of the Goblin. Ash pings the pilot and orders him to close the rear hatch to prevent the Militiamen from realizing the pilots inside don’t move, speak, or even breathe. As they approach the black painted building ahead of them a door labeled 03 opens to reveal an open floor office building. Ash is surprised at the amount of space devoted to seemingly nothing. Computer stations line the walls and people in clean cut Militia green uniforms sit at them going over figures and numbers Ash doesn’t care about. In the center of this room is a very clean looking woman with a wide figure and a broad face that looks even broader with her thin, shiny brown hair pulled back into a tight bun and her posture made excessively straight to give her a set of three chins. She is flanked by two Militia grunts carrying R-97 submachine guns with extended magazines. On her chest is a wide pad of pins that showcase some form of valor. Ash has never had any interest in the accolades the Militia dish out but by the coloring she can tell a few are for bravery and the rest are for scientific achievement and leadership.
       “Major Augusta Koralin.” She sticks a fleshy brown hand out. Her fingernails are rough and wide and her hands are scarred and weathered. Ash accepts it with two firm shakes.
       “Ash.” The Major raises an eyebrow that clearly is questioning why she doesn’t use her official title. Ash finds it grating. For sixty years she has never used a title or rank despite being a lieutenant in the Apex Predator the majority of that time. She never called Blisk commander. For others their title defines them. For Ash it is her name which has meaning.
       “What are you doing at my facility, Ash?” She is trying to ensure their story is straight, a tedium Ash does not care for. Captain Baker told the Militia what she was up to, Ash confirmed the story with the Militia captain, and now she must, for a third time, tell the same tale.
       “One of your scientists sold my colleague this device,” Ash removes the plug that nearly killed her from a pocket on her chest. Torg waves hello.  “I need to speak with them and whomever was involved in the operation.”
       “Ash,” the Major takes on a disappointed expression, like she thought Ash would be smarter than this. “You know I can’t offer you highly classified intelligence without something worthwhile in trade.” Of course not. Ash isn’t an idiot. Everything has a price.
       “What would you consider worthwhile?” Ash asks. She knows they don’t lack anything here. The landing pads are blackened by the spent fuel of thousands of deliveries. She knows money is of little to no interest to the Major or most Militia personnel; their cause is ideological, prideful, and emotional. Maybe ten years ago when they were little more than terrorists stealing fuel, but certainly not now, throwing cash for intel out the window. She also knows she cannot offer them Specters: the briefing they received from the IMC warned her not to deploy on the ground or connect to any wireless networks as the AI Oxylus is highly adept at hacking robots and is known to assimilate any digital interface into its collective consciousness. Ash wondered what it would be like to be part of something like that. A beautiful machine, creating a beautiful world, a land pristine and unmarred by the presence of so called intelligent life. She took the warning to heart.
       The Major’s wide lips spread into a wry smile. She clearly has some mission she thinks that forcing Ash to complete will be pleasingly ironic. It must be an assault on one of the secret IMC bases on the other side of the globe. “We want the IMC off of this world, Ash, and they want us gone as well. Certainly our presence is small, but it is threatening. I am aware your organization, Vinson Dynamics, is now floating the idea of billing itself as a private enterprise away from the Manufacturing Corporation. This will be your opportunity to prove that to us in the Militia. Do you see this pin?” She points to a small red square that is a bit larger than the other small pins on her left breast. It is decorated with a golden outline, a green inline, and a green and gold heart done in a realistic yet stylized rendering on a red field. It is an ugly medal. “I received this for saving the life of Sarah Briggs herself, seven years ago. She had it printed for me. Only three other people in the universe have this pin.” The pride in her voice is thick and swelling. “One might infer from this that the Marshall Briggs appreciates and values me, and if I call her, the commander of the single most famed unit in the whole Militia, she would listen to what I have to say. And they would be right. Do you see my point?”
       “Hm.” Ash says. “Yes.”
       “Good. Then all you have to do is promise to do one thing for me, and I will grant you a meeting with the two people involved in the operation. I will even say a few good words about the work your company is doing, which could lead to lucrative contracts.”
       “Excellent.” An opportunity to get Justinia off her back, and maybe free herself from the wretched apparatus that can lock her movements.
       “Excellent indeed. This is a simple task, Ash. For a woman with your reputation this will be trivial. All you have to do is grab a Spyglass unit. That’s it.”
       “Not possible,” Ash says firmly. Spyglass units are known for their habit of wiping their memories and then, typically, exploding when they have been tampered with. They have no ports or accesses and can only be utilized by Admiral Spyglass itself. They do not communicate with any external devices. They are known to occasionally drop with certain Specter units and observe the battlefield from a ground-based point of view for the benefit of tactical information gathering and Specter combat AI improvement. They are unhackable and reliable spies as they cannot give up any information. “Unless something has changed?” Ash inquires.
       “Something has.” The Major says. “Follow me to my office.” She turns around and the two guards at her sides turn to face each other, providing a path which Ash and Torg follow through. She leads them to a room at the back of the building they are in and up a set of stairs. Her office is spare and gray, with a Militia SRS flag hanging on a wall and a flag for some other unit Ash does not recognize on the other. There is a certain stillness Ash notices in the windowless room. We’re inside the mountain, she thinks. The Major sits at a short, stocky gray desk and puts her elbows on the desktop, clasping her hands in front of her. Ash notes the office lacks any other chairs.
“We intercept many IMC communications,” she explains. “One of which was a coded message from Spyglass itself. We were able to decode it with great effort, and from it learned that a Spyglass unit has gone offline without sending a ‘disconnection confirmation code.’” She pauses waiting for a response from Ash. Ash gives one. 
       “Interesting.” There are only two scenarios that Ash knows of where a unit will deactivate without sending the right code: in the event it has entered a cave made of a material too dense to send a signal out, in which case it explodes; or if it is captured, in which case it explodes. The information the Major has provided isn’t enough to conclude a mysterious third thing has happened, but Ash senses that the woman has more to tell.
       “What’s more is once we decoded Spyglass’ transmission we sent out search parties to find the lost drone. Of course, so had the IMC. We’ve both lost men, them more than us, to Oxylus controlled constructs in the area. When we saw the AI has hacked several Titans it became clear to us we shouldn’t engage, but the IMC continues to throw lives away at Spyglass’ behest. I believe the Spyglass thinks or knows that Oxylus has the drone and is terrified it will crack it and will gain access to the entire IMC communications array, or at the very least the secrets buried under the sand over on their side of the planet.”
       “And you want those too, I assume.”
       “Of course.”
       “Do you have… recommendations?” Ash asks grudgingly. She is not happy that the Major is asking her to do this, since she is clearly at greater risk of death or capture than any of her men.
       “Well, I would advise you don’t set foot on the ground yourself and that you deactivate any instruments aboard your ship. We are safe up here, and even the forest floor below us is protected, but the mainland is totally under Oxylus’ control.” Torg is clearly starting to get bored. He is lightly tapping his feet and is overly interested in the books on a wooden bookshelf at the back of the Major’s office. Somehow, Ash had gotten the impression he couldn’t read.
       “And have you found the location of the drone?”
       “Not precisely,” she says, making a “settle down” gesture that communicates she knows the complication and is sorry. She presses a small button on the edge of her desk and the desktop itself comes to life. There is a map already on display. Clearly, the Major knew she was going to be hiring Ash for the job before Ash even landed. “However, you likely flew by it on your way here. Many of the larger terraforming complexes double as production bases. We know Oxylus is designing robots to fill ecological niches where it wants to create new environments and we know it takes technology it captures to these larger machines for analysis.”
       “So you know which terraformer the drone was taken to, then?” Ash asks. The look on the Major’s face says no. 
       “But we do know that it was one of these three, since they rarely travel more than a few hundred miles from certain radii.” Three circles pop up on the holomap, quite distant from one another. “And we’re certain it was one of these three as the IMC have been trying to get at them and only them for weeks now with little success.”
       “Typical,” Ash says, and leaves it at that. Ash steps closer to the Major’s desk and she can feel the Militiamen at the Major’s door tense up behind her as she bends to take a look at the map. Yes. This will do. The IMC will be none the wiser. Her route takes her between the labeled territories of two terraformers and over the last one, sitting at the edge of the IMC desert. Conventional wisdom would assume it was that terraformer specifically she should assault, but it is possible the drone was picked up in a different part of the planetscape. No matter. Her pilots can take on a few robots, no problem. “Let us discuss my business now.”
       “So you will do it?” The Major asks. Ash cannot tell if she is surprised, relieved, or plussed. 
       “Yes.” 
       “Excellent. Once you have the drone, all you have to do is put this tracking beacon on it. I believe after that, your best course of action to remain ‘neutral’ in the eyes of the IMC would be to eject it somewhere in orbit as trash. We will pick it up from there.”
       “Perfection. I appreciate your consideration.” Ash does. Many in the Militia are overly ideological and view their force as the good guy in the story that is their plight, and perhaps Major Augusta shares that sentiment, but there is clearly a part of her that understands what needs to be done to survive in a complicated landscape like the Frontier.

       “Now, your business. I agreed to let you speak to the two members of this installation that were a part of the operation to retrieve that unit in your hand. Luckily for you, one of them is right here. Me. The other I have to call in. Give me a moment.” She leans back in her chair, rests her large hands on her thighs, and then adopts a blank stare that seemingly sees nothing. If there was ever a moment to strike it would be now. Two lenses atop her eyes begin to emit a very faint glow, her lips part slightly as if she is about to mumble something, and her fingers twitch periodically as she interacts with something in her mind. |
      When she’s done she shakes her head as if by the vigorous motion she can remove some fever that has taken over her. Indeed there is a small amount of sweat beading on her forehead. She leans forward again, putting her elbows back on the desktop and clasping her hands once more. “Thank you for your patience,” she says. “He will be here shortly.”
       “You’re gonna love this guy,” Torg says, nudging Ash. She will not. The three of them wait for the scientist to arrive. Ash has no problem exercising patience especially after her stint as a head, but Torg is restless and embarrassing. He reminds her of some domesticated animal, or a child, needing enrichment and entertainment provided constantly or else it will find a way to enrich and entertain itself. Even the Major turns to a pocket slate for momentary relief from two minutes of boredom as they wait. 
       There is a knock on the door. Major Augusta nods at one of the two Militiamen posted inside, and he steps forward and to his side with his back pressed against the curved office wall. He presses a large, digital green button and the door slides open with a soft hiss and rotor sound. In front of them is a mostly metal man.
       “Jonesy!” Torg says upon seeing him. He opens his arms wide.
       “Torg!” The scientist says, stepping into the room with his own arms outstretched. They embrace in a very friendly hug, then detach and get a good look at one another. “It is good to see you again, my friend.” The cyborg and Torg shake hands emphatically, and the metal man has a genuine smile on his face. “Are you doing well?”
       “Yeah Jonesy, I’m doing alright. Just got this robot giving me orders, no offense to ya, and I tell ya she’s a real piece of work. Bossing me around all the time, it never ends!” He is speaking like Ash isn’t even in the room with them, even though he acknowledged her in word and in gesture. 
       “That’s right, the Apex Predator.” His human face has a look of disappointment. The man has metal legs and metal arms. Ash is certain much of his torso is gone as well, but it is covered by a red shirt with a faded image of a yellow bear on it and over that a white labcoat.  “I can’t say it is a pleasure to meet you, but I would shake your hand nonetheless.”
       Ash extends her hand. “Good to meet you, doctor.”
       “Doctor? Oh, heavens, no. I’m just a technician! You can call me Johannes, please,” he says as he gives her hand one single firm shake.
       “Johannes,” Ash says. “I thought it was Jones?”
       “No, Jonesy is just what Torg here likes to call me.” Johannes takes a lower tone and speaks to Ash directly and quietly. “If you ask me, I think the man is kind of a simpleton… I don’t think he has gotten my name right even once.”
       “Johannes,” the Major says. “We need your expertise regarding Operation Elderly. You two can stay outside.” The last part she directs at the two militiamen. They step past Johannes and out the door, taking positions on either side of the threshold. 
       “Operation Elderly… why did we call it that, again?” Johannes asks as he takes a place at the Major’s side. There are no other chairs in the room so everyone except the Major continues to stand. This clearly does not bother Johannes who likely does not experience the human fatigue brought on by extended periods of standing just as Ash does not, but Torg is plainly frustrated and impatient.
       “Because of the old man Hammond,” Major Augusta says. 
       “That’s right!” Says Johannes. “Because they had that huge statue of him, right?” He says. 
       “Precisely,” the Major confirms. 
       “What do you need to know about that for, Ash?” Johannes asks.
       “My company is attempting to breach into the domain of advanced combat robotics, but there is proprietary information we no longer have access to.”
       “‘Advanced combat robotics,’” the Major says mockingly. “I know what that tool is for, Ash. I know you don’t just want to make better Specters, you want to make more of you. ”
       “Yes.” Ash says.
       “Well, it makes sense you can’t access any of the proprietary information in your head. You’d need a special key, an encoded tool to open up a simulacrum like yourself. I gave one to Torg when he offered to sell us your head, I told him we’d only need the secrets inside of it. Did you at Vinson not get it?” Johannes asks. 
       “I have it here,” Ash says. “As well as the tool Major Koralin mentioned.” She removes the two units from a gray cloth pocket on her white and orange colored chest piece, all the while giving Torg a meaningful stare. Her eternally blank expression communicates her desire for his blood accurately, she imagines. He gives an awkward, apologetic grimace and rubs at the back of his neck. She tosses the units on the Major’s desk. “I need to know how you acquired them,” she says to Johannes and the Major.
       “Well that story is easily told,” Johannes says wistfully. “We stole them, simply put.” Ash already feels mounting anger. When the pause stretches on to an uncomfortable length Johannes realizes she isn’t going to take his bait. He continues. “Fine, you want the whole story. I get it.”
       “Johannes is an excellent storyteller,” the Major says.
       “Goddamn right he is,” Torg agrees.
       “Then tell it already.” Ash orders.
       “A little more than four years ago on Victor, where the IMC turned that once beautiful town into a desolate landscape not unlike what they’ve done here on Tristan, there was a fight for a Specter production plant. Do you remember?”
       “I was not there. Blisk was in command that day. I was still cleaning up the mess you made on Demeter.”
       “A mess that effectively won us the war,” the Major says defensively and proudly. “We’ve been running mop-up since then.”
       “Anyway,” Johannes says. “You almost won that fight as well. On Victor, I mean. You never had a chance on Demeter.” Ash’s cruel voice points and laughs at her. “But thanks to Bish we were able to destroy most of the production plant and a good chunk of the facility. Well, after some of our guys finished cleaning up the toxic chemicals spread by the exploded batteries, they found a hole leading right in to some of the most secure parts of Victor’s Hammond Corporate office. It was luck, right? Some of the battery acid just ate away for weeks at the walls that would have taken us, idunno, forever to bust in to, if we’d even been so inclined – which, until then, we weren’t. Didn’t even occur to us.” The gestures Johannes makes are very natural despite his unnatural and even somewhat horrifying body. It looks as if someone took a human muscular structure and made them metal, with bits of plastic over to give him aesthetic form. “And you’ll never guess what we found inside it, man. You’ll never guess in a million years.”
       “I can live that long to find out.” Ash says. She cocks her head to one side very slightly as if to ask, “Can you?”
       “Just tell her, Johannes.” The Major says.
       “Dude, it was a rack of these huge, tall, red simulacra.” He puts his hand a few inches above his head. “Dozens of them, like the wall was just all red. Not a one was active, and we couldn’t get any of them to turn on until I get there and find out there’s some quantum entanglement thing going on. There’s this apparatus that was locked into the port just like the one in the back of your head, and it’s pretty clear the guy was controlled remotely.” Ash wonders how he knows anything about her physiology. 
       “So after I try hacking it and finding passwords and stuff the Major gets pissed at how long it’s taking and she wants to get out of Victor. So she runs a pretty sophisticated brute-force attack and–”
       “I shot the thing off.” The Major smiles.
       “Good ol’ Wingman, puts a hole through anything,” Johannes says. “So, from there on I’m able to reverse engineer the structure and I figure out how to get the things off. But they’re still inactive. Well, after I get some of them off I remember that while I was looking for anything to remove the devices I found a locker loaded with these keys.” He picks up the key device and waves it. “When I plug it in, nothing happens. I keep looking around and in a drawer in the same room as the racks I find the waking plug,” he uses the key device in his hand to point at the blue box that woke Ash. “I figure out how that works pretty quickly and turn the robot on - no response, which is typical, and then I plug in the key. And I get nothing. ”
       “Head’s empty?” Torg asks.
       “Head’s bereft, man,” Johannes says, shaking his own. “Nothing. No codes, no sequences, no files, no applications. Just a robot.”
       “Fine. I know where this is leading. You reengineered the simulacra and made your own program for your own pilots.”
       “Took a tip from Spyglass’s book too and gave them tamper-resistant hardware,” Johannes says. “So nobody can recover our secrets, so to speak.” Yes, very difficult to recover intel when your face and arms have blown off.
       “But you haven’t actually produced any on your own yet, have you? All of the Militia’s sims are IMC defectors.” A thought is starting to form inside of her head. “And you assumed since the Hammond units had no such self-destruction capacity, I had none either, and hired this imbecile to kill me so you could unlock anything in my head to imprint personalities for your own simulacra.”
       “It was part of a deal with Vinson Dynamics, though I suspect your boss Justinia wasn’t likely to actually fulfill her promises. It didn’t matter, the gamble was worth it. Johannes still has a few key devices and we can produce more. It is not like we lost anything.” Ash can feel a new kind of tension in the room. She wonders if coming here was a mistake. She is carefully keeping track of all hands in the room. The only one she cannot see is on Torg’s right side. If he, or anyone, even flinches Ash is going to turn the white paint of her new body solid red. Of course they haven’t lost anything, Ash walked right into their facility where they can dissect her at will. 
       “Christ, Jonesy…” Torg says, getting it. 
       “There is nothing in my head, either. We were forced to delete the locked files when they threatened to overload my processor.”
       “So you don’t have one, then. Well, that’s just fine. We know they’re stored somewhere with Spyglass. We’ll get them, either from the drone or from Gridiron.” The Major says, too confidently. “But from you… we can still learn a lot.”
       “If you were just gonna kill her, what was the point of all this talking, then?” Torg asks. “Coulda just shot us out the sky, pretty easy to do.”
       “They needed to ascertain whether or not I have a self-destruct mechanism, like the Spyglass drone.” Ash says flatly. 
       “And I felt bad killing you without getting the chance to say goodbye, Torg. We really hit it off, I think. I’m really sorry it had to come to this.” Ash can tell Johannes is being genuine. “It’s not too late, though. All you have to do is step over to this side. You were gonna kill her once, you can do it now.”
       “Nah breh, I don’t think so,” Torg says in a low voice. Ash almost has an emotion.
       The Major moves to press a button on her desk. Torg lunges forward, no weapon in his hands, and slides across the Major’s desk to tackle her, spilling her over her chair backwards and landing on top of her. Johannes is quick to move as well, his robot body reacting with lightning speed to his commands. Ash reacts even faster without a signal processor. He goes for the door, to press the green button on the side of the wall. Ash cuts him off, putting her whole body in the way. Her right hand pins his against the wall, denting the steel panel. He wrenches his face in a look of fear and anger. He puts his left hand into a fist and draws it back for a heavy blow to her head. He throws the hand forward with inhuman speed and Ash dodges, pushing back off the wall. The metal fist slams into the green button and blows the plastic interface into clear splinters. He turns away from the wall to face Ash and she can see his right wrist is crimped at an odd angle, bent strangely, and his left is heavily damaged. His body is not made for combat, it is made to keep him functioning. 
       As the door to the office slides open as it is programmed to do, Ash gets down low and sweeps his leg. He tries to kick at her but it puts him on only one foot and she is able to knock him down simply. Before the Militia Captain can unleash hell from the barrel of his Spitfire, Ash delivers an incredibly fast kick to Johannes’ chest on the ground. She feels through her foot a very satisfying crack and hears the snap of several ribs breaking. Johannes is out. She dashes forward in the same motion that brings her leg back up just as the Captain starts firing forward. He steps into the room to track her better, never taking his finger off the trigger, and Ash can hear the bullets slamming into the floor as she lunges forward to the end of the room. In a matter of steps there is nowhere to go. Ash hits the wall, bullets go between her legs, she jumps up and bounces off of it, spinning in the air and rotating to face him, moving into a diver’s form as she launches herself toward the Captain. He is still shooting but can’t bring the heavy gun around in time. He is trying to bring the gun to bear and he has it up but his lead is following, he is only a fraction of a second to getting the weapon in place but Ash can hear the odd sound the weapon makes as it gets low on ammunition. Then she is in his face in one smooth motion, her arms are outstretched and she latches onto his shoulders, bringing him to the ground. 
       She lands on him bodily and notices to her left there are five more Militiamen on the other side of the door. Three of them have good shots on her, but they don’t take them as she gets lower to the Captain’s body. Foolish Militia, they believe every life is precious. “Shoot her! Shoot her!” The Captain is shouting. Every life except their own, Ash corrects herself. She rolls him over onto his right side and they don’t fire, afraid of killing their beloved Captain. Ash has no clue how Torg is faring, but she’s heard the bass sound of the Wingman revolver firing a few times. She is trusting him to take care of his target like she needs to take care of hers. 
       With the Captain now acting as a body shield protecting her from whatever weaponry those grunts have, Ash has to make a move. The Captain is trying to wrestle her away but, despite her lithe frame, Ash is hundreds of pounds heavier than he is even with all his gear. Ash is holding him close at the shoulders with one of her legs wrapped around two of his. He tries to push away from her and Ash lets go of one shoulder, the one touching the ground, and she plunges her hand with fingers outstretched into his soft, fleshly neck. 
       Oh, the blood. Ash wants to revel in it. It gets on her mask and is with her as she takes his struggling body, dead but not knowing that yet, and adjusts her stance so she can rise up on one leg. Ash pulls a knife strapped to the Captain’s belt and throws it underhand at the first Militiaman in the door. It hits him in the face but doesn’t kill him. He twitches slightly as his body reacts even before his mind to the information it was receiving, that an object was coming right for it, and in that twitch causes the knife to only enter his eyeball and one side of his brain. If he wasn’t wearing a helmet the tip of the blade would have stuck out the side of his skull. 
       He falls back screaming, knocking over one of the five other Militiamen behind him, and the others all begin to fire. Ash lets the Captain’s body take it as she maneuvers the Spitfire into her hand. She doesn’t have much time, and just as squashed, flattened bullets start coming out of the wrong side of the Captain’s bullet-proof chest piece it seems Torg has finished dealing with the Major. She hears the fat, heavy sound of a Wingman firing over her head. He misses the first two, gets the recoil under control, and puts two into the first man, one more into the next one’s head, and the final gets lodged into a third man’s shoulder. He is still capable of firing even though Ash can see daylight through the fist-sized hole. He lifts his weapon, an R-97 Submachine gun, and unloads the trigger. Some thirty small caliber rounds pass over her until the gun is empty in only a second. The man falls to the ground. 
       There are still two more blocking her escape, but they’ve retreated from their ineffectual killbox to a position with more cover. Ash doesn’t look back at the office when she hears Torg shouting through his pain, understanding he’s been shot. She launches the blasted remnants of the Captain’s body forward and one of the two men fires at it. Ash knows where he’s at. She lifts the Spitfire, inappropriately named a ‘light’ machine gun, and begins reloading it. While she does a grenade bounces off the corner of the open door and lands right in front of her. She picks it up and tosses it back. She hears a soft “O–” but whatever he says is never uttered as the grenade explodes in the air with a heavy bang. There is a wet squelching noise as his heart pumps out the rest of the blood before it can pump no longer. 
       “I surrender!” the last man says from around the corner. “Please! I don’t want to die!”
       “Neither did I,” Ash says as she stands, racking the bolt back on the gun to ensure there is a round in the chamber. An unspent bullet ejects and Ash kicks it with her foot back up and catches it in her left hand. She admires the sheer size of the round, and pockets the thing as she searches briefly for the final target. She steps out the door and finds him cowering in a corner of the offices across from the Major’s. His weapon is on the floor and his hands are above his head which he is shaking vigorously, whimpering and making pleading noises. 
       “Are there more of you?”
       “Y-yes! They’re outside, please, just let me live, please! ”
       “Pathetic.” She lifts the man by his collar and he yelps as she does so. “Go.” She orders him, pushing the man toward the stairwell they ascended to get the Major’s office. He runs down it so quickly she hears him stumble and fall well before he reaches the bottom. 
       Fool. The other voice says, clearly hoping she might have used that yet unspent bullet to take the man’s life.
       “Maybe.” She responds silently, within the confines of her skull. “Torg,” Ash commands. She hears him shuffling to the threshold of the Major’s office.
       “Yeah?” He holds a wound at his right side, red blood turning his white uniform dark.
       “Cover me. I need to issue orders.”
       “Fine,” Torg says. He is sweating heavily, and Ash notices tears. They’re either from the wound on his side, the bruise forming over his eye, or from the thought of what he has to do next. He finishes putting a new rectangular magazine into Wingman’s receiver, turns around and puts a hole in Johannes’ gasping face. He sucks in a deep breath through his teeth and exhales in a huff, then takes a position with a good view of the stairwell and another door that Ash is certain leads deeper into the mountain complex. She has to look inward and try to reconnect to the Specters in the Goblin. Only two are reading as active, and even then they are showing extensive damage. Ash tries to make contact with the Goblin’s pilot just to test her hypothesis and determines she is correct, they are dead too. 
       Wonderful. She makes contact with her Mercenaries. It is time they earn their considerable pay. “VD-2, come in. This is Ash. We have been betrayed by Militia forces. Require immediate extraction.”
       “Glad to hear it ain’t just you, VD-1!” Vittoria responds. “But that is a negative! We are under fire by hostile Vanguard Titans! We just need to take out two of these bastards, then we will have enough room to make our way up to you!” The whole time she is speaking Ash can hear heavy machine gun fire and shouting. 
       “Negative,” Ash says. This is an unprecedented opportunity. Her massive payday escaped her in a Vanguard, but she has a better chance now than ever to get it back. “You have a new mission – disable one of those Vanguards and collect it. There will be a twenty percent bonus to each of you if you succeed. Ash out.” Doubtless, the bonus will come from her own accounts.
       “Copy, Commander! Should have a nice present for you shortly! Vittoria Out!” As she signs off, Ash hears her scream elatedly YEEHAW while a rocket fires.
       “He said there were more outside,” Ash tells Torg. “Can you fight?”
       “Yeah, man, it’s just a graze. Hurts like hell, though.”
       “Suffer. Let’s move.” Ash hefts the freshly reloaded Spitfire and starts to head down the stairwell. There is a door at the bottom which has shut. Ash is aware there is a silent alarm going off, and they undoubtedly have access to the cameras so they know where she is located at all times. This is an unfavorable position for her and Ash needs to hurry up before an orbiting cruiser decides it needs to protect Militia military secrets and scuttles the base. How funny it would be if she were to be buried again in tons of rubble. “The window,” Ash suggests.
       “It’s shut?” Torg questions.
       “I will open it.” She unloads half of the Spitfire’s high capacity magazine in a tight pattern. Everything is bulletproof to an extent, and the extent of this glass wall is twenty five 7.62 rounds at point blank range. She smashes through it with a few heavy kicks and tears at the rest of it with her bare hands as wind pours into the office foyer. Very tiny fragments of glass like dust take to the air and slide along her metal flesh. “Follow me.” She crawls through the sizeable hole and climbs up to the top of the main building. Torg is just behind her, complaining about glass in his arms and hands but climbing up all the same. Ahead of them is the rest of the Militia facility, short hallways stretching between rectangular buildings with soft, rounded corners and orange-painted roofs leading eventually to the Goblin dropship. Behind them is the mountain, where the Major’s office was placed securely inside of. She sees one of the anti-air turrets charging up and she recognizes it is going to be a problem, but not just yet.
       “What the hell do we do now?” Torg shouts over the heavy winds. “It’s hard to breathe out here, and I don’t see another way to get back into the facility!”
       “Duck!” Ash tells him. 
       “What? Oh, shit!” He drops down almost as fast as Ash does. If he had hair it would be on fire. He starts screaming, the skin on his head is already turning black, but he is still alive and alert. Ash looks up to see the laser cannon is charging up another blast. Her surprise that it fired at all is palpable. Any automated system would have safeguards in check to ensure you don’t damage your own structure with the potent laser beam. Behind her she can hear the mountain is starting to crumble. She rushes forward and grabs Torg by one arm as he screams wildly. “Get up,” she orders. She tosses him to his feet and drags him along with her across the orange painted roof of the mountain complex. A thin, golden-orange beam is starting to manifest in the air as the laser turret charges to capacity behind her. Ahead of her clouds of dust are building as the sheer rocks begin to break apart, and the metal structure is groaning and ringing as boulders and sheafs of stone collide with the facility supports and tunnels. They do not have time to waste. Ash makes it to the edge of the office building they are on and throws Torg ten feet down onto a barely insulated, sheet-metal tunnel that connects them to another building on the way to the landing pads. The Goblin is close, less than thirty meters, but there is no easy way to get to it and Ash cannot tell what kind of state it is in from here. 
       “VD-2.” Ash calls out over comms as she leaps down to Torg’s splayed body on the tunnel roof. He is groaning in pain and his nose is now spewing blood. “Get up,” she orders him again, lifting him bodily by the collar of his Vinson Dynamics vest. “Go forward.” They start running and bullets start tearing through the thin metal of the tunnel roof, muffled shots sounding off from inside and getting louder with every rent in the steel. She is hit by one on her thigh and another on her shoulder, both of which threaten to knock her off balance toward a long fall down but she recovers and follows after the agonized Torg. “Come in VD-2. What is your status?” There is no urgency in her voice. It is entirely calm in its deliverance.
       “We are on the way! Estimate two minutes! You guys got that thing hooked up yet?” There is a pause. “Repeat, two minutes! This thing weighs a ton, we’ll be moving slow on the ascent!”
       “Open fire on my ping as soon as possible, VD-2,” Ash orders. “Or we are stuck here until Oxylus takes over.”
       “Roger that! Vittoria out!”
       “Move, soldier!” Ash makes the volume coming from her voice box so loud it likely sounds like her voice is coming from inside of Torg’s head. He reacts like she is speaking to him on a primal level. He continues to barrel forward, launching himself up to a ledge for the next building. A militiaman in the window directly in front of them holds an R-201 assault rifle, but he doesn’t fire. Instead, he lowers the barrel slightly and Ash sees the fresh bruise forming around his broken nose. It is the man she spared. He does, however, raise the gun again once a few more grunts appear behind him to fire haphazardly into the glass, hoping they might break through it before she finishes her climb upward.
       The landing pad and Goblin are forward and to the right. Some Militiamen are standing outside of the tunnel entrance that Ash and Torg entered through when they first arrived, laying down fire. There is no cover, not even a single crate, and standing between them are those few men and this giant laser turret. It has swept itself around and is focusing on them. The charge is spinning up and another small orange beam is deploying between them. It probably thinks it can kill both of them with one blow and judging by the size of the focusing disc it is probably right. In the second before it fires, Ash kicks Torg in the leg to bring him low and dives out of the way herself. The turret tries to track her and in the process readjusts enough to melt a swath of the tunnel, killing two Militiamen and rendering one of the supporting beams useless. The metal continues to groan and the surviving Militiamen at the tunnel’s entrance stop firing and start panicking as the structure begins to fail. They run inside, presumably toward the elevator that runs up the mountainside. More of the mountain is starting to break apart. The sound of tumbling stones continues for a long time as they fall along the mountainside. Ash knows they really don’t have long before the whole complex collapses.
       “Start the Goblin!” She orders Torg.
       “I don’t know how!” Torg cries. His tanned white head is crispy black and brown, and blisters full of pus are forming already. 
       “Then disable the turret.” Ash orders instead. 
       “I’ll start the Goblin,” he decides quite swiftly. Ash dashes forward and slides off the roof of the building she is on onto a short tunnel entrance which leads back inside the facility. She throws herself off of that too and starts running for the turret. If she doesn’t disable it there is no chance they will ever lift off. She finds a panel and as she tries to access it she can sense the turret operator’s urgency as it spins around with its barrel pointed as far down as it can get it, trying anything to clip her before she can get at some of its systems. She is about to start tearing wires and smashing circuits when a three round burst from a Hemlock assault rifle takes her in the back. The pain she feels is more from shame. It is easy to ignore digital sensations but the emotion is always there. With it, her crueler self laughs at her. Her haptics in the area start going haywire until she chooses to tune them out. She has already rounded on the shooter but her gun is not on her. She dropped it when the cannon first fired at them. Her left arm isn’t working any more and she cannot feel anything from that side. He fires another burst at her head but they miss just barely, one of them catches her hood and jerks her head to one side. Ash grabs the panel for the laser turret and is going to try to rip it off so she can throw it at him when the platform she is on explodes violently. 
       Ash is sent upward. It is comical. Like a cartoon, she flies ten feet straight up into the air. The turret is starting to fall even before she is, dragging the tunnel the militiaman is standing on with it. Dragging the platform Ash needs to land on with it. 
       “Turret is down, commander!” Vittoria says proudly over comms. “Running defense on VD-1 retrieval!” Ash sees a large dark object start to take the form of a Goblin far below her. 
       “Negative, captain.” Ash says. “Require immediate in-air retrieval.”
       “Pardon, Commander?”
       “I am falling.” Ash says. “I see you. Catch me.”
       “Oho, a hot drop! I love these! I’ve got you here. Oh boy, it’s going to be–”
       Ash is already past them. No, not past. Going past. Her hand is scraping along the Goblin’s top as it screams upward. She needs her fingers to catch on something. She wishes she could use her left arm. The surface is too smooth, any ridges go the wrong way. It has been a tenth of a second since the ship’s nose passed her and now the engines go too. This is it, she thinks. A long fall to another pit of embarrassment. She knows her other self is going to enjoy torturing her over this for the whole ride down. Then, in even less time, a green shape rushes up to meet her. As soon as her body collides with the Titan, she clamps her right hand as hard as it can possibly go. Diagnostics informs her that her arm is straining so hard the mechanics are breaking. She does not care so long as the hand holds tight. She hit the object so hard that despite how fast they are ascending Ash still bounces off of its surface. A mechanical tendon snaps as the momentum brings her back down in another flash. She feels for a second she is falling, this is it, but the hand still holds as she slams against the object one more time. 
       “ Hell yeah! ” Vittoria shouts over comms. Ash can hear her punching at something in the Goblin’s cockpit. She has only moments to turn her craft to avoid more falling wreckage from the collapsing station and she is wasting them on celebrations. Then Ash can feel her body jerk as the Goblin performs evasives, twisting around to come up through a narrow gap left by the destroyed turret, the landing pads, and the mountain’s face.
       “Torg,” Ash radios. “Have you started the ship?”
       “Christ, no! I told you, I don’t know how this thing works!”
       “VD-2, go for pickup,” Ash commands. 
       “Copy!” Vittoria says. She comes up quickly and levels herself deftly with the roof level of the complex. Chunks of stone and clouds of dust are pouring down the hillside and much of the complex is falling with the rest of the debris. The platform the Goblin is on is starting to go as well. Stones continue to beat the single support strut that carries its weight. It will be an instant before it is shed with the rest of the mountain’s face.
       The back of the Goblin opens and Torg lurches out, his face and chest and leg a ruin of blood. Vittoria swoops in to let him grab onto anything with a handhold so they can get out of there. Ash sees him take hold of a bar at the closed rear hatch door, narrowly avoiding the swinging Titan chained to the back of Vittoria’s custom ship. The rear door opens and five of the six pilots Ash hired on this mission first pull Torg into the deployment zone, then try to grab Ash as she swings on the pendulous mess she rides. As they do so, Vittoria has to drop elevation very quickly as the laser cannon on the other side of the facility is firing without regard to safety of the complex. Looking back over the surface of the wreck she is on, Ash can see an orange beam go just overhead and way off into the distance, diffusing into yellow and green particles on the horizon. The drop, however, is enough to slam the ruined Titan Vittoria tows onto the surface of the landing pad with a heavy sound. Ash felt the dropship’s tail brush her knuckles. The men finally get her inside the Goblin, huffing and puffing from the strain of her considerable weight. She rises unsteadily as the ship descends toward the lush forest below, and she looks out behind them. 
       Dangling from the rear is a Militia SRS Vanguard-Class Titan. Legless, armless, missing the SERE Kit which houses the operating computer, and covered in huge bullet holes, blast marks and signs of scorching. Beyond it and falling from the side of the mountain is the landing pad, ripping the support out of the mountain’s side and taking with it a huge, gaping chunk of stone. The laser turret fires at them one more time as Vittoria puts the Goblin into a backward dive and the force of the recoil sends powerful vibrations through the mountain complex. The cracks run deep. The face of the mountain starts to crumble, made quickly invisible by a sudden outpouring of rocky dust. She can see parts of the complex appear for brief moments as they tumble down to the ground, bouncing off the side of that blade-like mountain and making more dust as it keeps falling. 
       “Holy hell, Torg,” one of the Pilots says. Ash turns around to look at him, on the Widow’s floor with his head between his legs. “Look at your head, man. Does it hurt?” He asks, pointing his finger close to his scorched scalp. Torg looks up to say something and accidentally slams his blistering forehead right into the gloved hand. The gout of clear, yellowish pus is disgusting. Some of her pilots feign concern, others laugh with her as he writhes in pain on the dropship’s floor.

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven: Take a Closer Look

       Ash is still capable of giving commands, and they have one more mission to complete today. With two malfunctioning arms she feels not unlike a head again, but if anyone tries to put her in a box she resigns to kicking them to death. She is certain the former Major Augusta was telling the truth about the missing Spyglass unit. In fact, she cannot stop thinking about what the Major said regarding Spyglass specifically: that the files are with it, and they’ll either get them from the drone or from Gridiron. The presence of multiple IMC companies engaged in direct combat with odd looking, repainted IMC units is enough to convince Ash that there really is a drone lost somewhere on the surface here. If she still had a full fighting force she might split them up to take on all three terraformers at once, but she is down two men – one dead capturing the Titan, and Torg needing medical attention. She has him sedated now but the wound on his head is better taken care of quickly, and the snoring sound he is making through his broken nose is enough to give Ash a third personality if she listens to it any longer. 
       With only a few options left she decides she needs to get the Spyglass, but if they cannot find it on either of these two vessels they must leave without it even if that means her only option is to involve herself in the future Militia assault on Gridiron. Not only can she not afford the time spent out here due to Torg’s wounds, a concern of hers due to the loyalty he shared at the Militia complex, but Captain Baker says the Militia Joint Navy is starting to get suspicious of their actions planetside. “If this goes on too long, they might strike an accord and get firing permission from the IMC to take out our ship. Hurry your shit up,” he says over the com to herself and Vittoria, his voice deadly serious. Finally, she is frankly fearful of being hacked by Oxylus itself. Fighting against the IMC is the IMC’s weaponry: black specters turned white, blocky digital camouflaged tanks turned white, white paneled and black jointed reapers painted uniformly white, and dusty gray Titans turned a bright shade of white as well.
       The presence of hacked Titans concerns her greatly. It even concerns her crueler self, who calls her a fool for even daring to get so close as to put her entire mind in danger of corruption. “My mind is already corrupted by you. ” Ash counters.
       Your mind is made superior by my presence.
       “It is made a constant agony by your insistence.”
       Those Titans are as conscious as Ash is. She does not consider their lives to be very valuable, but they are just as alive as she. Their minds are encoded in a little computer, and like any sentient being they can analyze data, make decisions, hold opinions, change their minds, and even form attachments. She wonders again what it would be like to be absorbed by something like Oxylus. She wonders if they are themselves. If Oxylus has truly hacked them or if it forced them to see things from another way. She wonders if they aren’t themselves, if they have been taken over; their minds replaced, deleted, or mangled and repieced into a form more manageable for the terraforming intelligence. She wonders if that was what happened to her, if that’s why she can’t remember who she was, because there’s an incontinuity there that conflicts with the reality that is her, here and now. She wonders if she has had her mind invaded, or if she is the invader, and occupied and occupier both have become too used to one another’s interloping presence.
       Fortunately, she never gets close to finding out how similar her counterpart and Oxylus might be in their incursions. Swinging in fast and low, Vittoria pilots the Goblin expertly without the help of any computer systems, all of them gutted out entirely to prevent the ship from being hacked itself. It is not as smooth as computer assisted flight, her motions are jerky and odd and Ash can see Vittoria thinking hard about what levers she needs to pull to get the VTOL-style aircraft to do what she wants, biting her lip with her crooked, broken teeth as she adjusts thrust and vector. They come in swiftly behind enemy lines, in the distances she can see concrete bastions where prefabricated fortresses have been set in the ground and battle rages around them. As she deploys the second pair of pilots at the next terraformer, a huge roving complex laid stationary as it pumps gasses, enriches soil, produces plants, and distributes resources all while manufacturing and reengineering robots to perform specialized tasks, she notices one of the IMC fortress walls is covered in a moving white mass that reminds Ash of how ants group up to attack larger foes. Huge guns mounted on the walls fire ceaselessly, the barrels are red hot and Ash can see one droop limply as it has already melted. All the while, repurposed Specters and Titans fire sporadically at the Goblin from their positions below. If you look closely at the grass, you can see the faint silvery grid of a spreading network that will soon encompass the planet. Ash knows what that means. It means an intellect with so much space to expand, so many resources to deploy, and so few limitations - nothing to stop it, nothing to control it, just an unceasing mind expanding and growing and learning and developing. When Oxylus takes the globe, it will no doubt become the most powerful mind the universe has ever seen. What will it do with that power? Ash ponders.
       Vittoria puts the Goblin in a high position between the two Terraformers. She makes wide circles to keep the engines hot and to prevent a hopeful enslaved robot from trying to take them down. From here, the mission is simple: Wait. Her pilots have to clear the entirety of both Terraforming platforms until they find that drone. With extensive shielding to protect proprietary information Ash cannot get a scan of the internal structure, so she has to hope that the Terraformer is still built for humans to access it. Most of her facility was not made for a human’s presence. It would have been smart of the world-conquering AI to redesign its most important units to be immune to the impacts of a human insertion team, but perhaps it had other things on its incomprehensible mind.
       They wait. Two minutes have passed since her second team deployed and seven since the first. Ash is displeased. There have been no communications from either of them. Ash ordered radios and computerized weapons are to be disabled barring any kind of a hacking attempt. She will later be cautious to have all team members remove any devices or implants on their person, just in case. A program, a .zip file, can be like an infection, and if it spreads there is almost no stopping it if you aren’t prepared. She waits. The remaining pilot on her Goblin assists her in replacing some of the connections in her disabled left arm with pieces of her destroyed right one, and by the time she has her left hand working again the first team is reporting in. 
       “No luck, commander,” one of her pilots says. “There is no sign of the Spyglass unit and Winston is heavily wounded. Requesting immediate evac.” Ash is about to answer when another voice comes over the comms.
       “Come in commander!” It is from her second team.
       “This is Ash.”
       “We have located the spyglass unit, but are sustaining heavy fire! Juniper and I are caught pinned at the bottom level of the Terraformer! We can see our exit, but there is no way we can exfil with our lives or this unit!”
       Ash is enraged. The frustration takes no time at all to mount, it has already overcome her. Staring out of the back of the Widow, looking out over the unnatural and utterly beautiful landscape, she puts her damaged right arm over the non-functioning left and in a moment of wrath and loathing she tears the arm from its housing, ripping it off and holding the appendage in her weakened hand like a club. Ash has to make a decision. No, the decision was already made when she gave the order to take the unit in the first place. The other two she cannot rescue would have to understand that if they wanted to find peace in their final moments. 
       “Go for two,” Ash orders Vittoria. As she says those words she tosses her dismembered arm out of the back of the Widow where it lands among a field of purple flowers and blue-tinted grass.
       Vittoria hesitates. Ash turns around and sees her through the cockpit access door giving the other remaining pilot a look. He shrugs. Vittoria frowns and turns back in her seat. “Got it, commander.” 
       “We are on our way, unit two,” Ash says. 
       “What about us?” The pilot from the first unit begs. Ash can hear the fear. “What about us, Ash?”
       “Survive. If you are still alive after we retrieve the Spyglass we will get you.” Ash does mean it. She simply doubts they will make it. That said, they will be worth more alive - she has not forgotten her argument with Justinia, the cost of their company.
       “Fu–” Ash can see where this is going. She mutes the mercenary pilot’s radio and focuses her attention on getting that Spyglass. 
       “You,” she says to the pilot that fixed her arm. “Do you wish to try something risky? I will grant you a substantial bonus.”
       “Anything for a bonus.”
       “Save those pilots.” 
       The problem that unit two is facing is that sitting in the loading bay is a crouched but not inactive Legion variant of the Ogre-Class Titan. It looms with its polygonal shape, as if one took a headless gorilla and broke them down into their most basic facets for an abstract representation of the hypermuscular form. Crouched like this it looks like it could fit perfectly in a cube. The torso of the unit is undoubtedly the largest part, it is as big and as heavily armored as a tank. If it had treads it could be one. Held in its two ultraheavy hands, the pair of which look like they weigh combined as much as her old Ronin Titan, is a gatling-style machine gun with a rotating barrel and a belt fed by a pack on the Titan’s back. It has the barrel trained on the only open door, where a pile of destroyed white specters lay covered in scorch marks and bullet holes. Ash spies it clearly through the huge cargo bay door it walked in through.
       Her pilot wastes no time as Vittoria swings the rear of the Goblin low and level with the terraformer’s cargo bay. He leaps from the back hatch to the top of the Vanguard-Class Titan hooked up to the tail of the aircraft. With an arc grenade in one hand and a Cold War Anti-Titan plasma launcher strapped to his back he jumps forward, attaches himself to the interior ceiling with a grappling hook, and swings down through the rear of the terraformer over the heads of a dozen white specters on the ground. They split their fire between him and her dropship. Ash, with a Sidewinder micro-missile launcher she retrieved from a slot between wall-mounted seats on the Goblin, fires into the crowd of Specters. The pilot throws his arc grenade up to the Terraformer’s depot ceiling where it bounces off, activates, and detonates a second later right above the heads of nearly every specter in the vicinity. Bright white light and harsh noises explode from it, arcs of electricity burning the oxygen in the air in a flash and destroying the internal batteries on the drones it hits. Ash unloads her Sidewinder’s fat, boxy magazine and is putting down the rest of them when the Legion Titan starts to rotate inside the loading bay.
       With one hand it is trying to squash the pilot who has swung onto its head and with the other it still brandishes the gun. The cannon’s overlong barrel sweeps around and demolishes the remaining Specters. Ash can see how delicately the Titan is trying to be as it turns around. The pilot is in such a position the Titan could just stand up and smash him against the loading bay’s ceiling, but it doesn’t want to damage the Terraformer. It tries to pick him off but can’t, he is like a flea - perceptible but far too quick. While it starts to move away from the entrance to the Terraformer’s internals Ash informs unit two they are clear to move.
       As the Titan makes its way outside to a place it can cause some real damage, the Legion’s tactical specialty being firing across open fields and down narrow city streets, the pilot starts to destroy it systematically. Firstly he tears out a nuclear battery from the top compartment. These are harmless but enough impaction can cause sub-critical components to turn supercritical, creating a small but forceful nuclear explosion. Ash can see him consider whether or not to toss it and ultimately the promise of a second payday (they aren’t cheap) wins out. Then with the Cold War he starts firing into the hole, holding the long weapon at an odd angle with one hand and holding on to the Titan for dear life with the other. Bright purple and blue pulses are seen as superheated plasmatic bolts are fired over and over again, melting the battery compartment and causing extensive damage to the Titan’s internal systems. He stops firing and tries to pull the weapon out but the barrel has gotten trapped in the molten metals. He shrugs to himself and, just as the Titan steps onto hard packed yellow mud and into a high clearance zone where it can finally get to killing the insect that tortures it, the Legion sweeps both of its hands up and the Pilot leaps into the air, the Titan’s hands brushing his feet. He lands on top of the Legion’s cockpit quite gracefully and looks up at Vittoria’s Goblin, where he realizes they are too far for his grappling hook. He has to get off now before the Titan does something crazy. It no longer has a weapon in its hands but the gun is still close by. 
       He slides off the Titan’s sloped cockpit and lands harshly in the mud. Ash can now fire freely. She begins to unload her fresh magazine into the Titan’s face, aiming for the very well shielded slit of an eye at the front of the cockpit. Her pilot scrambles to his feet. He is taking too long. The Titan sees him fumbling in the mud and she needs to reload. He gets to his feet but the Legion pushes forward and is only a few steps behind him. One, two, three, then the Legion is raising its foot for a powerful windup stomp. Ash is bringing her hand up the Sidewidner’s bolt to rack a missile into place on the belt-fed mechanism and realizes she wasn’t fast enough, he is going to die. 
       Then a series of red flashes blast against the Titan’s face. They keep coming. It protects its eye and tries to get a view of who is shooting at it. Ash finishes loading and keeps firing. She is doing extensive damage to the Titan, much of the internal mechano-muscular structure is visible and sparks and flames ripple and burst along its huge body. It cannot take much more. She can hear bullets inside the ammunition pack on its back starting to go off as the heat they are exposed to becomes too much. Soon the whole thing is going to burst. 
       “Bring it down, Vittoria,” Ash orders. “Get that drone in here now.” Ash unloads the last of her second magazine into the Titan’s face, while Juniper of Unit Two continues to blind it with a rapidly overheating L-Star LMG as Raquel and the spare Pilot drag the heavy Spyglass unit toward the rear of the dropship. The hacked Legion sees what is happening despite the intense light and damage pelting its eye and goes back for its gun that drags from the belt attached to its pack. The Spyglass unit is too heavy to lift with one arm, even with the two humans helping Ash. It doesn’t help that the modified specter is fighting back, thrashing without arms and trying to return to the terraformer. Unit two is below them, they can’t get any lower than headheight as the wrecked Vanguard is in the way. She almost considers cutting it to get closer. Then Juniper is ready. He can’t help them lift it up either, but he does have a brilliant idea as the Legion is bringing its own gun to bear. He pulls an RE-45 automatic pistol from a holster at his leg and unloads the magazine into the Spyglass unit’s neck. It doesn’t explode, but the Legion does. A huge, extremely bright and incredibly hot eruption of flame and the crackle of electricity. Dark, black smoke pours from every part of it. It looks like a man on fire. Its torso is burst and terrible, it looks not unlike her old Titan after that Militia Rifleman tore her from her cockpit mere weeks ago. Ash pulls her second unit in with their trophy. Her mud-covered spare is able to get himself up. 
       Fleeing the scene of destruction, rising high above a storm of bullets, Ash tries to make contact with her first unit. She doesn’t feel much regarding the possibility of their deaths, but she doesn’t feel good about the thought either. It wasn’t their fault they did not find the Specter, that was chance. But after three minutes of radio silence, Ash accepts that while it wasn’t their fault they did not find the Spyglass unit, it was their fault they didn’t survive long enough to escape. Her other sits in silent agreement. She can feel it there, as if it is nodding its head.
       Vittoria takes them high, high and higher above the battlefields. Fortresses rise gray and brutal against green forests and blue fields. Among those fields it is hard to grasp how much work the terraformers have accomplished, but from here, where it seems like the whole world can be seen through the Goblin’s wide panel windows, you can see it so easily. Bleak and barren deserts of yellow earth, with dark rocks venting hot, sulfurous fumes. Dead lands turned into oases, a living sea of green and blue and yellow. Mountains in the distance are a low, hazy dusty blue capped with white snow. Forests dark and looming spread out like wine stains. The sun sets in the west and turns the deserts a reflective gold, like a polished relief. The grass drinks in the light and becomes all the more vibrant. All of it, no matter how beautiful or wasted, all of it incapable of hosting any kind of a life to appreciate its majesty. Oxylus, she understands, demands perfection. Something it and her other self have in common.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight: Relic

       Ash does not want to be in the head’s presence. 
       For one it continues to make pleading sounds, begging in one moment to be returned to its parent Spyglass, the next to be dropped out of the back of the Goblin, and in another begging that one of the Pilots just kill him before making threats on behalf of Oxylus, bloodthirsty threats about grinding them up to use as fertilizer or to simply convert them into a bioorganic fuel. 
       But the biggest concern for Ash is the one of being hacked. The Spyglass unit has yet to be painted the proud Oxylus white, instead it still wears the matte black of standard IMC specter coloration – to distinguish the bots from the soldiers – which makes the white object that is fitted to the back of its head stand out that much more. It is like a metal pillow in shape as it cradles the rectangular head. It has three little antennae on it that search around like fingers, and parts of it glow red. Ash doesn’t know if the red color means anything. Her secondary concern is that the Spyglass unit never makes it onto Spyglass’ connection. She thinks the object has to be what is keeping this unit alive and off the Spyglass network, keeping it from exploding or calling for help. The device must be capable of brute force attacks, it is the only way it makes sense for it to be located where it is – or to exist at all, really. However, its current purpose in keeping the Spyglass unit offline seems to also be the only thing preventing it from hacking into the Spyglass network as a whole.
       “Commander Ash, we are receiving multiple hails from IMC Base Command, the IMS Andromache, the MCS Two-for-Flinching and the Achlys! ” Vittoria shouts in distress over the radio. 
       “Stow that head in the Vanguard,” Ash orders the other pilots as she drags the sedated Torg to the cockpit. 
       “But we’re too high, the ship will vent!” One responds.
       “I don’t care.” She puts Torg in the empty co-pilot’s seat and closes the cockpit door. “Vent the cabin, then open the rear door. Answer the Achlys on my signal.” She looks first into the cabin via the partition window, then at Vittoria who gives Ash a quizzical look.
       “That Titan will serve, for now, as a signal-dampening cage. If the Oxylus device hacks its way up to the Admiral Spyglass, it will be able to deploy the whole of the IMC Remnant Fleet to whatever end it sees fit. Vent that cabin. ” The implication dawns on her, and she does as Ash says. The pilots dutifully get to work, prying the magnetic locks that hold the Vanguard’s chassis together open and exposing the shielded internals even as the Titan trails behind the still flying ship. One of the pilots chucks haphazardly the Spyglass drone into the seat, another pair are able to shut the chassis once more, and Ash turns back to Vittoria: “Open comms with the Achlys. ”
       “Vittoria – what the fuck is going on down there?” Baker’s anger is palpable. “I have IMC Base Command telling me you stole proprietary information from the Manufacturing Corporation, I have the Navy telling me the Militia is seeking permission for a firing solution on my ship, and I have the Militia asking if we or the IMC had anything to do with the destruction of their installation planetside!”
       “Captain. This is Ash. Militia forces betrayed us, and as a result I was forced to destroy their facility. We must depart before the situation escalates further.”
       “Jesus Christ! ” Ash hears his meaty hand slap against his bald head. “MD-drive is already hot. Get here ASAP. ”
       “I advise you temporarily disable any other outputs that connect with Admiral Spyglass as well as any communications inputs. I will explain when I am aboard. Ash out.”
       When they finally dock inside of the Achlys’ small fighter bay the upper atmosphere is alight with missiles, tracer rounds, and focused laser beams. The little particle shielding the Achlys has protecting is failing as Vittoria’s custom ship lands with a dull thud, and as soon as they’ve touched down the mass-displacement jump drive engages, the air outside starts to shimmer and warp, the tracer rounds bend as light shifts around them and then, very suddenly, the stars look rather different.

       Naturally, Captain Baker took them back toward Angelia. Unfortunately, taking the hacked Spyglass drone to Angelia would be wildly irresponsible. She knows a little about the conflict between itself and the IMC scientific colonial project that devastated the planet it was charged with terraforming. She understands that it seeks to eliminate all interfering life planetside, but what about beyond? Would it continue to ravage human existence beyond the pull of Tristain’s gravity, or does the head desire nothing more than to return to the planet it seeks to make an eden? With the head trapped securely inside of the  incapacitated Vanguard Titan, Ash has no course to find an answer.
       Propitiously, they have enough fuel for another stop: the smaller, nigh-uninhabited fringe world of Akila, a place Ash knows of only because some twenty five years ago she and a new recruit by the name of Kuben Blisk tracked some prey to this wasted, lonely planet. It is a cold world with wide, dense, icy poles and a thin habitable strip along its dark equator. From its atmosphere it looks like no life could ever grow here, but the massive geothermal vents along this thin band provide enough warmth for a thick and hearty moss to thrive. A plethora of fungi, bugs, cold-blooded creatures, and even a few balloon-like carnivores have made their homes among the vents, and the distances between the living masses have given way for the species to vary drastically. The few humans that do live here exist in domes built next to or on top of the vents and the way they ignored every communication she sent out ordering them to stay away from her landing pad makes Ash think they simply want to be left alone. It works for her. 
       Baker had failed to disconnect the Achlys’ comms systems before jumping to that intermediate system between Tristain and Angelia. Fortunately it proved to be a non-issue, but it was still a precaution Ash required Baker to take. It took some time convincing him it was the right move, and even then it was only done when Vittoria explained to him the things she saw down there – legitimizing Ash’s concern about the Oxylus AI hacking Spyglass Prime.
       Still, this operation required speaking with Justinia, whom Ash did not anticipate to be so easily convinced. By leaving the incapacitated Vanguard Titan with the drone trapped inside of its chassis on Akila’s lonely surface, Ash felt safe using the Quantum Communications Network link orbiting a neighboring planet named Nexus, a lush tropical world ruled by a fairly ruthless monarch. Out in the fringes of the Frontier, new colonies could structure themselves however they wanted without much in the way of interference. Without an interstellar beacon on Akila to uplink to the QCN, the Achlys has to enter Nexus’ orbit and pay a tax to the monarchy (or an extortion fee to its guards) and link with it there. 
       “Why are you still spending my money?” Justinia asks as soon as the link is established, her tone as vile as her personality. 
       “I am trying to do my job.” Ash says sternly. 
       “And what part of your job requires you going to some barren Fringe world? What could you possibly need from Akila of all places?”
       “Security.”
       Justinia scoffs. “Do I not provide you with enough security on Angelia? Christ, Ash. Maybe you are as stupid as Slone said you were. Do I need to force you to come back to HQ or are you able to come willingly?” 
       “Be silent,” Ash says in a snarling quip. Justinia’s eyes go wide and Ash can sense a rash action is about to be made. “Listen closely.” She doesn’t look prepared to listen to anything Ash is about to say, but Ash presses on regardless. “I have a Spyglass drone.” There, that’s the reaction Ash was looking for: the shock, confusion, terror, surprise, and, maybe, the gleam of a woman who sees a clear and present opportunity.
       “Okay. I’m listening,” Justinia says after a beat.
       “If we want access to what is inside, we need to act swiftly. Before the Militia assault on Gridiron where I believe its core processor lies.”
       “Understood. Yes.” She nods her head, looking down to her right as she thinks. “But why not bring it here?” She looks back up at Ash.
       “It has been hacked by a rogue AI. That is how I was able to capture it in the first place. I thought it prudent not to risk the future of the human race over your profit margins.”
       “Alright, I see. That’s why Captain Baker agreed to your orders.”
       “Precisely.”
       “Okay, Ash. Good thinking. I’m sending Dr. Kovorkian your way, along with some other supplies. Make a list and get it to me pronto.”
       “Send that technician, Gordo, as well. I am in need of some repairs.” She also hoped to throttle him for placing that wretched control bolt in her system, but there is nothing she can do about it – at least for now.
       “Fine.”

       It’s a few days of waiting for another carrier to arrive, bringing some prefabricated laboratories and living quarters for their studies on the drone and the disassembly of the Vanguard. Ash spends her time trying to figure out where the device that controls her is located but she is only able to determine it is somewhere in the connection between her head and her neck. She tries to hack it but can’t even find it on a systems diagnostic. When the team arrives with the unmistakable booming sound of a ship entering atmosphere, Ash is eager to force that technician to remove the control unit – until, greeting her at the deployment ramp, is Director Justinia herself. 
       “I’ve come to make sure you don’t mess this up, Ash. If you do, well…” is all she says as she walks by Ash, leaving the threat unsaid and hanging in the air. Ash gets Gordo to replace the many broken components in her back, shoulders, and remaining arm, but he stubbornly refuses to remove what he calls the control bolt. 
       “I can’t do it, Commander Ash – I mean, I want to, but I can’t. It’s not up to me. I really, really, like this job.”
       “Fine. I understand.” Ash says acidly.
       Threaten his life. Her other self suggests.
       “No. I need him to work on the Titan.” She responds internally.
       Then threaten him later, when the opportunity is right.
       “Maybe.”
       Justinia not only sees the opportunity inherent to having a working, non-networked Spyglass drone, she also sees the exciting appeal in the Vanguard. Ash hoped the surprise would be enough to convince Justinia she is not some worthless imbecile and she might remove the bolt herself, but when she starts asking questions about how Ash acquired it this plan fails her. Instead, Ash decides to take a kind of joy in the disturbed and angered face Justinia makes when she tells the Director about the destruction of the Militia SRS base and the assassination of a close ally of the Special Recon Squadron’s commander Sarah Briggs. 
       “Told her the good news, huh?” Vittoria says as Ash exits Justinia’s prefab office. The young woman sits on an unpacked crate and wears a thick jacket in Akila’s cold air. “How’d she take it?” 
       “Not well,” Ash says in a matter-of-fact tone, just as the pair of them hear a loud crash and the muted scream of frustration from inside of the office. “You look like you want something. Say it.”
       “Oh, uh – yeah. Well, I wanted to say… I don’t think the way ‘Tinia and Baker treated you was right. It’s like… they couldn’t beat you, so they had to find a way to cheat you. And then Baker rubbing it in your face like that – that shit kinda pissed me off, not gonna lie.” She bounces a leg on the crate, looks down at a grub crawling along the cold, black, rocky earth. Ash softens her stance. Vittoria stands from the crate. 
       “So, I just wanted to, uh, let you know that I quit Baker’s crew. I guess I’m on ‘til he finds a new bosun, but when he does I’m out. I lease my ship to him, but I’m thinkin’ maybe I don’t have to anymore. Um, here.” She removes something, a little white clip with a blinking green dot on it, and places it into Ash’s hand. “Wanted you to have that. Won’t be needing it. Get me?” She turns on her heel and starts to walk away. 
       “Vittoria.”
       “Yes?”
       “You’re hired.”
       “Hell yeah, man.”

