CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR—PIECES 

After his startlingly productive meeting with Varnet, James slept for eighteen hours, and when he finally emerged, he hobbled to his nest on the couch and stayed there. Heather put on a science fiction show marathon with the volume turned low—swashbuckling and space aliens without too much political intrigue—and sat with him, trying to keep him company.

He didn’t speak at all that day. Even acknowledging direct questions seemed to take too much effort. Sesame found a puzzle in the hall closet and assembled it on the coffee table in front of the couch. James’ gaze trained on his progress every now and then, and Heather took comfort in that small spark of lucidity.

In the middle of the night, she was startled out of hibernation by muffled screaming from downstairs. She sat up, clutching her head in her hands, trying to get herself to get up, to help James, worried the Q-13 was about to go off. But she couldn’t move.

Behind her eyes, another scene played, of her friend strapped down in Benson’s concrete experimentation chamber, erupting into flame. His upturned jaw seemed to unhinge as an utterly soul-destroying sound belted out of him, a scream she had never heard another creature make, and hoped to never hear again.

Though its phantom echoed, as they tried to recover. As every attempted step forward seemed too necessary to refuse, but threatened to drive her deeper into despair, and ripped whole chunks out of James.

Sesame sat in an upholstered chair across the room reading. He tried to shoot her an inquisitive look to check in, but she ignored his gaze. He had been watching her especially closely the last few days, but she didn’t want to be babied, she wanted to do something. But mostly, there was nothing to do but hurt.

The door to her parents’ bedroom opened down the hallway, and she heard someone tread down the stairs.

With shaking hands, she pulled the charger cord from her chest and finally managed to stand up.

She found her father hanging in the doorway of her parents’ bedroom, gazing down over the railing at the lower level.

Her father had been absorbed in keeping the ground solid, staying busy and trying to be positive, doing whatever he could to make sure Heather had a future. Little more than a silhouette in the dark, he looked just as lost and exhausted as the rest of them.

Richard noticed her and shifted position, readjusting his glasses. Heather wandered forward and hugged him.

“Mom went to check on him?” Heather asked.

Richard nodded. “I don’t think approaching the ICNS was a good idea.”

Heather buzzed a soft sigh, half agreeing. Nothing felt like a good idea these days.

Wordlessly, she pulled herself free and headed downstairs. Richard let her go.

She found her mom in the guest room with the lamp on, sitting on the bed holding James’ torso. Su rocked him gently as he wept into her robe like a tall, lanky child. Thankfully, his scars remained inert.

A couple years ago, Heather remembered being very sick with the flu, where medication brought little relief to an absolutely unbearable sore throat and body aches. Su had held her like this. Her mother couldn’t take the pain from her, but she could hold and protect her until it passed.

Su glanced up, meeting Heather’s gaze, and Heather braced herself to see the reluctance in her mother’s face—taking care of James for Heather’s sake, though Su hated him for what he’d brought on their family. But Su’s gaze was soft and sad.

Keeping ahold of James, she extended her closest arm to her daughter, beckoning.
Heather’s expression crumbled. She ventured forward, and took her hand, lowering her face to the back of her mother’s shoulder in grief. Su tilted her head, touching hers.

+

The week after, James had a blood draw and a followup consultation. The doctor adjusted his extensive medication list—swapped one out, upped the dosage on another, and added some vitamin supplements and an anti-depressant to the mix.

Back at the Knight’s house, Richard helped him put together a pill organizer, and James frowned the whole time. He barely knew pill organizers existed a month ago, and now it felt like he was gluing it to his soul. It took all these extra tools just to have a worse quality of life than he had prior to Empetrum. His walker sat a couple paces away, mocking him.

He knew he should have been more grateful for the help, instead of resenting all of it. Sometimes he was. It was miraculous he was even still alive, but the inner perfectionist marched on.

Sesame appeared at some point with sticker sheets he’d found in Heather’s room, and convinced James to let him decorate it. James sat hunched over, hands laced behind his neck and elbows on the table while he watched Sesame work. At least someone was having fun.

A week after that, James stood at the sliding glass door, cupping a hot mug of tea between his palms, watching birds on the feeder in the backyard. As the weather got colder, the feathered traffic was increasing. A cloud of dark-eyed juncos brawled while a chickadee waited for its opportunity to grab a sunflower seed. A growing list of bird species in both Heather and Sesame’s handwriting tracked down the sliding glass door in wet erase marker, recording whom they’d seen at the feeder.

Heather approached him carefully, wary of startling him, perhaps.

“You okay?” she asked, half reaching out, assessing whether he was stable or needed help to the couch.

He glanced at her, and she blinked, as if surprised by what she saw in his face.

Her gaze searched behind him, finally finding his walker across the room by the hallway.

“I’m okay,” he said.

+

Another week later, James asked the Knights if they could help him visit the storage unit with his name on it. He sat in the backseat during the commute, mentally pretending to drive, trying to assess whether he had recovered enough to manage it.

His sense of equilibrium had improved, but not enough. Su would still be driving his car back to the Knight’s house as planned.

They retrieved the keys from the customer service desk—one for the apartment storage, the other for the car locker.

Richard pulled up the door on the former, and emotion caught at the back of James’ throat as the fluorescent warehouse lighting spilled over the piles of furniture and boxes. His life, shoved away like a dirty secret. He stood staring at it, gripping the handles of his walker.

“I’m looking for my government documents and wallet,” he said finally, shakily. “Some clothing and personal items…” His laptop and recent project notebook had likely been buried at Empetrum. That made twice in one year. “I think my cellphone’s gone forever, though.”

He pried open one of the nearest boxes, finding a jumble of random objects that used to be on a shelf in his apartment living room. James picked through it, disoriented. His preferred packing strategy was extremely methodical, but he hadn’t packed up any of this.

It had been done for him, soon after the night of the transfer. Many of the boxes had appeared in his quarters at Empetrum, but he hadn’t bothered to pull much more than basic necessities from them.

“Oh, this is overwhelming,” he muttered, a hitch shaking in his voice. He sat down on the floor against the wall and bowed his head to drawn up knees.

“Take your time,” Richard said.

He closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. “I feel like I’m back there.”

“You’re here, kiddo,” Su said gently. “With us.”

He nodded. His heart was pounding hard. He tried to breathe, his hands pressed to his sternum.

He heard shuffling, a thump. By the time he looked up, Su had emptied a box and tossed it into the middle of the locker opening. “We’ll put what we’re taking back with us in there. Can add more boxes as needed.”

Over his knees, he watched the Knights open boxes and rummage around. They found a felt tip marker in one of them and began labeling. Slowly, James began to recognize a pattern—the boxes themselves were a rushed hodgepodge, but whoever had packed them had worked like a vacuum, gathering up each room without much overlap.

They found his wallet and keys, and his other government documents in a box from his home office. Some writing utensils, an empty project notebook. Clothing, an external hard drive, his orthodontic retainer. They had assigned James to verbal direction, mentally tracking them through rooms, items, and where they should look next. Slowly, they were able to label and re-stack boxes and create a tiny path through as they worked their way back. All the while, he felt like he could see a wraith of his former self, its skin unstained yet the whole creature dead, watching him from the shadows.

Wedged between boxes and furniture further in, Richard found his desktop computer swaddled in bubble wrap, and James abruptly stood up, bracing himself on the wall for support and lurched for the opening. He staggered a couple doors down, one ebony hand tracking heavily along the wall, the other clutching his sweater over his heart. His legs buckled. He dropped to his knees.

“Maybe we should take a break,” he heard Richard say.

James’ shoulders dropped with a breath that was more sob than exhale. He hugged himself, doubled over.

Footsteps approached, carefully. “What’s going on, sweetheart?” Su asked.

“It’s like going through a grave,” he rasped. He twisted, putting his back against the wall. “He killed me. Stuffed me in there. He destroyed—everything—and he got away with it. Who’s going to pay for that?” His voice broke, seething with rage and pain. “Who the fuck is going to pay for that? Why is it us stuck with that bill?” He dug his palms into his eye sockets as the bitter tears came. “Why do we have to learn how to crawl forward on broken fucking glass, and they just get to keep doing this to people!” He drew his legs close to his face and curled up, sobbing. “I can’t take it.”

Su leaned against the wall next to him. “Lately I still think much more about violence than I do silver linings.” Her voice was a pensive, frigid monotone, “Maybe we’ll get justice someday. Make them pay back that debt with interest.”

James sniffed, trying to get ahold of himself. “If we’re lucky.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle the ICNS?” Su asked.

“I have to.” James rubbed at his eyes, and sighed. He glanced down the storage facility corridor. This space felt liminal, purgatorial. He itched to leave. “I don’t want to be the guy that ran away.”

“You can’t change systems like that from the inside,” she said.

“I know.” He started kneading his aching hands. “But it at least seems to help having someone on the inside.”

Su studied him as she absorbed his words. Silence stretched between them with their list of allies and sympathizers:

Alice Benson, a defector who had surrendered her family’s secrets.

Sesame, who had seen behind the curtain.

Yeun, an attempted advocate when things got bad, who had ultimately helped them escape, and then resigned.

Erika, Ganymede, and Kaczmarek, agents of the resistance.

Eve, who leveraged every ounce of her influence with the Bureau to arrange reparations and make Benson face some form of retribution, even if it wasn’t harsh enough.

James himself, who did everything he could.

“It’s looking like we’re almost done in there, if you’re ready to get this over with,” Su said.
James nodded.

“Would you like help up?”

“Thanks.”

She offered her arm and he took it.

+

“Have you had a consultation with the surgeon yet?” James paced unsteadily across the edge of the Knights’ living room, one hand holding his new cellphone, the other hovering along the back of the couch in case he faltered. He was determined to graduate from his walker to a cane, but he needed to regain some of the muscle the Q-13 had burnt through in its early days.

“It’s scheduled,” Erika said. “A few months out. Lot of tests between now and then trying to figure out what they’re working with.”

“Can I pay for it?”

Erika balked. “You have that kind of money?”

“Not right now,” he said. “But I’ll be starting with the ICNS in a couple of months. It’s a salary position and the pay is good. I won’t need most of it.”

“Heather told me you got in.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, James. Please tell me you’ve at least found a therapist.”

He paused pacing, leaning against the couch, suddenly exhausted. “Not yet.”

“You don’t have any debts to me,” Erika said. “Plus, you’ve got your own medical stuff to worry about.”

“This is important to me,” James said. “Please.”

Erika sighed. “Maybe it’s harsh of me, but I can’t help but think of dealing with all this myself as penance in some way. Consequences of my own stupid actions.”

James’ heart sank. “What do you mean?”

Silence answered him for a moment. “My mom died last year,” she said. “Empetrum is in a remote corner of a nature reserve that meant a lot to her. I heard about it through the Conxence, though it was a rumor at best back then. I couldn’t stomach it. Had to see for myself.”

James took a steadying breath as surreptitiously as possible, feeling the air stretch his lungs, before he carefully let it out again. As she went on, her path sounded devastatingly familiar.

“Kaczmarek tried to warn me off, but I didn’t listen. Things were so messed up at the time of my mother’s passing—my sister had dropped out of college to help support the family financially, my dad completely fell apart. I was the oldest daughter, and I could compartmentalize a little better than everyone else, so I just carried it. I was stable so they could lose themselves. I wanted to be that for them, but at some point…I just couldn’t take it anymore either.” Her voice wavered. “I didn’t tell anybody I went out there. My family thought I was taking a solo camping trip for a few days, to try to get my head together. And, well, you know what happened after that.”

James closed his eyes, his heart in his throat, throbbing softly through his scars. He tried to let the sorrow soak through him. Don’t tense up, let it pass. But everything was so painful.

“If I’d been able to face things properly,” Erika said. “My family would have been spared a whole new level of hell, thinking I’d died too. I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you with two extra arms and severe medical trauma, preparing for surgery…”

Face things properly…The words sank into the back of his neck, prickled through his nerves. If only he’d been able to do that too.

“We’re facing them now.” His voice cracked.

“Yeah,” Erika said quietly. “Guess so.”

He opened his eyes, gazing out across the house, out the sliding glass door at the birds on the feeder, which happily ignored Sesame shrouded in a poncho, raking vibrant fallen leaves off the deck in a rainstorm. Heather was out there with him. There was really no reason to do it right then when the weather was so bad, but they were safely waterproof, and something about the sensory experience appealed to them.

He eased himself off the couch, stiffly directing himself toward the kitchen. “I’m sure you were simply weighing a hiking injury or a trespassing charge as the biggest risk.” He made it to the counter and turned on the electric kettle. “Not what ended up happening. You can’t blame yourself for Empetrum.”

“I don’t suppose you blame yourself for what it did to you,” Erika said, skeptical.
 “It’s still hard not to,” he admitted. He rifled through the tea cabinet for something anti-inflammatory. They’d accumulated a large assortment by then. His hands felt obtuse and slow. “I can’t help but try to figure out how I could have dodged it. I wish I could go back in time. Fix things.”

“But then Empetrum might have gotten how many more years of anonymity,” Erika mused. “It doesn’t exactly make any of this worth it, but…” she sighed.

“But it’s presented an opportunity,” James said.

“If we paid for it, might as well exploit it.”

A wan smile tugged at the edge of James’ lips, agreeing. He pulled a mug from the cupboard, realizing belatedly that it was one from work, with the name Larkspur across it on one side and the five-pointed emblem of a delphinium on the other.

He’d looked it up once. The larkspur flower—delicate starbursts stacked in colorful aggregate towers—symbolized good luck and new beginnings. The plant was severely toxic, but in trained, benevolent hands, its lethal properties instead became agents of relief and protection.

He debated putting the mug back and choosing a different one. He felt unworthy of it.

“I don’t know, I have a hard time taking money,” Erika said. “And I don’t want you worrying about a lot of extra things while you’re at the ICNS. You’re probably going to get closer to this than any of us, and I want to see you burn down the ICNS, and everything remotely connected to it.”

James looked down at himself, at the artifact from his past and his hand curled around it, unnaturally dark and troublingly frail. “Well, I’ll try.” The kettle started to boil. He put the mug on the counter and searched for a tea infuser. “If taking on your medical bills gets to be too much, I’ll pull back. Deal?”

Erika sighed heavily, but relented. “Deal.”

+

James never thought he would see Larkspur again.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel as the building came into view, tall and still. His scars began to throb as he imagined facing the lobby, the whole facility flashing with afterimages, the traumas of that one terrible night burnt into his brain.

“You’re drifting,” Sesame piped up from the passenger seat.

James abruptly course corrected. “Thanks.”

He managed to park his car without incident and shakily opened the door.

“Good job, James,” Sesame said. He stowed the walkie talkie—with which he’d been talking to Heather—in the glovebox as he hopped out. “You could probably even manage the freeway if you wanted to.”

“Oh, god,” James said. He popped the trunk and dragged himself to his feet with a wince.

The Knight’s car pulled up a couple spaces away. Heather got out, smiling wryly. “You’re alive!”

James obligingly held up his hands in a halfhearted “ta-da!” gesture, as Sesame arrived with his walker. He checked his pockets, then closed and locked the car. He gazed up at the building, hugging himself.

“We don’t have to do this if it’s too much,” Heather said.

He shook his head. He was headed for the capital soon for orientation. If he managed that, he would then have to look for an apartment closer to the ICNS. He was feeling alert enough to spend some time brainstorming mechanics for Heather’s organic-passing body, and planned to contribute as much as he could remotely. But he had to make sure he could handle workplace excursions.

Sesame, surprisingly, had volunteered to live with him. James had figured he’d want to stay close to the Knights, to Heather.

“We talked about it,” Heather had said. “No way we’re just going to let you live out there by yourself.”

“Somebody’s gotta make sure you sleep and eat food,” Sesame had agreed. Though they all knew it was much more serious than that: strict treatment regimens, doctor appointments, night terrors, flareups, medical complications, the ever present threat of sudden health failure.
Sesame grabbed Heather’s hand and hooked James’ winter coat pocket with the other, as James forced himself to take the first step forward.

“You’re leaving at fifty percent,” Heather said. “I can drive you home if I need to.” She almost had enough hours to apply for a license, if the state would let her.

“Well, I’m at seventy percent right now,” James said. And that was a high estimate.

“Good to know.”

“I want a driver’s license,” Sesame said.

Then Richard was opening the door for them, and James stepped into the lobby. His gaze immediately found the invisible trail through its center, where he had dragged Heather’s lifeless organic body out to his car.

He directed himself to the stairs, slipping into old habits, while he tried to push the jagged memories away, avoiding the security guard’s gaze. He paused at the foot of the stairs. They seemed much steeper than he remembered.

“I-I should probably take the elevator, huh?” he said.

“Probably,” Heather said.

Richard took the stairs and headed for his office. While they rode up to the second floor, James closed his eyes, brows furrowed. He drew a breath in through his nose, out his mouth.

Heather and Sesame had already spent a good amount of time here in the aftermath of Empetrum while they repaired Heather’s body. But for James, it was like opening up a time capsule to a reality that no longer existed. Everything was so familiar, yet he moved through it like a corruption, shards of darkness bending around him. Every corner was a dual impression of Larkspur as both a home he had loved, and the home he had burnt down.

It knocked his sense of cohesion loose a little. Why was he this particular person? Why was this his life? He felt like a template of himself, a paper doll. Interchangeable, hypothetical.

He stared at his reflection in the elevator doors, reminding himself to come back. He was this body, this life. Not a potentiality, floating outside it. The aching in his bones certainly reminded him that he existed.

They passed the opening of the staff kitchenette, and James froze when he glanced in and locked gazes with Greg. The latter was pouring himself coffee next to Chelo, and almost spilled on himself in distraction.

“James—” Greg breathed, incredulous. He abandoned everything on the counter and crossed the room to meet him.

James half expected him to wrap his arm around his head like he used to, but he didn’t. Greg kept a respectful distance, taking in the sight of him with a grieved, apologetic expression. “Welcome back…”

James fidgeted. “I’m not back, not really. Just, cleaning out my office and tying some ends.”

Greg swallowed and nodded. Chelo gave James a gentle hug.

“You’re looking much better than the last time I saw you,” Chelo said.

“The bar is very low,” James tried to laugh. “But I am feeling better. My organs seem to be working again. Mostly.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“He’s fireproof now,” Sesame said. “Even his hair. We tested it.”

Chelo looked at the little robot in surprise. She scoffed, and flashed a smile at James. “You’re still in there, ey?”

James shrank back a little, his gaze falling. He didn’t expect that statement to hurt.

Chelo reached for his arm. “I meant that as a good thing.”

“Thank you,” James said. “But, I don’t know if I agree.”

Addie emerged from her office, alerted by their voices. The depth of sorrow in her eyes as she saw him was hard to take, but he accepted her hug.

“I’m so sorry for everything that happened because of me,” James said. He gripped the handles of his walker for support, staring at the seams of his compression gloves. “I’ll do my best to engage with anything you need from me. I know I really messed up.”

“The Knights filled us in,” Addie said. “We’re just glad you survived, and seem to be on the mend.”

“I hear you’re taking on the military now,” Greg flashed a wan, sideways smile. “They had better watch out.”

James managed a weak smile back, despite the heavy weight in his chest. It sounded crazy, he knew. One disabled person, skin and bone, standing before an old, monstrous machine, its toothy cogs spinning inches from his face. What did he think he was going to accomplish?
Eve arrived on the second level, and her face softened when she saw James. “You made it in,” she said. “Good.”

“James is only staying for a couple of hours,” Richard joined her at the top of the stairs. He looked at James. “While you’re cleaning out your office, we’ll get you set up for remote work and reactivate some of your pay and security stuff in the system.”
That last bit caught him off guard. “Pay?”

“You mean you were just going to work for free when we went through all the trouble to get funding?” Eve said, amused.

“Well, yeah.” James’ face burned, feeling unworthy of her favor in any form. “I wanted to help regardless. I guess I didn’t think past worrying whether I was physically able to do the work or not.”

“Apparently,” Chelo hummed. “You’re not a bad person, James. I hope you can believe that someday.”

James couldn’t meet her gaze. He ached to retreat from the center of all their attention. “I’m trying to.”

+

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE—GHOST    

James hunched his shoulders against the early December cold as he walked across the ICNS staff parking lot. The last week of orientation and training had been a whirlwind of info dumps, teaching seminars, and personal vetting by various authorities within the ICNS. Miraculously, he’d managed it, but he was definitely hurting by the last day.

But now it was over. He planned to sleep everything off at the Knight’s house as soon as possible, then arrange housing in the capital and prepare for the semester’s start date, fast approaching. The majority of his paltry energy, he aimed to spend on Heather’s organic-passing body.

They were going to have to invent several new types of technology to pull it off, and, despite the scorch marks on his conscience, puzzling out scientific problems was still a safe place. And his friends were collaborating on this one so it felt—authorized.

Sesame had accompanied him to the capital. Embarrassed at being fussed over and nervous to spend the week alone with him, James had dried to dissuade him, but Sesame’s presence had proved vital. James’ capacity was still very limited.

He figured he’d hate having a roommate, as he had in college. Living alone had been a bit of a razor’s edge even when he was healthy, but the isolation had been quiet, uncomplicated. And James felt unqualified to navigate Sesame’s drastically different personality in close quarters and offer any of the attention Sesame needed.

But when James returned to the hotel in the evenings, and Sesame pushed tea and a takeout menu into his hands, chattering about everything he’d been up to in his absence, James found it felt warm in a way he still didn’t quite understand.

He knew from hearing about Richard’s early interactions with him that Sesame could be stubborn and manipulative, and some part of him still watched, wary that Sesame would become another catastrophe born of his mistakes. But Sesame had come back from a cliff too. He had a body, and a new life, and seemed to value his found family immensely.

James tried not to take any of the robot’s kindnesses for granted. As foggy and decrepit as he was in the evenings, he didn’t have much to offer in the way of active reciprocation, but he gave Sesame free reign of the TV within reason, and resisted the urge to ask him to hide all day out of his own anxieties about how people would receive a sentient robot.

James had to admit, Sesame was growing on him too.

Pushing the folder containing his teaching certification under his arm, he searched for his keys, eager to get back to the hotel, where tea, blankets, and a friend waited for him. He was already making a list in his head for the drive back to the Knights’ house the next morning. He couldn’t stand to be in the capital for another extra second.

He unlocked the trunk of his car and tossed the file in. His breath billowed in the cold air, and he paused to knead his wrists for a moment—the cold made his hands cramp up—before beginning to fold his walker.

As he stiffly hefted the mobility aid into the trunk, a voice called out behind him, freezing his blood. It was the voice that still appeared in his nightmares, and haunted his waking thoughts. Smooth and measured, dripping with hatred, “Of all things, I really didn’t expect this from you, Siles.”

James whipped around. A stinging pulse of pain jolted through every stained stripe in his body, down to the tendrils twisted up in his marrow. The deposed director of Empetrum approached, his hands in the pockets of his coat and a tired, exasperated expression on his face.

James shut the trunk, and almost fell trying to get around the car. His limbs felt crushed and bound, his vision unsteady. His breath stuck in his throat.

He hadn’t seen Benson since Heather had destroyed his lab. The wound on his cheek had healed, leaving a thin, silver scar. Benson’s venom broke into a wan smile, observing James’ reaction.

“You’re lucky Varnet doesn’t like me very much,” Benson said. “Otherwise, your little interview last month would have gone very differently.”

“What do you want?” James managed. He searched Benson’s face, his concealed hands, wondering whether he was going to pull out a weapon. He knew Benson was on probation, that half his staff had quit, and was under other disciplinary actions from the Bureau despite being allowed to quietly continue his research.

And he knew Benson blamed him for all that.

Benson pulled his hands from his pockets and showed him his empty palms. “I’d just like to know what you think you’re doing with all this.”

James gripped his scarf over his chest, trying to breathe, to calm the fight-or-flight ripping through his fragile system. “You’re supposed to stay away from me.”

“Are you going to tell on me?” Benson scoffed. “Run to Varnet to protect you?”
James glanced for security guards, but no one was around. The weather suddenly felt colder, cruel and permeating. It kept occurring to him over and over again that the unassuming person before him had tortured and tried to kill him, and had almost succeeded. Some days it felt like he had dreamt the whole thing, but his body remembered.

“I know you’re here to get in the way,” Benson said. “You know Varnet didn’t hire you because she appreciates your bleeding heart, right? She’s just using you, because, like me, she sees you for what you are.”

James fumbled with his keys. He dropped them.

“Soon enough, your delusional honeymoon with the Knights will end,” Benson went on. “And the person you are, that brought you to me, is still there.”

“Stop talking—” James braced his hand on the car, managing to close his fist around his keys and stand back up. Blood pounded in his ears. His eyes felt hot. Ribbons of pain pulled at his skin.

“You’ll stagnate, trying to follow their ideals. And you’ll crave everything you left behind. Perhaps resurrect your project to save your failing body, but Knight and his daughter will try to stand in your way when you inevitably start to deviate. They’ll disapprove of you, call you obsessed. They’ll try to force you to stay docile, palatable, and you will grow to resent their small-mindedness yet again.”

James heard the car beep. He could barely move his hands, seizing up in the growing icy ache, but he’d managed to depress the unlock button. “Stop—” Benson’s voice scratched against his brain, echoing through trauma after trauma. He barely registered what he was even saying as his body screamed at him to get away, yet he couldn’t get himself to move.

“Mark my words, Siles. Something will come up, something you can’t resist. And I look forward to watching you turn.”