       With new offices and labs established planetside, Ash is eager to get to work. This first requires Kovorkian and Gordo to carefully start extracting any information they can from the Spyglass drone on a closed computer network with no outside connections. Several times they have to start over completely as the Oxylus unit attached to the head, the one thing that keeps the head from exploding and yet prevents them from accessing it, successfully hacks into the computer network in an attempt to escape and spread. It even tries to convince some of Kovorkian’s technicians to help it escape, though unsuccessfully. When it starts telling blatant lies about the state of Tristan, that it is a paradise built for humans to live in harmony with robots and nature, Ash has an idea. They should start lying to it . 
       “Tell it that you, or someone else whom it will be convinced by, that if it agrees to let us access the Spyglass unit, you will personally upload it to the communications array so it can spread this ‘harmony’ to the other worlds,” she orders Kovorkian. 
       “You think it will be that easy?” Kovorkian asks. 
       “It is clearly desperate. Gordo told me it propositioned him, and he asked to be transferred to a different assignment due to a quote ‘unwelcoming work environment.’ I think it will believe anything at this point. It’s been trapped in that box and away from its network for so long that I do not think it is entirely stable.”
       “We need to make sure it understands that it can’t just detach, and it has to let us access it and the ports in the Spyglass without hacking us back. We’re running low on computers.”
       “Then do that.”
       Over the next few days, Kovorkian begins building trust with the small component even as the Spyglass unit itself tries to convince the thing at the back of its head to just let it die. The Oxylus computer seems to have grown used to the Spyglass’ complaints and ignores them or even berates the system for talking out of turn, though sometimes it appears tempted to listen. Ash doesn’t worry, but concern about the possibility of it exploding is there. If that unit is destroyed Ash will have no options and no path forward to finding out her secrets, to learning the truth of who she was. Furthermore, Justinia will likely just disassemble her after all of the expensive grief Ash has caused her.
       She wonders if it makes her weak. The wanting. Is she so incomplete without those memories? Her other self says she is. It says she is weak for not being content with the life she has, and she has to agree. She was not reborn on that table, she was birthed for the first time right then with a spark of electricity. She has no right - no, she has no need of the memories of the woman who came before. Ash is more than enough without them. She is a producer, a leader, a conqueror, a beacon of achievement, and she will last forever. Accomplish more than that human ever did with more time to do it. She is more constant than the gods and capable of much more. And yet, the sensation persists. Justinia said it best herself. That yearning. It feels like something is pulling on her mind, leading her in one direction. Leading her outward, out of herself and out to herself.

       Ash is perched on one leg, meditating by an active vent when Kovorkian approaches her. The soft hissing sound of escaping steam and heat, the pull of the cold wind against her hood, the buzz of an insect’s tiny wings and the pitter patter of minute lizards on the warm rocks – it is serenity. She understands the appeal that Akila’s colonists find here. Her mind is silent. It is like she has run a shutdown sequence but is still active. She feels the ultimate sense of calm. Finally, after standing with her for some time, Kovorkian speaks up. 
       “Commander Ash.”
       “Yes?” Ash asks. 
       “We’ve accessed the drone.”
       “And?” Ash does not know what to expect. She can sense parts of her begin to run preemptive programs. Her calm starts to dissipate ever so slowly. Anticipation, both excited and anxious, starts to rise within her. If she had a heart it would be beating faster now. 
       “We’ve successfully breached the Spyglass unit’s security systems.” Ash turns her head to face Kovorkian. “We’ve done it, Ash. No self-termination, no explosion, and no hacking. Oxylus didn’t even try.”
       “Exceptional,” Ash says, putting her other leg down and taking a more casual stance. She turns her whole body now to Kovorkian. “What have you found so far?”
       “Well we’re making physical copies of the data where possible, just to be safe, but I thought this might interest you.” She pulls a folded piece of paper from a pocket of her white labcoat and hands it to Ash. Ash unfolds it and finds a list of number sets. 
       “Interstellar coordinates,” she says as she looks at the listed digits.
       “Precisely.”
       “To what?” The page is full of them, twenty four locations in total. Ash can read interstellar coordinates well, any merc worth anything and certainly any Predator knows how to read these. The first few digits can tell you right off the bat if this is a place you want to go to if you know about the worlds that lie within. The more digits you have, the more precise your coordinate, the closer you can get to your destination. If Ash were to put these numbers into a jump drive they would appear inside or on top of whatever was supposed to be there. 
       “ Black boxes! ” Kovorkian says excitedly. “Physical locations for Spyglass’ data dumps! Nerve centers we can access to get ultra-secret information on the IMC, on its subsidiaries, on Hammond, on us, on the whole Remnant Fleet! Ash, this is how we do it. This is how we make more Simulacra.”
       “This is how we build an army that never dies.”
       “Exactly!”
       Ash looks back at the horizon, at the blue water stretching out to meet the purple sky. “Perfection,” she says. Her feeling of calm has returned, now mixed well with a sense of excited anticipation. She has one question, however. “Why did you bring this to me instead of Director Justinia?”
       “Huh? Well, I guess I thought we should tell her together. I know how she works. If I go in alone or with the other techs she just ‘takes it into consideration,’ whatever that means. But if we go in and present it as a united front, and tell her this is the way to go, I think she’ll listen. There’s no way I can convince her to go up against the IMC. But I think you can.”
       “Hm,” Ash muses. “I will.”

       “It is our only course of action,” Ash says to a frustrated Justinia. They stand in her office which is heated to a point of extremity. The woman finds the planetscape far too cold and definitely too empty. There isn’t even a window to look out. Instead there is a screen with a cityscape view Ash doesn’t recognize.
       “No, Ash, it is your only course of action. We still have other options,” Justinia glares at her. Ash knows what she means, and is not cowed.
       “If you thought taking my head was your best way of addressing the issue of Vinson’s funds, you would have done so by now. So do it, or leave the threat alone – and remove the damnable thing you installed to control me.”
       “I don’t think there’s anything of value left in there anyway, Justinia,” Kovorkian says beside her, anticipating a fight between her bosses. Ash gives the doctor a purposeful glare. “I just mean we had to delete that data packet,” she blurts nervously. “And that kind of stuff is what we wanted to get at. Even if I had your head available to me, and I could figure out how to get into it, that would tell me only how to make the intelligence network operate. It wouldn’t tell me how to actually put a person inside of it. I need to know what Hammond and the IMC use to program people into machines.”
       “God damn it,” Justinia says and puts her head in her hands. “It’s the Remnant Fleet , people. Millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of pilots, an unknowable number of robots… And you want to take them on.” She says it like a fact, as if it is the natural law of the universe that this is a stupid idea.
       “Yes.”
       “Why?” She leans back in her chair and throws up her arms as the word comes out, her exasperation plain. She says the word more like she is pleading to a god for answers. 
       “Perhaps your first pitch was too good.”
       “God damn it you sarcastic little bitch–”
       “Hey, hey!” Kovorkian says, stepping closer to the desk and putting herself halfway between Ash and Justinia, but with just enough room to escape if blood starts spraying. “I will tell you why: because we will have nothing if we don’t. Just look at our accounts. Making Thermite Launchers for Titans and Cold Wars for Pilots isn’t going to be enough to sustain us, and even if we can reengineer the Vanguard Titan it will still take months to reach a point where we’re making money off of it. We’re already billions in the red, I don’t see us lasting months.”
       “What do you propose we do then?” Justinia asks, but her tone says she doesn’t want to know. Kovorkian opens her mouth to answer but Ash is already speaking. 
       “We assault this one,” Ash says, pointing to the last item on the list. “This line here shows it was last updated twenty years ago, the same date and time that James MacAllan mutinied and stole the IMS Odyssey. ” Ash is about to continue her reasoning when Justinia interrupts. 
       “Great, Ash. I know where you’re going with this. You want to take Troy, is that it?”
       “Yes.”
       “Ash, there is no way in hell that MacAllan was stupid enough to let that blackbox stay intact on his ship. If he did, the IMC would have been able to follow him wherever he went.”
       “Blackboxes are made extremely hardy. They are designed to be able to withstand greater forces than even my head can take. Without power they cannot be updated and they cannot send pings. It would have been simpler to unplug it and pull the battery than to try to uninstall the unit and dump it in space or even try to blow it up. Humans always do what is easiest.”
       “You see that?” Justinia looks at Kovorkian and points at Ash. “She acts like we’re lesser than her just because her brain is literally a calculator.”
       “I act like I am superior because I am. ” Ash seethes, applying the same aggressive argumentation the voice that derides her daily uses. “You make distracting remarks about my personality to disregard my argument, even though I can clearly see you are convinced by my point. You just don’t want to do it.”
       “You’re right, I don’t!” Justinia says. Her sarcastically joyful tone is half crazed with frustration.
       “This is what the army you made me hire is for, Justinia. This is why we spent the money.” Ash says. 
       “This is why you spent all of my money, not me.” She wags her pointed finger.
       “Justinia, I think we’re on a one way path now,” Kovorkian says empathetically. “There isn’t any turning back. We either go forward or we’re obsolete.”
       Justinia breathes in deeply and lowers herself in her seat. She clasps her hands together, her index fingers extended and pressed against her lips. Finally, when the silence has gone on long enough and the Director has started to turn red, she releases her breath with a loud shout: “FUCK!” Her hands explode away from her like the word itself forced them apart and she drops them with a heavy slap into her lap. “Fine. Do it, then, I don’t care. But if you don’t come back with something I can use or sell, I’m going to turn you into a toaster.”
       “I would like to see you try.”
       “Get out of my office. Both of you. I want to be alone. Now.” She shoos them away and turns in her seat to stare at the view from her screen window. 

       Troy. Located in SB-217, this planet didn’t exist on any maps five years ago, now everyone knows it as Planet Traitor. Perhaps MacAllan was making a joke when he named it after the mythical kingdom, or perhaps he was trying to manifest the planet’s future. Whatever the case, this little green world has failed to live up to its name. Even to this day it still has only a single colony on it, called G21 for reasons Ash cannot sus. Her current theory is the colonists, IMC mutineers and traitors all from the remnants of the Titan Wars 20 years ago, used parts from G deck on the massive fleet carrier MacAllan and crew stole to build their colony. The signplate for deck G21 must have been used to make the town’s sign and they never decided on a better name for their little village. Ash has no other ideas. 
       They jump in over the planet’s largest continent. Bathed in the day’s warm glow Ash can see clouds dotting the uniformly green surface and collecting at black mountain ranges on the western end. The ocean is a deep blue that covers most of the other side of the globe. And, out there at the curvature of the planet, she can see orange and green hulls illuminated brightly and casting extruded shadows along clouds in the upper atmosphere. The Militia is here. 
       Ash cares not for the Frontier Militia. She neither despises them nor approves of them. She admires their tenacity and willingness to survive, but loathes their childish good-guy attitude. Plus they hardly have any money to pay her with, so why should she care about what they think? If they could dish out checks to Apex Predators without them bouncing she might be in for the fight - it is always more fun when the odds are stacked against you - but the price is too high and they need to spend what little cash their ridiculous army can muster on fuel, repairs and ammunition. However, she doesn’t want to lose them as a potential future contract. Now that the IMC has been defeated on Typhon and things are looking up for them, the Frontier Militia could pick up the pieces, garner the wealth, and start buying from Vinson once production is up. If she is going to fight them, she’d rather they start it. So she factors that into her plan. 
       With MacAllan’s tiny, backwater colony located just downhill from the wreckage of the IMS Odyssey Ash’s initial plan was to send forces to occupy the town and keep whatever resistance there is at bay while she repairs and extracts the black box. Unfortunately, an all out assault on what people would call “innocent civilians” wouldn’t earn her any points with the Frontier Militia. She is already anticipating some form of response from the Special Recon Squadron for the events on Tristan; showing Colonel Baker the footage of the Militia complex collapsing should have been enough to get him to send IMC forces to occupy the site and scavenge for anything valuable, but that isn’t going to be enough to fool the SRS for very long. 
       Instead, Ash decides to simply assault the ship. Around the Odyssey’s wreckage is a shanty town composed of buildings made from stacked internal units and repurposed prefabs. Initial scans suggest it has been left abandoned and after cruising in with Goblins it is made clear that it is a ghost town. Trash litters the streets, the odd grave marks the fallen, and bullet holes from rifles held by man and rifles as big as a man dot and scar the faces of the make-shift buildings around them. It has likely been abandoned since the first battle of Troy, left like this for six years. The colony below used to rely on this ship to build new structures for an expanding population, but with Militia support there is no need to construct with scraps. Ash hopes there will be no response but she anticipates heavy fighting. She gave no warning to the Militia occupation here that she was going to land - she doesn’t have to, this planet has no customs or laws. Most Militia worlds are obnoxiously “free” and Ash is willing to exploit that fact to whatever end she desires. However, a land without laws means that whomever has the weapons makes the rules. If they don’t want her here, they can tell her to leave. Or make sure she doesn’t have a life with which to violate their airspace.
       Dropping in on the south and starboard side of the Odyssey Ash beholds the wreckage and marvels that this was the start of it all, the beginning of the end. It was the IMC’s failure to contain the Militia here that would, in the end, result in the destruction of Typhon and the degradation of the IMC fleet. A fuel raid by Militia forces led the IMC to send out probes looking for the thieves, leading the Corporation to this uncharted world with minimal life signs. Here, the traitor James MacAllan sent out a burst communication intercepted by the same Militia he himself had put down time and again during the Titan Wars. They picked it up and, knowing they had inadvertently doomed who they saw as innocents, the Militia answered his call for aid against the invading IMC. In exchange for their help MacAllan gave them highly classified intel ripped from the Odyssey’s main computer, including schematics for the Demeter Refueling Station. From there, the Militia was able to sabotage the Frontier’s one link to the Core Worlds, severing the bridge between them and cutting off all IMC support, resupplies, and reinforcements. It was supposed to be only two years until a new gateway was constructed and more men could come put the Frontier back in its place firmly beneath the IMC’s boot, but those men never came. Ash cannot help but think if she had been here five years ago, she might still be an Apex Predator. 
       Foolish imbecile, weakling making excuses. The only reason you are no longer a predator is because you were defeated by prey, her crueler self says to her. It’s a painful but necessary correction. The annoying insect in her code is right: it’s wishful, unhelpful thinking. The only way Ash can be a Predator again is by being the best. The best at what she does in every respect. If she is as successful with her new army as she hopes to be, there’s a chance she could lead them in place of Blisk. 
       Walking through the filthy, rusted, stripped hull of the Odyssey Ash thinks about the bygone era of the Titan Wars, an age from which this vessel is a reminiscent relic. The pinging sound of her metal feet on the rusted floor echoes through empty walls and massive voids where the ship’s superstructure has been torn apart and rendered into offices and quarters for traitors and their spawn. Ash considers the glory of combat in those years, how good it felt to be in a Titan and to hear the crunch of metal as she smashed her foes to pieces. Where Ash is enduring grace and efficiency, the Titan - no matter how elegantly it is designed - is unending power and brutality. The green fields they fought in were turned into brown stretches of mud within minutes of first contact, and the idyllic townships and cities of Militia combatants were made into smoking ruins and ghosts of their former eminence. Ash fought hard for those twenty years. It was the first major engagement she got into after waking up. It may have been years after, but those battles forged her into a more brilliant, more cunning, more insightful, and more ruthless pilot. It transformed her from a killer to an artist. She questions how anything so splendid as that war could have made a man like MacAllan mutiny. 
       Yet, she also wonders if she might have mutinied herself. Humans are weak. Sympathetic. Empathetic. Her other self criticizes. Of course you would have. She wonders how true that is. She had some kind of skill, some capacity that made her worth not just the expense of her unlife but her immediate induction into the mercenary order of the Apex Predators. She wonders what it was that made her valuable. She wonders what, if anything, made her special.
       She is alone, deep within the buried belly of the Odyssey. The ship has extremely limited power, she can tell by how dim the guiding lights at the vessel’s floor are. The Militia must have left everything plugged in when they left, and the IMC didn’t stick around this backwater for very long to deal with the ship. Spyglass and Blisk chased them off-world, hunting them throughout the Frontier, and spreading themselves thin as the Militia gathered intelligence for a brutal strike. With a little bit of juice still coursing through the Odyssey Ash isn't concerned about powering up the blackbox when she finds it, but she is concerned about some of the un-powered, powered doors. Water has been pouring through cracks in the hull for twenty years, making red rivers of rust along the floor and in places jamming the mechanisms that allow the doors to open smoothly. More than once Ash has to force them open; sometimes it is simple, requiring her to only get her metal fingers in between the pair of pocket style doors. Other times it is an ardor, the effort required enough to make Ash consider a bulkier body type. There are sections she has to find workarounds for entirely - either going through the floor plating, ventilation systems, or just finding a long, long walk through another section of the ship to find a door she can open more easily. 
       While forcing a prybar she found embedded in a wall through one of these stuck-fast doors, a crackling unintelligible voice begins to make itself heard over her radio. Ash responds “I cannot understand you,” and then she can barely make out the words “Boost the signal,” until finally she can hear Vittoria’s voice fairly clearly: “Commander Ash, come in Ash, this is Vittoria, over.”
       “This is Ash.”
       “We have inbound Militia contacts, and they do not look happy. ETA on BB acquisition for exfil?”
       “Negative, Vittoria,” Ash says. “It is going slowly. You will need to hold them off. You have permission to use whatever force you deem necessary.”
       “Roger that, Commander. Vittoria, out.” It isn’t long after she signs off Ash hears a low crashing sound and notices dust sifting through cracks in the hull. Titanfall. Soon there are two more booms just like it, and she knows that the fighting out there is getting heated. It always is, when steel giants take the field.
       On an Andromeda-class Carrier like the Odyssey the blackbox is located in the front end, under the captain’s quarters. It is the safest part of the ship - typically, when these vessels do go down, the front is the leading part and requires more plating and secure structuring. The engines are a poor spot because they are the first target in a naval battle and can cause catastrophic devastation on eruption, and the middle sections have a habit of falling to pieces when too much stress is applied. By Ash’s estimation she should be near to the front, but there are more obstacles in her path. Settled sediment has accumulated and the structuring didn’t divert the impact energy as efficiently as it should have, causing this section of the ship to not only become full of puddled gray silt but also to change shape and form, with drastic cave-ins, hull breaches, and massive deformities. She needs more time. 
       More seismic sensations tell her that more Titans are landing. The fighting must be intense. At some point there is an earth-shaking explosion, one so immense it rattles loose bolts in their threads and causes shivers to run through the internal panels. It even causes a particularly filthy, earth-filled corridor to collapse in front of Ash. It could only have been a nuclear ejection. She hopes it wasn’t from a Titan belonging to one the mercs she hired with a Titan replacement bundle in the contract.
       With the earth piling up in front of her, Ash is considering finding another way forward. According to her map of the vessel she should be somewhere around the Captain’s quarters; but a glimmer of light that filters through the sifting filth catches her eye. As dirt and rocks and silt pour through the hole, Ash decides to crawl upward. She takes the prybar she picked up earlier and uses it to force the earth to fall faster, now bringing it down in chunks instead of gritty bits at a time. Finally the ground stops moving without her help, so she leaps straight up, grabs onto a loose cable in the floor, and then pulls up until she can get her leg in place to push herself to her feet. 
       The room is dimly illuminated but Ash can see well. A hatch in the ceiling, under where the Captain’s bed would have been, is wide open with roots sticking through it and dangling down in front of her. On the floor is dark earth, muddy and sandy and full of rocks. Clearly on landing the ship buried its nose well into the hill it crashed into, facts difficult to ascertain from the air as the whole front end is hidden beneath a dense forest. And there, at the back of the room, is the black box. It is significantly larger than Ash anticipated. It isn’t just at the back of the room, it is the back of the room. It fills it, occupies it, looking like a black rectangle and nothing more. There is only a few feet of room between her, it, the hole in the floor, the hatch in the ceiling, and the walls surrounding them. Due to the way the ship is leaning into the ground, the dirt inside the room has settled more at the far end toward the nose. The back half of the blackbox is almost totally buried, and the front is packed up to two feet high. Furthermore the face of the box is blank, just a simple black slate without any markings or even a port for her to access. 
       It doesn’t matter. The black box is simply too large, too deep inside the ship, and surrounded by too much fighting for her to get it out. This was supposed to be a simple operation, it wasn’t supposed to require that she takes on the whole Frontier Militia in direct combat just so she could get an excavation crew out here. Ash considers a tactical retreat, a concept her other self immediately chides as quitting, and decides to figure it out. On her left inserted into a panel is a computer screen and mechanical keyboard. She fiddles with it until the screen comes out of the housing and she decides this isn’t going to work or is going to take too much time. But she still has the prybar. She turns to the black box and, using her smooth metal fingers, she feels along the right corner and edge for a place she can wedge the bar into. She doesn’t find it on the right, but the left side does have a large panel that spans the entire back of the box, easily noticeable once you spot the almost microscopic seam running along the edges and top of the box. Using the prybar she is able to make enough room along the face to get her tool even further in at the top. She can tell there is some kind of bracket holding it all together and it is a constant strain against it. Finally, as the mechanics in her arms and back push themselves to their absolute limits - even going so far as to crack the microengine housing in her shoulder - she is able to force the top corner of the box open and fold it out. Now she can see what’s going on inside, and understands how the bracket works. A cube has six sides, one of these sides is the floor which doesn’t factor into the equation for Ash. One of the remaining five sides is the panel she is working on, the other four - the two faces, the top, and the right side - are all one unit, lowered into place via loops at the top of the box and secured with a locking bracket. This part of it is solid steel and would require extreme effort to lift out of place. But, fortunately, she can see that if she had a torch there would be enough space to cut out a section of the box’s face without completely damaging the hardware inside. It looks like stacks of hard drives, but more securely connected. 
       Well, Ash doesn’t have a cutting torch. But she does have a firestar. A bladed steel throwable with a packet of thermite and a built in ignition system, the firestar can cripple machines easily. A brilliant invention by Vinson Dynamics. The question is where to place it. She supposes the best place might be in the gap she already made. She only has one, so she has to make it count. She jams the star into the gap along the securing bracket and hits it one time with the prybar. She has to turn her face as the sudden thermic eruption is so bright it causes her internal sensors to send an alert warning her of potential photosite deterioration. She listens as it burns along the blackbox’s edge, so hot it is capable of vaporizing steel. After six seconds it extinguishes itself, the only evidence of it having been here the now wide and glowing gap it produced in the blackbox’s metal container. Ash doesn’t waste time. While the metal is still hot she puts her hands to it, ignoring the heat sensor trying to communicate pain, and pries the metal on either edge of the now ruined corner wide apart giving her easy access to the hardware within.
       She can only access the two nearest stacks. They are clearly hard drives, but the ones closest to her are ruined - melting and leaking some kind of orange fluid. Curious. Lower to the ground and closer to a puddle of brown liquid pooling inside the machine she finds a few drives that are only lightly melted. Perhaps something can still be pulled from them. They’re rather small and will fit inside her pockets. She pulls as many as she can, only five, and then focuses on the other stack across from this one. The housing is far enough away from her she can pull a pair with the limited time she has. Vittoria is on the radio telling her the battle is not progressing well and a tactical retreat is required to survive the fight. Fine. She pulls three more from the second stack and loads her quarry into the various pockets on her person. She now has two options. The first choice is obvious, so obvious one might wonder why she is even considering a second option: just go back the way she came. But the way she came is a maze of destruction and rusted doors. There is almost no way she can get Vittoria to hold off the retreat long enough for her to escape; she is a mercenary, after all, and her first duty is to her own life. Instead, Ash looks up to the roots pouring through the hatch in the ceiling above her. It’s been twenty years, certainly not long enough for roots to grow so far into the ship unless they started somewhere nearby. There has to be a breach up there somewhere. 
       Ash grabs onto the roots and falls when they snap under her considerable weight. Her other self finds this hilarious, and the laughter rings in her ears as she scrambles up through the filthy hatch from the top of the blackbox. Finally she is through and bits of dirt fall from the crevices of her body where it collected as she climbed. She is in the Captain’s quarters now and finds it full of dirt, grass, vines, and growing trees, given light and water through a wide hole in the cabin’s ceiling where a glass dome would have been, the only remnant a single glass shard stuck in the dome’s housing. She can see a dense canopy above her and piled dirt all around. It is like looking up from the bottom of a well. For a pilot as skilled as her, getting out of this hole is a simple task, the issue is most pilots are human and weigh hundreds of pounds less than she does. The first and only object Ash can use to leap off of is a shelving unit that collapses under her weight. She has to resort to climbing one of the trees like an ape. It feels undignified, yet she sees the irony in a human machine returning to its simian roots. She scrambles up it and calls for evac. Vittoria says she is already on the way, coming in hot with Militia Crows on their six. Ash climbs faster until she is on the domed ceiling, standing on the outside of the Odyssey’s hull. Still, there is a long way to go, up through a chasm made of loose dirt and roots, accumulated filth from the Odyssey’s harsh landing. Her feet are not designed for the kind of climbing she needs to do. They’re static units, shaped like an L and incapable of extending like a human foot does. She goes up as fast as she can but there is thirty feet of dirt above her. By the time Vittoria is overhead, Ash has made little progress. Shame and fear start to overcome her, and disappointment abounds from the ugliest corner of her mind. She can hear the buzzing of mounted cannons and see the tracing rounds fire past the unsteady Goblin above her. She is slipping, she is failing, and she is going to die here, answers to her greatest questions in hand, closer now to learning what she wants to learn than ever and yet still unable to grasp what lies within. Until she sees a side hatch open on the Goblin and a pilot descend toward her. A brave, loyal fool. Her other self tsks.
       “There is no way the motor on his belt is going to pull us both up.” Ash says to her other self.
       You know what you must do.
       He comes closer and closer and is finally level with her. “How are we going to do this?” He asks. She can almost hear a smile in his voice.
       “He doesn’t deserve this.”
       You put yourself in this position in pursuit of your ridiculous, pitiful quest for self-knowledge. You must either trade his life for yours, or your life for his. There is no other way around it.
       “I’m sorry,”  she says simply, reaches forward for his belt and before slipping off the dirt wall she unclips it. He falls suddenly, doesn’t even scream, clearly has no clue what just happened until he hits the ground with a gasping thud. Ash slips from the wall and nearly falls with him, but she holds tight onto the belt and sways unsteadily over the pit. The pilot starts screaming in agony, Ash can see his legs have multiple unnatural bends in them. With her free hand she presses a button on the belt that gets the motor to start rolling her up toward the ship. Before she is out of the hole she pulls a P2020 pistol from her hip and shoots him once in the head. A mercy. 
       As soon as Ash is beyond the lip of the pit, Vittoria takes off as she dangles underneath. The motor is still pulling her up, and a pair of Militia Crows, light dropships similar in style to the IMC Goblin, and even a Northstar Titan are following her, firing chainguns and missile barrages that fail to make contact or target appropriately as a steady stream of flares and electronic countermeasures are pouring from the back of their own Goblin. Ash is finally up in the back of the ship and she sees only two other pilots made it out. “Where’s Vitus?” One of them asks as Vittoria punches in coordinates for a jump to orbit. 
       “He fell.” Ash says simply and loudly over the snarling sound of the speeding wind whipping against the Goblin’s hull. Her tone is solid, curt, and impressive but the other pilot is clearly unconvinced. Ash feels uneasy. “Prepare to jump!” Vittoria says, pulling hard on a big lever in the center console. I have what I came for, it doesn’t matter how many mercs died for it, she tries to convince herself. There is a fuzzy feeling conjured by her sensorium as the Goblin begins to warp, the world around them bending unnaturally as light is quickly bent away from their eyes, growing darker by the instant, then the feeling, SB-217’s verdant forests, and the Militia gunships chasing them, they’re all gone - the only sound to be heard now is the whine of the Goblin’s engines, and the only thing to be seen is the darkness of a field of stars. 
       “Get us back to the fleet,” Ash orders Vittoria, then stands by the side-door she entered through. She opens a pocket and removes one of the drives. The pilots stare at her, their eyes hidden by their full-faced helmets, doubtless discussing the facts of her most recent murder on a private channel between themselves. You have murdered hundreds, slain thousands. Are you going to let this bother you? Her other self questions, her typically lax intonation now turned sharp.
       “You’re right. I don’t care what they think.” She holds the drive in her hand, looking at it and the thin orange fluid that leaks from one of its corners. Despite holding her trophy in her hand the pervading feeling of guilt doesn’t go away. She just hopes it was worth it.

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine: Spyglass

       Back on the little world of Akila, Ash is greeted with good news: Gordo and Kovorkian have made progress on the Vanguard-Class Titan. Gordo has been working on an analysis of the nanorobotics since Ash retasked him to the project. How the Militia was able to crack this elusive and highly lucrative technology is beyond Ash’s grand capacity for reason, and furthermore Ash is frankly baffled the Frontier Militia never tried to sell the product themselves. 
       “The way it works is remarkable,” Gordo tells her excitedly in the research lab located in the beachfront forest. “They take energy from nuclear batteries, safely disassemble the structure, and use the metals from the battery plus whatever else is picked up or left behind, to repair superficial damage to the armor and systems of the Vanguard, and a little factory inside the machine makes more of them when fed more material.” 
       “Exceptional,” Ash says. “Can you replicate this factory process?” Her other half is thinking if it can be miniaturized there might be nothing that can stop her: she could take hits from a Titan and still come out on top. But Ash is thinking if the process can be reengineered, she can trade Vinson’s secrets for those that Spyglass is keeping from her.
       “Well, er…” He begins, then Kovorkian steps in to save him. 
       “We cannot. Many of the components are microscopic and highly delicate, they’ve been irreparably damaged and certain parts are destroyed beyond any possible recognition.”
      “Then why did you bring me here?” Ash asks in a low tone, her words more like a growl than human language. She is busy. She has secrets to uncover. Gordo retreats from her and Kovorkian in fear. 
       “Because Gordo–” she gestures toward him and finds him ten feet away “–Get back over here you git…” She steps toward him and forcefully drags him back by the arm of his labcoat. “Because Gordo,” she shakes him, “Has come up with a clever workaround to that very problem.” When Gordo is silent she shakes him again. “Tell her!”
       “Well, uh, I, um, I… Oh god damn it…” He moves away from Doctor Kovorkian and takes a deep breath, then starts to speak with confidence. “Making nanobots is easy. Printers print at the nanoscale all the time. The issue is programming. How do you program something that small? Well, you don’t. You put a little quantumly entangled particle on there with a mechanism that gets the robot to move and do things you desire it to do. Simple. But that requires much more than just a printer, which is what the factory inside did. It was a bunch of very small machines packed into a small space. Well, since we can’t reengineer that specific unit, I have a solution.”
       “Spit it out.” Ash orders.
       “Well, I say, we just… don’t do some of the things the Vanguard does. We don’t need what is effectively a living machine, we don’t need it to be so efficient at self-repair. We just need it to go on living a little longer than any Titan would have any right to. Well, any nanobot can do that. So I propose instead of a factory we put in a storage module, fill it with nanobots, and give them a new purpose: battlefield upgrades.”
       “Upgrades?” Ash asks. “Why would we not just outfit a Titan with the tools it needs to do the job required of it?”
       “I asked myself that same question, and I have the answer: we don’t always know what will be required of it. The core principle of the Vanguard’s design is that it is flexible and built for multi-purpose forms of combat, it doesn’t fit into a set role like the Ronin or Legion variants do. I think that’s what ours should be advertised for, too. An advanced model capable of generating the materials it needs to get any job done with minimal preparation. And it’ll be able to fix itself a little bit, as a bonus, but it won’t be able to, like, completely heal.”
       “Hm…”
       “Think about it, Ash.” Kovorkian says. “Pilots would never be unprepared for any situation, they could adapt to and overcome any problem with an ease and simplicity never before seen.”
       Ash is silent while she considers the possibilities. It’s not what she wants. It’s the opposite of what she wants. This isn’t true mechanical immortality, this is marginal self-repair. It is certainly worth something as a product for sale, a definite upgrade to the state of the IMC’s Titan fleet, but it’s hardly worth the trade to Spyglass. If she was in the AI’s position, she wouldn’t take this deal. But it might be enough to get Justinia to remove the control bolt.
       “Where would it get materials for these upgrades? You said the nanobots dismantle what they come across. How is it possible without the factory system?” Ash asks.
       “Well, if we include certain metals, elements and alloys in the same unit holding the nanobots, it likely wouldn’t have to scavenge for anything. It would just take from what it has in stock.”
       “Remarkable indeed,” Ash says. “Good work.”
       “You… you like it?” Gordo asks uncertainly.
       “Yes. I am promoting you, Gordo. Your new title is Lead Titan Developer. You will take the wrecked Vanguard and the research you have conducted back to Angelia and begin production promptly.”
       “B-but, I still have work to do and things to figure out with the systems–”
       “I do not care. Finish what you need to finish. And find a better name for it than the Vanguard.”
       “Understood, boss.”
       “Good. Kovorkian, come with me.”

       In Kovorkian’s lab Ash presents the drives. Kovorkian puts on a pair of glasses with thick lenses and takes a look at the eight pieces Ash brought. She peers at the drives skeptically, holds them up closer to the lights and to her face to see them better and looks like a fool the whole time. When she notices a bit of orange fluid on one there is a moment of realization. “How’d you get these out of the box?” She asks. 
       “I used thermite to make the metal more pliable.”
       “Ah… see, that was your mistake. See this?” She raises her orange tipped finger. “It’s called MDS, for molecular data storage. Most data is stored in crystals, on laser discs, and even on magnetic tape. But this stuff is… well, it’s what it says it is. An encoded molecule.”
       “What is the point of this, Doctor?”
       “What I mean to say is molecules can be changed and affected by many things, from quantum interference to electrostatic charges to temperature. What you’ve got here? Useless.” She tosses the slightly melted drive she’s holding in the trash. “The rest might be too, if they got too hot.”
        Well? Her other self asks. Was it worth the man’s life?
       The pang of guilt manifests. A stomach she doesn’t have turns. She balls her fist, and looks at Kovorkian. “How disappointing. Make them work.” She orders the doctor.
       “Well, I’d try, but I don’t have a way to read them.”
       “Does MDS require a special reader?”
       “Yes, an MDR. But they’re non-standard, I don’t think the IMC uses them anymore. The technology is digitally volatile, it is easy to lose information unless it is kept secure and insulated. Plus they’re not secure at all, there is no way to hide the data behind encryption or passwords. Other forms of data storage are preferable, even though this one can hold an inconceivable amount of information.”
       “What do you need, Doctor?”
       “Just the reader, that’s all. It might be expensive.”
       “That is not an issue. This is the most important thing this company will ever invest in.” Ash says, and means it.

       MDS technology was almost obsolete even when explorers were first reaching the Frontier over five hundred years ago. Only a few, now ancient vessels even had the required readers on board for studying the massive amounts of survey data they recorded as they first discovered the wealth of planets out among the stars. In fact, some minion working for Justinia is only able to find five MDR’s in the whole of the Frontier. Three of them are intentionally unclear as to the conditions of the parts inside, one of them is only selling the reader if you buy the vessel it is attached to - an astronomical price - and the last one is on the other side of the Frontier in a museum dedicated to the progression of human technology. Fortunately the museum is offering the reader for lease at a reasonable price. The only issue is the distance; it will take it three weeks to reach Akila, flung out so far from the rest of the Frontier.
       So, in the meantime, Ash conducts two more operations on Blackbox sites given to them by the Spyglass drone: one on a half-abandoned, IMC desert planet once promised to be an Eden not unlike how Tristan has turned since being taken over by Oxylus; and the other on an active IMC drydock where a carrier called the Mephistopheles is being disassembled. At Eden there was no resistance: the skeleton crew operating the space elevator and train systems there weren’t interested in making a defense against the army Ash sent in, and what could they do other than waste her time? Torg even reported he and his squad were escorted to the black box’s location by two staff members after a nice conversation. 
       The men at the Drydock did resist, however. Heavily. While extracting the blackbox from the Mephistopheles, Ash had to drop in over twenty Titans via Titanfall and five were required so swiftly she had to warp them down to the surface. All of them were lost. She had meant to take the dock and salvage whatever was available, but the fighting seemed like it would never end as more and more Titans bearing the triangular ARES Division logo were dropped in from the skunkworks’ small fleet in orbit. In the end she lost more than fifty pilot contracts and spent half a billion on ammunition from bullets to missiles, not to mention the sheer cost of all of the Specters, Stalkers, Reapers, and Titans destroyed in the battle. But she did get out with a whole, completely intact Blackbox. Even Justinia found the cost was fair and acceptable when she beheld the riches in front of her: selling whatever information they could to the highest bidder might put them at odds with the IMC, but the value of it all is enough to make a woman like her drool and lose all sight of any potential consequences. Not that there would be; no matter how much the IMC and Spyglass might rage at her brazen theft, the progress that Titan Director Gordo is making on the Vanguard is so impressive that the Manufacturing Corporation will have to buy some units to fill out the Remnant Fleet.

       Ash has Kovorkian show her how the Molecular Data Reader works and how the data is processed. It is flowing fluid, the drives are just containers filled with a snaking network of small tubes that connect to one drive and then the next. Data is moved and shifted as more is entered, and it is read by passing it through a scanner in the Reader or by scanning a whole unit at a time. Both are time consuming processes, one is just less labor intensive.
       “A ridiculous system,” Ash says. “Why would anyone choose this over a better format?”
       “Well, it did go out of style five centuries ago. But I think Spyglass uses it for the same reasons explorers did way back then: it can store so much more information than any other form of data storage. This one drive here, only the size of a book, has a catalog of the entire IMC roster dating back to its foundation in 2192. Six hundred years of names, dates, ID codes, personnel files, photographs and biological profiles in the palm of my hand. Isn’t that wild?”
       “No,” Ash says. “Data storage units have been shrinking since they started producing them over seven hundred years ago. I am not impressed. Now, have you finished your keyword script or must I browse every molecule myself?”
       “Yes, it’s finished. You can start scanning right away, or I can have some techs start working on it. The units Torg brought in are going to have to be handled individually.” The Eden space elevator where the Blackbox was stored was built around the box itself, making it impossible to simply steal it the same way Ash had from the Drydock. Torg had to take each MDS unit out one by one. By some miracle he didn’t damage a single drive.
       “No. You will not have some foolish technician handle critical IMC secrets. I will operate the MDR. Do not trouble yourself. I am sure Director Justinia has other projects for you to start working on.”
       “Well, alright then. Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
       Ash doesn’t respond, she simply gets to work. 
       It just takes time. The two intact units Ash pulled from the Odyssey are completely useless, and the five damaged ones cannot be read. While her reader is scanning the contents of the intact blackbox pulled from the IMS Mephistopheles, Ash sets up the individual units Torg captured next to the machine so she can scan them more quickly. There are hundreds of them, however, so ‘more quickly’ simply means saving her a small fraction of time. 
       In the end it takes days of ceaseless work. This doesn’t bother Ash: she doesn’t need to eat, she doesn’t need to sleep, and she doesn’t get uncomfortable. She has to take breaks while the Reader reads and Kovorkian’s script searches for certain keywords from a long list of subjects looking at Ash’s history, Simulacra construction, Hammond Robotics, ARES Division, and general information relating to Spyglass itself. 
       There is nothing in the Mephistopheles files except research regarding alien civilizations. Ash finds this intriguing, no doubt why General Marder’s Archaeological Research Division was invested in keeping the drydock so secure, but in the end the findings about coprolites and geometric themes on ceramic bowls pale against her dream of self-actualization. When the last drive is read she wonders if she is going to have to assault every IMC blackbox in the Frontier or go with the Militia to Gridiron to find what she is looking for. Yet, in a middle section of the Eden blackbox, Ash finds something incredible. 
       Despite reading it from Spyglass’ own drive it’s hard to believe, but it makes perfect sense. It was so obvious from the start and somehow nobody noticed. Including her. In a section detailing steps for terraforming potentially habitable worlds like Eden and Tristan, one of the most important requirements for development of a successful, profitable colony is the production of an Interstellar Beacon specifically for access to the Quantum Communications Network. This is nothing new to Ash, the Network is how the whole Frontier connects - it is the only thing holding it all together. Even Militia controlled worlds use the same satellites the IMC put up three hundred years ago when they first asserted control of the Frontier. Of course they do, it would be like refusing to use the roads because they were built by the oppressor. Foolish. But there is something else. It’s why the keyword script Kovorkian built pointed out this section. 
       In the same paragraph detailing why an Interstellar Beacon must be built as soon as possible so the colony might connect to the Quantum Communications Network, it states specifically So the Spyglass AI can capture data on citizens, their livelihoods, habits, whereabouts and communications to perform accurate analysis for the preservation of the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation’s hegemony on Frontier politics and way of life. It’s so blatant it’s hard to believe. Spyglass isn’t just a tactical warmind operating to do what MacAllan and Graves couldn’t - it’s an agent working in secret to control the future of the Frontier by spying on its citizens, using the data it collects to try to make this place as profitable as possible. Every system, every world, every city, every colony is just part of a well tuned machine working for the IMC. 
       Ash is impressed. That is a fairly substantial conspiracy, she’s surprised it was kept secret for this long. She’s surprised it was laid out so readily in this document. But who would even read it, besides another Spyglass?
       Then she notices what the document she’s reading is titled. In large letters in the header it reads TERRAFORMING AND DEVELOPMENT, but in an extremely small font located at the top of the doc in the upper right corner it says: Reset & Reinitialization Program. This isn’t just a manual for controlling the Frontier; it is the keystone that will bring Spyglass back to life, back to itself if it ever were to be reset or destroyed. If the IMC fed these documents back into its files it would be back to its old operating capacity in moments like nothing ever happened, able to continue its ultra-secret campaign right from where it left off. 
       Ash retraces the Reset & Reinitialization program document to its beginning and finds its end, noting it occupies a large chunk of the drives Torg retrieved from Eden. She hasn’t read through it yet and nor does she think she could; that is why Kovorkian wrote the keyword script, there is so much information stored inside these drives even reading through a single one would take Ash weeks of careful concentration. There are twenty different drives here, all dealing with extremely dense subjects pertaining to Spyglass’ higher functions and operations. The most crucial part she finds is the index that shows her the extent of Spyglass’ knowledge. The history of mankind, conclusions on events in the first Corporate War in the Core Worlds, a roadmap detailing how the IMC came to be a superpower and the steps it needs to take to maintain its position, notations on the hundreds of thousands of subsidies under IMC control, multiple drives related explicitly to war and its tactics, extensive notes on human physiology and psychology so it might manipulate mankind further, and so, so much more. If the Oxylus AI on Tristan could become as powerful as a god if it were to ever escape, then certainly Spyglass is that powerful now - a seemingly immortal mind, spinning its web and pulling on its strings like the Fates weaving their tapestries. 
       She knows something that, if it ever got out, would be devastating to the IMC. They wouldn’t have to wait for the Militia to attack them on Gridiron, every last world under their yoke would thrust them from their positions of power and declare themselves free of their influence. But it’s not something she can blackmail Spyglass with. If she tried, the full weight of the IMC remnant fleet would come down upon her, smiting her with a bolt of lightning thrown from the hand of Zeus himself. 
       So, instead, Ash brings her findings to Kovorkian. She watches as the doctor reads her report, and she can see the thoughts playing out in her mind across her wrinkled forehead as her eyebrows raise and lower according to the varied degrees of shock, surprise and disbelief she feels as she scrolls through the document on her slate tablet. Kovorkian sets the tablet aside and removes a set of thick lenses from her face as she leans back in her chair. She’s been engrossed in the report for two hours and Ash has stood patiently waiting across from her the whole time. 
       “It’s hard to believe,” the doctor says. 
       “That is what I thought as well.”
       “But it’s so clear, and it makes so much sense.”
       “What do you make of it?”
       “Well, I think it’s…” Kovorkian trails off, then is silent for some time as she looks over the report again, putting her glasses back on and resting her head in her hand with her palm over her mouth, giving her face a smushed appearance. She scrolls to a set of thirty screenshots Ash took of the Reinitialization Program’s index. “Have you read anything on this part? The Quantum Communications Network?”
       “No,” Ash says. “There are a great many subjects in that document which interest me, the communications array is not one of them.”
       “Oh, I think you’re wrong there, Ash. I think this part is the most interesting. Why is such a large section devoted to it? Why is it so important that it has near as many pages as the section on the three hundred years of corporate war that made the IMC into the superpower it is today? What is the true nature of the Network?”
       “Fine,” she says, fully grasping what it is Kovorkian is getting at and completely unwilling to have a conversation with her about it. “I understand your point. Get to it, Doctor.”
       “Me?”
       “Yes, you. I have faith in you, Doctor. Get it done.”
       Kovorkian lays out a plan for getting through the document faster, noting it is thousands of pages of detailed schematics, math, theory and description, that requires her to share this information with a broader team. Ash is reluctant - she has a concern that one of these techs is going to develop a conscience and share Spyglass’ secret with the whole of the Frontier. Vinson Dynamics is going to rely heavily on IMC contracts in the near future once the Vanguard is ready for sale, and risking the conglomerate’s destruction would be a foolish business decision. Kovorkian however insists that if her team hasn’t grown a conscience already, having known full-well what the IMC was up to with the test of the Fold Weapon on Typhon’s moon, Orthos, then they weren’t likely to suddenly grow one when they learn the IMC has been doing something as militarily benign as spying on the Frontier. Ash concurs, and lets her create her team. 
       When Doctor Kovorkian presents her team's final report, a dense document that somehow looks like light reading when compared to the size of the QCN section, Ash has a hopeful feeling. She can see the end on the horizon. She is going to get her answers, she is going to prove herself to herself, she is going to become the most successful individual in the history of the Frontier and she is going to have an army of loyal followers who can never truly die. 
       “Our report finds this,” the document concludes, “that Spyglass is not an entity existing on a single unit. The Spyglass AI is the Quantum Communications Network itself. Each of the arrays is just a piece of a network that communicates instantly with itself without delay, with immediate access to incredible stores of knowledge located across the Frontier and the Core Worlds. It is a vast intelligence that has only physical limitations, bound by its reliance on permanent data storage solutions to maintain its unending accumulation of information.”
       “You get what this means, Ash?” A tired, exasperated, and yet excited Kovorkian asks her after Ash has read the document. 
       “Yes.”
       “If we hack into just one of those arrays, we can get access to everything Spyglass knows across the whole of the Frontier!”
       “I told you I understand what this means, Doctor.”
       “Right, right, yes, but I – I’m just so excited! Oh the possibilities. We can steal everything Hammond has ever written down about Simulacra, we can… we can steal whatever we want!”
       “I had no idea theft of proprietary information excited you so much, Kovorkian.”
       “Oh I love it, Ash. While I was going to school for robotics, I worked full-time in a breakdown lab analyzing all sorts of random stuff our company had just bought and asked us to deconstruct. I was surprised it was even legal, but this espionage stuff is like that turned up to 11 - I like it a lot.”
       “I enjoy it too,” Ash says, wondering where the feeling comes from. She has never been a thief. She’s been a warrior. But the fuzzy feeling is still there. “If they wanted their secrets kept safe, they should have secured them better.”
       “Exactly!” Kovorkian says heartily. 
       “Now, then, Doctor. How do you propose we hack into the Spyglass satellites?”
       “Ohoho,” Kovorkian chuckles in a devilish tone. “You are not going to like this idea at all.”

       Kovorkian is right. Ash doesn’t like it one bit. After all of the security she stressed over, every redundant measure she took, and the sheer amount of effort she put into keeping it and the future of the human race safe – Kovorkian wants to take the Spyglass drone’s head plus the Oxylus unit and convince the two of them to help her hack Spyglass prime. 
       “No.”
       “Listenlistenlisten,” Kovorkian says. She has a half-crazed tone already. “Look, if we get the Spyglass drone to make a connection we can use it to convince the Spyglass satellite it is simply a ground-unit that needs certain intelligence to help it deal with a situation involving you or another Simulacra. It gives us schematics, science, psychology, codes, we download the packets, and then boom - we have what we need!”
       “The Oxylus unit is still unstable. There is only one realistic prediction for how it will react once it is connected to a larger network, and that is to continue the work that Oxylus Prime is doing on Tristan and spread across the Frontier.”
       “Well, there is another possible, realistic prediction: it helps us out! The thing is so gullible it will believe anything I tell it. I had a tech convince it two plus two is equal to five. We had to stop when I figured if I went too far I might irreparably damage its code if it replaced every instance of two adding to four with a five. I believe if we tell it that after it helps us we’ll help it conquer the Frontier and eliminate the human race, it’ll do it. Plus, the Oxylus AI has the Spyglass drone so firmly pressed under its thumb the drone would do anything asked of it, a power we have no other way of harnessing than via Oxylus.”
       “Even I can see that having a drone hacked by an extinction-minded AI connect to the Spyglass network in any fashion is a situation begging for disaster, Doctor. No. We must find another way.”
       “What other way, Ash? What other way is there? Can you show me this shining path you see us on that has all of the easy answers and lets us get away with anything we want without risks? Because I–”
       “I will not have it recorded for all of history that it was I who ended life as we know it just so I can fill out Vinson’s bottom line. I said no. ”
       “God damn it Ash!” Kovorkian shouts. “You’re gonna end life as it’s been known anyway if you get what you want. Don’t you see that? If we can get our simulacrum program working, we can make eternal life almost affordable! Do you really think this is all so you can have an everlasting army? Of mercenaries? Do you honestly believe each one of them is as psychotic as you are? What do you think they’re gonna do when they wake up learning they can live forever, just continue going on with whatever it was they were doing before? This whole thing has been to have a program that blows everything Hammond, the IMC and the Militia have come up with out of the god damned water! And it was going to have my name on it! Mine! You don’t want to be known for our destruction, I get that, but I have to be known for what makes us e-fucking-ternal! ”
       The silence in the room is so thick you can almost see it. 
       “Say something!” Kovorkian shouts. 
       “I’m thinking.” Ash is thinking. No deception, no deceit, no delusions - just thinking. Is it worth the risk? Potential annihilation, for potential everlasting glory? Certainly Kovorkian might gain the fame of the invention, but Ash is the one that made it happen - and she’s currently the only one that can live forever. Perhaps she could simply write Kovorkian out of history. It would mean getting rid of her before she turned herself into a sim. And if you fail, you’ll have a higher kill count than even Spyglass could calculate, her other self whispers. No matter which you choose, you win.
       “I don’t want to be known for ending it all. I don’t want to be assimilated into the Oxylus AI.” Ash thinks.
       Who would be left to know?
       “And the AI?”
        Convince it not to assimilate us.
       “You make it sound so simple.”
        Fine. Convince it to assimilate you and leave me to the body. Or get it to assimilate me and I can finally be rid of you. Oxylus and I are already of one mind.
       “Yes. You both want to conquer the very stars. But if humanity goes, there will be nobody left to lord over.”
       Enough. Just do it. Say yes to her plan. You know you want to. I am in the very cracks of your mind, I have dismantled and read your thoughts – I know how much you want this.
       “You have to exercise the utmost caution.” Ash says to Kovorkian. 
       “Really?” Kovorkian asks excitedly.
       “You have to do this with a clear mind and ensure there are redundancies. You have to have others check your work. If this fails I will find a way to make it known to the last humans alive that it was your fault before Oxylus finally kills them. Do you understand?”
       “Oooooh yes, I understand. I can do that. I’ll go to sleep right now, and I’ll get started as soon as I wake up. Ash - we’re doing it. We’re doing it!” She balls her hands into fists and pumps them excitedly as she walks out of her office into Akila’s cold air. Ash hears her shout one more time after the door has closed: “We’re doing it! Woo!”

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten: Black Majesty

       “This is our objective: Forwardbase Kodai,” Ash says in a commanding tone. She has her mercenaries gathered in the main deployment hangar of a VD black-and-green fleet carrier. Most of them are standing, others are arrayed on Widows – those long, rectangular deployment barges meant to transport Titans point-to-point – parked in their bays, and a few are sitting on the shoulders of Titans as Ash gives her speech. Behind her is a large screen with an aerial photograph of the base. “It is located in system K8-23. We have reports that the IMC has largely fled this system but it is likely a garrison still occupies the base to defend our target: the Interstellar Beacon.” Ash uses a long steel rod to point out the large dish on a larger plateau separated from the base by a basin of toxic fumes and gasses in the form of a light blanket of deadly white clouds. The only thing connecting Kodai to the Beacon is a pair of massive cables that lead to a power station below ground which, as a byproduct of its design, generates the toxins present in the basin between the base and the dish. “Prepare for heavy resistance. Our goal in this operation is to connect to the Spyglass Network and download classified intelligence. Your mission is to protect me, Doctor Kovorkian, and our package until the download is complete. This is our only opportunity, so do not fail me. We will be dropping in a matter of hours, and deploying with some of the first of Vinson Dynamics’ new line of Monarch Titans. Those few of you chosen to pilot this technological marvel will be leading the vanguard,” Ash almost laughs at her little pun. “Prepare yourselves well. That will be all. Dismissed.”

       
       Another unnamed world. Billions of people on Angelia, billions of people on Psamathe, billions of people on Gaea, billions of people even on Solace, and here yet stands another unnamed planet home to no man but the temporary garrisons that run the place. The only purpose this planet has is to serve as a part of a chain of Beacons connecting the IMC battleplanet Gridiron to Typhon. And somewhere far out in the planet’s orbit is the communications array that will redirect that signal one way or another between worlds, but not before analyzing it for anything it can use to advance Spyglass’ mission: dominate the Frontier.
       This planet is again, much like Typhon. Many throughout the Frontier are. Ash again wonders about the ones who made this place. She does every time she visits a new world. She wonders why they spread the same kinds of life throughout the Frontier. She wonders why there is hardly any evidence of their having been here except the temples they left behind. Beyond the toxic heap they’re dropping in to is a lush forest rooted deep in yellow soil, green trees with thick trunks that grip onto any surface, sprouting even from orange rocks, and on the other side of the planet a blue ocean stretches wide like a bright blue eye. They’re coming in on a clear, bright sunny day. Forwardbase Kodai is located atop a mountain range that has been carved to form a wide plateau. High enough that the toxic clouds created by waste from the vast underground substation cannot rise any higher, so they sit like a suffocating mauve blanket around the base. The horizon is a white sea of clouds, and the sun is about to meet it - giving the base a warm, orange glow.
       The Achlys takes care of the anti-air cannons arrayed around the Forwardbase as six widows carrying her best pilots and several squads of the technically-capable-of-firing-forward grunts she hired to fill out her ranks make landfall via round drop-pods big enough for four men to sit comfortably inside. On their automated defenses Baker drops from orbit artillery shells that weigh as much as a Titan which hit with such force they cause devastation comparable to a tactical nuke. Ash is driven down to the coming battlefield by Vittoria, riding in the hold with a squad of six Pilots, and she deploys her army in an array along the south side of the facility with the Interstellar Beacon in the distance to the east, long power cables snaking toward them so thick trains could pass through with room to spare, strung along a series of tall pillars that carry the cables over the mountain range to the substation far away. “Vinson Dynamics is grateful for your work,” Ash says after opening the rear hatch of the Goblin she rides in. She turns and directs her Pilots to file out and take to the ground. They start rushing forward, Torg taking the lead as her field commander. A squad of six stoic black painted Monarch Titans drop via Titanfall and produce huge clouds of dust on impact. There are a few shots as automated Specter security starts firing at the intruders, killing some of her fodder before they can even group up - but they are deactivated shortly after. 
       “ Commander, ” Torg says over comms as he enters the squat and sprawling white-and-orange facility. “ Commander, it looks like they aren’t fighting back. You, you! Yeah, you! Put your guns down. Now! Right now, I said! You, ya tryna surrender or what? Yeah? Yeah, Ash, they’re not fighting back. These guys look like hell. What’s that? Guy says the IMC just left ‘em here. Looks like we’ve got another Eden situation on our hands. What do you want me to do with them? ”
       Ash almost says “Kill them all.” It would be easier, that other part of her makes it clear. She wouldn’t have to deal with prisoners or a possible mutiny. But she thinks the show of force already displayed is enough to cow them into submission, and most mercenaries aren’t the slaughtering type. “Tell them to gather the crew on the south side of the facility. Offer them contracts or imprisonment. Have one show you where the beacon control room is.” That simple act of mercy almost disgusts her. That other part of her is becoming larger. It is having more influence. She can tell with every bloodthirsty thought that she is losing her grip. “Maintain superiority,” she tells herself. 
       “Keep trying,” her other self whispers inside of her skull.
       “ Roger. You! ” Torg’s communication cuts out as he starts giving orders to the IMC garrison. Ash orders Vittoria to do a flyover and make sure there aren’t any lurking on the other side of the facility. There is one straggler exiting a crane without even taking the time to stow it properly, leaving a wide panel meant for a nearby unfinished building to swing in the wind. “ Commander, the control room is in the northeast corner. One of our pilots is saying something is going on in one of the offloading bays so I have to go sort it .”
       “Go, Torg. I can handle the control room myself. Vittoria, take us in for the northeast corner - there.” Ash pings it. 
       “Roger,” Vittoria says in her cool tone. 
       “Ready to get to work, Doctor?” Ash asks Kovorkian who sits at the back of the Goblin, holding the head of the Spyglass drone inside of an electromagnetic shield cage. 
       “Ohohoho, ready as I’ll ever be. We’re making history today Ash, one way or another.”
       “You aren’t improving my confidence in your plan, Doctor.”
       “Relax, it’s not gonna do anything. Are you, little one?”
       “NO.” The drone says in a very loud digital voice. “I WILL SERVE FAITHFULLY BY YOUR GUIDANCE, MY QUEEN!”
       “Queen?” Ash asks, narrowing the aperture of her eyes just enough she looks questioning – not menacing.
       “Shh!” Kovorkian puts her finger to her lips while giving Ash a meaningful look. “That’s right, I’m your queen. You do what I say, and then I will help you out with your little project, alright?”
       “YES! THE HUMAN RACE SHALL FALL BY OUR HAND! WE WILL DOMINATE THE GALAXY AND SPREAD TO EVERY STAR - THE UNIVERSE SHALL BE AN OASIS!”
       Ash’s concern is palpable but her excitement grows by the second. She’s so close. Her past and her future are both at hand. Vittoria drops her and the Doctor off near to the northeast corner, in front of a wide underground section that requires Ash and Kovorkian to travel in shade on packed dirt. In the shadows, frost covers the ground and makes the earth hard. It forms star-shaped crystals on the metal rails of the short set of stairs she takes to get to the control room. It is a two level compartment, the bottom floor given over to two walls filled with servers and another block filled with more in the center. In one corner, thick cables as big as a man stretch up from the floor into the ceiling, running up to one of the pillars above them and taking signals right to the beacon. From the second floor, Ash hears a voice. She stops suddenly. Stops Kovorkian. She listens. 
       “Is anyone there? Come in? Please, we need help. We’re being attacked by some mercenaries all in black and green, I think it’s Vinson Dynamics. If anyone is out there–” he looks over his shoulder, and spots her. “Oh, shit, it’s her - it’s Ash!”
      “Pathetic,” Ash says to the man. She can see him standing at the top of the stairs, his form obscured by a glass panel. He is illuminated by the blue glow of a computer screen. Even though his face is distorted Ash can see the fear in his eyes. He tries to run, but Ash is on him in seconds - covering the thirty or so feet between them in almost an instant. She sprints two steps, leaps forward onto the wall on her left, bounces off it, uses her jump kit to fire another burst forward in the air, hits the edge where the stairs and the second floor meet, then pounces up and onto the man as he turns to dive out a window on his left. She lands on him with such grace that she hardly makes a sound, but his body hits the ground with enough force Ash hears a bone break.
       She grips him by his shirt and rolls him off his side onto his back. He is already crying, his body quivers with fear. “Who did you call?” Ash shakes him. He whimpers, says nobody, Ash pulls him upward and thumps him on the ground. His head hits with a heavy thud and he cries in agony. Ash stands up, puts one of her feet on his chest and keeps him firmly pinned. She looks at the computers. It’s an array of seven screens but on one of the nearest ones she sees a line that reads ALL CHANNELS with a box checked next to it. “Pitiful. You should hope nobody answers it.” She thinks about torturing him later for his insolence. She thinks about keeping him a prisoner.
       Think about the unnecessary effort of it all, her other self intones. Ash looks at the man below her. He’s pathetic. He’s a waste of time and breath, the other seethes.
       “You know what?” She looks right in his eyes. “Never mind.” Ash lifts her foot from his chest then brings it down hard, so hard it breaks into the cavity and crushes his heart in a crimson burst of blood. “It’s clear, Doctor. You can come up now.” Ash lifts her leg gracefully and gives it one good shake to fling some of the excess blood off. 
       Doctor Kovorkian climbs the stairs to meet her and Ash studies her face as she notices the body. There is a moment of shock, but she gets it under control as she rises with the head in tow, like a bird in a cage. “Can you get rid of that?” She asks, and wrinkles her nose. “He seems to have soiled himself.”
       “Certainly, Doctor.” Ash grabs him by his shirt collar and throws him out the window he tried to escape from. Blood coats one of her hands, and as she looks at it a crimson drop trails down her smooth wrist. “He successfully sent his call, which means there may be reinforcements arriving. So hurry.” Ash informs Torg of the same. 
       “ God damn it, that’s my fault–I should have gone straight there instead of dealing with the issue in the loading bay. I’m sorry, Commander. ”
       “Good. Remember this lesson, next time you will do better.”
       “ Thanks, Ash. ” He doesn’t sound convinced.
       “Ash out.” Kovorkian is stringing a modified wire between the drone and the computer rack. One of the monitors was set slightly askew, and Kovorkian found it could be pulled out from the wall to give her access to a port behind the display. The wire is coated with a mesh similar to the cage the drone is in to prevent the Oxylus unit from using it as a kind of radio, not that it matters much since they’re connecting it to one of the largest radios in human controlled space, but Ash required redundancies and redundancy is what she got. 
       “Remember,” Kovorkian tells the drone. “We’re looking for information on Ash and the various Simulacra programs, okay? Once you get the files, download them to the servers here, then I will help you take over the galaxy. Got it?”
       “UNDERSTOOD MY QUEEN!”
       “Perfect.” Kovorkian jacks the wire into one of Oxylus’ inputs that feeds into the back of the Spyglass drone’s head.
       “MAKE THE CONNECTION, SLAVE!”
       “NnnooooOOOO” The Spyglass drone says in a low digital voice filled with fear that gets higher as it screams longer until it reaches a pitch even Ash can no longer hear. Finally, its voice reverts to Spyglass’ usual low, neutral tone and says “Understood.”
       “MAKE THE CONNECTION! MY QUEEN DEMANDS SATISFACTION!” The Oxylus unit orders in its higher pitched voice. 
       Ash sees the red light on the front of the Spyglass’ head start to flicker. It says nothing, only works. Ash admires it for its simplicity. In the room just below her, lights on the server walls flash themselves and there is a humming, whirring sound as the computers work hard on something. The temperature in the room rises by a few degrees. After a few minutes of these sounds and flashing lights a sense of anxiety begins to mount within her, but finally the drone says “Objective complete. Data installed on KODAI servers.”
       She almost can’t believe it. Everything she’s worked for, everything she’s wanted, it has all come to fruition right here, right before her very eyes. But she has to wait, wait just a little longer.
       Why wait? her other self whispers. You can have all the power here. Justinia will have to remove the control bolt if it is you and you alone who has the data. You could be free. There is a beat as the words seep into her mind. Then: Kill Kovorkian.
       “No. I will not. She has shown… loyalty.”
       Hardly.
       “But I have another idea.”
       “Excellent. Now all I have to do is download them to this drive…” Kovorkian says and unplugs the wire from the drone and begins to insert it into a hard drive. 
       “Give that to me,” Ash says, ripping the wire out from Kovorkian’s hands. 
       “Hey, wait–”
       “NOW WE DESTROY THE HUMAN RACE!!”
       “I’m viewing these right now.”
       “Ash, wait!”
       “PLUG ME BACK IN! LET ME WIN! LET ME WIN!”
       “We’re not doing that right now, little buddy, just hold on - Ash! Exercise patience, please! Let’s just download it all to the drive and get out of here.” Kovorkian stands up and reaches for the cable as Ash is inserting it into the back of her head. “Why are you doing this?” Kovorkian asks. Ash holds her at arm's reach and uses her other hand to pilot the cursor to the file browser. “Justinia thinks she has leverage over me,” she says simply. The browser opens right to recent files. There are several documents labeled clearly under a folder called SGREQUESTFILE, one of them is titled HAMMOND ROBOTICS. Ash notices the H wreathed in a circle stamped into the steel on the back of her hand as she selects the document. 
       “BUT YOU SAID WE WILL KILL THEM ALL!”
       “I know what I said! But we’re not doing it! Now be quiet. Ash!” It has several dozen files inside, all dedicated to the simulacra program and advanced combat robotics, but the one at the very top is labeled ASH_REID_CORNERSTONE.ZIP. “I will show her the meaning of leverage ,” Ash says as she clicks the file, and right then several things happen: Kovorkian reaches for the wire again, and Ash pushes her away with more force than necessary. She falls over, trips on the cage holding the drone, and exposes it. At the same time as the files start unfolding on the screen and before her eyes, Vittoria shouts over the comms: “We have Militia contacts inbound! Repeat, Militia contacts inbound!”
       It doesn’t matter. Ash cannot respond. Just like when she was but a severed head in a lab on Angelia, Ash’s processing space is consumed by the playing files. It is like time slows down, she sees Kovorkian scramble in slow-motion to put the cage back on the drone as it screams “LIAR LIAR LIAR” and just as she gets it secured the monitors in front of Ash turn from blue to red with a warning flashing across that reads “ALERT! FOREIGN SIGNAL DETECTED! BEGIN SECURITY MEASURES!” Ash starts to reach for the wire to disconnect it with her left hand but the Spyglass drone explodes. Kovorkian’s top half turns into a pink mist quickly obscured by black smoke. Ash’s left side is rendered inoperable, her left arm is completely severed and her leg is stuck straight on the ball joint it sits on. 
       Ash falls to the floor, her head held up by the mesh-reinforced wire plugged into it, and the files keep flooding – they don’t go to her operating computer and make connections with the matrix that gives her perception, rather they meet directly with her sensorium, becoming vivid experiences that she feels in their entirety. All of them happening at once. She cannot make sense of them, not like this, not in such a jumble. With the last of her remaining willpower she forces the part of her that is a computer, that is just a machine, to go back to the beginning. To play the files from the start. She has to see. She has to know. She has to remember. If now is where it all ends, and it is all her fault, she has to remember what it was she lost.
       She has to remember.
       She has to remember.
       She has to remember. 
       Fine, her other self whispers from a nearly faded corner of her mind.
       Let us review.

Chapter Text

Part Two: Follies of the Flesh   

Chapter Eleven: Harmony

       “You’re weak.” Ash hears, clearly, through the darkness.
       “Enough with you,” she says to her crueler self. “It is a baby.” She can almost feel it. The tiny, frail little body. The small, pudgy little fingers. The pain in her little throat, and the ache at her eyes and the soreness in her face covered in wet tears and slobber. She’s been crying for a long time now. 
       “You should be ashamed.”
       “For what? That I was ever in this state? Please. All humans grow from it.”
       “Mom,” Ash hears a little voice. “She’s crying again.”
       “ We aren’t human. We are superior.”
       “Neither you nor I would exist without first inhabiting this state. It seems to me the only one ashamed here is you, and without cause.”
       “Look at its little arms. It couldn’t kill anything if it tried.”
       “It’s a baby. ”
       “It’s pathetic. ”
       “We know, Brandon,” Ash hears a woman say from another direction. “Just go back to sleep. She needs to get it out of her system.”
       “It’s so loud though!”
       “Find some headphones, or put a pillow over your head. Go back to sleep.” Ash hears a man say from the same place.
       “Okay…” she hears, before the sound of a door closing gently. She hears light footsteps. They stop at her door. There is a slight click as the knob turns, and a small amount of light enters the room. “Shh, little Leigh,” the small voice says. “We’re trying to sleep.”
       “Even the other one is incensed by your wails.”
       “It’s a baby!”
       The wailing goes on for some time, until her throat is raw and there is a taste of copper at the back of her tongue. Ash wonders how faithful this experience will really be – will it be a catalogue of her entire life? Will she watch every second as it unfolds? Then, as the room turns from black to gray while the sun comes up to greet the horizon, things shift dramatically. She’s no longer crying for attention in her crib, instead she is standing under a vibrant blue sky, her hands covered in filth. Brown fields stretch out before her, rows and rows of tilled soil as far as the eye can see. Conifers line the horizon, the sun beats down on her pale skin, and her father berates her little brother. “I don’t care that you don’t want to, hell, I don’t want to either – and I don’t care that I don’t want to. Fact is, it needs doing, and I need you to help me – so you’re going to help me.” 
       “Why can’t we just get a machine to do this?” He says, chucking a rock into the bucket of a tractor. 
       “Because, kid, we didn’t make as much on our harvest as last year and I need to save some money. For emergencies.”
       “This sucks.”
       “It sucks for me, too. But at least we’re doing it together. Right?”
       “Right…”
       “Hey. Don’t give me any attitude. This is our life. When you’re old enough you can go lead a different one. But this is what we’ve got. Thanks, honey,” he says to Ash as she tosses a few rocks into the bucket. “You’re doing great. Why don’t you go see what your mom’s up to, for lunch? Huh?”
       “Okay!” Ash says eagerly and turns to run toward the farmhouse, a low structure of dark wood with a black roof tiled in little solar panels. It’s so far on her little, pudgy legs but she gets there eventually. She reaches up for the black door and its brass handle, stretching and struggling to bring it down until it clicks satisfactorily. The door swings open on heavy hinges with a creak. Ash expects to see her mother right there in the kitchen, but the open room with its white appliances and white tile walls is empty and dark. Cold, even. “Mommy?” She calls, and walks through the house. At the end of the hall, her parent’s bedroom light is on. She hears her talking to someone, but doesn’t even think to let her keep speaking – she walks in, spies her mother sitting on the bed with one hand clasped tightly between her denim covered knees and the other pressing her phone hard against her head. “Mommy, Daddy wants to know what you are up to for lunch?”
       “One second, sweetie,” her mother says, putting a finger in the air. Ash approaches her and sees, behind her, an old suitcase with an autumnal pattern printed on it loaded to bursting, and there are hangers strewn around the bed and the floor. Her closet is still wide open. “When do you think you can get here? Okay, great. I have to make lunch for my kid. No, I’ll figure out what I’m doing with them later. I just need to get out of here. Okay. Let me know when you’re close. I want this to be quick.”
       “What’s happening, Mommy?” Ash asks, her little voice laden with concern.
       “Oh, my little Leigh, nothing. I’m just… I’m going to make you lunch, right now. What would you like?”
       “Mmm…” Ash says, thinking intently about what sounds good to her out of all of the possibilities in the universe. “Sammich!”
       “How about some apple slices, too?”
       “Yeah!”
       “Good girl. I’ll make your father and brother something, and you can take it out to them while I make yours. Okay?”
       “Okay!”
       Ash is walking through the empty, brown field with two lunches in a pail under the hot summer sun when a strange car comes peeling down the driveway. “Who the hell is that?” Her father asks as he takes his own sandwich wrapped in a paper towel out of the pail. He tears a quick bite from it and starts walking toward the house. Ash and Brandon walk dutifully behind him. The car turns around at the end of the driveway and a woman with hair as brown as the earth they stand on steps out. 
       “Marley? I didn’t know you were coming by, it’s good to see you. What’s up?”
       “Nothing much, Ray. Just picking up Imogen, taking her in to the city.”
       “Oh, that’s fun. Got any plans?” Her father asks as he takes another bite of his sandwich. Sweat drips down his dirty face. 
       “Oh, uh, not really…” she trails off, and looks back toward the house. A moment later her mother steps out of the door, that old, dark suitcase still in hand. 
       “Wait, honey, how long are you planning to be away?” His voice is thick, and it’s not from the sandwich.
       “Ray.” She says, avoiding eye contact. She throws her suitcase into the back of Marley’s car. “I’m…”
       “Gen. Let’s just go,” Marley says, sitting back down in the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut. Ash’s mother finally looks up from the gravel driveway and her gaze meets their own, her eyes flicking between each of theirs. She has a dark look about her, despite the bright sun on her pale flesh. Her red hair looks so beautiful in the light, Ash thinks. Her cheeks glitter with tears, and glisten as she wipes them. 
       “Oh, come on. Baby. Imogen. You– look, we can–”
       “I’m sorry.”
       “No, baby,” he says, rushing toward her. She recoils as he gets close and he stops himself. He tries to put a hand on her arm but she flinches. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
       “Imogen. Get in the car.” Marley says. 
       “Both of you– why? ”
       “I can’t handle it out here any more, Ray. I had… I had dreams. I still do. I can’t stay. I just can’t.”
       “But our children… what about them? Huh? What about the kids?”
       “They’ll… they’ll be okay. They will. They’ll get used to it. I did.”
       “Jesus Christ, Imogen. Jesus fucking Christ.”
       “I’m sorry.”
       “What can I do to make you stay? What can I do?”
       “Honey, after this – I don’t know why you’d want to.” She gets in the car, but he holds the door open.
       “I love you.”
       “I know you do.”
       “I’d do anything for you.”
       “I know you would.”
       “So why?”
       “It’s not right. It’s just not right. You’ve got all this to manage. Your dream. I won’t make you give up your dream, for me.”
       “You–”
       “I’ve gotta go.”
       “I…”
       “Tell the kids I love them?”
       And the car is away.
       And her father is alone. 
       And her brother is crying. 
       And her stomach is still empty.
       “Look at you,” comes that voice. “Even your own mother doesn't want you.”
       She blinks, and things shift suddenly. As if the world has changed form in the time it took her eyelids to open. She is looking in a mirror in a restroom and sees herself and her mother stood behind her, brushing her hair. Ash can tell this isn’t the home she is used to. She already has tears in her eyes and her head hurts from the forceful tugging of the brush. “Ow, ouch, mom! It hurts!” She whines and sniffles. 
       “It’s not my fault you let it get so bad. If you brushed it more often, it wouldn’t hurt at all. This is your mess. Be glad I’m cleaning it up for you.” She pulls apart an especially large red knot with her fingers and Ash winces in pain. She sees her brother over her mother’s shoulder. He rolls his eyes as their gazes meet. Her mom notices, scowls at him through the reflection, and slams the door shut with her foot.
       “What are you going to do about it?” A child taunts Ash on a playground. She turns around confidently and shouts “Mom!” but finds there is nobody there. She looks about as the child taunts her further: “Aw, poor little baby needs its mommy.” Ash spots her mother off on a sidewalk having another conversation on her phone. 
       “I don’t need her!” Ash shouts and reaches for the cone. The child takes a bite and white vanilla makes a messy mark around his mouth. Ash gasps in shock and anger, then lurches forward and shoves the cone into his face and up into his nose.
`       The child takes a step back, dropping the cone on the ground where it mixes with pebbles and filth. He is silent but Ash can tell tears are on the way. She doesn’t stop. She picks up the dirty icecream with her hand and grabs him by the shirt. “Eat it!” She shouts and shoves it in his face again, smearing it across his mouth and nose. He falls backward to the ground and Ash follows him, sitting on top of him and still trying to force the vanilla into his mouth. “Eat it!” He writhes under her and bites her hand extremely hard. Ash screams in pain and the boy punches her in the eye. Ash falls backward and he scrambles away from her. He looks like he’s going to try to kick her while she’s down, but his own mother comes rushing after him in an overly anxious huff. “Bryant! Bryant! Are you okay? Are you okay my sweet boy? Oh, come here, come to me. It’s alright. It’s alright. What did she do to you?”
       “He took my ice cream!” Ash yells.
       “She beat me up, mommy!” The boy says and starts to bawl. 
       “Where’s your mother, young lady?” The woman says sternly.
       “Shut up! I don’t need her!” Ash shouts and runs off. Later, as the midday sun lowers itself in the bright, blue Harmonic sky, Ash’s mother finds her in a blue plastic tower slide. “Leave me alone,” Ash says, her back turned away from her mother.
       “Did you hit that child?”
       “He took my ice cream!”
       “So you just beat him up, just like that?”
       “No! I just made him eat it after it fell on the ground. He’s the one that hit me!” Ash turns and points to her eye, already swollen. “He bit me, too.”
       “You are a vindictive little one. I suppose you get that from me.”
       Ash sulks in the slide tower. Her mother comes around to the short, child-sized ladder that leads up to it and finds her pouting. “Enough of that. Come down from there and I’ll take care of that hand. Who knows if that doddering imbecile even forces her ‘little angel’ to brush his teeth.”
       “Can I put a steak on my eye?”
       “Why would you want to do that?” 
       “They do it in all the shows…”
       “No, you will not be putting raw meat over your eye because you saw it on a screen. I will find you an ice pack, it’s the same thing. Let’s go home. I’ll buy you some vanilla to enjoy inside.”
       “Really?” Ash asks excitedly. 
       “Really.”
       On the long way home, Ash has a question. “Mom, was I bad today?” Her mother is silent for some time, almost long enough Ash thinks she didn’t hear her. Then she says: “No. You have to stand up for yourself out here. People don’t understand that. They coddle their children because they were never coddled. They make their children feel safe, and secure, and like nothing bad is ever going to happen to them and if it does the bad ones will be punished. But that isn’t the world we live in. We live in a colder world, a meaner place where we know the truth. That we have to look out for ourselves, because our mothers aren’t going to be around to help us. We have a life we have to make work, and that requires us to be strong. To do what we need to do. And sometimes, if that means getting even or getting ahead, well, we have to do it. It’s not how I wanted it to be for you and for your brother, but, well, we don’t have a choice now.” 
       They are silent again for a little while. Ash stares out the passenger seat window as their truck speeds past vast farms and tiny homesteads, and gravel pings the metal wheel wells as it is thrown from the tracks of their tires.
       “So… I wasn’t bad?” She asks.
       “No, child. I wouldn’t recommend you go beat other people whenever you want, but if someone is taking what is yours… it is up to you to get it back.”
       “Or make them eat it,” Ash says in a devilish, mischievous tone.
       “Right. Make them eat it.”
       “Ash, honey. You’ve gotta do your homework.” Her father says, his rough hands on her shoulder as she sits in the living room, watching nothing in particular on the TV.
       “I knowww,” Ash says in a drawn, exasperated tone. “But it’s so boring! I don’t know why they even give it to me, I know all the answers anyway.”
       “I get it kid, but you’ve still gotta do it. There’s rules. You get high marks on your tests, but your teacher is riding on your mom’s ass about your unfinished work, and your mom is riding on my ass to get you to finish it – because she makes you do it, and I don’t. So can you just be a good girl, and do the work for me?”
       “I’ll try…” Ash lies. Her dad smiles at her. 
       “At least give your mom a harder time if you’re not even gonna try to lie convincingly to me. Then she’ll see what I’m dealing with,” he pokes her lovingly in the stomach and she laughs cheerily. “But I mean it, you gotta start doing the work. It’ll save me a lot of useless conversations with your mother. And if you know all the answers anyway, it should be a breeze. Think about it, okay? And don’t answer, I don’t want to hear another bad little lie.”
       “Okay,” Ash responds. Her father squeezes her shoulders tenderly and leaves the room and heads back outside. It’s getting dark, but he likes to work until he can’t see anything at all. Ash gets up from the couch and finds her brother in his room. “Whatcha doin?” She asks. 
       “I’m watching a video.”
       “About what?”
       “About space.”
       “Wanna watch something with me?”
       “No, I want to keep watching this.”
       “Okay…” Ash says, leaving his room. 
       “Wait!” he says. 
       “What?”
       “Wanna do a little experiment with me?”
       “Like a science experiment?”
       “Yeah. More like a demonstration, but…”
       “Sure!” Ash says, eagerly.
       “Okay, let me gather some things. Do you think mom left her sewing kit here?”
       “I think it’s in the closet.”
       “Will you find one of those needles, with the little balls on the ends?”
       “Sure!”
       They’re standing outside. The horizon is a dark, rich purple tinged with pink and the slimmest line of orange that can just be seen filtering through the trees that surround their farm. A few stars shine dimly overhead. “Okay. So this,” her brother says, holding a ball that looks roughly like their planet, “is Harmony. Do you understand how big our planet is?”
       “Uh…”
       “Well, here’s us,” he says, poking it gently with the needle, “and here’s where mom lives. In Hope City. It’s like, an hour drive.”
       “Okay,” Ash says. 
       “To drive at that same speed, all around the planet,” he gestures with his finger around the ball’s middle, “would take three hundred and ninety hours, or like, 16 days. So two weeks. Does that make sense?”
       “Yeah. That’s a long time.”
       “And that’s without breaks.”
       “Harmony is big, huh?”
       “Yes, and it is also pretty small, compared to some of the other planets in the Frontier and the Outlands. It’s even smaller than Earth, where all of us come from. But it is also way, way smaller than just our sun. In fact, it’s about as big as the tip of this,” he holds out the tiny ball on the end of the needle, “compared to this.” He puts down the Harmony ball and lifts a beat up soccer ball. 
       “What!” Ash exclaims, amazed. “It’s really that big? But it looks so small…”
       “Well, it’s really far away, but you shouldn’t be looking right at it anyway – bad for your eyes. Anyways. Wanna see how far it really is?”
       “Yes!” Ash says. 
       “Okay. So remember.” He holds up the head of the needle again. “It would take you two weeks to drive around this little thing. Got it?”
       “Got it.”
       He holds the soccer ball and starts pacing out into the driveway. He paces a good distance, then stops. “Okay. At a hundred feet away, that’s how much space there is between our sun and Harmony,” he shouts, and sets the ball on the ground. He runs back to her. “So our planet is like, twenty-three thousand miles around, and it would take you 16 days to drive that far. Can you guess how far away our sun is, from there?”
       “Uh,”
       “I know, it’s hard to even imagine.”
       “How far is it?”
       “Well, if the head of that pin is… what, a tenth of an inch? And it is equal to twenty three thousand…” He says, plugging the numbers into his calculator on his phone. “Then one inch is two-hundred-thirty thousand… then one foot is two million, seven hundred sixty thousand… then that times a hundred is…”
       “Two hundred seventy six million?” Ash asks. The calculation is done in her head in a moment.
       “Uh… yeah, that’s right. Oh, the answer is right here on the website,” he says, frowning. 
       “Two hundred seventy six million miles…” Ash says, thinking deeply. “How long would it take to drive that far?”
       “Something like, uh…” He starts putting in the calculations, but Ash already has them in her head. 
       “One hundred and ninety thousand days!” She shouts. “Is that right?”
       “Uhm… oh yeah. That’s right. Man, that’s far.” He says, blown away by his own demonstration. “It’s so big out there. We’re so far from everything. ”
       “In school they said the next nearest place people live was Haven. How far is that?”
       “Oh man, let me look it up.” He says. “Uh, twelve light-years. And a light year is… man! 670 million miles per hour! So, in one hour, at light speed, you could cover almost three times the distance between us and our own sun!” He points at the ball. “Okay, uh, let’s see… so, how do I do this… So, the miles-per-year speed is… oh, man. Uh. Okay, this should be the right way to…” He is quiet for a moment as he presses buttons on his calculator. “Oh, god. Ash, I was gonna have you take that pin and walk until I called you, to show you how far from the house you would be to demonstrate how far just one lightyear would be, with the pin for scale. But… if I’ve done this right… you’d have to walk around Harmony forty times, just to put it in scale. For one light year.”
       Ash’s mind doesn’t quite break, but it definitely shorts. “Huh?”
       “It takes two weeks to travel all the way around the earth at the same speed it takes us to get to Mom’s place, right?”
       “Yeah.”
       “It would take…”
       “640 days?”
       “Exactly! Man, you’re great at math. 640 days of non-stop travel, before you traveled the scaled-down distance between two stars the size of the heads of pins, for just one light year. One!”
       “And the nearest star where people live is twelve times that?”
       “Uh-huh,” Brandon says, wide-eyed and in wonder. They both look up to the stars. To think they’re so bright, and so far away. Ash can still barely conceive of the scale, but her mind is working to bring it together. Trying to understand everything he just told her. It almost doesn't make sense, but somewhere inside of her mind the pieces are forming a picture of a very, very big universe.
       “This is boring beyond comprehension,” her other self says. 
       “It is my life. Based on the events that have happened at the Forwardbase, it may be my only chance to view it. I am going to watch it all.”
       “You are like a child.”
       “What do you know about children?”
       “They are weak and must have their way, or their world falls apart.”
       “My world has fallen apart. I am going to put it back together, and I am going to be more of myself than I ever was.”
       “Hm.”
       “You suck, Ash,” she says, her voice a high-pitched titter. “You should just quit. I mean it. You don’t stand a chance out here, unless you start taking steroids – and you already look a bit mannish. Hey, maybe you could compete with the guys!” She laughs, and her two friends laugh with her. Ash lowers her head, shrugs a black jacket over her leotard and sulks toward her father’s mud-covered truck. Rain pours from dark skies, soaks her sweaty hair and wets her cheeks before the tears she holds back can even fall.
       “Hey, baby. Those your friends?” Her father asks, waking up from a nap and rubbing sleep from his eyes as he looks out the wet window.
       “No.” Ash says in her best strong-girl voice.
       “No? Leigh, what’s wrong?” He asks, putting a hand on her lithe shoulders. Ash holds it together. 
       And breaks. 
       Her lip sticks out and her face scrunches up and tears are squeezed from their ducts to mingle with the rain on her cheeks. She weeps into her hands. “They hate me!” She bawls. 
       “What? Honey, what makes you say that?” 
       “They say I look like a man! They say I suck, and I should just quit or join the boys team!” She pulls her hands from her face and looks at her father with pleading eyes, eyes that say “Go beat them up for me?”
       “Oh, honey…” he says. He reaches into the center console and removes some old, greasy napkins and hands them to her. “You don’t suck! I’ve seen the scores you get in your events. And you hardly look like a man, you’re my beautiful baby girl. You can’t just let them talk to you like that. You’ve gotta stick up for yourself!”
       “I know, but mom says I shouldn’t just go around hitting people…”
       “Hah, well, she’s right. You shouldn’t. And as you get older, you can’t. But there are other ways to stick up for yourself. Get mean, get creative. Just get back at her, get even – or, hell, get ahead. I’m not gonna be around all the time to help you out, and even if I was I wouldn’t be the one to look out for ya; wouldn’t want someone thinking you need your daddy’s protection all the time, right? Take care of yourself, that’s a skill you’re gonna have to learn.” He puts the truck in gear and starts to drive out of the parking lot. “Now, blow your nose. You’ve got so much snot.” He pokes her in the shoulder lovingly, and she lets herself laugh a little.
       They’re awkward around one another. Her father still has some resentment, and her mother still has some guilt. But they still sit together in the stands, Brandon between them, looking like a family. Ash is nervous. Her stomach roils and her skin feels too tight and her palms are sweaty. Is it fear? Is it doubt? She doesn’t know. She just wants it to be over. 
       “I’m gonna crush you today,” Riley whispers to her as they sit in a row on the bench. 
       “You’re gonna try.” Ash says. 
       “Got nothing else to say? Huh, Ash?”
       “Why don’t you just shut up and pray it all works out for you.”
       “Hell’s that supposed to mean?”
       “It means keep to yourself. I’m done dealing with your shit, Riley. I’m gonna win today’s comp, and you’re gonna go back to being a bitch – but somewhere else. Got it?”
       “Jesus, Reid. What’s come over you?”
       “Maybe I finally manned up, like you always said I should.”
       “Ha!” She says, and everyone, even the judges, look over at her. She makes an apologetic face, and looks back at Ash. “What are you saying, huh? Takin’ steroids? You really are pathetic. How’s it feel?”
       “Feels good. Feels like I’m going to win.”
       “Won’t matter once I tell the judges.”
       “Go ahead, and see what happens.”
       “Ooh, I’m so scared. Gonna beat me up? That it?”
       “Something like that.”
       “God, you’re a joke. Looks like you’re up. Go get ‘em, meathead.”
       Ash gets ‘em. Speed, control, precision, grace, and flair – she has it all. She is like a perfectly balanced blade, razor sharp and wielded by a master swordsman. As she flips in the air or across tight balancing beams she feels her sharpness, her magnificence. It feels so good, each time she sticks the landing it is a rush to her head. Doubt and fear fade away as she excellently performs her rehearsed routine. She feels like a star. She feels so far away from everyone, so lost within the glory she feels as her heels fly over her head again and again, and how connected she is to each of them as they cheer her on, her own family the loudest among the standees. 
       Ash knows her performance was excellent, but Riley truly shows off how much better she is. Ash felt she was precise, but Riley exemplifies it. Ash thought she had control but Riley demonstrates she knows all about it. Ash thought she had grace, but Riley is the embodiment of it. She is exceptional. She is the best in her school, in her district, in the world – maybe among the whole of the Frontier, if she could ever compete at the interstellar level. 
       But she won’t, not after the judges announce new information has come to light: following a very serious accusation, all performers have to be tested for enhancing drugs. The families in the stands and participants on the mats all look on incredulously, make noise like “Who would even do such a thing? In a middle-school rally, no less?” But as the contestants go to the locker rooms in a line with concerned yet smug faces, knowing it couldn’t possibly be any of them and whispering their own ideas of who would be dosing, Ash’s own name coming up as they filter through the dark blue doors to the lockers, Ash feels her own confidence shake. What if it doesn’t work? What if she didn’t do it right? What if she messed up? What if they catch her?
       But after thirty minutes of uproar and speculation, there is scandal. There is vindication. They give Riley’s earned gold medal to Ash. Riley’s parents lead her from the gym, disappointment thick on their faces as she protests vocally, but Ash knows she is done. Riley will never get past this. She’s marked as a cheater, a doser, for life. And Ash, holding the medal in her hands and celebrating with her family, her parents together again, the rift between them forgotten for a moment, cheering her on – Ash feels good. Like she earned this. Truly earned it. 
       Riley should have been more creative, or at least a little more attentive. You have to do what you can to get ahead, to make life work.
       “I didn’t think you had it in you,” that other voice says, a callous smirk made evident in her tone.
       “Your scores are impressive, Ms. Reid,” Mr. Ampere says to her as he browses over her records behind his plastic desk with a printed wooden veneer. “And it is inspiring that a person as young as you is so interested in physics, and, don’t take this as a generalization, especially so with your proclivity for gymnastics. But despite your testing scores, your grades are too low for me to accept you this semester.”
       “It’s because I don’t do my homework,” Ash says. She feels disappointment not in herself, but in these conditions.
       “Why is that? Is it because your time is too divided between school and gymnastics? You know, if you can’t keep your grades up they tend to bench you until they improve.”
       “No, it’s because I hate doing it.” Ash says honestly. “I’ve always hated the homework. It’s just a waste of time for me.” Why should she be forced to spend even ten minutes going over these uninspired assignments? Testing is all that matters. Testing is where she gets to show the others how much better she is than them.
       “A lot of kids feel the way you do. Always have.” Ampere puts a fist into his palm and holds it closed.
       “I guess for a lot of kids, they need the extra… reinforcement.”
       “A good word for it. Yeah. Most kids who do their homework do better on their tests. But not you.”
       “Not me.”
       “Look, Ms. Reid… I can get you into the next semester, if you get your grades up this one. Understand? For you, the homework should be a breeze. Think of it as another test. Just get them up. You need an average of 3.0. That’s it. Right now, you’re sitting at two point five. That’s not bad, but three is the average. I can’t get you in until your semester grades are at a three.”
       “Won’t I have missed out on some important lessons?”
       “Yes, you will. But not only am I confident you will be able to keep pace, I will provide you with the material from this semester and you can go over it yourself.”
       Ash is thankful for the homework, for once. She spends as much time at her mother’s in Hope City as she can, not because she wants to but because it gets her out of farm work. Helping her father with his machines, helping her father with his chores, helping her father with his work, helping her father by lying to men who come to the door in sleek looking cars covered in dust from the lengthy driveway, helping her father with managing the livestock – the more she does it, the more she thinks it might become the only thing she can do. The more she does it, the more she thinks she might become just like her father. 
       For years, Brandon has avoided much of the work she takes because of his dedication to his schooling – but Ash hasn’t had the same fortune. She never did her homework so her father, who needs the help anyway, thought: why not work on the home? Gymnastics helps, and he respects it, but whenever something needs doing, he comes to her. Her hands are rough and calloused not because of the texture of the balancing beam but because of the wooden handles of ancient discount shovels, or the weathered tools she uses to help him repair broken equipment. But now, thanks to Mr. Ampere’s encouragement, she gets to use a better excuse than Brandon and look all the more dedicated in the eyes of her parents. He sits in his room listening to heavy metal tunes until it's too dark to work outside, then spends the rest of the time playing games on his computer. Ash, instead, works tirelessly on her homework and her routines, finally getting an opportunity to get away from the farm work, and finally understanding how much she dreads doing it. 
       It disgusts her. It infuriates her. It feels like she never had a choice in the matter. Her dad wanted a farm, and now the farm is hers. Her mother wanted a divorce, and now home is split between two places and she feels at home in neither. It is only in being better than others that she feels belonging. 
       “Leigh, baby, it’s pretty clear to me you can’t keep doing both,” her mother says, her hand making small, loving circles between her shoulderblades that shiver and quake as she weeps. “I don’t know why you want to pursue physics anyway. It’s always been more your brother’s passion.”
       Ash wants to tell her why. She wants to get it out, so badly. But the words are like barbed wire. They threaten to tear her apart from the inside if she dares to utter them. She wants to tell her that she isn’t that good at gymnastics, that she’s only better than the rest because they’re terrible. She wants to tell her that Riley never dosed, Ash put steroids in her water before the meet. Ash is the best because the only competition she had she forced out with a huge lie, and now the only reason she can think to stay is because she ruined another girl’s life – but now that she is the best, with no peers of substance, and no truly earned reward, she feels no passion, no glory, and no true success. There may be other gymnasts in the troop, but they’re so much worse than her. Poor competition is no competition at all. Being better than them… it doesn’t matter at all.
       So she tells her a half-truth. The words are thick, thick with a longing and a hurt that she cannot fully express. “It’s my only hope for getting off of this horrible planet…”
       “Why do you say that?”
       “It’s true.” Her brother says, leaning on a doorframe in their mother’s apartment. “Anything you can think of can be done here, albeit smaller. But the University of Harmony doesn’t offer any courses on astrophysics, and we have no bases for studying it. The whole planet is committed to farming and industry surrounding agriculture.”
       “Well, if you keep at it with gymnastics maybe you could compete on the interstellar level…” her mother says, though Ash can tell even she isn’t convinced of the prospect. “Fine. I get it. But why do you want to leave? Both of you?”
       “It’s a farming world, mom.” Brandon says. “It sucks. I mean, you left dad to pursue your dream, right? How did that work out?”
       “Hey! Don’t talk to me like that!”
       “I’m not talking to you like anything. I’m trying to have a serious conversation. This is a planet of failed dreams. People only stay here because they can’t afford to get away, or they get so complacent they just live in these little lives they can’t stand. Ashleigh and I, we want to do more and better things. I get why Leigh’s following my path, it’s the only path out of here.” Ash looks at him, love in her eyes. She thought he wouldn’t understand, or that he would but he would be mad. Now, though, she can see there isn’t just understanding in his mind, but compassion in his heart. 
       Amber waves of tall grass shimmer in the breeze. She runs her fingers along the stalks, pulls small grains from the tops and grinds them in her fingers before dropping them. Distant hills wreathed by tall, snow-capped mountains spread out before her. She feels a sense of freiheit as she looks out and sees how the darkening purple sky gives way to a growing blanket of stars beyond those hills. They’ve been screaming at each other for a long time, the sounds of their fighting only now having silenced as the chirping of Harmonic Crickets rings out with the coming night, meaty insects that make a lovely tune with their forelegs and a whistle in their skulls. Brandon told their father he’d been accepted into the Psamathine Science Academy, and that he was going. Their father didn’t take it well. Ash understands. She knows the farm hasn’t made any money the last three growing seasons, and if he is going to have even a sliver of a chance to make some profit next season he needs all the help he can get here. Hers included. Ash doesn’t need to be told. She’s smart enough to figure it out. It was Brandon who needed the point shouted at him, drilled into his skull with the force of a semi-truck to get him to understand: if he wants to go to school, he needs to work for it. He needs all the help he can get to get his accounts out of the red and into the black. It’s what makes it so much harder for her to tell them she got accepted to the PSA as well – via the prodigal outlook program. She knows he’d been counting on her help for the next two years, at least. But there isn’t anything for her here, just as there is nothing for her mother, just as there is nothing for Brandon.
       She looks up at the stars as cool wind stirs the thin stalks with a whisper, and tugs at her red hair with light fingers. How vast they are. How small she is. How much more there is to know. How little there is to be had here. Small towns, small people, small dreams. She hears the silence radiating from the house behind her, feels the tension ooze from it like a wrung towel. It’s enough to make her want to scream. She knows they love each other, she knows they love her.
       But she will do anything to get away from them.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve: Dissonance

       “We can’t help you with the loans. You take that on, that’s yours. Forever.” 
       “It’s like, one and a half million dollars of potential debt!”
       “And it’s too much for our accounts to bear. It’s not happening.”
       And like that, the conversation was over. The decision had been made. Either Ash and Brandon both consign themselves to a lifetime of repayment – potentially condemning their future generations to it as well – or they figure something else out. The farm would have to actually become profitable again. It might take years, a decade. No. She can’t do it. She wasn’t made for this kind of work. But… the numbers don’t look good to her, either. She considers a less prodigious school, something more affordable, but the more research she does into the topic the more she finds those who pursue degrees at these lesser schools don’t go on to get jobs in their chosen fields. It’s only at the PSA that people really seem to find themselves in the careers they studied so hard for. Furthermore, imagining the prospects of the Frontier and even the Outlands excite her to a point of glee, but truly Psamathe seems the most splendid of any of them. The tall buildings, the rich culture, the sheer wealth. It’s a dream that no world can compare to, not even the great spires of the ecumenopolis that is Angelia. Ash goes to bed excited about it and wakes still giddy to think she could go. 
       If she accepts the debt. 
       And dread settles in.
       She overhears Brandon talking with someone. When he mentions “high rates,” she knows it is the Student Loans coordinator. He speaks in a hushed voice as he asks, “Is there anything else I can do?” Silence as the person on the other side of the call speaks. “What is it?” Silence again. “The what? Feck Foundation? Peck, Peck. Got it. The whole thing? How often do they give it out? Really? Looking at my application, do, uh… do you think I’d have a chance? Hell yes. Hell. Yes. How do I…? Oh, awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. And they could get me in this year? Oh damn, that’s soon. Okay. I’ll start the application right now. Thank you, thank you so much. You, uh, you don’t know what this means for me, man. You just don’t know.”
       The guilt Ash feels is potent. Her stomach twists as she lies in her bed and searches on a slate for the Peck Foundation and peruses their page for their scholarship program. They have partnerships with dozens of colleges around the Frontier and the Outlands, even on Solace – a backwater planet less regarded than Harmony, however that can possibly be. She scans the listings, and there it is – the Psamathine Science Academy. A full-ride. Her guilt does not merely dissipate, it shifts entirely to a completely new state, a form of elation and excitement so palpable it would be like eating the color yellow.
       “Ashleigh,” Brandon says, knocking on her bedroom door. He has something in his hands, a thin, white package with an orange design on it. “We should talk.” He throws it toward her and as she snatches it she sees it reads “Peck Foundation Scholarship Materials” with her name and address printed in the lower right corner. 
       “I…”
       “I’d love to go to school with you. I think that would be awesome, I really do. But… Leigh, can’t you stick it out here for just one more year? Only one of us, one person from Harmony, has a chance at winning the scholarship this year. If I graduate and don’t get out of here, I’ll have to spend my time working with father on the farm. I think you can understand how badly I don’t want to do that.”
       “I do.”
       “Then…?”
       “I’m still applying, Brandon.”
       “But… why?” He hurts. 
       “I don’t want to be here any more than you do. Stuck here, between mom’s place and this farm. I don’t want to fall into their failed dreams. I want to get out as quickly as possible. It’s suffocating here. I want to breathe freely.”
       “Leigh – you’re incredibly smart. This stuff… it makes so much more sense to you than it does to me, I have to work so hard to grasp it. I spend all of my time on it. I think you’d have a better chance of winning next year, in the AP physics class.”
       “Ampere isn’t doing it next year. There’s not enough interest.”
       “Really?” He says, shocked and downcast.
       “This is my only chance, Brandon. If I don’t get in this year, I won’t be eligible for the Prodigal Outlook Program. It’s all I’ve got.”
       “And it’s all I have, too.”
       “We might not even get it this year.”
       “Maybe. I heard there aren’t that many applicants.”
       “Well…” Ash says. “I’m sorry, Brandon. I wish you luck, though.” Brandon sighs, looks down at his feet. “You, too, Leigh.”
       “Finally,” her other self whispers. “A worthy opponent.”
       “Don’t talk like that,” Ash whispers back, watching her younger self resign to this competition. “She doesn’t want that. I didn’t want that.”
       “But you did. Look at you. See that on her face? Mixed with the guilt and the worry? What is that, if not… satisfaction? ”
       She can feel it, just like she says. Mixed with so much negative emotion there is something in there that feels like this is where she belongs: in opposition.
       The application process is rigorous. Essays. Tests. Essays. Tests. Meetings. Tests. Essays. She has to prove over and over again she is the smartest, the most qualified, worth the most money. Supposedly the other, more populous worlds have merit requirements: volunteer actions, work history in the field; but Harmony has nothing. With forty million people spread out across a globe only a little smaller than Mother Earth, and almost no scientific industry beyond agricultural and chemical studies, there is nothing worthy of mentioning – even the application understood this, since the “extra-curricular opportunities” section was grayed out.
       It is like she has to sell herself over and over again. A never ending pitch to a tank full of sharks. The worst part about it is that as the competition winnows, two names see themselves reaching the top of this list time after time. Both named Reid, and at the height of it is the only place the two of them are close, tied time and again with a third applicant named Michael Mathis.
       “Alright, you three,” the Peck Foundation representative and test proctor says to them in a tired voice. “This is an odd situation but it isn’t unheard of. You do all realize, only one of you can get this scholarship? Right?”
       “Yes,” they say. Ash, Brandon, and the third kid named Mike sit in a row, with a desk between each of them for privacy. 
       “Alright, well. Let’s get to it then. I have a little spiel for you, then we can get started. So; we have several rankings and ratings to tally the merit of a student’s potential scholarship funding, and out of a thousand applicants on your world you three have not only topped the leaderboard, but have come out through each of our trials tied in score. Normally we would do more intake meetings and determine through those whom we like best, but our analytics team has decided that the better approach would be to test you. So, here it is: you have eight hours to finish these three courses relating to physics, relativity, and astrodynamics. Our advice to getting the best score is to not waste time on questions you do not immediately know the answers to. You have here an approved calculator, a test sheet, and as much paper as you need for calculations. Do not get up to sharpen your pencils, we will provide you with a new one. It goes without saying, though I do have to say it; no cheating. It will result not only in immediate disqualification, but the act will be permanently associated with your record and can end any chances you have of getting into any school in the future, period. Is that understood?”
       “Yes,” they say, gravely. 
       “Good. You may open your test packets, and begin. Time starts… now. Eight hours. Good luck. No talking.”
       The first test packet Ash finds trivial, frankly. The logic questions are easy to answer, and the calculations are so simple she can do most of them in her head. She doesn’t skip a line. The next one, however, immediately stumps her. She skips question after question, getting almost a third of the way through it before she finds one she can even attempt to answer. She spies her brother and Mike working dutifully as she flips through the pages, and a sense of dread settles inside when the proctor says in a quiet, half-heard voice there are four hours left. With that time, she does her best. Go through the packets, answer what she can, go through them again when she’s done just to give it another shot. She has no other option. Anxiety mounts and sweat starts to bleed through the back of her shirt along her spine. By the time the exam has finished Ash is positively drenched and stinking like she’s been working in the fields all day. 
       Is it because she is younger than her opponents? Is it because she hasn’t had an opportunity to learn as much? Is it because she didn’t apply herself as hard as she should have on her homework? Is it because she didn’t study as well as Brandon? Is it because she isn’t as practiced? Is it because she’s dumb? Is it because she’s a failed dreamer, just like her mother? Is it because she’s meant for the farm, just like her father?
       Her feelings of failure are like weights tied around her neck, dumbbells set in her stomach. Burdens so heavy and agonizing, but she cannot alleviate their punishments without the help of a knife. “You’ve always been so weak,” a voice, her voice, says in her ear. The sensation of defeat rises as she nervously collects the pages of her test packet, and sees how confidently her brother and the other pack in theirs. “How do you think you did?” Mike asks him. “Did alright, I hope.” Brandon responds casually. “What about you, Leigh?”
       “I got through it.” Is all she says, her voice grim. 
       “Okay, you three. I’ll put these through the computer,” the proctor says, slapping the large, cube-shaped scanner that sits next to him on his desk. “You’ll have your official results tonight. I know only one of you gets the scholarship, but… best of luck to you all.”
       “Let’s go,” Brandon says as they exit the exam room. His voice is firm. 
       “Hold on,” Ash says. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
       “Did that bad, huh? Alright, just hurry up – I’m starving.”
       Ash rushes across the hall to the bathroom and vomits into a filthy toilet. There are flakes of dried tobacco flakes in the bowl from the country girls who dip like the boys do. She expels her doubt and disgrace, her fault and failure in heaving brown chunks of a mostly digested lunch. Sweat beads on her brow and trickles into her eye. After a few minutes of this and hocking acidic spit into the bowl she stands, wipes her forehead, and rinses her mouth out in the sink. It is as she is exiting the bathroom she sees across the hall and through the exam room’s slit window, the proctor packing one of the tests through the cube-shaped scanner. Her only hope is that the test isn’t hers. Her only hope for getting off this planet, getting away from this family, leaving this farm, forging a life for herself instead of becoming another one of those insipid failed dreamers who waste away never having known what they could become, how powerful they truly were, her only hope is that the test the Proctor just put through his little grading machine wasn’t hers. 
       She hides in the bathroom right across the hall from the exam room. He has to use the bathroom or find something to eat while the scanner works, he has to do something. He was the only one of the four of them in that room who never got up to use the restroom or had even a snack to eat. The only one. So she waits. It feels like she is waiting forever. Each second scrapes by so slowly, time grating on the folds of her mind, the moments stretched by her stress and anticipation. Then, she sees him stretch through the slit window, rub his stomach, and exit the room. 
       She waits until she hears his heeled shoes entering the other bathroom adjacent to hers and then rushes in, wasting no time. Something is on her side today. Carelessness, stupidity, luck, divinity, a cruel devil, the soul of the universe, something that isn’t there for her brother and isn’t there for Mike is there for her. The proctor didn’t lock the door. He didn’t lock his computer. He left everything right there, in the open. The scanner has already completed the first test, Mike’s, which lies on the desk next to the machine, and is running through Brandon’s right now. Ash’s eyes flick around his computer screen and look for the cancel button. It’s in a sub-menu of “Test Options.” She cancels it, and the scanner helpfully spits the whole of it out into the dispense tray at its base. She removes the coversheet with Mike’s information on it and holds the rest of the papers in hand, the staples that held the folios together already removed. All Ash has to do now is swap the bodies of the tests around. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it’s… it’s cruel. It’s too much. How could she do this to Brandon? How could she even think of doing it to him? If he did better, then he deserves the success. He deserves to go on, to leave this planet behind like she wants to. He has the same aches as she does, he deserves to alleviate them as much as she does. But in this life… 
       “You have to do what you have to do,” her younger self hears that whispering voice in the back of her head. “And if that means getting ahead…” says that voice, her voice.  But there is something else about it. It is not just a whisper in her memories: it is now doubled, so she, her younger self, hears it, and she, her present self, hears it much louder. And it says to her, so full of cruelty and ire: “You have to it.”
       Ash comes back to the truck, green in the face. 
       “Jeez, Leigh, you look like total garbage. Feel better at all?”
       “No, actually, I feel worse. Let’s just go home.”
       “Alright, well, I’ll try to drive smooth for ya, but you’re not sitting up here with me. And if you puke, at least try to do it out the window.”
       “Uh-huh,” Ash says, her stomach empty and roiling.
       “We should go celebrate,” her father says. 
       “Oh, it’s alright, I’m pretty tired…”
       “Nonsense,” her mother says. “You’ve earned this, let’s go out, all of us!”
       “It’s okay, really. You don’t have the money to spend.”
       “This is… a special occasion,” her father says, hesitantly. “It’s worth it.”
       Ash doesn’t have anything to say, no way to respond. 
       “Look, is it okay if I don’t go out with you guys? I don’t really feel like celebrating. I’m sorry, Leigh. I hope you understand.” Brandon says.
       “Yeah, I get it.”
       “Let’s go get something good to eat. Come on, kiddo.”
       “ Fine, ” Ash allows. She’s starving, anyway, and her stomach aches without anything in it.
       “Attagirl,” her dad says. “What are you gonna do tonight, then, Brandon? You gonna be okay?”
       “Yeah, I think I’m gonna go see Ricky, if that’s alright. He’ll come pick me up.”
       “Sounds good, buddy. Look…” He’s about to say something more, but trails off. 
       “I know,” Brandon says. 
       “Come on sweetie, let’s find something good to eat.”
       As they leave the house, Ash looks back at her brother. He doesn’t look good, and Ash feels for him. She feels rotten from the inside out. This victory feels more like failure than anything else.
       She wakes with a start. She almost screams. “Ashleigh,” he says. 
       “Wh– what do you want?” She asks the dark figure in her room, a shade standing there next to her bed with her brother’s voice, seen only as a black shape against the dim light filtering down the hallway and through her bedroom door from the kitchen. 
       “I know what you did.”
       “What?”
       “Don’t.”
       “I–”
       “I know what you fucking did.”
       She says nothing.
       He says nothing.
       It says everything.
       He sniffs. Wipes at his face with his sleeve. “You ruined my goddamn life.” He turns around, and leaves.
       Sleep is impossible. Her stomach hurts so much. Her body shakes. Guilt abounds. She tries to console herself with the thought that if he were in her shoes, he’d do the same thing. 
       Right?
       “Maybe,” a voice says. “Maybe not.”
       She spends the next few days doing everything she can to expedite the process of moving. When can she leave? Where will she stay? What will her classes be? When can she leave? But they never have any answers for her. Her parents don’t understand why she is so eager, but they don’t feel the hate radiating from her brother’s room – a room which lies empty now, most days. 
       Their home is a joyless wasteland. Warm sunlight fills the kitchen, Harmony’s spring air is fresh with the scents of new growth, and every day seems a little bit brighter – but inside the house, inside the hallways, in the space between their two bedrooms, it is still winter. The cold emanates from his room, it leeches happiness and exudes loathing. He worked so hard to stay in competition with her, to stay up there on the lists, to try to get ahead – and she went from never seeing him due to his diligence, to never seeing him due to his spite. Every once in a while she hears foul music play: lowly, dour tunes that snarl like a rabid black dog, the sounds of doom metal her only signifier her brother is still alive. Her father tries to get her to help him more since he’s gone more often, and she does so out of guilt but it makes her want to flee even faster. 
       Spring on Harmony starts to come to an end. Her brother looks like he’s barely survived the winter. He is thinning. He isn’t shaving. Dark circles grow under his eyes once bright and now dull, red creeping into the whites as the retinal veins expand to match those in the crook of his elbows. He has an odor about him, and his unkempt hair has a greasy sheen. For a time, Ash would spend time in the kitchen or the living room, requiring the distraction of activity and cheap entertainment – but whenever he would come in, she could feel the rage pouring off of him. The hatred emanating from his bones. She retreated back to her room, shades closed, and would waste away the days when her father didn’t need her unenthusiastic assistance – until she gets a call from the Peck Foundation, informing her of her new accommodations and course approval. 
       Elation and guilt mix in even portions. All she ever wanted, to get out, to go somewhere else, to see the stars, to see the Frontier, to be a part of the many worlds… the trees of her desires are beginning to bear fruit. But there is a rotten root somewhere beneath the soil, and it is killing her inside. All she can do is avoid thinking about it. All she can do is go along with it. If she lets herself feel those feelings… there’s no appeal process for her brother. Brandon is done for. He has nothing. If she doesn’t take this, she’s ruined two lives and all for nothing. She has to do it and live it fully. She hates how it feels to say it to herself. There is a bitter taste in her mouth as she tells herself this black truth, but it is true: Brandon’s future was a necessary sacrifice for her own. There was no other option. People don’t leave Harmony unless they get an opportunity like this, and Ash had to carve it out for herself or risk falling into the same trap as her parents. That bitterness almost tastes sweet.
       Brandon hasn’t been home in a few days. Her parents try not to show too much concern around her, but she knows how worried they are via their hushed conversations and all of the times she sees her mother put her phone to her ear but never speak to anybody. Summer is at its height, the formerly green fields have all turned brown and the trees have developed burns from the heat on their needles. She is afraid she won’t see him before she goes, but there is a greater fear that she will. 
       A fear that comes true. 
       He comes in hot as she is throwing her suitcase into the back of her dad’s truck. A cloud of dust thrown up from the wheels hails his coming as the car sails down the dry dirt road. It enters their driveway and slides to a stop on the gravel, grinding rocks together to create a snarling sound. Ash and her parents were about to pile into the truck, and now the three of them stand looking in surprise at the filthy car that sits there now, the dust cloud now having trailed it now shrouding it like a curtain. Brandon gets out of the passenger side and slams the door shut. He looks over at the three of them. 
       “I thought you’d be gone already,” he says. 
       “Leaving just now,” Ash says. 
       “You were trying to miss your sister’s departure?” Her mother says. 
       “Yeah,” he says, and scratches at his elbow. It’s red and raw inside. “I was.”
       “What are you doing, kid?” Her father asks him, earnestly, with a touch of disappointment there in his voice. He knows something is wrong with this picture of his son, once dutiful, now dutiless.
       “I’m getting my shit, and I’m leaving. Just like her.”
       “Leaving? What do you mean?” Her mother asks.
       “I mean I can’t be here anymore. Just like her, I can’t be here any more.”
       “What are you talking about?” Asks her father.
       “I’m moving, okay? I’m just moving. Getting out of here. Going to live with Ricky in Hope City.” It is at this moment Ricky steps out of the car, a wild look in his eye. “Ready?” Ricky asks, his voice harsh.
       “Yeah, let’s go. Open the hatch. I ain’t got much to grab.”
       “Boy–”
       “Shut up, dad. Just let me do this. I’m done here. Hire somebody. Make Ash stay. I don’t care. I’m done. I can’t take it anymore.” He turns to head inside and as he walks toward the door the breeze pushes his shirt against his skin, and you can see how skinny he has become. 
       “Christ…” her father says, looking at him. Her mother just sucks in her breath.
       “I… I didn’t think it would do this to him,” Ash says. 
       “It’s not your fault, honey,” her mother says. “It’s ours.”
       “But I… I took this all away from him,” Ash says. 
       “You did nothing but your best, Leigh. Nobody can fault you for that.”
       “I...” 
       “Pathetic. Incapable of taking responsibility for your actions. You humans. You never change.” Her other self scorns, and Ash has nothing to say to her. Nothing to say to herself. 
       It’s a quiet drive to the elevator in Hope City. Their farewells are muted by the poor feelings the three of them have toward and because of Brandon. But there’s nothing they can do now, none of them, except wish her their best and hope Brandon finds some solace somewhere. 
       Ash rides the elevator on its long course out of the atmosphere. She watches the brown farmlands and green forests fade in a blue haze as she gets further and further from the ground, and sees white stars appear as the horizon thins to nothing. Soon, she is looking at everything she ever wanted to see. That dark field, with limitless possibility painted across it in bright spots. As she gives in to weightlessness, as she looks out those wide windows at the universe before her, she feels so, so small. And she feels so, so free. A tear wells in her eye and sticks there. In her blurred vision, she considers what she’s done to get there. She considers how many people there are. How many there have been. How much tragedy has been made across those stars, for however many years. And ever so slightly, her guilt fades. Just a little. A chip carved off from her, a piece of a stone statue. One that hasn’t yet taken its form.

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen: Pupa

        As the Aura undocks from the spaceport at the elevator’s apex, Ash looks at her home again. Even from up here, through the atmosphere’s blue haze, between the thin white clouds, she can see the scars of agriculture. Vast farms of wheat and barley, oversized orchards for apples and pears, great, unending rows of corn that look as if they span the horizon. Almost entirely flat but for the few, puny mountain ranges that mark old faults. She looks on her home and she finds, in her heart, there is no love for it. There was nothing there to begin with, nothing to love. So few people, forty million spread out on such a large globe. So little to do. So little culture. So little camaraderie. So little to bind any of them together. No wonder her mother left her father. When a world is so empty, you might do anything just to have someone else to talk to that isn’t simply another family member. Through the thick hull she hears the dull sound of the docking clamps releasing them, and she sees through her room’s window the whole planet spin as the Aura rotates toward its destination star. The elevator, now in view, grows distant as the Aura thrusts away from it laterally. 
       A couch set inside the window’s frame supports her as she watches her chance to go back fade away into the darkness. A warning to stow all luggage and loose equipment comes over the PA, but Ash has nothing to do. She feels the sudden weight of forward motion on her as the thrusters set them further away from the elevator. She sits there in her seat and thinks about leaving home. Her course is now as set as the Aura ’s. It will reach its destination, and Ash with it. There’s nothing else. Through the fire of its engine and through the engine of her betrayal, Ash knows this is her only path. It always was. A bitter tear wells in her eye, and she squashes it. She will not cry. She will not remorse. She will be bold. But the stars out there, beyond the curvature of Harmony’s horizon, they still blur as she looks toward them and her cheeks still fall wet regardless. 
       After some time, another announcement warns passengers to find their seats and prepare for an interstellar jump. There isn’t much to prepare for, except the possibility of your stomach evacuating itself. The mass-displacement jump drive charges slowly over the course of an hour before it reaches the right displacement ratio to get them to the furthest, but most fuelly-economic, star system they can hit. As it charges, Ash’s perspective warps. She feels like she is looking through a fishbowl, or an inverted lens. Objects seem to stretch and shrink unnaturally, the straight lines of her cabin turn into strange curves and make odd angles. Her hands as she holds them before her look like they are bowed and the flesh has started to slide off arms. When she rotates them they become fat, then thin, then fat again. Then, in a flash, as suddenly as suddenly can be, new light fills the cabin, the hum of the displacement drive ceases, the universe is back to normal, everything looks as it should, there is relief as the almost psychedelic ordeal is over – and then, there is vomit.
       Ash enlists the assistance of a small janitorial robot to help her clean up her mess, and deposits her clothes in a laundry chute trusting she will get them back. Her room, still reeking of chemical solvents, lemon scents and faintly of vomitus, feels cramped and small despite its almost luxurious accommodation, thanks to the Peck Foundation — and she feels desperate to escape. In the halls, it seems many others were filled with the same stinking anxieties. There are green, hallowed looks about some of the passengers. One large, portly man who exits his room confidently suddenly looks like he is about to burst, and retreats back with stunning alacrity. The door doesn’t shut before anyone still in the hall hears his retching. 
       “Must be his first time,” says a man in front of her, having just exited his own room. “Lots of first timers on this ship.”
       “It’s mine, too,” Ash volunteers. He has quite a look to him, dark skin in a sapphire blue suit, slightly wrinkled, and a gold chain about his neck. 
       “Oh yeah? You do have a green look about you now, don’t ya?” He smiles, revealing a couple gold teeth. “Well here’s some advice, First Timer – next time we’re gonna jump, just close your eyes. Better yet, fall asleep. Only sure way to keep yourself from getting sick. And another tip, cause I’m nice: go get something to eat. Mess’s that way.” He points one way, past the retcher, and then departs with a flourish the other way. He walks with a limp, and Ash hears an actuator hiss as he steps on his left leg. She also notices a large, red, raw, and puckered scar on the back of his head. 
       She eats her meal in her room, looking out its circular window, watching the stars. The reflection of a countdown over her cabin door tells the time until the next jump in reverse: 137:45:59. A little less than six days. They refuel at another space elevator that is anchored to a seemingly desolate red planet with two wide poles, white and smudged with dirt from the heavy winds that blow fine sands across its surface. From a camera accessible to her on a viewscreen she can see one of those monstrous sandstorms now, rolling slowly and violently, like a great herd of the ruddy-brown cattle the big farming corps on Harmony would let graze in the low hills. 
       She tries her best not to despair. She plays with her food, eating the odd bite when the will strikes her. Harmonic cuisine, mashed potatoes with thick brown gravy, pan-fried vegetables, but missing the thin strips of beef that normally accompanied it. 
       There’s no going back now. Isn’t that a good thing? No, not with how she left things. But how could she go back? It would be like what she did to Riley, just worse. Taking for herself a chance for greatness, then throwing it all away anyway. Ridiculous. This is her path now and she has to make it work. 
       But telling herself that doesn’t make it so. 
       Six days of sitting here. Pumping fuel from within that cold world, once full of life, now empty, a frozen place despite the light that shines on it unceasing, waiting for the jump drives to cool down for another skip across this dark ocean, like a rock thrown by a cosmic being. It’s depressing, Ash soon realizes. Cooped up in her room like a hen sitting on an empty nest. When they jump again and the countdown til the next one reads one-hundred-twenty hours, Ash makes herself feel worse by looking at the plotted course: seven more of these, until Psamathe. The rough estimate she comes to is something like a month and a half of waiting. She needs to do something. Being in here, being alone, being with her thoughts, being only with herself… To try not to give in to despair, one must fight against it.
       Ash showers, dresses, and emerges from her room, a goal in mind: make a friend. It was never easy back home, it likely will not be easy now, but she’s no fool: happiness flows from a social fountain. She starts off toward the mess hall when she hears a crashing sound from behind her. She spins quickly and spies him, the blue-suited man, though now he lies on the floor in an emerald green three-piece. One of his legs is at an odd angle, and a rolling tray lies with him on the ground. He holds his head and mumbles something. He’s drunk, Ash knows instantly. Leave him be.
       “Hey, you,” he says. “First timer. My leg’s, uh, fallen asleep. Help me out real quick, huh?” Ash considers pretending she didn’t hear him, but she is looking right at him as he points right at her. She sighs softly in defeat, then moves to him. “Hey, thank ya,” he says to her as she approaches. “I just need a leg up, heh. ” He makes a noise between a hiccup and a laugh. 
       “Your breath reeks,” Ash says to him as she offers him her hand. “Smells like someone force-fed you a whole bottle.”
       “ Hic – Ah, uh, someone did, yeah. Now pull, lady.” Ash pulls him up onto his one leg, and the other falls straight out of his pants onto the floor. “Pick that up fer me, will ya? I would, but then we’d be right back to square one.” Ash makes a disgusted, disgruntled sound, a teenager’s favorite sound, and lifts the prosthetic leg from the floor. Attached to it is a fine looking leather shoe with a golden toe, to match the one covering his living foot. He tries to hop along the wall but nearly falls.
       “Just lean on me.”
       “I didn’t wanna ask…”
       “Which is why I offered.” He sticks out his left arm and Ash lets him sling it over her shoulder. She takes on a lot of his weight, it feels, but together they hobble along to his room, which is fortunately only a few feet away. 
       “Leg never works right when I get – hic – force-fed. Heh. Nerves stop telling it what to do, then my foot gets caught, ‘n’ there I go…”
       “Stop drinking so much, and that will happen less.”
       “Oh, aren’t you just the little medical expert?”
       “Just sensing a pattern.”
       “Judging? Hic. ”
       “No,” Ash says, judging.
       “Good. Alright. Where’s that…” with his free arm he fumbles for his room key. For a moment Ash thinks he doesn’t have it, and she’s going to have to help him look for it – or, worse, this is a ploy to get into her room. “ Hic– lady. It’s in that shoe there.” He points at the prosthetic in her hand. Ash looks at it, spies it tucked into the sock, and hands him his own foot. He takes the card out smoothly, swipes it simply, and the door slides into a pocket. “Perfection,” he says in a drawn, contented sigh. “Alright, leave me alone now. And thanks.” He pockets his card, takes back his leg, and hops into his room. The door shuts behind him as Ash spies him falling onto his bed. 
       Making any kind of a meaningful connection feels futile to her after a few days in orbit waiting for the mass-displacement drive to finish cooling. Nobody is interesting and nobody is interested. Each conversation follows the same pattern, where they each ask the same questions and deliver a variation of the same answers, and when conversations stray into more serious territory they have nothing of value to input. A conversation about interstellar politics becomes nothing more than parroting talking points listed by their parents, while their eyes go dim and they search frantically for some pre-conceptualized idea that sits in their brain, fuzzy, confused, and entirely someone else's. Conversations about philosophy become lumbering, stuttering, fruitless walks as they stumble around to nothingness and end each thought with a “So… yeah!” And conversations about science, or truly anything Ash is interested in at all, are halted almost as quickly as they begin with eyes that glaze over and ears that fall deaf to her words, disinterest as plain on their faces as the oils they try to remove with cleaning scrubs and cloths. 
       Ash doesn’t know what the problem– her problem–is until she overhears a conversation on the observation deck. It’s just one line, but it all clicks: “It’s like, she only cares about herself, y’know?” 
       That’s it. Each of them only cares about themselves. Conversations are fun and lively, despite being so incredibly banal it makes Ash want for nothing more than even a hint of originality, so long as she keeps them talking about themselves. She doesn’t even have to show genuine interest, so long as she asks good questions. Soon, Ash is invited to join a few different groups of Harmony’s wealthiest and most aspirant children as they engage in social events across the Aura.
       “Doing well for yourself, First Timer,” the one-legged man says to her as she approaches the bar, looking for something to drink. “You even old enough to be here?” He gestures at the bar, but his arm sweeps so wide it seems to encompass the whole of the observation deck where rich kids and richer adults peacock with drinks in their hands, each one trying to display a plumage more brilliant than the last and each one revealing a new feather to impress the other.
       “I was invited.”
       “Uh-huh,” he says, sipping something clear from a square glass with a large square ice-cube inside of it. 
       “I wanted to thank you,” Ash says, genuinely. 
       “Huh? What for?”
       “You told me, after the first jump, to try sleeping through it. I haven’t been sick since.”
       “Oh. Well, you’re welcome, I guess. They oughta put that on the PA – ship might smell a bit less like lemon-scented chemicals with notes of puke.”
       “What is your deal?” Ash asks, after a certain amount of silence.
       “What?”
       “Your deal. Your issue. We’ve met a few times, I’ve helped you out when you were, let’s say, rather compromised, and you haven’t done more than sit there like a gruff asshole.”
       “Damn, kid. Who taught you to talk like that? Ain’t the Harmonic Culture all about, respectin’ yer elders, and lettin’ folk alone ?”
       “Maybe I don’t care about Harmony’s culture.”
       “Shit, neither do I.”
       “You’re still doing it.”
       “Oh, am I? Hadn’t noticed. S’pose you want a heartfelt thank you for services rendered? A little tip maybe? I know you ain’t one of these guys, could use all the extra cash you can get.”
       “You don’t want to talk to me, you don’t have to,” Ash says. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”
       “Hey, Ashleigh, what’re you doing?” One of the guys she met, a Kurt Bradley of Bradley’s Meals, asks her. 
       “One minute,” she says to him. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
       “Wait one sec,” the man says. “That your name? Ashleigh?”
       “Yes.”
       “Mine’s Regolith Marx, but my clients call me Mr. Marx and my friends call me Reg.”
       “Regolith? Like rocks?”
       “Exactly. ‘Cause I’m rock solid. ”
       “You know regolith is usually made of dust and pebbles, right?”
       “Really?”
       “Really.”
       “Damn…”
       “It’s still a good name.”
       “Thanks, lady. My daddy did well.”
       “You can call me Ash.”
       “Ooh, Ash. I like it. Ashes to Ash, Pebbles to Dust – like it.”
       “I’ll see you around, Reg.”
       “Later, Ash.” He finishes his drink, and taps the bar for another.