“Stop fucking talking!” James snarled. And suddenly, with a pull like a full-body gag reflex, light blinded his left eye. He clutched the side of his face and curled in on himself. “Fuck!” His scars were glowing white, the pressure swelling, close to tipping. He leaned hard against his car. He pulled heavy draughts of air in through his nose, out his mouth. “Calm down calm down calm down,” he choked between breaths.

James watched Benson from the corner of his eye. His former captor stood by, smug, pleased he could still hurt him. He’d be in even more trouble with the Bureau if he touched him, but if James’ body failed on its own in a fit of Q-13-style anaphylaxis, well…

He didn’t know if Benson was specifically trying to kill him, or just wanted to stab him a few more times while he could. If he got any amount of power back, he might be a danger in the future. But for now, he was just a vengeful ghost, bound to its mistakes. An apparition, nothing more.
The only power he had against James was what James allowed him.

He forced himself to think about a cup of tea between his hands. He thought about Sesame and the Knights, the comfort and warmth waiting for him if he could just calm down. If he could make it home to them.

The balance fell back, the light faded. James gripped the front of his coat in both hands. His legs almost buckled. He retched, and threw up on the pavement. It wasn’t black. He pressed a trembling hand to his face and pulled it away dry.

“Getting a handle on my weapon, I see,” Benson noted.
James glared at him.

“It’s mine now,” James said, hoarsely. Benson’s jaw tightened at that. “I survived it. I live with it. It belongs to me. Now get the fuck away from me.”
Movement caught his attention. The doors of the ICNS opening. Finally.
Benson glanced over his shoulder, noting the approaching pair of security guards. He tilted his head at James with a wan, bitter smile. “See you around, deserter.”

“I’d better not.”

“Oh, a threat.” Benson chuckled, but finally, he took his leave to go talk to security, as if he had done nothing at all wrong.

James collapsed into the driver’s seat and shut the door. He wrestled his phone out of his pocket, activated the voice command. He could barely get the words out, “Call Sesame.” As it rang, he pulled open the center console, shaking and crying. He struggled to pry open the lid from the bottle of emergency pills—the ones that discouraged the Q-13 from poisoning him when it flared up. He shoved one in his mouth, swallowed it without water, almost choked on it.

A distant voice spoke on his phone, tossed onto the passenger seat. He managed to set it to speakerphone.

“James are you okay?” Sesame said.

James curled over the steering wheel, sobbing.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Q-13 almost went off,” James said, unsteady and gasping. “Benson confronted me…”

“Motherfucker. Did he hurt you?”

Hearing Sesame swear in his youthful voice was amusing enough to draw James back from a renewed panic spiral. He rubbed at his eyes. “Not directly. He just talked at me. Security found him before long.”

“You took your meds?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll come get you. Let me drive.”

“You don’t know how to drive.”

“I’ll figure it out. It looks easy.”

James exhaled heavily. He pressed the heel of his hand between his brows and shut his eyes hard. Images tore through his mind. Pain, powerlessness, and terror. Flashes of white and black. He tried to focus on Sesame’s matter-of-fact voice describing how he’d already memorized all the local traffic laws and operating manual.

“It’s like a video game. I’m good at those.”

A tapping at his window startled him. A security guard stood there. “Hold on, Sesame.” James clumsily stuck the key in the ignition and rolled down the window.

“You okay, Mr. Siles?” the guard said. “I’m so sorry. He was working in Hill’s lab today and we were keeping an eye on the cameras, but he’s a slippery one. Varnet’s trespassing him right now. He won’t be allowed on the premises anymore.”

James pulled a sleeve across his eyes. He checked for black discharge again. Still nothing. “I appreciate that.”

All over again, the grief and rage buffeted him—the visceral knowledge that Benson had tried to kill him, had succeeded in killing Heather and countless others, and he’d just gotten a slap on the wrist in comparison. He’d gotten another chance to seriously harm James, knowing how tenuous his health was. He got to walk free, to continue his work. It felt like nobody was listening.

Nobody with any power to stop it understood or cared how fucked up it all was.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” the security guard asked, earnestly.

James shook his head. He just wanted to leave. “Thank you.”

He rolled up the window and started his car.

“I wanted to give that guy a verbal thrashing,” Sesame said from his phone.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Why? It’s messed up! They shouldn’t have even let Benson be on site if they knew you were there too.”

“At least Varnet’s not going to let him back.”

“At least,” Sesame’s voice buzzed in distaste.

James was shaking so hard he could barely drive. He got off the ICNS grounds, and down the road a ways until it was safe to pull over by the pier.

“I don’t know if I’ll feel good enough to make it to the Knights’ tomorrow.” His head throbbed, pain radiating through him. He caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror. His eyes were still glowing. They would be incandescent for hours. He tipped his head back, tears welling up. “He just had to show up. To ruin everything. I hate how scared I still am of him.”

“The hard part’s over. We can hang out here for another day.”

“I’m supposed to check out tomorrow at eleven.” He dragged his hands down his face. “I’ll be lucky to get back before the fog pulls my whole brain out. If I’m not headed to the hospital tonight.”

“I know what to watch for. Can you call Varnet? Ask for another night at the hotel?”

“I don’t want to even think about the ICNS right now,” his voice broke. “I don’t want to be here. I can’t do this. Everyone was right. What the hell was I thinking?”

“You can still back out. No one would blame you.”

James groaned loudly at the roof of his car. “But I would blame me.”

After a beat of silence, Sesame said. “Okay. Option time.”

James sighed. This wasn’t the first time Sesame had pulled this on him. He hated the acknowledgment that he was spiraling, and needed help.

“Drive slow, get home. You just need to stay lucid for ten minutes, maximum. Or we’ll call a cab,” Sesame laid out the items like a list. “You rest tonight. Tomorrow we can either extend this room another night or get a new one, and I can move our stuff over. I’ll ask the front desk right now. I’ll let the Knights know. We’ll revisit our options then, depending on how you feel.”

He could barely track the options. It felt like the Q-13 was melting through his brain like heat on old film. But the basic takeaway was clear. Support. People he cared about, reaching out to catch him even as he hurdled toward oblivion like a meteor.

“Okay,” he muttered. He opened his eyes again. It took a second to focus. He gripped the gearshift, and pain needled through his metacarpals. “I’ll try to make the drive.”

He managed to make it to the hotel garage without incident, though he was fading fast and pulled too far forward into the parking spot, scraping the bumper on the curb. Sesame had found a wheelchair.

The little robot helped him painfully transfer to it from the driver’s seat. James attempted to maneuver himself, but his stiff, aching arms couldn’t take it. Sesame secured the car, then pushed him through the lobby, to the elevator, toward their room. People watched them pass, curious at the spectacle. Sesame didn’t seem to mind, and James avoided gazes.

He watched the doors pass as he rode down the hallway, hating his weakness, his dependence.

He felt so helpless and frail. How could such a short, one-sided conversation transform him from looking to the future with hope, to a desperate, poisoned heap so quickly?

“I bet it was really scary,” Sesame said as he unlocked their room, “seeing him again. I think you did a good job.”

James stared at his hands in his lap. He was ashamed of his panic, as his body reeled in the aftermath. But he’d made it back to home base, where he could metabolize the repercussions in quiet and safety. That had to be worth something.

The hotel suite had a tiny kitchen area. Sesame set the electric kettle going and put a heat pack in the microwave while James sat in the wheelchair and sagged into his puffer coat and scarf.
The interaction with Benson repeated behind his glowing, unfocused eyes. He’d overreacted, hadn’t he? He’d lost control.

Before long, a warm weight lowered onto his hands.

“Thank you,” he grunted.

“Can you make it to the bed?”

He debated for a minute, then acquiesced. He managed to stiffly get out of his work clothes and into sweats, and crawl into bed. Sesame brought him tea—nettle, spearmint, and lemon balm, it smelled like. He nestled it on a strip of down comforter in his lap. He cupped his hands around the mug.

He stared at that view for a long time. Fragrant steam wafting up between white ceramic and black, fragile hands. This had been the first thing he’d thought of earlier when he was trying to ground himself. He wasn’t sure why.

Sesame interrupted the slow pull of his dissociation to hand him pain killers and a mozzarella stick. He’d memorized the dosage limits and practices somehow while putting stickers on James’ pill organizer way back when.

“Why are you so kind to me?” James asked quietly. The left side of his face felt swollen, throbbing up into his eye socket. “It’s for Heather’s sake, right?”

“It’s for your sake.” Sesame looked at him, unflinching. “You’re a part of my family. Why is that hard to understand?”

He gazed dismally into his tea.

Sesame continued to stare at him, the mental wheels turning behind his face panel. James was too tired to ask him to go think somewhere else.

“Do you not want to be part of our family?” Sesame asked, neutrally.

“It’s not that,” James struggled. He hadn’t let himself think he was a part of their family, as much as their support and companionship meant to him. More sensation than logical belief, he figured they tolerated him out of sympathy and because he could still help with Heather’s new body, but if he didn’t stay in line—if he showed too much of the traits that had gotten him mixed up with Empetrum—they’d want to be rid of him. And they’d be right to. “I just feel like I don’t deserve it. Like I’m lying to you all for my own benefit.”

Sesame’s virtual eyes blinked once, as he considered that information. “Lying to us about what?”

James shrugged, and winced as the movement pulled at his aching shoulders. Speaking was getting difficult. “That maybe Benson’s right about me. That I’m selfish, and linear, and I’m going to hurt you all again.”

Sesame cocked his head, reproachful. “James.”

“It’s plausible, isn’t it?”

“That Benson’s right about you?” Sesame said. “No, it’s not.”

James took a bite of cheese stick, thwarted. He put the painkillers in his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of tea. His altered physiology kept it from burning his mouth.

“I think you’re used to thinking this way,” Sesame decided finally. “But things are different now. It’ll just take time and practice to accept it.”

+

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX—ENTWINED

Heather sat on the porch steps, waiting for James and Sesame to arrive. She and her parents had been deep cleaning the house all day, a holiday tradition that symbolized cleansing the old year and ushering in good luck for the new. Her dad had pulled the decorations from the attic—lights, festive wind chimes, and tiny ceramic houses he liked to set up in corners of the house during the holidays.

She’d helped her mom forage branches from the evergreen trees out back, preparing to make wreaths and garlands out of them, decorated with spices and dried fruit. Inside, the garland supplies sat on the kitchen table in a tall bristling pile, while storage tubs waited for attention in the living room.

Every year, they wrote hopes and intentions for the new year on slips of paper, and tied them to the garlands with ribbon. It was a tradition she had loved, but this year she was afraid to find out whether or not she could stand to see them. She already couldn’t handle pictures of her organic self, scattered throughout the home like phantoms, a constant reminder of the life she had lost.

They’d told the extended family. Her grandparents took it hard, especially her dad’s parents, who were religious. They’d assured them that her spirit had transferred over, knowing they themselves would never get that assurance. Nobody else had to wonder about that, because an identity was typically enclosed in a single body, and that was all anyone had. Nobody else had to wonder about it like she and Sesame did.

Though Sesame didn’t appear to worry about it either. He didn’t care to puzzle out whether he was still the ailing mouse from the pet shop. That creature lived in some part of him, but he had evolved so much that they could hardly be called the same entity. He’d started out longing to be human, but now he’d moved on in his journey of self-creation. The human mind as a starting point was more complicated. It seemed important to her to stay human, but would that hold her back in the end?

They were all operating off the assumption that she was Heather—she carried her memories, processed posthumous traumas as her previous identity—but there would always be a sliver of distinction. A crack of doubt she could never patch up.

They’d mostly canceled any holiday traditions involving travel or family visits, but she encouraged her parents to keep up the cooking traditions. She’d mostly lost her taste for food by now. She missed the warmth of it, but she still had access to other forms of connection, she reminded herself, and the loss of its organic forms wasn’t quite as isolating when Sesame was around. He embodied the reminder to keep moving forward. She didn’t know how she was going to survive him and James living in the capital full time. The last week without them had felt eternal.

She buzzed a soft sigh, pulling the sleeve of her sweatshirt over one hand and gently scrolling on the tablet in her lap. She was getting better at using touch screens. And she’d been reading Kaczmarek’s blog, gleaning more about the rebellion and its ethos. Kaczmarek was the only public-facing member of the group. Everyone else operated from the shadows, and she struggled to find even the barest mention of group members from its pre-militia era. Someone had wiped their records from the internet.

Jaeger, probably. Her parents had mentioned the Conxence had a talented engineer of some kind in their ranks. If they ever met, James and Jaeger would probably have a lot to geek out over.

Heather had never been much for politics—her parents tried to spare her as much as they could—but now she found herself researching it obsessively, tracing the current political movements and the people at the top back ten, twenty, fifty years. Larkspur’s falling out and Empetrum’s creation had happened almost twenty years ago. The ICNS as a concept at least went back that far.

Their current president, Noel Ferrens, had been in power for thirteen years, a dictator for the last five, sprung off from what used to be a democratic republic—depending on who one asked. He hadn’t originated the human weaponry angle, but he had inherited it, nurtured it.

The rabbit hole was deep, old, and probably more convoluted than she would ever know.

She was glad Eve and her dad had been talking about trying to take Larkspur out of their government contracts. At first, their safety robot that now housed her consciousness had seemed innocent enough, but now she wondered if it had been meant to evolve into something for the military.

Kaczmarek wrote a lot about developing injustices in the capital city. It was ground zero for experimental citizen control and propaganda campaigns, police brutality, unchecked corporate meddling and exploitation, and rampant mistreatment of the poor. The militarized section of the Conxence was just the tip of an iceberg, with Kaczmarek seated at the top waving a red flag for the government bull. The majority of its network was devoted to humanitarian aid—though any affiliation at all got a person branded a terrorist, so Heather couldn’t find any identifying information about exactly where these other branches operated. Kaczmarek used codenames for them by district.

Her parents would be worried to find her reading about the Conxence. She knew her task was here for now, picking up the pieces of her life, and helping her friends at Larkspur build her a more suitable body. But once that was sorted out, maybe she’d join the rebellion, burn it all down.

Maybe that would be on her garland intention slip for the next year.

A distant engine caught her attention, slowing down from the road, the crunch of gravel under tires.

Heather felt the circuits in her chest simmer down in relief as James’ car appeared around the bend in the driveway. It was different than his original—too many traumatic memories in the old one. She pushed an extra burst of air from her coolant system, like an exhale. She waved at the new arrivals.

James parked off to the side to avoid blocking the garage. Sesame popped out of the passenger side like a jack-in-the-box. “Hi!”

Heather headed down the steps to meet them. James dragged himself out of the driver’s seat, cross and frazzled. From the distance, Heather briefly searched the skin at his nose and mouth for signs of staining from the black discharge, but she couldn’t see any. His face looked extra pale, dark circles under his eyes.

They had all urged him to take a second extra day in the capital to recover from the Benson-induced flareup, but he wouldn’t have it. Q-13 flareups behaved kind of like an earthquake, with direct fallout and delayed aftershocks. Secretly, she appreciated that his stubbornness had brought him where they could all keep an eye on him.

He made for the trunk, bracing himself along the car for support. Heather met them around the back and prepared to help Sesame discourage him from straining himself.

But in one smooth motion, Sesame pulled James’ small suitcase out on his far side and handed James the folded up walker on the other.

“How was the drive?” Heather asked.

“Oh, nightmarish,” James grumbled, frowning as he worked. He wore his compression gloves, and his hands shook as he pulled at the corners of his mobility aid. “I hate everything.”

She reached for the walker to help, but Sesame calmly passed her a duffel bag instead. “Let him do it,” Sesame said. “He’s mad.”

James scoffed, annoyed. He managed to get the walker latched into shape, and leaned on it for a moment. He exhaled heavily, his shoulders bowed.

Heather drew nearer and offered an arm for a hug. He accepted it.

“I’m glad you got home safe,” she said. “Sorry you’ve had a rough week.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, avoiding her gaze. “I’ll live.”

Sesame cast her an amused, long suffering expression. He shut the trunk, and spotted the house with a gasp of delight. “You put up wind chimes!”

“The rest of the decorations are ready and waiting inside,” Heather said. “Mom and Dad are making mulled cider if you want to see that.”

Sesame sped up, dragging the suitcase with him, already leaving them behind. “What’s mulled cider?” He yelled back across the driveway.

“It’s a drink,” she called after him.

He hopped up the steps and disappeared inside. Heather smiled to herself, watching him go.

“He’s been talking nonstop about holiday traditions,” James remarked softly. “He was sad to miss cleaning.”

“Only Sesame would be sad to miss cleaning,” she laughed. “There’s plenty to do still. I think he’ll like decorating and cooking more, anyway.” She kept pace with him, though he was walking better. On good days, he was able to use a cane for short periods.

“He missed you all,” James said.

She glanced up at him. “We missed you too.”

He kept his gaze on the house, his expression careful.

“I’m sorry I arrived angry,” he said.

“You can be angry. It’s okay. You’re on vacation now.”

His lips tightened. He still wouldn’t look at her, like he was embarrassed. Or had forgotten how to feel comfortable with them during his week in the city.

“James…?” she said, patient yet warning. “Vacation. Right?”

“It’s on the list.” They arrived at the stairs. Heather took the walker from him and he gripped the railing, easing his way up.

Heather buzzed a sigh as she carried his walker up the steps, making it to the top before him. She retrieved her tablet. “We’re gonna tie you to the couch and hide your laptop.”

That earned her indignant eye contact. “I haven’t had free time all week. I’ve just been pretending to be functional at the ICNS and then being catatonic in the evenings—”

“I’m kidding,” she said, gently cutting him off. “Mostly.” He let her help him up the last step, a little winded. “I know working on projects helps you decompress, but I also know you tend to push yourself too hard.”

“There’s so much work to be done,” he lamented.

“And still time to do it.” She opened the door for him. He paused, disgruntled.

“I’m glad to be back here,” he admitted quietly. “I missed you too.”

Heather smiled at him, softly.

As they entered together, Heather announced, “Look who I found!”

Her parents appeared from the kitchen, welcoming. James forced his shoulders a little straighter. Heather closed the door behind them and tugged at his coat. He unzipped it and let her take it.
She stepped aside, watching her parents hug him each in turn, asking about the drive, about how he was feeling, watching more of his protective layers slowly beginning to thaw.

“Come to the kitchen,” Su said. “We have mulled cider.”

“That’s what I hear.” James carefully bent down to remove his shoes at the door. Heather helped steady him.

“It has wood in it!” Sesame piped up from the kitchen, ever fascinated by the world. “Did you know cinnamon is wood?”

Heather headed down the hall to put his coat and duffel bag in the guest room.

“I took good care of him,” Sesame’s voice filtered down the hallway as they gathered around the stove. “Like I promised.”

“He did a good job,” James said.

Heather smiled to herself, lingering in the doorway of the guest room, listening to them. The house had felt empty and cold without those two extra voices. The suitcase was already by the bed—Sesame must have blown through the house and hopped into the goings on in the kitchen in record time.

She let herself notice the carpet beneath her feet, her robotic hand on the doorframe. Different than what she wanted, but still real, present. A life worth building ahead of her, if she could manage it.

“What do you think?” Richard asked.

“It’s good,” James said. His voice lilted a bit, shy. “I’ve never had it homemade before.”

“Did you see much of the recruits while you were doing teacher’s training?” Su asked.

“No, they’re on a really tight schedule, and we weren’t on the same floor.” He paused. “I hope they like me.”

“I’m sure they will.” Richard said.

None of them wanted to talk about Benson’s stunt at the ICNS, so they didn’t. As Heather rejoined her family, Su was showing James—mug of cider in hand—the garland supplies. Richard pulled orange and lemon slices out of the oven, which would eventually become part of the decorations. Sesame stood next to James, eagerly absorbing Su’s show-and-tell and holding James’ free hand on the top of his metal head.

James caught Heather’s gaze as she reemerged from the hallway. He looked tired, but the strain was beginning to leave his features. A flurry of all her memories of him ran in snapshots behind her eyes, their lives soldered together like a stained glass window.

Sesame stuck a sprig of pine in James’ face. “What does it smell like?”

James held it under his nose, searching for a description Sesame could relate to. “It’s on the cold side, with a little bite to it like an electrical impulse. Compare notes with Heather, she could probably recreate what I’m talking about.”

Sesame turned on her, hands eagerly outstretched. “I want to feel it!”
Heather came forward, recalling the smell of pine. Their tactile temperature sensors didn’t register temperature as sensation, though she had been experimenting with incorporating her electromagnetic field to experience temperature more organically.

“There’s a few layers I’m not sure how to imitate,” she said, but she met his hands anyway. Their electromagnetic fields melded, and she pushed a little energy into his palms, trying to approximate the subtle sharpness of the scent. “I actually have some pain simulator questions for you, James. I’ve been experimenting with developing sensation out of my current sensors.”

He hesitated at the mention of the pain simulator, but nodded. “Sure.”

+

Later that evening, James emerged from a nap in the guest room to find garland-making underway in the den.

They asked if he wanted to join out of courtesy, but he declined. His body was hurting. He made himself some tea and a heat pack and parked himself in a free spot on the couch. Within minutes, Sesame was eagerly showing him what he had learned.

As he watched Sesame’s robotic hands wrap thin paddle wire around a bundle of greenery, talking about evergreen shape variation and visual interest, James’ confrontation with Benson intruded on his mind. He tried to push it away, tried to be present, but several sections of the memory scrubbed back and replayed like a skipping record. His illness and terror. Benson’s contempt.

He glanced up, observing which combination of branch types the Knights were using in their respective garlands. The variety was subtle. Heather painstakingly threaded a wire through a baked orange slice, which introduced a surprisingly satisfying pop of color into the green. A year ago he wouldn’t really have seen the point of this. Handmade decorations, quality time.

Would he really grow to resent this?

He felt the ever gnawing anxiety to keep working, railing against his tired body, his mortality a constant worry. But he really wanted to care about slowing down like this. Sesame fully believed Benson’s assessment was wrong.

James craved that certainty.

“We’re gonna write intentions and hopes for next year to hang in the garlands,” Sesame explained.

“What are you going to write on yours, James?”

“I don’t know…‘Stay alive?’”

“A worthy goal,” Su said.

“‘Blow up the government…’” Heather nonchalantly clipped some more branches into smaller sprigs. “‘Make six new super-powered friends…’”

“Are those yours or mine?” James scoffed.

“Mine,” she said, smiling.

“I’m gonna be your teacher’s assistant,” Sesame realized suddenly. “I’m gonna meet the recruits! I hope they’re nice to us. We’ll be friends either way.”

Richard laughed. “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with that.”

“You have to introduce me,” Heather said.

“I’ll try!”

James listened to them chat and banter hopefully about the new year, and he tried to slot his relationship with Sesame and the Knights into the shape of his nervous system. It didn’t really compute, but where he was used to brittle, heavy-handed social frameworks, these new variables felt strangely flexible and grounded.

The Knights urged him to slow down and be kind to himself when all his instincts funneled toward perfectionism. Where emotions or weakness had often earned him deeper isolation, his new friends didn’t pull away. They worried about his wellbeing. They seemed to trust his choices, and spoke up when they didn’t. His connection with them didn’t feel so much like a contract.

He still watched for signs that this wasn’t real either. But if this safe, quiet place turned out to be authentic, he supposed he could learn to trust it.

Time and practice, to grow a new way of being.

On some level, he would always be chasing recompense. He would do anything in his power to make it up to them, to protect them, fight for them, to become someone worthy of their care. In all new territory, dealing in a type of equation he didn’t quite understand, he had very little yet to offer, nothing he could promise with any confidence.

All he could do, the only thing that felt appropriate in that moment, was to be there, gratefully. In the cordial glow of holiday lights, enjoying the company of his loved ones undeserved, a soft smile stole unbidden across his features, and he let it linger.

Maybe, for now, this was enough.

+

THE END

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO—INFORMANT

Heather listened closely for signs of movement from upstairs or the couch as she carefully unplugged her mom’s cellphone from the charger in the kitchen. The screen illuminated with a virtual number keyboard, waiting for the PIN. She sent a tiny bit of energy to her index finger, and lowered it to the first key.

It registered.

She uttered a soft buzz of relief. With some internet sleuthing and practice on her tablet, she had figured out how to get the capacitive touch screen to respond. She typed out the rest of her mom’s password—gleaned from years of co-piloting in the car looking up directions, fielding ETA or grocery request logistics texts to her dad.

Nervously, she pulled up contacts, scrolling down the list, looking for a name, hoping Su hadn’t hidden it.

“What are you doing?”

Heather startled and whipped around.

“Sesame, shhh.” she said, waving at him to quiet down.

He read the gesture to mean sit down, so he sat down crisscross on the floor, gazing up at her inquisitively.

“Close enough,” she said. She headed for the sliding glass door. Sesame wordlessly got up and followed. She’d piqued his interest.

Rain fell in a fine mist. Heather took shelter under the eaves, continuing her search. Sesame sidled up next to her. He reached his robotic hand out from under the shelter, watching the rain collect and drip down his reflective palm.

“There it is,” she said.

Ganymede.

She braced herself and tapped the contact. Anxiety buzzed through her as it rang.

The call connected. The voice was artificially modulated. “Su, hi. Is everything all right?”
 “Is this Ganymede?” Heather asked.

He hesitated. “Who is this?”

“Heather.” She exchanged a meaningful glance with Sesame, hoping he wouldn’t decide this was some kind of infringement and go tell on her. He stayed put, listening. “Is this a good time? I have something really important I wanted to talk to you about.”

“How can I help?”

“Are you familiar with a place called the ICNS?”

He chose his words carefully. “We’ve encountered people with that name on their uniforms. Some kind of special law enforcement group.”

“They’re kids.”

A long pause answered her.

“You haven’t hurt them, have you?” Heather pressed.