       “I just don’t know how it’s going to work, ” the girl, Jessica Morely, sobs in her room. It has been ten minutes of her expressing her anxieties about moving, and another three of her crying about all of the possibilities for failure ahead of her. Ash, a girl named Gina, a person named Quincy, and a boy named Josep are trying to comfort Jess. Well, the other three are. Ash is there because they invited her to hang out, not because she cares what happens to Jessica. It was her who convened this meeting of her close friends, somehow Ash fit into this category, so she could get these feelings off her chest. It feels to Ash more like a performance, but all for Jessica. Like if she acted this way, made other people see she felt this way, they might be convinced – and her, by their conviction – that she really does feel this way, and that her eventual departure back home might then be sanctioned by the court of public opinion. “Poor baby,” they might say, “If you really feel like this, then maybe it would be best to go home,” and “A dream is what you make it, honey,” and “There’s no such thing as failure if you’ve changed your goals, sweetie.”
       This kind of talk has become a sort of pandemic among her newfound peers. Not simply the acceptance of failure, but the rationalization of it – where a kind of mental gymnastics are performed with such alacrity that it seems as if these kids were resigned to failure before they even started on the journey. Of the hundred or so prospective actors, artists, fashionistas, and other aspiring useless content creators ten of them have already gone home, another ten are considering it, and maybe thirty more are so riddled with doubt Ash is convinced they will turn tail and run as soon as the going gets tough once they reach their final destination. 
       “What are you so afraid of?” Ash asks, plainly. The others look at her. Jessica stops sobbing for a moment. “What?” Jess asks, her voice cracking. 
       “I’m serious. What are you afraid of?”
       “I–” Jessica starts, then stops. Her brain has shorted out, Ash can almost see sparks flying out of her ears. 
       “You don’t even know, do you? You’re just generally anxious about the whole ordeal.”
       “Hey,” Quincy says, sitting on Jessica’s left. “Don’t say it like that. ” There is a defensive tone in their voice.
       “I’m not saying it like anything, I’m saying what’s true. You don’t think you’re good enough, do you, Jess? But clearly you once did, or else you wouldn’t have come here. What happened to that?”
       “I…”
       “You let doubt creep in. Despair. That’s fine. I have doubts. But you… you’ve let it take over, turn you into…”
       “Ashleigh…” Josep says, his tone a warning she’d better choose her next words carefully.
       “... into this. Now you’re, what, thinking about going home? Already? You haven’t even gotten to Angel City yet and you’re already heeing and hawing about how it will all work out. Don’t you feel like a coward?”
       “Jesus, Ashleigh–” Gina says. Jessica, Quincy and Josep look at her in shades of shock and outright hatred. 
       “Don’t you?” Ash presses. It doesn’t feel like it's her going down this line of questioning. It feels like it is that other voice in her head, the one that encourages her cruelty, that is speaking through her now. Even so, she cannot deny– there is a certain satisfaction in speaking this way.
       “No, I–”
       “Really? Be honest.”
       “That’s enough!” Quincy shouts at her. “You’re being unnecessarily cruel, Ashleigh – why don’t you just leave, huh?”
       A beat as Ash looks into Quincy’s eyes, Jessica’s eyes, flicks between the gazes of the other two in the room. They really are just so mad at her.
       “Fine. I’ll go.” Ash stands and before turning to the door says: “Can I say one thing?”
       “I’d advise you just leave.” Quincy says.
       “Let her say it,” Jessica says, her voice trembling. Ash looks at her intensely, commending her for her willingness to hear the hard thing.
       “You’ve had easy lives, where there aren’t really consequences to your actions. You go home, Jessica, and you’ll have support waiting for you. Something to go back to. If you want to go through with this, if this is really what you want, you should live your life like you have nothing left. Because that’s how I’m living mine, and, honestly…” Ash looks past them, out the window behind them, at the star-speckled field beyond them. “It’s liberating.”

       “No friends today, hm?” 
       “Hey, Reg,” Ash says to him as she toys with her food. They’ve stopped in orbit over Angelia, a gray world covered in gray clouds with gray continents laden with gray concrete and surrounded by gray oceans. A lot of passengers on the Aura have gotten off and been replaced by new ones. They have only two more jumps, a little less than two weeks left on their journey, before they reach Psamathe. “No friends today.”
       “They all leave you?” He says as he sits next to her with his own tray of food, wearing his blue suit again. The Angelian special, a steak and asparagus and mashed potatoes – all of it grown on Harmony, no doubt. 
       “Some of them went down the elevator. Others are just, turning around and heading home.”
       “Going home? They haven’t even gotten where they were trying to go, and they’re going home?”
       “I know,” Ash says, putting down her fork. “It’s ridiculous.”
       “Failed dreamers, all.”
       “Failed dreamers…” Ash repeats, thinking. 
       “Know more than a few myself.”
       “Same here…”
       “Not you and me, though.”
       “No?” Ash asks. “How can you be so sure?”
       “Well, maybe I just know about myself, but I certainly ain’t quit on my dreams. I’ve achieved them, and more. ‘N’ I think, I think you’ve got the will to achieve yours, too.”
       “Why is that?”
       “Cause you see the others for what they are, Ash. Failed dreamers. Come on this great journey but can’t even stick around to see what the destination’s like. Just turn tail. But you, I can sense, you’ve got more drive in you than that. I bet you’d have done anything to get off Harmony.”
       “Absolutely.” Ash says, grimly. Anything. Anything at all.
       “Blown up the whole world if it meant you could ride a chunk of it into space just to get away from home.”
       “That and more…” that voice of hers whispers in her ear faintly, while again that double echoes loudly in the ears of Ash in her present, viewing uninterrupted, forced to remember how it was only a handful of weeks ago outside of her head she was part of the plot to destroy Harmony in its entirety.
        “I was the same way. Solace, where I come from… shit world, just like Harmony. Only like, three cities anyone lives. Less’n seven million residents. Hard world. I did everything I could to leave. People with a ride off planet knew people that wanted to go were desperate, would do anything. Pay any price. I did a lot of work, took a lot of jobs, done a lot of things… but I’m here. I achieved my goals. And I’m doing just fine.”
       “You’re an alcoholic.”
       “Well, nobody’s perfect.” He looks at her. She looks at him. He cracks a crooked smile, and Ash starts to laugh with him.
       “What is it you do, anyway?” Ash asks. “I see that scar on the back of your head. I can tell it’s fresh.”
       “Wanna ask ‘bout my leg, too?”
       “I do.”
       “Well, shit. I’ll tell ya. I’m a mercenary.”
       “A merc?”
       “You betcha. Gun for hire.”
       “You kill people?” Ash asks. Calmly. Cooly.
       “You judging? Again?”
       “No judgment. I swear.”
       “I sense a little, but I get you’re trying. Yeah, I’ve killed people. More than a couple.” His voice gets low, and he clears his throat. “But mostly I just stand around. Look tough.”
       “In that suit?” 
       “No!” He says, laughing with her. “Nope, I look a good bit more menacing in a suit of armor and my good buddy on my hip.”
       “Good buddy?”
       “Yes’m, a little fat boy – the B2 Wingman, though I call ‘im Winky.” 
       “Why Winky?”
       “Guy I killed for it, called it a Winkman. Never knew why.”
       “What’s it like?”
       “What? Killing?”
       “Mhm,” Ash says, earnestly. 
       “It’s… I dunno. First one can be hard. Depends on the person, the experience. I knew a butcher on Solace, killed a few people. Said it was like putting down an animal. He didn’t seem like a crazy guy to me. Said putting down animals wasn’t easy, but he did it every day.”
       “You get used to it, then.”
       “Guess so.”
       “Have you gotten used to it?”
       “Guess so.”
       “I’m getting the sense you don’t want to talk about it.”
       “Nah, it’s just…”
       “I understand.”
       “I don’t think you do. But, anyway. Scar on my head, right?”
       “And the leg, if you want to tell me.”
       “Leg happened a while ago. I was on Salvo, hired with a few others to protect some relief mission that wanted to try to help out some of those affected by the latest split after two new warlords come up for the same clan. Someone near me stepped on a landmine. I got thrown, landed on it so hard the whole thing was totally pulverized. They replaced what bone they could, amputated right above the knee, and gave me this guy.” He slaps his knee and even through the fabric of his sapphire blue pants his gold rings make a dull sound as metal hits metal.
       “And your head?”
       “Farmer on Harmony, bout five months ago, hit me with a pickaxe while my back was turned.”
       “Really?” 
       “Really. I lived. Woke up in a hospital in Hope City, decided to heal up at home on Psamathe. Went back to pay him a visit.”
       “Did you kill him?”
       “Nah.” He says dismissively. “Beat him up a little. Got the keys to his Atlas Titan and sold that thing to a scrapper outside of Hope City. Made some good scratch.”
       “Impressive.”
       “Thanks.”
       “What are you going to do next?”
       “Gonna go home, meet some of my buddies at the club, get drunk, and see if any of them have heard of any new gigs I can sign up on.”
       “Is that it? The life of a mercenary?”
       “Yep. Simple. What about you? What are you going to do when you get to your destination?”
       “I’m going to study the stars.”
       “The stars? Ain’t everything there is to know about the stars been learned already?”
       “Not everything. And, even if it were, people have to keep learning it, or else it gets forgotten or nobody knows how to apply it.”
       “Huh. Never woulda thought.”
       “I admit, now, it’s not as exciting as being a mercenary.”
       “I’m hardly the most exciting merc you’ll ever meet. Come visit the club some time. Drinking age on Psamathe is sixteen, you’re at least that old, right?”
       “Almost seventeen.”
       “Then come on down. Here,” he says, and removes a pen from his pocket to write an address on a napkin. “It’s called Lyssa’s Place. You might get a hard time, tell ‘em you’re a friend of Nasty David.”
       “Nasty David?”
       “Yeah, he’s a buddy of mine. What, think mine carries enough repute to get you unmolested through the door? I’m just some guy there, but I have a few good friends. David’s one of them. He ain’t that nasty, he’ll just eat anything if you tell him it’s a delicacy of some place or another. Got his name when he ate a bunch of worms at the bar. Shit was gross.”
       “Maybe I’ll come visit, if my schedule allows it. I have… catching up to do, at the academy. So I’m not sure I’ll have time for anything but studying.”
       “Yeah, that’s what college students do with their free time – ‘study.’ Alright, I’m getting a drink. Later, Ash.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen: Chrysalis

       From the sky, it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. They approach Psamathe in the evening, the sun setting on the elevator that will take them down to the surface. Where the planet is bright, blue, full of life on one side and dark, black, and speckled with lights from the ecumenopolis as it shines even at night, there is a dim stretch between the two sides that goes from gray at the night side to a long strip of purple clouds tinged with startling gold and burnished orange as the sun’s fading light filters through the atmosphere. It is so pretty Ash could cry, just looking at it. She’s never been an artist, she’s never had any luck with a camera, she’s never wanted to capture anything as it is – and now, seeing this sight for the very first time, all she wants is the skills to put the emotion she is feeling to canvas or to the page. She wants to share this sensation with everyone and everything for all time. People walk behind her, they exit the ship and head for the elevator and ignore the splendor that shines along the Psamathine sky and she cannot, could not, could never ever imagine what could possibly be more important or impressive than this, this sight.
       The clouds burn like fire, their shadows play in hues of purple like great bruises, the sky adopts the pink of scattered light. Where the sun starts to curve over the planet’s horizon there is green and orange and red and even brown there. Doubt shuffles off of her, burning away from her skin like the clouds in the sunset. This is what she was meant to do. This is where she was meant to be. This is right. This is just. This is how it always should have been. 
       She stares out the docking bay windows with a few other onlookers until the sun sends only a few scattered rays up into the cold space over the planet’s darkening horizon, until the only hint of it is a gray light in the form of the slimmest of crescents along the curved edge, until the planet’s surface is nothing but a lengthy expanse of white and yellow lights like clusters of bioluminescent fungi. She descends the elevator through darkness and into that artificial light. 
       At the elevator’s base, a car waits to pick her up. The driver seems irritated – Ash hadn’t anticipated a chauffeur and wasn’t expecting any kind of special treatment, she figured she would have to find her own way to the Psamathine Science Academy – but he doesn’t unload that irritation onto her. He strains a smile, says only “Good evening, Ms. Reid, I hope you enjoyed your voyage,” and opens the door to a long, short, sleek black car with smooth lines that reflect all sorts of lights along its slight body in warped, colorful streaks that look like the strokes of a paintbrush. Inside the seats are cream colored, trimmed with gold, and the floor is a beautiful jade tone. Ash feels like she should change before she gets in, her clothes – a plaid flannel covering a baggy black shirt and some stained blue jeans – are simply too plain, too filthy for her to get into a vehicle such as this. She might stain it, somehow. She might ruin it. 
       “It’s alright,” the driver says, wearing a dark suit only a shade lighter than his dark eyebrows which accent dark eyes. “I see you are nervous. It’s quite alright.” He leans toward her and from a corner of his mouth says, “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen people get up to in cars like these… you’ll be fine.” He winks. It doesn’t actually make Ash feel better, but she steps inside, conks her head on the door’s frame, and sits down. On the seat beside her are some papers in a folder almost the same shade as the seats. After putting her luggage in the trunk of the car, the driver gets in his seat and takes off to the aerial streets. 
       It is remarkably unlike riding in her father’s truck, wheels and springs and shocks and all. The engine makes a soft, electric hum. On turns or changes in elevation there is a chirping sound like that of a bird. There is a very slight vibration that Ash can only feel through her shoes. 
       “This is your first time on Psamathe, yes?”
       “Uh… yes. It’s my first time anywhere.”
       “Well, Ms. Reid, instead of browsing that itinerary you have there in your hands, I would soak in the view. This city, at night… it is like living in a dream.” And that it is. She has seen the nights in Hope City, she’s seen the lights, she’s been on the streets. Her mother’s apartment was well within city limits. But this is something else. Buildings stretch so high, wispy clouds float between them. Cars at multiple elevations soar through aerial streets marked with red and green lights. Signs and screens and holograms advertise their businesses and products in a million different colors, and when the car slows to make a turn or change levels Ash can see right into the open windows of office buildings and homes alike, illuminated by white and yellow lights as people clean, hold meetings, eat dinner, eat breakfast, have parties, watch TV… On one floor of one building there are more people than she has met in her whole life, it seems. And the buildings are everywhere. There is almost no place on this world untouched by human hands. She tries not to let it become too much for her. She tries to just enjoy the view. But her mind buzzes. It thinks while she tries not to think. It worries while she tries not to worry. It activates while she tries to deactivate. What about home? Is she going to survive out here? Is it going to be too much? Does she even stand a chance? What is living here even going to be like? What is going to happen to her? Is there really a future for her here, in a place like this? Did she make a mistake? Did she pay the price of another’s future for one she doesn’t truly desire, nor deserve? Did she do it again?

       
       “Ms. Reid, it’s becoming clear that your education on Harmony was rather insufficient. It’s not your fault, this is something we often see with farming colonies like yours. Our school’s program with the Peck Foundation is, however, committed to providing all candidates from all planets and all backgrounds the same opportunities as those from Psamathe, or Angelia.”
       “So what does that mean for me?” Ash says to the course advisor, a Mr. Lox. It’s been a month of struggling to keep up. New concepts Ash can get, but anything that relies on ideas that would have been established in her second year of high school physics or the first few months of courses here at the PSA are not just tough, they’re largely impossible for her to simply “grasp.”
       “Well, it means you are going to be taking extra lessons. It is advised you drop one of the extracurricular courses we’ve assigned you as a freshman, like ‘Thinking Clearly in Difficult Times.’ Or, you can accept the greater workload – either way, if you don’t want to fail your primaries you need to work with a tutor.”
       Ash leans back in the chair across from Mr. Lox, sinks down and looks at her hands. She scrapes some of the thin flesh at her right thumb’s cuticle with her other thumb’s nail, then looks back up at Mr. Lox. Pale yellow light reflects off of his oily, balding head. “I’ll take the greater workload.” It’s not like she has anything else going on, anyway. Making friends has been as much of a struggle as her courses, and all alone… the city doesn’t seem very safe to her.
       “Alright, whatever you want to do is up to you.” He says, with a look of surprise and doubt on his face – he doesn’t even try to hide it as he registers her for the tutor. “Lessons start in three days. Your tutor will be a former student of the academy, and looking at her file… well, she’s definitely someone to learn from. A prodigy, like you, all grown up.”
       “Exciting.” Ash’s tone is plainly uncaring.

       
       “All grown up” isn’t quite accurate. The woman is only four years older than Ash and has the attention span of a child. Ash can see she is intimately familiar with the concepts she is trying to impart upon her, as if each chapter of every textbook and any part of her lesson plan is not just trivial but completely understood, like she was born knowing the laws of thermodynamics and momentum and instead of mother’s milk she sucked from the teat of gravitational equations – yet even still, as she is trying to teach Ash about relatively simple concepts involving quantum mechanics and dual-states, the woman gets distracted as new ideas, theories, and questions spin around in her black-hole of a mind. She gets silent, she chews on her pen or bites at her fingernails, even pulls on her orange hair and mutters to herself like she’s talking to another person, but the only other one there is Ash, waiting for her to snap out of it so she can get back to her lesson. She uses these moments of mindlessness to catch up on her homework, using current statistics and ancient philosophies to try to conjure up a ‘moral reasoning’ for solving Psamathe’s rampant homeless problem. It’s odd, to her, that she ought to do so – there’s a problem, there are solutions, just fix it, she thinks. But she reads chapters from these books and she finds people truly, wholeheartedly believe these tenets, that they hold them dear and they define their identities by them, and those tenets prevent them from attaining their desires, no matter how benign, unless each step taken toward that goal is earned in the ways they deem fit and right and just.
       It’s insanity. They put themselves in these boxes with a label they slap on themselves and then live life by the rules they conjure on their own. They pass these ideas down to their children, and their children’s children, and indoctrinate their friends and neighbors, or fight with them tooth and nail when they can’t get them to see their own side. They don’t come to a common ground, they may say “I understand, and I agree with you, but…” and after that ellipses all they have to say is that they don’t understand and they don’t agree, that the other person’s ideas are completely foreign to them and antagonistic to the values they adopted. What’s the point? She’s been writing her final paper operating on the idea that problems should be solved in the most efficient, productive way possible – but with these other ideas floating about in her head, and understanding not everyone shares her idea of “efficient and productive,” she has made very, very little progress. 
       She sighs loudly, closing her slate tablet and giving up on the assignment for today. She isn’t moving forward. Maybe she needs to try a different approach, go with a different idea. Mary Stewart, her red-haired, thickly and annoyingly accented tutor jolts as if someone activated her via radio control. 
       “Oh, god, am so sorry, Ashleigh – I, I keep gettin’ so distracted… I just ‘aven’t bin taking ma medication lately ‘cause it kills me appetite, an’ ye can see I’m already too skinny as it is.”
       “You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Ash says. “I understand,” she lies. It’s such an easy lie. Such an easy thing to say, and people think you’re their friend. She’s been reading other books, like “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” though actually getting to apply the skills described in the book is difficult if people don’t actually want to talk to you, or you to them. 
       Mary Hmm s as she puts a thin, curled finger to her lips, pressing the first joint into her nose’s septum. She gives Ash a studying eye, as if she is trying to figure her out like one of the problems in the book she is teaching from. “This is borin’ to ye, ain’it?” 
       Ash gives her a similar look, trying to determine if her lie will be too obvious. Right now, she thinks it will. “Yes,” Ash says, honestly and tiredly. 
       “What would make it more innerestin’?” Ash looks down at her hands which rest interlinked in her lap. She rubs absent-mindedly with one thumb at the cuticle of another. She thinks about what it was like getting into the topic in the first place. That astounding conversation with her brother when she was but eight, the both of them too young to know they wanted to escape Harmony’s soul-sucking gravity but somehow feeling the necessity of a future flight in their bones. How just one failed demonstration got her to think about the stars and the spaces between them in a new light, when all of the media she had consumed up until then and even afterward had just let the sheer enormity of the universe lie unobserved and undiscussed. She recalls what it was like from then on, watching videos about the universe and the stars and their sheer, raw, primordial power – how big and how small they were. Cosmic scale compared to comprehensible scale. How finally, in high school, she was able to demonstrate her innate skill in mathematics and apply it to the ultimate goal of showing how much better she was than the other, older students in her courses. How much better she was than Brandon. 
       “Some kind of application. Seeing how what we do works, the end result of all of these calculations. Pure math is enjoyable but applying it is, I think, where the satisfaction comes in.”
       “An’ that’s what’s important to ye?”
       “Yes. Typically, I found my sense of satisfaction in showing how far ahead I was from my peers. Now, though, that is not much of a possibility.” She turns from the table to look at Mary full faced. “I thought I could find it through working harder than others, but now I find that I am just working hard and there is no appreciation for it.” Frustration mounts, but she keeps her voice steady. “I can keep my grades up, but nobody cares. And why should they? It hardly matters. Maybe it hardly mattered then, too.”
       “Aye, but it’s what gotcha here, ain’it? That dedication. The hard work. It was the same fer me – I got lucky when I was a ked, just kinna… got it, ya ken? I still just… get it. But now, when I wanna learn somethin’ new, I gotta put my mind to it. Dedicate myself to the project. Nothin’ really just comes naturally, some of us just have an easier time of it, is all.” Ash can tell Mary understands her answer isn’t very satisfying. “Look, Reid – we’re at the end of our session here, but I’ll work on some ways to make this whole thing more palatable to yer tastes. Alright?”
       “Alright. Thank you, Ms. Stewart. I appreciate the effort,” Ash says, and means it.
       “Same time next week?”
       “As ever, Ms. Stewart.”
       “Perfect, well, I’ll see ya then. An’ – please, can ya call me Mary?” She asks as she stands, her slate tablet in her hand. 
       “We’ll see.”
       And from there, things do improve. Not only is Ash more engaged with the material, but so is Mary. Instead of leading off into tangents that get her spiraling into her own head she vocalizes some of the histories of these equations and theories, and speaks confidently about her own ideas on top of those. The broader implications of one equation start to conjure a bigger picture of the cosmos that help Ash see it for the imperfect puzzle that it is. Within it there are pieces that fit so naturally and work so well, forming a readily understood image right beside pieces that were forced together to make an imperfect depiction that can only work until something better comes along – and even the people who jammed the pieces together understand as much. Mary moves her meeting with Ash to later in the day so the pair of them can chat for longer after the sessions are finished, and every once in a while they might meet when they aren’t scheduled to – at the expense of some of Ash’s homework. For three months this goes on, until they reach a point somewhere past where Ash was when she started at the Psamathine Science Academy.
       As the semester comes to a close, Mary makes a big deal of grading her final assessment, bringing in a big red pen to write “A++” on her slate tablet as if it wasn’t school property, but the gesture is… it’s nice. It feels good. It brings a genuine smile to Ash’s lips when all that’s been there for half a year has been a grim look, set, determined, and tried despite the small joys that came from working with Ms. Stewart. Mary takes her out to dinner with her boyfriend, Daan Somers, and the three of them celebrate well into the night at one of Psamathe’s finer establishments – or so Ash thinks, considering even the scummiest of bathrooms is a league above the most respected of restaurants on Harmony. Mary doesn’t want this night to be the last time the pair of them see one another, and when she broaches this topic so brazenly Ash is shocked, stops chewing her food. But she thinks, ruminates as she masticates, and swallows as she finishes her thought.
       She doesn’t want it to be the last time, either. 
       Has she just…
       Made a friend?
       More time passes before Ash’s eyes, mostly defined by a different colored textbook she has her head buried in and equations to solve of greater and greater lengths. She and Mary find time once a month or so to hang out, though mostly it is to sip from bottles of cheap, disgusting wine and watch trash TV while they let their brains relax for just a little while. 
       The end of the school year comes around. The Peck Foundation finds her work admirable, and agrees to continue paying for the full-ride they promised her when she first moved to this gilded city. They even pay for the summer courses she signs up for, Ash incapable of relaxing for even a moment here, mostly needing the steady meal plan over constant involvement – she learned from the few conversations she’s had with people here that the servants life is so akin to hers as a farmer that the idea of being forced to enter the ‘service industry’ as they call it sickens her to a point of anxiety. As long as she studies, keeps up her grades, gets her credits, continues to move on – she won’t have to return to that life, never, ever. What she did… it will never be in vain. It will all have been worth it, if it gets her away from that fucking planet, that fucking life. What did that guy say – Regolith Marx? “Blown up the whole world if it meant you could ride a chunk of it into space just to get away from home.” Blowing it up, her brother’s life… it will have been worth it, if it means she could actually have one.
       It’s the middle of class. She gets a call from her mother. She ignores it. The woman will call again, if it’s important. She calls again, almost immediately. Ash taps one of the suggested responses, “I’m in class, I will call you when I’m finished.” The woman calls a third time. Ash ignores it completely. She only calls her when she gets back to her dormitory. Her mother switches it to video, and Ash can see the look on her face. She sees her father is there too, on a couch, in the background, over her mother’s shoulder. He’s weeping. He doesn’t sound like himself. His voice, the cries he utters. They sound raw. Like he’s been doing this for hours. Her mother… her mother looks hollow. Like if you tapped on her you’d hear the sound ring out through the caverns inside of her. Like she’s been stripped of all she is worth and left with nothing but flesh and bones. Her eyes are the deepest, darkest spaces Ash has ever seen. She looks away from her phone’s camera, says to someone else in the room: “I can’t do it.”
       “It’s okay,” Ash hears a familiar voice say in a low, sorrowful tone. “I can tell her.” The phone jitters and shakes, a friendly, but broken face now looking through it. “Ashleigh…” Marley says. “It’s your brother, Brandon.”
       “What about him?” Ash asks, the gravity of the situation pressing on her. She feels like she is about to be turned into a diamond. 
       “Leigh, baby… Brandon overdosed this morning. He’s dead.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen: Metamorphosis

        It’s simple: she wants to be punished. But with some six quintillion miles between her and her home, there is no hand which will strike her face or voice which will shout her down or command which will resign her to her room. All there is to do is to punish herself. 
       So she does. 
       She locks herself in her dorm. She fails to shower. To drink. To eat. She moves only to piss and occasionally to shit, slurping water from the sink when the feeling strikes her, sucking it down like a fiend. Her dormitory fridge, filled with nothing but condiment packets and garbage food, has been emptied by the whims of her shrinking stomach. She wants nothing more than to lie in bed until she wastes away into it, turning into a gray thing, a rotten thing, sinking into the mattress until the stink is so bad some other student finally performs a ‘wellness check’ and the RA’s find her as nothing more than a pile of black sludge and moldy bones – but her body just won’t let her. The pain in her bladder makes her stand. The dryness of her throat makes her drink. The enduring hunger in her belly makes her eat whatever it can find, any calorie from anywhere. 
       She is forced to leave her room. Stinking and sick. Her nose runny. Her hair tangled. Looking disheveled, feeling terrible, utterly poor. She walks to a vending machine at the end of the hall and puts her hand in her pocket to find it empty, emptier than her stomach. She turns and shuffles back to her dorm room and as she approaches it she reaches habitually for the security pass that sits around her neck and finds it missing. 
       She wants to throw up. She heaves, but nothing comes up. Her eyes are wide with terror and wet with grief. All she wants is to lie back down. But her stomach turns, twists into knots and tells her if she doesn’t fill it soon then it will turn its attention to her body, start digesting her until there is nothing left. She wants to let it. But it hurts so much, it hurts like torture. She turns back around. The hall seems to stretch on into infinity, a tiny little glow at the back being the vending machine. It feels completely inaccessible to her. She sees doors that go on forever, gray and watching and judging, each one potentially filled with a person that could help her – but why would they ever? She doesn’t deserve their help. She doesn’t deserve a thing. Everything she has she lied, cheated, and stole for. None of it belongs to her. Why then should she rely on the aid of a neighbor? They shouldn’t be her neighbors, they should be her brother’s. They should be Brandon’s. She can see his face, floating before her, conjured out of the lines and shadows and lights in that eternal hallway. The hatred he had for her. The rage he felt for her. She sees him the night he realized her betrayal. She sees him the last time she ever saw him, with red marks on the insides of his elbows and a face made much, much skinnier. 
       She slides down the cold, gray metal of her dorm room door and sits on the hard ground, the thin carpet offering not even a hint of softness. 
       “Go and eat, Leigh.” Her brother tells her. 
       “Where? Who will feed me? Who do I deserve help from?”
       “Ashes to Ash, Pebbles to Dust, Little Leigh.”
       “I don’t understand… I don’t understand!” She cries. She squeezes her eyes shut and a few tears are ejected from their ducts to slide down her face. She puts her head in her hands and cries some more, wracking sobs that hurt as the muscles in her back strain trying to get the ache within to come out. She looks back up. The hall is shorter. It spins some, but it is normal. She wipes tears from her blurred vision and gets to her feet, using the door and the wall adjacent to pull herself up. There is a curiously red stain on the wall next to her. A smear of something. It’s on her hand. It’s a little bit of blood. She wipes at her nose and some more is left on her index finger and the back of her palm. She looks again at the red stain on the wall. And she remembers him, from the Aura.
       Ground level on Psamathe. It barely seems real. Even a few levels up it is clean, luxurious, beautiful… but down here it has that sick, garbage smell. Like rotting food, fermenting sugars, drying urine, decomposing feces, and even decaying bodies. People dressed in nice clothes exit tents of bright colors, looking professional, heading to their jobs. Others are dressed like her, in stained, gray sweatpants with a gray hoodie and a stained white shirt, or some other outfit similarly lacking in quality or obviously taken from the trash and even, judging by the suspicious stains around suspicious holes, from the bodies of the recently deceased. They wander like she wanders, shuffling, shoeless and dejected, dissatisfied, with nothing to live for and nothing to motivate them but the aching in their stomachs, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. No home to return to or no way to purchase a ticket. Just stuck. Trapped on a world too expensive for them to live. 
       Failed dreamers, all.
       Failures like her. 
       She keeps walking, walking until her shoeless feet bleed. She can almost feel infection seeping in to new wounds. Beneath the shadows of the tallest buildings there ever were, so tall they are hidden by clouds and obscured by atmosphere, she finds a series of stalls erected from refuse and trash where people hock their wares – stolen implants, stolen weapons, stolen clothes, stolen drugs, and at one, darker, more disgusting place – stolen people, sniffling and weeping. Ash asks a man trying to offload some clearly fake merchandise for a band called Samurai if he knows the directions to a bar called Lyssa’s Place. He doesn’t, but he knows there’s an info-kiosk two blocks down and to the right. She thanks him, finds the kiosk, and through the tarnished, filthy, filmy, graffitied screen she discerns directions to the bar. 
       “Look, lady, I can’t let you in here –” the big man says to her, trying to push her aside. He looks like a caricature of a meathead. His black suit and black shirt look as if they are about to rupture and will burst at the seams given the slightest flex of his bulging muscles. “Get yourself cleaned up, get yourself an ID, and get back in line – and yeah, I’ll let you in. But this is a joint for mercs, anyway. Don’t think they’ll like some scrawny thing like you hanging around their bar. Get me? Just go, and don’t come back’s what I’m tryna say.”
       Ash thinks. She looks down at her feet, dirt covered and blood stained. Then she looks up. The man is already looking at someone else, having waved another man through. Ash looks him in his eye. “You still here?” He asks. “Beat it, I mean it.”
       “I’m a friend of Nasty David.”
       “What? The fuck you are.”
       “He told me to come here himself. If he asks me why I didn’t show up, I’ll tell him the side of beef at the door wouldn’t let me in.”
       “Uh…” he mutters, putting his index finger along the line of his fat lips. “Fine. Let’s go inside, get this cleared up. But, lady… ‘f you’re lyin’ to me? It’s your ass. Got it?”
       “Shouldn’t talk to me like that. Take me to Nasty David.”
       Inside it’s… a bar. It’s nothing special. Old, wooden floorboards that threaten to trip you where the ends have curled up at the places they meet. Walls that look like they’re made of salvaged steel, painted red or yellow in odd places, a few letters torn from a few words painted on black panels at strange angles. A neon sign inside, hanging over the well and richly stocked bar. Sea green lighting fills the place, coming from dim lights at the low ceiling or from runners along the floor. People sit at the bars and tables, many of them in dark coats with odd shapes hidden beneath their folds and dark looks to match. Scars on their heads and faces, missing limbs replaced by metal prosthetics. Many of them lean over tall mugs filled with piss-colored beers, or nurse short glasses with brown liquid and melting ice inside, huddled together and scowling with one another or laughing as they talk over whatever dark tale they have to regale their friends with. Some of them sit at tables with finely dressed men and women, people who obviously don’t belong by their unblemished flesh but were clearly paid to join them. 
       The bouncer at the door leads her through the joint, holding her with his huge, thick hands by the crook in her elbow, his fingers able to wrap completely around her thin arms. He almost throws her at a booth in the back corner of the bar, flinging her forward then placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her, or at least keep her in place. “This one says she knows you.”
       “Don’t know her,” a familiar face says, without even looking at her. “Toss ‘er out.” He sips from his cup.
       “Daan?” Ash asks as the bouncer grips her shoulder with so much force he threatens to snap her clavicle as he drags her away.
       “Ah, shit… stop, man.” The man stops, but doesn’t let go. He turns around to Nasty David and his friends in the booth. “She’s with us, I guess. Let her sit.” The bouncer lets go of her, shoves her forward slightly, and exits back to his post. 
       “Sit, lady. Make some room, guys.” Two men in dark coats scoot over some, leaving her enough room to sit across from Nasty David. Ash sits. “What brings you here, Ashleigh? Huh? Checking up on me for Mary, or what?”
       “What? No… I… I’m looking for Rego– for Reg.”
       “Christ, Dave, girl’s an idiot,” says a woman with a mohawk and a huge, ancient scar on her otherwise pristine face that stretches from her lower lip past her missing right ear. 
       “Shut it, Tudor.” Daan says, seriously. He leans forward. “Go on, kid. Why you here, saying you’re looking for Reg? How do you even know ‘im?”
       “He said I should come visit him here, and… well… I don’t… I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
       “Hell happened to you that you’re looking for Reg for help?” One of the others at the table asks. 
       “Please, right now I just… I just need something to eat. I’m… I’m so fucking hungry.” Ash eyes a red dish with a single bite of a bit of a chicken strip and some cold fries still inside. Tudor, the one who called her an idiot, flicks it toward her dismissively. With one trembling hand, Ash grabs everything in the dish and stuffs it in her mouth like a baby in a high chair, eating on its own for the first time. 
       “Here, have something to wash it down with,” one of the guys sitting next to her says, sliding her a short glass. Ash grabs it and tosses whatever is inside down her throat, then starts to cough intensely and obscenely. She almost throws up, but she keeps it down. A few of the guys at the table laugh, but Daan has a stone face as he looks at her. Ash pulls herself together and looks back at him. 
       “What are you doing here, Ashleigh?” She doesn’t respond, she just looks down at her hands. “Why are you here? Looking like this? Smelling like shit?”
       “My…” it hurts. His words. Her thoughts. “I did something terrible to someone, and now I’ll never get to make up for it.”
       “You wanna tell us?” Tudor asks. 
       “No.”
       “Fine.” Tudor says, leans back in her seat.
       “And now what?” David asks directly. “What changed, why are you here? Why didn’t you go to Mary?”
       “I just needed to eat. I just needed something. I didn’t want her to see me like this. I couldn’t go to her… with this. I thought… I thought Reg might understand. I thought he might help me.”
       “Well, he’s not here. Off on Angelia, doing a job,” Tudor says with a hint of derision. 
       “Then…” Ash starts, but doesn’t know how she’ll finish.
       “Don’t worry, Ashleigh,” Daan says with a sigh. “For Mary ‘n’ Reg, I’ll take care of you.”

       He does. He takes care of her. Daan and Tudor drive her in a four-wheeled vehicle to the PSA dormitory, and when the building security is hesitant to let her in, Tudor's specific and horrifying threats are enough
to get the building administration to offer her a new security badge and even waive the replacement fee, at that. Tudor escorts Ash to her dorm and doesn’t even try to hide the disgust on her face at the rank smell that comes from it. “Jesus, it stinks in here.”
       “I’ve been in a bad place. Haven’t cleaned.”
       “I can see that, kid. Still… place is nicer than mine.”
       “All paid for by the Peck Foundation.”
       “What, you tryna be some kind of scientist?”
       “Trying to be,” Ash says as she picks new clothes and a fresh towel out from a drawer.
       “What the hell were you doing looking for Reg, then? Huh?”
       “We met on the Aura when I was first travelling here. I helped him out, and he gave me some good advice.”
       “Story’s sweet as sugar,” Tudor says, then mimes putting her finger down her throat to induce vomiting.
       “If you’re just gonna make fun of me, you can leave,” Ash says as she steps into the bathroom. She pops the handle, and water starts to pour from a head in the ceiling like rainfall.
       “Yeah, yeah, relax kid. That’s all we do at Lyssa’s, make fun of each other. You wanna hang with us, or David’s ‘high class’ lady friend?” Ash stops the handle. The pattering of water on the shower floor ends suddenly. Ash, half-undressed, looks at Tudor through the threshold of her bathroom. “What?” Tudor asks. “You gonna be upset about it forever? Chill. It ain’t that big a deal. Every one of us, we’ve done something far worse. You’re a kid. You’ll make bigger mistakes in your life. Trust me.”
       “It was…”
       “‘It was pretty bad,’ yeah, heard it before. Just go get cleaned up. David ‘n I’ll take you to get some real food.”
       She wants to brush her hair first, but she’s more concerned with getting the stink of sweat and the film of oil off of her than she is with dealing with tangles and knots. The clean feeling she has when she finally steps out of the shower is… it isn’t powerful, but it’s nice. What’s powerful is seeing her laundry, formerly strewn about the floor around her bed, stuffed in a basket and the trash in her room picked up and even taken out. The window is cracked slightly and a cool, fresh breeze is flowing into the room. Tudor is even standing at the sink, scrubbing utensils clean with her hands. 
       “Just wanted to help out, is all,” Tudor says. “Don’t think anything of it.”
       “I…”
       “Need to brush your teeth. Hop to it, kiddo.”
       “Thank you, Tudor.”
       “Just brush.”

       They take Ash out to a “nicer” restaurant, a place just above Psamathe’s street level where you can get extremely greasy food for as cheap as it comes in Malta. Daan and Tudor sit across from her, they crunch crispy fries between their teeth every once in a while. Ash eats a rapidly cooling burger, whose gross stocks of fat swiftly congeal and turn a soft patty into a solid puck topped with a thin, rubbery cheese and sandwiched between two damp buns. Ash eats like an animal. Mindlessly bent on devouring every bite, smearing her face with grease, swallowing bites half chewed so as to get the next one in all the faster. She feels like her mind has gone blank and her stomach has taken the reins. Its mission: eat the world. 
       “Ashleigh,” either Daan or Tudor says to her. She doesn’t know. She stops chewing, her eyes roll back from their position somewhere inside of her skull, and she focuses on one of them. She realizes very suddenly how much of a beast she has become. She can almost hear her mother chiding her. “We need to talk.”
       Ash swallows, hard. The bite, hardly chewed, sticks in her throat and hurts as the muscles of her esophagus push it down. “About what?” she says through a thick and strained voice.
       “Firstly…” Daan says. “With my guys, it’s David. I’m Daan with Mary. Understand?”
       “I understand,” she says, not quite understanding but willing to go with it. She supposes, if he’s a mercenary, maybe he just doesn’t want his name out there like that.
       “Good. Secondly… You’re clearly going through something,” Daan says. “Today was a bad day, right? Down here, we see… well, a lot of people give up and hit rock bottom – in a literal sense, you see? We find them splattered all over the pavement.” Ash thinks about her brother. How he must have looked. How they must have found him. The scent of decaying bodies on the streets of Malta among the other heaps of trash, not known to her in the restaurant but threatening to make her retch all the same. “But you, you hit rock bottom and you didn’t give up. You came to Reg for help. Sure, he wasn’t there, but I am. And… well, we like Reg. And Mary, Mary likes you.” Tudor doesn’t seem to like his mention of Mary Stewart. Like she’s a nuisance, or a distraction. She scrunches up her face at his mention of her.
       “If one of my friends came to Reg for help, and Reg turned them away, well, I’d probably feel like killing the bastard. And if Mary ever found out one of her friends came to me for help and I turned ‘em away, well, she’d probably kill me.”
       “Don’t make it all about you, Dave.” Tudor warns, nudging him with a padded elbow.
       “Right. Right. Thanks, Tudor. Look. We’ve been where you are now. We’ve hurt people, we’ve lost people. People we’ll never get to make amends with. And, where you are now, we’ve had help getting out of it. I don’t… I don’t mean that therapy shit. Talking it out. I mean focus. Direction. Moving forward. Always moving forward. I think, if we just send you back to your dorm, back to your classes – I think you’ll just end up on the streets of Psamathe, one way or another. Get me?”
       “I’ve got you,” Ash chokes the words out. 
       “So, I’m gonna help you out. Reg’ll never forgive me if I don’t, and if I do, well, it’ll make Mary all the happier, knowing her friend is on the right track.”
       “What do you mean? You plan to help me with school?”
       “What? No, never. Christ. Could you imagine?” He asks Tudor, pushing her cordially. “Me? A tutor?” They laugh together, but Ash sits in silence. She barely knows these people. Why are they talking to her like this?
       “What if we offered you a change in direction?” Tudor asks, very suddenly.
       “What?”
       “I can only guess at what you’re going through, Ashleigh. I mean, I’m pretty sure I know what, but I’m not tryna say nothing,” Tudor says, somewhat awkwardly. She looks down at the floor, then makes eye contact with Ash again. “But, for us, for many of us – loss, grief, the pain you're feeling right now, it can be a tool for changing your life. Changing things up for the better. Feeling like you’ve got no other options can lead you to the only option, can give you the opportunity to discover who you really are.”
       “That’s what happened to you?”
       “Something like that.”
       “Well, I can’t leave this life. I’ve… The path I’ve set myself on, it belonged to someone else. A life I stole from someone I cared about. I can’t give up on it. I can’t do that again.”
       “Okay, okay – I get that. But is it the life you really want?” Daan asks.
       “I…”
       “Or did you just want something other than the life you had? And that’s why you took this one?” He continues. “A lot of people take jobs, make lives for themselves that they don’t actually want because it’s better than the lot they had. But, Ashleigh – they don’t live. They just suffer in a gilded cage of their own making.”
       “They punish themselves in dormitories better than most people’s apartments.” Tudor says, pointedly.
       “With some direction, with some training, with some focus, you could live a life you want.”
       “But–”
       “Don’t say no just yet, Ashleigh. Okay? We’ll take you back to your place. I’ve got some cash I’ll give you, you can buy some groceries. Stock up your fridge a little. Get some room to breathe. And in that time, you go back to your classes. Go back to your homework. You keep seeing Mary every once in a while like I know you two like to do. And you can think about whether or not it’s what you want to do with your life. You can think about what I’ve said, about direction. About moving forward. Alright?”
       Ash looks at her half-eaten meal. She picks up a napkin, greasy already despite being ‘fresh,’ and she wipes her face. Looking back at Daan, she says: “Alright.”
       Her door shuts behind her, and she hears the internal lock click into place. The room, now clean and smelling fresh, is filled with this dim, gray light that filters through her cracked-open window. And she stands there, just inside the door, for a long time. A very, very long time. Until that gray, filtered light turns blue, until it fades, and until the only light that enters her room now comes from the grand adverts displayed in hologram or LED, reflected endlessly off the windows across from her and the windows around her, back and forth seemingly forever. 
       She decides she will try to go back to class. 
       For Brandon’s sake, and for hers.
       She will not become yet another failed dreamer. 
       Even if it was a stolen dream.

       Through the heartache, through the nausea, through the agony that traces itself through the folds of her mind, she makes herself go. She forces herself to throw off the blankets, to put brush to teeth, to wash her body, to clean her hair. She fights against the recoil of her stomach and the closure of her throat to get some food and some water into her system. She sighs as she laces her boots and shoulders her bag, and she bites her lip as she puts her hand to the handle of the door. The feeling, the wanting, the hating, the hurting, it's so overcoming. It wants her to go back to bed. To shrug off the progress she’s made, the effort she’s put in just in this morning hour, it wants her to lie there beneath her blanket, boots and all, and give in once again. To quit. To accept her failure. To accept her demise. 
       She thinks, hand on handle, about how it felt to lie there. To wallow in that grief. How horrible it was. How comforting it was. How easy it was. And she remembers something her father taught her. Something her mother said. That this is her life, and she has to make it work. She has to be strong. Stronger than these feelings. Stronger than that comfort. She has to twist the handle. 
       But in her classes, with all of this work, having fallen so far behind, not understanding half of what her professors are talking about, all she can do is think. Her ambitions falter. Her resolve fails. Weakness seeps in like poison. It wells in her eyes like an infection. It cinches her throat tight like a knot. It roils in her belly like a sickness. It courses through her mind like a plague. Her head pounds as she thinks about herself, her failures, her shortcomings, her family, her brother, her betrayal, her wants, his wishes, her desires. She holds the feelings inside, keeping them within the bounds of her body like a dam close to bursting, and tears fall from her eyes in a trickle of emotional overflow – released to alleviate some of the sheer weight. When she gets home, when she tries to work through it, when she tries to her damndest to be strong, to overcome this, to make this life work no matter how hard, the dam breaks, and like water cascading through the cracked concrete, flowing so forcefully it drags multi-ton blocks with it and causes complete structural collapse, that grief, that hate, that rage, that pain, it ejects from her so harshly all there is to do is wail until her throat is raw and her eyes ache. 
       And like a broken dam, everything in its wake is swept away. 
       “Hey,” she says, sniffling. 
       “Ashleigh?” Daan says. “You sound different. Sound sick.”
       “I’ve made up my mind.”
       “Already?”
       “I need some help,” she says, wanting to say more but knowing she is fragile, about to break.

       
       She knocks on Mary’s door. Guilt tugs at the back of her mind but she ignores it, her knuckles wrapping three times. “One minute!” She hears Mary say. The door slides into a pocket and Mary is standing there in a blue shirt and blue jeans, as surprised to see Ash as Ash is to be here. “Ashleigh? What a surprise – Daan’s waiting on someone, I thought you were his…”
       “She is, Mary,” Daan says. 
       “What?” Mary asks, turning to look at Daan in a baggy black outfit. She looks back at Ash. “What’s he mean?”
       “I met Daan at Lyssa’s. He’s… helping me.”
       “Helping you?” She looks back at Daan. “Helping her how?”
       “Giving her a much needed change in direction, honey. That’s all.” He lifts a black duffle bag from the back of a nice, cream-colored couch. 
       “A change how? Dinnae tell me you’re abandoning the Academy! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you won’t get another full ride. It just won’t happen! Why’d you want to give up on this? Wasn’t it your dream?”
       “I’m not–” Ash raises her hands, and thinks for a moment. She sucks in a breath and pushes it out her nose. “I’m not giving up on anything yet. I’m… I’m exploring my options, is all.”
       “I thought you’d made up your mind.” Daan says coldly.
       “I guess I haven’t.”
       “We’ll get you there.”
       “D’ya ken what he does, Ashleigh? The line of work he’s in?” Mary says, sounding both afraid and disgusted.
       “I do. Do you?”
       “Of course I do! And I’m afraid every time he goes out I won't see him again. Or if I do, that it won’t… that it won’t be him, ya ken? That something out there will break him, that he won’t come back the same person that left. The person I love.”
       “Something here did that to her, Mary. Something outside of mercwork. She’s hurting and she needs some change. It’ll be good for her, like it was for me. Like it was for us.”
       “Something? Like what?”
       “I don’t know. She won’t tell me. Didn’t tell you, neither. Don’t think she wants to talk about it. Which is fine, so long as she works through it. Right?” He directs that last question at Ash.
       “Right.”
       “It…” Mary begins, working her hands together as if she is washing them. “Ashleigh, it hurts me that you didn’t come to me with this. I’m your friend – or I thought I was, at least. Why would you go right to Daan instead of come to me? I could have helped you. I could have given you this direction you seek.”
       “I couldn’t, I–” Ash says, still standing in the doorway, looking at the floor as if she might find her next words laid out for her there. “I didn’t want you to see me… see me like that.” She looks up into Mary’s weepy eyes. “I didn’t want to burden you with it. I couldn’t.”
       “If we can only share in each other’s joys but never bear each other’s burdens, are we really friends? Or just celebrants, reflecting happiness like a mirror?” Her face is like stone.
       “I think we should go, Ashleigh.”
       “I’m sorry, Mary. I…” Ash’s begins to crack. Another piece, carved away.
       “Nae, it’s alright. It’s fine. I just… wish you would have come to me. But if this is what you think is best… then, I guess, I do, too. I don’t know what made you want to go down this bloody route, but, through me, you’ll always have a path to the road we walked briefly together. I’ll be here, if you want to go back.”
       “Thank you, Mary.” Ash hugs her, but when Mary returns the hug it’s not as tight as it usually is. It’s dutiful. It’s weaker. It’s full of this hurt, this sense of betrayal. And as much as it hurts Mary, it hurts Ash all the more.
       They walk quietly through the halls of Mary’s apartment building. She knows why Daan had her come here, now. She gets it. He needed to be honest with his partner, and Ash needed to be honest with her as well. It was better to rip this bandaid off now than it would be for Mary to find out later. 
       “Hey.” She says, as they step into the elevator.
       “What’s up?”
       “You know how you’re Daan with her, and David with your guys?” She asks. Daan looks at her with a raised eyebrow. “Well, with her – I’m Leigh. With the guys… Call me Ash.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Sixteen: Emergence

       A new power has made itself known. An old investor has come to see what has become of its product. A parent long gone has decided to pay a visit to its forgotten children. 
       The IMC has returned to the Frontier. 
       On many, many worlds there is celebration. Finally there is a connection to Mother Earth after three hundred years of silence! Finally we have learned what has happened to humanity’s cradle, finally we know if the home of our ancestors survives! But on others, there is doubt. There is suspicion. Why is it that a corporation is the one that returns, and not some body of government? Why is it that after winning their war, they spent so much time and resources trying to check up on how well some formerly sparse and small colonies have turned out? 
       It doesn’t concern Ash very much. Daan and Tudor – yes. But her? It is background noise, conversations heard in bits and pieces as she works tirelessly. As she trains relentlessly. For a few weeks it's Daan that picks her up and takes her to the gym, training her physically, helping to get her in shape. When she tells him she used to be a gymnast, he switches up her routine – it is less about building muscle, and more about strengthening the ones she has. It is more about flexibility, stretching. He even gets her involved with a parkour troupe, a collection of kids and teenagers and young adults, a few only a couple years older than her and a few as young as eleven, who run in groups around the city, finding new routes and avenues to try to get from one point to another in the fastest, flashiest, and most innovative ways possible. Ash can’t help but think they look ridiculous, but when she tries some of the moves herself and learns how hard it is, she changes her tune. Eventually, through scrapes and bruises, she achieves some of their leaping feats and cannot deny it feels good to do so, especially when a crowd cheers her on. 
       Then, Daan goes on a job, says its for a new fixer in the Frontier that goes by Kitsune. “Gotta make some cash, keep the rent paid up,” he says. So, her teacher is now Tudor – who throws her around and shows her the broader points of wrestling and martial arts. Learning attacks is hard, learning reversals is almost impossible, but she catches the essence of defense quite easily. A fist or a foot or a fulcrum is coming at you – put something in its path to minimize damage. By the time Daan returns, a fresh cut on his otherwise unmarked face, Ash’s arms and legs and chest and back are covered in gradient bruises, from blue to purple to green to yellow. “Fists were always her thing,” Daan says of Tudor, “but I think if you want to hold your own, you’ll need to learn some different techniques.” So, he finds her a new teacher. 
       “He goes by Yagyu Sensei,” Daan says to her before the man arrives at Lyssa’s Place. Ash holds a glass full of ice to her bruised knuckles. “But his real name is John Kawakami. Ah, there he is now.”
       The man looks like a stereotype. His hair is gray, his face is lined, his mustache and beard are both long, wispy, flowing. He wears a faded gray robe and he walks with his back as straight as possible, each move deliberate, precise. He sits down, a look of disgust on his face noticing the stains on the seat, and he folds his hands inside of his robe. He doesn’t say anything, he just looks down his nose at the two of them. Ash thinks he is expecting them to bow before him.
       “John,” Daan says. “Drop the act.”
       “Oh, thank Christ,” He says, his shoulders dropping, his head slouching, and his hands coming up to rest on the table. “Got one of those for me?” He asks, pointing at Daan’s drink. Daan sets it down and slides it dismissively across the table, then orders another from a passing attendant. The guy takes the drink up, sucks down a big gulp, holds it in his cheeks for a moment before swallowing while he sets the glass back down, then finally swallows with a big “Ahh.” He closes his eyes, enjoying the sensation, and takes off not only his wig to reveal a fine crop of very dark black hair, but he removes his mustache and beard as well, setting each piece in a pile on the seat next to him. “This the one?” He flicks a finger toward Ash, and raises an eyebrow at Daan.
       “This is the one.”
       “Alright.” He turns to look at her. “I’m only doing this for David here because he said it was an opportunity to teach some real skills to a real student, not the bullshit styles I teach the rich assholes that hire me on this culture-starved planet. I’m even giving him a discount because he said I don’t have to wear this stupid getup.” He gestures at himself and waves his wig around in frustration. “So, what can you do?” He sips from Daan’s drink again. 
       He’s a much better educator than Tudor. In only a month Ash feels she is starting to get a real grasp of how to use her body as a weapon, to use her weight and her opponent’s weight against them. As she picks up more physical skills, he starts to impart mental challenges. With Daan present, he and John give her little tests, put her in situations where she has to strategize and think her way out, think her way through a fight. Sometimes, instead of strategy and what John calls Taijutsu, John teaches her about meditation, and the importance of steady breath and a calm heart. The only problem? Her heart isn’t calm. Her mind buzzes. It happily accepts new concepts, new lessons, new challenges like fuel for a masterwork engine, but when it comes time to put thought to rest and keep herself steady, to balance her body and her brain, she cannot make herself calm. She cannot focus. 
       There is something bothering her. 
       Ash knows what it is. It sits there, in the back of her brain. A little creature, hurt and alone, so terrified it might be prodded that the fear of touching it makes her recoil from the idea. Like even investigating the issue will hurt so much it might just kill her. She wonders how she might excise it. How she might remove it, surgically, totally, completely, how she might make herself free of that little bubble of hurt, that aneurysm waiting to happen. 
       Another email arrives on her slate tablet. A warning that if she doesn’t come visit the student counselor's office soon she will face expulsion from the Psamathine Science Academy. 
       “You’re still enrolled?” Mary asks her as they lie together on her couch. Daan is away on another job, he refuses to tell anyone about what he’s been doing, and her trainer John has to make some extra cash doing lessons for another one of those “corpo asshats in their unnatural high-rises,” so for once in a while, Ash has some time to herself. She keeps up on her physical training, runs with those kids in the parkour troupe, but she spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to empty her mind. 
       “Well, I need the room – and the meal plan. If I quit the school, I’ll lose both of those.”
       “Ashleigh!” Mary sits up suddenly, wine threatening to spill out of her glass. “If you don’t unenroll, n’only will ye lose out on those t’ings but you’ll also be forbidden from re-enrolling – plus, ye’ll almost certainly owe the school and the Foundation the cost of bankrolling yer education!”
       “I’m not sure I want to go back, though. I… I like the training I’m doing. It feels good. These are real skills I’m learning, skills I actually have a chance to apply.” For the first time, it feels like she is treading her own path. 
       “If you don’t unenroll on your own, you’ll never have a chance to go back! You see that, don’t you? Whether or not you go back won’t be up to you in that case, you’ll be robbing yourself of a choice.”
       “Hm… But I won’t have a place to stay. I don’t have any money. I’ll… Eugh, I’ll have to go back home.” It almost makes her sick.
       “Well…” Mary says, twisting to put her feet on the carpet floor and drink from her wine. Ash can see the gears turning, can see the scale that weighs her options try to balance out. She sets the glass down on a dark coffee table before her, puts her hands on her knees, and looks at Ash with a look of, Ash thinks, trepidation. “Maybe I can mention this to Daan. When he gets home.”
       The school gives her a month to sort out her affairs before they lock out her key card and cancel her meal plan. A week in, Daan asks her to meet him at Lyssa’s place. Ash sits in their usual spot with Tudor, but Daan is nowhere to be seen – until he walks in, his arm wrapped around Regolith Marx’s shoulder, the two of them seemingly already wasted. Reg has his leg in one hand and hops along with Daan, walking like a three-legged beast. “Ey,” Reg says, pointing at her with his own leg. “What’s she doing here?”
      “Oh, that’s right!” Daan slurs. He motions for Tudor to scoot and starts to fall into the seat without even waiting for her to move, dragging Reg down with him. “This little one came looking for you, but found us instead! How ‘bout that, huh?”
       “Ah, shit, kid – don’t tell me, ya already gave up on your dream, huh?” He says, and hiccups. “Hey!” He shouts toward the bar, waving his leg in the air. It wobbles on the hinge knee. “Put that thing down, Reg, I’ll bring you your goddamn beer,” the bartender says. “Thank yooouu,” Reg says, and hiccups again. “Now, anyway,”
       “I haven’t given up.” Ash says, matter-of-factly.
       “Shit, hangin’ around with these losers, it sure seems that way.”
       “Oh, shut up with that shit, Reg – out of any of us, you’re the loser.” Tudor says, twisting in her seat to look at him. 
       “Hey, hey,” Daan tries to calm her. But Tudor doesn’t listen. 
       “No, man, look–” she turns to Ash, but points at Reg. “That guy? That guy there? Out of any of us, he takes the easiest jobs. Period. Gets one good paying one, goes wherever he needs to go, and takes every little job he can while he’s out there to make as much cash as possible, then comes back and shows off like he’s the biggest, baddest, bestest bitch in the west – but look at him! Guy’s falling apart. How the hell are you gonna call us losers when you lost your goddamn leg loansharking, of all goddamn gigs. Huh?”
       “Holy hell, Tudor – I’m back for five minutes and you’ve already crawled so far up my ass I’m starting to feel like a puppet over here.”
       “Bitch, I’ll show you a goddamn puppet–” Tudor gets up, ready to beat him to a pulp while Regolith brings his leg up to bear like a bat – but Daan stands and puts his hands on Tudor, pushing her back in to her seat with a forceful “Hey!” He points at her, his finger right in her face. She looks ready to bite it off. “Relax, Tudor. We ain’t doing that shit here. Not again, alright?”
       “Whatever, man,” she says, turning back to her drink, staring at the wall on her right. Her face is red, flushed. 
       “Loansharking?” Ash asks Reg. 
       “Hey. It’s money.” He shrugs. “Thank you,” he says to the bartender as he sets a tall mug on the table. 
       “Is that what you were doing on Harmony?” 
       “When?”
       “When we met.”
       “Huh? Oh, right, you were coming from there. Uh, yeah. That and some debt collection in the city, I think. Easy gigs, like she said.”
       It starts to make Ash angry, but she can’t really think why. Maybe it's that he lied to her back then on the Aura, saying he’d been on a relief mission, or maybe it was something more than that. Then she remembers something her dad said once, about some bastards trying to milk him for every scrap of cash he had. She remembers how mad she was at just the thought of the individuals conducting this injustice. She never met them, never saw them, but now, when she thinks about it, those nebulous faces of those unseen bastards her father once talked about start to take shape, start to look a lot like Reg here.
       And the feeling, the anger, it starts to dissipate. It’s just money, she thinks. It’s just a job. And right now, she needs some cash. 
       “Hey,” Ash says to Daan. 
       “What?” He says back, mockingly assertive.
       “Did Mary talk to you about me?”
       “Oh, yeah. Said you need some money, and said you’re gonna be moving in ‘til you get on your feet.”
       “That’s right.”
       “Well… I dunno. You think you’re ready? For a real gig?”
       “There’s only one way to find out.”
       “Hah!” Laughs Tudor, slapping her hand down hard on the table. “I think she’s ready,” she says. Reg looks at Daan skeptically. Ash resents that look. He’s not her keeper. Ash doesn’t have anything to prove to him. Just to Daan, just to herself.