“For everyone’s safety, we should continue this conversation off the record,” Ganymede said. “Do your parents know about this phone call?”

“No. They would have tried to stop me.”

“Can you bring them into the loop, please?”

Desperation pulled at her. “Please don’t treat me like a child.”

“I only ask because discussing this in any form is very dangerous,” the voice cloak cast an ominous bent onto everything he said. “It will affect them too, and may carry heavy consequences.”

“But I can’t just do nothing. What if they refuse?”

“Then you have a choice to make.”

The knowledge had been burning at her since James had told her while in the hospital: How there were six kids in the program, how Erika’s abuse was part of Empetrum’s efforts to create superhuman abilities in non-Compatible people. She thought of them, trapped, their bodies and lives taken from them, forced to fight for their own continued imprisonment, protecting the systems that made places like Empetrum possible.

She had just reunited with her family. She knew she needed to try to recover, work on moving forward. But she felt like such a ghost in her own life, and those other kids needed help. And right now, nobody else even knew to fight for them but her and James.

Heather groaned, raising a hand to her head and glaring at the floor. “This sucks.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” he said sympathetically. “At this juncture, ask everyone involved what they’re comfortable with, and give me a call back, and we’ll go from there, okay? I agree this is very important.”

“Okay,” Heather said. “I wish everything weren’t so complicated.”

“Me too.”

She hung up, and tipped her head back against the exterior paneling of the house, gazing up under the eaves in exasperation.

“Ganymede isn’t his real name,” Sesame piped up. “He and the others live in hiding because the government is after them. I don’t think he wants the same for us.”

Heather buzzed a sigh. “Yeah, I figured.”

She went back inside, leaving Sesame to whatever he was doing, and plugged her mom’s phone back into the wall. She felt guilty for going ahead with it, not considering that telling the Conxence about the ICNS might harm her family, or require her to leave them if she put a target on her back as well.

She peeked over the back of the sofa, where James dozed with his hands wrapped up in a heat pack on his chest. Her heat sensor indicated it had cooled off. “Hey, James?”

He grunted, muffled. He didn’t open his eyes.

“Can I heat that back up for you?”

He grunted again, softer.

She gently pulled on it, and he woke up with a long inhale—a human startup sound. Confused, but compliant, he let the heat pack slip away from his hands. He rubbed at his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” Heather wrapped up the heat pack on her way to the microwave.

“Ugh,” he said.

“Are you coherent right now? I need to talk to you about something.”

“Mmm I think so…” his voice was slow and grainy with sleep. “Give it a try.”

“I want to tell the Conxence about the ICNS,” Heather said. While the microwave hummed across the room, she positioned herself off the end of the sofa so he could see her. “I tried a few minutes ago, but Ganymede wants to see what everyone else thinks before moving forward.”

James stared at her. His golden irises had finally stopped glowing that caustic, urgent yellow from his episode much earlier that morning. His very short hair stuck up at odd angles, and his sweatshirt hung askew from his bony frame, while most of him lay shrouded under the stuffed blanket taking over the couch. She read lucidity in his gaze, hoped it was accurate.

“Oh,” he said finally, glancing away. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too.”

“Ganymede says it’s dangerous to talk about it,” she said, as he slowly levered himself to a sitting position, wincing.

He nodded. “I’ll be in much bigger trouble if it gets out I told anyone, especially the Conxence. Anyone who knows about it could be in danger too.”

“But they’re already clashing with the kids at the ICNS. They’re having to treat them like enemy soldiers.”

James tipped his head aside, slowly massaging a point where his neck met his shoulders. “When I was still at Empetrum, the head of the ICNS floated the idea of a part time teaching job. I’ve been wondering if that’s still on the table.”

It was Heather’s turn to stare. “You would really go back there?”

“Something’s going to come to a head. I just really feel like I need to be there when it does.” He avoided her gaze. “I can’t explain it.”

“But…you can barely even walk right now.” Not to mention his even more debilitating symptoms, which Q-13 flareups only exacerbated.

“I know I sound delusional, but it gives me something to live for right now,” he said.

“I get that,” Heather said, softly.

The microwave beeped, startling them both.

As she moved to retrieve the heat pack, James said, “I’ve been thinking about building you an organic-passing body too.”

She paused at the microwave. It surprised her how much his quiet statement felt like a knife pointed at her back. The reminder that despite his decimated body, he was still there—the James that never stopped, who struggled to face any version of himself that wasn’t useful, that stumbled after a compulsion to keep his dangerous mind busy.

She gently tugged on the handle of the microwave. She pulled out the heated sack of flax seed and checked the temperature. She couldn’t feel the warmth in her hands.

“If you want nothing else to do with me after this, that’s okay. I’ll leave,” he said it neutrally, at her heavy silence. “I know you don’t need my help.”

Sorrow stirred in her chest. Some moments, James felt like a hand to hold while they made sense of the devastation. Others, he felt like another accident waiting to happen. The thought of him leaving for good was painful to consider, like losing a family member.

“I just…wasn’t ready to hear that yet from you, I guess,” she said finally. She crossed the room, and handed him the heat pack. “It sounds like a lot of work, and really expensive. Who else will you have to sell your soul to?”

“Nobody, hopefully.”

“Are you really going to try to get a job at the ICNS?”

He shrugged, his gaze far away as he carefully wrapped the compress around his hands. He closed his eyes in an expression of relief at the heat. “I was involved in exposing Empetrum and destroying its research facility, so I don’t think they’ll consider it anyway.”

“Or they’ll try to trap you again. You can’t safely use the Q-13, and they’ll be more than prepared to counter it if you manage it.”

“As a milestone prototype, I’ll be under surveillance soon no matter what I do. Might as well make it on my own terms.” He looked up at her. “I would like to talk to the Conxence about the ICNS. We have to do it before that window closes.”

+

James was determined to be coherent when the Conxence arrived at the Knight’s doorstep. He willed his body to behave, knowing he was powerless to control the sudden crashes and flareups.

He used to rely on adrenaline to perform well even when sick, but after Empetrum, stress lit him up like a match covered in gasoline.

Heather helped him type out everything he felt prudent to share with the rebellion—to make sure they got all the necessary information if the brain fog pushed him nonverbal before their arrival. He would have liked to type it himself, but the pain and weakness in his hands rendered them nearly unusable for fine motor skills. The option of voice-to-text instead fell prey to brain fog and concentration issues. Heather already knew a lot of the basics of their upcoming meeting, so she was able to fill in the blanks off of skeletal outlines as needed.

Reclining on the couch watching her type on the laptop for him, he grappled with a growing sense of rage and despair to be trapped in this poisoned body. It felt like he had indeed died at Empetrum, if this was what he was reduced to.

Maybe he would never be strong enough to live on his own, or face the ICNS, or even pick up a pencil. The thought had occurred to him many times over the last few days that maybe he was better off transferred into a robotic body as well. But it was impossible. He was the only one that could rebuild that machine, and it filled him with shame and self-hatred to even consider it, wishing for a way back.

This couldn’t be his life now.

Despite angst and tears and regular breaks, they got the information down, and several hours later, the crunch of tires on gravel bloomed in the driveway.

Sesame was out the door immediately. He forgot to close it while he stood at the top of the porch steps, eagerly waiting for the newcomers to get out of the car.

Parked on the couch, James hunched his shoulders at the breeze wafting through the open door.

Anxiety stirred like bruises under his skin. Prior to Empetrum, he would already have a mask up—professional, smart, and capable. But now it was like the wires to any light he had left had been severed.

“Hi!” Sesame said, as two men came up the porch steps.

“Hello,” the older of the two said jovially, shaking the robot’s eager hand like old friends. “Staying out of trouble?”

“I got a library card!”
 “Did you, now?”

Richard and Su met them at the door. James hazarded a glance up behind the back of the couch, where Heather hung back. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, feet on the floor.

He had been briefed on identities enough to recognize the people who stood in the doorway as Noran Kaczmarek, the head of the militarized side of the Conxence, and Ganymede, whom the Knights suspected was leadership in some capacity but had never managed to confirm. He wore a baseball cap, and a mask over the lower half of his face.

“First thing we need to do is stow phones and any company devices out of earshot,” Kaczmarek said.

Richard and Su nodded, and moved to comply. Su switched on the electric kettle on her way past the kitchen.

“It’s nice to finally meet,” Kaczmarek said, looking at James and Heather in turn. “You kids have been through hell.”

Heather slowly rounded the couch and sat next to James, her body language closed. Now that the emergency of James’ hospital stay was wearing off, she had confessed she was uncomfortable being seen in her current form.

“Thank you for helping us,” Heather said.

“And thank you for talking to us today,” Ganymede added. “We’ll do everything in our power to keep this information under wraps.”

James carefully massaged his aching hands. “If anything happens, make sure the data trail only comes back to me. I don’t want anything else falling on the Knights.”

That earned him a glance from Heather.

Su brought James tea, offered their guests coffee, which they politely declined, and then they set about discussing Empetrum and the ICNS. James refrained from divulging any information that wasn’t need-to-know—such as the recruits’ names or appearances. The Conxence compared notes with what they had already gleaned from them in the field, and what Erika had told them.

He described the basic functioning of the technology, and how the kids at the ICNS had all probably been recruited against their will. He also admitted he was thinking about approaching the ICNS for a job.

Richard and Su stared at him, shocked. He realized he’d forgotten to discuss that with them.

“The head of the ICNS had offered the possibility of a part-time teaching position, in case I needed an occasional change of scenery from Empetrum,” James said. His face felt warm.

“Benson declined for me, but I’m curious if the offer still stands.”

Kaczmarek flashed a wry smile. “Trying to poach personnel from Benson, eh? Smells like politics.”

James shrugged. “I don’t even have their contact information, so I’d probably have to approach the Bureau about that.”

“Eve and I are in the process of getting some form of restitution approved,” Richard said, glancing at Heather. “The Bureau wants to pay for development of an organic passing body.”

“To pay us off, you mean,” Heather said bitterly. “Make this all go away.”

“Maybe.”

“If there are strings attached, I’m not taking it,” Heather said.

James fidgeted. Dhar had proven himself sympathetic so far, putting Benson on probation, but that still seemed too good to be true. “You should take it,” he said.

“And let them claim legal right to my body because they paid for it?”

“We’re keeping an eye on that,” Richard said. “We would make it at Larkspur, make sure nobody but us and the Larkspur team are in charge of every part of the process.”

“They may lessen terms for you if I give myself up.”

“James,” Su groaned.

“Heather has a life ahead of her,” James insisted, defensive. “The chance to fix things, move forward. But I don’t know how much time I have left.” His voice hitched, wavering hopelessly. “If I’m sick and useless under government surveillance, or sick and useless in the outside world, what does it fucking matter?”

“You’re not—” Heather started.

He cut her off, “All I do is lie around passed out or too messed up to contribute anything. And I don’t know if that will ever change. I just…” He deflated, sitting back with a heavy sigh. “I want to make this worth something.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to be an inside informant if you manage to pull it off,” Kaczmarek said.

James shook his head. “I can’t ask you to go easy on them. But if we’re lucky, maybe we can help them from our respective positions.”

“We’d like that,” Ganymede said.

+

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE—MEETINGS 

Heather wished her first trip to the national capital were under different circumstances. Even covered head-to-toe, a surgical mask over her face and a short wig under the pulled up hood of her sweatshirt, she felt incredibly exposed as her family drove deeper into the city’s heart, where the Federal Bureau of Science and Innovation resided.

Dhar was ready to talk reparations, and she had to keep an eye on her family.

She kept her face bowed, watching her legs kick at her long skirt as she walked between her parents through the parking garage, her mother’s hand steady on her back. On Richard’s other side, James walked with his mobility aid, bundled up in winter clothing. The early October weather was mild, but still too cold for the persistent chill he suffered. They’d tried to persuade him to video call into the meeting instead of making the journey, but he dug his heels in.

She was having serious misgivings about letting him approach the ICNS.

As they made their way up to the sleek reception desk, Heather ventured a look in James’ direction. His gaze was lowered to his hands, fingerless compression gloves supporting his grip on the handles of his walker, his lips a hard line.

The receptionist took them back to a small meeting room. Heather kept her face down and turned away from anyone they passed in the hallway. They were asked to take a seat at the glass table, and left alone with the promise that Dhar would be in shortly.

Eve was already there.

James balked. Eve had watched unethical practices almost destroy Larkspur once, not to mention threaten her career by mere association. She had tried to warn him, and in searching for Heather, she had had to endure her own skeletons being dragged to the surface. She had witnessed firsthand all James had put her friends through.

She stood up from the table.

“Eve, I’m so sorry for everything,” James said, his voice shaking as she drew nearer. “I should have listened to you.”

She wrapped her arms around him, producing a wheezy squeak of surprise. Faltering, he lifted his arms to return the embrace.

“I’m sorry about Empetrum,” Eve said, softly.

Over her shoulder, Heather watched James’ face waver. He bit his lip, trying to keep it together, but crumbled anyway. He shut his eyes tightly, and lowered his forehead to her shoulder.
Eve hugged Heather too. “We’ll make them pay through the nose for this,” Eve said.

As they took a seat at the conference table, Heather thought she would be sandwiched between her parents, but then Su motioned for James to sit next to Heather, bookended protectively by the Knights. James sheepishly obeyed.

Heather wanted to reach out, to squeeze his arm, offer something encouraging, but cold, breathless anxiety pulled through her circuits in a steady, cycling stream. He was generally uncomfortable with touch, anyway, unless he was a complete emotional wreck. She didn’t know where on that spectrum he was at the moment.

She pulled down her hood, removed the wig and surgical mask, and laid them on the table. She straightened her shoulders.

She was tempted all the time to join the Conxence, where she could be a direct help. She had mentioned it to Kaczmarek and Ganymede during their meeting, to the dismay of her parents, but the Conxence had turned her down.

“You have work to do here first,” Kaczmarek had said.

“Money’s not going to fix anything,” she muttered to James, waiting for Dhar to enter. If he was anything like Benson in appearance or demeanor, she fully intended to stand up and drag James out the door with her.

James nodded slowly. He worked a thumb into the tissues of his other palm, staring at the door and breathing carefully. “But an organic passing body will help you.”

The door opened, and Heather stiffened as Vihaan Dhar, a middle-aged man with a black mustache and soft, concerned eyes entered. He paused as his gaze met hers, traveled to James, then to Richard, Su, and Eve with an air of sorrow.

Performative, Heather thought venomously.

“Good morning,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting across from them. He folded his organic hands on the table. Heather squeezed her gloved, robotic ones together in her lap underneath it.

“Let me just say again how sorry I am for what happened,” Dhar said. “I knew Empetrum was under some pressure, but I didn’t realize how dangerously unhinged Benson had become. I thought what I was arranging when I recommended you to him, Siles, was a simple prospect. A chance to let you thrive in your unique expertise and make the higher-ups happy…He led me to believe the transition went smoothly, that you had parted with Larkspur on good terms.” He looked at James, whose narrow, stained face was stony, his golden eyes sad. “You should have been allowed to resign from Empetrum with respect. None of this should have ever happened. But, now that it has, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to try to offer excuses. I want to help ease some of the effects, if at all possible. No special conditions attached. Richard, Eve, and I have been discussing reparations.”

Heather stared him down, trying to detect any insincerity. Any hint of Benson in him. Words were cheap.

He looked at Richard and Eve. “Have you put a proposal together?”

Richard slid a folder to him across the table. “Eighteen months of full dedication of Larkspur’s resources, and funding of two organic passing bodies. One for Heather, the other for Sesame, who helped us.”

Heather cringed inwardly. She didn’t want the Bureau knowing about Sesame, but it had already come out. Benson knew about Sesame, so Dhar knew too.

Sesame was elated about the prospect of an organic passing body. He wanted full body thermal and mechanoreceptors immediately.

Dhar flipped open the folder, skimming the numbers. “Done.”

“Mr. Dhar,” James said. “I have another request I’d like to make.”

“Yes?”
 “How much influence do you have with the ICNS?”

Dhar paused, wary. “The ICNS is further under the military umbrella, but the Bureau essentially supplies the technology that keeps it running. Why?”

Heather could feel James trembling. Under the table, she reached for one of his hands and squeezed it. His hand tightened in hers.

“When I was with Empetrum,” James said, “the facility coordinator, Varnet, offered me a teaching position if I was ever interested. I wanted to take her up on it.”

Dhar’s eyebrows lowered in confusion. He searched James’ haggard face for a moment. “Why would you want to go back after all this? Empetrum scientists operate there too, you know. Varnet knows what happened between you and Benson.”

“I feel responsible for the Compatible recruits.”

“They aren’t your responsibility.”

“They’ve entered the field after only a single year of training,” James pursued. “I know I’m not the only one expecting things to come to a head with the Conxence in the next several months.” He forced his posture straight, and for a moment, he appeared whole. “When that happens, those kids will need someone on the inside looking out for them.”

“They already have caretakers,” Dhar said. “Good ones, too. James, you have to distance yourself from all this. Let yourself heal, and move on with your life. None of this is your concern anymore.”

“Don’t I get to decide that?” James gestured to himself with both stained hands. Dhar’s gaze didn’t flinch, bearing witness to the price he and Heather had paid for merely brushing up against the land mine of someone else’s power struggles. “This is something I need to do.” He stared Dhar straight in the face. “If you bar this avenue, I’ll find another one.”

Heather hoped the implication of that was clear to Dhar. Judging by the latter’s expression, staring back at James, it was: If he stood between James and the ICNS, the Conxence was about to gain one very dangerous new member. Or the military would have to do something to silence him, and the fires Dhar was attempting to pacify would keep burning.

Dhar narrowed his eyes, exasperated. “You understand Varnet’s probably changed her mind, and I don’t have the ability to just give you a position there. Benson and Hill will do everything they can to block you, and you’re on everyone’s radars as a threat. You’ll be in danger if you’re not careful, whether or not you get what you want.”

“I understand.”

“Please, just move on from this. You’ve suffered enough.”

“I can’t.”

Dhar stared at him, hope waning. Finally, he sighed. “Well, if this is truly something you feel you need to do, I can at least set up a meeting. You bring the expertise of an Empetrum scientist with the ethic of Larkspur, which may interest her. And she’s the one who’ll have the final say, depending on her personal opinion of Empetrum’s recent activities.”

James nodded.

“I don’t know how much of a chance you got to interact with Varnet,” Dhar went on, fidgeting with the folder on the table, “but I’ll give you some advice: She values candor, and she can always tell if you’re lying. If you do somehow manage to convince her, be careful. She is very good at identifying what people want, what they can’t bear to lose, and making that useful for her. She will have terms, and if you want in with the ICNS, you’ll have to agree to them. I just want you to be prepared for that. I really hope you’re able to walk away from this one.”

Heather glanced aside, watching James’ face in her peripheral vision. Her heat sensor clicked on, and in the secondary visual feed, James lit up beside her in representative color. The black in his skin was the coldest parts of him, pulling colder with his mounting anxiety. She squeezed his hand again, supportive. Though she feared he would soon stray too far away for her to protect him.

“I understand,” James said. “Thank you.”

+

Richard drove James to an agreed rendezvous point in the capital, where Varnet had sent an ominous black sedan to meet them. Heather insisted on coming too.

James had wanted to drive himself. He knew where the ICNS was, and his belongings—including his car—had since turned up at a storage facility in Worthing. But moving in a car made him dizzy, and his Q-13 blunted reflexes were still too slow to drive safely.

He stared at the sedan, waiting for him. The splintering ache of his altered physiology throbbed down his arms and through his jaw and left cheekbone. He pulled a slow breath in through his nose and exhaled. It didn’t really help.

He opened the car door and got out. The driver’s side door of the other car opened as well and a man in a suit appeared.

Richard popped the trunk, and helped him unfold his walker. He gently took James’ arm, staring into his eyes, worry written into every line on his face. Supposedly, James was just going to talk to Varnet, but they didn’t know what was coming next—if they’d ever see him again.

“Good luck,” Richard said. James nodded, nervous.

Heather hugged him, burying her face in his sweater. He wore a couple of them under his jacket.

“Come back to us,” she said.

James hugged her back. “See you soon.”

Together, they faced the black car, Heather holding onto the sleeve of his jacket. James felt his heartbeat in his chest, radiating out through his scars. He glanced at Heather, who held his gaze.

He gripped the handles of his walker and Heather finally let him go as he strode forward.
He willed himself not to panic, even as he felt like he was limping straight to his death. He felt the Knights’ gazes on his back, but didn’t turn around.

The driver smiled as he reached conversational range.

“Good morning, Dr. Siles,” he said, holding out his hand. “May I stow that for you?”

James swallowed and nodded. Once he was safely braced on the car, the chauffeur opened the door to the backseat for him. James cast one more glance at the Knights, who held each other, trying to burn that image into his memory, and then painstakingly tucked himself into the black leather seat.

“Nervous?” the chauffeur glanced in the rearview mirror once he returned.

James hugged himself and looked out the window. “You could say that.”

“We’ll have you back with your friends within the hour, as scheduled,” the chauffeur said. He switched on the radio, where smooth jazz droned softly into the backseat. “Music okay?”

James nodded.

His hand on his heart and pain pulsing through his scars, James watched the scenery as Varnet’s chauffeur took him over the bridge, through the capital’s downtown financial district, and out to the concrete plains dotted with hushed warehouses and dormant equipment of the industrial shipping district.

Then he saw the familiar fence, a tall chain-link monstrosity covered in opaque sheets to obscure any curious eyes. The building reared up behind it, tall and wide, all the windows treated with a reflective surface.

The car wound through security checkpoints, and the driver only had to reveal his face before security let him through. James felt sicker and sicker as they advanced into the parking lot, and the chauffeur delivered him—mobility aid, PTSD and all—to the lobby.

He kneaded his hands as he waited, his breathing disturbed. The receptionist discreetly paged Varnet, then mostly ignored him. He could feel his eyes starting to glow—an unsettling warmth in the vitreous humor—and he didn’t know how to get his body to overlook how much danger he knew he was in, how foolhardy and idiotic this quest was.

What did he really think he was going to accomplish with all this? If he ever saw Benson again, he expected to just die on the spot.

The door at the back of the lobby opened, revealing Anusha Varnet, the coordinator and warden of the ICNS. James fixed his layers of sweaters, wishing he didn’t look as terrified and frail as he knew he did in that moment.

Mercifully, Varnet seemed to overlook it. She smiled. “Siles, good morning. I hope you had a pleasant trip.” She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter. “Let’s talk in my office.”

James obeyed. He tried to memorize the route, in case he had to flee, knowing that if Varnet decided to imprison him, there actually wasn’t a single thing he could do about it.

Entering her office again, it felt like the world tilted, and he had left reality behind. These walls existed in his nightmares and flashbacks. Closed in, examined, controlled.

She motioned to a cushioned chair in front of her desk. “Take a seat.”

James stiffly complied.

“So,” she said, sitting down behind her desk. One of her neat eyebrows arched. “I’m told you want a job?”

“Yes,” James said quietly.

She folded her hands on her desk. “I was surprised when Dhar called to set up this meeting. As I’m sure you’re aware, I know all about your role in Empetrum’s recent ‘accident.’”

James swallowed and nodded.

“Modulator research isn’t cheap, or expedient,” she went on. “But the government is extremely impatient to get its hands on those ready-made Compatibles all the same.” James winced at the term, uttered without a hint of discomfort. “You’ve given Empetrum a lot of recovery work to do, having thrown the biggest wrench possible into our operation to date.” She leaned forward, steepling her fingers. “So tell me, why should I let you anywhere near my recruits?”

James took a breath, and carefully kneaded his hands. He straightened his shoulders, reminded himself to be candid. Varnet wasn’t Benson.

“None of that would have happened if Benson had just let me resign like a regular person,” he said.

“When he briefed you of the situation, I suspect he neglected to mention the part where he killed my friend, a fifteen-year-old kid, requiring me to use my neural transfer machine on her to save her life.”

Varnet tilted her head in concession. “He framed it differently, but I figured that’s how it happened.”

“He was spiraling out of control, which was probably going to burn the ICNS at some point anyway,” James said. “I heard Empetrum is restructuring as a result.”

She studied him, her expression calm and searching. “Dhar says you feel responsible for our Compatibles.”

James’ face reddened. “Yes.”

“You’re acquainted with Erika Hodgson, correct? Benson suspects she was with the Conxence. I don’t like my employees being sympathizers with the very group we’re training our recruits to resist.”

“There is some ethical overlap for me, yes,” James admitted. “But I try to focus on what’s in front of me. I’ve always just wanted to be left to my work.”

“And now your work is meddling.” Varnet smiled wanly, amused. “You’ve only seen the recruits in person once, right? Yet you’re willing to dive back into the system you fought tooth and nail to escape just to provide ‘moral support?’ I’m just not buying it.”

James stared at his hands. He was forever tempted to think of his outward scars as his misdeeds branded into his skin, a testament to his cowardice and failure. But he knew they were a byproduct of his efforts to make things right. The Q-13 was a punishment he had harnessed to free himself and help his friends. The marks were a badge of courage, not of shame.

“Does Benson know about this meeting today?” he asked, preparing to be told to leave, or worse.
Varnet nodded. “He’s livid that you’d even think about coming back.”

“I’m not asking to go back to Empetrum,” James said. “Just the ICNS.”
Varnet paused at that. She raised a hand to her chin and sat back, regarding him. Her eyes flicked to the lower left of James’ gaze, and he knew she was looking at the black stripe.

“Even if you prefer to concentrate on the teaching position,” she mused, “I do like the idea of having my own specialist on board that doesn’t answer to Benson.” She smiled wanly. “You may have guessed already, but Benson and his lot can be hard to work with.”

James cracked a small, tired smile in agreement.

“If I were to hire you,” she went on, “you would answer to me and Victor Gresham, the recruits’ trainer and operation manager. Benson and Hill would have no jurisdiction over you, outside of the scientific side of things, of course.”

“I admit I like the sound of that,” James said quietly.

“How much have you actually worked with modulator technology?” Varnet asked.

“I was up to date on theory and methodology, and had started shadowing Yeun, but hadn’t yet done any major hands-on work.”

“But you do know enough about how it works, how to manage it, guidelines for dosages and procedures, and so on, to be useful?”

“Yes.”

She sized him up again, and took a piece of paper off her desk James hadn’t noticed. The way the light passed through it, he could see the composition of the text on the page and recognized the configuration as that of his resume. Dhar must have passed that along too.

“How old are you, Siles?”

“Twenty-one,” James said.

She nodded, looking at the page. “Yet you already have a doctorate and two years on-the-job experience with Larkspur. I’m going to tell you up front, I’m not impressed by the ‘boy genius type’ in any capacity. In fact, I see it as a hazard.”

“I understand,” James said. He had come to see it as a hazard too.

“Your feud with Benson aside,” she said, “do you play well with others?”

“When they don’t try to kill me, yes.”

Her lips tightened, thinking. “Contrary to what you may think, we care very much for the wellbeing of our recruits,” she said, returning his resume to her desk. “And we’re not in the practice of enslaving or executing coworkers.” She looked at him. “From what I know of your activities over the last few months, it sounds to me like you’ve been forced to make some tough decisions, and have done everything in your power to face the consequences. I’ve observed you appear to have a network of people who care about you, and Dhar seems to think you’re a good person, someone that might—” She lifted a manicured finger, pausing for emphasis. “—might—be an asset here at the ICNS.”

James stared at her, trying to figure out what that all meant.

“You mean…you’re considering it?” he asked, incredulous.

“Do you have teaching experience?”

“Some,” James stammered. “I tutored physics and digital logic in college.”

“I would need you for science and mathematics,” she said. “Algebra through calculus, physics, and biology. Given your previous vocation, I assume you can handle those?”

“Yes,” James said. He had figured she’d have already made up her mind about him before he’d walked in the door, but the question had been what her opinion of him was. What was he worth to her?

“There is also the question of what to do about this,” Varnet said, motioning to the left side of her face in a curling motion. “The first viable strain of the Q-13. You’re lucky to be alive.”

James glanced down at his hands in lap again. He squeezed them together. “Yeah.”

“And I hear it’s functional, no less.”

“Kind of,” James said, nervous. For a terrible moment, he thought she was going to ask him to show her. “It creates a byproduct that’s poisonous to my body, and it’s a huge metabolic strain. Fully activating it now would probably kill me.”

Varnet nodded thoughtfully. “If I bring you into the ICNS, I would like to continue to monitor its progress. Semi-regular checkups conducted by my own medical staff, with the results passed along to Empetrum. I don’t think you should have any more contact with Benson.”

“Agreed,” James said.

“Benson is only grudgingly letting the ICNS take interest in the Q-13,” she said. “I’m told there was nothing especially miraculous about your physiology prior to infusion, and Benson didn’t lose data in the ‘accident.’ He can finish the Q-13 without you. This would just be a peace offering to Empetrum for my interest in bringing you on.”

“I see.” James had known destroying the facility wouldn’t truly bring Empetrum down, but he was still disappointed it continued to exist. He and Heather had risked their lives for its demise, and it wasn’t enough.

“We have very specific protocols and requirements,” Varnet went on. “We’ll provide that training here. If you want to take a stab at it, make yourself available the first week of December to complete the program. If training goes well and after that trial period you decide this is really something you’re up for, the position’s yours. You would start in January.” She cracked a wry smile.

“Provided you don’t try to destroy the ICNS first.”

“No need to worry about that,” he said, trying to smile back.

Varnet pulled open a drawer and produced a folder, which she extended across her desk. James stood up to take it.

“Here’s the basic information about what your position will entail, the orientation dates, and so on,” she said. “The recruits’ trainer will conduct his own screening during this period.”

James nodded, glancing through the folder.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Varnet said. 
 The most burning questions he had, only time could answer: Was this a massive mistake? Would he be able to be there for the recruits when they needed him? Would this ever be worth anything?

“I’ll—save it for orientation,” he said.

“All right. Well…” She stood up and rounded the desk to shake his hand. “Thank you for meeting with me today. Good luck.”

James tucked the folder under one arm to meet the gesture with the other hand. Stark, unnatural black against brown. He felt weak with relief that the meeting was finally over. “Thank you.”

“I’m very curious to see what comes of this.” She said brightly, showing him to the door. “Let’s hope it works out.”

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE—COMPLICATIONS 

+

The emergency department lobby was much busier than Heather was comfortable with, but she focused ahead. She stuck close to her parents, who dragged James in through the automatic doors, headed for the big wood-paneled check-in desk. Sesame walked next to her, carrying the car battery attached to her chest.

She felt gazes following them across the room. Suffering people waiting for help, others waiting anxiously to hear about their loved ones’ treatment. The intake administrators watched her and Sesame approach with puzzled expressions like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“Something’s very wrong,” Richard said. “We think he’s dying.”

The administrator pulled up forms on the monitor in front of her. “What’s his name?”

“James Siles.”

“What symptoms are we dealing with?”

“High fever, severe abdominal pain, extremely rapid weight loss,” Su listed. “Joint pain, exhaustion, dizziness, which has graduated to general lack of consciousness—” James’ body convulsed weakly, and the black bile made its appearance again. “Also that.”

The administrator stared, surprised.

“He was injected with an experimental substance against his will,” Heather blurted. “It’s killing him. Please, he needs help!”
 The administrator nodded, typing, her lips tight. She paged somebody.

“Do you know what the substance was?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Heather cried. “It’s not gonna show up on any of your forms!”

“Heather…” Su placed her free hand on her shoulder.

Heather ignored her. “We can try to explain it later, but right now we don’t have that kind of time.”

A nurse appeared from a side door with a wheelchair, headed for them. He helped the Knights lower James into it, and then wheeled him away. Richard volunteered to go with him, as the rest were advised to take a seat in the waiting room. Heather tried to follow James.

Su held her back. “Your dad can handle it.”

“No, I have to make sure he’s okay.” Heather glanced at the cords in her chest, at Sesame, who held the battery that was a third of his size. She took a step after James but her metal peg leg felt unstable on the polished floor.

“The more space we can give the doctors to work, the better,” Su said.

“You don’t understand,” Heather’s voice mistuned, quiet and broken. “I asked him to make a shield with the Q-13 at Empetrum. He pushed himself too far because of me.”

“None of this is your fault, sweetheart. You each did what you had to do.” Su hugged her, careful of the cords. The double doors closed behind James and her dad. “And James made his choice.”

+

Hours later, Heather sat in a dim hospital room in the ICU, holding vigil over her friend’s failing body. She held his hand, as if that could keep him tethered to his physical form. Her hopes that he would begin to recover burned like a tiny, exhausted flame at the bottom of a well.

He was stable, for now. Her dad had gotten ahold of Alice Benson, who offered critical clues to the molecular nature of the Q-13, and what James’ body might need to stay the downward spiral.

“Give my regards to your daughter,” she had said when Richard mentioned what had happened to the Empetrum facility. “That was a hell of a move.”

A machine in the corner measured out James’ slow heartbeat. Oxygen tubes ran across his face. Electrodes dotted his chest under a teal hospital gown, and an IV fed a cocktail of medicines, nutrients, and pain killers into his system. The doctors had given him at least one blood transfusion—trying to give his body something uncontaminated to work with—but even though it was his blood type, he had broken out in hives. Q-13 was his new blood type.

They had attached a port to a vascular branch in his chest, where two capped catheters waited for another round of filtering.

He was lucky, the doctor had said. The toxins in his blood were similar enough to the regular dialysis candidates that they were able to get some results despite the completely foreign medical territory.

She heard the click of the door handle turning, and glanced back as it opened. A man and a woman stood there, older, mid-fifties. She had never seen them before, yet they were somehow familiar. She saw a bit of James in each of them.

He looked a lot like his father.

They glanced at her for only a moment, then their gazes found their son. Heather braced herself for questions, confusion, incredulity. She and her family had fielded the last several hours trying to explain the situation to medical staff, as well as law enforcement, whom the hospital called against the Knights’ wishes.

But the newcomers merely drifted into the room and pulled up a couple more chairs on the other side of the bed.

Finally, James’ father spoke, “Has he woken up at all?” His voice was deeper than James’. Soft and serious with a gravelly edge.

“No,” Heather said.

They sat in silence again, and Heather surreptitiously observed them. Both his parents were scrupulously maintained, their demeanor prim and distant, but she could still detect the exhaustion. His father was bald, his skin freckled and unevenly pigmented like he’d recently recovered from an extreme sunburn. Signs of his ongoing cancer treatment, she figured.

James’ mother sat with her hands in her lap, her shoulders straight and her gaze on James’ nearest hand, jet black and taped up with the IV.

Protective anger burned in Heather’s chest as she watched them, as she imagined James growing up under this frigidity. On some level she understood that everyone dealt with pain and crisis differently, but their response to all this felt eerie, empty, insufficient.

“This all started with you,” Heather said, darkly. “He just wanted you to love him.”

His parents looked at her. She had seen a version of their clinical, veiled gazes many times, in her friend. James’ heart monitor beeped on, and his eyes remained closed, oblivious to his surroundings. Heather figured he probably didn’t want them there. It was her own parents who had called them and told them what had happened. She didn’t disagree with their decision, exactly, but…

“We do love him,” his mother said.

+

James woke up, and found himself in a small medical room with cold gray ceiling tiles. His eyes widened, a rising sound of panic in his throat. His hand flashed black and skeletal across his vision as he pawed incoherently at the tubes on his face, which wrapped around his ears and stuck into his nostrils.

The cold, grinding ache of the Q-13 splintered up his back as he tried to get up, his need to escape drowning violently in the acute weakness gripping his limbs. He found more tubes connected to him—an IV attached to his right hand, a red, double-tubed catheter port at his left collarbone, tubes in his nether regions.

“No no no no no,” he gasped. Tears spilled down his face, his heart beating out of his chest while the stripes in his skin pulled colder and colder. A machine beeped frantically off to the side. Something frigid clamped down on his other arm.

“James.”

It was Heather. She sat close at his bedside, gazing earnestly into his face, a hand on his arm. The panel removed from her head and her broken auditory receiver hadn’t been replaced yet, but the bundle of wires in her chest were gone. Most of the charring had been cleaned off her body, and she wore an oversized lavender hoodie he’d seen often at Larkspur in the mornings. She appeared to have two arms again.

“James, you’re safe.” Her expression scrunched emotionally. Her voice mistuned and fizzled as she crumbled, holding his left hand in both of hers—one still mangled, the replacement very simplified. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He grimaced in pain as he relaxed back into the cushions. A blanket lay over his lower body, not restraints on his legs, as he’d thought. A large window spanned the wall to his right, the blinds open to reveal a large lonely tree in a landscaped courtyard below. The heart monitor’s rapid rhythm began to stabilize.

“W-where…?”

“Hospital,” Heather said. “You’ve been here for six days.”

A wave of nausea buffeted him, but passed. He took a breath, trying to absorb more of the room, look for signs of danger. A dull ache burned in his upper abdomen. “Benson…?”

“Dhar pulled him from power, temporarily,” Heather said. “With a path to redemption, though, which sucks, but Dad thinks it lessens the danger of him going completely ballistic. His research facility is unrecoverable, and it sounds like Yeun quit. Another scientist, Jones, did too.”

Surprise fluttered in James’ chest. “Good for them.”

“Dhar was furious when he found out about everything. Apparently it was completely out of his zone of tolerance for whatever shady operation he has going, which helps us, I guess. We haven’t seen or heard from Empetrum at all since then.”

James sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked down at himself—stained, emaciated, covered in tubes and wires. His regular skin was overly pale, with an unsettling yellow tint. Emotion rose in his throat. He didn’t recognize his body.

Heather watched him take it all in.

“What…happened to me?” he asked. “I remember you waking up after we brought you home, then…not much.”

“Multiple organ failure,” Heather said, as gently as she could. “The doctors managed to get you stabilized before the point of no return—emergency dialysis, metabolic inhibitors, heavy duty anti-inflammatories…That stuff you were throwing up, they think it’s some kind of waste product from the Q-13. Your body seems to be able to filter some of it, but your system was flooded.”

James stared at the ceiling, exhausted and overwhelmed. “Am I going to make it?” he rasped.

“You’re not in the ICU anymore,” Heather said. “They say you’ll probably have to be on dialysis for a few more weeks, but your liver and kidneys are recovering, and you’ve even gained a little weight back since we brought you in.”

“So…hopeful,” he was afraid to say it. He tried to smile. “I guess the Q-13’s a tool I’ll have to shelve, huh?”

Heather’s expression clouded. “I asked too much of you that last day at Empetrum. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” James said. “I fully intended to bring the facility down on top of me. I’m alive right now because of you.”

“Yeah…It doesn’t hurt any less, though.”

James swallowed, and nodded.

Heather squeezed his hand and stood up. “I’m going to let your parents know you woke up. They made me promise.”

James startled. “My parents are here?”

“They’ve been here,” she said. “All six days.”

James felt a pulling sensation in his chest, nausea rising again. Surprise, warmth, fear. “Do they know…?”

“Yeah, we told them everything. Sorry…”

He sighed heavily, raising a hand to his head. “Fuck.”

She flashed him a sympathetic look, and left. James noted she had a replacement leg too, the progressive repairs proof of time passing. Every moment of his life up until the last couple of weeks had been frantically crammed with productivity. To have lost six whole days, to have nearly lost his life a second time to his body’s inability to metabolize its trauma, felt incomprehensible.

A minute later, his parents appeared in the open doorway, his father tall and his mother serious.

They stared at each other across the room for several long moments, like either party were perceiving the other as a ghost high up in an attic window, surprised and unsettled by each others’ presence.

He hadn’t seen them in over a year. His father’s appearance had changed a lot since then, the image of order and strict, snapping intelligence corroded by his own brush with death. Though he hoped the fact that he was here pointed to some optimism as far as treatment results. James couldn’t believe they had both waited here all this time, putting their lives, their careers, their attention, on hold—for him.

James swallowed, and finally his gaze fell to his hands in his lap. He laced his dark, bony fingers together. He exhaled.

Jonathan moved. The set of his mouth stern, he strode forward until he stood next to the bed, looming. James stole a glance at his father, whose brow plummeted as his face scrunched, his emotional expression of relief and sorrow looking obtuse and severe.

Finally, James’ mother crept over from the doorway, completely out of her depth. Her thin lips were pressed together, and her eyes welled up with tears despite her best efforts to distance herself from them.

James observed them—awkward, withdrawn, struggling—and life felt too fragile to feel anything but care for them in that moment. Grief for the pain they carried, gratitude for the ways their pragmatism revealed their love.

Their choices, well-meaning, deficient, had left scars on his life, but they were here. They had waited six days at an unfamiliar hospital surrounded by confusing and disturbing realities about his activities, hoping he would wake up and unwilling to leave until he had. They weren’t at all good with emotions, or affection, but they were trying.

He caught his mother’s gaze. “It’s okay,” he rasped. “You can cry. I’m sorry things got so messed up.”

Catherine covered her mouth and turned aside, crumbling but still fighting it. Jonathan shook his head, his jaw clenched and face bowed. James realized tears were streaming down his dad’s face already. James lifted his hand and offered the palm. Jonathan took it.

“I love you both,” James said. “Thank you for being here.”

Neither of them responded verbally, grappling to keep control. No amount of permission could crack it—if they allowed themselves this indulgence, there was no telling what more pain or chaos lay behind it. These walls were familiar.

If he was lucky, he might get the chance to feel frustrated by it in the future. But for now, he felt he was seeing the whole picture of them for the first time, and the nuanced truth of their soft, severe, faltering humanity felt sufficient.

“The Knights told us an insane story,” Jonathan said. “Is it really true?”

“Yeah,” James said.

“All of it?”

James nodded.

His parents sat with that, his confirmation sinking in. The dangerous and devastating things he had done chasing something that nobody else could ever give him.

He still didn’t know if he could find what he was looking for. Maybe the old souls, the kids who had to grow up too fast, were just irrevocably cursed.

“I never asked you to save me,” Jonathan said, his voice barely above a whisper, heartbroken.

“That’s not why I apologized.”

“I know.” James couldn’t meet his father’s gaze. “I wasn’t ready to face you. I thought it would fix things.”

Jonathan sighed. The sound of it was branded into the back of James’ mind, always demanding, never satisfied. But this one sounded tired, self-directed.

“Is your treatment still working?” James asked.

“Seems that way.”

“I’m glad.”

“What do you plan to do after you’re discharged from the hospital?” Catherine asked, ever the logistician. Numbers, strategies, were safer than emotions. James did that too, without even realizing it most of the time. “You’re welcome to stay with us while you get your strength back.”

“No plans yet,” James said. Distant amusement bloomed in his chest at the question. “I just found out I’m not dead a few minutes ago. Thank you for the offer, though. I’ll consider it.”

The last time he had seen his parents had been a fierce argument. They had tried to discourage him from accepting a permanent position at Larkspur, believing instead that he should seek out something with heavier biomedical leanings. Mechanical engineering for infrastructure wasn’t nearly close enough to his father’s biological career preferences to tolerate.

There had been threats, guilt, multiple attempts to claw down the tiny spark of independence James had cultivated for himself. He had left his childhood home fuming, swearing he would never come back, that he would never speak to them again, never give them another second of his life.

A year ago, staying with them to recover would have been a demand, not an offering.

He still didn’t know if he’d be able to forgive them for the past, whether he was ready to close the strict distance he had kept.

But he thought maybe, if given the time, they had a shot at starting over.

+

CHAPTER SIXTY—LIMBO 

“You don’t have to stay here all the time,” James said. At first, Heather thought he was muttering in his sleep, it was so quiet. “You should be with your family.”

Heather paused the video game she was playing, parked at the utilitarian loveseat by the window. Her hands didn’t match, and most of one was still missing, but she was grateful to finally have all her limbs back in some form. She’d finally managed to wrestle her handheld console away from Sesame, and had asked him not to rummage in her room when she wasn’t there.

She shrugged, evasive.

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

She glanced up at him with only her eyes, her expression reproachful.

James didn’t like that look. He was still groggy, but the shadow of his slowly returning eyebrows pinched downward. “What? We worked so hard to get away from Empetrum. You deserve to be home.”

“I know,” she said, turning her gaze out the window. “Home is…complicated. I don’t know what to do with myself there.”

Keeping track of James aside, it hurt to be home—surrounded by pictures of her organic self and reminders of the life she’d lost. By her parents, trying to process, one of whom remained hostile to James. By Sesame who loved his new life and didn’t seem to fear being a robot in a human society. Suffocated by how much she envied that.

Sesame didn’t wonder about how to tell her extended family, which of her loved ones wouldn’t be able to accept her.

She didn’t even know if she accepted herself. It didn’t feel right to continue being Heather, but it felt even worse to consider giving up that identity. She would never have confirmation on whether her soul had transferred with her cognitive pattern. The concept of souls was mythology at best, anyway. Speculative, unmeasurable.

Should they hold a funeral?

She had heard once that touch receptors in the skin were far enough away from each other that there was a closeness at which two points of contact felt like one. Maybe her existence was like that.

She didn’t have to grapple with these things in James’ hospital room. She could stay in limbo.

“Besides…” She tried to smile. “I can’t leave you here all by yourself.”

James’ parents had eventually had to go back to their jobs, as did her dad. Larkspur’s next steps were up in the air. Erika had gone back to her family, Su was fielding things at home, and Sesame didn’t like sitting around, so he had gladly left watching over James to the one person who seemed willing and able to do it.

The medical setting was too close to Empetrum for both of them, but especially for James. Every time a nurse or doctor came in, he got a really cornered look on his face, and by their departure, the Q-13 had been fluffed up enough with his fight-or-flight that his eyes were glowing. He’d had a panic attack when they were hooking him up for another round of dialysis.

“You can,” James said. “My needs don’t matter here.”

“Because I’m the only one suffering?” Heather said, injured. “I’m not in physical pain. Benson destroyed your body too.”

James frowned at himself. Heather willed him to hear her.

Her parents also asked her often if she was sure about staying at the hospital. Her dad was trying to take things one day at a time and wouldn’t open up to her any more than that. Her mom’s advice mirrored James’—that Heather had no more responsibility to him. It was easy to feel sorry for him in his current state, Su had said, but Heather should think about a version where he was healthy and unscathed in the aftermath, and let that color her judgment on the fate of their relationship.

But he wasn’t in perfect health. He had paid dearly for his attempts to make amends.

“I care about you,” she said. “I know you still feel guilty, but I want you to just focus on getting better right now. We can talk through everything later.”

He sighed through his nose. She refused to entertain his self-loathing.

“When you finally started to fight back,” Heather said. “That’s the apology that I accepted.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself,” James said.

“Try, please.”

+

The Knight’s house appeared between the trees at the end of their long driveway. James took a breath, idly massaging his aching hands, and trying to ignore the other corners of him that hurt.

He felt loosely stitched together with frayed twine. From the back seat, he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror, and looked away again. His irises were still Q-13 yellow. The black marks were blacker than ever.

After another week in the hospital, his hair was growing back, at least. He had half expected it to come in jet black like the stains in his skin, but it seemed to be the warm brown he was familiar with. A small comfort, as he was released to the rest of his life irreversibly altered.

Heather and Sesame sat at the top of the porch steps, waiting for them. The car came to a stop, and James waited for Richard to kill the engine before he opened the back door and pulled his legs around. Bracing himself on available anchor points, James slowly raised himself to his feet.

The early autumn breeze was gentle, but knifed right through him.

Sesame waved, and Heather got up.

Richard unfolded a walker from the trunk and brought it around. James thanked him. He watched his own hands close around the handles, trusting his weight to it. He watched how his hoodie and sweatpants hung off his frame like there was nothing beneath them. He felt like he was viewing a video recording of someone else’s body, someone else’s life. Empetrum smoldered at the back of his mind in a pile of confused, muted embers.

Then Heather was moving around the walker, her arm extended and leaning in to hug him. He adjusted his weight to accept it.

“The guest room’s all set up,” Heather said. “Are you hungry? Mom’s making dinner.”

James nodded, second guessing his decision to stay with the Knights until he was strong enough to make other arrangements. To his supreme frustration, instead of using his immense amount of downtime for planning next steps, he had spent the rest of his hospital stay either sleeping, or tight in the grips of a brain fog so thick he could barely speak. He was still on a slew of medications attempting to keep the Q-13 from vomiting toxins into his bloodstream while his health was still so fragile, but his liver and kidneys had regained enough function that the doctors decided against further dialysis treatments.

As far as he could tell, Heather had mostly orchestrated the boarding arrangement, and he had gratefully gone along with it. He hadn’t failed to notice the increasing emotional distance she kept with her family. It worried him.

He had known that one horrific night at Empetrum was going to change everything, but it killed him to watch the devastation continue to run its course. There was so much more to be done picking up the pieces, and he felt more burden than ally in that effort.

But if Heather wanted him close, he wouldn’t deny her anything.

It was a comfort, anyway, to be around someone who understood what the other was going through. It felt important to stick together.

He’d already started having night terrors. The doctor had prescribed him sedatives. For the sake of this stage of recovery, he wasn’t allowed to keep waking up screaming about Empetrum with glowing skin.

As he accepted extra help on the porch steps, he resolved to be as easy and quiet as possible. He hardly dared to imagine how the conversation with Su had gone. He hadn’t seen much of her at the hospital since his admittance.

The house smelled like pasta, and Su stood at the counter stirring sauce. Sesame talked brightly about the guest room and what they had all been up to that day as he led James across the house, Heather at his side.

Su glanced at James as he came by. He couldn’t read her expression. Resignation, perhaps.

“We picked you up some clothes while you were in the hospital,” Sesame said. He trotted over to the dresser and pulled it open.

James aimed the walker through the doorway. “Thank you. All my stuff is probably in a storage locker somewhere. If it still exists.”

“Wonder if you’ll get any of it back,” Heather said.

“I hope so.” He sat down on the bed with a soft grunt of discomfort. “My government documents are gonna be a pain to replace if not.”

Sesame showed him a t-shirt from the dresser, to which he nodded approval. He worked a thumb up the palm of his other hand, kneading at a dull, dripping pain that made his joints feel like they were slowly separating.

Richard peeked in the doorway. “James, can we talk for a minute?”

James glanced at Heather and Sesame, who took their leave. Heather shot her dad a look, half questioning, half warning, as she left them alone. James sat on the bed, trapped, waiting to hear what his former boss and the father of his victim wanted to say.

“Thank you for letting me stay here,” James said. He couldn’t stand the silence. “I’ll keep out of the way, and I’ll leave as soon as I can.”

Richard sat down on the bed next to him. “You don’t have to worry about that. Though I wanted to ask you to make sure you’re honest with us. No minimizing your symptoms, okay?”

James nodded, his gaze on his hands.

“And if they start worsening or new things come up, I need you to let us know immediately so we can get you help.”

James nodded again, emotion rising in his chest. “I really wonder if it’s worth fighting, though,” he said quietly. “Wasted resources on a losing battle…”

On a wretched, wasted life.

He winced. Benson’s words cut deep, ever looming over him like a curse. Logically, he knew there was no merit to them, based in a value system James had rejected. But his inner critic, surveying the damage he had both taken and inflicted, agreed.