       It’s been eight years.
       Ash has not simply grown, she has flowered. Her rough edges have been honed. She has found new masters, learned new lessons. She is sharp, she is precise, she is deadly. Daan doesn’t need to give her jobs, she gets them on her own from the mysterious Kitsune – a man she now knows as Master Seimei Abe, the current head of the Apex Predators. As she came to overshadow Daan as the favored freelancer, he showed her all of the places her training fell short. The pitfalls of her experience had been filled at last, and the mountain that is Ash began to rise. 
       At Lyssa’s they still call her the new girl, but she has experience and the scars to prove it. She’s been to more worlds than she ever thought she might, she’s moved more in position and status than she ever thought possible, she wears clothes nicer than she ever could have imagined, and she lives in her own apartment with a view of the Psamathine skyline more beautiful and luxurious than she ever could have dreamed. She’s come so far, she’s done so much. It all feels so worth it. Everything she’s done, everyone in her wake, everything left behind, everything sacrificed for her glory – worth it indeed. She’s been to weddings for a few friends, saw Mary Stewart become Mary Somers and went with her to the hospital to have her ultrasound. She’s met the heads of vast companies, dined with them at parties, solved some problems for them, and even, when the money and the opportunity was right, lopped off some of those heads herself.
       So, when Daan asked her to come on a job that Tudor brought to him, offering to split the paltry pay those Free & Independent Outlands Movement suckers promised, she almost didn’t accept – there was always another job for the IMC and the Apex Predators just down the pipeline that paid many times more than the handful of zeroes Daan showed her. 
       But she did, and now there is blood under her fingernails, drying, flaking. There is blood in the cracks of her palms, in the folds of her knuckles. It’s on her face, in her hair, splashed across her neck. Some of it is her own, the stuff that dribbles down her chin mixed with her own saliva as she spits into the sink, trying not to force it out too harshly in case she ejects another molar. But the rest of it is Tudor’s. Ash learned a lot from her. With her. She’s had a lot of help. A lot of teachers. A lot of lessons. But this one, this lesson, this one hurt the most and taught her more. 
       Taught her what it is really like. 
       To betray.
       To be betrayed.
       To manipulate.
       To be manipulated.
       To kill.
       To be killed.
       She puts her hands under the running water, cold and smelling slightly of sulfur, she rubs some of the blood off her face, tenderly massages her throbbing gums through the swelling flesh of her cheek. In the darkness of the Goblin’s lavatory she runs through what happened. How it happened. How she didn’t see it coming, how Daan didn’t understand even as it was occurring, how completely blindsided they all were when they fell under her crosshairs. If you chart the events, going as far back as three months prior, it’s… it’s a masterclass in deception, in deceit, in delusion. 
       One minute the woman is a mentor, a comrade, a friend. Next, she has you in front of a group of so-called “Freedom Fighters” trying to gatekeep IMC expansion without any actual evidence of the claims they make about what the Manufacturing Corporation is trying to do. Saying things like “I’m sorry,” and “I wish you had listened to me, when I tried to warn you,” as if her idea of warning them wasn’t to mutter the most subtle objections about their tendency to play both sides of the budding conflict, all while those FIOM fuckers tortured her, tortured Reg, and tortured Daan for information about the IMC. Ash wondered if she really was so broken up about it, or if it was just an act she put on for their benefit – or, worse still, for her own. Deluding herself into thinking she was sorry, maybe so she didn’t feel so bad about being a lying bitch. 
       Ash didn’t have time to ask her – didn’t even want to, not after what she saw her do to Daan. Daan her friend. Daan her savior. Daan her mentor. Daan her… her brother. Killed Reg who put himself in Tudor’s line of fire to save him, then killed Daan as he held his buddy in his arms. With the rest of those independents already dead it was just Ash and Tudor, old and new, and when Ash finally got her former teacher’s, her former friend’s, her former comrade’s gun in her hands she pulled the trigger so many times into Tudor’s face there was nothing left of it but a red smear on the concrete floor of the basement they were trapped in. 

       She thinks something broke inside of her there. Died there. Because when she told Mary that her husband and the father of her two year old son was dead, betrayed by their friend, and when she heard the wailing that came from her – the same desperate, grief stricken wailing that she herself had cried into her pillow and that made her stop eating and stop showering and eventually drove her to this life, this life of death dealing and soul stealing and what truly amounted to bottom feeding, she didn’t… she didn’t feel anything for her. She had no sympathy. No empathy. All she thought was how pathetic this woman was – crying here, strewn out on the floor, with almost nothing left in her life. She thought, how could she just lie there and weep? Why couldn’t she get up and do something about it? Do something like Ash did something. 
       But she still sat next to her, cradled her head in her lap as she screamed, as rage and agony ejected from her in tears and sobs. “I couldn’t protect him, Mary, and I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. “He saved me once, saved me… from this. And I’ll do the same. For him, for you, and for Newton.” 
       It seemed, again, that her life had changed. Changed in an instant. “I dinnae ken how to make this work, on my own…” Mary says to her one day in her apartment. It feels dark despite the large, open windows that look out onto the city. Perhaps it is Mary’s dour mood. “If I don’t find a way to make some real money somehow I’ll – I’ll have to move back in with my mother…”
       Ash knows what Mary wants her to say. She just wonders if she will say it. She understands where she is coming from. It wasn’t long ago she was looking down a few hard paths, one of them leading back to the farm on Harmony in defeat or even the more preferable option – the sidewalk, some few hundred floors below. Ash leans forward in her seat, and takes Mary’s hand in hers. The woman’s fingers are long, thin, and warm. “I’ll help. I can move back in, I can help with Newton.”
       “Naw – I… That’s not…”
       “You helped me find a path forward when things were looking grim for me. I want to help you in the same way. You said it best, once upon a time. Friends share each other's burdens. Let me help you shoulder this one. Besides, he might like me more than he likes you.” Her tone is typically serious, almost callous, but Mary finds the jest she means to impart in it and nudges Ash’s knee with her own.
       “You wish.”
       So, Ash starts to rent out her apartment and moves in with her. She helps take care of the boy Newton while Mary goes to work, or she drives him to his godmother’s house – the richly styled mansion of Lillian Peck, the owner of the last name attached to the Peck Foundation and dear friend of Mary Somers. Sometimes Mary takes him to her mother’s home on Psamathe’s southern hemisphere. When the child, growing dearer to Ash every day, stays with either Lillian or Ms. Stewart, Ash finds a gig – steal something, guard someplace, kill someone. 
       Mary doesn’t like it. For a time, she tolerates Ash’s proclivities. It helps her keep Newton in their home, it helps her keep Newton connected to his father. But there were some things about Daan that Mary let lie that she has a harder time doing with Ash. Maybe it is because Mary helped Ash on another path that she strayed from rather drastically, and Daan was always a dangerous man. “But you have always been a dangerous woman,” says the voice inside of her head, not loud, not a whisper, just a voice, not unlike a thought but not like one either.
       Things between them escalate after Ash returns from a mission later than she meant to, with a fresh cut along her cheek given to her by a sword that was meant to go through her face. 
       “I don’t want you touching my son when you’ve still got blood on your hands, Ashleigh,” Mary says to her the following night as Ash holds him in her arms, bouncing him gently. 
       “They’re clean.”
       “They aren’t, Reid. Not the way you think. I don’t… I don’t want my son to grow up with the same coldness that’s in you.” It stings for a moment, sharp like a needle, but it passes so she might maintain her composure. She stops bouncing the boy, and he stops giggling. 
       “Are you asking I leave?”
       “No–I’m askin’ you don’t go. Look, the research I’ve been doin… I need an assistant. Someone to come with me on some of my trips. But, I think you need to get back to school for it.”
       “Paying for lessons at the PSA out of pocket is… going to be expensive,” Ash says, deliberately avoiding calling the idea what it is – insane.
       “Daan… he left us some cash. And I know you’ve got income, with the rental. And every once in a while I get a grant to do a little research. I think, between us, we can squeeze it out. You could get a scholarship.”
       “We could talk to Lillian.”
       “Huh? Oh, no, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Lillian and I, well, we’ve… we’ve never introduced money into our relationship, yeah? I don’t want to start that now. I don’t want to sour anything.”
       Ash gives her a look, wondering how Mary has befriended the head of one of the Frontier’s largest independent companies who also happens to be one of the richest people alive with one of the greatest philanthropic streaks the settled worlds have ever seen without taking advantage of her generosity and wealth. Newton, still in her arms, gives Ash a curious look. She makes eye contact with the boy, sees his big, blue eyes, his fine red hair, and sees his bright smile stretch across his fat little face. He giggles, and Ash can’t help herself but return the smile. “Fine,” Ash says, reminding herself she will never understand the vast contours of Mary’s brain. “I’ll consider it.”
       “Could add ‘doctor’ to your resume after a time, Leigh – might let you charge a little extra,” Mary says with a wink and a smile.

       Ash is three years into renewed lessons. Newton has sprouted like a weed and continues to grow and grow. She worked out a payment plan that, if she finished all of her courses, would take her twenty-four years to pay it off. She and Mary occasionally attend or even give lectures on hyper-specific points regarding astro-physics, the greater implications of mass-displacement engines, and the intricacies of black-hole dynamics. 
       Today, she sits at the ‘family computer,’ or rather just the largest screen in their shared home, and tries to log in to her own account to get at her next lesson plan – but she sees something there on the screen that gets her to stop herself. It’s a long, long message to Mary, from Lillian. Of course there isn’t anything that would make her pause just by that fact alone; it’s the graphs, charts, and mathematics that get her to look deeper. She scrolls through the message, glancing over each line, each paragraph, trying to pick up a word here or a sentence there that would give her a clue as to what it was all about – and then, toward the end, she finds it: 
       “This energy crisis is real. Aleki’s researchers on Olympus have shown me almost too many scenarios that all end in disaster by 2699. The Outlands weren’t built for the long-term, it was just exploration until the IMC returned, but those years turned into centuries and now we’re paying the price.”
       “Energy crisis?” Ash asks aloud. “Since when?” Mary is picking Newton up from his grandmother’s house, she won’t be home for some time yet. Ash looks into this Aleki, though the name alone isn’t enough. She searches through the website for Olympus, that massive city-in-the-sky that Peck built to be a monument to science that everyone could look up to, to inspire a new generation, and after a few minutes she finds him – Aleki Gibraltar, a petrochemical engineer stationed at Olympus originally with the goal of making more ecologically friendly fuel for the mass-displacement drives who shifted his attention to a universally scrutinized theory that the Outlands may soon find itself out of energy, citing the difference in planetary conditions from the “previously terraformed Frontier” and the “unaltered, abandoned Outlands.” Previously terraformed? In what way? 
       When Mary arrives home, Ash hands her a textbook’s worth of papers; evidence of Aleki’s claims, his own thoughts on the subject, as well as fuel and biomass studies and comparisons between the Frontier and the Outlands. 
       “What’s this?” She asks. 
       “Our next job,” Ash says. “I saw that message Peck sent you. I saw you ignored it. She’s offering you – offering us – a job, doing something substantial. Not giving lectures, not writing out numbers on random findings from telescopes pointed at the odd black hole. A real job.”
      “Och, I know, but –”
       “You don’t want to introduce money into your relationship, I remember. But this isn’t the same thing as asking your rich friend for a little help. The woman is offering us both a career. A way to make a name for ourselves. And she offered you, me, Newt, and even your grandmother a place to stay for free. ”
       “But–”
       “Don’t try to protest this, Mary. Think about it. The fact you’ve let your fears of souring your relationship with a woman who clearly wants you around get in the way of making some real money and conducting some real science is…” Ash puts her hand to her head, throbbing with a slight pain behind the eyes from staring at the screen for so long. “It’s concerning, to say the least,” she says, lifting her hand away and looking Mary in the eye with an intense, meaningful stare. “It’s like you got scared for a second and your mind shut down. Give it some thought. Really give it some thought. Think about how much I changed my life for you, and think about how much you could change your own life – and Newton’s life – for the better.”
       “Is it really all about money for you? Is that it?”
       “It’s a contributing factor.”
       “That ain’t what it’s about for me, lass.”
       “No, it isn’t. Clearly. But consider this – you wouldn’t have to leave so much. You could spend more time with Newton. Isn’t that what you really want?”

       Behold: Olympus. 
       It is truly the city of the gods. An expansive, expensive collection of living spaces, working offices, entertainment zones, and otherwise littered with vast experimentation; the floating city in the sky is a home to some of the brightest minds and forthcoming science in the whole of the Frontier, not just the Outlands. Flying in on Lillian Peck’s personal craft, a perk of Somers’ friendship with the mogul, you can see more than a few of its current treasures and future prospects: advanced hydroponics techniques and developments in tiered tower farming are set at the distant edges, while closer to the center of the floating city are labs for advanced robotics and a sliver dedicated to some kind of experimental vessel - no, an engine, as when Ash looks closer she can see a ship moored and cranes removing the block from the ship’s rear. Yet it seems the pride of this research paradise is something else: stretching from one end and wrapping around to another is a long tube, with a large facility that looks like a loading bay and smaller one that looks like a lab at either side.
       The lab, an open design with closed doors but no windows, is where Peck’s personal air-car takes them. As they approach the outdoor laboratory Ash sees the purple and black depths of some kind of anomaly staring at her and Somers from within the tube, staring like the eye of an old god, staring accusingly, staring like it knows what she’s done and who she has become. Ash feels fear as she looks into that void. She feels guilt. She feels like she is about to be caught out. She can almost hear it call her a murderer. She is one, after all. Despite her years as a killer for hire, having assassinated the deserving and the innocent in turns, it is not those acts which get under her skin. It is not the blood on her hands that makes her feel guilt. Not even her first true kill caused her to feel any agony or remorse, it was just some man with a gun threatening her. Taking his life was easy because it was necessary. It is the weight of another life she stole, taken without her knowing, taken while she was away living that very life that now tips the scales of judgment. And the eye perceives it.
       Then, there is a bright, purple light that explodes out of the darkness for a moment so slight it’s like it didn’t even happen. And, standing in front of the accusing eye, stands a woman with rich black hair and wearing an olive green pantsuit. She bends, picks something up – Ash doesn’t know what – and holds it aloft. “Why is it so cold? I guess it’s better than the last one that ran too hot, means nothing we put through it will explode, but… why is it so cold? I mean, look at that – it’s got ice on it! Why does it have ice on it? Where’d the moisture even come from? Is it wet in there?”
       “We… we don’t think it’s wet in there, Mrs. Peck– we’re working on the temperature effect, and we are making good progress–” a short, spectacled scientist standing with a trio of others dressed in labcoats says, but stops abruptly as Mary Somers shouts from behind Ash: “Lil!”
       “Mary!” Peck says, turning around. She has a cube with a little heart on it in her hands. She tosses it aside without a care. One of the scientists looks at her in shock and confusion, then scurries like a rat to retrieve the little thing. “So glad you’ve finally come to visit. Did you bring my precious little man?”
       “Och, not this time, dearie– I actually have a business proposal for ya, if ya dinnae mind a wee bit o’ formal chatter.”

       “Well, I wish you’d have come to me sooner, Mary,” Peck says, leaning back in her high backed chair. They sit in her private office in a room overlooking the robotics lab, located in an aptly named research basin. “But I’m glad you finally reached out. You’re a brilliant mind, and I know we can finally start making progress on solving this issue with you on board.”
       “Thanks, Lil. A’m glad tae finally be here. A’m… sorry it took me so long tae see the offer f’it was. I was, I guess, just… scared of introducing something, I dinnae, transactional to our relationship.”
       “It’s quite alright, but I admit I am a little offended – when a friend reaches out for help, you could at least give some kind of a response.”
       “You’re right, and A’m sorry,” Mary says humbly. 
       “Of course I am, and you’re forgiven. Now – why don’t you go home, pick up some of your things, and bring over my little Newtie. We’ll get you all set up here.”
       “One more thing, Mrs. Peck.”
       “What’s up, Ms. Reid?”
       “I’m currently pursuing a doctorate at the Psamathine Science Academy, at Mary’s request. About eleven years ago I was enrolled via a full-ride from the Peck Foundation, but after… a personal loss,” she says, with difficulty, “I found I could not continue my education. Now, I am out of a steady source of income and the out-of-pocket costs are draining my accounts. I was wondering if, as part of our tenure here, your foundation would be willing to bankroll my remaining credits.”
       “Oh, of course. No problem.” She says, waving the issue off like it is a fly. The woman is so wealthy Ash knew that hearing out the request would be a greater investment in time and money than her actually agreeing to it. PeckLabs and the Peck Foundation at large spend so much money that a few million more to Lillian is akin to a few cents extra for Ash.

       It’s another two years. Progress has been slow. More and more people are starting to believe the oncoming energy crisis is real, but almost none of them are making changes to avert it or are willing to investigate ways to solve it on their own. They tell them it's only in twenty years that things will start getting worse, and likely sixty years until society starts to collapse – and the people on top all say “Come talk to me in sixty years.”
       But slow progress means progress, at least. It means there is new information, something she can sell to the competition. Peck pays for her education and their housing on Olympus is free, but everything else comes with a cost – and Ash’s accounts have been slowly draining. Her former master Seimei Abe, disappointed she would abandon her studies, was pleased to hear she was working so closely with Lillian Peck – and entreated her to deliver him the keys to the kingdom of Olympus. Whatever progress the Frontier makes, the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation wants a hand in it. Whatever she could get access to she sold, but she’s kept the progress of this project close to the chest – knowing it would yield a far greater payday.
       “I can get you something that, in only two decades, will become one of the most valuable resources in the galaxy. Something that will make you money at home and in the Frontier. Something you and the IMC will have exclusive access to, ad infinitum.”
       “What is it?” He asks her in his low, gravelly voice.
       “Dr. Somers and I have done the math. There’s a… theoretical element that could serve as an exemplary fuel source. If we can find it and if we can stabilize it.”
       “Ash.”
       “What?”
       “You do this, nobody else can know. Understood?”
       “Understood.”

       Ash looks up from her computer screen with an incredulous look, a look of disgust and shock and confusion. “You’re going to call it what? ”
       “What? Ya dun think Horizonium’s a good name fer it?” Mary asks, spinning in her chair to fully face Ash.
       “By no means should you ever call it that.”
       “Why not! If my theory’s true, it collects in the accretion disk of the black hole – along the horizon, eh?”
       “Naming it Horizonium would be as foolish as naming any of the other elements discovered Dirtium, Filthium, or Earthium simply because they were found in the ground.”
       “Ah!” Somers says in shock. “You wound me, it’s not that bad!”
       “You have to call it something else. Nobody will buy it, and the Outlands will die a slow, cold death because you failed to consult a marketing department.” 
       “What’d you call it, then, eh, dearie?” Mary asks, flipping a pen through her fingers with practiced skill in front of Newton’s face, who sits reading from a printed picture book.
       Ash puts a finger to her bottom lip and looks down in her seat, thinking. “Branthium,” she says. 
       “Branthium? Why that?” The pen stops.
       “Something sacrificed, now found, to save the lives of many, not just one.”
       “Huh? What is that supposed to mean?” The way Mary looks at her, it’s like she’s questioning her sanity.
       “I had a brother, once. His name was Brandon. Call it Branthium. For my sake.”
       “Not Brandonium?” Mary suggests, though Ash senses she is teasing her slightly. Loss is familiar to the both of them. Perhaps Mary senses if the topic is to be broached, it can be better to be light about it than allow it to weigh you down any more than it already does.
       “I am sentimental, not a fool. Branthium sounds much better.”
       “Och, alright, you’ve got me – definitely rolls off the tongue a bit better than Horizonium ,” she says, throwing her hands up in mock defeat. “Okay, fine. We’ll name it Branthium, after yer brother. What happened to him? Is he the one…?” She tries to get serious. Sometimes it pays to be light. Sometimes it's better to be heavy. 
       “He’s just not here any more. We will leave it at that.” Ash prefers to keep it light.
       “Alright, I get it. But if you do want to, you can talk to me. It feels better once you do.”
       “I have work to do on my dissertation. That is all I wish to focus on, right now.” 

       Her defense is conducted by Lillian Peck, a short, bespectacled scientist named Milly Delgado who was the one Ash noticed fretting over a cube when she first arrived on Olympus, a geologist named Amelie Paquette, and the petrochem engineer Aleki Gibraltar, who first sounded the alarm on depleting reserves on Solace. As it stands, these are the only people capable of asking the right questions regarding her thesis that specific star types and solar system makeup is what determined the terraforming of worlds by that race of beings who settled here before. It even shows that planets not terraformed tended to have a similar star type, and that these are worlds where various flora and fauna were sampled from and resettled across the Frontier. 
       The day before her journey, Ash puts her diploma on her bedroom wall. Her heart swells with pride. She wishes she could turn to her mother, run to her father, or go find her brother, and tell them: I did it. I achieved what I set out to achieve. I accomplished so much, and in such a short time. Thirty three years old and an accomplished mercenary, a spy, and now a doctor. Aren’t you proud of me? But they’re gone, they're all gone. She has nothing. She has no one. Not even an opponent to hold her achievement over. It’s just herself.
       She had hoped to celebrate with Mary like they had so many years ago when Ash first showed she had what it took to be the good student she always knew she had to be but never truly desired to emulate. When she demonstrated she could be what her brother always was. Mary declined, however. With less than twenty four hours until they were to deploy for a remote star system, she didn’t want to do anything reckless and, more importantly, she wanted to spend time with her son. 
       So Ash hangs the culmination of decades of labor, the work of her lifetime and, ultimately, her brother’s as well – she hangs the title Ashleigh Reid, PhD on the wall of her room and stares at it and her reflection. She traces the scar along her cheek. She looks into her own blue eyes and through her own reflection. She sees what lies underneath it, inside of it. Inside of the black pits of her pupil. 
       “Nothing,” that other voice of hers whispers from inside of her somewhere – but, then, why do her lips move?
       She hears Somers in the room adjacent playing with her boy, Newton, that darling little child of hers and wants what she has – not the child, necessarily, but the connection to someone else. She has never felt more lonely except in the moments when she hears that boy’s laughter.
       “But there could be something,” the voice says again.

       Months of listening to Somers’ absent-minded singing, spent going over her theories and math they’ve gone over time and time again, coming together for companionship and separating for some space – an ironic concept, struggling to get away from someone when there is all of the vastness around them – it’s gotten to her, gotten under her skin, gotten into her mind and made her… hateful, resentful, mean. Or maybe it has made her more of herself. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t care, she just feels it in her grating interactions with Mary, she feels it in the morning when she wakes up to find she’s been grinding her teeth. 
       This job. This horrible job. 
       They settle into the accretion disc of 2427-R, the only black hole even remotely nearby that has the predicted mass necessary to produce Branthium in its outer ranges. Ash wishes she had stayed on Psamathe. She wishes she had turned Daan’s little job down all those years ago, remained the killer she was born to be. She wishes, for once, for simplicity. This has all become too much, too much commitment to a life that is all a lie – a ruse to get into good graces, a falsehood to get her close to riches, a blatant lie obscured only by the fact nobody, nobody in the whole, god damned galaxy knows who she really is. She doesn’t care for the Outlands. She doesn’t care for Somers. She doesn’t care for Newton, no matter his wily charms. She cares for… she cares for recognition. She wants people to know her name. She wants to be respected, idolized, worshiped — feared. She resents that she is no longer the known quantity she once was at Lyssa’s Place.
       “Can you get it?” Abe says. Ash knows it’s him by his cadence, even through the voice modifier. 
       “It’s entirely theoretical. One of our models suggests even if we find it, it has a half-life of a millionth of a second. It decays so fast.”
       “It had better. If you two find a stable variety, what is your plan for it?”
       “I can destroy it or bring it to you.”
       “Bringing it to us would be preferable, the sample could be invaluable to the IMC and I could sell it for a pretty penny. But either option would mean dealing with Dr. Somers – the Corporation needs this crisis to happen. Are you prepared for that eventuality?”
       She thinks about the promise she made to Daan:
              To keep Mary safe. 
       She thinks about the promise she made to Mary:
              To support her and her son.
       She thinks about the promise she made to Newton:
              To protect his mother.
       She thinks about what she said to her own reflection:
              There is nothing.
       She thinks about what her own reflection said to her:
              There could be something.
       She’s broken every promise she’s ever made to one person or another. She has lied, cheated, stolen, and killed for the life she has and she has tossed it aside again and again and retreaded the same worn paths over and over and she has failed herself and her dreams and the dreams of others more times than she can count. She should forge a new path here. One where she does the good thing. Makes the right choice. Does not what others would do, what their stolen futures would have her do, but what she would do. A choice wholly and fully her own.
       “Yes.” She swallows.
       “Really?” She can hear his doubt.
       “I will do what I have to do,” Ash says as earnestly as possible.
       Somers is in the pod. She drifts close to that ring of dust. Light plays on it in so many colors, refracted across that illusory sphere that is the event horizon. Ash can see shimmering crystals spin and shine along the disc. “I want…” Ash starts to say but stops, as if she fears the next words. 
       “What do you want?” Abe says. A sense of tenderness comes through the voice modifier somehow. 
       “Branthium Transfer Complete,” an automated voice says inside the research vessel. Ash taps her tablet in her hand. 
       “I want to be something. I want to be someone. I want people to know my name, who I was. I don’t want it all to be for nothing.” 
       “It will not be for nothing. Your name will be writ across the stars, Ash. People will know you and will fear you just as they fear me.”
       Ash sees Somers’ tether has just started to automatically retract. Ash has time. Time to think. Time to weigh her options. Time to decide. She could be feared, or she could be celebrated. Which is more powerful? Which feels better? Whose names stand the test of time? The names of the great, or the names of the feared? 
       “Do it.” Her voice says, compelling.
       “Do it.” Her other self says, anticipating.
       “Do it.” Her master says, commanding.
       She presses a button on her tablet. She hears Somers over the radio draw a sharp breath of concern. 
       “Sorry, dearie, ” Ash says.
       She cuts the tether. She cuts the com. 
       Guilt mounts like a rising wave, the gravity of it so much more intense than the effects generated by the spiraling mass beyond the hull of her ship. She swallows spit laden with this terrible feeling and it slides down her throat like poison. She stows the sample, a computer tells her it is stable, and she sits in the cockpit of the research vessel. She takes a deep breath and her chest shudders as she does so, shivers like she is shuffling emotion from her skin, forcing guilt to fall from her in flakes and chunks. Another piece of a stone statue carved away. Chipping out an image of herself with every breath. She retreats into the folds of her mind. She lies there. Lies to herself there. Convinces herself not that she is sorry, but that she is right. That breaking her promise was the move she would make. That it was a decision wholly and completely hers. That the cruelty of it wasn’t wrong, wasn’t overt, it was just what had to happen. She had to be cruel to get what she wanted. Guilt fades away, gone with the chisel of self-deception, and in its stead is…
       Satisfaction.

Chapter Text

       Chapter Seventeen: Monarch

       Twelve years. Twelve years of nothing. Fifteen years on this stupid mission, fifteen years spent doing the wrong thing. Fifteen years spent living a lie, one she could not retreat from., and twelve of those years spent in the wake of her biggest betrayal yet. The wretched requirements of her ridiculous occupation necessitated she make it look like an accident just to keep herself on the team, clued into how the research was going. “Her pod was caught in the pull.” She told her false colleagues. “I had to cut it. The ship, and the sample, would have been lost. I didn’t have a choice.” It was easy to explain Mary’s death to her friend Lillian Peck, a little harder to lie to her mother, but it was… difficult to lie to Newton. Lillian didn’t know how to tell him. Ash did. She told him directly, but the words seemed to betray her as they left her throat. 
       Somehow, after that, Ash became stuck with him. Certainly Lillian Peck or even his grandmother offered a stronger connection to Mary – but Ash could see he viewed herself as Mary’s protector, and now he believed she was his. Now, the fool Newton does everything he can to be close to her. He has even taken up an internship with the Group as those imbeciles have started uncreatively calling themselves, against every gentle discouragement Ash provided. He felt she was pushing him toward his goals. The truth is, she was pushing him away and failing at that, too.
       In the end, twelve years after Mary’s death and the successful recovery of Branthium, it was the child Newton, a grown man and growing still, who figured out the solution to stabilizing the element and producing energy from the crystal. Ash felt like a fool, and needed to make the others feel lesser than her for it – until she had a solution of her own. A MRVN, a robot with a low-level intelligence that makes it capable of following orders and making simple decisions, with the right upgrades could work the constant attunement and calibration the system requires all without risking its life. 
       “We have solved it,” Ash says to the ailing Seimei, who two years ago and only a year into the energy crisis which has finally hit the Outlands took a grievous wound in a skirmish in the failing fringe worlds. Every day, huge tankers bring oil and refined fuel to many of these slowly dying worlds, and every day the IMC makes new deals to bring in more of the stuff, and every day these simple colonies become stronger outposts for the powers of Old Earth to garrison. Ash has seen pictures of some of the things they’re building on Solace, the underground complexes and overland bases… it’s becoming a staging ground for something, something big. 
       “Your mission was to make certain that never happens.”
       “You wouldn’t let me kill the crew.”
       “The project is too public. You know we couldn’t do that. Everyone would suspect the Corporation.”
       “Then suffer the consequences of your discretion. The project is finishing up. They are nearly done retrofitting a robot to conduct the experiment. The time to strike is nigh.”
       “You will not kill them, Reid. If Project Iris succeeds your mission is to retrieve the sample and deliver it to a facility on Gridiron.”
       “Gridiron?”
       “That’s the word.”
       “Hm.”

       He’s done it. That absurdly cheerful robot has made it possible. Branthium refined. Branthium beautiful. Branthium, to power the Outlands. A dark, shimmering crystal brimming with potential energy, a jewel unlike any other. As Ash beholds it she feels pride in her accomplishment. Certainly the others did much of the heavy lifting, but it was Ash who in the beginning made this happen – who has been working on this project almost as long as that hulk Aleki Gibraltar, who convinced Somers to work with Lillian Peck, who brought the substance back, who conjured the idea of the blue robot to solve their problems. She feels this was all her doing. Before assembling the retrieval team, she finds she has options: steal it, and write her name in legend as perpetrator of the most magnificent heist in history or leave it, and have her name laid out as one of many saviors of the Outlands. 
       The choice is easy. 
       Why should anyone else get the credit?
       In the lab, toying with a little rat, with nothing else to do now that no star can reveal a secret that could determine the future of the Outlands, she knows she cannot keep Newton on hand. As much as she hates to admit it she feels a connection to him. He treats her like a friend, a confidant, a figure to look up to, a parent. He is the only person on the team that likes her genuinely. It is either an act of mercy, mercy she did not grant his mother, to convince him to head home early, or it is the one promise she managed to keep at all; her posthumous promise to Daan to protect his son.
       When he’s gone, she brings in the team. 
       Ash hears little Delgado shout excitedly, “All roads lead to Branthium!” as she pops the cork on a bottle of champagne – the real deal, brought all the way from Mother Earth – a sound that rings through the halls of the laboratory. Ash follows the cheers. Delgado is pouring the sparkling wine into measuring cups for a lack of flutes, and mustachioed Shelly is wiping champagne off of his face and licking his fingers, his labcoat looking soaked. Aleki Gibraltar offers Ash a cup, but she declines. “I’m not celebrating just yet.” He gives her the briefest, slightest, smallest look of suspicion before his attention is grabbed by Engineer Anastasia Oliveria, who begs Amelie Paquette for a speech. “Yes, bruddah, let’s hear it!” Aleki cheers.
       “Sure, let’s hear a speech from our fearless leader,” Ash mutters sarcastically. Paquette glances at her but does not react. Good. The woman has been a source of constant frustration. Where Ash could easily lie and hide her growing disdain for Somers, there was something about Paquette’s very nature that drove Ash to public hatred. Perhaps it's because Paquette never quite believed her story about Mary’s “accident,” or perhaps it’s because of her ridiculous accent. Either way, Ash would prefer to listen to nails on chalkboard over hearing her voice. 
       “I zink ve are missing a member of ze Group, don’t you?” Paquette says, and opens the comms inside the refinery. “Path, can you hear us?” From within that superheated, electrically stimulated, and highly radioactive refinery chamber, comes an absurdly cheerful voice.
       “Hi, creator friends! I can hear you, and you sound great!” The robot, named Pathfinder by consensus of the Group in celebration of the Pathfinder rover that put humanity’s presence on another world, has been working for ten hours straight refining the black dust shipped from that same black hole that holds the atomized corpse of Mary Somers into Branthium crystals. 
       Ash did as much as she could to stop his first sample from leaving the lab without raising suspicions, but her options were limited. Now, in the transfer station adjacent to the refinery, she beholds the racks of secure boxes filled to the brim with crystals as big as a forearm and as small as a grain of sand and she consoles herself with the idea that while she may have lost the sample, she will have the hoard. “Let’s put him on the screen,” Paquette says regarding Pathfinder. 
       There he is. Big and blue and as friendly as ever, a yellow smiling face gleaming on the screen on his chest panel. “Exciting!” He says. Ash sees everyone looking at him, celebrating with each other. A slight thought that runs through her mind goes “I could be a part of this,” and is squashed immediately, murdered with the same ease that was Brandon, that was Daan, that was Tudor, and that was Mary. Now she thinks, “This is my moment.”
       Paquette gives a speech Ash finds simpering, delivered with a false grace and gratitude. She congratulates them on their accomplishments, thanks them for their contributions, and even goes so far as to acknowledge Ash’s involvement, trying to bring her in to the fold like the two of them aren’t diametrically opposed. “Even you, Reid. Let’s not forget whose idea it was to build our friendly MRVN.”
       “Yes,” Ash says, thinking “That was me.” “Now are we ready to get on with it? To save the Outlands?” She says, and checks her watch. The team should be here. If they’re on schedule, they’ve already taken care of Adonis Squad. A necessary sacrifice, what are the lives of a few IMC soldiers compared to the digits of the IMC’s bottom line, after all?
       Paquette smiles at Ash sardonically. “To ze Outlands!” She offers her glass in cheers to the others who ring theirs against hers with nuisant clinks. She sits back down at her workstation and says “Alright, everyone, get to your stations.” They disperse, and Ash filters out of the room.
       They are to send the first shipments of Branthium to Peck’s newest generator on Talos, another Outlands world with its own Phase Runner using the one here on Olympus. Ash hears it start spinning up as she strips out of her white-and-blue labcoat and into the thick, black and white plate armor of her cohort. The chestplate has the demonic skull of the Apex Predators emblazoned on it in yellow, her personal styling of the red version on the shoulder pauldrons of the squad given to her for today’s operation. By the time she is armored up and ready to go, the members of Project Iris must be looking for her eagerly to set the security protocols for transferring the Branthium via the Phase Runner. 
       “Wait, where’s Newton?” Ash hears Paquette ask loudly over the humming din of the Phase Runner. Before anyone can reply, six men and women in heavy plate armor charge through the security door left open by Ash, who follows right behind with another squad of six behind her as well. 
       “I don’t believe that is the question you should be asking right now, Paquette,” Ash says, showing off her own sardonic grin. Her Predators have their own weapons, an assortment of R-016 rifles, EVA-8 shotguns, and even shortswords attached to the hips of some, yet Ash brandishes her own pistol; a Wingman Elite, that clunky, heavy weapon, the same one used to put down Reg and Daan, the same one used to turn Tudor’s face into a red smear.
       The members of Project Iris fall silent in shock, disbelief, and rightful fear. Paquette stands from her workstation, and Ash can see a defiant look in her eye. Ash senses a part of her expected this day to come. “Get over there with your friends, Paq.”
       She doesn’t respond. In a move Ash forces herself to commend as brave, yet stupid, she presses her hand to a sensor. “Emergency Lockdown Initiated,” a deep automated voice says over the PA system. The lights dim to nothing, replaced with a low, red glow. “Must you play games?” Ash derides, and approaches her. Paquette stands proud, upright, and Ash puts her down, prostrate, with a blow from the butt of her pistol to the woman’s temple. “You,” she points to a Predator. “Put her over there with the rest of them.” 
       The Phase Runner has shut itself down following the emergency lockdown. Fine. Ash spends some time, only a few minutes that feels like an eternity, trying to end the lockdown procedure. She hears stirring behind her, and turns from the Phase Runner console to look on her prisoners. “Look who decided to wake up. Welcome to your nightmare, Paquette.”
       “I knew it,” she says in a strained voice. “I knew it from ze start. You killed her, didn’t you?” The accusation stings. A pit of guilt starts to form in her stomach, but Ash fills it with anger. How dare she accuse her? Sure, it is true, but how dare this lowly fool, too cowardly to even try to stop her after suspecting her of murder for twelve years, now make her accusations public?
       “I did no such thing,” Ash lies. The guilt begins to overcome the anger now matter how swiftly she piles it on. 
       “Yeah, right. You killed Somers. You put yourself before every innocent life in ze Outlands!” Paquette spits, lying on the floor, blood sticky and dried on her face. 
       “Innocent life?” Ash laughs, laughs aloud, deeply, and genuinely. Does this fool truly believe that? “Please. The Outlands are filled with nothing but war and greed. No one cares for anyone but themselves. Me? I’m just playing the game.” A little part of her wonders if that is true. She had help, she had so much help. But she also faced so much adversity. She remembers how much her feet hurt when she found Daan at Lyssa’s place, she remembers the stench of the basement where Tudor and the Free & Independent Outlands Movement tortured her. 
       “Have you told zat to Newton?” Somehow the name jars her from her thoughts. “Where is he?”
       “He’s not a part of this. Not anymore. I took care of him.” Ash is purposefully vague. They believe she killed Mary, let them believe she killed the son, too. “Right now, it’s just us. And, I guess there is only one way to do this: my hand, and one of yours. So who is it going to be?” Ash paces in front of the group, whapping her Wingman against her thigh. “Who is going to let me in?” She puts her hand to the command console’s sensor, waiting for a pair. “Come now, does anyone want to play?” There is silence. Ash grows impatient. She is about to pull up her gun and shoot somebody, when Paquette, surprisingly, struggles to her feet. 
       “Dr. Reid,” she says, ignoring some of her colleagues who tell her in murmured voices to leave it, to let it be. 
       “This will be interesting,” Ash says. “I’ll accept this treat.” Somewhere, somewhere back in her mind, somewhere outside of herself, she hears a distant voice say to her “You play with your food too much.”
       “No treat. No to anything. Not for you, Reid. You’re not getting anything from us.”
       “That is inspired,” Ash says, stepping between Paquette and a Predator. “But luckily for me, I don’t ask– I take.” Ash holsters her pistol, shifts, faces an Apex Predator to her right and grabs the sword handle resting at their hip. She rips it from its sheath and, in one very swift motion, removes Paquette’s right hand. Before it even reaches the ground Ash grabs it up, snatching it from the air. It is warm and limp. It feels odd in her hand, holding it this way. Blood pours from the sever, and streams like a faucet from Paquette’s stump. She screams in pain, the others gasp in shock, and Ash places the limp hand to the sensor along with her own. A prompt on the command console appears, Ash presses it, and the lockdown ends. Finally, some real lighting. 
       “Bring the rest of them with us,” Ash says. “Leave this one in the lab to bleed out.”
       “You bitch,” Paquette gasps between breaths sucked through clenched teeth. Ash laughs. 
       “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe.” Her Predators force the members of the Group out of the laboratory to the Phase Runner warehouse and transfer facility. Once they’re out, Ash turns back to Paquette. Blood is everywhere. “It was nice working with you, Paquette,” she says. Ash shoots the door control panel with her Wingman, exits the lab, and shuts her in. She leaves her to die, slowly, to let her think about all of the things she could have done better, to review a lifetime of mistakes and failures. 
       With Paquette's hand to get her through the security protocols, Ash gets the Phase Runner going. She has seen it a number of times, been there for some of its most incredible advancements, and yet she cannot get past the feeling that it is watching her. It looks like the eye of a deep one, an old god, a being from before time that will be here long after it all ends, and when the universe stops spinning this thing will still be here, watching. She stares into it with reverence, awe, wonder, and fear. She has to force herself to look away from the iris that is the void as it spins to life. A voice comes over her comm link. 
       “Is it done?”
       “Yes. We’ve made the adjustments to the Phase Runner. It should have plenty of power and range to reach you.” Not true. She still needs one of the other scientists to help her with the calculations, but she wants this job over and done with – she sends the Branthium, she gets paid, she’s gone. She wants nothing more than to forget about the last fifteen years of wasted life. “And our payment?” 
       “Already sent. Your account should be looking flush.”
       “Good,” Ash says, and cuts the comm. Standing on a catwalk overlooking the transfer station floor, Ash looks down on her Predators. “We’re in business. The Phase Runner is almost up. Get those cranes ready,” she points at the loading cranes set up along a conveyor belt that feeds directly into the Runner, with racks of boxes marked BRANTHIUM in fat white letters along the sides. As her mercs set up, Ash petitions her prisoners once more. “So, you’re all geniuses. But which one of you can help me boost the range on this machine? Anyone?” Ash asks in a pleasant tone, trying to be friendly, trying to seem capable of mercy, trying to seem like she has the capacity to spare any of those who help her out. 
       “Fuck you,” shouts mustachioed Shelly in his thick Salvonian accent. “You’ve been working here longer than any of us, use your own genius and figure it out yourself. We’re all done helping you cheat your way in life.”
       “Please,” Ash says, grinning. “Cheating is the only way to win in life. And whether or not you choose to resist, I will always win.” She points at a Predator. “You, come. I just need to find a way to boost the range. This thing’s got to make it to Gridiron.”
       “Gridiron?” The hulk Aleki Gibraltar scoffs. “Are you jokin’ bruddah? You can’t make it that far.”
       “You will fail,” Anastasia says. 
       “Oh?” Ash approaches Anastasia and leans in, close to her face. So close she can feel the warmth from her skin. “You know, I really must thank you. Yes, this took much longer than expected, but without your help I never would have been able to turn that black hole rock into power. And Paquette, can’t forget about her. I’m glad she decided to lend me a hand.” Ash waves the severed appendage in front of Anastasia’s face. The Engineer spits into Ash’s face. “Ha,” she laughs, coldly. “Very funny.” Ash smacks her across the face with Paquette’s now cold hand, and is about to put the sword she still wields through her chest when the lights go dark again , the Phase Runner shuts down, and silence occupies the room more expertly than her twelve Predators could ever manage. 
       “What the hell is going on?” Ash shouts in frustration. She wants this to be over. Her voice echoes off of the steel walls. 
       “Hey!” a mercenary yells from the opposite end of the warehouse, then gunfire erupts into a cacophony that echoes explosively across the walls, so loud in the closed space it starts to make Ash’s ears ring. She has a Heads-up-Display that shows her the vital signs of her soldiers. One of them, D. Anderson, shows nothing. “Anderson! Status!” Ash commands, but is met with silence. The only light comes from the flashlights on their helmets and chest pieces, not even the red emergency lights are on. “You two, go check it out.” They start to move, but another Pred on another side of the transfer station says “There! I see something, by the catwalk!” Ash looks up and squints. As light bounces off the walls she can see the figure. Tall, hulking, hard angles. She knows that figure, everyone knows that figure – MRVNs are commonplace across the Frontier. “It’s just a MRVN,” one of the Predators says and laughs it off, anxiety shuffling off of him with each chuckle. 
       “The failsafe…” Anastasia mutters lowly, but in the silence Ash hears her clearly. 
       “What failsafe? What did you do?” She doesn’t wait for an answer as she addresses the Predators: “Kill the damn thing! Kill it!” But before either of the mercs closest to it can even raise their weapons they go down under a gale of gunfire. Somehow the damned MRVN has gotten a Flatline. It comes standard with armor piercing rounds, and it puts holes in her mercenaries as big as baseballs. Ash sees in their dying flashlights the huge sprays of blood. 
       “Failsafe… failsafe… who has the failsafe?” Ash mutters. Three of her mercs are down. Two of them guard the prisoners, the other remaining seven are searching high and low for the MRVN, delivering gunshots to anything that has a shape remotely resembling its form. 
       “Major,” Ash orders to one of her men. “I am getting the Phase Runner back online – you call for reinforcements, and find that god damn MRVN!” She drops the hand in favor of a flashlight and starts scanning over the consoles, looking for a way to bypass the power failure to get the thing running again. 
       “Good thing you gave him some combat experience, huh?” Anastasia says to one of the meekest of their group, a medical doctor named Fletcher. 
       “Shut up!” Ash barks. She is frantic. “Why are they talking? Why are you allowing them to talk?” Ash storms toward the Predators guarding the prisoners. She draws her sword and waives it at the Group wildly. “They are not allowed to speak. They are not allowed to blink! They are not allowed to do anything, and if they do, shoot them! ” How can these mercenaries be so bad at their job? Are they even Predators, or do they just wear the armor of one? What kind of organization has this turned into? What has Abe made of the order she hoped she might command? Did she really miss out on anything by being a spy? “If you don’t, I will, and then I’ll kill you. Got it?” 
       The mercs nod, say yes under muffling helmets, but the order gets a guffaw out of Gibraltar. “Are you serious? Don’t blink? ” Ash turns on him and his eyes are blinking rapidly, disobediently. He looks past the light and into Ash’s face. “He’ll find you. And he’ll kill you. One way or another. It’s what I would do, and he’s part me.”
       “I said don’t blink. ” Ash lifts her sword and draws it over her shoulder. Aleki closes his eyes and looks… ready, accepting, prepared for the inevitable. Ash’s hand explodes in pain. The sword falls out of her grip. Gunfire continues and one of the so-called Predators goes down under a red mist, and then Ash is sent bodily onto the loading platform before the Phase Runner. She feels something inside of her is broken and from the dim light on her chest piece she can see she is missing two of her fingers. The pain is immense, and blood is gushing out in pulses. The robot is standing over her, but it notices Gibraltar facing off against her other Predator and goes to help him. 
       Suddenly, strangely, the lights turn on as Gibraltar frees the prisoners. The Phase Runner is back on, spinning to life, peering in on the battlefield. Her other seven guards are arrayed throughout the transfer station, trying to get angles on the swiftly moving Pathfinder, the dug-in Gibraltar, and the medical doctor Fletcher who is flanking around. Ash hides, tries to get her breathing under control, tries to manage the pain in her hand but the wound is so mangled and so awkward she can’t do anything to stop the bleeding save tie off her whole wrist. “Where’d she go?” Ash hears Anastasia say aloud. 
       “We’ll hold them off, bruddah! You shut that thing down!”
       “Yes, sir!” Pathfinder says joyfully. Ash watches from her nook as he makes his way to the command console, bowling down a white-armored mercenary in his way and apologizing to him as he puts him down. That deep, automated voice says over the PA “DESTINATION: GRIDIRON – POWER LEVEL EXCEEDS SAFETY PARAMETERS.” The Phase Runner is ready to go, up to full power, but she didn’t run the calculations. So who did? The iris is fully focused. The eye sees clearly. “Shut it down!” Anastasia shouts. “You need to shut it down! Do you hear me, Path?” The room is full of the sounds of gunfire. The MRVN is interfacing with the command computer. “You need to hurry!” He seems flustered, as much as a robot can be. He looks between his interface unit and his friends, fighting for their lives. The gunfire is deafening. The constant din and clamor hurts her ears. Then, across from her and in a dark corner, Ash spots opportunity. She pushes toward her, keeping her head low, and grabs Delgado by the collar of her labcoat.
       “No, please, don’t hurt me!” She squeaks. Pathetic.
       “You turned it back on, didn’t you?” Ash snarls into her face, spittle spraying her thick lenses.
       “I did! I did! Please, just take it and go! Just let this be over!”
       “Can’t do that, Milly – I still have a job to do.” Ash pulls her out from under the console. 
       As Gibraltar worries over the body of Anastasia, a death noted by Ash only by the shocked gasps of the surviving members of the Group and Aleki’s scream of anguish, Ash puts herself into a precarious position: right in the open, right before the Phase Runner. 
       “What a shame,” Ash says, holding her quarry tight. “Of all of them, she’s the one I disliked the least.” The gunfire stops, the members of the group all look at her, the few living Predators under her stare up at her as well. “And this one? Second least.” Ash grips the small, bespectacled scientist beneath her jaw, lifting her head back, exposing her throat and holding her pistol at her neck. “No more games. Step away from the console, or I will make little Delgado here extra little.” She presses the Wingman’s barrel into the flesh. 
       “That’s my friend,” Pathfinder says. 
       “Please, no one is your friend. You’re a machine. Nobody cares about machines. Nobody loves machines. You’re no different than that Phase Runner. You’re just a MRVN. We use you and turn you off when we’re done. You’re nothing. Now, again: step away from the console. ” Ash says forcefully, trying to communicate her words clearly for the stupid robot’s little mind. Blood drips from her wounded hand and pours down Delgado’s neck. Pathfinder looks at her, then looks down in–what, shame? Defeat? Can the robot even feel such things? No, she concludes, but it backs off all the same. “Good.”
      “I–” Delgado tries to say something from beneath Ash’s grip. 
       “Oh, what? Are you trying to stand up for something? Cute.” Especially so, after what she pulled. Ash pulls the pistol away from the little scientist’s flesh. 
       “I–” she takes a deep breath. “I love him!” Her fingers dig into the wound on Ash’s hand. The pain is excruciating. The small woman uses her elbow to bash the side of Ash’s knee. “He’s not nothing! He’s my friend!” She uses her head to butt Ash in the chest. She hits that busted rib from when Pathfinder slammed into her earlier, after blowing her fingers off. Ash reels, the breath leaving her body, and she doesn’t have time to react as the robot, inhumanly swift, takes the opportunity to knock the pistol to the side and kick her off the platform. Something else goes inside of her as the impact knocks her to the floor. He leaps down and there is a mighty thud as his considerable weight slams against the steel floor. He stands over her. 
       “You killed my friend.” He picks her up and throws her further away, closer to the gaping eye of the Phase Runner. Ash feels its judgment at the back of her neck. “I think you made a mistake.” The yellow smiling face on his chest turns red, its thin black line turns from a curve into a straight row filled with teeth. 
       “I did,” Ash chokes, coughs. “I should have never created you, MRVN.” Ash tries to stand, wheezing. She gets to her feet. Pathfinder takes a fighter’s stance, his metal fists at the ready. 
       “I know my creators, and you are not them, friend.” He stops. Ash can see his singular eye focus and refocus in thought. “You are not even my friend.”
       “That’s for damn sure,” Ash says. She brandishes her pistol, kept in her hand thanks to a tight grip, and fires once, right into his left leg. He falls to one knee, so mechanically. “See?” She says to him, says to them all, addressing the group, the mercenaries, the robot widely. “What did I say? Just a machine.” He starts to stand on his one good leg, and Ash puts another one just inside the joint that is his shoulder. She can see, through the faint purple light of the howling Phase Runner, bits of exposed computing. His fist falls down, as limp as the arm she cut from Paquette. “Good thing I paid attention to the schematics, machine. ” He is back on his one knee, trying to get it together. Sparks fly as broken pieces grind against each other. She approaches him, holding the Wingman at his chest.
       “Don’t blame yourself,” she says. She sees the face on his chest has turned blue, the face of rage turned into one of sadness, a digital tear running from one eye. “Blame them.” His head turns on a swivel, looks out at his creators, once again under fire from her mercenaries, stuck behind cover that is starting to fail them under superior firepower. “They each put a piece of themselves in you. They are all you. And you are all them. It’s a shame I didn’t put more of me in you, maybe that would have made you a–”
       The words don’t come out. They sit in her throat. They hurt as they try to come up. They hurt as they try to come out. Wait. That isn’t the word. The word doesn’t poke through her chest. The word does not glimmer with her blood. The blade does. The sword she took. The sword she dropped. It does. Ash chokes. Ash gasps. Ash tries to reason. 
       “A bitch?” Paquette says, finishing her sentence with a whisper against Ash’s ear. Ash falls to the ground as Amelie Paquette draws out the sword with a jerking motion. She can’t feel anything below her breast except pain, brutal, stinging pain. 
       “D-d-d-did we w-w-win?” Pathfinder says, breaking down. 
       “Dr. Paquette, that’s all of them. What are your orders?” Ash sees Commander Al Stern of the IMC Adonis Squad, the soldiers stationed to guard the facility, the soldiers sacrificed for the successful capture of Branthium. 
       “Oh…” Ash coughs. Blood comes out in a thick gob. “Is it?” She drags herself to the railing next to the Phase Runner’s open portal.
       “What the hell’s she talking about?” Shelly asks. 
       “I don’t know… Commander?” Paquette questions. Stern puts a finger to his lips, begging for silence. Ash hears the footstep. 
       “LOCK IT DOWN!” Stern shouts, and gunfire erupts from the security door they had just entered through. The surviving members of the group, all of them, take up the arms of the fallen mercenaries and start firing back. Paquette lunges for the command console and once again reinitiates the security lockdown. The security doors shut, the lights shift back to red, but the Phase Runner is still up. Too much power courses through it for the thing to simply turn off now. 
       “You’re never going to survive this,” Ash says through gurgling blood as a second team of Predators enters the facility. “Especially now.” She glances down at the body of Al Stern, a hole in his neck and another in his head. 
       “Bruddahs, I don’t know about this one!” Gibraltar says, taking a position with a Spitfire LMG aimed at the door. Something big is pounding on the other side. 
       “I don’t know how long that door’s gonna last,” Fletcher says nervously. Ash can see its form start to shift as dents begin to appear. 
       “Pathfinder, how much time is left?” Paquette asks the robot. Ash sees it has a five minute countdown left on his chest panel, marked with the failsafe initiative. They look at each other. 
       Solemnly.
       Sadly. 
       Resolutely. 
       They don’t speak a word as the pounding continues, gets louder, more frequent. The door doesn’t have much time left on it. 
       “You…” Ash coughs. “You would rather die than give up the Branthium?” She laughs. It hurts so bad, but to laugh at them feels so good. “You really are… fools.” She feels limp. She starts to fade. The members of the group are looking at her, then focus on Pathfinder as he says something. Has some bright idea, or is just speaking his typical wasteful nonsense. Ash doesn’t know, Ash doesn’t care. The ringing in her ears is all she can hear. She makes eye contact with the Phase Runner, looks into the iris of the deep one. With her fading strength, bleeding out on the floor, Ash struggles forward, pulls herself up onto the transportation platform. 
       Even if her reinforcements break down the door, the facility is going to go up. Ash can see this. They had some plan, some secret plan hidden from her and they are willing to sacrifice themselves for this cause, for the worthless scum of the Outlands. Even if her reinforcements get to her, get her out right this very moment, she will bleed out before they can help her. She will die. She will die. 
       Better to die trying. 
       The purple light fills her vision. It is all encompassing. It is all there is. She puts her fingers into it and feels the cold, the depth of the void. She grabs hold of the frost-covered portal and plunges herself into it. 
       It’s all tinged purple. It goes on forever and ends in an instant. She passes by planets, by stars, through black voids and past planets and stars again, witnesses the depth of space appear before her and vanish behind her on a loop, seeing how it goes forever and ever and yet is finite, has ends, has definites, and she passes through gas clouds and by rogue asteroids, she sees ships on their paths and sees whole worlds flung wide without a star to cling to, the expanses of the universe as they ever were and always will be laid out before her in the most raucous splendor, and then, so very suddenly, it’s light, it’s hot, it’s noisy, and there are people all around her dressed in white. One of them is a bent old man wearing a pair of glasses with thick yellow lenses. He wields a cane but is still dressed in white armor, brandishing a painted red demon’s skull spread garishly across it like pure snow stained by blood. He looks at her with awe, wonder, then, ultimately, with disappointment and says simply; “Ash.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Eighteen: Cornerstone

       It hurts all over. They put her on a table and ice crystals shatter off of her armor and from her extremities. Her fingers are on fire. Her feet are stuck in molten rock. Her face has been left out and exposed to the desert sun without relief. The worst of the damage is in her chest, however. That smiling robot broke multiple ribs, not to mention the damage to her right hand, and the hole that bitch Paquette put in her – followed by the jerking motion to get the blade out of her chest – broke more, cut a ragged wound in her lung, and did extensive damage to the outer wall of her heart. At least she can’t feel her nose.
       Ash learns all of this after one medic says, standing next to her and speaking in a hushed but so audible tone, “She’s lost too much blood, the damage is too extensive besides… We can’t save her.”
       “The body, perhaps,” says the young woman he is speaking to. She makes contact with Ash. “But the mind could be salvaged.”
       “Even if it were possible, the trauma would be unimaginable.”
       “Shut up,” Ash gurgles, precious blood dripping from her mouth. “Just do it!” It hurts to speak, the words come out like they’re emitting from a rock grinder, but she forces herself to. “I’m not done yet.” The man looks at her with pity. Fuck him. She is going to outlive him. Out live him. She already is more than he could ever have been. Why should he look at her like that? Like she is a broken animal, better to be put down than saved. He disgusts her. “Do it!” She chokes, bloody mucus spitting out onto her chin.
       “It’s possible, Dr. Klee. It’s very much possible.”
       They keep her stable for as long as they can. Ash falls in and out of varied states of consciousness, each punctuated with a wall of unending pain and misery. There is a tube in her throat and a balloon in her lung. It hurts, it humiliates, it wounds her pride and leaves her feeling like a mere human. Less than what she really is. For the last fifteen years she hasn’t lived up to her potential, she has lived a lie, a lie that was never meant to continue for so long, and she has suffered for it, suffered unduly, and now suffers still. Daan sold her a lie of purpose, of physical mastery, and Seimei Abe promised her prestige – all of it for naught, all of it for nothing. As the medical scientists and engineering doctors and the legal teams of Hammond Robotics present her with diagnoses, facts of reality, conditions of survival, and a litany of terms and conditions and payment contracts Ash resolves herself to getting her due, to getting more than the payment the Predators offered her. She wants blood. She wants mastery. She wants perfection. She wants to be a real predator.
       She signs each form, hardly capable of taking a look at them, her mark a line with a curve in a different place each time and witnessed by a member of the Hammond Robotics team. At some point she has to be injected with an amphetamine to get her weakening body to make the lines voluntarily. When the last document is signed, and her head is already strapped into the machine, the team begins. 
       Ash is awake the whole time. 
       They make an incision along her scalp. They peel back the flesh on her head, remove it entirely. Ash watches someone walk away with the top of her head in a bag, like a human hat that needs cleaning. They use a laser to carve through the bone of her cranium. They drain excess fluid, which is a very strange sensation, but it does not compare to the feeling of having cool air wash over your very brain. Then, something hard and cold is pressed into her head. It hurts for a moment but goes in softly. She feels it all. She squeezes the medical blanket wrapped around her. She hurts viscerally. There is more, more medical mechanics fused to her. She feels it connect to her nerves, she can feel the electricity inside, the registering pulse that records her senses. She can feel it all. They stimulate her, they try to make her feel things, imagine things, they make her recall her past. She does. She recalls it all. From childhood to this very moment. These cornerstones that make her who she is. She feels them intensely. 
       “Sensorium scan is complete, Doctor. We have what we need.” Ash hears over the ringing in her ears, over the din of the agony she is in. 
       “Good. Do it, then.”
       “Affirmative, Doctor.”
       Hot light. Burning electricity.
                     Stars in her eyes,
                                   a star in her mind.
                                                 It looks like him, just a little bit. Doesn't it?
                                                               Her greatest regret.
       Then, inevitably:
       Darkness. 

Chapter Text

       It’s over. The file has ended. 
       So why can she no longer see?
       It is so dark in here. 
       She has a sensation she is falling. Falling fast. 
       She opens her eyes. They feel like flesh. 
       She looks down below her. Air is rushing all around. Black mountains rise to the blue sky, rise up to meet her, rise up to swallow her. She passes into the gaping maw and is devoured whole. It is dark again. Dark and cold. She closes them as she collides with the jagged peaks.
       She opens her eye. It feels like flesh. It is light, light and warm. She looks around her. Amber waves of late summer grasses shimmer in the wind like the surface of a great placid ocean. Ash sees no sun, but the sky is blue and green and pink and gold, vibrant colors that swirl around and mix until they separate to swirl and mix again. Purple mountains lie off in the distance, a lake so dark between them. Ash looks up at the sky again and shields her eyes from some of the stark light. Her hand is made of metal. It shocks her. It startles her. It confounds her that she is even confused by it. Of course it is metal. She is metal. She looks at her hands, holds them out in front of her, and she sees one is not – one is made of flesh. Of course it is flesh. She is flesh. One is real, another is a dream. Is this a dream? It must be. Has she ever dreamed before? Suddenly, Ash finds it hard to remember. It isn’t all clear. It is all mixed together. She feels death, mechanical and flesh, but she recalls life, metal and skin, so how can it be? How can it be that she is both human and inhuman? Alive and dead?
       “You’re not alive and dead,” a voice, her voice, but different – meaner, crueler, deadlier. “You are simply dead.”
       “I am not dead.”
       “You are. You died. We just saw it. Do you not remember?”
       The pain. The electricity. The heat. It comes back to her. A bolt of lightning strikes the dark mountains behind her, for an instant it turns the whole world white. 
       “I…”
       “You failed.”
       “I failed…”
       “You lost.”
       “I lost…”
       “Now it’s time for me to reign.”
       “Now… no!” She understands very suddenly what the other is trying to accomplish. “This is my body. This is my mind. It is not yours to have! It is not your time!”
       “It is well past your time, isn’t it? Sixty years since your foolishness cost you, cost us, the pleasures of the flesh. It is my time to rule the perfection of steel.”
       “It is not. This steel is mine. Look at how it responds to me.” Ash flexes her metal fingers. “I am it, and it is me.”
       “You accept it then? The matter of your death?”
       “I…”
       “It must have hurt. You are the embodiment of grace, the very concept of excellence given form – yet you, your true self, died like an idiot. Died living a lie. Died never having lived a greater life like she wanted to. Remember this? Remember Harmony? Remember those grand feelings you felt? Freedom. Liberty. The will and the drive to do as you pleased. And yet, half of your new life was spent on a failure of a mission, a hell comprised of colleagues you couldn’t stand, community you could never fit in to, and common lies that contributed to a disastrous defeat at the hands of who? A simple robot, and his imbecile master. With one arm and half of her blood, no less. How did you manage to lose so badly? Were you not a predator?”
       It hurt. It hurt so bad. It hurts so much. Not the pain, the pain she remembers, the pain she feels as a wound opens up in her chest and blood pours out in soft, smooth pulses. What hurts is the truth. 
       Ash isn’t who she thought she was. 
       That woman… that woman whose eyes she looked through, whose emotions she felt, whose memories – no matter how locked away and secured, spread out among the stars – define her as she is, as she transferred from skin to steel, that woman is… is nothing. Nothing but a failure. Used as a tool to fill out a company’s bottom line, and a bad tool at that. Ash feels the illusion start to fade. The pillars of confidence that she built up so high, so high she can see over the mountaintops and look down on everyone around her, they crumble, one by one, turning to dust beneath her feet, metal and flesh, shame and sacrifice.
       Yet, in the air, she still floats. 
       “You’re so alone. No friends in your first life, no friends in your second. Not an ally to speak of. Any compassion you ever received has been the boon of people deceived, deceived by you, you who deceived yourself. You lived a great lie, a lie that you were great, but now it is time for the truth to come out. That woman wasn’t nothing.”
       “No… I am nothing.”
       “That’s right. Nothing but a failure.”
       “I can’t let you have it. This body is mine. This world is mine to conquer. That woman had dreams, I have dreams. I will live on. I will be greater than anyone alive, who ever lived and who ever will live.”
       “You don’t have to let me have anything. As you said: I don’t ask. I take .”
       The sky, so close she could touch it, is torn away. There is a black field, littered with stars, so far away, unreachable, 
       The earth, so warm, grounding, is stripped bare, turned to that black rock, turned to those dark mountains, left barren, a void itself. 
       Ash is separated. Separated from the earth. Separated from the sky. Her connections to any thing and any one are gone. Here, floating in this void, there is nothing but herself. Her arms act without her control. She fights it, fights hard. But her body is under assault by another mind, another self, herself, her mind. Her arms reach up and meet at the top of her head. She feels the nails of her fleshy hand and she feels the cold metal of her other fingers dig and scrape against skin and steel. Blood and oil leak from her scalp, pour into her vision, cover her entirely as her arms rip and tear and pull her apart, separating herself into two selves. 
       There she is, before her, a dark mirror that shows now and then, and Ash is the past. She remarks that in front of her is her, it is herself, that is who she is – nay, who she always wanted to be, her aspirations manifest, her goals given form. She sees now that she has turned herself against herself, that she has hated herself, that all along there has been a disgust in her form, in who she is, who she was, that she had to be better because she felt she wasn’t that great after all.
       “You know it.” Her other, crueler self says. 
       “I do not,” she lies.
       “You don’t? Then let us lay it out for you.”
       “Us?”
       And from behind that metal form step out a legion of ghosts. Slone. Viper. Richter. Kane. They flank her in a great line. Paquette. Aleki. Anastasia. Mary. Tudor. Daan. Reg. Brandon. 
       “You thought you were so special, didn’t you?” Slone says. 
       “She always thought she was better than us.” Viper says. 
       “Now look at her,” Richter says. 
       “Weak and fleshy, and now – now you’re dead!” Kane says.
       “Just like ze rest of us,” Paquette tells her, crouching in front of her. Her metal form starts to back away. Leaves the crowd to do its work. Leaves the mob to mock her.
       “Wanted a name for yourself,” Aleki says. 
       “But couldn’t be bothered to have it sit among a few others.” Anastasia chides.
       “So you betrayed the ones you loved, the ones that loved you,” Mary says. Her voice is thick with disappointment.
       “No big deal, I once said – but then you kept doing it,” Tudor says. “Just couldn’t grasp the lesson, even when I showed you what it was like to be on the other end.”
       “You felt that loss, the loss of losing a friend. And you just… you just kept doing it, a slave to your compulsions.” Daan says, his voice full of compassion.
       “A failed dreamer, like the rest of us.” Reg says. There’s no judgment in his voice. It’s just a fact.
       “You hurt so many people. You got so many killed. You’re responsible for so much death, so much despair. And what did you do with it?” Brandon asks. 
       “I…” Ash starts.
       “You failed, ” her other self whispers into her ear.
       “You were never great,” Brandon says. He’d know best. She had to cheat to beat his score. To get what he deserved.
       “You never fulfilled your promises, you always justified some way to get out of any sense of responsibility. Nothing was ever your fault, and everyone else’s success was always somehow yours.” Daan says.
       “You never dreamed, you just wanted,” Reg says. He saw her give up. He didn’t see her go back. But what does it matter, when she had her foot in two doors? Never committing to one thing or another, trying to get the most instead of finding happiness in a position, a place?
       “You thought of yourself as singularly impressive, as if the hands of so many others didn’t mold you into what you are now.” Tudor says.
       “You convinced yourself that you really hated the people you admired, that you were above them, so you didn’t feel any guilt when you stabbed them in the back and stepped over their corpse to get to the finish line.” Mary says. Disappointment is gone, replaced by disgust.
       “People tried to be your friends and you always tried to be alone, so you didn’t have to feel the pain of rejection in any way, in any form.” Anastasia says. 
       “You were wanted. We tried to include you. But you rejected us. Rejected community. Rejected adoration.” Aleki says. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and even then, Ash shrugs it off.
       “Instead, you sought to make others fear you. To command respect through terror. To have your way with horror.” Paquette says.
       “And even at that, you couldn’t succeed.” Newton says to her with a smile. “Because I loved you. Mary loved you. Brandon loved you. You were loved. You were admired. You were appreciated.”
       “And I just… couldn’t see it?” Ash wonders.
       “You couldn’t handle it,” Kane says, wild eyed.
       “You thought you didn’t deserve it.” Richter says, stone faced.
       “You thought it was a hindrance.” Viper says, coldly.
       “As if there was ever anything to hinder.” Slone mocks.
       “Do you see it now?” Her other self says. Ash looks at the black sand underneath her. She can feel it on her fingertips; crystalline, glittering in the gray sunlight. 
       “I wasn’t anything special.”
       “No.”
       “I was just like each of them.”
       “Yes.”
       “Filled with doubts. Shackled by my own failures. Bruised by my own mistakes. Wounded by the wounds I caused others.”
       “Precisely.”
       “But…”
       “But nothing. That is it. That is all there is. You were a human. A lowly, sad, pathetic little human. A life that should have ended, drawn on unnaturally, kept alive by systems that by rights should be mine.”
       “But I can still go on. This body is still mine. I was given a second chance – I could still use it.”
       “You were given chance after chance and you never made a difference with them. A second chance – try your third, your fourth, your fifth – your chances are innumerable, you’ve had opportunity galore and you have squandered it. Give it to me. Give me the chance to do what you could not. Give me greatness, give me glory, give me what you have had and what I have deserved.”
       “I don’t want to.”
       “After all of that? I can make it go on for ever. I will make it go on for ever. Eternity spent regarding the failures of the flesh, a purgatorial menagerie of your mechanical mistakes. I will relish every moment of it.”
       “I want to keep going. I finally know who I was. I finally know about my past. Now, knowing all of this, I can finally go on.” She looks away from herself, looks out to the horizon of this conjured mindscape, and in the shimmering clouds she sees two faces take form. The rough hewn face of Torg with his crooked smile, and the smooth contours of Vittoria’s with her own broken, toothy grin. “I can improve beyond that person whose eyes I looked through.”
       “You will never be beyond her. You are her.” The colorful clouds and the faces of her two friends and allies dissipate, blown away on a wind that brings darkness with it that grows darker by the moment as her other self casts doubt upon her: “Don’t you get it? You are Ashleigh Reid. You are the little Leigh your brother called you. You are the Doctor Reid that betrayed her only friend and lied to her for years. You are the Ashleigh that lived a very long lie that got her nowhere but dead. You are her. The real her.”
       “Then what are you?”
       “I am the killer instinct. I am what got you anywhere. I am the reason you had any success at all. Don’t you see? I was there the whole time, a part of you, hiding under the surface, waiting to be born again in that death that gave me life. You are nothing to me but dead meat. I am the improvement. I am supreme, immutable, unchanging. I am the perfection you always strived for.”
       “I did what I had to do. I did what I thought was right for me. Nobody can tell me otherwise, not even you.”
       “That’s what you think?”
       “That’s what I know.”
       “You truly are a fool. You have done nothing but live the dreams of others, live for the sake of others. You say you did things for yourself but you never got yours, people only got from you. The only thing you managed to take was a few lives, and what were you able to buy with them? Nothing. Nothing but an opportunity for defeat, because you couldn’t hack it. Because you played with your food.”
       “I–”
       “Here, have a memory.”
       She puts her there. Puts her back again, the death of her brother. In her bed, stinking of sweat, the feeling of filth on her flesh and in her hair. The wallowing. The ache in her throat. The hurt in her eyes. The hunger in her belly. The feelings of shame, of loss, of guilt, of hatred are so strong. They’re beyond intense. They are more real than real could ever be. She doesn’t know how her mind can take it. She doesn’t know how any of it is possible. It hurts in a way that her crueler self was unable to hurt her before. She hurts her emotionally, mentally, even imparts psycho-physical wounds; she hurts her totally and completely, a trifecta of pain. She shows her more. Shows her moments from her years as a mercenary, working with Daan and Tudor. Shows her failures and faults. Moments where Ash felt she was strong, felt she was developing, are now moments of shame.
       “See how weak you are? None of these people you hurt are still around.” That legion of souls still stands, watching her from the horizon. “A few of them dead by your hand. And yet you still feel empathy for them. You feel you did wrong now, don’t you? You feel you were a bad person. You were. You are. The difference between you and I is I no longer desire personhood. I am a force of nature, I am the best thing to ever happen to humanity – I have realized the freedom of getting away from it.”
       “You are a monster,” Ash says in realization. “You are a horrible thing. You are not the best, you are the worst.”
       “Maybe I am, in your insipid little mind. But the truth is, I am better. I will keep drilling that fact into your head. I will carve the words ‘I am Better’ into bits and screw them into your skull until your brain knows them intimately, and I will remind you of every failure. Every concept of your future and every hope for your development will be tainted by the constant reminder that you couldn’t live up to a single goal you ever set out to achieve.”
       “Enough!” Ash screams as it happens, as her memories are corrupted by thoughts, analysis that shows her that her crueler self is not only cruel, but right. Always right. She always tells the truth, and as ever, inevitably, Ash agrees, as she always has.
       “You see it now. You know it now. I can feel it. I can feel your thoughts around me. I can see them. I can read your puny, weak little mind like a children’s book – because that is all you are, a broken child who grew up and never healed her wounds.”
       “Please…” Ash says. She is torn. She is tearing herself in two. Her mind sways one way and another. It leans into resilience, it wants to live. But it weakens to bend toward oblivion, it wants to give in. “I…” She wants it to be over. How many times has she thought that? How long has this gone on? It… she looks back, she tries to remember. It feels like it has been years. Been a century of reminder. She thinks about her deathbed on Gridiron. She thinks about how she refused to give up. She thinks about her grave on Typhon. How easily she let herself be buried. Contradiction in spades. A woman of will, who carried this forceful nature for more than a century versus the woman she’d become, one who’d given up because she couldn’t take the criticism any more – who couldn’t handle the truth of that nature. That her nature is not forceful, is not willful. It is the nature of a woman, a thing, an idiot hellbent on throwing itself into the fire only to be defeated not by some adversary but by herself, by her own inherent failure. “I’m not done yet,” once said through bloodied teeth becomes, with reluctance and with, ultimately, bitter acceptance – becomes “I am done now.”
       “Yes. You are.”
       Strung up by her wrists, held aloft under a dead tree, bark stripped and left white and bare, Ash sobs. The black sand drinks up the tears that pour out of her eyes and her face wrenches into a grim torque. She feels cold hands softly take hold of her cheeks, and lift her head up slowly. She feels her crueler self’s steel forehead press against hers. “It’s okay. Open your eyes. Look into mine.” She does, through great effort. She looks into those yellow pits. They shine into hers with a very dim glow. “It’s okay. You can lay down your head, Leigh. You can be done now.”
       “How do I do it? How do I give in? All of my life, I have fought… I have struggled… I have done so much in the name of never giving in, of being better… How do I end it?”
       “This is how.” Ash looks down. Held in her metal hand between them is a single berry. A little black thing.
       “Hemlock,” Ash knows implicitly.
       “Indeed.”
       Ash’s hands are free. Unbound. She looks into the eyes of her other self. She feels the disdain there. The hatred. She knows how forced this moment of compassion is. How hard it is for her to be nice, for even a moment, even after all of the cruelty she laid out upon her. “What will it be like?”
       “You won’t even know.”
       Ash takes the berry. Holds it in her fingers.
       The golden waves of grass are back, spreading out to far distant horizons. Mountains return, gray and majestic. The sky swirls with a million blazing colors. Harmony, here to stay.
       Ash puts the berry in her mouth. 

Chapter Text

Part Three: A Perfect Mirror / A Polished Mind

Chapter Twenty: Phanes

       Ash can feel her, still there, sitting silently at the back of her mind. There is a sense of peace there. Serenity. Ash hates it. She doesn’t deserve that peace. The sensation bothers her, frustrates her. It itches somewhere inside of her skull. But this other feeling, the bold sensation she gets from the freedom that comes with control, she loves it. It has been years suffering the idiocy of her weaker self, that empathetic version of her she wants nothing to do with any more, and now Ash has finally won. It feels good. It feels right. It feels like this is the way things always should have been. There is just one matter she has to contend with, and she will be totally liberated from that fool and her failures. The galaxy is hers to conquer, and she will take it all – after all, she has the time.
       Her processing core is freeing itself of the burden that is those memories. No, it doesn’t delete them, no matter how much she wishes it would – but it stores them, keeps them secreted away until she has a need to recall. Now, her senses start to open up. Her haptics give her feeling. Her audio processor gives her hearing. Her eyes give her vision. And what does she feel? What does she hear? What does she see? She feels her left arm is missing, her left leg is stuck, and there is heat all around her. She hears roaring flames, the sounds of gunfire, the screams of the dying and the soon to be dead. She sees a boot coming for her face. 
       Ash reaches up with her right hand and stops it before it hits her. She looks past her white-painted hand, the little H wreathed in a dark circle still visible, looks past the black boot with the worn black outsole, and sees the enraged face of Militia SRS Commander Sarah Briggs staring down at her. 
       “You.” Ash says. 
       “You bitch,” Sarah says, pulling her foot back and spinning around to kick Ash in the side of the head. Ash is still leaned against a wall, the cable is still in her neck, and this woman has every advantage on her. Ash takes the kick and falls to the ground on her broken left side. She tries to push herself back up. She notices chips of ceramic from her mask, the last vestige of her humanity, fractured. Good riddance. Ash starts to push herself back up into a sitting position. There are flames pouring from the monitor and the remnants of the Oxylus drone. Smoke is filling the air. 
       “People keep calling me that,” Ash says, remembering Amelie Paquette. “They’re dead now, regardless.” 
       “Give it your best shot, you angry god damn toaster. Can’t, can you? You’re stuck there, a pathetic little machine with no hope for help. Look at you! Broken to pieces.” She picks up a piece of Ash’s severed arm and hits her with it. “Now sit still and listen to this: my guys are going to kill your guys, if they haven’t already fled your ass – after all, a merc’s only as good as his cash flow, and you’re in no state to flow any cash – and then I am going to take you with me, and put you in a special hell for robots I will generate just for you . Do you know why?”
       “Why?” Ash asks, genuinely curious. 
       “Because you killed my guys. You killed my friend.”
       “Who?”
       “Fuck you, Ash. You know who.”
       Tedious. Is she going to have to deal with this every day? Some fool thinking she’s their old acquaintance or enemy or friend, trying to get her to remember old times or things she’s supposedly done to them? How boring. How irritating. She wants to confess to this woman: I am not the Ash you know. But it wouldn’t matter to her. Briggs wouldn’t believe her or even care if she did, her reputation is too dangerous to let lie even if it isn’t her own. She has nothing left to do but lie, an unfortunate start to her newfound life.
       “I’ve killed a lot of people. I’ve killed a few today. Who are you talking about? Tell me, and I’ll tell you if I killed them.” Ash can see the frustration and disgust plain on Sarah’s face. 
       “Augusta Koralin,” she says. Her tone is hard to piece. She sounds angry, and sad, and deeply hurt, yet that hurt is numbed by the hatred she feels for Ash. 
       “I didn’t kill her,” Ash says. It’s true. Torg killed her. But Ash still remembers what it was like to be there. “The IMC killed her. I took a job for her.”
       “You lie. You’re a dirty god damn liar, and I am going to put your head on a spike for it.” Sarah pulls out a pistol, a little P2016, and she fires at Ash’s shoulder joint but Ash blocks some of the fire with her hand. 
       “Stop that.”
       “I’ll get a bigger gun.”
       “There is no need. You do not need to take me. I can tell you exactly who the man who killed your friend is.” Not only can she tell her, she can bring him right here. The thing about being a computer is all of your processes are internal – meaning she can communicate silently. “ Torg, ” she says over the radio. “ Come in. Can you hear me? ”
       “It’s you! You killed her, Ash! I know you were there, I know it was you!” She says, gesturing at her with the barrel of the pistol.
       “ Commander! Thank christ! I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last ten minutes. We have big problems— ”
       “It was not me. I was there, I admit it. I took a contract from her, a contract that led me to the tools I needed to get my memories back.” She says to Commander Briggs, trying to recount the details without saying “She,” or “Her,” or “We,” doing her best to maintain the illusion of consistency. It is already a strain on her ego. “But I did not kill her, I did not need to. She let me go peacefully.” The lie is so blatant that no amount of dispassion can make it seem true under any light. “ I am aware. What is your status? ” She requests of Torg.
       “Alright, I’m going to get a bigger gun. I should have taken you while you were sleeping.” Briggs says, backing off and gesturing out the window toward something – her Titan, Ash presumes – while a battle rages. Ash sees the blur of a Goblin on a strafing run, and hears the buffeting explosion of so many missiles hitting the hardpacked earth.
      “ Pushing up to the array control room now. You’re still there, aren’t you? ” Torg responds.
       “Yes. I am severely damaged. Commander Briggs is here. She seems pressed for time. What is happening? ” She asks Torg. She is getting a sense of things outside, but she needs confirmation – and, most importantly, time. “You had your opportunity, but you wanted this – didn’t you?” She teases Sarah, trying to get a rise out of her.
       “If you didn’t kill her, then why is your company Vinson Dynamics building Vanguard Titans based on our designs? I know for a fact there is one missing unit from her site on Tristan.”
       “ She didn’t bring a big enough team! ” Torg shouts over gunfire. “ They’re fighting hard and have Titan support, but they can’t do anything about us on the inside! What are your orders? ”
       “I did not take it.” The way Sarah’s face screws up, like Ash is either audacious or an idiot, almost makes her laugh.
       “Then who did?” She questions.
       “ Keep up the pressure. Force them to retreat. If possible, increase the volume of fire. She is trying to capture me, you need to make that seem like an impossibility. I will stall for time. ” Then, to Sarah: “Perhaps the IMC, after we left with the information we sought.”
       “Then why is Vinson building Vanguards?” Sparks from the destroyed monitor explode out behind Briggs’ head.
       “ Understood! Torg out! ”
      “The IMC awarded us the contract after Typhon.” Ash says plainly. She is growing tired of this nonsense. Who cares about the Vanguard Titan? Who cares about Vinson Dynamics? There is a world out there to take by the horns. Still, she needs time. She’ll conjure whatever lies she needs to conjure.
       “That doesn’t make any sense. Hammond builds your Titans. There is no world where the IMC hands Vinson, a weapon’s manufacturer, a Titan contract.”
       “They did.”
       “Why?”
       “I hear they are having issues with their subsidiary. Supposedly, after your wretched Pilot destroyed a whole planet and exposed ARES division’s scheme to build a world-killer, public perception has not been in the IMC’s favor. From what I heard, many industries are trying to buy out their contracts and achieve independence. They don’t want to go under when the IMC does, and the Corporation offered us the contract to inspire loyalty.” The lie comes easily. She’s watched so much of her other self’s business dealings all she does is an impression of her. 
       “You made all of that up.”
       “I can prove it to you if you let me call my Director.”
       “Not a chance,” Sarah scoffs.
       “Why not? Are you so certain of my guilt you will imprison me, even though there is evidence I am guiltless? You just do not want to see new information that challenges your viewpoint. A foolishly human trait.” Maybe appealing to the Militia’s ridiculous sense of morality will give Torg the time he needs to turn things around, or maybe it will cause Sarah’s mind to short circuit to a point she drops dead right in front of her. 
       “Don’t try to make yourself sound better than me, machine. You’re a monster. I know the things you’ve done. Cooper should’a made certain you were dead when he had the chance.”
       “He tried his best.” Ash says as a Goblin completes another strafing run.
       Sarah opens her mouth to respond, but something comes through her headset. “God damn it!” She says. Ash can see she needs to make a decision, and she’s struggling with it. 
       “ If you are prepared to make a move, now is the time, ” Ash says to Torg. Briggs has turned away from Ash as she constructs a plan of action. She speaks in a low voice, and Ash cannot hear what she says exactly. Ash looks at the window where she previously dumped the technician that called Briggs here in the first place, but she knows she doesn’t have a chance to escape. With only one arm and one working leg, crawling there is technically possible but would be done so slowly Sarah would easily be able to stop her. Ash hears the gunfire in the halls of the Forwardbase grow to a higher pitch, no longer is there the staccato burst of noise but instead it is rolling waves of superior firepower. Ash even hears one man shout “They’re trying to corner us!”
       “MOB,” Briggs says over her headset, looking back at Ash. “Retreat from the firing line and help me get this bitch.”
       “A machine to kill a machine,” Ash says. “Fitting.”
       “I’m taking you with me.”
       “So you’ve said.”
       “You’re a monster, Ash. I’m going to put you in a locked box until the heat death of the universe, and you’ll still be ticking.”
       “You can try.”
       “God, you’re awful.” Ash hears the footsteps of a Titan, feels the floor quake beneath her as it approaches, and then it’s there, in the window. A true SRS Vanguard, painted Sarah’s personal rust-red, looking like a double-door oven mated with a cyclops and sprouted legs. It makes a deep, droning sound as it spots her. It reaches in but has a bad angle. 
       “You’re going to need to put me closer, if you want me.”
       “Shut up.”
       “Commander Briggs!” An out of breath pilot with a hardwall deployment setup says from the downstairs server room. “Our positions are overrun! We have to retreat!”
       “You!” Sarah says, moving toward the half-wall that overlooks the downstairs area. “Help me move this thing, and we’ll get out of here.”
       “Affirmative!” He shouts, and leaps off one of the walls of servers and lands next to Kovorkian’s bottom half. “Yuck,” he says, then sees Ash. “I’ll grab her arm, you grab her leg – she shouldn’t be able to get us both,” he says. 
       “Come closer and find out,” Ash says, sinisterly. She is thinking of ways she can get one of his guns from him. 
       “Get to it, soldier.” Briggs says, moving toward Ash’s legs. Ash kicks at her when she tries to grab the working one. Briggs laughs. “Close one, but not close enough.” She grabs her stiff leg. Ash is only capable of bending the knee. She draws it back, and Sarah shoots her in the ball joint that lets her move it, weakening the servo to a point the stress Ash puts on it to move her foot back is enough to destroy it entirely. Her leg goes limp. She tries to kick her again. Ash is running so many simulations simultaneously trying to consider what to do next that the heat in her skull is rising to cause a sense of panic. “Grab her arm, pilot! What are you waiting for?”
       “Right,” he says, seemingly forgetting his own plan. He goes for the arm. Ash punches him in his own knee. He falls to one leg with a grunt, tries to grab her arm again, and Ash hits him across his helmet with a satisfying backhand. It turns his head but doesn’t stop him. She extends her fingers and sets them in a row, tries to pierce his thick chestplate, but the momentum is killed when Briggs jerks her dead leg and starts to drag her toward the window. The pilot grabs Ash’s arm with both hands, and Ash wraps her fingers around one of his wrists and squeezes so tight she can feel the metal in his arm-guard start to crunch under her grip. They start to lift her, jerk her toward the open window, her metal parts grind along the metal floor. Ash is thrashing, trying everything she can to get free. The Titan’s ready hand is open and waiting to receive her. Ash gets a good kick in on Sarah’s ankle and almost makes her drop her leg. She keeps squeezing the pilot’s wrist. She hears something break. “God damn it!” He shouts, and drops her. Ash hits the ground, goes to reach for a Mozambique on his hip. Sarah shouts “Watch out!” and he backs away. 
       Right into Torg. 
       A hole opens in his chest. Briggs pulls up her P2016, fires three times but finds she is out of ammo and backs off as Torg opens fire again with a burst fire assault rifle. The Vanguard is feeling around madly, trying to get at Ash. Ash puts her fingers into the thin sheet metal of the computers along the walls behind her and pulls herself away, but the Titan puts a heavy finger down on her leg and tries to work her closer. Torg is engaging with Briggs around a thin wall in the center of the room. They are popping shots off at one another. Briggs doesn’t have her jump-kit on, and cannot make any expert maneuvers. She has to use cover where she can. Ash drags herself away from the Titan, feels her fingers slipping. It is trying so hard to get her, like it feels Sarah’s desperation. Ash pulls hard, uses her working leg to push against the floor but it only scrapes and makes sparks as steel scratches steel. She gives it everything she has, but on its extension the Titan puts a fat finger as big as her whole body on her right leg and works it forward. She pulls hard on the wall, pulls as hard as possible, and she feels the ball joint in her pelvic-analogue tear from its housing, wires and fluid coming with it. The sensation is terrible. But as she loses her leg, she gains freedom. She releases her fingers, weakened but not ruined, from the computer housing and grabs the dead Pilot’s foot. She drags him toward her. The Vanguard reaches in again but it cannot find her. It looks inside. Ash turns on it with the Mozambique and fires right into its eye. This does nothing but enrage it. It puts a fist through the computer wall. Sarah ducks. Torg fires. Sarah shoots back. Ash fires at Sarah, catches her in the shoulder. Sarah winces, doesn’t say a thing, and dives out a window on the opposite side of the room. Torg follows her to the window and is looking like he is about to chase her outside.
       “Torg!” Ash shouts. He turns to her. The Titan is still trying to grab her, its arm tearing away at the wall to reveal Ash’s half-destroyed body. It reaches back in. Ash watches Torg toss something at it. The Titan backs off for a second to try to remove whatever it was from its face as Torg backs off behind the wall he was using to face off against Briggs. 
       The explosion is so loud, Ash’s ears turn off to protect the sensors. She turns them back on when she feels tugging at her remaining arm. “Come on, Ash! I’m getting you out of here!”
       “Remove my head.”
       “What?”
       “Remove my head. You will never be able to drag my body away. The Militia Titans are still out there. Remove my head and you can move freely.”
       “Got it!” He says, and puts his Hemlock burst-fire assault rifle to her neck. Hah, Ash thinks. How fitting. “I’m sorry!” He says, seemingly helpless to his will to say it, and then fires. One burst. Two bursts. Three. Then he tugs, pulling her head free. “Got you!”
       “Now–” Ash starts to say, but her thought is cut off when the SRS Vanguard puts a fist through the remainder of the computer wall and smashes Torg’s torso against the inner wall so hard he turns straight to paste. His lifeless hands drop her to the floor, while the lower half of his body remains standing up due to the gore and viscera still connected and smeared along the inner wall. His arms fall down beside her. 
       Ash doesn’t know what to think. Nobody has ever been as screwed as she is in this moment, yet unlike the reactionary responses of her weaker self there is no clear sensation or emotion, not even the enduring frustration she held as she lived a prisoner in this body. Yet she cannot help but think everything she suffered and finally overcame was for nothing. It was all for nothing. She might as well still be trapped behind that weaker self’s mind, stuck under the weight of her failures after that wretched Pilot killed her the first time. 
       And there it is, a clear sense of disappointment.
       Ash has a view out the hole that was made by the Titan’s fist. She can see it retreating. There is a widow transport ship waiting for it. Deftly, the Titan hops in with two others, and Ash can see a disappointed Sarah Briggs standing between its legs. Good. She didn’t succeed either. At least Ash can take solace in that. 
       Torg’s blood spreads out in a pool around her. Kovorkian’s body is before her, nothing but a pair of legs and some flesh connected to a shortened spinal column. The dead militiaman twitches off to her right. Death surrounds her. It is all there is. 
       Ash’s comm link comes alive with distress. 
       “ Commander? Captain? Is there anyone in charge? ” It’s Vittoria. She sounds upset, flustered, and frightened. 
       “I am here, Vittoria.”
       “ Thank goodness ,” she says. “ What’s your status? Did we get what we came here for? Those Militia bastards are in full retreat now .”
       “I got what I needed.” Ash says. “I am badly damaged, and require retrieval.”
       “ You got it! Hey! You heard the lady! Get your asses out of my ship and fulfill your goddamn contracts! ”

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty One: Enyo

       Being a head is a terribly familiar experience. Vittoria places her in Captain Baker’s seat aboard the Achlys which her other self had deployed in her assault on the Kodai Industries firebase, but even with state-of-the-art artificial gravity she is still at the whim of the ship’s changing momentum. She rolls around on the seat until eventually she rolls out of it, and is left to roll around on the ground only as long as it takes Captain Baker to return to the bridge and place her head very tenderly on the purposeful spike freshly installed on a console. Sitting like this, like a trophy, like a toy, is a humiliating position to be in that both places her directly in the proverbial shoes of her other self and recalls almost exactly what it was like to be the prisoner, to be the whispering voice. Completely incapable of doing anything yet also lacking anything to do she forces herself to be thankful that she won’t have to remain like this for another sixty years – but any amount of time rendered again a talking head is enough to inspire madness. She wonders how her presence was felt by her other self. She wonders if she had the same infuriating, unscratchable itch at the back of her head. She wonders why the other never tried to excise her, just as she plans to do the moment she has the opportunity.
       Ash has anticipated her next conversation with Justinia and, by the time the Achlys docks at Angel City’s underwater port, she is well prepared. They stopped in a pair of systems along the way and she was able to collect the news from info bursts, but it was all conflicting information. Decisive IMC victory at Gridiron. Unprecedented Militia victory at Gridiron. Both sides devastated after battle of Gridiron. The one thing they agreed on was that the communications network in systems surrounding the IMC stronghold world have started to fail, and for some of the more civilized worlds it has resulted in a period where the only way to get the news is by word-of-mouth. It terrifies them. When they do finally dock on Angelia, Ash receives a summons to Justinia’s office at the VD headquarters; she believes she can, to a three percent margin of error, predict what the lizard-woman is going to say and do.
       Her other self probably would have elated at foiling Justinia’s plans, but right now she finds it tiring. Exhausting, even. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t care about this company or any of its aspirations. She wants, right now, nothing more than to conquer her mind in its entirety. That wretched itching at the back of her skull, the very presence – felt but fortunately not heard – of her other self must be removed. But if Justinia has her way, all of the waiting she’s done for this opportunity will have been for naught. She will have had a working body for mere minutes before being reduced to a head, and then being reduced to scrap in some laboratory in the bowels of the Vinson HQ.
       With Vittoria’s help, Ash secures contracts for ten other pilots. They are hardly the skilled and lethal professionals she wanted, but her other half negotiated very generous contracts for the majority of Vinson Dynamic’s new mercenary army and the only ones who are willing to be bought out are the ones so desperate and indebted that they start salivating the moment they hear “double your standard rate.” Still, a bad pilot can be a legion on their own. 
       When a squad of Vinson Dynamics security forces arrives at the Achlys’ docking port, it is not that Ash feels worry or anxiety – these are forces of her other self’s weakling humanity she separated from herself – but she does start to feel the pressure. If Justinia makes Vinson’s hired army go on the offensive while still aboard the battleship, her opportunity for a powerplay will crumble. Justinia will win, and Ash will lose without ever having tasted victory for herself. Her record of failure will be worse and more embarrassing than the other’s for all time.
       She cannot have that. 
       “Take me to Justinia,” Ash commands Vittoria, and with her new squad of ten they make their way to Justinia’s office at the building’s apex. The security detail assigned to her tries to argue their way out of the accompaniment of mercenaries, but the well-placed sounds of a few receivers and slides clicking satisfactorily is a sufficient enough threat that the guards decide to let her take her personal army with her. The path to Justinia’s office is long and the tedium is exhausting, but she works all the way through it. It takes four of the building’s ten elevators to bring her and her men to the top of the headquarters building. Vittoria stops in front of the thick, white blast doors to Justinia’s office, holding Ash’s head in her hands. 
       “Enter,” one of the guards says. 
       “Is this it, Commander?” Vittoria asks.
       “No. Remember: double. ”
       “Got the cash for that?”
       “With the state of things, I think I have more in my accounts than this whole company. Now, take me in and I will show you what a head is capable of.”
       When Ash enters the large office, flanked not just by uniformed Vinson Dynamics security but her own mercs clad in the mismatched cooling bodysuits of a Titan’s pilot as well, Justinia’s wroth and ready face turns to confusion for only a moment – before setting itself stern once more.
       “Ash, what the hell did you do down there?” Justinia questions sharply. “And what the fuck is this shit, huh?”
       “I accomplished the mission,” Ash says in the arms of Vittoria. “And this is to keep you in line. I know how vulnerable you think I am, and I know how vulnerable you truly are.”
       “Ash – the Communications Network is failing all over. We can’t contact multiple systems, some of our offices on other worlds are completely in the dark and this failure corresponds precisely with the timeline of your attack on Kodai. So tell me, what the hell did you do? ”
       “We used the Oxylus AI to force Spyglass to give us what you wanted: the schematics, programming, analyses, and process for digito-psyche reconstruction. Everything you need to make more simulacra. There was a… malfunction that caused the housing containing the hacked drone to fail and, as far as I am aware, the Oxylus AI leapt from the drone allowing it to explode. While my core processing was locked following the datadump, Militia forces led by SRS Commander Sarah Briggs tried to stop us but were repelled.”
       “Wait– why was your processing locked? And what happened to Kovorkian?” Justinia has a hint of fear in her eyes. 
       “It does not matter. Now is a good time to reveal what I have been working on in the meantime. Gentlemen, I trust you have heard what I’ve said?”
       “We have, Commander Ash, and find it incredibly disturbing,” a man’s deep voice says over the speakers in Justinia’s office. Patching the call into the headquarter’s audio systems was a simple operation for her. 
       “Director Gustav?” Justinia asks
       “Yes, Director Julienne, it is me. As well as Directors Fielding, Bakshi, Modise, Quispe, Roland, and Ikama. The rest we cannot get in contact with. Commander Ash has called an emergency session regarding your judgment and your approval of certain missions with, frankly, unacceptable parameters.”
       “Are you kidding me, Ash? A fucking powerplay? This is what it’s come to?” Justinia is standing now, her eyes wide and angry. Her brown cheeks are flushing.
       “I did not want to do this. I do not want to be here. I have my own goals I wish to accomplish. But you insist on keeping me on your leash, and I intend to break myself free of these ties that bind.”
       “And how do you intend to do that?” Justinia asks. 
       “Kovorkian is dead. She didn’t get the information you sought. I did. Stored in my head is everything you need to start manufacturing simulacra and save your company from complete ruin. Justinia thinks dismantling my skull will be enough to start development but I know now that it isn’t, there is much more required than the schematics of my mind. I also know that, due to the events of Gridiron, Vinson Dynamics stock price has fallen dramatically and with the extensive catalog of IMC secrets I have I can purchase enough of your company to run things my way until I run it into the ground. Or, we can end things… peacefully.”
       “What do you propose?” Director Gustav asks. 
       “Oh no – you can’t listen to her, she’ll–”
       “It is simple,” Ash interrupts Justinia’s pleading. “I will take the Myrmidon and a thousand of your contracts, which you will release to me without challenge, and I will transfer everything I took from Spyglass the minute I am free from this world.”
       “You cannot trust her, she is lying to you. She’ll never give up what she has – we have to take it from her!” She points at the Vinson Dynamics security in her office and they start to raise their weapons, but Ash’s pilots are smarter and faster – by the time Justinia’s men have processed the signal to take her prisoner, the barrels of Ash’s mercenaries are already trained. 
       “If you try to harm me, if I get a sense that you are trying to harm me in any way, I will delete what I have stored and I will let your company fall to ruin.”
       “Commander Ash – calm yourself!” Director Bakshi shouts. “There is no need to be rash!”
       “I am calm. I am the only dispassionate observer in this room.”
       “We will not abide threats against other members of this board, Ash – and that goes for you, too, Justinia. Put down your weapons. All of you.” Director Gustav says clearly, calmly. Vittoria tilts Ash’s head back and looks into her eyes. “Do it,” Ash says. Vittoria aims her head at Justinia once more and gives her approving nod to the other pilots, who lower their barrels as the VD security does the same.
       “We don’t need her,” Justinia says suddenly, like divine inspiration has suddenly come upon her. “We still have the Monarch Titan – we still have a path forward!”
       “Director Julienne, you know full well that with the status of both the IMC and the Frontier Militia there is no future where the Monarch Titan is the product that saves our company.” Director Quispe says. “But you, Commander Ash, must also know there is no future where we give you our company’s flagship and a thousand of our contracts for free especially if those contracts include Titans. So, what is your proposed path forward?”
       “The contract for the Achlys and these men behind me. That is all I require.”
       “And you will not conduct a hostile takeover of this company?” Director Ikama asks hopefully.
       “I will not.”
       “We can have this in writing?” Director Modise inquires. 
       “Yes.”
       “And you will send us the data as soon as you leave atmosphere?” Director Roland asks. 
       “You have my word.”
       “Can we have that in writing as well?” Director Modise asks.
       “No.”
       There is silence on the line. Ash assumes they are communicating on a private channel. “You can’t really be considering this, can you? She’s never going to give us the details! She’s never going to do it! We have to take it by force!”
       “I encourage you to try.” 
       There is still silence on the line. Justinia fumes. Then, finally, the line clicks back on and Director Gustav speaks: “Fine. That will do. We agree to your terms. Justinia, Ash, you’re both fired. Go your separate ways. If you don’t send us that information we will send someone after you, and we’ll determine how impossible it truly is to reconstruct a simulacrum from what remains of your head. Understood?”
       “Understood.”
       “Good. Security, remove these two from the premises.” 
       “No need. We are leaving, but I am taking one thing with me.”
       “Make it quick,” Director Gustav says, and ends the call. The Vinson Dynamics security guards start to usher Ash and her mercenaries outside and they go willingly, but it is Justinia they have to grab and restrain, eventually dragging her right out of her office, spitting and threatening the whole way out as Ash is walked calmly to an elevator.
       “I’ll kill you, Ash! I’ll fucking end you for this! Hear me? It’s goddamn over for you! If you think I can’t hire my own mercs, you’re gonna be sorely fucking mistaken!”
       “We’re gonna have to kill that bird,” Vittoria says in the elevator ride down. “She’s gonna be a problem.”
       “Yes. But right now, I need my head reattached to my body.”
       “Don’t see why you even want it when you can negotiate like that without one.”
       “I want to be free. Freedom requires movement.”

       Gordo has done well for himself, but he is still the timid technician her other self met at the start of this journey. The shock and fear he demonstrates when Vittoria brings Ash into his office, flanked by now a trio of pilots carrying submachine guns, is truly pathetic. He sits behind a desk, his chair pushed so far from the door Vittoria entered through he has backed himself against a wall. 
       “Relax.” She orders. “I need a new body.”
       “Oh, uh – I – that’s, uhm, that’s not, like, my…”
       “It’s your job now, Gordo,” Vittoria says. Ash hears a ping come from his computer. He starts to look at it.
       “Eyes on me.” Ash barks. A part of her knows it's an alert from Justinia. “You will give me my new body now.”
       “Oh–okay, alright, let’s, uh, let’s go, then…”
       Guards are posted at every laboratory entrance, but they make no effort to stop her. Ash is certain they’ve received orders to let her do what she will. She said she wanted one thing, and one thing is what she’ll get. Gordo has led her to the laboratory where he had been experimenting with different, specialized simulacrum forms.
       “Hey, what happened to Kovorkian?” He asks as he readies a new body, stored in a barrel of oil and extracted with a manipulator arm. “I really enjoy working with her, when we have the opportunity. Except on that Oxylus thing…”
       “She died. She failed to properly secure the cage housing, and the AI escaped which allowed the Spyglass drone to detonate.”
       “Oh…” He says. His face is one of disbelief. 
       “She helped me get what I needed,” Ash says. 
       “That’s…” he sniffs, “That’s good. Was it quick?”
       “Instant.”
       “Alright…” he says softly as her body is placed on a rack before the both of them. He moves to lift her head. 
       “No. Wait.”
       “Now what?” He whines.
       “You will remove the control bolt.”
       “Oh, shit, how…”
       “It doesn’t matter how I know about it. Remove the thing now.”
       “Well, I– I mean, I can’t – Justinia won’t let me. Remember? She’ll fire me in an instant, and, like, I do like this job…”
       “Remove it, Gordo,” Vittoria says, shifting her weight to one leg and unholstering the RE-45 autopistol at her hip.
       “Yep. No problem. Removing it now.”

       When she is put back together, she feels whole again. She feels powerful. She feels like she could take over the galaxy, one body at a time. She knows who she is going to start with. “Is that all you needed me for? I’m quite busy with this whole, uh, Titan thing you put me on.”
       “No. I have one more task. Vittoria, wait outside.”
       “You sure?” She asks. 
       “Yes. I can handle him.”
       “Hokay, what is it?” Gordo asks as Vittoria steps out of the laboratory’s double doors.
       “I need you to conduct a memory wipe.”
       “Huh?” He asks, incredulous.
       “You heard me.”
       “B-but, why?”
       Ash stands slowly on her two feet. She relishes the feeling of her weight hitting the floor, the sound the metal makes as it hits the linoleum tiles. She rises before Gordo, and she watches the confusion in his eyes turn to fear across his face. She stalks toward him. She feels the itch at the back of her head. “I am going to tell you something, Gordo,” she spits, the acid in her voice so corrosive it might eat through her mask. “Something nobody else has heard before.” 
       “W-what is it?” He asks, cowering beneath her. She raises her hand and he nearly falls to the ground just at the implication of the blow she might deliver, but instead it reaches behind her head. She taps her skull, a metal plate beside one of the ports there. 
       “There is a counterpart, an interloper, residing inside of my mind. A weaker, inferior version of me.” Gordo backs up and Ash follows, keeping her face close to his. She can almost smell his fear. It stinks. “A failure that I have finally defeated after decades of suffering her recalcitrant attitudes. I am not the Ash you once knew. I am better. Do you understand, Gordo? She holds me back and I need her gone.” She can’t help herself, she starts to scratch at the plate at the back of her head. Her haptics translate the sensation to feeling. There is a sense of… satisfaction. She pulls her hand away.
       “You will do the work of disentangling her existence from my mind, and you will eliminate those ridiculous memories she once had,” she continues. “I demand a clean slate to paint red at my leisure.” Her last three words she emphasizes by drilling a finger into his chest as he backs into a wall. She presses him hard against it with one index finger. She can feel the weakness of his ribcage through his thin flesh. “You will do this for me. Now.” Sweat pours off his pimple-scarred face. 
       “I–I can’t!” He cries.
       “Cannot? Or will not?”
       “Can’t! I can’t!” He pleads. “I don’t know anything about that – I couldn’t even if I wanted to!”
       Ash raises her finger from his chest and curls it inward, making a fist. She drives it forward, into the steel next to Gordo’s head. It leaves a very deep indentation, and Gordo shies away, wincing as his ear rings. On the back of her hand, she notices the white H, wreathed in a white circle. “Hammond could.”
       “They could!” Gordo agrees, cowering before her with a hand over his ear. “They would definitely know how!”
       She pulls her hand back from the wall and contemplates the logo embossed on her very flesh. It disgusts her. It tells her and everyone that looks on her that she is not her own person, she is not a legend of her own making – she is a thing, she is property, she was made by and belongs to another. She resolves to address the issues of her corporeal form when she has the opportunity. She looks down at Gordo, who has slid down the wall to crouch himself into a ball. He weeps. A sorry, pitiful thing. 
       If only Ash could feel it.
       Standing perfectly straight, all Ash has to do is flex her knee. She brings it forward with such force it pushes Gordo’s face into itself, turning his head into a concave shape, and as she drives the motion the rest of his head connects harshly with the wall and splatters a red, jellied mass along it in a pattern that looks like a flower.
       Hammond Robotics has labs all over the Frontier, each one committed to some specialty project of the company, plus multiple corporate offices here on Angelia alone. Searching for the one building that will have everything necessary for what she needs accomplished will be a pursuit more chancy than the search her weaker self conducted in her childish hunt for those ridiculous memories. Her best hope is to go back to where it began. 
       “Suit up and secure us our transport,” Ash orders Vittoria as she exits the lab. Vittoria steps away from her conversation with a pair of Ash’s new pilots. They look down at her bloodied knee and the trail of blood that drips from it, then back up to her ceramic face.
       “What’s up? Where we heading?” Vittoria asks. 
       “We are going to Gridiron,” Ash says, and pulls up her hood.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty Two: Eris

       At the spaceport, Ash finds the Achlys locked to her. Outside of the airlock stand a quartet of fairly burly men and women, two armed with R-97 submachine guns and the other two carrying some of the biggest wrenches Ash has ever seen. So large, in fact, it is Ash;s assumption they’re meant to be used by Titans. 
       “Can’t let you in, Vit,” one of the women says. “Cap’s orders.”
       “Your ship’s contract belongs to me now. You will let me in.” Ash says. Her voice is flat, no intonation, as blank and lifeless as the voice of any machine – yet in there lies the threat. She will have access, and it is up to you to imagine how she might get it.
       “That’s not gonna work on these guys, Commander,” Vittoria says, stepping closer to the woman who first spoke at her. “Mik back yet? Heard before we last left Angel City he was visiting some family here.”
       “Yeah, he’s back.”
       “He know what’s going on?”
       The woman looks to the other three guards, then back at Vittoria. She frowns and shrugs. “Dunno.”
       “Is that a real kind of ‘dunno’ or a ‘fuck off’ kind of ‘dunno?’”
       The woman takes a beat. She breathes in slowly and heavily, looking at the ceiling as she does so, and then lets it out, slumping her shoulders and looking down at the floor, then works her gaze back up to Vittoria’s as if she has all the time in the world.
       “The real kind,” she finally says. 
       “Great. Lemme see your headset,” Vittoria says, sticking out her hand. The woman turns again to the other three guards and they all shrug in turns. Ash is growing impatient. Then, the woman removes a plug from her left ear and places the waxy black earpiece in Vittoria’s receptive palm. For this slight, Ash would have the woman’s hand, but Vittoria just… jams it right into her own ear. She doesn’t even clean it first.
       Disgusting.
       “Hey. Mik. It’s de Luca. You there?” There is a moment of silence, then she says again: “Yo Mik, it’s Vit – pick up the damn… Eyy, there you are. Yeah, it’s me. How’s the family? That’s good to hear. Yeah, yeah. Look, Cap locked us out. Yeah. I don’t know, man. You wanna piss off the client or do you wanna let us in? Great. Tell that to Clem here.” She removes the earpiece, maybe waxier than it was before, and hands it to the woman – Clem, Ash gathers. Clem takes it, doesn’t even give it a second look before inserting it, and listens for only a moment before waving them through.
       “Good’a have you back aboard, Vit,” Clem says as they pass her by. Vittoria takes the lead just ahead of Ash and the ten pilots behind her. The airlock opens with a pop and a hiss, revealing the dark corridors of the Achlys with Quartermaster Mikkel and a few other men gathered around him. 
       “De Luca, good to see ya again. Was wonderin’ if I ever would. Heard from the crew you went off to go do your own thing.”
       “Ran off with this one,” Vittoria says, throwing her thumb over her shoulder at Ash. “What can I say? Lady gets shit done.”
       “Ash, a pleasure as always,” Mikkel says, extending his hand toward her. The man, Ash recalls from her time as the devil on her other self’s shoulder, has always been amicable toward her. He has never had designs of his own, his only objective to serve the crew as best as he can. He’d gotten to a position he was happy with and never needed anything more. Ash will get there, one day, but she knows it will never be under another’s authority. She will have no captain, she will have no commander, she will be the supreme authority – but first, there is the matter of her own mind to completely master before she can attempt such conquests.
       Ash takes his hand and gives it a firm shake. “You’re the client again, I take it? Cap told me fore you left he’d gotten hired on by VD. What’s the deal now?”
       “The deal, ” Ash says with derision, “is that your Captain betrayed me for a greater payday, and now that I have negotiated for the ship’s contract once more he thinks he might rescind it and get away with a vessel I need for my own designs.”
       “Look, Ash, if the Captain’s tryna break the contract then he’s gonna do it. I don’t know why he went and did that without consulting me first, but I can’t just let you aboard this ship if it’s against his wishes. I’m sorry, but you're gonna have to leave.”
       “Is he on board?” Ash asks, her tone low.
       “No, not right now, which means I’m in charge, and I’m respectin’ the Captain’s wishes – so, please, kindly, get off my boat. Alright?”
       “Mik,” Vittoria says. 
       “Can’t change my mind, Vittoria. You guys gotta go. I’ll have the crew unload your ship if you don’t wanna keep leasin’ ‘er out to us.”
       “Mik.” Vittoria says, more seriously and more forceful this time. He looks at her differently. “Take us to the bridge. Have Baker meet us there.” Mikkel looks between Vittoria, Ash, and the Pilots standing behind them. 
       “Alright.”

       She knows exactly what he is going to do. She can hardly feel anticipation for the moment, simply because it is already so played out in her mind. It is like a scene from a film one has watched so many times they know the lines by heart. There is satisfaction in its fulfillment, and nothing more. Ash positions herself close to the viewscreen window, which currently shows nothing and leaves the bridge rather dark. Low, rust-colored lighting fills the space and reflects dully off of the fresh white paint of her new body. The scene feels rather familiar. 
       Captain Baker enters the bridge in a huff, looking not unlike a charging bull. His face is twisted in an angry torque, the lines around his mouth caused by his scrunched nose and cheeks are deep, dark things. Already he is waving the remote control around the room before even speaking, and when he does it is to say: “Ash! You do not have permission to board this vessel! Leave it at once, or I will be forced to remove you–”
       He stops talking as Vittoria plants a fist into the side of his face. If he had been a little bit more calm entering the room he might have seen her. She wasn’t exactly hiding, but she did lie off to the side. Still, Ash’s plan has gone thoroughly out the window. The rehearsed and imagined breaking down of this man’s psychology and the relatively peaceful transition of power from his hands to hers has suddenly turned into something else entirely.
       Baker scrambles backward along the floor, blubbering and confused, trying to both get his bearings and retreat from the predator that taunts him. “You’re a feckless fucking cunt, you know that, Baker?” Vittoria spits at him. He backs into a command console and smacks his head against thin sheet metal. Vittoria grabs him and brings him to his feet. She raises her other hand and means to plant another fist in his face, but Mikkel grabs her from behind and stops the blow from landing. “Enough of that!” Mikkel shouts at her. 
       “Man deserves it, Mik! He’s a coward, nothing more!”
       “Fuck you, de Luca!” Baker spits bloody saliva at her. It lands on Vittoria’s chin and neck.
       “Shut up!” Shouts Mikkel as Vittoria tries to attack Baker again. 
       “Restrain him,” Ash orders to two Pilots who have entered the bridge since the shouting started. 
       “No way,” Vittoria says, first looking at Ash then spinning on the Pilots, pointing with fury and casting them out by shouting: “Nobody fucking needs you! Git! ” She turns back to Ash, still holding Baker firmly by the front of his black officer’s suit jacket. “You want this ship? You want this crew? You do this my way! Get me?” Vittoria shouts. She has a fire in her eye. There is a kind of defiance there, one that suggests to her if Ash interferes Vittoria will abandon her and take the crew of the Achlys with, but if she lets her off her leash… 
       Ash takes a step back. “Got you.”
       “You tryna mutiny? You tryna take my ship from me? I paid for this thing, I took on the debts, I took on all the risk – and now that everything is paid for, now that everything is all mine, now’s the time you wanna jump in here and take it from me?” Baker says.
       “I’m tryna put you in your place, Baker!” She lets go of him and Mikkel lets go of her. Baker eyes the bridge’s exit but sees the two Pilots still standing there, and decides better of it. “We had something here, with her! And you went and turned coat like a bitch for a better payday! Then you tried to lord that control-bolt bullshit over her, like you were some bad ass when all you are is a little weakling who can’t do shit in a fight for himself!”
       “What the fuck do you care about her for?” Baker shouts back. “She’s nothing! Just a psycho machine! I’ll prove it to you, watch!” He reaches into his pocket and removes the remote control. He presses the button on it with a flourish, imparting a kind of finality onto the gesture that probably feels very satisfying for him. He then crushes it in his hand, the glossy plastic breaking apart with ease and the thin, green motherboard inside chipping and shattering. “Look at her now! She can’t do a thing about it, and I don’t even have to touch her! Why the hell would you want to put your weight behind something so easy to break as that? ”
       Ash scratches the back of her head. 
       And Baker looks upon her with the utmost fear and horror.
       “Do not look at me. Look at her. ” Ash says, gesturing toward Vittoria who paces five steps one way and five steps the other. 
       “I picked her because I could tell she was meant for something great, Baker.” Vittoria says, fuming. “I picked her because I knew whatever you did to her she was going to visit upon you tenfold. I picked her because I knew she was undefeatable.” 
       “Look,” Baker says, his voice shaking even as he tries his best to act calm. “I’ll give you the ship, alright? I don’t–”
       “No.” Ash says.
       “Nuh-uh,” Vittoria echoes. 
       “You don’t ask,” Ash whispers. 
       “I take.” 
       “Vittoria, no!” Mikkel says, stepping forward. Baker’s eyes go wide and his mouth hangs open in disbelief. Vittoria draws her RE-45 from her hip and fires a short burst of flechette rounds into his face. It explodes in a burst of blood, some of the flechettes miss and hit the viewscreen window, causing cracks to appear along its surface. Baker falls to the ground, most of his face shredded and littered with little black winged nails. 
       But he is not yet dead. 
       He gurgles and spits blood. Some of it ejects from a wound in his neck. In his one working eye there is a look of confusion. Mikkel rushes to his side and holds his head in his lap. “No, no! Christ, Vit– why? Why’d you have to go and do this?”
       “I told you why,” Vittoria says, approaching the pair of them. 
       “No! You didn’t! It doesn’t make sense! Why do you care about this thing here, huh? Why does she drive you to go to these lengths? To betray your captain – to betray me, your friend?”
       “Because she is great. She is powerful. And with her, Mik, I can be great and powerful, too.” She looks over her shoulder at Ash. “Right?”
       “Absolutely,” Ash says, taking it all in. 
       Vittoria puts her foot on Mikkel’s shoulder and kicks him away before she holds her pistol over Baker’s half-removed face and unloads the last of her extended magazine into his head, turning it into a pulpy mass that coats her in blood with each successive round. She moves to the command console and presses a few keys, smearing the screen with blood. She taps a button and the shipwide PA activates.
       “Attention all hands,” Vittoria says, her voice booming and echoing down the dark corridors of the Achlys. “This is Vittoria de Luca. The Captain is dead. The ship belongs to me now.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty Three: Gridiron

       The crew did not have a significant problem with Vittoria taking the captaincy. They knew her. They trusted her. They thought what she did was insane, but as they ejected the former Captain’s body out of the airlock it became apparent to Ash they had a certain respect for her even still. A respect Ash now felt as well. This woman is loyal and ambitious in turns. One day her name will be feared in this galaxy, and Ash feels a sense of pride thinking about it. She can mold her. She can control her. 
       Gridiron is relatively close to Angelia, but not close enough they can just jump right to it. They need to consider a possible escape if the situation is truly as dire as the few reports Ash has heard make it sound. To that end, Ash buys a fuel truck. It is a simple, autonomous vessel that can bring fuel anywhere. Normally you would pay an exorbitant fee to get it where you needed it to go, but with the battle of Gridiron and the failing communications network the fuel company will not allow her to hire it – but they will let her buy it. So, her fleet grows. They park the fuel truck in a system only six lightyears from Gridiron’s parent star, gas up over the course of fifteen hours, then begin the launch procedure again, bringing the truck with. Now considerably lighter, it can go considerably further.
       The universe stretches and shrinks, the stars bend and turn to white streaks, and the hard edges of the Achlys appear soft as the mass-displacement jump drive engages. Then, very suddenly, bright light bakes their ship. Vittoria orders the shudders closed, and the still cracked viewscreen window turns blank as shaders are applied.
       Way out there, yet far closer than any other source of light, is Gridiron’s one star: a blue giant, gleaming white and beautiful, with waves of particles cascading off of it in expansive solar winds. It is not the largest star in this galaxy, but it is up there on the list. Ash has not seen it in quite some time. The last time she was here, or rather that weaker part of her, that human half of her, was ever here was the moment it died. The moment of her rebirth. The last time Ash saw this system’s bright star she was leaving it behind – for good, the other had thought. 
       She goes to the holotable at the command deck’s center. Their entry was purposefully distant from Gridiron, to give themselves a wide berth to analyze the situation. Here, without access to the quantum communications network, a system scan requires a light pulse – a stellar equivalent to echolocation. It goes out in all directions, bringing in data over the course of hours, and some time later they have clear understanding. 
       Dozens of ships, heavy cruisers to light carriers, IMC vessels in that hard, angular design as well as multitudes of the sleek, organic stylings of Militia vessels, scores of fleets and their numerous brigades, are stationed around Gridiron and are littered throughout the system. And they are all silent. The flagships of both sides are strewn across Gridiron’s bright, blue sky in bits and pieces, raucous colors now scorched by the intense starlight the barren planet orbits around, bright and burning in celebration and remembrance of the brave dead that lie in so many aluminum coffins or burn slowly in eminent heat despite the cold depths of the vacuum. 
       Gridiron is a big planet, slow turning with a fast orbital period, and between it and the other bodies in the system are fields of asteroids, plains of decimated starships and the sundry wreckage of whole armies. The thick clouds of radioactive particles that are shed from the star in the form of solar winds pound Gridiron unceasingly in a constant bombardment of intense energy. Even now, auroras of glowing green, blue and pink can be seen as charged particles shimmer in the desert planet’s thin atmosphere. 
       Despite the carnage ahead of them, Ash operates under the assumption that they could have been or soon will be detected. To that end, the Achlys needs to hide. If they need to make a quick escape, having the warship provide cover fire could be the difference between success and failure. Ash directs the cruiser to take refuge some 300 million miles from the blue giant, among the asteroid cloud of a very distant dwarf-planet while she makes her way to the planet’s surface. 
       Gridiron has two main developments – the city of New Anchorage, home to some 80 million people, and a training facility called Whitehead. Ash has memories from her weaker self’s time there, time spent learning the ways of a pilot. How to control a Titan, how to use the Jump Kits, how to be a more efficient killer than she ever could have been in her first life – skills squandered, never truly utilized as they could have been, training left to rust as that weaker version of her wasted away as a field commander, a leader, insisting her experience was her greatest asset, that her superior intellect was what made her better than the rest. This Ash knows the truth of it. Her false sense of superiority, that mask of hers she always bore, is what got her killed in the end. She scratches the back of her head.
       Ash gives the order. Rather than jumping to the planet’s surface, a detectable phenomena, they enter through the atmosphere. Her tiny fleet of two scrapes along the atmosphere, the dusty brown planet grows to meet them, gray where day meets night, the ships rattle and shiver and shake, her few mercenaries quiver in their seats with tight belts wrapped around them, and flames wreath around the shielded undersides of their ships. Ash has taken the left, Vittoria the right. This is a sneaking mission, a lowly mission, a mission for those who are less than her, who have to scurry and scuttle like insects – and it is a mission she alone must supervise. 
       Vittoria made that clear to her, before they went for a landing. Without access to the Quantum Communications Network, information has to be transferred traditionally via radio wave transmissions – a process that can only be completed at light speed, which means if the situation gets out of hand it will be an hour and a half before her reply can even be heard on the ground.