A rising star reduced to a warped, blackened heap of failed potential. Just James—awkward, arrogant, emotional—had never been good enough, and this poisoned, broken version of him was worth even less.

“I hear you,” Richard said. “But any effort spent keeping you alive will never be wasted.”

“I don’t deserve it. I was supposed to die at Empetrum.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Yeah.”

“So I suppose it’s time to build a new path.”

James frowned at his hands, dark and wiry, his joints swollen.

“You can’t blame yourself for falling prey to Benson,” Richard said.

“But I do, Richard,” James snapped. “I should have known better. I should have seen through it from the beginning, but I was too stupid, too selfish—” He faltered as a twinge rippled through his scars like a toothache. He hooked his hands on the back of his neck and bowed his head with a heavy sigh, abandoning what he was going to say before he got too worked up.

“Too young,” Richard stated, solemnly.

James squeezed his eyes shut. “That’s no excuse.”

Silence sat between them for a long time. James propped his forehead on the pads of his hands, elbows on his knees.

Finally, Richard said, “When I was a sophomore in college, I met a girl.”

James warily twisted around to look at him, wondering where this was going. “Su?”

Richard shook his head. “The attraction was immediate, and powerful,” he went on, pensively, his gaze far away. “She was intelligent and driven, and showered me with attention. She made me feel like I was the most important person in the world, and that I could do anything as long as my life revolved around her. Coming from a fraught home life, where I often fell through the cracks in my parents’ chaotic divorce…that kind of dynamic was intoxicating.

“I did everything she wanted, happily at first, but soon she was constantly asking for receipts for everything I did, testing my loyalty, putting me down, blaming me for her severe reactions, getting me in trouble, isolating me from my friends. I walked on eggshells. Nothing I did was good enough.

She continued to pull and sever more and more of my life, and if I ever pushed back, it came with an agonizing cycle of arguing, shaming, abandonment, and finally the overwhelming relief of repair after I gave in. She told me she loved me, and I believed her. We dated for two years. I did a lot of things during that time that I’m not proud of. It took me a long time to learn how to trust people again after it finally ended.”

James stared at the carpet between his feet. He narrowed his eyes.

“I was only twenty years old.” Richard paused, waiting for James to make the connection—though

James was twenty-one now. “I knew nothing about the mechanisms of abuse. Like a lot of people, I had to learn the hard way. But I was lucky—Nothing mortally dangerous came of that relationship. You weren’t so lucky, and that isn’t your fault.”

James didn’t move.

“Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“Yeah.”

“Your life is just beginning. It’s a good thing that you survived.”

Richard’s words sank oddly in James’ chest. He wanted to believe them, wished they brought him comfort and relief, as they were meant to.

But he just felt even more lost.

“Why are you doing this?” James rasped, hopeless.

Richard gently touched his shoulder, and stood up. “Dinner’s going to be ready in a few minutes. Join us?”

James drew his torso upright with a slow, resigned breath. He nodded. Richard smiled, a fatherly expression that James couldn’t acknowledge.

After Richard was gone, James sat alone, kneading his weak, stained hands in the silence. He stared at his walker with his brow furrowed, turning Richard’s anecdote over in his mind like a Rubik’s cube covered in thorns.

+

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE—FOR NOW

James wandered down the hallway, swaddled in a comforter. It was five something in the morning, but he had been scared off trying to sleep any more.

The stove light was on in the kitchen, dim and warm. The scent of eggs and toast wafted across his senses. He debated retreating, but didn’t want to go back to the guest room and lie awake and uneasy in the dark.

He had hoped to find Richard when he emerged from the hallway, but it was Su who stood at the stove. She wore pajamas, a robe, and slippers, pensively stirring a small skillet of scrambled eggs.

She glanced at him as he appeared.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” she asked quietly, a civil sympathy.

James tilted his head in a soft shrug. “Nightmares.”

“Are the sedatives not working?”

He hung back. “Not all the time.”

She turned off the burner and scooped her breakfast into a bowl. “Are you hungry?”

He shook his head. “Thank you.” Even if he were, he wouldn’t have admitted it. He didn’t want any of the Knights feeling like they had to take care of him. Especially not Su. At the moment, her poor view of him felt like the only honest one in the whole house.

As Su pulled toast from the toaster and went to the refrigerator for condiments, James drifted up to the stove. He stared at the hot pan, seeing other images behind his eyes—nightmare mixed with real memory. Benson cutting into him, killing Heather himself. His arms ablaze with the Q-13’s ravenous, chainsaw fire. The way it snuffed out, and his arms were still there, while everything else melted and burned around them.

He slowly extended a long, black hand from the blanket around his shoulders, hovering over the pan. The heat radiated upward, buoying against his palm. He felt himself breathing, but his mind drifted somewhere else, curiosity pushing against his body like a growing tide.

He lowered his hand into the pan. Heat pressed intense and crackling against his skin.

“James! Jesus Christ—”

He looked up and blinked at Su, at first not comprehending. He looked at the palm of his hand.

Remnants of scrambled egg and cooking oil stuck to it, but it was otherwise unscathed. Su stood at the fridge, clutching her breakfast in shock.
He twisted his hand, showing her his palm, unharmed.

She gaped at him. “Why did you do that?”

“Mom?” Heather appeared at the top of the stairs, alerted by the shout. Her oval eyes glowed in the dimness. “Are you okay?”

Su took her breakfast to the table in a huff. “I’m fine. James just put his hand in a hot pan.”

James held his hand up for Heather to see. “I think I’m fireproof.”

“Wasn’t there a better way to test that than going all in?” Su groused.

Dizziness pressed in on him and he leaned against the counter away from the stove, cradling his hand as he gazed down at it. He could feel every bone in his hands, his arms, shoulders, ribcage, spine… throbbing softly in time to his languid heartbeat.

Benson pushing the infusion needle into his arm. Closing the scanner lid on Heather’s lifeless face. His body, shredding, bursting into flames.

Dimly, he heard Su’s voice, talking. “He’s not all there right now.”

He closed his eyes, head drooping.

“No—Heather, I can do it.”

A cloth swiped his hand, and then something gently nudged his back, another modest grip around the thick blanket over his arm, guiding him to turn and walk.

Then, what little awareness he had dropped suddenly out from under him. He didn’t know where he was. There was something he had to do. Guards pushing him down a hallway, strapping him into a chair.

He jerked suddenly away with a gasp. He pitched sideways, something caught him and lowered him to his knees. He curled in on himself. Fear and fatigue, anger, grief, disorientation engulfed him. He was too weak to fight them. He began to cry.

Sitting on the floor of his lab, alone. The empty air ringing in his ears, as the isolation and despair pressed into his chest like a wooden stake. Dragged suddenly into the dark, unable to scream.

Someone kneeled behind him, a hand on his back. Frigid, angled hands took his, while he relived Empetrum again and again in a cruel riptide. Benson’s cold, curious hatred as he tortured him. His life under a hydraulic press, fed through a meat grinder. Blamed for Heather’s murder, blamed for his own.

Somebody gasped. Movement loomed suddenly behind him, footsteps veered away. “—Get away from him!”

The cold hands cupped his face. “James, come back.” He flinched, opening his eyes. His scars were glowing, blinding. He was hyperventilating. Heather’s face was very close to his. He grabbed her hands on either side of his face, struggling to focus on her.

“Come back,” she said. Her voice wavered, as she attempted to stay calm.

A cold washcloth descended onto the back of his neck, tethering him suddenly to the present.

The howling ghosts in his mind retreated into the background. Still there, but muffled. His breathing slowed down with effort. He bowed his head and began to cry again, softly, as he remembered where he was.

With an unpleasant twinge, his scars faded to black, and an abrupt feeling of weakness flooded into him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Heather hugged him. He clung to her and bowed his head, every faltering breath thick with grief, shame. and exhaustion.

He felt Su standing above them, her gaze on his back.

+

Once they got James calmed down and nested on the living room sofa with a big mug of tea and a nature documentary droning softly on the TV, Heather crossed back through the kitchen, brushing off her mom’s effort to comfort her, and opened the sliding glass door.

The sun hadn’t risen yet. She strode out to the end of the deck and sat down on the steps, cradling her face in her mismatched hands.

Her robotic body didn’t react to the trauma quite like James’ did, though more and more she wished it would. Her own experience of the events haunted her waking consciousness yet she didn’t know how to express or process them. She made herself scarce during mealtimes, turned photos around in the living room. She found herself spending more and more time hibernating in her room, avoiding everything. The rest of her life yawned before her like a cave full of monsters.

When she was organic and upset, she used to cry, or scream into her pillow where no one could hear her. Or she would try to tire her body out by going on a walk or sprinting until her muscles hurt more than the turbulence inside her, and the endorphins soothed the pain. Her robotic body didn’t have endorphins, and she still couldn’t tell if it simulated them in any way. All she knew was her usual coping mechanisms weren’t bringing her much relief. Either this body was incapable of release, or there was just too much pain.

A rustling in the bushes startled her. She looked up to see a dimly illuminated face panel coming toward her across the yard from the trees beyond.

“What are you doing out here?” she called softly to Sesame.

He looked perplexed at the question. “Exploring.”

“At night?”

“It’s different at night,” Sesame said matter-of-factly. “Two worlds in one yard. You should try it sometime.”

He paused at the bottom of the steps, gazing up at her.

He cocked his head. “You’re upset,” he noted.
 Heather scoffed, hopelessly. It came out buzzing and mistuned. “I’m always upset.”

He climbed the steps and wedged himself next to her at the top.

“When humans cry,” Heather muttered, “the composition of their tears changes based on what emotion is overwhelming them. It’s one way the body regulates.” She bent double, hugging her legs and staring at the trees off the edge of the yard. “But I can’t cry anymore.”

“Can you zap the ground?” Sesame said.

She looked at him. “What?”

“That’s what I do when I feel upset for too long,” he said.

Heather stared.

“Emotions are electro-chemical in a biological system,” Sesame said. “In our bodies, it’s just electrical. So when I need to, I focus on the sensation, and pretend my feet are a grounding rod, and send it out.”

“That sounds like cheating,” Heather said.

Sesame raised his virtual eyebrows, surprised. “Does it?”

Heather looked up at the sky, where the first hints of light were beginning to creep into the darkness. It occurred to her it would feel cold outside if she were organic. And cold would feel uncomfortable because organic bodies had a preferred temperature range.

Somehow, acknowledging that organic bodies came with their own form of programming felt like a betrayal. A moral shrug of her shoulders, that robotic was just as good, just as real.

It wasn’t. She could never have that life back.

But, curious if Sesame’s method held substance, she closed her eyes, and grudgingly allowed the miasma of her inner landscape to rise. She felt different emotions in different corners of her body. Grief, rage, exhaustion, anxiety, despair—their embodiment a simulation of her old biological systems.

She imagined a tiny river through her circuits, traveling from each of the centers, up to her face, where she imagined tears forming. With a pulling sensation, her face began to crackle with energy in that region, and she diverted it down over her facial panel, through her neck, arms, and out her fingertips into the wood she sat on.

She stopped channeling the energy, contemplating the results. A part of her felt quieter.

“Efficient,” she remarked, with relief and resentment mixed.

Sesame smiled.

“Do you ever miss your old body?” Heather asked quietly, staring down into the yard.
Sesame shrugged. “I don’t remember much about it. I miss the ability to feel warm and cozy though.” He swung his legs. “I figure I can fix that in the future.”

“What do you mean?”

“I would like to be human, but even that end goal is more limited than I would like to be. I’m not there yet,” Sesame said. He rapped a fingertip on his metal chest. “But this is good for now.”

A robin began singing, as dawn slowly approached.

She missed her organic body. It was the only existence she knew before Empetrum. It was imperfect, vulnerable, but it was home. Dunesborough on the east coast had also been home, but she’d had to leave that behind too.

Larkspur’s android had been an emergency choice. Sensors could be added, programs updated.

She had lost limbs and her friends had just made her new ones. If she had taken on Empetrum while still organic, her life would have ended many times over.

With her heightened processing speeds, she could teach herself engineering in record time, and build herself a whole new body, one that passed for organic for social benefit, as well as personal experience. Maybe senses with different composition could come close to organic experience, given the right parameters.

She no longer needed any of the things that had made her body so fragile—food, rest, hygiene, warmth. With the elimination of sleep, the time she had in a day had expanded to the full twenty-four hours.

With an inorganic body, she would never again be vulnerable to the chemical that had killed her. She would never have to face the kind of hospital stay or physical complications James endured, even many years into the future. No disease, no menstruation, no dentist appointments.

She was no longer a teenage girl and all that implied. It filled her with grief to be so changed, but as time trudged on, she actually felt safer for that fact.

And if Benson ever threatened her family again, she would kill him.

The stars were fading, barely visible high up in the atmosphere, as the rest of the world woke up and a new morning flooded in.

“Good for now…” she mused.

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX—SURVIVORS 

The bell on the door to the convenience store clanged like a startled bird as James staggered in.

He lurched straight up to the counter. The cashier jumped and stepped away.

“Can I use your phone?” he gasped.

Pressed up against the shelves on the opposite wall of the counter, the frightened cashier looked him up and down. Shirtless and shoeless, with only singed joggers to his name, James’ entire sweating, shaking body was burnt clean from the waist up. Black marks tangled across his skin, and his eyes glowed neon yellow like something out of a bad alien movie.

“Please,” he pressed. He buckled under a wave of pain, hooking an arm across his ribs with a stifled, frustrated groan. “It’s an emergency!”

Stunned, the cashier fumbled for the cordless phone. She passed it to him across the counter, and backed up again as he snatched it and started pushing buttons with clumsy, weak fingers.

He called the emergency number and described how to get to Empetrum. When the dispatcher confirmed, James thanked them and hung up despite their direction to stay on the line. Swearing repeatedly under his breath, he dialed the number Heather had given Erika—who had memorized it and written it down for him again.

The line connected and the voice that answered made him go weak at the knees. He hadn’t physically heard Richard’s voice since the night of the transfer.

“Hello?”

“Richard?” James caught the cashier’s nervous gaze. He raised a stained hand to run through his hair out of habit, but stopped, startled at the reminder of only cold skin. “It’s James.”

“James? Oh my god what happened? We thought you were dead! Is Heather with you?”

James took a shaky, painful breath. “No, she—I don’t even know where to begin. I’m at a gas station down the hill from Empetrum. We got out but she’s not with me right now. She, uh…” He paced away from the cashier’s counter. He winced, his body stiff and head pounding. “She overloaded Empetrum’s generator to force an evacuation and destroy the facility—” He faltered, lifting a hand to his mouth, trying to curb the surge of emotion clawing up his throat. “It’s bad,” he managed, his voice warbling. “I—I haven’t had a chance to find her yet. I’m going back to look for her. EMTs and the fire department are on their way. Come meet me at Empetrum. Be careful, though. I don’t know how many Empetrum people stuck around.”

“Leaving now,” Richard said.

“See you soon.” Trying not to make any sudden moves, he approached the counter. He carefully set the phone down, thanked the cashier, and headed for the door. He barely made it outside before leaning hard against the wall. He struggled to steady himself, pulling in fitful draughts of the rural air. The sudden quiet of his surroundings tugged at his equilibrium. He felt as if he’d been locked in a cellar with a chainsaw over his neck for weeks, and had just abruptly clipped out of that reality to this one, where birds and grass and sleepy roadside convenience stores existed.

He thought maybe he was hallucinating all this, still strapped into the mindwipe machine, his brain’s last futile rebellion as Benson purged him from his own nervous system. But if this were a dream where they had escaped, Heather would have been there too. The sheer, screaming unfairness of her absence kept him loosely convinced the last thirty minutes had really happened.

He realized another employee sat on the curb outside on their break, watching him gasp and weep in tandem, holding his head in his hands like it was too heavy for his neck. Embarrassed, James painstakingly dragged himself back to Yeun’s car. He pulled open the door with difficulty.

As he collapsed into the passenger seat, Erika’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Did he pick up?”

James nodded. “He’s going to meet us there.” He pressed an aching hand against his face and felt something wet. His nose was bleeding black again.

“Good,” she said, starting the engine. “You okay?”

“Vaguely.” James opened Yeun’s glovebox, looking for something to catch the discharge.

+

The emergency responders made it back to Empetrum shortly after James and Erika, and had already extinguished the fire by the time the Knights arrived. James thought Benson might have lingered, but the Empetrum campus was effectively deserted, likely to preserve the identities of its personnel.

James sat on the ground with Erika next to Yeun’s car, swaddled in a blanket one of the EMTs had given him as they had tried to figure out what on earth had happened to them. Law enforcement had arrived too. They took his and Erika’s statements, in which the two tried to be honest, then they conferred with the other emergency personnel, and left.

They’d soon have the matter buried, James thought bitterly as he scanned the scene, looking for traces of his friend in the monstrous pile of rubble.

His throat ached. Finding her looked hopeless from this distance.

Richard parked along the side of the path, out of the way. In the passenger seat, James spotted Heather’s mother, Su. A virtual face peered out from the back.

James uneasily dragged himself to his feet as the newcomers started getting out. Richard said something to the android and it stayed put, grudgingly. James felt like his heart was going to stop as he looked at it, knowing who it must be.

“I’ll talk to the first responders, if they have any more questions,” Erika said. “Go find Heather.”

“Thank you.” James attempted to swallow his terror as he ventured forward to meet Heather’s parents.

Richard’s face flooded with worry long before he saw him up close. Even Su paused, and James couldn’t help but glance behind him. Their shock and concern had to be directed at someone else.

But they were looking at him.

He turned, directing himself toward the remains of the Empetrum facility.

Only shards stood of their prison. The blast had decimated the rest, blowing debris in all directions. James tried to trace where Heather could have been standing and where the explosion would have thrown her.

The moment the detonation hit still throbbed in his head. It had thundered suddenly from behind the car, jogging him back to tortured wakefulness. He had twisted back to look out the rear window just in time to watch the facility behind them erupt. Speechless, spent, he had helplessly watched the mountain of smoke and flame climb into the atmosphere.

Heather’s parents walked beside him, silent. James wished he knew what to say. He soon had to stop to catch his breath, and the Knights paused to wait for him. He heard a car door shut. He glanced over his bent shoulders.

An android trotted across the grounds toward them. James shied away in a flash of panic. A painful twinge pulled from his scars, and his breath caught. He hunched his shoulders, gripping his arms and ducking his chin into the blanket.

“Sesame, wait a second—” Richard stepped between them. “He may not be ready—”

“I want to help,” the android said. It stopped before Richard, gazing up at the Knights. It lowered its volume carefully, “Please, let me help.”

Richard glanced at James, who stared at the childlike android with wide eyes.

This was the creature he’d watched trundle along his kitchen floor the night after its transfer, whom Heather had held in her arms, talked to, petted, trained, named. James had purchased the ailing animal housing its soul from a pet store on his lunch break.

Now it was humanoid. Communicating, emoting, and carrying itself as smoothly as if it had been born into the body it now possessed.

“Okay,” Richard said finally, watching James, who nodded numb approval.

“Where should we search first?” Sesame looked around.

James slowly straightened up, gesturing stiffly toward the northern edge of the debris. “The generator was over there…so…” He fell silent. Further words wouldn’t come.

“Okay.” Sesame considered its plan of action. Finally, it offered James a furtive virtual smile. “I’m glad you made it, James.” Then it was off, running ahead, calling Heather’s name.

James’ gaze followed it.

“So, Heather blew up the generator,” Richard said quietly.

James nodded. He took a step forward, and his leg faltered. He grimaced in pain.

“Maybe you should rest,” Richard said. “We can search.”

Su was watching him. She kept close to her spouse, slightly forward, as if ready to position herself between him and James.

James shook his head and forced himself to keep moving. His whole body felt burnt and arthritic. “I’m fine.”

Richard and Su picked around the ruins a hundred feet from where Sesame searched. They didn’t let James follow. He was far too decrepit. So James remained along the edge, looking for movement. Heather had used her energy core to overload the generator, but it was possible she had been able to reserve enough to maintain consciousness.

Suddenly, Sesame cried out. “I found her! Richard! Su!”

“Is she—” Su couldn’t finish her question. She and Richard ran Sesame’s direction, tripping over rubble in their haste. James slowly made his way around, looking for an opening he could utilize.

He was doing well just to keep pressing forward.

Squeezing through a narrow channel between two chunks of burnt wall, he found Sesame crouched by where a scorched robotic arm stuck out from the wreckage.

Sesame dropped to its hands and knees and ducked its head down to try to see her face.

“Heather? Can you hear me? Hello?” It shot the Knights a worried expression.
Richard helped it pull debris off the top. They struggled with a bent metal crossbeam. James drew nearer, gingerly kneading his hands.

“I can get her out,” James said. He carefully shed the blanket from around his shoulders. The breeze was awful. “Please, if you could stand back…”

Su opened her mouth to protest, but at a pleading look from Richard, she relented, and stepped away with him. The android followed their lead and backed off as well.

James crept up to examine the crossbeam, looking for weak points, tracing regions of leverage.

After asking Richard to check his calculations, he nervously steadied himself.

Then he summoned it. The flames came a little too easily.

He ignored the Knights’ fearful stares as he fought to keep the Q-13 under control. He methodically pushed his hands through the metal like knives, lopping off the bulk of the weight.

The sides of the beam slipped on either side of the target beneath. James glimpsed Heather’s charred robotic face and closed eyes before he stepped back.

Sesame was able to lift up the remaining obstruction while Richard pulled her free.

The flames left James with a cruel jolt. He fell to his knees, doubling over and gasping raggedly for breath.

“Heather.” Richard sat back on his heels, drawing his daughter into his lap. Su kneeled beside him.

Heather’s mechanical head was badly dented, her body blackened. Her left arm appeared to have been blown clear out of its socket, and only a fraction of her other hand remained. The blast had ripped off half her left leg at the knee. The polymer supporting her chest dangled loosely in cracked, melted shards. No light beamed from her shoulder.

“Heather? Can you hear me?” Richard tried to pry open the panels in her head to check her neural network, but it wouldn’t budge. His movements became increasingly frantic as he tried to bypass the dent. He checked where the light should have been, touched her face, pulled an eyelid up to reveal a dilated mechanical pupil. “Heather please…” He hugged her close, dipping his face to hers. “Please be okay.”

James hung back, half bent over, the more excruciating edge of his physical pain beginning to subside. Black spots plagued his vision and the sound of his irregular breathing dragged dully through his ears. Maybe the Q-13 would finally kill him.

“She uh…” James felt too wretched to speak, though he tried. “She wanted me to tell you that she loves you…that what she did with the generator was her decision. And—and that she was sorry.”

He hugged himself tighter, bowing his head as he talked well beyond his ability to keep composure. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she was dead set on it and I—I didn’t want to let her down again. I should have listened to you, Richard. I should have forgotten about that project when I had the chance.” His voice broke softly, “I never meant to hurt her. I never meant to hurt anyone. I just—”

He shook his head. Tears came, and the liquid hatred and shame burned across the tender black mark on his cheek. He clutched his face in his hands and curled forward with a sob. “I’m so sorry.” The phrase was overused, empty. It couldn’t change anything. “I’m so sorry, Richard, Su-Wei. I’m so sorry…”

After a long silence, Richard said, “I know.” He heard the shuffle of footsteps as he came and stood over him. James didn’t dare look up. He felt the blanket lower onto his quivering shoulders.

“But you looked out for her as best as you could. You tried to get her out.” Richard knelt down and gently laid a hand on his back. “You tried very hard to make amends.”

“It wasn’t enough,” James choked. His skin needled and smarted at Richard’s touch. “I failed all of you.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his sunken eye sockets. Tears squeezed out his burning, golden eyes into his stained palms.

“You were both forced into impossible positions,” Richard said softly.

“Of course, but that’s not—”

“You just wanted to help your dad.”

“But it was more than that,” James lowered his hands, shoulders drooped. “I needed to see if I could pull it off. I thought it would fix everything. I thought Empetrum was going to help me.”

“But now you’re free.”

“No.” James slowly straightened up. Richard’s hand lifted, and James dragged himself to his feet, pulling the edges of the blanket further around his shoulders. “I’ll never be free of this. And not just because Benson branded his signature into my genetic code.” He looked at the debris around him. “No one can just walk away from something like this.” His spiritless, tear-swollen gaze found

Heather’s body, and his heart gave a painful twist inside his chest.

Sesame managed to pry open Heather’s chest panel. The escaped energy had utterly fried whole swathes of the internal machinery, her power core burnt and broken.

“Su and I have decided not to press charges,” Richard said quietly, getting to his feet as well. “We’re releasing you from responsibility.”

“You can’t do that.” James turned on him in dismay.

“It’s what Heather would want.”

“But you can’t—I mean I—”

“What do you want me to do, James?” Richard snapped, startling him. “Say ‘I told you so?’ Try to punish you further for all the hell you wrought on my family? Believe me, there is so much rage in me right now, but I just—” He cut himself off, rubbed his hand up under his glasses.

After a long, heavy silence, he said, “Heather sent us a visual feed of your infusion as she witnessed it.” James stiffened, but Richard continued, “I saw what Benson did to you that night, and when he told her you had died, she passed along the message. We were all devastated. We thought you were dead, yet here we are. Don’t you understand, James?” Richard was starting to cry too. “We all know you tore our hearts out, but you tried to make it right. You took responsibility for your choices. You came back to face us.”

He looked at James, his eyes intense and full of tears. His brow furrowed. He drew himself up, and James braced himself for a fist to the nose, but before he realized what was happening, Richard was hugging him.

Richard was soft and warm. James was taller, all sharp edges that didn’t know how to be held. He stood still, arms pinned to his sides as Richard clung to him like a lifeline, and it felt like Richard was claiming him, somehow. He didn’t understand.

“You’ve suffered far too much already,” Richard said quietly, resolutely. “I refuse to put you through any more.”

James couldn’t even begin to process Richard’s words. “You can’t possibly—”

“No more, James.”

Richard’s words rippled through him like calm waves knocking a battered dingy against a dock. Gentle, devastating. And something in him broke loose. He deflated. He wrapped his arms around his former boss, bowed his forehead to his shoulder, and began to weep. He wasn’t relieved. He didn’t know what he was.

“I wanted to keep you and Heather away from this,” James sobbed into Richard’s shoulder. “But he wouldn’t let me.” He felt himself buckling, Richard held him up. His voice waned to a futile, broken whimper, “He wouldn’t let me…”

“I know,” Richard said. “You’re among friends now.” After a long moment, Richard made sure James could stand on his own before carefully letting him go. “And don’t give up on Heather just yet.” He looked over to where Su gently took Heather in her arms, preparing to lift her up, to take her home. “If her neural network is undamaged, she should be fine, right?”
James studied the dent in her head, the extensive charring in her chest cavity.

“Yes,” he rasped, brushing at his eyes. He hadn’t designed the internal supports to handle what she had put them through, and there was a high chance the electrical discharge—either from her own conduit or the backlash upon detonation—had melted her neural network.
But he wanted to hope too.

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN—HOME 

Heather’s eyes opened.

Her vision was a dark, scattered blur. She heard the rain through only one ear. She blinked groggily, and finally, her eyes began to focus. The haziness sharpened to the advanced visual clarity she’d since grown accustomed to, with some pixelation as her eyes struggled to maintain focus. She remembered her body. Inorganic.

She was staring up at a ceiling, painted a quiet, sunny yellow, lit by soft light. Not cold concrete, or the gray tiles and fluorescent panels like the ceilings of Empetrum. She tried to place it.

A mass of spliced wires and extension cords bloomed from her chest. She carefully turned her head and traced them to where they plugged into the wall. She lay on a yoga mat on someone’s kitchen floor. Gradually, she recognized the vintage counters, a familiar dent in the edge of the table at the border of her vision.

She was home.

“Mom? Dad?” Her electronic voice box managed a weary, fizzling croak. She looked down at her mangled robotic body, impressed. She could feel a gap in her electromagnetic field on her cranium. She lifted what remained of her hand to the upper left side of it, finding electrical tape over where one of the parietal panels had been removed.

“Heather!” An unfamiliar voice piped up from the living room and a smallish android with a smiling screen for a face vaulted over the side of the couch. He wore purple athletic shorts and an oversized sweater she recognized as one of her own. “You’re alive!”

The door to her parents’ bedroom upstairs burst open, and then her mom and dad were hurrying down. For a split second, Empetrum felt like only a nightmare, and she had just woken up.

Heather slowly tilted herself toward her right arm—her only arm, now— and pushed herself to a sitting position, just as Sesame dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her head.

“Careful!” Richard gasped. “Watch the cords.”

“They’re fine,” Sesame insisted. He turned his beaming virtual smile on her, very close to her face.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Sesame, right?” Heather said. She was tired. The electrical socket was a poor substitute for her boundless energy core, but the electricity felt like standing over the heater vents in the early morning. “Thanks for your help.”

Sesame grudgingly moved aside so her parents could kneel down and hug her as well.

“Watch the cords,” Sesame teased.
 “They’re fine.” Richard shot him a breaking smile and hugged Heather tighter. “Heather,” he squeaked. “Heather, you’re okay. You’re home.”

Heather brought her hand to her mother’s arm. She pressed her face against it. “I missed you both so much.”

Heather found her heat sensor still worked. She watched their thermal signatures, felt their touch through her electromagnetic field. Her parents. Her family. She was finally with them again. She closed her eyes and tightened her hand. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Even though they all knew it was coming if they were to be reunited, she was still ashamed they had to see her like this. Robotic, severely damaged. Still their daughter, somehow, but not the kid they knew and loved before.

Another person emerged from the living room. Heather glanced up. “Erika, you’re here too.”

“Yeah.” She shyly stepped closer. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Heather smiled. “Thanks.”

“It’s so good to have you back,” Su managed, her face flushed with tears. “What do you remember?”

“Everything, I think.” Heather’s gaze roved what she could see of the other part of the house as her parents released her. “Where’s James?”

“Resting, in the guest room,” Richard said. Both her parents’ faces and shirts were smeared with soot from their contact with her. “He’s in bad shape.”

Fear stirred in Heather’s broken chest. “Can I see him?”

A door opened down the hallway and Erika’s attention turned. “Woah, hold on, Siles—You shouldn’t be up and about.”

“James?” Heather shifted toward the hallway, forgetting she lacked a few parts. Richard caught her before she fell onto her side and helped her stand. Her remaining foot was damaged, but functional.

“I’m okay,” James said hoarsely. A jet black hand gripped the edge of the wall, and he emerged painfully into the kitchen. He wore one of Richard’s sweatshirts, and a gray beanie on his bald head. After a wince, James’ eyes met hers, and emotional relief inundated his humbled, scarecrow-like countenance.

Leaning heavily on Richard, Heather smiled and extended her arm. James shuffled forward, and she wrapped it around him. She buried her face into his sweatshirt.

James’ arms enveloped her while Richard held them steady.

At close range, Heather could detect the heat circulating in James’ veins, could hear his beating heart and the respiration in his lungs—whole, organic, living. James’ breath faltered and his arms tightened, cradling the back of her head and his shoulders caving over her as he broke down.

Richard hugged them both at once and Heather nestled into the shelter of their bodies.
Even though she would never see her organic body again, and her mechanical one was in pieces, she was finally home, with the people she loved. For that fact, she felt like they could be all right someday.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” James rasped, shattered, relieved.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Heather said.

“Took that explosion like a champ.” Erika offered a wry smile. “You completely destroyed Benson’s research building.”

Heather grinned back. “Good. It was so satisfying to finally stick it to that monster. Someone had to knock his god complex down a few notches.”

James scoffed unsteadily, rubbing at his eyes. His face went pale, and both Richard and Erika reached out to catch him as he swooned. Su stepped in to support Heather while Richard wrapped an arm around James’ back.

“You really need to go to a hospital,” Richard said it like they had already spent some time arguing about this. 
 “No.” James pulled away, stumbling right into Erika, who managed to keep him standing. “No hospitals. There’s nothing they can do about this. Plus, they’ll send me straight back to Empetrum and I have to be here, to try to strike a deal with Benson if he shows up.”

“You’re a person, James,” Su said impatiently. “Not a bargaining chip.”

“Not to him,” James insisted.

“He’s not gonna bargain with us,” Su snapped. Heather felt her mother tense beside her, as Su’s expression darkened in anger, in hatred. “He’ll just kill us and take you and Erika anyway. If you’re so set on crawling back to him, why shouldn’t we just dump you at a hospital and go into fucking witness protection? Not that witness protection would help us.”

“I don’t want to go back—” James started. He suddenly clutched his mouth in one hand, hanging off Erika with the other as his body spasmed and black bile dripped between his fingers.

“Fuck fuck fuck not on the carpet!” Su cried.

James blearily hung his face over the linoleum, as Richard hurried over to grab a bowl and paper towels. He barely got the former in front of him before he retched again. Erika, to her credit, kept ahold of him.

Heather wanted to cry, watching everything unfold with wide eyes. How quickly the relief and warmth of reunion had given way to the very real dangers still looming over them all. She had landed a deep cut on their enemies, but now Benson would be back for revenge.

Over and over at the back of her mind, she felt the sting in her arm from the tiny dart that had ended her life. Benson didn’t need his facility to visit devastation on her family. He didn’t even need to announce himself.

Su clung to Heather as she watched Richard and Erika try to convince James to go lie down, while he wiped clumsily at his face. Sesame stood up on his toes by the kitchen sink running water over a paper towel. That worked better.

“I have to fix this,” Heather said.

Su reacted like she had startled her. “Sweetie, you don’t have to fix anything, okay? You’ve already done far more than anyone should have asked of you.”

Heather shook her head. “Nobody asked me to go after the generator. And I didn’t ask to be going through this.” She shifted position, trying to stand up straighter. “James.”

He looked at her, exhausted and embarrassed and definitely not in any condition to be upright. His watering eyes glowed yellow, bloodshot with black.

“Rest,” Heather said, with gravity. “Mom is right, Benson won’t be bargaining if we see him again.

You’ve done everything you can, now it’s time to recover. We’ll take it from here.”

His lips tightened, but he managed a nod. He let Erika guide him painstakingly back down the hallway to the guest room. He moved like a man four times his age.

Su helped Heather back down to the floor while they waited for Erika to return.

“How long was I out?” Heather asked.

“Six hours,” Su said. “It took some time to get you back here and replace enough parts to get your body to accept power. You woke up within an hour after that.”

“Have you heard anything from Empetrum since then? What conversations have you had?”
 Su hesitated. “Heather, you need to rest too. You almost died again—”

“I don’t care about that right now,” Heather said. “Please, for once in my life, don’t shelter me. I know what we’re up against, and I’m not letting Benson hurt you too.”

Her parents exchanged a glance. Sesame busied himself with cleaning the floor. The inky substance was already staining the linoleum.

“We haven’t heard from Empetrum,” Richard said finally. “We’ve been talking about leaving, trying to figure out what might be coming: Empetrum, police, or both. We’ve considered asking the Conxence for protection…And we’ve been wondering just how complicit the Bureau is, whether they’ll be after us too.”

“And fighting with James,” Sesame piped up in a curt monotone. Richard winced.

“He’s in dire need of medical support,” Richard said, helplessly. “But he’s right, Benson will have easier access to him if he goes to a hospital.”

“But we can’t just let him die,” Heather agreed.

Richard nodded.

“Even though that’s what he seems determined to do,” Su said. “He keeps switching between begging us to abandon him for our own safety, and demanding he stay here like he’ll be able to stop whatever’s coming. It’s unintelligible.”

“Of course it is,” Heather said, sorrow blooming across her chest. “Please be kind with him, Mom. He’s been through a lot.”

“You have too, because of him.”

“I know.”

Su sighed. “Every time he asks us to leave him, I want to.” She looked away, pain etched across her face, her voice nearly a whisper. “I really want to.”

Heather lay back, staring resolutely at the ceiling. “We’re protecting him.”

Erika emerged from the hallway, then. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Benson’s already hurting quite a bit from everything blowing up in his face. The Conxence has much more information about Empetrum than they ever would have gotten if he hadn’t messed with your family. His attempts to cover it up, and to later take revenge on James cost him his research facility, and put a huge crack in the loyalty of another one of his scientists—the one who was heading up the next generation of what I understand was the money-maker project for the company.”

“The whole reason James was brought to Empetrum in the first place,” Heather said.

“Exactly,” Erika said. “Benson might still be out for blood, but he’s been burned by you at every turn. If he hasn’t already had enough, we need to figure out how to make sure he has, and will leave us alone by his own choice.”

“Do we try to contact Yeun, then?” Heather asked.

“No,” Richard said, as it dawned on him. “We contact Dhar.”

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT—CONSEQUENCES

Michael Benson strode impatiently down a wide polished corridor at the Federal Bureau of Science and Innovation headquarters, headed for a conference room whose vaulted ceiling and frequent disinfecting always made him feel like he was under a microscope. He tugged irritably at the bandage across his left hand. He hadn’t slept much, fielding an eternal barrage of crises in the aftermath of a vengeful teenager given a self-contained nuclear core for a battery.

He should have barred Siles from transferring her. At the time, it seemed like a useful concession, opportunistically leveraging Siles’ emotional turbulence to secure his cooperation. Now, he found himself reexamining every decision he had ever made.

Employees were resigning left and right after the explosion, and the mindwipe machine was still buried under the wreckage so every single one got to dodge protocol. Yeun tendered his resignation by letter, not in person. That one hurt.

Now, Dhar had requested an urgent meeting with no notice—probably to talk about what had happened— and despite his deep resentment for Dhar’s strange combination of corporate ruthlessness and inscrutable taproot of a conscience, it was never a good idea to tell Dhar no.

“Can we make this brief?” Benson sighed as he pushed open the door to the conference room, wincing at the predictable sting of disinfectant in his nose. “I don’t have much—” He stopped dead. “—time.”

Dhar sat at the frosted glass conference table, but he wasn’t alone. Knight and Delva were there too.

Benson felt his body language closing. He forced his shoulders square, his eyes narrowing. “What the hell is this?”

Dhar held a hand out across the table. “Take a seat, Benson.”

Benson stayed where he was, gazing first at Knight, who stared back with something like disbelief and utter hatred, then at Delva, unflinching, her hands folded on the table.

“Hello, Michael,” Delva said. “Remember me?”

“How could I not?” Benson said. “You ruined my family.”
 “That’s not how I remember it.”

Benson looked at Dhar. “Why are they here?”

“You’re running your lab like an empire, and it needs to stop,” Dhar said. “I’m putting you on probation.”

“What? You don’t have that kind of power.”

“Twenty years ago, your grandfather made some steep compromises to overcome the blacklist on his head and get the resources to build Empetrum,” Dhar said. “When you took over the company, you inherited that contract. And as you well know, the kill clause is absolute. There is no Empetrum outside of that contract.” Dhar gestured to the chair across from them again. “So please, let’s talk terms.”

Benson stood frozen, calculating, heat rising in his chest. Finally, he strode to the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. “And we’re just going to get into it with a couple of outsiders listening in?”

“Knight and Delva are representatives of Larkspur,” Dhar said. “Which you’ve been treating as some kind of rival gang. Your actions have had devastating consequences for them and their families. Understandably, they want to make sure you’ll pursue no further action against them.”

“I’ve left them alone thus far after ‘the accident,’ haven’t I?” he glared at Knight. That’s what the Bureau was telling anyone who needed to know—an A.I. experiment gone rogue, destroyed in the explosion.

“We need a guarantee,” Knight said. His shoulders were tense nearly up to his ears, a shaking in his hands and voice. Benson noted all three with a wan smile, as a small dose of satisfaction dipped into the encroaching humiliation.

Knight was terrified.

“Fine, I’ll leave you alone,” Benson said, disdainfully. “I’m sick of dealing with you people anyway,

Siles and your daughter especially. Are either of them still alive?”

Knight’s jaw clenched, and his chest expanded in a deep breath as if he were preparing to fight.

Benson stared coldly at him, waiting for that. If he was lucky, the meeting would devolve into emotional chaos on account of Knight’s hatred for him, and Benson would be in a better position to sidestep Dhar’s attempts at retribution.

But Delva touched her colleague’s arm, giving him a meaningful look. To Benson’s annoyance, Knight left the bait.

“Is that all you wanted?” Benson brought out a bored tone. He tried to ignore how hard his heart was beating, as Dhar’s threat of removing him from his position loomed over the back of his neck like a ready blade. “I’ll even put it in writing, under penalty of whatever threats you had lined up. I have much more pressing things to deal with now, thanks to you.”

Dhar shook his head. “Probation wasn’t a threat. That’s happening. You’re out of control.”

“In what way?”

“Where to begin…” Dhar said. “The destruction of Larkspur’s other facility—which was a blatant act of war on the Bureau itself—harming and endangering civilians, including the kidnapping and murder of a child—”

Benson scoffed harshly. “And what is the ICNS? A day care? I don’t think you understand what it takes to produce resources like modulator technology. You can’t get it guiltlessly, and you can’t punish the people who get blood on their hands so you can sit here and pretend you’re above it all.”

“I didn’t recommend Siles to you so you could torture and kill him if Empetrum wasn’t a good fit,” Dhar said. “Not to mention the murder of an additional colleague, Olsson, a year and a half prior.”
Knight and Delva seemed surprised to hear that one.

Benson bristled. “The ICNS would not exist if she had succeeded! Our contract stipulates that so long as Empetrum delivers results, I’m allowed to run my lab how I want. And we’ve delivered, haven’t we?”

“Within reason!” Dhar cried. “You destroyed Larkspur’s other facility. We’re supposed to be on the same team here.”

“I was only trying to set back their prototype, not destroy the—”

“Yes, but why?” Dhar said. “This was an obsessive and one-sided feud. Larkspur is focused on infrastructure! They didn’t even know your lab existed. Siles would have benefited from being approached as an equal, and allowed to choose.”

“New hires so often become whistleblowers,” Benson said. “It’s a wasteful process, I had to create some leverage—”

“Your personal vendettas have exposed highly sensitive information to private citizens, and potentially to a very dangerous rogue militia.”

“It wasn’t me hemorrhaging secrets.” Benson stared Knight down across the table, trying to read any amount of guilt in his expression, trying to get whom he had decided was the weaker of the two intruders to break. “I’m sure Knight’s already taken all the information he has to the Conxence. And we’re not going to talk about how Alice blatantly broke NDA?”

“I’ve already spoken with her. She was helping the Knights,” Dhar said. “She only told them what was relevant to their dilemma. If you had just stopped while you were ahead, none of this would have happened.”

“You’re framing this in the worst possible way.”

Dhar stared at him, tiredly. It reminded Benson of an expression his grandfather used to give him, when his timid, bespectacled grandson wasn’t living up to his expectations for eventually succeeding him to the directorship. He’d gotten too many genes from his paternal line, soft where his grandfather was severe, anxious where he was assured. Benson had purged all of that, pinched every weak nerve until it died.

To have to sit there and be treated like a failure and a liability filled him with white hot rage, but he couldn’t do anything with it here. If he lashed out, Dhar would consider his criticisms confirmed, humiliating him even more in front of his enemies.

“You killed a child,” Dhar emphasized. “In what world is there a better framing for that?”

Benson’s brows tightened, exasperated. He briefly considered throwing Alder under the bus for Heather’s death, though Alder had been acting within Empetrum protocol. Alder was overzealous, perhaps, but extremely loyal—He had been a former death row inmate, a participant in an early trial of Compatible MBE, and afterwards given the choice of a total neural reset or a job.
It was more useful to Benson to maintain that loyalty. Trying to pin the responsibility on him wouldn’t work with Dhar anyway.

“Do you have any regrets at all?” Dhar asked.

Benson’s gaze flicked to Knight’s, as the latter waited. For a brief moment, the doubts crept in—maybe he’d gone too far. Maybe he’d destroyed countless lives chasing ghosts.

He glared at Knight. “None.”

Dhar took a breath. “As part of your probation,” he said. “Your role as director will be temporarily suspended. To even have a shot at reinstatement, you’ll need to undergo a psychological evaluation, and meet with a therapist to help you avoid a repeat of all this.”

“Are you serious?” Benson felt his demeanor go absolutely frigid. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Of course there’s not.” Dhar stood up and calmly motioned the Larkspur engineers to follow suit.

“Please take the steps I’ve prescribed, and leave Siles, the Knights, Hodgson, and anyone connected with them or Larkspur alone, or I’ll have you removed from Empetrum permanently, and report the national security infractions to the authorities—offenses which would mean jail time. Those are the terms. I’m being very generous.”

Benson got up, while Dhar walked Knight and Delva to the door. Neither of them seemed particularly happy about how the conversation had gone—they probably wanted to see Benson burned at the stake, he thought—but they also didn’t seem surprised. Expectations managed.
Dhar closed the door once Knight and Delva had departed the room, turning back to face him.

“You’ll thank me for this, someday,” Dhar said solemnly. “You’ve terrorized and irreversibly devastated innocent people. They just want to be left alone to pick up the pieces, and you need to stop setting wildfires.”

“And who’s supposed to rebuild Empetrum while I’m demoted?” Benson snapped. Exhaustion squeezed like a rubber band around his temples, as he watched everything slipping through his fingers, and for once couldn’t think of a single thing to do about it. “Yeun and Jones resigned, and Hill’s busy with the Compatibles at the ICNS.”

“Hill will also act as interim director, with your personal assistant, Walker, taking over most of the administrative duties,” Dhar said. “You can continue your research in the meantime. Upon review of your notes, it doesn’t sound like Siles had any special affinity to the Q-13 or modulator compatibility, so you won’t need him to continue your work. I’ll personally attend to hiring new talent to build Empetrum back up. I think it became a little too…insular. Addressing your concerns of whistleblowers, we can delegate and outsource parts of the process so no one has enough information to raise any red flags.”
 Benson crossed his arms, staring at the ground. Dhar’s even voice grated on his ears. He just wanted him to stop talking.

“I’ll email the terms for you to sign by the end of today,” Dhar added.

According to Dhar’s plan, Empetrum would continue to exist only in name, the spirit of it dumbed down and domesticated. Dhar was just putting out fires, while he fenced Benson in to go up in flames. That was his job. The public relations guillotine, ever ravenous. The inertia of charisma and political opinion made him sick.

“I suppose it was Hill that backed up whatever Knight and Delva told you?” Benson groused.

“It was.”

“Figures,” Benson said. “This is nothing but a coup. Hill is bitter because he didn’t get the directorship when Lawrence died. He’s always been vocal about that. He doesn’t care about any of this, only that he finally gets what he wants.”

“They’ve all had enough,” Dhar said, opening the door to leave. “It’s time to stop burning your bridges at both ends, Dr. Benson.”

+

The morning after Heather’s return home was a busy day in the Knight household. Erika made phone calls to her family, and to her allies in the Conxence, who wanted a full report. From the kitchen floor, Heather listened to her pacing in the other room, trying falteringly to explain her disappearance to her dad. From the way the conversation went, Heather guessed she hadn’t been open with him about her activities in the resistance movement. When she called the latter, she got an earful from somebody on the other line.

While Su and Sesame monitored James’ increasingly fragile health, Chelo had volunteered to come over and help Heather with some temporary repairs, to at least get her ambulatory until they could do more. Richard and Eve had left for the capital that morning to meet with the Bureau.

Contacting Dhar about the situation had been a dangerous gamble—Heather feared Dhar was secretly as evil and conniving as Benson. But, supposing he had a soft spot for Eve because they were friends despite the ethical shadows that had recently come to light, they decided to play it straight.

It had surprised Heather how little it took to expose Benson’s behavior as unhinged, and far beyond any hands-off relationship Dhar may have tried to maintain with the lab. While in Empetrum’s grip, it had felt like Benson controlled the whole world.

Benson had stalked, sabotaged, and destroyed Larkspur and its members for his own ends, which was action against the Bureau—its source of funding—as well as the government and its interest in keeping human weaponry research quiet.

Heather would have liked to explode the whole thing, reducing all the politics to a barren crater, but this would at least buy them some time to regroup, and to get James help.

Heather stared up at the ceiling while Chelo worked on her leg, her circuits buzzing with impatience to be mobile again. It galled her to watch her family and friends disappear and reappear down the hallway with little to report on James’ condition, unable to participate.

Despite his youthful personality, Sesame dutifully helped without complaint. Nobody had to explain to him what it meant to be terminally ill. He remembered.

He filled his daylight hours trotting around being useful as needed, and at night played video games on Heather’s handheld console while recharging his battery. Heather had spent the night before alternating between hibernating out of habit, and asking Sesame to check on James.

“Have you seen James yet?” Heather asked Chelo.

“I poked my head in,” she said, working on the knee socket from which she’d managed to dislodge Heather’s mangled robotic calf. “He was sleeping.” She whistled softly through her teeth and shook her head. “I can’t believe what you all have been through.”

Heather buzzed a sigh. “I can’t believe it myself most of the time.” She raised her remaining hand, missing half its fingers. The other arm was just an empty, shredded socket. “Yet here I am.”

Chelo gripped above her metal knee and pushed up, connecting a peg-like prosthetic with a curved metal foot into the lower half of the hinged joint. She measured the end of both legs, working the temporary peg out to lengthen it, and measured again. Finally, she reached in with a wrench and started tightening bolts.

“Is there any way we can get me set up with some kind of battery before Dad comes back?” Heather asked. “If their meeting goes well, we’re taking James straight to the hospital, and I’m not being left here.”

She had no idea how to tackle being in spaces where others could see her, robotic and half-destroyed, her chest cavity stuffed with cords. But after four weeks of threats, confinement, and devastation, she was determined to keep her hard won autonomy.

“I’ll see what I can do, kiddo,” Chelo said.

Soon, Heather had a reasonably stable foot placeholder, and Chelo was ready to at least give her more length on the extension cords keeping her conscious.

“Ready?” she asked.

Heather nodded.

Chelo pulled the plug and immediately jammed it into the end of the ready extension cords strung out from the wall outlet. Heather’s vision blacked out briefly.

“You okay?” Chelo asked..

Heather confirmed, relieved. She tried to stand. Chelo helped her.

“How does the leg feel?”

“Good,” Heather said. Her knee was a little stiff, and the cadence was awkward without a foot that actually moved, but she was mobile. “Thanks.” She took a step toward the guest room, her hand keeping the wires in her chest steady.

Chelo made sure the extension cords didn’t tangle or unplug as she ventured into the shadows of the hallway. It was so quiet, Heather could hear her system thrumming in her chest, the hum of her moving joints.

The door was open a crack. Heather carefully peeked in. James had haphazardly pushed the covers down, betraying the black snaking up his arms, and a sweat-drenched t-shirt. Her heat sensor clicked on. He was still alive, thankfully. Though he had a high fever.

The nightstand by the bed was crowded with a large bowl, a box of tissues, a glass of water, and a pile of towels, the latter of which were stained with black. An electric heating pad lay forgotten on the floor. James’ long, dark hand rested limp at his side. His nose was raw and smudged black from the unsettling discharge.