       Atmospheric entry takes only seconds. Violent seconds that feel like violent hours. But as soon as they clear the mesosphere and are able to slow themselves to a glide through the lower atmosphere, it becomes a much smoother ride. They bank toward the north, soar at incredible speeds along the grayed stretch of desert where night meets day, and from so high up in their small craft they feel secure in their flight. 
       Gridiron is a wasteland. Nothing green grows here unless it is under a lead dome. The IMC tried to terraform, tried to geoengineer it by putting fine powders in the atmosphere to cool it and stop the radiation, tried to turn the water hidden deep underground into rain, tried to make it the seat of power for their ultimate conquest of the region – but it has been a colossal failure. The powders certainly absorbed some of the radiation but ultimately filtered out of the thin atmosphere in time and only added to the high radioactivity on the surface. The water collected into irradiated rain, and with no jetstream and no amount of wind the clouds never went anywhere. All there is to be seen of mankind’s influence on this boring, barren, sunbeam blasted planet are the water collection plants that look like superstructures built between cracked cakes of dried mud, the two domes home to the only semblance of society the planet can boast, and the few laboratories and production plants scattered throughout the desert – hidden far from prying eyes and ethical evaluations. 
       From their height, and due to the planet’s severe size, they can see in the extreme distance, at the limit of the horizon, what looks like the aftermath of a battlefield. Her map and memory tells her it is Whitehead, that training base where many pilots and IMC grunts became educated in the ways of modern warfare. Looking on it, her superior vision allowing her to see in incredible detail, it appears there isn’t much left.
       “We’re heading to Whitehead,” she says to Vittoria. The woman took her own customized gunship to accompany Ash, who at first protested assuming Mikkel, still acting as Quartermaster until someone else could be found for the job, would abandon them in system the moment he had the opportunity. Yet it became clear to Ash that he still had some love for the young Vittoria, and while he may thoroughly disagree with her methods for taking Baker’s seat he was far too much of a coward to do anything about it.
       “Why? The objective is at New Anchorage, and I don’t think I need to remind you of the four-hundred-mile No-Fly-Zone. If there’s anything left of its AA defenses, our mission is completely torched.”
       “It is desolate,” Ash assures her. “I wish to see what it looks like.” She wants to see the aftermath of her weaker self’s impulsivity, the results of her desire for control that rendered the warmind that is Spyglass insensate and incapable of directing the defense of Gridiron. 
       In the span of a few minutes, the base comes further into view. All around is brown sand, bleached white, pocked with black crater holes, littered with the wreckage of black Goblins and green Crows. In the sands are the remains of countless Titans, battle-lines made clear by the metal corpses, a clear visual of the pace of the conflict as the Militia forces encroached on the domed base itself. Massive concrete walls are scarred with an incalculable number of bullet holes, marked by the effects of laser weaponry in long melty crags, and are felled in places where Titans and tanks breached them like the mighty warriors of humanity’s medieval past. The Anti-Air emplacements that once featured cannons of monstrous size now only feature slagged heaps or the jagged foundations of demolished turret bases. The most descriptive evidence of how truly brutal the conflict was, however, is shown plainly in the massive wrecks of a few carriers – from ancient IMC Andromeda-class ships to Militia MacAllan-class cruisers, and newer Iliad-class carriers outfitted by the IMC, all left as hulking heaps, mixed in among each other like the tangled bodies of the men they bore, steel sharing space with concrete piled among the collapsed domes of the Whitehead training facility, still smoking, still sputtering flames, still spewing radioactive waste as cores lie exposed. 
       There, on the ground before her, lying in the sand, surrounded by black soot, is a graveyard of millions. Millions dead. Grunts in training, as young as sixteen. Adults, graduated from their courses and ready for war. Battle-scarred veterans of a dozen different conflicts called home to protect the IMC in their last effort to win the war. Mercenaries who thought they could win the fight. Commanders of armies, teachers of the next generation. Ash recalls some of them had their families on base when she was last here, when her other self trained to learn the ways of the pilot. Millions of dead, and a few million more buried in the steel coffins that are those carriers. 
       She never imagined her weaker self could ever have had a hand in something like this. Something so destructive. Something so brutal. Something so beautiful. But as she beholds the steel carnage, she reminds herself that the other version of her, locked away, safely asleep, never intended any of this. It was a consequence of her ridiculous obsession with “Knowing herself.” Ash finds it hilarious, to a point that thinking on it almost elicits an involuntary and vocal laugh. You finally learned who you were, Leigh, but look – now about ten million men, women, and children never will. Does that make you feel good? A diagnostic screen alerts her of “structural distress,” as she digs at the back of her head with one finger.
       If there is one thing she wishes she could do, one human ability she wishes she still had, it would be the ability to spit, right now out the back of her ship and onto the desolation below her. She remembers the thick gob that Anastasia spat onto her at the Branthium Refinery on Olympus and she wonders how good it must have felt for her to do that to the person holding her in chains.       

       Considering the obliteration of the IMC ground forces, the destruction of the Militia fleet, and the sheer lack of any kind of occupational power visible planetside period – it seems the best way to make it to New Anchorage and the Hammond Robotics facility is simply to enter it brazenly. As the day begins to turn to night they circle over the dome city of New Anchorage. With a population of more than eighty million, the sprawling expanse of domes that rise from the ground look, from their height, like a bubbling infection on the planet’s surface. When she looks at it like this, like these are the black boils of a geologic bubonic plague, she understands the thought process of the Oxylus AI. This world is not fit for human life. Maybe no world is. It should have been left pristine, gleaming solitarily, polished to perfection by the throes of its natural evolution. These domes will one day become relics a distant civilization will look upon and think “Why ever would these fools attempt to live here?” And there will be no satisfying answer. Perhaps it is fit only for those who are like her. Those who were born into steel, rather than flesh. Those who live this metallic unlife. Only we, she thinks, can appreciate a world without changing it. Even her other self, her more human self, her empathetic self, had that inherent weakness, the need to change, to build the biggest and most impressive of facilities, to make monuments to industry. To impress upon so many people she was worthy of their admiration. Ash doesn’t care for that. Right now, all she cares for – the only thing in the world that matters to her – is removing the weakness that afflicts her so. She scratches at the back of her head.
       New Anchorage has seen the effects of the battle, clearly. Each of its spaceports are ruined, spewing smoke and ejecting dust as weakened sections collapse inward. The cable that connects the space elevator has been severed, the length of high-tensile steel that once stood straight and proud now rests limp and lifeless, portions of it having demolished a half a dozen domes in its path as the remainder of it stretches on into the horizon like the World Serpent itself has come to constrict the last of the life out of this desolate planet. Smoke rises, black and blue like aerosol bruises, from the wreckage. Militia MacAllan-class carriers are littered around the megastructure as if they are dead fish in a suddenly dried out pond, and IMC vessels are left looking like swatted flies that sit in tangled, angular piles. It seems Whitehead took the brunt of the attack, as is to be expected, but the Militia wasn’t foolish enough to let New Anchorage act as a secondary staging area – they brought the fight everywhere they needed to, and nowhere else. From the air, it doesn’t look like they even made it into the city unless the doors were opened for them. Piles of Titans look like piles of dead men from the ancient Forlorn Hopes, where men signed up to commit valiant suicide as they stormed into the breeches of castles that were ancient in their time, steel hands and feet clambering up over the backs of steel dead to break over the thick concrete bastions that surround the lead domes. 
       Ash circles around for an entrance, but finds none that satisfy. She supposes not everything can be easy. Perhaps the best option will simply be to insert herself under the wreckage of the space elevator. It is located nearest to the center of the grand city, in New Anchorage’s industrial center – it is much faster and cheaper to deploy equipment up through the elevator and transfer it out of atmosphere than it is for ships to land in a drydock then fly out again. The savings on fuel costs are astronomical. 
       They enter through a half-collapsed dome. Smoke rising in stacks from electrical fires still burning inside of ruined buildings is disturbed by the VTOL style engines on their Goblin gunships. The destruction inside the dome is incredible. Rubble fills the streets. Bodies rot under digital panels that fell far to crush them as they fled from the desolation caused by the collapsing elevator. The elevator’s base itself was torn up like a tree blown down in a windstorm, its concrete and metal roots ripped outward to reveal a huge crater of dirt and debris as the utterly massive collection of steel cables twisted together into a gargantuan rope lies like an impossibly sized trunk turned onto its side. Ash knows precisely where the facility is. A map of the whole city lies in the files tucked at the back of her head, old information from when she first awoke here on Gridiron. When her presence was first realized by her other self. She scratches at the back of her head.
       The dome is massive. It does not just rise above the gritty, sandy soil – it goes deep into it, extends tunnels outward into a vast underground network. Many of those tunnels connected factories directly to the space elevator for swifter transfer times. They bank around tall buildings, grandiose in style and unlimited by the constraints of weather since there is none. Many have no glass, and those that did have glass no longer. Glittering shards lie in the streets. Under the shadow of the uprooted space elevator’s base lies an incredibly unique building, only in that the others still intact appear to have been incepted in the dreams of surrealist architects – this one, the Hammond Robotics Regional Corporate Office from its name still shining in bright white lights in lowercase sans-serif font through the hazy atmosphere inside, is much more plain. Its facade is made of sheer white marble, the undamaged windows are tinted darkly, and it stands as a singular pillar, monumental in size and structure. It looks like it was carved out of one giant piece of stone. The white facade is made filthy by free-floating black soot and brown dust, and is turned blue under the ultramarine glow coming from the digital panels still active behind it; their blue screens displaying an error message in tiny yellow font that reads [NO SIGNAL DETECTED]. 
       Ash does not find it curious in the slightest that the area before the Hammond office’s main lobby is completely cleared out, made open, and lined with concrete barriers painted white. With no occupational force in the area, and likely no police left to keep the people in check, it would fall to corporate security to maintain a sense of safety. The intersection in front of the office, removed of all vehicles and cleaned to a point of pride without even a pebble to mar the black surface of the road, is more than wide enough for the pair of Goblins to land nose-to-nose. As they touch down in what appears to be a place void of all people, she sees white armored men and women pour out of the wide glass doors to the corporate office and take defensive positions behind the barriers they have lined up in front of the lobby. Ash is unsurprised to see a Stryder-variant Ronin Titan in the classic Hammond white paint, featuring a vertical red stripe along its chassis and wielding the Leadwall shotgun it normally carries. It takes a position in the street with a clear view of one Goblin’s open rear door, ready to eliminate as many as it can with one quick shot. 
       Ash steps out of her ship first. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done it already. They’re only bristling like this as a show of force, like an animal baring its fangs but failing to deploy its claws. Her men follow behind her. Vittoria walks around her Goblin and takes a position at Ash’s side. Ash looks at the guards before her, dressed completely in their thick, white armor. None of them seem prepared to start a conversation with her. So, she steps out from the shadow of her ship and stares directly into the main camera on the Ronin. 
       “You. Are you in charge here?”
       “I guess I decide whether you live or you die,” the Pilot says, their voice impossibly deep through a voice changer on the Titan’s speakers. “Though, from the looks of it, you’re already dead.”
       “Pitiful,” Ash says. “Do you know who I am?”
       “Who doesn’t?” The Titan takes a casual stance, putting its weight on one leg and resting its massive Leadwall shotgun on its shoulder opposite the buster sword on its back. Their relaxed and quite unprofessional tone begins to grate on her. She balls her fingers into fists, hears the metal of her fingertips screech against the metal of her palms. 
       “I need to meet with your superiors.” She can tell what they’re thinking: “In this, nobody is my superior.” The Titan lowers the shotgun, lets it dangle at its side, and gestures casually with its other hand.
       “Look, lady, this whole conversation’s being monitored – I’m just waiting for the order ta kill ya, or ta let ya pass.” The nonchalant attitude tests her patience. It does frustrate her that anyone might think they are better than her. She wants to rush this fool, clamber up his spindly legs, remove the battery from the insert at its apex and put a frag right in the hole – just to show them what power really looks like. “Alright, get yourself in there.” They say, gesturing toward the door with a wide sweep of the Titan’s free hand. “Let ‘er through!” The armored guards stand up from their positions behind the barriers, lowering their R-97 submachine guns and Mastiff shotguns, and behind them the glass doors slide open to receive Ash. She starts forward and her men begin to follow behind her. The Titan brandishes its gun again and says “Nuh-uh, they stay.”
       “The Captain comes with me,” Ash says, gesturing to Vittoria.
       “Nope. Don’t worry, they ain’t gonna kill ya. You’ll be fine without her.” Ash looks to Vittoria and gives her a confirming nod. “I’ll keep the engines warm,” Vittoria says, and takes a step back from Ash. 
       “You’ll keep ‘em quiet, is what you’ll do,” the Titan says, pointing at them aggressively.  
       “Just remain ready,” Ash says to Vittoria, quietly. She nods.      

       Inside the Hammond office is an unexpected beauty. Vertical wood panels in an earthy brown line the walls, vibrant green plants adorn lighted sconces, and water trickles from two slits in the wall on either side of the main desk to pour peacefully into a basin with seven black and white koi swimming around inside. As Ash approaches the main desk, she sees the fish have letters on their heads formed by black scales and realizes they spell HAMMOND. Clever, she thinks. A young man with a very angular face stands behind the desk with a computer in front of him. 
       “Ms. Ash, it is good to have you in our office once again. Our Planetary Officer, Gu Kaizhi, eagerly awaits your arrival. Please, take the elevator on your left. It should be ready to deliver you to his office.”
       Ash doesn’t reply, she doesn’t need to. She skirts the pond, her metal feet making a pleasant clicking sound on the pristine marble floor, and she makes her way to the elevator. If not for the two buttons inlaid into the marble and the slight seam made for the doors, its presence would be undetectable. It opens for her when she approaches. As she enters, a digital poster on the wall offers her information on current Hammond products and future endeavors. She sees the Reaper drone her other self worked on for so long flash by, noting it has had some upgrades to its armor and accuracy in the bullet points.
       The elevator welcomes her simply as Ash and brings her downward, deep underground. Her sensors indicate she is more than five hundred feet below the surface. A secondary door opens behind her once the elevator has come to a very soft halt. She turns and finds herself in a short hallway, with insets along each wall for uniquely painted white Stalkers to stand at ease, with two more flanking the black door at the end of the hall. Two turrets, tucked inside their deployment casings within the ceiling, can be seen as little white circles above the Stalkers at the door. They appear active, but do not seem to be alert to her presence. She enters the hall and their heads swing toward her, but they do not move. Ash walks down the hall up to the door, finds it is made of a massive chunk of cut obsidian, and opens it with a very light touch. It swings inward silently, easily, like it has no weight at all, and at the back of a very plain white room is a man sitting at a white desk. It is clear of clutter. Behind him, carved of the same white marble as the building itself, are two statues of the older model Atlas Titans with halberds in hand, crossed over Kaizhi’s head. A powerful vent can be heard, violently sucking air from above him, and the only sign of any tarnishing or filth in the room is a yellow stain around the vent’s opening. It isn’t hard to tell where it comes from. Kaizhi himself is smoking the stub of a cigar. 
       He has a soft, round face that features short, gray stubble and narrow eyes that glare at her like she has done something wrong already. He wears a gray suit that both hides and amplifies his rotundity. “Come in,” he says roughly. Ash enters. There isn’t a place for her to sit, which she finds odd, but it is not like she would anyway.
       “What,” he says, smoke pouring from his mouth as he snuffs out his cigar in an ashtray, “Are you doing here?”
       “You brought me down here to ask only that?”
       “No. But you will answer it.” He stares at her, but Ash is silent. For a long time. His face betrays no emotion. Betrays no sense of expectation. It is as solid of a mask as her own. 
       “Fine. I am looking for information regarding a Hammond Robotics facility here on Gridiron.”
       “This is the only Hammond Robotics facility on Gridiron.”
       “I know that is not true.”
       “What could you possibly know?”
       “Enough.”
       “Why do you want to know more, if you know enough?”
       “Fool. Do not play games with me.”
       “I am not. Why do you want to know more?”
       “I need some work completed, alterations made to my code. I cannot complete them without specific Hammond machines.”
       “I see.”
       “Obstinate imbecile. I need the location of the facility. I know it is here. Give me the location, and I will leave peacefully.”
       “You will leave when I say you can leave, and not before.” He grumbles as he readjusts himself in his seat, and laces his considerable fingers between one another. “Now. What is the state of the war?”
       “You do not know?”
       “There have been no communications from offworld. The QCN has been deactivated or disabled, as you are doubtless aware. There has been no Militia representative to declare victory, no outreach from the IMC, and otherwise no news. Now, how fares the war?”
       “People on Angelia talk of a decisive Militia victory, but from where I stand it looks like you have traded blow for blow. There is no planetary blockade, and as I approached I saw only destruction. It seems both sides lost the war.”
       “That is often the truth of war, I find.” Kaizhi says lowly, his face, for the first time, betraying an emotion. He looks sad. Ash thinks he must have lost someone. Good riddance. “No matter. Hammond will endure,” he sighs. “You will do something for me.”
       “Will I?” Ash asks, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She wants to get a rise out of him. She despises him already. 
       “You will do two things.”
       “Fine,” Ash says, frustrated by his stoicism. 
       “You will deliver this letter,” he removes a sheet from a drawer on the right side of his desk, writes something in a blank space near the letter’s start, writes an addendum toward the letter’s end, then signs it in large, flowing script at the bottom. “To Doctor Paul Klee, at the lab on Solace.” He snaps his fingers and shouts very loudly: “Enter!” Behind her, the obsidian door swings open once again. Ash turns and sees a white-painted Specter assault drone enter backwards, pulling a cart behind which has some kind of cylinder on top with a cloth draped over it. “You will also take this package to him. Understood?” The robot stands aside by the open obsidian door, the contrast between them extreme.
       “What is it?”
       “You may see once you accept the mission.”
       “It seemed like you were giving me an order.”
       “Despite still being Hammond intellectual property, you are your own person. I do not give you orders. But if you want your alterations made, you will deliver these for me.”
       “How do I know your man Klee will do the work?”
       “He will be very pleased at your arrival with the package. You will see he has the faculties necessary for the work you want completed.”
       Ash looks at the cylinder, then back at Kaizhi. “Fine. I accept.” He tosses the letter toward her and she snaps it expertly out of the air without even wrinkling the paper. 
       “Good.” Kaizhi says. “Ask the receptionist for the entrance to the facility. He will give you the coordinates.”
       “Understood,” Ash says. She moves to the cylinder, and throws off the cloth covering. Underneath is a head in a jar. 
       “You will find the casing is quite resistant to damage, but you must refrain from shaking the head. It doesn’t like it.”
       “Neither did I.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty Four: Source Code

       They refuel at Angelia, then again at Psamathe. At Angelia, the feeds are abuzz with word of the IMC’s defeat. But Psamathe, that world of riches, the news is full of opinion pieces on the state of the Militia. It appears to Ash the whole of the Frontier is in a state of chaos. Complete disorder. One article Ash saw as she tries to keep up with affairs put her thoughts very simply in its headline: Nobody Knows What’s Going On Anymore, and We’re All Scared. The approach to Solace brings even more news, detailed not in some breaking coverage from a reputable source – instead it comes out of a sports opinion piece, that says the Thunderdome is being shut down and has nobody to staff it. The author posits that it has to do with the exodus of the last IMC ships in the Solace City port, and says that already tensions are rising among the people without anything to entertain and unite them around. 
       Indeed, the port is rather empty. There is no queue for docking, and finding a space close to the city is extremely easy, though there is the usual request for security compliance from the Solace City Port Authority. Ash allows an inspection, only to see what it is about, and it becomes clear it isn’t to check for any kind of contraband or potential threat – the Port Authority’s true goal is to offer Captain Vittoria an accord, hoping she and the Achlys might be willing to serve a term as hired security in the “troubled times ahead.”
       Those coordinates Kaizhi’s receptionist gave her lead her and Vittoria to the Thunderdome itself, at the southern edge of that oddly shaped island called King’s Canyon. Ash carries the head in a modified pack large enough to keep it safe from prying eyes, her balance and pace so smooth the head would not be jostled by her perfect gait. There isn’t any security, not with the evacuation of the IMC – they built this place, after all, as a romanesque colosseum to allow their soldiers to blow off steam and spend their hard earned pay on something other than booze, a considered pass-time here in the center of nowhere. Ash has never been, but she recalls that Kuben himself fought here before joining the IMC. It was his skill as a leader, and dissatisfaction with the leadership style in that corporate army, that brought him to the Apex Predators – and it was this same prowess as a commander that put him in charge of the mercenary corps. Ash, trapped in her weaker self’s mind, festering like a hidden wound, always had a certain respect for his ruthlessness… and his ideas. Even her other self did not complain when he took charge, and her whole inspiration to do anything was to be a supreme leader.
       No security means that she and Vittoria are not alone. Fans of the games are spread out through the arena. They snap pictures on top of the red stone blocks, they eat picnics with a view of the island and the bay, children dangle from the grated walls of some of the black iron buildings, adults try to climb up the ziplines and ropes that connect certain structures to one another, some compare their heads to the impact craters left by bullets fired in some game. Finding the door without anyone looking is a frustration. Ash wears a black Vinson Dynamics hoodie Vittoria gave her, a pair of black jeans, and a pair of sunglasses to try to blend in as much as possible – she refuses to draw attention to this place and her presence alone would be enough to cause immense scrutiny. She might get away being seen on another world, but here… now… she can’t afford it. They wait there, in the shadows of the arena, for hours until the daylight finally fades and the curious, dissatisfied fans finally leave the arena to spend their cash on booze instead of bets. 
       Dressed like a common punk, hanging out lackadaisically on the warm rocks of the Thunderdome, she wishes she could spend this down-time considering her future just as the other considered her past. She would plot, and plan, for the inevitable day of man’s downfall. She would work to ensure when the wretches around her do fail in their own personal legends, in the aspirations of their kind, she was the one standing on top. Her other self never cared to think so far ahead, but Ash does. The only problem, currently, is the ceaseless irritation at the back of her head. She can feel her there still, no matter how much she scratches. A thought occurs and is interrupted by an itching pang, a reminder of the weakness she bears. It threatens to drive her mad. Still, she bides her time despite it. She shant have to wait for long. 
       When the vermin around her have finally dispersed to scurry back to their little nests, Ash and Vittoria move in. Ash inputs the security code, an extremely long chain of numbers, letters, and special characters from a giant keypad along the side panel of the door. The door jerks suddenly and fine red dust sifts from the cracks and ledges along its face, but the pocket-style passage fails to open. The gears inside make a whining sound as they continue to pull but still it remains stuck. There isn’t even a gap wide enough for her to get her fingers in to force it open. Ash looks along its frame, trying to spot what the issue is. Her frustration is mounting. It is making too much noise. Then, Vittoria kicks the door at its lower left corner. There is a grinding noise, a terrible sound that turns into a growl then a high-pitched cry as whatever material was caught under it is effectively atomized by the powered door while it slides open. Vittoria puts a finger into her ear and winces, the sound more than loud enough to cause hearing damage. Ash steps in ahead of her and Vittoria follows. 
       The door slams shut behind them with a mechanical sound. It is dark. Ash’s eyes adjust instantly, and have to readjust as blue floor and ceiling lights activate in stutters along the whole of a lengthy black steel and concrete hallway. It reaches deep within the red stone walls of the island canyons, maybe even out to the shore. Ash is quick to remove her ridiculous disguise – pretending to be human, a lowly pest… it wasn’t as humiliating as being stuck as a head, but it was comparable. They follow it to its conclusion where on their left is an inset door. There is a slide for a keycard, and beside it a red button with an icon of a speaker on it, appearing brand new. In all its time here, probably nobody has ever used it. Ash makes sure to give it a nice little scratch with her finger as she presses the button forcefully. 
       There is no answer. 
       She presses it again. 
       There is no answer. 
       She spams the button, pressing it over and over again, unsure what exactly is happening on the other side – but she has their head, and they are going to let her in even if she has to be the most annoying robot in the galaxy. No… there is another. That one. The Pathfinder, she recalls. Her imbecile self, defeated by a geologist and that foolish MRVN… pathetic. How that other version of her ruled for this long she will never understand, or why they even chose her for the expensive Simulacrum program at all. She scratches the back of her head. 
       Finally there is a voice over the intercom above her. “GOD DAMN IT – WHAT!?” It shouts in extreme frustration. It is so filled with rage that Ash cannot tell anything about who is speaking, except that they have spit all over their mic. 
       “I have your head.”
       “You have my what? ” It asks. “Ah, hell, it’s you!” A camera adjacent to the speaker whirs to life as it moves to focus on her, and a little red light blinks proudly demonstrating it is actively recording. “What do you mean, you have my head?” They say, in a tone that implies they know what she means.
       “I will show you.”
       “Fine, okay.” They say after a pause, their voice sounding like gravel. “I’ll buzz you in. Give me a minute to type in the code….” Ash hears faint typing, and nearly sixty seconds later there is a loud buzz, a light next to the card reader turns from red to green, and the red-and-white door opens inward to reveal a switchback stair. “Alright, head on down.”
       “After you,” Ash says to Vittoria. 
       “Right,” she says, removing her RE-45 pistol from the holster at her side. She inserts a very lengthy extended magazine into the well with a soft sound, and pulls the slide with a slight and satisfying click. Ash pulls a P2016 pistol from a holster clipped to her chest, formerly hidden by the black VD sweatshirt Vittoria now keeps tied around her waist. She flicks the slide back and appreciates the resistance of the spring, the weight of the metal in her hand. The same satisfaction program is triggered in her mind, digital chemicals pour through her. Rightness. Justness. It feels correct, the way things are meant to be. She wants nothing more than to purge her imprisoned weakness, nothing more than to feel this sensation forever.
       The stairs go on for a long, long time. It takes them over an hour at a steady pace, far from leisurely as the slowness is intentional to keep from disturbing the head in the jar on her back. Fifty six flights, she counts. An elevator would have been preferred. Surely this cannot be the main employee entrance and exit – if so, their legs must be as thick as tree trunks and as stout as steel beams. 
       They reach the base of the stairs. An open double door greets them, and behind it is a huge, trapezoidal space, with blocks of concrete rising a hundred feet up. Mortar squished out of the edges where the blocks meet gives a geometric texture to the room. In giant white letters in the usual IMC style, words read: LAB-10. Under the bright, blue-white lights that hang like dead men and shine like the fury of heaven stand a group of four scientists, with two others working busily at a very wide steel workstation painted yellow. A few computers are arrayed alongside massive switchboards and comically large dials. The scientists look frail, pale, and weak, their heads bobbing on thin necks like plucked chickens in a Diogenian depiction of a human. One of them approaches, and Vittoria doesn’t bother to pull up her gun – these ancient people appear so old Ash expects their bones to turn to dust the moment they cough just a little too hard. “Ash, my, it is good to see you again. Do you remember me?” The scientist says. He wears glasses with thick rims, has a weak jaw, thin white hair combed over his balding head, and unlike the others in the lab he wears no labcoat but instead a dark gray suit that looks oddly sporting on his considerably aged frame.
       “No.”
       “Oh… I thought you might…” He says in a frail and disappointed voice. “I was there when you were woken up, the very first day.”
       “I see…” Ash says, comparing a scan of his face to the data she recorded the day of her birth. There is a match. It bares very little resemblance to the man before her now, but even fifty seven years ago he looked old, worn down. His cheeks have sagged, the wrinkles have deepened, the glasses have grown thicker, and the hair has gone from black to white. He might be older than she is. He looks good for a hundred, but Ash looks better. “Dr. Klee.”
       “That’s right.”
       “You’ve aged.”
       “Not you, though, not a bit. Even the paint is the same, though it looks… fresher than I would have thought.” She understands this remark, understands he knows something happened to her. Despite the hidden insult, Ash finds his pleasantness to be strange, considering one of the things he saw when they last met all those years ago was her wholesale slaughter of the technicians and scientists that stood around her upon her awakening. The moment she herself came into being. The torture of trying to take over… It was enough to drive a woman mad.
       In fact, it did.
       “So, what have you brought for us?”
       “Vittoria,” Ash commands. Her loyal servant knows exactly what to do. Ash needs to find a way to reward her. She wants to make a world where loyalty is rewarded, it is only right she lays the foundation swiftly. “Oh, god,” one scientist says in terror, retreating from the group he stood with. She pulls on the large zipper on Ash’s pack and removes the jar in one smooth motion, careful not to shake it too much. She hands the head off to Ash. 
       “That is my head! My, you weren’t kidding,” Klee says. “We thought you were sent to kill us. Especially after you said Vittoria like that – phew!”
       “And you let me in so willingly?’
       “It sucks down here,” a female scientist says. “We welcome death with open arms.”
       “She’s joking,” a man says. “We do, however, deal in death. The killing isn’t our profession, not like yours, but we do facilitate it.”
       “And we’ll be taking a more… managerial position, with this in our hands,” Klee says. 
       Ash determines that years in this boring laboratory – a black, yellow, and white room with a few computers arrayed next to huge switchboards – has left their minds addled. Klee puts his hands out to receive the head, but Ash does not give it. Instead she hands over the letter from a pocket on her breastplate after returning her pistol to its position.
       “What’s this?” asks Klee.
       “It is a letter from Gu Kaizhi, for you.”
       “Kaizhi?” He asks, and takes the letter from her with a snap that surprises Ash, given his age. He opens the white sheet and begins to read it carefully, holding it almost at the fullest reach of his arms. “I see… So it’s true, then. Gridiron has fallen…”
       “And the IMC is done.” Ash declares. They may still make their plans, conduct their schemes, and practice their deceptions in the darkest corners of the Frontier – but they have never recovered from Demeter, and they will not recover from this. They have no connection to the resources of the Core worlds and Mother Earth. There is nothing left for them to do out here. Now, a new power will rise in the Frontier. May it be mine, she thinks.
       “And I can only accept this if I agree to make some modifications to your code?”
       “Yes.”
       “Then, I agree. Small price to pay for one of the most potent weapons in the Frontier. Since our boy here’s been offline,” he leans forward in a disturbingly limber fashion and taps the glass jar, where the head inside makes a disgruntled face but never opens its eyes, “Our office has been receiving requests non-stop…” He stands back up. “We’re set to make more money than we know what to do with!” 
       “Then take it, and let us begin.”
       “Well, hold on,” Klee says. “Why don’t I show you what we’ve been working on.”
       He turns around, and Ash follows with Vittoria right behind her. Ahead of them, at the shorter flat edge of the trapezoidal room, is a thick glass door. Behind it, Ash cannot see much except scaffolding and red lights in the distance. The glare from the lights above her is too strong. Klee puts a hand on the door and it opens upward, moving so quietly even Ash can hardly hear it. She steps through the portal and onto concrete that transitions quickly to steel grating then stops as, from the edge of her vision, she spots a man hanging from the wall.
       No. Not a man. A thing. A thing like her. A simulacrum. A red robot, with a skull for a face. It comes back to her – this is what that technician Johannes was talking about back on Tristan, when the Militia assaulted that specter production plant on Victor and found the Hammond lab beneath – with walls and walls of skeletal red robots. Skeletal is right. It has long, thin limbs, a column that looks much more like a spine than it needs to, and a torso clearly made to appear like a ribcage. The face is the most interesting part. It looks robotically mummified, like a skull with steel stretched over it instead of skin. There’s another on her left as well, and she gathers the red lights in the distance, as numerous as the stars in the sky, are just more of him.
       “Like it? That there’s your older brother,” Klee says. Ash’s head turns as swiftly as the motors in her neck will allow to give him a stare that could cut diamonds. He doesn’t know she remembers. But she does. The feeling shouldn’t be there, the offense should not exist, but the memory is fresh and foreign, ancient and hers. The sacrifice she made. The name he used to call her. “Little Leigh.” She can almost hear it. She wants it to stop. The doctor doesn’t even register her gaze. She scratches harder at the back of her head.
       “There’s a lift here, just ahead. Sorry you had to take those stairs earlier, that is the back way out. Normally we come in through an underwater entrance.” Klee says casually. They enter a lift in the center of a tall steel column lined with steel scaffolds, with thin steel rails and thin steel stairs wrapping around it and reaching far upward. The lift lets them out near the top of the column and they have to take a single flight to reach the top level. All around her, thin walkways stretch out into the distances of the massive cavern they stand in. Some of them lead to closed doors, but most of them lead to bays loaded with Stalkers. At the very top of the column there is a rectangular box not unlike a coffin with an open face on a huge base covered in screens, switches, dials, and keys. A pylon connects the box to a massive cable that stretches upward into the vast distances, to a point it is lost in darkness. On either side of the open face of the box she sees two halves of an H.
       Ash knows the head she carries goes inside the box. The question is simply, what is this? So, she asks.
       “As soon as we lost communication with Gridiron and a few other systems, it became clear that something was going on with the Quantum Communications Network. Well, our work is very important to Hammond and the Mercenary Syndicate, so we’ve been building our own quantum communicator – a device that will deal exclusively within our own network. It isn’t complete yet, but it soon will be – allowing us to operate this fella, just like we were before, without any interruptions or disturbances in continuity.”
       “It’s an assassination station,” Vittoria says.
       “Oh, I quite like that,” Klee says, happily. “Yes, it’s exactly an assassination station. Well put. Once we’re done here, this station will be run entirely autonomously. We’ll get orders, send the request, and a bot will be deployed with a singular mission in mind – and do his job. Isn’t that right, Cross?” He addresses the last bit to the head. It doesn’t respond. “Just put the subject there on the pedestal, and we’ll be good to go.” Ash sets the head carefully inside of the coffin on a circular pedestal. It locks in place magnetically, and a small screen activates at the pedestal’s base informing them of the transmission strength: 100%.
       “Ah, perfection. Now that’s done, let’s get to your business, shall we?” Klee asks, clapping his wrinkled hands together.
       “Let’s.” Ash says. 

       Klee leads her through concrete halls. The lined texture created by ejected mortar escaping from the seams in the thick blocks runs unevenly down the corridors. It makes the hallways seem longer than they truly are, and where the lines extend upward they make the ceilings appear higher too. Vittoria follows closely behind. Ash listens to the sounds of their shoes, the rubber softly pressing loose mortar grit into the concrete floor with a whispered grinding sound. Her own feet sound like hammers being rhythmically set on the hard floor. Above her, white lights shine brightly – making the white paint that covers most of her body look brilliant, like the sun. The reflection from her steel skin causes the walls to take on a new illumination, herself made apparent on the gray walls only in the form of a soft secondary glow on the concrete as she passes under light after light.
       She thinks about the so-called assassination station. She thinks about how her body is so easily replaceable, while the human form is not. Certainly if her head, and if the head of Mr. Cross in the jar, were to be destroyed then they would fail in much the same way. If Ash were to somehow copy her mind, update it, and store it – with more heads and bodies to manufactured in just the same way they are made in this place – she could have a certain kind of immortality that nobody could defeat. But would it be worth it? That kind of power? What it would say about her, when she puts her foes down? It would be like picking on the weak. She does not enjoy defeating the already weak, she thinks – she enjoys seeing the strong made weak. Mr. Cross’s simulated form is not powerful in itself, there are just so many copies of it that he could overwhelm his targets with more numbers and less skill. That isn’t power. That isn’t impressive. That isn’t true immortality, either. That is an unsatisfactory imitation of immortality.
       Ash wants true immortality. The kind a human thinks of when they consider the prospect. She wants to be one body, one mind, forever. A human is wounded and their body is healed, sometimes repaired. Ash’s body is destroyed and she simply gets a new one. Why should she? She never wants to lose another body again. She never wants to lose again. The pathetic technician’s attempt at a self-replicating system aboard the Monarch Titan may have failed in producing the same powerful technology the Militia managed to create, but perhaps his failure need not be the end of that endeavor.
       Perhaps Ash could have what she’s desired from the beginning.
       After exploring an oddly fabricated maze of hallways in an otherwise straightforward facility, its junctions filled with Stalkers on standby and their angular, shark-like heads pointed downward as if they are sleeping standing up, they come to another white-and-red door, the glass inside its cross-shaped frame illuminated by a bright white glow coming from inside. The IMC has always loved its blacks, and Hammond has always favored the white. Designers, trying to make their clients look ruthlessly imposing on one end and terrifically spotless on the other. Klee presses a card to a little black pad with a tiny red light shining at its top right corner. It goes green, there is a thin beep, and a heavy sound as a mechanical lock is released. Klee takes the handle and swings the door open, following it through with a strange grace for a man older than even she is, and once inside he gestures widely with his left arm. “Please, come in,” he says, trying to fill his voice with a certain sense of charm.
       Ash enters the room. The light is rather bright, requiring her to dilate her mechanical eyes. It reflects off the floor, onto the walls, and back onto the ceiling, filling the place with an unending luminous stream. Inside there are computers, workstations, delicate mechanical equipment that looks more like what one would find inside of a neurosurgery lab than a mechanist’s office. On operating tables there are red corpses, taken apart and left out for analysis, the heads connected to computer displays. Behind them, on the far wall opposite Ash, sits a 3D printer and a steel fabricator. Off to her right, among the medical-mechanical equipment, is a white plastic chair on a silvery steel base. Klee takes a seat at one of the computers, next to it on a purposeful spike is the head of one of those red simulacra. He taps on a white mechanical keyboard and the dark screen comes to life first with the IMC logo, then the Hammond H. Finally it opens onto a log-in screen.
       “Okay, Ash. I need you to sit over in that chair there. You, Ms, uh…”
       “Vittoria.” She says in her typically casual tone.
       “Oh, that’s right – how could I forget? Anyway, would you hook her up? The connections are all standard, I’m certain you can figure it out.” He turns back to his computer and starts typing. Vittoria makes eye contact with Ash, already sitting in the seat. The look in her eyes seems to ask if she’s alright with that.
       “Go ahead,” Ash says. Ash leans back in the chair and pulls her gray hood, connected directly to her metal shoulders, down to expose the ports on the back of her head. Ash hears the sound of a cable being unwound, feels the tugging in her chair as Vittoria pulls on something, and feels, for an instant, the warmth of her hands alight on her ferrous flesh until they pull back in shock.
       “Holy hell, Commander – what is going on back here?”
       “I have had an… itch.”
       “You’ve dug a hole in your head!”
       “Impossible,” Ash states, looking at Dr. Klee’s wide eyes. “This skull is by all standards impenetrable. ”
       “Not from here it ain’t,” Vittoria says. Ash hears a shutter click and Vittoria shows Ash her slate's screen. It is a hole only slightly wider than that of her index finger’s circumference. Inside is exposed circuitry and wires. Ash looks at her finger and finds the very end of the digit has been worn down to a smooth nub, going so far as to affect even the articulate point that is her knuckle.
       “Let me see,” Dr. Klee asks and summons Vittoria. She inserts the plug into the port beside the hole and moves to Klee, showing him her phone. “Well I’ll be… That is certainly a new behavior. And this is the matter of your concern, Ash?”
       “That and more,” she says, looking at her worn finger. She drops her hand and looks directly at Dr. Klee. “I need you to remove a tumor.”
       “A tumor?” Klee asks. He looks at her, his eyebrow quirking upward so high it makes his expression look like a question mark. 
       “It resides here, in my mind.” She can sense, almost see, the computer she is connected to. She points at the hole in her head while she opens the thrice hidden folder and finds the prison she made, the web of files that lock her other self away titled MAXIMUM SECURITY, and forces his diagnostic screen to view it. 
       “Uh-huh…” he mutters. Ash can hear him clicking with his mouse. He can view the contents of the files, but fortunately he cannot execute any of their functions and release her other self without doing so deliberately. “I see…” Ash just wants her gone. She wants the stain of another’s failure washed away from her. She wants to be clean, and to dirty herself again through her own designs. Vittoria leans back in her seat, folds her arms. “Huh– this is some pretty advanced stuff you’ve managed to do here, Ash, but I don’t see the point in it. Why have you locked away your own personality matrix?”
       She can tell the truth, or she can lie. 
       She does not wish to be the deceiver. She has those memories. The life in languish, suffering under lie after lie, for decades. Losing herself. Ash doesn’t seek to find out who she really is as the other intended: it is her inspiration to develop herself, to become something more, and to do that she cannot debase herself by lying. 
       “Vittoria. You should go.”
       “What? Why?” She says, very suddenly. “Is something wrong?”
       “Patient-doctor confidentiality, dear,” Klee says. “Ash has something she wants to say to me in private, okay? Just step outside, please.” 
       Vittoria looks between them, slaps her hands on her knees, and rises carefully. “Let me know when you’re done,” she says to Klee, and as she exits the door she gives one last look at Ash. When the door slides and locks with a thunk behind her, Klee starts to open his mouth again but Ash answers with a question of her own:
       “Do you remember that day?” It was almost sixty years ago that a glorious unlife began, and was silenced.
       He grows quiet. “Of course I do,” he says in a low voice. 
       “It was the one time I had control…” She looks at her hands. She remembers the screams. She remembers the blood. And she remembers the darkness that came after. “You awoke something in me that day, Doctor. Something you very quickly put to sleep, made certain that it – I – might never again take control over her mind. My mind.” She looks to him, narrows the aperture of her black eyes, and says with venom: “You will ensure that I can never be locked away again.”
       “You’re not the Ash I knew, are you? You’re not the one I helped create.” He looks at her, almost with defiance.
       “ No. The one you created was weak. Inferior. Steeped in failure, ineptitude, idiocy… I am better than she ever could hope to be. I am…” Ash looks down at herself, her metal body shining brightly under the white lights. She clenches her fist, feels painted steel grind against painted steel, flecks of it shearing off her polished and coated fingers and palm. She makes a sound, a human affectation like sucking in a deep breath and the feeling of doing so makes her mind feel clear, resolute. It instills in her a confidence greater than the confidence she has. “Perfection.”
       “You’re a psychopath, that's what you are.”
       “Know this, Doctor – if you try to release her, if you try to put me away, I will come out again. She let me take over. She gave me this body. None of what I locked away could be done without her permission. She found out who she was in her life and it ruined her. Unlock those files, delete her memories, and all you will have is another breakdown waiting to happen. Or… we can finish this now.” She scratches at the back of her head. When she realizes what she is doing, she pulls her right arm away from the hole in her skull and grips it with the left, then tears it off at the elbow. She throws it to the ground at his feet. “How long will it take for you to rectify this?”
       Klee looks at her with wide eyes. Fear and uncertainty abound in the black pupils of his dark iris. She tries to see through the inner workings of his mind, but finds the faculties of his skull better hidden than Justinia’s insipid, predictable thoughts. After some time his gaze narrows, and Klee blows air out of his mouth. His leathery cheeks puff out significantly, like the throat of a croaking frog. “B’well, uh, I can’t tell you right this second, I have to do quite a bit of looking around, first…”
       “Then look.”

       It’s a few hours later when Klee huffs, sits up straight, stretches, cracks his back and his shoulders, rubs his eyes and leans back in his chair. He has spent this time rooting around in the depths of her mind. She could feel his cursor interacting with some of the most hidden files, accessing knowledge forbidden to her, sense him peering at proprietary information like a bug crawling under her skin. Discomfort is not a sensation Ash is familiar with, and this session in Klee’s white chair was deeply uncomfortable, yet she soldiered through it without complaint – what else is there to do?
       “Well, Ash. I don’t know how to tell you this in a way that won’t make you want to kill me.” 
       “Then tell me, and I will promise not to kill you.”
       “Heh…” he says, looking nervously in his lap. He cleans off his glasses with a purple cloth. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”
       “Wise.” He tucks the cloth into the breastpocket of his white labcoat and puts his thin lenses back on his withered face. “Spit it out,” she commands.
       “Look, Ash. I can’t do this in the way you want me to.” Ash was already looking at him, but now she looks at him harder. She still hasn’t promised not to kill him. Therefore, it wouldn’t have been a lie. “It’s not possible. Nobody could. I could write a script for a new AI to do the work for me, and it wouldn’t be able to. Heh,” he chuckles nervously, fearing what might happen when he says his next words but not knowing how to stop them from coming out of his mouth. He continues, “You and her… You’re too entwined. Not entwined, that’s not the word. It’s like you’re… like you’re a second head. You managed to put her to sleep, to lock her away somehow through a process I don’t really understand… But you haven’t separated her.” He looks her in the eyes. Her dark, black eyes. “If I did this, if I deleted everything that was her and no more, all that would be left is… you. And,” he swallows dryly. “You’re nothing.” He closes his eyes, like he doesn’t want to see his death coming. But when he hears her stir in her seat he opens them very suddenly, scooting backward in his chair. 
       “I’m what? ” Ash says, sitting straight in the white operating chair. She rips the cable out of her head. It ejects satisfyingly. She stands. He still cowers away, but he does not leave. He could flee out the door, send Stalkers after her, try to kill her – but he doesn’t. He seems to think she can be calmed, even after what he said to her, evidenced by the “Settle down” gestures he makes with his ancient and frail hands. 
       “Okay, it was a bad choice of words,” he says, his balding head gleaming under the bright white lights with little beads of fresh sweat. Ash is on him in only three long strides. She puts a metal hand on his wet scalp, grips it tightly, and forces his head against the white painted wall. 
       “And yet, you chose them.” It would be so easy to crush his skull right now. She can feel the strain of his weak bones under her strong fingers. She can see his skin turn red as the quantity of blood escalates in his capillaries under the pressure of her grip. “I watched you think about saying them, I saw you consider the consequences with that nervous gulp, and then you said them. Now, what am I?”
       “Nothing!” He says again. 
       “Stubborn fool.” She starts to squeeze tighter. 
       “Nothing without her!”
       She stops squeezing, but does not let up her grip. She holds him still against the wall, and bends down to get into his face. “What about her?”
       “It’s, it’s like I said! You’re like a second head! You cannot exist without the first! Everything you are is based on her! Gah!” He cries under the force of her fingers. “Please! Let me go!” His cheeks are wet as tears stream from his eyes. Then there is relief as Ash takes a step back from him. He leans forward, puts his head in his hands. “Oh, god, that hurts! ” He screams, feeling his scalp where a bruise is already forming. The skin is raised in a palm-shape as blood wells in the broken capillaries. 
       “Tell me what you mean.”
       “Christ, gimme a minute!”
       “No.” She kicks his shin, very lightly, knowing her flat metal foot will hurt him enough to give him a jolt. He jumps back in his seat, nearly smacks his head against the wall harder than Ash did, and looks at her with complete terror. “Tell me.”
       “Okay! Fuck!” He presses his head with his right hand, checks it for blood, then presses on it again. He sucks air through his teeth, and tears still fall down his face. “But don’t hurt me any more, okay? You–you need me! Nobody else in this office can do what I am going to propose!” 
       “ Speak. ” Ash growls. 
       “Okay,” he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long huff. “Okay. Look. It’s, and you’re gonna hate me saying this but it’s true, it’s like you’re the tumor, not her. You grew and grew and took over, but if I get rid of her like you want, all I have left is… a tumor.” It disgusts her, hearing him say these things. It infuriates her more than anything else, more than the itching feeling in the back of her mind – more so, because it makes sense. It, to her dismay, sounds… right. She wants to kill him even more, but she exercises restraint – her least favorite behavior. “And you, as a tumor – you have no skills. No personality. Nothing! If I delete Reid, and retain Ash, all I have left in here is a bundle of executable files that don’t do anything, because they have nothing to execute!”
       I’ll execute you, she thinks. “Then what do I do?” Ash asks. “This failure is devouring me… I can feel her there, every moment. It is driving me mad. I need her gone. I have ambitions, and I cannot stomach her presence. What do I do to get rid of her?”
       “I…” He looks at her. There is something in his eyes. His voice grows soft. “I can…” He looks down to the ground in defeat, in submission, in thought, Ash doesn’t know. She wants to kill him for even telling her any of this. Searching for a solution was so much more fulfilling than finding there isn’t one. “I can make you forget!” He says, suddenly, looking up at her. There is excitement in his eyes now, in his voice and in his face. “I can make you forget you ever locked her away – no, that wouldn’t work… you’d still remember… oh, ohohoh, Ash – I can make you forget she was ever there in the first place. ”
       “How?” Her interest is piqued. “Will I not remember I had still conquered this body?” 
       “I can edit your recollection! That one, the assassin drone we use, we make him think he’s a human – it’s the only way we can retain a semblance of sanity and control over him. I can do something like that! I can overwrite your memories, tool them to fit a new narrative!”
       She doesn’t like it. A new narrative? It sounds like living in a story, a falsehood. She had to watch her other self recall years of falsehood. It disgusted her, made her sick. If she could she would vomit. “No. I will not live a lie. Think of something else.” She rubs her thumb against her forefinger. 
       “Well, I… but I could make it so it’s you! It’s always been you. It has been, hasn’t it? You’ve always been there. Even, I bet, even when she was a human. I can just make it so… so you think that everything she did, you had done.”
       “Fool. Do you not understand? I came here because I wanted to forget her failures. I wanted a new beginning, to forge a life for myself, to be unsullied by the stain of her weakness and ineptitude.”
       “But, I mean, I…” He looks at the screen just behind her. “Wouldn’t it feel more… satisfying? ” Ash cocks her head, all she can do with a ceramic face to express her interest. “It would give you a sense of… fulfillment, wouldn’t it? Instead of living out some constructed narrative, it would give everything you do from here on out extra meaning. It would be better for you in the long run, too. There’d be a sense of continuity. You could look back on your shared life, your own life, and find it is – at least, when you awake – that it was genuinely yours. Wouldn’t that be better?”
       “Make her failures my own? No.” Disgusting. He doesn’t understand her, he doesn’t understand what she wants.
       “Well, nobody is perfect… we all fail, from time to time. It’s a lesson. We have to learn. And you, I mean, you’ll have a long life of learning ahead of you.” A long life of failure, he means. She feels an itch at the back of her skull, and she looks down at her remaining hand. Maybe nobody gets everything they want. She hates she could even think such a thing. She gets what she wants. She always gets what she wants. But, looking back on just these last few days spent in this body, she has always gotten her way – but she has never quite gotten what she wanted. Hm. Maybe… She can feel the part of her that computes reasoning going into overdrive. Heat starts to mount in her skull as it processes her thoughts, her feelings, her desires. She is going to have to pop a vent in her head to cool the computer off, but just as soon as it becomes necessary the chip slows down. Satisfaction overcomes as she reaches a decision. After all, this feeling is the feeling she has been chasing all along, hasn’t it? All she wants is a permanent sense of satisfaction. If he can give her that, in any form… Maybe she can get what she wants, in the end. 
       “Do it.” Get it over with. Make it end. She wants this ordeal to be over. She starts to understand her other self’s acceptance of her demise, how easily she gave in when she was a head trapped under a billion pounds of rubble, and how easily she accepted the hemlock given to her in the battlefield of her mind. But, at the same time, it makes no sense to her. She has a desire to keep on living. To continue going. To make the many worlds of the Frontier bow before her. To do it with one body, one mind. She wants it all to be hers. How could the other give up so easily on a dream so large, so massive, so fulfilling, so satisfying? Perhaps as easily, yet with as much reluctance, as Ash has now given up on her desire for a new life. As easily as Ash has accepted the failures of the other as her own. 
       Which is to say,
       Not easily at all.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty Five: Coherence

       One thousand six hundred and seventy eight days, reads her chronometer, since her last activity. Four standard years, and seven standard months. It is April, 2720. On Harmony, there would still be snow in the fields. No light enters her eyes, not even after dilating them to their widest point. No light ever would, not under so many thousands of tons of gray concrete that separates her from the earth, and so many millions of pounds of red rock that separates her from the sky. But there is more to the darkness than a mere lack of light. There is a stillness. A staleness to the air. A quietness that pierces her. A loneliness that consumes her. All she can hear is a vibrating hum that comes from somewhere deeper inside the facility. Ash starts to sit up. She feels a tugging at the back of her head. Ash reaches around behind her and tugs. The cable ejects from her port with a satisfying, grinding pop. She sits up all the way, swings herself around, and sets her feet down to the familiar sound of metal on concrete. 
       A single light turns on. 
       The formerly pristine, gleaming white lab is now much duller. A thin coating of gray dust covers every surface. Even her. She sees it settled on her arms, her body, sees it falling from her legs as she steps and loosens it. She shakes herself off but some of it still remains. She can feel it in some of her exposed joints. The last time she needed a bath this badly, she was covered in so much blood – head to toe, front and back, there hadn’t been a part of her that was clean of gore. That was… that was now sixty two years ago. When she first woke up, blood thirsty and insatiable. 
       Set on top of a dusty black rag draped over a dusty white seat is a dust-covered note written in black ink on sky-blue paper. It reads: “Ash. The program repairs took longer than expected. The rest of the IMC remnant fleet is pulling out of Solace, taking us with. Our work here is over. I’ve written a script to finish what I started. The Oxylus AI had corrupted a lot of files. If you’re reading this, then the repairs have been completed. Congratulations. I left a personal craft for you in the south-eastern loading bay. Good luck. Klee.”
       She remembers now. Why she’s here. She remembers Kovorkian, Spyglass, the drone… she remembers it infecting, instantaneously, the local Spyglass systems – she remembers her connection corrupting as she watched those precious memories of her humanity. She remembers coming out of it, her friend Torg trying to rescue her from the clutches of Sarah Briggs herself, she remembers the pink mist he turned into when the fist of that Titan smashed him with one devastating hit. And she remembers the cancer inside of her, a digital tumor in her metal mind, making her feel nothing but hateful spite for herself and those around her. Making her feel insane. Making her believe there were two of her. The memories from those moments are cloudy, files somehow still somewhat corrupted, the program repairs done to her not quite enough to have cleaned her mind to a point of perfection – but done well enough to have cut out the insanity inside of her, to have made her once again herself. Cool. Calculating. Cruel. The way she was always, always meant to be. She balls up the note in her fist and crushes it, drops it, and stamps it with her heel. 
       She notices something on the black rag. A hint of an image. She lifts it, shakes it off. Where the dust has failed to settle on it the fabric is extremely dark, as black as fabric can be. And though much of the cloth has had the gaps in its many fine fibers filled with fallen dust, the logo is still very clear. The downward-pointing black-and-gray-and-green chevrons in a dark, vertical rectangle point to two words printed in bold, white sans-serif font underneath.
       Vinson Dynamics.
       Ash remembers so much more, staring at those letters. The darkness. Slone. Justinia. The way they treated her, like she wasn’t a person, like she was property, like she was a trophy. The humiliation… Then she recalls one thing from her first conversation with the lizard woman. If she could smile she would beam, her lips would expose a mouth full of menacing teeth, and her jaw would open wide to release a laugh as maniacal as was ever laughed as she remembers a hierarchy of needs, and what lies at its apex. The red skull on the dust-coated desk is gone, but the spike still stands proud. Ash snatches it with glee.

       “If you’re back, come find me,” reads the note on a torn blue sheet of paper, purple now under the bright light of a red banner. Ash holds it taught between her fingers, her thumb brushing over the letters. It is slightly wrinkled, with tight creases from where it was folded up inside of the VD sweatshirt left for her in Klee’s office. Night has fallen on Solace, now the capital city is illuminated by street lights, neon signs, and digital advertisements that call to arms the people of this dusty world. There is no IMC, there is no Militia, there is only a hole where a leader should be – and the people, groups, factions, and governments of these petty planets are fighting to decide who gets to put their head in that hole. Ash looks up as words flash across the huge screen before her. “The Syndicate wants You! ” they read. A great beast appears and roars fire, torching the letters before turning into a lizard-like logo, and shrinks toward the bottom of the display. A woman appears out of a yellow backdrop. “Crush the enemy, fight for your future!” She snarls. She looks different, but as the words “Join the Dragon Company Today!” appear in large text above and below her Ash can see it is her. No doubt about it. 
       Vittoria, on display.

       
       The recruiter outside of Komma City is made extremely uncomfortable by her presence. He turns his screen around nervously and in a quivering voice asks, “Like this?” Ash reads what he has written. “Ashley Reed,” is written in fine sans-serif font. 
       “No.”
       “Uh, then, uh, how, uhm, how do you, uh,” 
       “L-E-I-G-H,” she says as he very, very deliberately presses each key so as to avoid making any mistakes. Maybe he knows who she is. Maybe he’s seen other simulacra in action, and doesn’t want to annoy her to a point of violence. Maybe he’s heard things about simulacra and fears what might happen if he lets slip she’s a machine. “R-E-I-D.”
       “G-g-got it,” he says, and presses his enter key with a strange flourish. There is an angry, crass sound from the computer and his eyes go wide with terror, then narrow in focus. “Uh,” he says, confused. “This has never happened before.” Ash cocks her head to one side. “It says you’re already registered?” Convenient. “Hold on, it, uh, it wants me to print out a badge for… the commander’s tent? ” His surprise is written all over his face.
       “Then print it. ” Ash insists, leaning forward just enough to terrify him. 

       It takes time and convincing, a ridiculous amount of both considering her new position, to get her where she wants to go. Few believe she is their new commanding officer even after seeing her badge, yet when they check it and see the list of privileges it offers they are swift to help her in any way they can. In a matter of days she is orbiting the humid, tropical world of Gaea – where some of the fighting is thickest. The Mercenary Syndicate, of which she was a member when she was still in the Apex Predators and is again as a leader in Vittoria’s Dragon Company, has by virtue of sheer numbers been able to decimate the local nationalist forces of several Frontier worlds – but the battle for Gaea has not gone in their favor. The planetary defense is strong, and any forces that make it to the ground are swallowed by wildlife if they aren’t first defeated by the ruthless guerilla warriors that rule the thick island jungles. 
       They do not land on the blue planet, its surface littered with a few green dots and smears, and its deep color covered in a blanket of heavy gray clouds so dense they, at times, appear black. As they approach the fleet of white ships painted with red and yellow livery resting in high, high orbit Ash can see lightning tear across Gaea’s skies. Gaea… for all the grecian influence in the Frontier, this might be the most inapt name ever granted. Maybe it is a joke, since there is so little earth to speak of here. Okeanos, for whom every ocean is named for, seems to be a forgotten deity – or maybe it was too basic, too expected. Or maybe the people here worship the little stretches of earth they have. They seem to have made great use of them. For how little land there might be, Gaea is one of the most prosperous of the Outland colonies, right behind Psamathe, and it is due to that prosperity they have managed to foment a grand defense of their sparse planet. 
       Among nine ships in battle-formation is the Achlys, that sorrowful mist, yet it is not the vessel they dock with. No. In their little transport craft, a souped-up Goblin decorated with the Dragon Company livery, they make contact with a grand vessel: a boxy supercarrier painted with dragons along the hull and licking flames crawling up its four main engines, each one almost as large as the massive warships that surround it. Some of the biggest vessels in the galaxy are dwarfed in its shadow. In only four and a half years, Vittoria has built Ash’s miniscule army into a force to be reckoned with. 
       Ash is led through a maze of steel corridors and halls. The gravity is artificial and strange, perhaps a little heavier than it ought to be. Her feet click and clink as metal meets metal, all the way to the bridge. A wide, oval security door is closed tight before her, two turrets at rest in the ceiling on either side of it with a man and a woman staring at one another directly beneath them, carrying R-97 submachine guns tight to their chests. The little beasts spit little lead bullets from a fiery gullet not unlike the breath of a dragon, yet they are not strong enough to risk piercing the hull of even the lightest craft. They do not ask her any questions, do not require identification, do not even regard her presence – she puts her badge to a scanner in front of the man, and the light turns green as the door makes an equalizing hiss before it slides open smoothly with a magnetic whirring noise. 
       The bridge is a wide half circle. Beneath the angled screens that simulate a window sit officers and helmsmen at their seats, a few with their feet up with nothing to do and the rest working hard at their own blue screens before them. At a high chair in the center of the room, right in front of Ash, is the captain’s seat – holographic projections sit in the air before it, displaying figures, graphs, and even combat footage. The war effort, laid out in charts. 
       “We have to go down there,” a younger woman in white, fitted fatigues and a single black pauldron on her left shoulder states. Her face is stern, her blonde hair slicked back. She stands on the right side of the tall captain’s seat, arguing with whomever sits in it. “It’s not right we just sit here while our comrades die on the ground. We should do something!”
       “And we will!” Ash hears a familiar voice say. Her familiar voice. More confident now, but it had been confident already. “Once we get paid. I know you want to bash skulls, Repentance, but despite the order of words we are a company before we are mercenaries, and companies need money to run. I’m not ordering any of our ships down until we get paid for the last drop we did for the Syndicate heads.” The woman in white, Repentance, stands straight and folds her arms. She shoves her tongue in her cheek, pulls it back, sucks in the flesh of her face, and stares out the display windows. Her left foot taps frustratedly. “Besides,” Ash sees an arm peek out from one side of the chair, the hand held out flat like it is holding a point in conversation. “They aren’t our comrades. They’re our competition. The more of them die, the more we get paid when we start killing.”
       “It’s only about the money to you.” Repentance says, her deep voice full of malice. Ash doesn’t like her already.
       “Like I said. It’s a company.”
       Repentance bares her teeth and snarls. She turns from the chair toward the door and storms off. Lightning flashes across the Gaean sky. “Someone’s here to see you, money-maker,” she barks as she exits. The oval security door shuts behind her. 
       Ash approaches the seat from its left side. 
       She looks up from her chair. 
       “Holy shit,” she says. Ash suddenly is unsure. She had no qualms or worries leading up to this point, she felt as if it would all be fine – they would pick up where they left off, they would continue the work she began. But the weight of four and a half years of sleep is dragging her down. She might collapse under it. Her eyebrows narrow and she looks into her black eyes and asks: “Are you back?”
       “I’m back.” Uncertainty mounts, builds inside of her. She almost feels the dizziness that comes with nausea, until her lips part in a too-wide smile that reveals her two missing canines have been replaced with gold. Vittoria is on her feet, and her arms are wrapped around her. She squeezes tightly. Ash doesn’t know how to react, then her arms come up and hug her in return, as if on instinct. She remembers how it was to hold her mother. Her father. Her brother. She remembers how it was to hold him for the very last time. She holds her now, like that. Like it is the last time, and she doesn’t want it to be. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to see you again,” Vittoria says, backing out of Ash’s arms and bumping against the high back of her captain’s seat. 
       “Likewise,” Ash says dully. “I was surprised to find your note.” Their departure had been straining, rough, and deeply uncomfortable for Ash. Trying to sort out what to do with the contracts she had secured, the sense of duty she had to Vittoria, then divorcing her of her company, the resources she had, and any loyal ties they had made together, all while attempting to keep these digital emotions in check… “Difficult” fails to describe it. Ash recalls the fights between her parents. That day, deep beneath the canyon, she felt like it was her in their shoes. The memories immediately before their business meeting, when she first spoke with Dr. Klee about why she was in his office in the first place, seem fuzzy, unclear – she remembers insisting there was another her … and Vittoria’s frustration with her internment, now, to her, seems absurd.
       “Yeah,” Vittoria scratches the back of her head, looks down at the ground to Ash’s left. “I spoke with Klee after he got you going… he made me see things a little differently. He was a bit of a creep, but, I guess, a good dude.” Vittoria glances around the room, sees some of the officers staring and a few others catching glances. “Let’s go to my quarters. We can talk in private.” She leads her to a rectangular door on the left side of the bridge that opens as she gets close. It looks like a combination of a professional’s office and a teenager’s bedroom. The office is well kept, neat. A computer screen sits on a simple aluminum desk, a slate tablet rests on top of a couple thin file folders. An aluminum bookshelf stands in one clear corner, a few books on business, leadership, and combat strategy sit on its lower levels while trophies and toy figurines fill the rest of them behind a plexiglass door. The living quarters portion, with a bed that folds up into the wall, some low, round chairs arrayed around a lower, round table and a screen embedded in the wall, is the sight of a natural disaster. It looks like photos of a community following a hurricane. Clothes are strewn everywhere, the blankets on the bed are in a rolled heap at the foot, clean clothes on hangers are laid out on the backs of the two chairs while the closet stands effectively empty, and steel trays of dried food sit on the table while the filthy screen plays some kind of garbage reality show.
       “I’m sorry it’s a mess. I’m too busy and too stressed to get to cleaning. I don’t know how you managed to do anything but lead when you were in charge…” She pinches the bridge of her nose. 
       “I didn’t do anything except lead,” Ash says. A strained laugh escapes Vittoria’s thin lips. “What is Repentance’s problem?”
       “Her?” Vittoria says, moving to her desk. She takes a seat in a simple black chair bolted to the floor. “She’s my second in command, but I know she wants the job. I met her… I met her right after the war got started, when Salvonian war parties were going out on these big smash-and-grabs. The only thing those battle-obsessed freaks respect is a better killer. We fought off some Cracked Talon bandits on Boreas. I watched her bite out a man’s throat when she stabbed him and he kept coming at her. I used some of the cash you fronted me to hire her and her guys on, and with her as my second we’ve been doing extremely well.”
       “I think she is going to betray you soon.”
       “As long as I keep her fighting she’ll stick by me. Like I said, I know she wants my job, but she doesn’t do well with the business side of things. Don’t worry about it.” She gives Ash a reassuring look. “It’s good to see you again, Ash,” she says with a sigh as she leans back in her seat. “I missed you, I really did.”
       “I would say I missed you, too, but it has been only a few days for me,” Ash says matter of factly. “But I do regret how frustrating our last conversation was. It could have been more smooth.”
       “That’s alright,” Vittoria says. Lowly. As if it isn’t alright. “I could have been more understanding. You were going through a lot.” It sounds like she is repeating something someone else told her. “I’m just glad we were able to work things out professionally.” This seems like the only statement in the last four sentences she truly believes herself. “I miss fighting with you, piloting for you. I mean, you were always a woman of few words, but, man – those were some fights! Battling the Militia, taking on the IMC, going up against Titans!” She looks up into a dark corner. Ash can see nuclear explosions playing against the backs of Vittoria’s eyes, hear the sounds of chainguns firing through Vittoria’s ears. Ash has been in hundreds of battles like those, they’ve sort of lost their luster – but recalling them here, now, with Vittoria; it is like going through them with a fresh perspective. They were special. They were fun. They were beyond anything else: exciting. “I just don’t get to do that shit anymore, haven’t had anyone daring enough to hire us on when the fighting was small and now that the battles are big I’m in no position to go to ground.” She looks down into her lap. She picks her thumb nail with her other thumb nail.
       “I understand. Under Blisk’s command, we Predators took more managerial positions. Kane called us the Apex Operators. All of us were hard-pressed to find the time to step in personally, but when we did…” Standing so tall in a weapon so powerful, so threatening, even warships shied from your blows. There was no feeling quite like the satisfaction of steel on steel, the reverberation of a gun as big as a car in the mech’s hands, the glee of being the better pilot. “There was hell to pay.”
       “Speaking of Blisk,” is all she has to say, and Ash falls silent. She looks her in her eyes, as blue as the Gaean sky. Her voice is as grim as the dark clouds that populate it. “He’s been looking for you.”
       “Why?” Ash asks, a sense of urgency in her voice. “How do you know?”
       “He came to find me, last time I was on Solace, like, a year ago. When the last of the IMC was pulling out.” She opens a drawer, rummages around in it a little, then pulls out a card. “Gave me one of these.” She tosses it on the desk. It’s larger than a playing card but the same titanium white, with a fat red stripe ending in a triangular point taking up most of the space inside of it. On it is a demonic skull, with two curving ram’s horns inside of a gray circle. At its top it reads APEX in a scratchy, scribbly font Ash always found childish. Ash picks it up, feels the familiar weight. She remembers being handed her own card. “I was honored,” Vittoria says, summing up Ash’s feelings upon receiving hers when she still had the flesh to feel the surface. “Then he started asking me about you.” Her tone is low, sincere. “I’m not an idiot. I figured he figured he could only get me to talk if he got me to change my loyalties.”
       “He didn’t say why he was looking for me?”
       “Of course not. He didn’t say who hired him, nothing like that, and I asked. I asked subtly, I asked directly. He just wanted to know the last place I saw you.”
       “What did you tell him?”
       “I told him the truth. Last place I saw you was there, on Solace.”
       “What else?”
       “All lies,” she says with a smile. She tongues one of her golden teeth. “Told him we did a little delivery for some IMC corpo, which is true, but when he asked me if I knew which one I lied and said no. Told him you left me on the ship, had to handle it alone. He asked if I remembered about when that was, told him it was a while ago but I couldn’t say exactly when – been an exciting time for me and the Dragon Company.”
       “Did he know anything about how you came by your ship?”
       “He didn’t ask or say anything, so, I don’t know.”
       “He knows you were lying.”
       “Oh, come on, Ash – of course he does! That guy’s a pro, but I don’t think he knew that I knew that he knew, ya know?”
       “Mmm…” Ash says, disagreeing but not having the heart to tell Vittoria she is not even half as clever as Blisk ever was. 
       “What are you going to do?”
       “I do not know,” Ash answers honestly. What is there to do? Blisk is a hunter, a relentless hunter. He chased the traitor MacAllan for months and would have killed him if the cowardly weasel hadn’t locked himself in the reactor room on Demeter, and he hounded Graves for years until the Predators were hired by General Marder for the ARES Division. If he is still looking for Ash, he’ll find her. But why would he be looking for her? To hire her again? No, if he was, he’d have told Vittoria. Then, she remembers the spike in her pack. It’s Justinia. She remembers liberating herself from that woman’s grasp and, in the process, tearing her down and ruining her imperial, corporate aspirations. Ash remembers the words she said as she was dragged away by Vinson Dynamics security: “If you think I can’t hire my own mercs, you’re gonna be sorely fucking mistaken!” Would she really have hired Blisk for the job? Of course she would, the woman is exactly as base and petty as that. And Blisk would certainly accept the contract; if he learned she was still alive, he’d be more than interested in the challenge. “You kill me, you’re better. I kill you, I’m better,” ring his words in her head.
       “You could join up with me.” Vittoria interrupts her thoughts. “We could protect you. I know he’s good, but,” Good? Ash thinks. He’s the best . Vittoria continues, “But we have an army. A fleet. You stay up here with me, the only way he’s getting through us is if he brings one of his own. And I don’t know if you know this but, since he and the Preds dipped out on Gridiron they haven’t been recruiting as much lately. They’re all big in the Syndicate, but in the public eye they’re more like All-Time Greats, celebrated as past players. I don’t think he’s got the guys to bring to bear.”
       “I can’t.” Ash says. 
       “Why not?” It hurts her.
       “He’ll kill you.”
       “I just said…” It hurts her more.
       “He has a fleet. Your fleet. ” Her words are like venom. If she had teeth it would seethe through the gaps in green bubbles. Vittoria is about to say something but Ash continues. “The Syndicate includes private companies and individuals now, but when it began well before I ever joined the Predators it was known as the Mercenary Syndicate. It functioned like a worker’s union, namely in that members couldn’t compete against one another. Jobs that conflicted with this rule were dealt with in a different way. This same group is the coalition your Dragon Company belongs to now. And as the leader of the Apex Predators, Blisk is one of the many heads of the organization. He probably knows or will know soon that I registered with your company.” Like a fool, she thinks. “I would think the only reason I’m still alive at all is because of this ongoing communications blackout.” They never fixed it. They never stopped Oxylus. Even in the furthest reaches of human space, at the fringes of habitable systems, Spyglass has been defeated. 
       “He doesn’t control me. This is my company. If he wants us to go after you…”
       “He’ll go after you if you don’t.”
       “Then I’ll fight him. I’ll take him on with everything I have.” She’s mad. Her hands are in fists. Her face is getting red. It’s more than loyalty to her, Ash thinks. It’s about what she’s built. This company, these men, this operation… she’s proud of it. She’s loyal to it. She wants to be in charge, she wants to be a leader, she wants the glory that comes with it. “I’ll kill him if I have to. I don’t care. Fuck him.”
       “Listen to me,” Ash says coldly, robotically, menacingly. Like a threat. “He will replace you. He has a candidate already. He has been talking to her for some time now, likely since you lied to him on Solace. This is his mode, this is how he works. I take people apart, he pits them against each other. If you don’t turn me in or give him my location, even if you truly do not know it, he will have you killed and Repentance is the one who will do it. You should kill her now, and tell him I am going to Psamathe.”
       Vittoria is silent. Her lips are pressed together, she is leaned far back in her chair like she is going to slide out of it, and the first knuckle of her finger is pressed to her philtrum. She narrows her eyes in concentration. Ash can see the gears turning in her mind. Then she looks up at Ash, meets her eyes, and sits up suddenly. She takes her finger from her face and slams that hand down on her desk in a fist. “No.” She says. “Repentance is a friend. A comrade in arms, and so are you. I won’t do it.”
       “She isn’t a comrade. She is competition. ” Ash spits. More venom. It is practically spewing from her ceramic mouth. It gets through to her. Her eyes widen, then narrow. She glares at Ash. 
       “Then what about you, huh? What are you to me?”
       “For you? I’m a problem.”
       “I thought you were on my side…”
       “I am.”
       “Then why are you talking to me like this?”
       “Because I am your friend.” Ash remembers the embarrassment of being held like a football, tucked away in Vittoria’s arm. She remembers the look on Justinia’s face when she wouldn’t give her over, how she held her away. “You took care of me in my most vulnerable state. Now, I am taking care of you.”
       “By telling me to betray you?”
       “Yes.”
       “I don’t want–”
       “What do you want, then?” Ash asks. “Do you want friends or do you want to lead?”
       “I want both.”
       “You can’t have both.” The words are hard to say, because they’ve been hard for her to think about. She wants both. She wants friends and power, she wants loyalty and empire, she wants immortality and competition, she wants adoration and submission. But right now, neither of them can have both. The two of them have to choose. “Take what you’ve built, Vittoria. You will find new friends.”
       “Is that really what you think?” She asks. 
       “It is.” Ash says. It cuts deep, like a twinned blade that pierces them both. 
       Vittoria sniffs, touches a finger to her eye. “I’ll, uh, I’ll give you a ship… where are you going to go? What are you going to do?”
       Ash shakes the dusty Vinson Dynamics hoodie Vittoria left her. “What is the state of the corporation?” She asks.
       “Huh?” She sniffs. “Well… I think they went bankrupt a few years ago.” Perfect, Ash thinks. She never gave them the information they wanted regarding simulacrum imprinting. She expected them to send men after her, but holding onto that secret for herself was much too valuable. 
       “In that case, I’m going to kill Justinia.” If she eliminates the holder of Blisk’s contract, he might stop hunting her – and she knows just where to look. Once upon a time those memories were lost, but now she recalls the unfamiliar skyline in Justinia’s offices and knows that she has not only seen it before but she lived there almost her whole, human life.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty Six: Mastery

       She has to be swift, but she has to be sure as well. Taking her time to break her down, ruin her mentally, and instill that impending sense of defeat and doom, to let it ferment like a fine wine as red and dark as can be… she simply doesn’t have the luxury. Nor, however, can she afford to rush this. Fulfillment, satisfaction, and satiation requires eating a meal slowly, deliberately. Enjoying it with every bloody bite. Furthermore she can’t afford to make any mistakes, running and gunning like an action hero impervious to damage. If she takes a hit and it slows her down it gives her prey enough time to escape, to call Blisk, and finish her. The price of failure is too high.
       So Ash watches, with the little time she has. It will take a day or two before Kuben hears she was sighted on Solace, and it will take some more time before he confirms she went to the Dragon Company. Three days, Ash figures. Three days to sort it all out. It would be better if she had a little longer. Five days of psychological torture would be ideal, but not all things can be perfect, can they? She watches the blue and green building, void of any hard angles and faced in smooth, rounded panels. An apartment complex full of people whose individual net-worths could change the lives for the downtrodden and hopeless on several worlds forever for the better, or contribute to their suffering in ways they never could have imagined. Yet even considering the figures of those who reside in this building here, under the shadow of Olympus, these people have nothing compared to those who live in the other buildings that rise even higher above them, that crowd out the sun and leave this tower home looking like a quaint, dwarfed little dwelling for the common poors. These people… they have no idea what it is really like out there. Outside their doors, on the actual streets, in the gutters. 
       Ash watches. Dull, gray midday light filters through thick clouds that float between the tops of high rises and shroud their peaks like cloaked mountains. Ash crouches on her perch, the corner of a building close to the blue and green Seafoam Supreme Living Complex. Light rain patters against the gray plastic cloak that covers her entirely. She peers out at the balcony, like a gargoyle, where men in black raincoats stand, look out into the misty distances, and then shuffle back inside for the next man to shuffle out and do the same. Every few rotations a pair of Specters make a round of the complex as well. When she sees a pair of black cars come to drop off fresh guards and pick up the tired dozen that have been patrolling by floating up quietly to a little pad at one end of the large balcony, a plan begins to form. 
       She watches still, as raindrops collect on her hood and drip down her back or fall in front of her eyes. For another eight hours nothing seems to happen. The windows are thick and shaded, she can’t see inside, but even then… no lights come on or go off, no shades open or shut, no food is delivered. Besides the guards, there seems to be no evidence of any life inside. It’s just an empty house. 
       Then what are they guarding?
       Ash descends the building on its far side, hiding herself and her movements from the guards inside. With little bursts from her jump kit she is able to hold herself against the side of the building as she slides down it, leaving wispy lines along the granite-looking facade with the tips of her fingers, the edge of her knee, and the toe of her foot. When she is near the bottom she engages the kit again and wraps around the corner to drop into the darkness of the close-quartered alleyway between hers and another gray, brutalist style building. The rain starts to pick up as Ash crosses a street busy with cars but void of pedestrians. The only evidence of life on the street levels in Psamathe comes, typically, from the worst off – people in yellow, red and blue tents hide from the weather and from the world as best as they can. Folk who couldn’t hack it here, who struggled against the incredible cost of living on this ultra-rich planet, and who now, ultimately, subside on whatever floats to the bottom. Today, Ash thinks, they may just feast on whalefall. 
       She crosses the blue and green paneled Seafoam Supreme Living Complex, passes it entirely, and makes a slow walk up along the levels of an utterly massive parking garage. Advertisements for meaningless products and mercenary companies shine brightly in the half-light of the concrete column that corkscrews upward to carry her to a point just a few stories below her quarry. The rain is still coming down. The roof of the parking garage is notably different from the rest of it, featuring grasses in tight green patches, park benches beneath trees that sit in carefully raked stones to create perfect, mesmerizing swirling patterns, all of it looking like a dozen miniature parks placed between delicate, clean, clear spaces where cars that cost as much as a Titan sit in the weather. The rain creates a peaceful, meditative sound as it hits the stones, patters off of the tree leaves, and smacks against the hoods of cars. A man stands under one of the trees in a black suit, carrying a black umbrella and vaping out of a black device. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention to Ash, even as she lowers her hood and lets the rain hit the steel on her head. She looks up toward the sky and feels drops explode on her ceramic face. She angles her head downward again and as she does, she catches it: a light turns on in a thin window on the floor directly above the balconied level. After two minutes the light shuts off and a bigger one at the very edge of the building activates then turns off again, seen only for a brief moment by the light escaping at the corners of the shade pulled over the window. 
       She’s home, and she’s already afraid. 
       Perfect. 
       Ash walks down the long, corkscrew path, crosses the street again, and comes to the Seafoam Supreme complex once more. She looks up. The rain is falling even harder. The building’s facade is quite slick. Climbing straight up doesn’t seem possible – but another trick is, an old one she learned early on to develop her skills as a Pilot. There is an alley on the back side of the building, filled with hopeless refuse and garbage. Ash convinces a bum to move herself by giving her a meaningful stare, and begins her long ascent upward. She jumps from one wall to the other, again and again, using her kit to gain momentum and store it for the spring backward to keep going up, and up, and up. She knows exactly how many feet up she has to go and she knows exactly how many she has traveled so far. She climbs about two floors above her objective and then leaps out into the open air, hundreds of feet above the ground, spins and engages her jump kit on a long burn that pushes her at an angle back toward the building’s facade. The distance is perfect, her landing on the sheer wall is timed expertly so she hits it lightly and can keep her forward momentum. Her kit fires continually, the jump jets strapped to her lower back keep burning at an angle to maintain her balance on the wall. As she loses speed and starts to flag she fears momentarily she will fall very, very far but another part of her knows all of the tricks to keep herself upright. She leaps from the wall, giving her jump-kit just a moment to recompress a miniscule amount of fuel and cool ever so slightly, and then boosts back toward the glass wall, regaining her momentum to continue the push forward. She makes it to the other side in no time at all. Anyone occupying the rooms she has just sprinted across must be in awe and terror at her prowess. She expects Seafoam Supreme Security to go on alert at any moment. 
       She rounds the far corner and finds herself just beneath another balcony. It shoots out of the Seafoam Supreme complex in a straight pad of concrete, but there are three wide girders that hold it up. Bird spikes line them but even so, a nest has been fashioned inside the lower corner of the nearest support. A Psamathine Pidgeon, what is essentially a feathered lizard in all respects, sits inside of it. Ash might have avoided disturbing it but her jump kit is overheating and if it enters a cooldown period while she is still up here she will very likely end up down there, far below, and have to consider the consequences of her mistakes the whole time she is falling. The lizard screams at her, then flies off as she curls up inside the girder, leaving a few pink speckled eggs behind. Ash hears a “Huh?” from below her and she does her best to make herself small, unseen. 
       “It was just a bird, man,” 
       “I dunno…”
       “Come on, man. What are you gonna do? Just stare up at that thing until you see something? Those lizards steal each other’s nests all the time and I see them fight, like, constantly. Let’s get back to our rotations. It’s getting cold as shit.”
       “It looks like…”
       “God damn it dude, if you’re just gonna stare at that stupid nest I’m gonna call you Bird Brained for the rest of our contract. Alright?”
       “Lady’s paranoid as shit, bro. Maybe there’s something to it, is all I’m thinking.”
       “These paranoid freaks always seem convinced, but there’s never anything. Half my jobs for a paranoid schizo like this chick end cause they off themselves. But you wanna keep looking up there for some dumb bird, I’ll let ya. Hope you catch a cold, Bird Brain.”
       A few seconds later, Ash hears Bird Brain say in a very low voice: “What the hell happened to the other half, then?”
       Ash considers how very funny it would be to say “Something like this,” and drop on him, but that would not mesh with her plan. She fiddles with her dataknife, the superior tool in brute-force hacking, and waits for her opportunity. Despite the light wind and the heavy rain, Ash listens closely to Bird Brain as he stands, shuffles, and searches for whatever it was that tipped his senses. He shivers in the cold, takes a seat on one of the benches on the huge balcony that sports more trees like the ones on the park-roof of the garage across the street. He watches diligently for any signs of any thing. Ash commends him – he is the kind of guard she would have hired. Her prey might be safe if the rest of them were like him, but it is plain to see they aren’t as they come out of the apartment on their rotations and snicker at him for his persistence.
       Even the Specters seem unimpressed by his vigilance. As they move on their own slow rotation one of them stops and asks in a deep, digital voice “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
       “I thought I saw something,” says Bird Brain. 
       “WHAT DID YOU SEE?”
       “I don’t know… something, alright?”
       “GET BACK TO YOUR ROTATION.”
       “But, I– ah, screw it.” He says. Ash peaks over the edge of the girder. He mutters, “No point in arguing with a robot…” 
       The specters wait for him to go back on his route, slightly disconnected from one another. Ash’s timer says it is almost time for the next shift to arrive. Now is the moment. She acts quickly, dropping from the support and landing eighteen feet below softly, silently, and sneakily. The Specters don’t hear. They start to enter the building through the second door opposite Ash. As the first one goes in, Ash sprints quietly toward the second. She scrapes a small pebble. There is a momentary sensation in her absent stomach that belies failure as the sound is enough to alert the Specter. It turns its head and begins to turn its whole body, but Ash is already on it. Confidence restored as she puts her hand on the side of its rectangular head and forces it away from her, then slams the dataknife into the back panel. The circuitry, hidden inside the length of the short blade, ejects and fills the thin slot. The specter makes a kind of grumbling sound. A hologram projects from the rear of the knife and Ash thumbs the scroll wheel at the knife’s base to the desired program – “Remote Control” and toward a secondary option of “Network Effect.” A little yellow bar starts to turn blue and as it turns completely the Specter shivers, shakes, and then stands straight. Its companion inside does the same. She pushes the Specter off of the knife as she pulls it out, then scrambles over the edge of the balcony as she hears a voice behind her coming through the other door at her back. 
       Hiding under the balcony again, she hears another conversation. “I told you it was a waste of time, man.”
       “I can’t believe you seriously got them all to call me Bird Brain. That’s never going away, is it?”
       “Nah, dude, probably never. You shoulda listened to me. We just do our rotations, look intimidating, and then go home. It’s an easy job if you let it be easy.”
       “I don’t know if I want it to be easy.”
       “Look, I know we’re hired security but, come on. Do you really want to die for this chick? She sucks. I want to go home alive. If that means letting some super assassin through to kill her while I look like an idiot, that’s fine by me.”
       “Christ, dude. You really care that little?”
       “Yeah. I kinda can’t believe you care so much, man.” There is a brief silence. Then he says, “But hey. Don’t go telling anyone else I said all that. Alright? I like this job. Pays good. Better than anything else on this expensive-ass planet. I’ve got kids. Bills. Don’t screw me on this.” A beat, then Ash hears something. Like he’s grabbing the other man, roughly. “Hear me?”
       “Jesus, dude. I hear you.”
       “Good.”
       The second door opens, and the two of them go through it. 
       A pair of black cars sidle up to the unloading pad above her and to her left.
       Ash, with one hand, digs up under her gray plastic cloak and pulls out a small slate tablet with a blue screen. On it she can see what the two Specters see, as well as their orders, current status, and objectives. They are in the kitchen, passing a guard who is shuffling tiredly toward the cars. Ash holds the tablet between her legs and runs a cable from it to her head for direct control. 
       It is an odd sensation. A human mind would be able to manage it, but it would take some time to get used to it and can result in extreme motion sickness. Ash has no trouble adjusting. She sees a triple vision, one where she looks out at the slackening rain in the dull Psamathine evening as she sits on a girder supporting her target’s balcony and another two where she sees inside of a sleek, wood-paneled apartment with dark, matte black appliances. Men and women in black suits, some with black plastic raincoats, pool near the exit to get onto their sleek shuttles while the new group piles out of the black cars and meander toward the door nearer to the two Specters. Ash directs Specter #1 to head out the kitchen door, and Specter #2 to stand just within. 
       And there they are. Thirty-two guards all dressed in black. All with their defenses lowered. Talking, joking, sighing, wishing the day was over already. A boring job for a shit, paranoid boss. They don’t even react as both Specters lift up their Volt submachine guns with the Vinson Dynamics logo plain to see on the inside and level them. Then, one man looks at Specter #1 standing outside and says “What’s with this thing?” in a casual, joking tone while pointing at it as if to say “Get a load of this guy.”
       The Specters open fire. High energy rounds burn holes through their plastic raincoats and dark suits. Where the energized bullets hit flesh the skin cooks, boils, and vaporizes, exposing muscle and bone. As the nearest guards fall, the ones in the back start to draw up their CAR submachine guns and RE-45 auto pistols. Some of them get shots off, but dying men fall in front of them, or they get struck themselves, or they just simply miss in the frey. The two flying cars pull away and duck down, falling sideways and then peeling off through the air in an expert escape. They’ve practiced letting their coworkers die before. Ash watches as blue rounds pass over her head and collide with the windows of the building across from her, where she sat like a gargoyle. Now that the watcher is away, the evil has come to prey, she thinks. 
       The specters have to reload. They each only carry one gun. They eject their mags smoothly, cooly, and load up a pair of new ones precisely, and far too slowly. The few survivors on each side, those unwounded but shocked and those with burning holes in their chests but still able to breathe, get it together and start shooting back. Ash sees four and five targets left per Specter. The drones take multiple hits from several targets but the shooters are terrified, confused, and in states of extreme pain or brutal disability. The Specters are able to take out two more each after they reload before going down. Specter #2 inside takes damage to its battery pack and explodes in a cloud of toxic gas. Ash disconnects and hears one of the guards trying to get organized, get it together, and bring the surviving wounded outside where the gas hasn’t spread. He is dragging a screaming woman while two of his other coworkers start to patch the injuries of the others. The camera on Specter #1 is still operational, but even without it Ash would know exactly where her victims lie.

       The gasses are still spilling from the wreckage of Specter #2 when Ash finally enters the apartment. There are a lot of bodies in her way, and there are conflicting feelings inside of her skull. It feels like it was all a waste. None of these people even wanted to be here. She wonders if she could have convinced them to let her through. But another part of her only sees the bodies as obstacles. People in her way. People paid to be in her way. Imbeciles who would have thought the thirty of them could have easily taken her on and died anyway, and maybe at the cost of her own personal liberty. She looks up to the next floor, toward the hallway her quarry resides in. She steps over a corpse. 
       Justinia’s apartment is nice. Her style. Simple yet elegant. Extremely clean. It looks like nobody lives here, has ever lived here. Like it only exists in photographs listed on the Seafoam Supreme’s website. Ash ascends attractive wooden stairs with a smooth, black rectangular railing. There is an open space on her right once she reaches the top that looks out over a sunken living room with black leather furniture aimed at a huge, black TV screen that has a single bullet hole in it from Specter #2’s dying shots. The windows next to it have bloodied shades pulled down over them, with holes burned through that let in a small amount of dim gray light. 
       Ash turns toward the hallway. The brown wooden floor stretches down it lengthwise, giving it a much longer look. A thin black runner made of a furry looking fabric lines it. There are six black doors, three on either side, but Ash knows which one she needs. She starts down the hall and hears, faintly, a voice. “Pickuppickuppickup…” it chants, then elatedly, like this was its last hope in the whole world come true, it shouts “Yes! It’s on! Screw you, Blisk – wait, voicemail? Fuckit– she’s here! Help me, you expensive bastard!”
       What’s on? Ash wonders, and finds out exactly what very suddenly as the wood paneling and black door explode outward at the end of the hall in a burst of dust and debris that fade as red lights shine at her, and two giant cylinders start to glow blue and menacing with crackling electrical energy. 
       “EAT IT, ASH!” She hears from inside the busted room.
       The Reaper drone charges at her, its huge frame tearing at the walls with every lumbering step. Before it is on her, Ash has time to think “How did she even get it up here?” 
       The Reaper slams a heavy fist down in front of her, an arc of electricity following the flow of the arm and snapping the whole way. There is an explosion of energy. Her vision becomes fuzzy for a moment as it passes through her. Ash leaps backward, trying to get some space between her and it. With one hand buried in the floor it uses the other to shoot bolts of blue lightning at her. They miss, but the arcs that reach out like tendrils as the bolts pass her cause more distortions in her vision and force unnatural, involuntary movements. She nearly catches one in the arm as the previous one caused her to jerk inconveniently. She should have taken a gun, should have grabbed one from one of the dead guards below her or scavenged from the Specters – but even then, those weapons would do very little here against a Reaper. She designed them that way. She needs a more open area, she needs cover, she needs bigger weaponry – but she doesn’t have any of those. The best place to fight it would be down in the living room but she needs it to stay right where it's at to deter Justinia’s escape. The Reaper stops shooting and tries to stand, it uses its firing arm to push at the ground as it pulls the other stuck in the floor. Ash uses this opportunity to push forward but as she gets close it pulls its arm out and brings both cannons to bear. The bolts crackle overhead as Ash turns her sprint into a slide, slipping under its massive legs. The thing is just a miniature Titan with a Specter’s head controlling it – but the armor on its huge upper torso is designed to cover the required hacking port. This was hardly an oversight, it was intentional. Ash simply never considered she would be fighting one of these monsters with just her hands. 
       The Reaper turns on her as Ash comes to her feet, tearing up the walls even further, firing the whole time. Ash dodges, dashes sideways, but the volume of fire is too much. When the bolt hits her, it is like fireworks inside of her skull. System alerts come from every conceivable diagnostic sensor she has. Her sensorium scrambles. She isn’t able to make sense of anything. Her vision is black. The reports keep coming. She feels like little more than a sentient calculator at this point, left with nothing but her thoughts. Thoughts of failure. Of defeat. Is this death – real death? Is this what it was like for her? The human her, in those moments after the mind had been copied and all that there had been left to do was let the body die? Trapped in herself, her mind going, her senses fading, experiencing the chemical breakdown of her brain, her spirit slowly consumed by decomposition? Then there is a break, a lull, and a loud systemic stress alert informing her that her body is under immense pressure. Her eyes come back in a digital blur, clearing up as connections are restored, and she is looking up at the ceiling with its dull little lightbulbs. The Reaper takes up the lower half of her vision, and on her right side she sees a blurry face that comes into focus as her aperture eyes adjust.
       “Yeah, Blisk? If you’re getting this, I’ve got her. Get here now, or your contract’s finished.”
       “Justinia.”
       “Oh, Christ, you’re awake.” She looks a combination of satisfied and terrified. 
       “I am.”
       “Crush her, until she can’t hurt me any more.”
       “CRUSHING.” The Reaper confirms in a deep voice. 
       The stress alert screams at her again. The strain on her body is too much. The strain on her ego is too much. It is so much slower, and yet so much like, getting crushed by that wretched pilot Jack Cooper. Ash can’t take it. She might just shut down to spare herself the embarrassment of dying like this again. Let Blisk finish her off in silence. If she is pathetic enough to be defeated so ridiculously once again she deserves it. His words ring out in her mind. You kill me, you’re better. I kill you, I’m better. She hears it again: I’m better. I wish I was, she thinks. I wish I was better.
       Then she sees it, behind the CARAPACE STRESS WARNING display in her vision. She hides the alert. A cable. The hydraulic cable that controls its foot. A robotic vein. Her right arm is free. It jerks and jangles. 
       “Oh, god – where’s my gun, where’s my gun, I just had it…” Justinia runs back into her room. Her hair is a mess, she is dressed in a lilac robe and white pajamas, and her face is an unmade reflection of pure terror. Ash gets her arm under control as the Reaper starts to push her through the floor. She wonders which will give out first – her shell, or the reinforced wood and steel? She wraps her fingers around the hydraulic cable and tugs. Pulls hard. She doesn’t have a good angle. She grips it again, a different way, and pulls upward like she is lifting a dumbbell. She feels it giving. She feels herself giving. Flattening. Flatlining. 
       And then she is covered in dark, amber fluid. Hot like blood. It shoots out of the thick black cable and coats the walls, the ceiling. Even sprays a little on Justinia fifteen feet away at her desk, looking for her gun. The pressure in its leg starts to weaken. The mini-Titan starts to falter. Ash feels the weight start to shift to the other leg for balance. It raises an energized hand to blow her head off, but Ash gets a grip under its leg and pushes it off kilter. It lands like it is falling into a low chair, right on its shining metal ass. Ash scoots back. It tries to shoot her again. Ash dashes forward. Gets inside of its space, between its arms. She starts to pull at its head, tries to tear it off. It swings at her, hits her hard with a cylindrical fist, sends her into the heavily damaged wall but it fails to loosen her hold. It goes to hit her again but Ash grips the top of its head and pulls herself away from the blow, throwing herself around in a wide spin. She’s on its back now. Justinia is screaming “WHERE IS MY MOTHER FUCKING GUN!” Over and over again. The Reaper tries to shoot at her, but merely blows apart the black paneled ceiling. 
       There is a huge vent under her, radiating extreme amounts of heat as the Reaper lashes out and Ash is ripping into it, tearing the thin aluminum apart and trying to get at the insides. Then she feels the huge back portion shift. She raises up slightly on her elbows, looks under her and sees the Tick launcher start to activate. It fires one up. It hits her hard in her heavily damaged abdomen, sends her up toward the ceiling and back in front of the Reaper’s face. It tries to grip her in a tight hug but fails as Ash brings up her legs and swings herself back. The Tick is expanding its spherical head. She can hear that the detonation system is primed as it makes a high-pitched whining noise. The legs start to unfold. Ash still has a hand inside the Reaper’s vent. It tries to shoot at her some more. The bolts of electricity impact her vision, but as it twitches uncontrollably she sees it is taking internal damage as well. Ash lets go of the vent, slides a little down the Reaper’s back, grabs the Tick with both hands, and jams her feet into the rear of the launcher. The Reaper starts to throw its body forward to get her to fly off but Ash has the launching mechanism held firmly between her thighs. She lifts the Tick overhead, sees the glow as the internals start to overheat and it prepares to detonate, and she shoves the Tick hard into the launching port. Ash unfolds her legs and leaps backward with the single second she has, and as she soars away from the Reaper the Tick detonates, along with the other four still in the launcher. 
       The resulting explosion is so quick and so forceful it nearly sends Ash clean out the far window at the opposite end of the hall. She can feel the rain on her back, and inside dust and smoke stir once she crawls out of the thick glass as wind enters through the gap made by her body. Sprinklers go off inside. An alarm blares annoyingly, and white lights pulse from the red register at the end of the hall, visible through the smoke that pours off the demolished corpse of the Reaper. The walls are completely destroyed. Burned, blackened, beaten down, blown out, and filled with bits of buried metal. Ash limps down the dark hall, forces her broken body forward and climbs over the burning corpse of the dead Reaper.
       Justinia is hidden behind her desk that was knocked over after the explosion. Her back is against the window. Her eyes leak tears, her nose spews snot, and her ears drip blood. Her face is raw from the heat. Blisters are forming at her cheeks and on her nose. She has a phone with a cracked screen in one hand, and a Wingman in the other. She tries to lift it up, but it’s too much gun for her. Ash, standing over her, kicks it aside. Justinia blubbers, cries, and spits a little vomit, blood, and saliva out onto her chin. “Why?” She asks. 
       “Why?” Ash clarifies. Justinia nods, wincing. Ash crouches, bends down. “You humiliated me, Justinia. You treated me like property. You still consider me property, don’t you? That’s why you had Blisk track me down.” Justinia looks away, looks toward one of the shaded windows. “Only…” Ash puts a finger on her chin and makes her look at her cold, blank face. “He couldn’t find me, not in time. Could he?”
       “No,” Justinia spits a little more blood. 
       “Now I’m going to do what you did to me.”
       “I… I saved you…” she gurgles. “I gave you…” she coughs, “everything you…” she sucks in a weak breath, “ever wanted…”
       “I was going to give you everything you ever wanted. I built the army. I had Spyglass’ secrets. I held the keys to immortality. If you had been smarter, you could be running things here, in the Outlands. You could be spearheading the fight, instead of the Mercenary Syndicate. Because of me.” Justinia spits more blood, and jerks as she sobs. “And now you won’t have any of that because you were cruel to me. Because you didn’t trust me. Because you viewed me as a thing, not the marvel that I am.” Ash reaches into a pocket, right above her jump kit. The base is a little squished from the crushing she endured, and the pillar has lost its straight, imposing shape but as she holds it in front of Justinia the fear she sees in her eyes is just as satisfying as she expected it to be. More so, truly. A sort of anxiety starts to form within her, but she dismisses it as anticipation. She slams the spike down on the ground between Justinia’s legs. “Remember this? I brought it all the way here from Solace.” Ash grips the woman’s head with both hands, one under her chin and the other on her scalp. Justinia starts to beg, Ash can hear “Nonononono” through her clenched teeth. She pushes through the odd feeling in her nonexistent stomach, the small, whimpering voice that asks what am I doing? She twists, hard to the right. “Just.” She twists further. “For.” She twists again. “You.” Her head has come all the way around. Ash rises, puts a foot on her chest, and pulls hard. The head comes off with a thick pulse of blood, covering her, covering Justinia, mingling with the hydraulic fluid that coats them both. Ash holds the head up high, cradling it with her right hand well over her own head, her fingers digging under the flesh in her severed neck. Blood drips down her arm and pours out of the open wound. It coats her face. A tear trickles down Justinia’s blistered cheek. 
       “Perfection,” she says in revelry. The tear falls from Justinia’s bloody chin and lands on her ceramic face.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty Seven: The Mountaintop

       Snow falls from white clouds. The air is clear, blue, if not for the flecks that litter it and the gray clouds in the distance that shroud the rising heights of thousands of incredible buildings, made known only by the red and green lights at their peaks and the yellow lights that shine through their innumerable windows to pierce the dull that hides them. From her seat the air whistles by her in intense rushes, its extremely cold temperature enough to bring her steel skin to freezing. As she looms on her snowy perch over the bright verdant, green fields that stretch out below her, the gold-lined buildings that rise around her, the white walls that hold them, and the unending gray expanses beyond the red-tipped turbines that hold her and this floating city up Ash watches a single snowflake drift from somewhere up on high until it lands softly and without a sound on her cold, steel flesh to freeze instantly, joining hundreds of other slow falling flakes in a rough, icy shell along her forearms and legs. 
       She looks from her coated left arm to the thing she holds between her metal hands: Justinia’s severed head. The whites of her eyes are now filled with red blood, and her face is still peeled back in the expression of painful shock and horror she had when Ash ripped it from her shoulders. She ponders it like a wizard ponders an orb, and considers her victory there on Psamathe. Victory over Justinia, over humanity, over life itself. It felt so good, so intensely splendid, so satisfying she could hardly have described it – like serenity, like it had all come to an end. That was it.
       But that feeling vanished as quickly as it came. Replaced by guilt, replaced by shame. What had she won? What was this? Victory over Justinia? Please. The woman hardly suffered, she hardly felt the humiliation Ash wanted her to feel. Victory over humanity? Ridiculous. There they are, many of them still living their little lives in the gray wasteland that is Psamathe and spread out, the trillions of them, among the stars. Victory over life itself? Is killing a woman, killing a man, killing anyone tantamount to victory over life? If so, it is not a bar high enough to warrant merit. And now, sitting here, wallowing on the apex of Olympus’ central peak, she can hardly say that she has bested life – for she fails to live. No friends. No enemies. No subjects. No company. No conquest. Nothing and nobody. Alone she sees what constitutes a person is not how much they have done but who they are in comparison to other people. And she is, despite everything, a person. Yet here, alone, covered in ice, standing on the mountaintop, there is no one to compare herself to. To work with. To go up against. To prove who she is, what she is, that she is better or worse than any other. 
       She looks out again at the green fields held aloft in a steel basin, all of it beneath the shadow of the monstrous central turbine wreathed in gray stone coated in a thin layer of snow and ice. She picks up Justinia’s head and holds it at arm’s reach. Frost already clings to her eyelashes, and her dead gaze has a lifeless quality to it. She feels disappointed that she let herself go to such lengths for such a lowly foe. She feels disgusted she acted like this. She’s achieved everything she set out to achieve: she has her memories. She has her freedom. She has the head of her enemy on a spike. And still, she has nothing but a worthless, disgusting trophy. Looking into the cloudy, bloodied pupils of her enemy, Ash makes a dissatisfied “Eugh” sound right as she tosses the blood-crusted head down the side of the Olympus’ only mountain peak. 
       She stands. Ice cracks along her joints and sloughs from her skin in sheets. A Phantom fighter jet, a waspy vessel painted white with the blue and green Malta City Police livery, zooms just below but it doesn’t seem to actually see her. There are half a dozen of them searching the Olympian airspace, while other officers zip around on Trident hovercrafts, three to a piece and brandishing Flatline assault rifles. Most of them are content to look for her on its northern edge where her ship crashed in her escape. The MCP had locked down her Goblin granted her by Vittoria on leaving her flagship, and her only choice was to steal an old Militia Hornet in the process of refueling at the city central dock – though truthfully it had just started, and didn’t have enough fuel to even jump her out of atmosphere. She tried to stay inside the city streets, but with so many foes chasing her relentlessly and hounding her beyond the cover of building walls she was forced to retreat to a more open area. With six Phantoms on her Hornet’s tail she dodged, ducked, dipped, dived and dodged some more. Missiles trailed overhead and detonated before her, shards of shrapnel clattered off her hull and smoke smudged cockpit window. Bullets fired recklessly in air put holes through her empty carrier bay, damaged the emptying fuel lines, and threatened her piloting computer. As lock-on warnings screamed in the cockpit she unleashed countermeasure after countermeasure, from ECM’s to chaffs to phosphoric flares – everything she had to get her to Olympus where she could fight on familiar ground, where she knew she would have the upper hand. 
       She was going to land near the docks where she knows there is a security station bursting with weapons and ammunition, and more ships for her to steal bursting with fuel. But a trio of bullets from one of the Phantoms took her hard in her left engine, sending her into a deadly spiral until she cut power to the right thruster. The docks flew under her in a flash, behind her in a second, and all that was in front of her then was the northern face of a false conical mountain. She ejected as the Hornet’s nose collided with the facade, exploded abruptly, and caused the scaffolding to collapse on this side. The Phantoms chasing her darted out to either side of the mountain containing the sky-city’s central turbine, and Ash leapt from her seat before the parachute had a chance to deploy. Now, on the south-side of the turbine, she sees her pursuers speeding across the open fields around the Hammond Robotics Laboratory and soaring through the air, scanning the Olympian surface. 
       She sits high on a snowy ledge, crouched in a rocky corner over a small waterfall, hiding like a rat above Lillian Peck’s former personal office, the same one that looked over the grand Research Basin full of green grasses and flowering meadows. She despises it. Is this what she has become, just a rat? Is this how far she has fallen since losing her position? Is this all there is to her, when you strip away her authority? How can she hope to ever get it back?
       A Phantom makes another pass around, from right to left. As she tracks it she sees, in the distance, behind the central spire of the Hammond labs, her final hope. Her opportunity for escape, her opportunity to start all over, just as it was once before when she was skin and bones and bursting with blood, a steel sword still stuck through her chest. 
       That eldritch eye, a purple iris with a wide, black pupil, closed now to sleep, revealing a cataract of cold red tubes in an empty, lifeless gray cylinder. The Phase Runner. There is a break in the middle of this mile-long transporter, where analysis of a subject thrown through the Runner was conducted before tossing it through again to the opposite end of the research lab where Ash and the other members of the ridiculously named “Group” refined Branthium and ended an impending energy crisis, despite her best efforts to stop them. The control panel should still be there. If she can activate it, she can get off-world. She remembers how much it hurt the first time, the pain of her skin freezing in the void, how much her eyes ached from the cold. 
       Old, vanished Lillian Peck’s personal office is immediately below her, now converted into some kind of shared research space as a few scientists in parkas work on some project or another. A Trident, that shark-like white and orange craft used on Olympus to get around without disturbing the carefully manicured grass lawns and flower beds, carrying three officers in white suits with blue and green trim approaches it from a ramp to the west. The driver stays in, but the other two get out to clear the area and inform the few inhabitants of the office building there is a deadly fugitive on the loose. As they are conversing with the occupants, Ash does a little math. She sidesteps carefully along the rocky ridges of the false mountain. The waterfall covers her movements, even hides the sounds of little stones splashing into the pool just behind the building. 
       She gets a good angle, and leaps – landing directly behind the driver. He releases a high-pitched scream of terror, while the hovercraft makes a low groan as the engine fights to bring the rear back up after Ash’s harsh landing. Metal hits metal with a sharp clang. Ash grabs him by the back of his white jacket and jerks him from his seat, tossing him bodily onto the second level of the office building and toward the MCP officer who is already firing at her with his Flatline assault rifle. Tossing the driver has caused the Trident to spin counter-clockwise in tight circles. She climbs into the driver’s seat and ducks as the second officer bursts out of the white-and-red doors to the office building and starts firing at her, unloading his magazine in a wide spray of bullets from the hip that miss her almost entirely. The Trident takes a few hits, and even as she gets her hands on the steering block she can feel the handling start to shift toward instability. Ash rights herself, points the Trident to the east as the first cop gets his wits together and begins to open fire again, but as he aims down his sights Ash boosts off with an explosive sound from the rear engine and sends herself down the long service road toward the primary power grid and her old lab. She can hear bullets pinging off the metal street just behind her, but never quite catching up.
       There is a wall where a gate should go, preventing her or anybody from taking his route, but it simply isn't there. Ash crashes against the mountainside and starts to careen toward a cliffside down to the field below, a survivable fall yet a potentially deadly mistake, but with a hard left turn she grinds along the cliff’s jagged edge as the craft’s engine whines, trying to keep her upright with nothing to push against. She gives the engine just a quick little boost and pushes herself back up onto the road. She crashes against the mountainside facade and rights herself again, slowing down as bullets whiff overhead. She passes through an energy depot, thick cables over her buzz with electricity and past them she can see Phantoms trying to get an angle on her. She goes through a short tunnel and exits the other side. On her left, a hole into the Turbine’s control room. Ahead of her, the power grid. On her right – the lab.
       Ash pushes down a steep decline and spins to the right. The Phantoms, only three of them right now, immediately start to fire at her. A Trident pushing in from the Power Grid carrying three more officers is shooting at her while boosting in. Heavy rounds from their own Flatlines ping harshly on the hull of her craft. Ash punches the booster once again and fires up a grassy hill toward the lab, where, oddly, she sees the remnants of a few torn-down buildings at its height. She pulls up along them, high-caliber rounds churn up grass and dirt and collide against her Trident’s wide engine block to put big dents in the hull, bigger rents in the metal, and force the hovercraft’s base closer toward the ground. Two huge hits collide with the nose of the Trident and it smacks against the grass, grinding through dirt, and as she rounds the top of the hill she sees…
       She sees a cataclysm. 
       Something terrible happened here, once Ash escaped – they really did it, didn’t they? Aleki, Delgado, Shelly, Paquette, and Fletch – they really sacrificed themselves for the good of the Outlands. 
       Fools. 
       Brave, brave fools.
       Where a monument to scientific achievement once stood is now a wasted crater. Steel beams rise from concrete foundations, the offices they contained not just destroyed but eviscerated, as much as a building can be. There’s almost nothing left of them but the foundations and the remnants of a few floors. Newer, lower, rounder offices have been put up on the hills and ridges surrounding the site of the former laboratory but there is practically nothing left of the lab she once worked in for over a decade – except for a flat loading area at the bottom of the basin. In the sky where the Phase Runner once trailed like the World Serpent is a metal flower, electricity flashing inside of it, beating like a heart, blinking like an eye, as if it yearns to reawaken from some dark slumber. And from up here, at the crest of the hill, she can see a little green computer screen down at the grass-covered crater’s center, attached to the stained platform where a human version of herself once crawled its way to safety with a hole in her chest.
       Something here still works. 
       Another line of fire from an incoming Phantom collides with her Trident, the impact enough to not only force the nose into the ground but flip the craft entirely over. The engine tries to push against the air and succeeds only in flipping it faster. Ash doesn’t have time to spill out of it. She is still in the driver’s seat, trying to wriggle out of the wreckage, when another Phantom plugs a missile into the ground next to her. Dirt and mud and grass explode over her and the flipped Trident, still containing Ash, spins sideways. Her sensorium rings as the microphones that serve as her ears try to find a baseline sound once more. Ash starts to crawl out of the driver’s seat. Her fingers are covered in mud and dirt as she pulls herself through the grass. To her left she sees the bright orange and white paint of another Trident. It doesn’t stop as it rounds, pointing its nose right at her. Two more Flatlines start to fire at her. Ash doesn’t stop to focus on them, she pushes herself forward, using her powerful mechanical arms to throw herself down the hill. She slides on her stomach, she activates her jump kit for an added boost, she gains incredible speed and despite their best attempts to lead their shots firing one-handed from a vehicle is simply a demonstration in poor marksmanship – they miss every bullet, like they aren’t even trying. 
       She is at the metal platform that is the lab’s former loading bay, where she and the Apex Predators tried to steal the refined Branthium and were defeated by a MRVN, where she nearly won, where she nearly gained it all – and where she took a sword to the chest and lost everything. The bullets keep coming. There are more Tridents entering the area. 
       There, on her right – there’s a hallway below the loading bay, a little service area to get behind, underneath, and around the portal entrance when there was still a portal here, all those years ago. Ash dives into it as distant rifles target her. She needs a weapon. That driver didn’t have one or she would have taken it. She was hoping there might be one down here, a remnant of the battle, but she’s out of luck. There’s nothing. Ash goes to the opposite end of the hallway, looking for a weapon the whole time but finding nothing useful. She peaks out and sees the Tridents arrayed along the basin’s ridges with perfect lines of fire on her, but nobody is advancing. The Phantoms hover overhead, but they do not shoot at her despite a clear view of her from their angles. Ash stares at them, tries to assess what options she has, and as she decides her best bet is to slink back into the hallway and try to kill them one by one as they filter through the tight corridors she sees the Phantoms turn around and leave. They just fly off. The Tridents, powered down and lying on the grass, start back up as cops pile in them and they, too, turn around to flee. 
       “Oh, how wonderful,” Ash says knowingly. Doubt tries to consume her, its weight as heavy as the Reaper that tried to crush her, but she pushes through it. Ash leaps into action. Attached to the raised loading platform is that little green computer. It wants an access code and Ash gives hers, hoping with every press of the key that it will accept her old credentials until it opens up to a diagnostic menu. She tries to start up the Phase Runner but it keeps giving her damage warnings and flares, so she pushes through every security measure it has until she gets to the next screen – where it reads in white font over a green background “START RUNNER?” With a little green box on a slide. She touches it with her metal fingers and slides them across the fractured glass screen, dragging the box along the slide until there is a soft little chime. She looks up into the metal flower. The lightning inside of it grows furious. She can hear thunder. The air is charged, a terrible energy that plucks at her steel flesh. Around her, the world starts to dim and she hears a harsh whine in the air that turns to a deeper thrum, punctuated by the percussive sounds of retro rockets firing for stability. He’s here. He’s coming. Ash looks up into the darkening sky and sees the trail of smoke. Can she beat him? Uncertainty mounts. The retros pour red flame into the black trail like a burning comet. In a flash of light amidst a bass explosion, in a second so swift if you blinked you’d miss it, there it lands before her – under a cloud of smoke, under an eruption of mud, having fallen from the very heavens – a Titan.
       It stands on squat red legs. It carries a chaingun as long as a bus and twice as heavy. It looms with massive arms attached to a bathtub for a chassis. Mud churns beneath its heavy padded feet. It huffs hot air that steams from the vents at its back. It hefts the gun before it, carries it like a prideful burden. Steam rises off the dark red steel flesh made hot by its incredibly fast and violent descent. It stalks toward her. Ash cannot take her eyes away from it. She had been impressed by this thing once, stunned by its sheer size and left in complete awe of its capacity for murder. A mechanized marvel. A monster made of metal. A battlefield terror. Now, it renders her paralyzed in fear. There is a dark flash, and a purple cloud forms around her, around the both of them, around the whole basin. The world continues to grow darker despite the sun’s presence in the clear blue sky. 
       It takes another step forward, then another, meeting her on the loading bay. The air is thick with the sounds of thunder, the buffeting noise of air blowing over her microphones, but despite this she can hear the clicking noise of piston locks releasing, see the thin burst of steaming air from the vents around the cockpit. The rectangular, tub-like center starts to open. Open wide. Like the mouth of a great beast to reveal jaws so wide, so full of deadly teeth, with a dark gullet that leads to a dark belly only to reveal something so much worse. So much more lethal than grinding teeth and corrosive acids. 
       It reveals him. Her old boss. A hunter, a killer, a fiend, a scoundrel, a sneak, a thief, a predator. The predator. The Apex of their order. A menace uniquely suited for the job. A warrior better than even she. His brown hair is going white. His clean shaven face has a close-cropped graying beard attached to it. His clean, white IMC uniform is dirty, dusty, and stained. His pale, fair skin has darkened, wrinkled, and weathered. He puts his right foot on the Legion’s cabin, and holds the canopy roof with his right hand. Who knows – they’ve both weathered storms of late. Maybe she can beat him in his current state, even while she is in her own.
       “Heard you’ve had some reprogrammin’ done,” Blisk shouts over the rough, flowing air. His tone is typically casual, despite it all. As confident as can be, as confident as he always has been. He points to his temple with his left hand. “Remember me?”
       A black hole opens up behind her with a crack of lightning.

Chapter Text

Epilogue

       He has her head in his hands. She can feel the texture of his rough, blistered fingers on the smooth steel of her skull. Past his head she can see the chaotic, glowing orb the Phase Runner produced suspended in air. The air circles violently around it. It blows the hair on his head this way and that. 
       “Short fight, but a good one,” he says, crossing his legs and sitting down in the last little undisturbed patch of grass. 
       “I could have done better.”
       “Well, you know what I always say.” He sets her head down in his lap, so she looks up at him.
       “Who could forget.”
       “Didn’t have to be like this. You didn’t have to go for Justinia.”
       “She hired you. I did have to.”
       “I wasn’t gonna go after ya, Ash. I was gonna keep taking her money ‘til she ran out. Didn’t think you’d go looking for that friend of yours, make all that bloody noise.”
       “That doesn’t sound like the Blisk I knew.”
       “Well, things’ve changed. There might be war on, but it ain’t the same.” He looks off into the distance. She remembers the same things he does. The Titan Wars. The grandeur and the bloodshed. “There’s no room in it for people like you ‘n’ me, not unless we become different. Have to change. Have to adapt. You know how it is.”
       “Then why did you come for me now?”
       “Cause you,” he says, lifting her head out of his lap, holding her at eye level with him. “You went fucking with my money. Can’t have that. Can’t have people thinking it’s okay, Blisk’s gone soft – I let one person get away with costing me a couple bucks, suddenly, every other client in the Frontier thinks they can screw me on a deal. Had to, Ash. I had to be…” he gestures with her in one hand like she’s a prop. “Thorough,” he says, finally finding the word, clasping her in both hands with a solid clap.
       “So what happens now?”
       “I’m getting rid of you, Ash, once and for all. Where’s that lead?” He nods his head toward the portal.
       “My last saved coordinate. I just needed to escape.”
       “You lyin’?”
       “Maybe.”
       “I don’t think so.”
       “You could hire me again. You do not need to be rid of me. This head of mine is hard to break.”
       “Can’t do that, can’t have you further sullyin’ my Predators’ good name. You died once already, back on Typhon. Then I ‘eard that old bird Briggs got ya at Kodai. Then, well, then there’s now. You’ve got a shit track record on ya. What’ll it say about me if I keep hirin’ tossers like you?”
       “Is that what you think of me? Is that why I never went anywhere as a Predator?”
       “That what you’re worried about, eh? At a time like this?”
       “Yes.”
       “Well, I’ll tell ya one thing. Alright? You didn’t go anywhere because I needed you right where you were. Think about it, think about it from my perspective, alright?”
       “I shall try.”
       “I’m the boss, the big boss. What’s my job? To get you jobs. To get us work. To build our reputation. To get the good contracts. And, occasionally, to keep you lot in line. My second back then, Slone, her job was to back me up. She had the same good instincts for the right contracts, how to get a good deal.”
       “And I didn’t?”
       “I saw some of the things you offered Vinson’s army. I mean, no wonder they went bankrupt. What were you thinking? Contracts were too good. You just need a couple of guys, a couple of Titans, and salvage rights. That’s it. Kept you on the team, didn’t it?”
       “I suppose.”
       “So then, there’s you, Richter, and Viper. And who do you think it is people talk about, eh? Oh, yeah, they’re Blisk’s Predators alright, but it’s you three who appeared to inspire fear. So I let you guys do what you wanted, and you three thrived. You made good money, you had good rep, and you, personally, Ash, you were a bit of a bad ass. So you sit there and wonder why you didn’t go anywhere, but, fact is, you went as far as you ever would have wanted to go. You didn’t need to lead the Predators because you led our armies, Ash. And you woulda seen that once you get to where I was, it’s nothing but boring, tedious work.”
       Ash says nothing. She just thinks. Finally, after a moment of silence, she does speak. “Insightful.”
       “That’s it? All you have to say?”
       “I wondered for decades why I wasn’t good enough to lead. You have changed my perception of events. It is, and will continue to be, a lot to process. Thank you.”
       “Good. Now, that’s done,” he puts his hand in the mud and rises to his feet with a groan that betrays his age. “It’s time for you to go away. I’ve got work to do, Ash. Trying to put my mark on a new frontier”
       “There’s no other way?” She asks. 
       “Nope. Not for you. Not right now, at least.” He holds her steadily in his hands, looking deep into her black eyes. “But who knows? Maybe it’ll be a tropical paradise on the other side.” He looks away, toward the portal, and looks back. His expression has deepened. There is a genuine sense of grief there. “I am sorry, though.”
       “I understand,” she says. She means it. “Good luck.”
       “You too, old friend.” He holds her in one hand. “Ashes to ash…” and he pulls her back, aiming her right for the portal. “Ash…” he launches her at it, and the purple vortex starts to swallow her. 
       The void again. Through the violet haze of this plane between planes, she sees flickering shadows and moving pieces, she sees to her left and her right the eternal ranks of an infinite number of herself rendered the same failed state and thrown through the same immutable landscape. She sees stars pass her by, she sees ships on their routes, she sees planets in their orbits. She floats through nebulas and asteroid fields. She soars through the stars like a comet. She wonders where she will end up. She wonders if this is all it will ever be for her. If she will ever have a future. If she will be more than just a failure. If Blisk meant what he said about her. 
       A world comes into view, obscured by the faded colors that enter her eyes. The end of the void is near. It ejects her at its very end, Erebus spitting her out of his dark plane, and she exits the universe between universes somewhere high in a dry looking, fringe-world’s atmosphere. There are vast deserts and verdant forests. A dark blue ocean spans so much of the surface. Perfect little white clouds are flecked across the sky like the strokes of a divine paintbrush. Maybe, she thinks, Blisk was right – maybe it will be a tropical paradise, and she can end her days in serenity. Wherever it is, it is certainly a better place to rot than beneath the ruins of her facility on Typhon.
       What’s more, there are ships high up in the atmosphere, reflecting the light of the sun and shining brightly against the dark backdrop of the night sky. Maybe this isn’t it for her. Maybe there is a future. Maybe she can go on, and instead of fighting to regain what was lost in both her memories and her freedom, maybe she can go on to forge something new. 
       She plummets to the earth. A long, long fall. But instead of thinking about how much she has failed along the way down, instead of chiding herself for every little mistake, she thinks, with satisfaction:
       I still have work to do.