From what she had gleaned, he had been taking fluids a few hours earlier, but rousing him was getting harder. His fever continued to tick up, and he was losing weight at an alarming rate. He was already even thinner than when she’d seen him the evening before—his closed eyes sunken in dark sockets, his cheekbones standing out sharply in his face. It was as if the Q-13 were sapping his life force, consuming him from the inside out.

Carefully, she crept into the room, up to the bed.

“James?” she said, the volume of her voice very low. She hoped he could hear her at least a little, though she feared claiming any more of his energy. “Dad and Eve went to talk to Dhar. They’re going to see if they can get Benson to back off.”

James stirred, slightly. He took a slow breath, then his eyes cracked open, unfocused. His irises glowed with an ominous, animal iridescence, and she hated it. Hated the Q-13. Hated what Benson had done to them.

She stood by his bed, contemplating the weight in her chest. She had no heart or blood or chemical signals—any of the things she might have attributed to this feeling before.

This pain, this terror of being alive. The grief of not yet knowing what to do with that.

She and James were both still alive, but time plowed forward, crushing them beneath its weight.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tread water in the swelling waves. She couldn’t protect him from the battle he fought. She just wanted all this to stop, to go back to when she was just an intern at Larkspur, making friends and feeling included. Why had that simple, innocent need for companionship brought them here?

She carefully kneeled down, putting her hand over his. His eyes rolled her direction, made brief contact, then drooped closed.

“Keep fighting,” she said softly. “Please.”

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO—FUNCTION

James spent the rest of the day after infusion mostly unconscious. His exterior was maddeningly itchy, and his whole body throbbed while he shivered and sweated with fever. At one point he thought maybe his nose was bleeding, but he fell asleep again before he could check.

The next day, he woke up with his skin dry and shriveled, the black marks faded to a dark, ashen gray. His bones ached constantly, especially those in his upper body. At times it was so intense he could hardly breathe. He found black stains on his pillow, more of the dark bile he dimly remembered at his infusion crusted down the front of his face.

Sometime later, he was taken out of his cell, to an examination room with a curtain at the back and Benson told him to take a shower. He complied without question, too stunned, too afraid to exist as the Q-13 had made him to do anything other than follow orders.

The water cascaded like hail on his tender shoulders, but the warm water helped soften the metal barb sensation in his limbs. With a simultaneous sense of relief and revulsion, he found the damaged, desiccated skin peeling. With little abrasion, it sloughed off like sheets of dried glue, leaving the skin underneath smooth where it was pale, and the ebony stains deep, penetrating black. All things considered, he expected to find his hair falling out too, but it wasn’t.

He lingered there as long as he dared, in a brief sanctuary of warmth and privacy, dreading what Benson had in store for him, marveling at how strange and horrible this all was. He hoped the Knights had already found a different angle to get Heather out, hoped maybe Benson would be distracted enough with him.

When he was finished, a guard gave him a towel and a change of clothes. James donned them wordlessly and waited to be told what to do. His unofficial goal for the time being was just keeping Benson’s mood out of a dangerous range.

The director took another blood sample and swabbed the inside of James’ mouth, making James wonder whether his genetic code had changed even further since infusion. James sat still, his arms crossed, trembling in the incredibly frigid examination room.

Benson shone a light in each of James’ eyes, testing reflexes. “Cold, Siles?”

“Yes,” James managed.

“Hm.” Benson turned the pen light off and jotted down some notes. “Take him to the Q-13 chamber,” he told the guards.

James’ eyes widened, hugging himself as the guards pulled him to his feet. “But I’ve already been infused—”

Benson held the door open for them as they took James down the hallway and into the sinister concrete dungeon of a room. They sat him down in a new metal chair that had replaced the one he had melted, and strapped him in. An IR camera on a tripod sat off to the side, trained on him.

The viewing room across the glass remained dim and empty. Benson switched on the IR camera, and as he approached the chair, James realized he had a handheld taser.

“Are you ready?” Benson asked.

James stared up at him. His heart pounded in his chest, throbbing uncomfortably through the black marks. “You’re going to electrocute me?” Even exhausted and poisoned, the pettiness of the parallel—as Benson had been similarly electrocuted the night of the escape attempt—was not lost on him.

“To stimulate your sympathetic nervous system,” Benson said simply.

“It’s stimulated,” James retorted.

“Not nearly enough, obviously,” Benson said, depressing the trigger. The taser snapped, and though James tried to shift away, the active end easily contacted James’ arm.

The electricity jolted through his body like a crack over the head, thumping hard in his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the panicky white out pain to fade, even as an odd sensation pulled into the black marks, on the line between numb and cold.

Benson spoke up beside him, “Bring her in.”

James looked up to see the director putting his communication device back into the pocket of his lab coat and swapping it for the taser again, annoyed at having to fumble around with one hand.

A guard dragged Heather into the viewing room, still wrapped up in rubber insulation. Their gazes locked. James felt weak with relief to see the immediate recognition in her eyes. Benson still hadn’t managed to take her memories, as threatened. He briefly forgot about Benson standing next to him, who dosed him again with the taser.

“Stop it!” Heather cried, muffled through the thick glass. “This is senseless!”

“You don’t know anything,” Benson said.

James fought to catch his breath while a wash of petulant nerves prickled across his torso. The black marks grew colder and colder until James squirmed under its intense, petrifying burn. His heart pounded hard. He waited, frightened and helpless in a static moment heavy with potential energy, and then the gradient tipped. Thick ribbons of heat crowded in to fill the freezing void. His whole body started to burn like it had during his infusion—cruel, hot and cold pain that harshly whispered of tearing him apart. He curled forward with a groan, straining against the bindings around his wrists.

Benson solemnly watched as the black marks in James’ skin began to glow.

Looking down at his arms in terror, James forced deep, frantic breaths into his lungs, trying to fight it, to calm it down, to steady his racing heart and shaking muscles, but the burning white light only grew in intensity. Benson put distance between them, hanging a pair of tinted goggles over his glasses.

The Q-13 exploded. James seized up with a cry as ferocious white plasma flared from the marks in his skin, gushing up through the spaces between his cells, tearing his breath away, and blinding him in his left eye.

The straps around his wrists disintegrated, and the flames reacted to the sudden jerk of his tense arms breaking free, spiking with renewed fury while James, their host and epicenter, struggled to understand what was happening to him within the inferno.

The heat faltered, then faded. Gasping for air, James collapsed, only barely managing to catch himself as he crumpled forward onto the concrete floor. The impact on his arms and hands sent splinters crunching up his bones into his shoulders.

He curled up in fetal position. He felt every bone in his body, incandescent. The concrete seared like dry ice on his exposed skin. Groggy, he brought his shaking hands in front of his face, expecting to see nothing but charred bone, but everything remained whole, as if he had simply hallucinated the whole thing. Even the unstained parts of his skin were unaffected. He relaxed.

He heard Heather’s muffled voice, calling his name, but he couldn’t move. His eyes were open, his vision unfocused.

Benson’s voice, soft and disgusted, came distantly to his ringing ears. “Looks like it really did take…” He scoffed, bitterly. “Of all people to bond with the first viable strain…Siles, why the fuck did it have to be you?”

+

Heather sat on her knees, watching the trial in horror. After the flames left him, James lay curled into a loose ball on the floor, his irises glowing yellow from staring, sightless eyes. Heather turned on her heat sensor, but the glass barrier withheld that information from her. His eyelids drooped closed, and Heather watched him closely, zooming her vision in on his stained chest.

It moved. He was still breathing.

She pushed air through her voice box in a soft buzz of relief.

While James lay unconscious, Benson checked the IR camera. As soon as the charred, melted metal chair cooled down, assistants unscrewed it from its place and put in a new one. Heather loathed how practiced and seamless the process was. She glared at Benson through the glass.

The director ignored her.

Within a few minutes, James began to stir, and Benson’s assistants took hold of his arms and pulled him back up into the replacement chair, strapping him in. Heather glanced back over her shoulder at the guard watching her, trying to figure out how she could stop this. She didn’t have the use of her arms, and her ankles were tied together.

A low groan from behind the glass attracted her attention again. James’ face was bowed, his breathing ragged and uneven, his bare torso slick with sweat. His head turned, dimly considering the straps around his wrists. He raised his face then, his movements lethargic and uncontrolled, and his gaze met Heather’s, stricken.

Heather leaned forward.

His golden eyes narrowed desperately, filling with tears. “Don’t watch,” he whispered, and Heather more read his lips than heard him. “Please don’t watch…”

Benson steadied the taser in his functional hand and stepped closer. “Round two.” The device snapped loud and merciless. Just before the taser made contact, Heather turned her face to the floor, trying to honor James’ request. She flinched as the white light burst from the marks, as he belted a single cry of torment while the flames stretched toward the ceiling.

They left more quickly the second time, and James was conscious enough to clutch his arms close to his chest, doubling over with a sob while faint trails of steam pulled from his skin. She had glanced up from the floor but he couldn’t meet her gaze.

“That’s enough for now,” Benson said, beckoning his assistants nearer. “Take him back to his cell.”

They made sure James was safe to touch, and then took his arms, dragging him toward the door.
Benson checked the screen on the IR camera again, reviewing the footage. Then his gray eyes flicked to Heather’s, icy and hard. With a slow breath, his gaze softened to a different kind of cold, the mask of the self-possessed director he preferred to present, though Heather now knew what festered underneath.

He raised his voice enough to be heard through the thick glass, “I’ll let you know if he dies.”

Heather stared daggers at him. Then Benson directed a flick of his hand to the guard behind her and it was her turn to go back to her own cell.

She frantically scanned the hallway for James. The guards were just closing the door to his cell.

“James!” she cried as she passed it. She pulled back, trying to linger close to his door as long as she could before her escort jerked her back on course. “Don’t die on me, okay? You can make it. Just hold on!”

She listened hard for movement, for a response, but no sound issued from inside.

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE—DEVELOPMENTS

“Try to activate it intentionally,” Benson instructed.

James leaned hard on the metal chair for support. His ankle was tethered to the base so he had more room to experiment with that morning’s trial, but not for much else. A guard stood near the door with Heather, a threat if James decided to be uncooperative.

He had spent the weekend in and out of examination rooms, submitting to a plethora of MRIs and other scans, hooked up to tubes and electrodes that measured everything imaginable as Benson sought to understand how the Q-13 had integrated with every tissue in his body, and what features of James’ physiology could serve as potential hallmarks of whether or not others would be able to support it too. So far, James hadn’t heard much about the results, but he figured they must have been interesting, or Benson wouldn’t have bothered to work overtime on it while injured. That, or Benson expected him to die at any time, which was a fair assumption.

Now, they were dealing with some of its more macro aspects.

“I don’t know how,” James’ tired, shellshocked voice sounded whiny in his own ears.

Benson stared at him, unimpressed. “Then think. You’re smart. I’m sure you’ve started to form theories.”

“That’s been kind of impossible lately,” James said. The last few days were a haze of constant aching and fatigue, and persistent inability to find relief from the chill.

The IR camera waited, the dark orb of its lens motionless and unflinching as an ambush predator locked on target. James was minutes from lying down on the floor and refusing to get up again. Benson couldn’t do anything to Heather without sustaining a nasty shock. It was written all over her robotic face.

“Please don’t make me threaten you,” Benson sighed.

“Why? Are you getting tired of it?” Heather spat from across the room.

“You said it’s tied to the fight-or-flight response,” James said, weakly. “It doesn’t take orders from me.”

“You know that response can be influenced.”

“Why do you even want me to control it? You’ve seen what it can do.”

Benson pulled a taser gun out of his lab coat pocket. “Call me optimistic.” He pointed it at James and deployed it.

Benson had impeccable aim, it turned out. Two bolts hit James’ back, and suddenly his body was seizing in intense, blinding pain. He fell, convulsing.

As the electricity left him, and the silence of the experimentation chamber crept back in, Benson said, “Before I forget, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”

James stared at the leg of the chair near his face, unable to move.

“The accident at Larkspur back in May,” Benson went on, reloading the taser. “Which undermined your colleagues’ trust in you and resulted in relocation, thereby bringing you closer to Empetrum, was very much intentional.”

James’ muscles began to reengage. He groaned, dragging himself weakly to his knees.

“I’d gathered that,” James said finally. He slowly reached around, feeling for the taser bolts in his back. The whole area was tender, and the barbs held fast.

“Was that really supposed to surprise us at this point?” Heather snapped.

“No,” Benson said. “Of course, annihilating the facility and endangering your lives wasn’t part of the plan, if it makes you feel any better.” He raised the taser again. The wires were still attached, ready for another current. “But it served its purpose.”

James bowed his head, waiting for it. The Q-13 stirred under his skin. This next dose of electricity would push him over.

“Stop it!” Heather cried, pulling angrily against her guard. “You’re just torturing him! I hope the Conxence burns you to the ground!”

“Cut the melodrama, Ms. Knight, or I’ll have your voice box taken out.” Benson squeezed the trigger.

The taser snapped harshly like a reprimand, and James took it as bravely as he could. Once his muscles stopped cramping, he lay still on his side, trying to catch his breath.

Finally, he found it, and the Q-13 reacted, tearing from his first gasp of air.

“Now that we’ve kickstarted it, try to influence it,” Benson called over the flames roaring in his ears. “If you manage it, we can be done for the day.”

James thought briefly about trying to burn the tether around his ankle, but Benson had him trapped in other ways. With difficulty, he got his knees under him, clenched his hands into fists, and tensed his arms. His shoulders pulled forward, and he searched through his soul-crushing fatigue for stronger emotions. Fear and anger were always somewhere in the back of his mind. Anxiety and grief for Heather, the fury and despair of feeling like he had sold both their souls and nobody had bothered to warn him before it was too late. He hated everything about what his life had become, and he hated himself for falling prey to it, for dragging Heather down with him.

The Q-13 flared higher with a savage burst of energy. Then it snuffed out, and he felt his body cave. His eyes closed. His shoulder hit the floor.

“James?” Heather’s timid voice ricocheted in the silent, open space, building concern. “James?”

He moaned in response, curling slowly into a ball as the ache and cold returned with a vengeance, now that the fire was spent.

“Well, I guess that’s a start,” Benson sighed.

James forgot where he was. He couldn’t remember what he had been thinking about. Finally, gratefully, the pain faded as darkness claimed him.

+

That evening, the panel in Heather’s cell door slid back, disturbing the stillness. A guard looked in, saw her sitting on the bed across the room, and said firmly, “Stay where you are. The director wants to speak with you.”

Heather straightened up, dread and confusion buzzing through her circuits.

The panel closed, and the door opened, revealing Michael Benson in his usual business attire. His hand was still bandaged, and the deep, swollen cut from James’ defective stun grenade looked particularly painful that evening.

“What do you want?” Heather asked, wary.

“Just to deliver a courtesy.” Benson regarded her coldly, his posture straight and formal. “Siles is dead.”

Heather’s eyes widened. “What—”

“He went into shock and his internal organs shut down,” Benson said. “It seems the Q-13 is still unviable, after all.”

Heather stared at him, stunned.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, her voice very quiet.

“Either way, the fact remains the same.”

“Can I see him?”

“Impossible,” he said. “The autopsy and cremation are already completed.” He turned to go. “My condolences.”

It must have happened right after tests that morning.

Far away, a part of her visualized launching herself at the director, seeing how much voltage she could get into him before the guards could react. She thought about ramming him aside with her shoulder and tearing down the hallway, to find someone who would take her to James, wherever and whatever his body had become. She would force them to tell her what had really happened to him, then force everyone to let her leave.

But she couldn’t move. She felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, and it was an eerie sensation, as she hadn’t drawn breath for almost a month now.

“Wait, what happens now?” she asked. He paused. “What am I to you, without him?”

“Good evening, Ms. Knight,” he said, and the door closed heavily behind him.

Heather stared at the door for a long time, reeling. Finally, with nothing left to do, she began to pace.

Why did Benson care if she knew whether James had pulled through or not? She strode back and forth in her cell, looking for a way out, a worthless, maddening perusal that she had already repeated many times before. She strained her arms against the tightly-wrapped rubber binding around her torso, but it didn’t budge.

He couldn’t be gone.

James couldn’t be gone.

Heather leaned forward against a wall. Abruptly, she kicked it as hard as she could and bent double with a harsh, buzzing scream of grief and fury. She drove her voice box so hard in that single cry it mistuned and perforated, unable to contain the force of organic, human rage.

She twisted, falling to a sitting position against the wall and drawing her knees up to her chest.

The kick had damaged the end of her foot, but she didn’t care. She lowered her face to her knees.

James’ idealistic, passionate nature had driven him straight into the hands of evil people, and he had done terrible things under their influence. But he hadn’t deserved to die like that.

She had kind of hoped he would be free, in the end. Maybe he finally was.

And she was alone, deep in the bones of Empetrum, with only a makeshift communicator and a bound, artificial body.

Heather closed her eyes, and sought for the communicator in her neural network. She barely felt the simulated pain as the device activated and her attention focused on the signal, on the vast sense of hopelessness blooming in her chest.

Is anyone there? she sent.

It took a minute, but then Sesame replied, We’re here, Heather. What’s going on?

She hesitated.

The silence of her prison was overwhelming, pressing in on her from all sides. James, of course, hadn’t been the only way out of Empetrum, but he had been their best chance of success. He’d fought so hard. She had wanted to take him with her.

For all his failings, she had wanted to save him too. Even when they were recaptured, she kept thinking if only he could survive, they’d find a way out. Even if she had to carry his limp body across her shoulders, they would find their way home.

Both of them. Together.

She curled up tighter, and finally forced herself to say it. The words made the suffocating feeling swell, cold and vacuous and infused with a dull, inexpressible sense of panic:

We just lost James.

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR—PRECAUTION

James heard the door of his cell, but kept his eyes closed. Maybe they’d think he was dead and he’d get a break. If Benson wanted him for tests today, he could drag him.

“Get up,” a familiar voice ordered, and James cracked an eye open, anxiety soaking through his poisoned organs. Alder.

James slowly pushed himself up. Every cell in his body screamed at him to lie back down and never get up again. He looked up at Alder, eyebrows lowered sullenly.

“Come on,” Alder sighed, gripping his arm and pulling him up. James gasped as the familiar metallic ripping sensation bloomed up his arm and into his neck, shoulder, and ribs. Alder tied his hands behind his back.

James struggled to maintain his bearings as Alder pushed him out into the hallway. Benson had ordered him moved to a different cell, far from Heather and Erika, but he had been too muddled to question it, only lamented how much farther of a walk it was to Benson’s examination rooms.

He braced himself as they neared the door to the Q-13 chamber, wondering what fresh hell awaited him, but then they passed the door completely. James glanced back, confused, as they continued on down the corridor. “Where are you taking me?”

Alder didn’t reply, his eyes forward and the set of his mouth grim. They turned a corner into a narrow passage, and headed toward a featureless white door at its end. Alder opened it, and ushered James into a small room—a broom closet compared to the Q-13 chamber, but unlike any of the medical rooms he had seen. A lone chair sat in its center, a helmet-like contraption poised above. Behind it, another guard stood at some kind of control panel.

James pulled back, uneasy. Alder shoved him closer, undid one handcuff, spun him around, and pushed him down into the chair. James’ wobbly legs weren’t strong enough to keep his balance.

The other guard gripped his tender, aching shoulders and held him down while Alder fought his arm onto the arm of the chair. A shackle snapped up, closing it in. His other wrist followed.

James tugged at his bonds, dread pressing cruel and cold against his forehead. “What is this?” he tried as they strapped his legs in too. Neither of them answered him, but Alder glanced at him once, and James thought he caught a hint of pity.

Throbbing and out of breath, he anxiously took in his surroundings. Everything of consequence was just out of his ability to see.

Silence closed in while they waited, and James didn’t have to be told for whom.

Minutes later, the director arrived, calm and businesslike.

“Good morning, Siles,” he said, heading for the control panel.

“What is this?” James insisted, trying to twist his head around to see Benson, and he gave quite a start when Alder grabbed it in both hands and held it straight.

“Let’s make this as painless as possible, shall we?” Benson said, planting three small electrodes across James’ forehead. A hard, angular frame descended over his cranium, and Benson adjusted it, tightening an internal band around his skull. He pulled a couple of appendages out from the front of the frame, positioning the barrel of each uncomfortably close to James’ eyes.

James struggled, but Alder easily held him in place. The wires shifted across the top of his head as Benson plugged them into the panel behind him.

“I don’t usually do this while experiments are still active unless it’s completely necessary,” Benson said. He moved toward the wall as the guard released James’ stinging face. He plugged in a power cable. Lights eased to life in the devices aimed into James’ pupils. “But if you’re ever able to control the Q-13, your cooperation needs to have been secured first.”

James’ eyes widened. “This is the mind wipe, isn’t it?”

“Very astute of you.” Benson snapped up a lever on the panel behind the chair. “We’re doing a total one today, clearing the slate.”

James’ insides froze. “No…”

“Just embrace it, Siles,” Benson said. He adjusted what sounded like dials and flipped more switches. “By erasing your identity, I’m giving you a fresh start. No more messy attachments, no pointless guilt. You should be thanking me.”

James pulled his head diagonally, trying to disengage any part of the apparatus from the control panel, but it held fast. He willed the Q-13 to activate. He sought for the tipping point, for the generalized ache in his body to sharpen into something useful and explosive, but nothing happened.

“I can’t forget—” he cried. “Please, you can’t do this.”

“But I can,” Benson said. “The moment you decided to act against me, you made it a struggle of powers, of which I was inevitably going to come out on top. Knight can’t have you, you’re far too connected to the wrong people to ever go free, and you’re harder to kill than I took you for. At this point, you’re a milestone, the first survivor of the Q-13. And I’m thinking maybe, if you survive it long enough, there will still be use for your intellect, as long as I can calibrate it correctly. I’ll see to it that you never forget your place again.”

James’ whole body was shaking in horror. From the very beginning, even when he was on good terms with Benson, he was only ever just a resource in the director’s eyes. An asset to be passed around and fought over, coerced into submission, and repurposed when his obedience proved insufficient.

“I’ve already informed your precious test subject of your death,” Benson added. “She’s not waiting for you anymore.”

“What?” James gasped. “When?”

“Last night.”

“No—” James pulled at his restraints again, struggling to resist a growing tidal wave of despair. He couldn’t bear the thought of how she must have felt. A whole night, thinking he’d abandoned her again. “No…”

It wasn’t over yet. It couldn’t be over yet. She couldn’t have believed him.

“Very soon,” Benson said, “James Siles will be erased. What do you want your name to be, when you start over?”

Tears clouded James eyes. “Don’t do this.”

“Maybe I’ll just give you a number. You won’t know the difference.”

James’ head began to tingle from the apparatus locked over it. The lights increased in intensity, and he caught a flash of branching veins superimposed on his vision. Desperation lanced through him, and he writhed in his restraints. The movement sent thick barbs of pain up into his shoulders, but he squeezed his eyes shut and pulled harder.

As long as the Q-13 stayed dormant, he knew fighting was useless. Even with such a volatile ability bonded to his cells, he was just as weak and helpless and trapped as he had always been.

Soon he would be only a number. Everything he had been, the good along with the bad, blotted out like data on a hard drive.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Benson said on his way to the door. “I’ll be back in an hour to introduce myself.”

James’ arm broke free.

Shocked, his eyes opened to see his arms ignited. Benson stood stunned.

The hot and cold agony flooded in like an afterthought, but James had already recovered, melting the device’s strap and ripping the contraption from his head.

Alder and the other guard moved forward to restrain him. Benson raised his voice in alarm, stopping them, “Don’t—touch him…”

James stared at him, thoroughly incredulous, eyes ablaze with wild fire. The Q-13 was his now. Benson couldn’t control him anymore.

No one could.

James pulled his other arm free and reached down to melt the restraints from around his ankles. Benson swung the door open and waved the guards through.

“Lock down the facility,” he ordered as James clumsily extricated himself from the chair. “Gather all available personnel upstairs and prepare for defense and recapture.”

The heavy door slammed and locked before James could reach it. Exposure to the mind wipe apparatus had left him dizzy, struggling to concentrate. The sticky, bone-grinding pain of the Q-13 clawed hungrily through his body, but he managed to hobble to the door. He focused on Heather.

He had to find her, to tell her he was alive, to burn her a path to freedom.

Taking a hitching, steadying breath, he braced his hand along the seam in the door, over the locks and pressed hard. The fire spiked, and he watched his hand sink into the door, through the latch and deadbolt. The door swung open, dripping molten metal and polymer, and James staggered out into the hallway. As he labored his way back up the corridor, holding his flaming ribs and leaving scorched hand prints down the wall, he found the entire lower floor deserted.

“Heather!” he cried when he finally made it to her cell. His vision unfocused suddenly, and he briefly lost his bearings. His head drooped too close to the door and the fire from his left cheek started singeing the metal before he could pull back. “Heather, are you in there? Can you hear me?”

“James?” Heather’s voice rang off the concrete walls. She ran to the door. Her voice mistuned emotionally, “Oh my god! James!”

“Stand back.” James tensed his right arm and drove it into the door, melting the lock. Fatigue inundated him as he pulled it open. Heather stood before him, relieved, elated.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Benson was going to erase my memory.” James directed himself toward Erika’s cell. He had no idea how long he had until the Q-13 stopped being helpful. He felt a crack deep inside himself, burning away little by little. “I got out. They locked the facility down and they’re getting ready upstairs to block me.”

“So escape attempt number two is in progress?”

“No other choice,” he panted. “I’m facing a full mindwipe if I’m recaptured, and there’s no telling what Benson will decide to do with you after I’m gone. I can’t let that happen.” Steeling himself, he flared up again to destroy the lock. He raised his voice with difficulty. “Erika Hodgson! Stand back! I’m burning through the door!”


“I’m clear!” Erika called back. She had evidently heard him yelling Heather’s name down the hallway.

James’ fire flickered, but he managed to keep hold of it enough to finish melting the lock. The bolt broke, and he tugged the door open before crumbling to his knees. The flames subsided with a whooshing sound, like the snuffing of a candle. It took his breath with it and the cold rushed in like a hundred angled swords.

“Please come with us,” he said between gasps, doubled over. “Benson’s demented and I don’t know what he threatened or offered you, but they’re liars and murderers and you can’t trust any of them. This is probably Heather and my last chance at escape, and we’re not leaving you here alone. Please, you have to come with us.”

Erika stood over him, considering his plea. Finally, she stepped aside and began unwrapping the rubber sheets pinning Heather’s arms behind her back. She managed a smile. “You make a good case, James…”

A breathless, wheezing scoff tinged James’ attempts to get ahold of himself. He smiled up at her, ruefully.

As soon as Heather could move, she lurched forward, dropping to her knees before him and wrapping her arms around him. James sat back on his heels and she pressed her face into his chest with a buzzing, emotional sound.

“Benson told me you were dead,” her voice mistuned softly.

James bowed his face, holding her close, emotion welling up in his throat. In that moment, he felt safe. He felt like he could do anything. If not for himself, than for her.

“We’re gonna get out of this,” Heather said, her gaze clear and earnest as the hug loosened, and she stared seriously into his eyes. She reached up and carefully peeled the severed electrodes from his forehead. “We’re going home this time. All of us.”

James tried to stand up, and she helped him, supporting his arm across her mechanical shoulders.

Straightening his body sent barbs of pain around his ribs. His breath caught, and the marks began to glow white again. He hastily detached himself from Heather and tripped to the wall, leaning against that instead. “Sorry—”

He took deep, forced breaths, shutting his eyes tight. Now that he’d brought it out, the Q-13 was all too eager to manifest.

Finally the pressure tipped back, and the light faded. He exhaled heavily in relief.

Erika looked at each of them in turn, waiting for an explanation.

“After what I just pulled,” James said, looking up at her. “I can either try to escape, or resubmit to Benson which will likely have horrific consequences for everyone connected with me.” Or die trying. “Right now, he’s worried about getting me back under control with an armed lockdown. That could give you two enough room to escape.”

Heather’s eyes narrowed, exasperated. “You are not asking me to leave you behind again. You just said there would be consequences if you stayed—” She trailed off, as it dawned on her. “You’re not planning to live through this, are you?”

James’ lips tightened and he looked away, emotion high in his throat.

“James!”

“I don’t know, okay?” James cried. “I just know I want you free, and Benson’s been focused on me.

That’s an angle I have to exploit as much as I can.” He gestured inward at himself. “You really think I’m going to live much longer like this?”

The injured, frustrated look on her face hurt. “Well I was hoping—”

Silence closed in between them, as they grappled with emotions they couldn’t resolve. He couldn’t give her what she wanted. James would never get what he wanted either—for none of this to have happened.

Erika stood by, fidgeting.

“She was an organic human being before this,” James said, tilting his head toward Heather, his eyes on Erika. “She’s a fifteen-year-old kid. She has to go home.”

“No,” Heather wedged herself between them, turning on him. “Don’t pull that card.” Her voice mistuned, in sorrow, in rage, because she knew Erika would side with him on it. “Don’t you dare pull that card!”

“Please let me fix this,” James gazed down at her anguished robotic face, the weight of the world hanging from his sternum.

“You can’t fix this,” Heather shook her head, staring into his eyes. “Sacrificing yourself won’t do anything!”

“If it gets you away from Benson,” James said, “it’ll have done a lot.”

After a long silence, Erika said. “James has a point. You’re both more familiar with the layout. Just tell me what I need to do to help.”

Heather scoffed, angrily. She crossed her arms and removed herself to pace.

James took a breath and ran a hand through his patchy, singed hair, thinking. “Benson’s probably amassed an army of guards upstairs by now. Tranquilizers, handguns, long range tasers. The Q-13 is effective, but inefficient and unpredictable.” He looked at his ebony hands, closing them and opening them again. “I wonder if I could make a barrier somehow with it, keep people back.”

He’d probably have to set his whole body on fire to achieve that.

“Are there any more of us locked up here?” Erika asked.

“No,” James said. “I checked inventory logs before our first escape attempt. Benson doesn’t like to keep people on site, and he’s been involved with my situation, so I doubt he’s brought in anyone else.”

“What’s in that high voltage room by your lab, James?” Heather spoke up.
James stopped dead, already horrified by the implication. He answered only reluctantly, “A generator.”

“If I could get in there,” she said. James started shaking his head, numbly prohibitive, but she plowed forward. “I can shoot it full of electricity and try to overload it enough to explode. Maybe I can bring this place down and give you two a chance to escape in the process instead of you playing sacrificial decoy.”

James opened his mouth to protest, but she doubled down. “If I threaten the generator, it will force Benson to evacuate the facility. That means he’ll have to lift the lockdown, and they won’t have time to deal with a couple of escaped prisoners. And if I can at least damage the facility, Benson will be hard pressed for a while to do anything to us after we get out—or to anyone else.”

“Then I’ll do it,” James insisted. “I can’t let you— ”

“I don’t think the Q-13 can get that kind of reaction,” Heather pressed. “My core holds more than enough energy to pull it off.” James attempted rebuttal, but she cut him off, “James, I’m made of metal! I can take an explosion.”

James felt like his spirit was draining from his chest as he stared at her. She was right, but her neural network wasn’t perfectly repairable if it sustained damage. She could lose memories, personality traits, maybe even her soul itself—if that had survived the transfer.

“Would Benson sacrifice personnel in an evacuation?” Erika inquired in yet another standoff between her allies. “He doesn’t seem to care about his researcher’s lives, at least.”

“It’s a loyalty thing with him,” James said, grudgingly. “What happened to me was a special punishment for endangering the company, I think. And he can’t afford staff tensions rising any more.” He glanced at Heather, then sighed, running a hand through his hair again. “I will admit, your plan sounds a lot more effective, but—”

“Then we’re doing it,” Heather said. “I don’t care that I’m fifteen. I don’t care that none of this was my responsibility. I have a real chance to do something about this, and I’m taking it.” She opened the panels in her head. “Pull the pain simulator out. I don’t want Benson using it against me.”

James complied, his hands shaking so much he could hardly grab it. “Your family is waiting for you…” he tried, pleading.

“I know.” Heather replaced her cranial panels and started down the hallway. “If I don’t get out of this, tell them I love them.”

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE—CHECKMATE   

James tripped after her, but Heather didn’t turn around. For too long, Benson had used her to control and torture everyone she cared about, and she and James were far from the only ones to suffer at his hands. She refused to be exploited anymore. Benson would regret bringing her into this.

A trembling hand caught her arm.

“Please, Heather,” James’ voice cracked. “I can’t…I can’t let this happen after everything I’ve—”

“I need you to focus, okay?” Heather said, turning back. He released her with trepidation. “Can you still activate the Q-13 at will?”

“I think so.”

“How possible is that shield you mentioned?”

James looked at his shaking ebony hands again, searching. “Enough to keep them busy, I think, as long as we move fast. But—”

“They’re probably waiting near the door to the stairs,” Heather said. “The generator isn’t far from there. I’ll need your help. Can you get me into the room and protect yourself in the process?”

“I’ll try,” he rasped.

Heather addressed Erika, “If James gets injured or tranquilized, can you drag him out?”
 Erika didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

“I’ll give everyone time to evacuate,” Heather said. “I want to wipe this place off the map, but I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Even though Benson deserved it, she thought. She didn’t want to be the kind of person that wished harm on anyone, but she also knew physically destroying Benson’s lab wouldn’t be enough for her. She wanted to destroy him, in the most complete, irreversible way possible. She didn’t wish death on him, she wished worse.

But his facility would have to do for now.

Heather tried the door to the stairwell and found it unlocked, which only further convinced her of the danger that awaited them upstairs. Benson’s lockdown procedure was herding them on a single route to recapture. She exchanged a glance with James, and the dread in his face suggested he had drawn a similar conclusion.

“I don’t suppose there are stairs elsewhere you can burn the lock to?” Erika said apprehensively.

“This is the only exit aside from the elevator,” James said. “At least on this level.”

“Not very up to code, is it?” she flashed a dry smile.

“Well, it was built in secret by a megalomaniac mad scientist,” Heather said.

“Yeah, that tracks…”

They stepped into the stairwell. At the top of the first flight, Heather turned around. James paused, confused. His irises glowed yellow in the dim space, and it hit her all over again that if they survived this, they weren’t returning to the niceties and naiveties of their old lives. Nothing would ever be the same again, and she feared stepping into that life more than she feared death.

“James,” she said. “If something does happen to me, I just want you to know that I forgive you. Please tell my parents that. And tell them that staying behind to blow up this place was my decision alone. Okay?”

James gazed at her, exhausted and scared and sorry. He nodded. “We’ll come back for you as soon as we can.”

She nodded back. As she looked at him, she felt all the emotions she’d ever held toward him at once. They coalesced into a mix of pity and grief, of care and respect. James had dragged her into this, but he was trying so hard to make it right. She wanted him to live.

She offered a wan smile. The world of the nerdy high-schooler bored and frustrated on summer break felt so far away. “Ready?”

James stared at her for a moment, his eyes wide and eyebrows pulled together. He glanced at Erika. “Don’t follow us out right away. I’ve never tried what I’m about to do. It’ll be really dangerous for either of you to be anywhere close to me.”

Erika nodded, nervous.

Heather tried not to think too hard about what she was about to do as well, as she waited for

James to haul his gaunt frame up each step. She extended a hand to help, but he didn’t take it.

He paused halfway up to catch his breath. As they neared the door to the first floor, he stopped and steadied himself, holding his arms out in front of him. He ducked his head and his shoulders pulled forward. The black rapidly charged up to white, but wavered. James’ eyes glowed bright and ghostly as, finally, with a sharp gasp, the white projections burst back into existence and hovered close to his skin. He curled his arms across his middle and resumed his ascent, pain etched across his face.

“Are you okay?” Heather asked.

“Okay enough,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s do this.”

They paused at the door. Heather put her hand on the doorknob, glancing through the window.

She flashed another reassuring smile at her companions, in gratitude, in farewell, before tearing the door open and throwing herself out into the hallway. She sent energy through both arms, shocking a line of the closest Empetrum security guards and sparking a small retreat before she ran the opposite direction toward the generator room. Behind her, James slid out in front of the assembly. The few guards that had moved forward after her halted.

She threw a glance over her shoulder, just as, with a fierce, determined snarl, James erupted in flame. She caught herself on the door to the generator room. The flare spiked alarmingly in her heat sensor and she turned around to get a glimpse of the full force of the Q-13 as a terrible thought occurred to her: that by asking for a shield, she had asked James to kill himself.
The fire crept out from his outstretched arms on either side, growing to block the corridor while their opposition scrambled back from the flames. The edges of the projection blackened and melted the walls, but did not ignite them.

She pressed herself against the door, awestruck.

James looked back. The flames from his face and shoulders snapped and buffeted around him. He looked otherworldly, shrouded in furious light, his eyes burning white and featureless, all his hair incinerated to oblivion in the immense fire that engulfed his head.

James switched his gaze back across the sizable barrier he had constructed, toward their enemies. He shifted a step backward, and the sheet of flame followed.

As he came near, Heather squeezed herself into the corner to give him room, hiding her face from the heat. The intensity of it blinded the sensor in her head, but James kept enough distance that the Q-13 didn’t touch her. He carefully pulled an arm close to him, and, twisting around, he shoved his hand into the door with a short bark of effort. The muscles in his bare arm and shoulders strained as he gripped the bolt and pulled it from the door. Quickly, he reached his hand back through the hole and tugged the barrier free from the mangled doorframe before the melted metal could harden.

“Thanks, James.” Heather avoided the molten parts as she pushed the door open farther and slipped through. James returned his full attention to the barrier in front of them. “Just hold on a minute longer,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”

Upon gaining entry to the generator room, she stuck her hands through the hole James had created and, grasping the other side, jerked the door back with all the strength in her short robotic body. The door squealed past the re-sculpted metal, creating a satisfactory lock.

She turned to face the generator, staring up at its imposing size. Overwhelming it with an intense surge of electricity could be enough to melt it down, but first she had to shut down whatever emergency regulation systems kept it in line.

A small intercom poked from the wall by the door, next to what looked like some kind of control box.

Grimly, she opened the box betraying a host of wires, and pressed the speaker button on the intercom.

+

White fire swirled around James’ face, blurring his vision and roaring in his ears. Keeping up the caustic wall felt like each of the metallic barbs in his cells were caught on fishing lines, slowly retracting. Resisting his own imminent shredding filled his nervous system with the urge to panic, but he knew the moment he let it down, he knew the Empetrum guards would pump him full of tranquilizer. And then Benson would end him, one way or the other.

Experimentally, a guard fired a dart into the flames. It disintegrated instantly.

James watched them deliberate, his eyes wide and face blank, concentrated on breathing, on just continuing to exist. What Heather was about to do was her decision. He would honor her plan and evacuate with Erika, but no matter what happened, he was coming back for her.

He felt himself dissociating, trying to shut out the suffering of the Q-13, at once tinny and grinding, and the terrible weight in his chest. He would deal with the fallout of this later. He was dead set on following through this time.

He would not fail Heather again.

Her voice rang out from the facility’s intercom system above. “Attention, Michael Benson and all other Empetrum personnel.” James had never heard her sound so cold. “My name is Heather Knight. I have locked myself in with your generator, and I’m going to use my powerful energy core to blow it up, annihilating this facility. You have six minutes to evacuate, starting now.”

The host of guards in front of James glanced at each other in dread. James set his jaw, struggling to keep himself steady while a burning sensation rose in his muscles and his body began shaking.

He could hardly breathe.

The door to the main lab slammed open, and Yeun lurched incredulously into the hallway. “She can’t possibly—” His attention found James through the fire, and his eyes widened further. “Siles—”

Benson strode into view behind Yeun, his handheld up to his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”

“Like you can do anything about it!” Heather snarled. “Finally, after suffocating for so long under your deranged control, it’s us who have the upper hand.”

The director cracked a smile, his face pale. “You will destroy yourself.”

James felt his grip on the Q-13 slipping. The adrenaline was wearing off and fatigue setting in, stitching in his trembling muscles and blazing like a swarm of bees in his head.

The director caught James’ gaze. “After everything Siles did to you, you’re seriously willing to die for him? Did you forget he destroyed your organic body and imprisoned you? That he was going to keep you here forever to secure his own safety? As unwilling as he is to accept it, he has sealed his tomb here. You propose to sacrifice yourself in vain.”

“You’re wrong,” Heather said. “He’s ours, and we’re taking him.”

“I’ll let you walk out right now,” Benson replied. “Forget this overblown show of aggression and just go home already. You’re of no more use to me.”

“And James and Erika?”

“They stay.”

“No,” Heather said. “I’m taking them, and I’m taking your lab too. Five minutes, Benson.”

“Director…” Yeun shifted apprehensively.

Benson held the communication device up to his mouth again, indecisive. The guards edged further back from James’ threatening display.

“Siles’ strength is going to run out soon,” Benson said finally. “What then?”

Heather didn’t reply. James waited.

The alarms activated.

“I don’t think she’s bluffing.” Yeun stepped back. He opened the door to the main lab and disappeared inside.

Benson’s composure yielded to a glare. In the red light of the blaring sirens, he spoke into his handheld, and his voice echoed from the overhead speakers, “Attention all Empetrum personnel. The generator has been compromised. Launch evacuation procedures and exit the premises immediately.”

The guards responded instantly, eager to abandon the entire situation. One of them ran over to the fire alarm. Punching in a code on the keypad next to it, he lifted the cover blocking access and pulled the lever down.

All at once, every door James could see opened, and a different type of alarm superimposed the first.

The spluttering Q-13 pulled from James’ grip and extinguished. He staggered and doubled over, choking in draughts of air, fighting to stay standing as cold fire and waves of torment cascaded through him. His knees buckled and his face pitched toward the floor.

An arm caught him across the chest.

The director kept his distance, staring for a moment at the person over James’ shoulder, then back to him.

“An eye for an eye,” Benson said icily before striding toward the exit. “How appropriate.”

More hands took James’ upper arms, helping him up. “Let’s go,” Erika said, throwing one of his stained, smoking arms over her shoulders.

James stumbled beside her. Erika readjusted her grip on him, her attention trained on the exit.

“Siles!” a voice behind them called. “Hodgson!”

Erika whipped around in surprise. James gasped at the sudden rough movement.

Yeun caught up to them and held out a set of keys.

“My car’s parked out front,” he said solemnly. “Go home.”

Confused, Erika accepted the offering.

“I’m sorry,” Yeun added, moving toward the exit. “I’m really sorry.”

Erika stood still, agape as she watched him leave.

“After everything he…” Erika glared at the keys. “That fucking—!” She drew herself up indignantly before hauling James toward the door. “Fine. Fine!”

James glanced back at the hallway. The angle of the wall obscured the gnarled entrance to the generator room. They passed through the first door to the outside, then the second, but James couldn’t tear his gaze away. The alarms pounded and screamed through his aching head.

Then he was outside, and the sirens grew distant and muffled and the breeze bit like menthol on his skin. Erika pressed the lock button on the keys and followed the beeping to a small red sedan. She unlocked the doors.

James felt his body hanging more and more on Erika. His head lolled forward, his eyes closed.

“Stay with me,” she said, shaking him. He uttered a soft gasp, waking up a little. She helped him over to the passenger side and tugged the door open. He just barely managed to lower himself into the seat.

“Well this will be interesting,” Erika muttered, rounding to the driver’s side. She reached in and angled the seat all the way back, maneuvering her additional arms into the space.

James’ head drooped to the side. The car window was cold against his bare scalp.

When Erika had found a suitable arrangement, she shut the door. She winced as she readjusted herself and started the car. One of her extra hands took hold of the back of the passenger seat. “If this was some kind of trick…”

James’ eyes closed again. He couldn’t take the pain anymore.

“Don’t fall asleep, James,” Erika said. “You awake?”

+

Heather watched her internal clock as it counted down, waiting for everyone to get a safe distance, listening for the possibility of Erika or James coming to the door and telling her urgently to call it off, that something had happened. They never did. She gave them thirty more seconds than threatened, and hoped it was enough.

She readjusted her hands on the generator’s surface, choosing to keep her heat sensor activated. She could pretend she could actually feel the heat through her hands. Like old times.

She sought the energy in her chest and channeled more of it than she had ever pulled before. It flowed easily from its container, up her arms, and through her hands into the generator. It shocked her and warmed her. She kept pushing it out, harder and harder.

The alarms increased overhead. The generator’s internal heat fluctuated and grew.

Heather allowed herself a wan smile as she stared at the metal surface between her hands.

She pulled up a memory. Greg was teasing James. He had just mussed James’ hair, and James looked cross as he ran his hands back through it. But he smiled as he made a sarcastic reply. The two were always riling each other up and pretending to be serious. Chelo made a comment, which flustered Greg. It was easy for her to fluster him. They had a crush on each other, Addie had told Heather, but refused to confess. Her dad was laughing with Eve. Smiling as well, Heather glanced into the sleek chrome surface of the lab bench at Larkspur.

Springy, dark hair. Brown eyes. Pudgy features and soft contours. Privately, she’d been insecure and judgmental toward her organic body. She had felt like her physical form was a combination of the features her parents didn’t like about themselves, though they would never have admitted it.

As awful as she had felt about her awkward, adolescent body at times, she liked it. She missed it.

She thought of her father’s reserved smile. Her mother’s laugh. She remembered what it was like to hug her parents. To throw her arms around them and know she was home.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as if somehow they could hear her, wherever they were at that moment. “I love you.”

Her energy core cracked. A diagonal beam of heat sliced up through her shoulder, cutting close to her head. She held steady. Her mechanical pupils readjusted to the light. Her electromagnetic field invaded her core, enveloping the exposed surfaces and filling her chest with a confused, crackling sensation.

Her vision blurred and flickered as sudden exhaustion inundated her. The sirens screamed and wailed, but she didn’t tune them out. Instead, she turned up her auditory volume, letting the vibrations pound through her, fill her with life.

She narrowed her eyes and pushed harder.

Her energy core broke apart, and its contents surged wildly out the channel she had created, overwhelming and exploding one of her arms just as the surface of the generator fractured.
Her eyes closed with the detonation.

+

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE—CONXENCE   

They met in a parking garage in the southern sector of the capital, one with four levels and a single camera at the entrance of dubious functionality.

The gray hatchback they were told to look for was already on the third level when they arrived, the only other vehicle there at that hour, with two men waiting outside. One of them, middle-aged with ash blonde hair and a roman nose, was smoking. The other wore a black surgical-style mask over the lower half of his face.

“Is that them?” Su said as Richard parked a few spaces down.

“The car fits the description,” Richard said, trying not to stare at them too directly. He felt like they were walking straight into a trap, into a world that would eat them alive.

“Wait here, Sesame,” he said, undoing his seatbelt.

“What?” Sesame whined. “I want to talk to them too.”

“Sentient robots aren’t really—a thing people know exist right now,” Richard said. “I’d like to make this as safe and streamlined as possible.”

“You’ll be talking about Heather,” Sesame protested. “It’s gonna come out anyway.”
Richard glanced in the rearview mirror and realized Sesame was waving to the two men. They exchanged a glance, surprised. The younger of the two, a twenty-something with black hair, multiple ear piercings, and the face covering lifted an uncertain hand in return. The older one put out his cigarette under his boot.

“See, they’ve seen me,” Sesame said. “It’s okay.”

Richard stifled an extremely heavy sigh and undid the child lock. “That wasn’t my point, but fine.”

Sesame was already on his way out of the backseat.

Richard took a steadying breath and got out of the car. The rebels waited until they were close.

The young one spoke first, “Are you Su-Wei?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Call me Su.”

The man’s monolid eyes scrunched in a calm smile and he extended a hand. His voice was warm and deep, “I’m Ganymede. We spoke on the phone.”

That could easily be an outright lie, Richard thought, recalling the cloaked voice. It made sense they’d want to protect their true identities, but it only increased his anxiety about trusting these people.

Su accepted the handshake. “This is my spouse, Richard, and this is Sesame.”

Sesame shook Ganymede’s hand, eager to participate. The rebel didn’t outwardly question it.

The older one also shook hands, considerably more serious. “Noran Kaczmarek. Friends call me Rann.”

Richard nodded, trying to suppress an urge to look at Su. She’d read him as much as she could dig up about the Conxence during the drive to the capital. Kaczmarek was the bold-faced leader of the entire operation.

“Thank you for meeting with us so urgently,” Su said.

“Of course,” Kaczmarek said. “So, run us through the situation in a little more detail. What are we up against?”

Su reviewed the background information through what had happened that night, leaving out the parts about organorobotic transference as before but including James’ infusion. Sesame was right, it was going to come up, but neither of them were ready to tell complete strangers about the complicated subject of their daughter’s trauma. As they spoke, Richard sent a text to the number of the device they’d been using to communicate with Heather: Meeting with the Conxence right now. We’ll keep you posted.

“They attempted to escape tonight, but failed,” Su was saying. Her throat tightened and she paused. Richard put a hand on her arm. “They were recaptured. Something was done to James, we think injected with Q-13. He, uh, burst into flames. Heather was connected with us at the time, so Sesame relayed the video footage to us, when you called me earlier.”

The Conxence members exchanged a glance.

“And you’re still not sure if Siles is dead?” Ganymede asked, surprised.

Su shrugged, and Richard offered, “Benson seemed surprised by the result, so we’re hoping maybe he made it through.”

“Do you have a photo of him and your daughter?” Kaczmarek asked.

Su pulled out her phone and searched through the photos, finally handing it over. On the screen was a snapshot they had taken at the beach, just a few days before Heather was kidnapped. She had roped Su and Richard into a selfie, despite Su’s protestations. Heather had made it her mission that weekend to get a good picture of her parents—the camera shy, and the un-photogenic—and she had been proud of this one.

The three smiling faces in the photo had no idea what horror awaited them.
With shaking hands, Richard searched through his own photos. He landed on a department photo and zoomed in. “And this is James.”

Kaczmarek and Ganymede leaned in, and Richard realized they both had a common disfigurement in the cartilage of their right ears, like a large hole had been clamped out of it. Ganymede wore a silver ring in his so that it accented his other earrings, while Kaczmarek had left his to scar.

“Young,” Kaczmarek commented. “He looks barely out of high school, yet he was one of your full time engineers?” He glanced at Richard. “Prodigy type?”

“He didn’t like the term,” Richard said quietly. “Or—doesn’t. I shouldn’t talk about him in the past tense.” Even though it was difficult not to. People didn’t burst into flames and survive.

“Did you approve of your daughter’s friendship with him?”

Richard hesitated. “Yeah, I guess. James was shy, and consumed with work, but I believed he was a good person. After the move, Heather didn’t have any local friends, and they were closest in age. She pestered him a bit, but I think she looked up to him, and she was interested in his work, which meant a lot to him.” He could feel Su’s gaze on him. She, too, had known James and Heather were friends at work, but didn’t think he was nearly as dangerous as he had proved to be. “And she brought him out of his shell, so he seemed to appreciate her company too.”

Kaczmarek nodded, thinking. “Supposing our rescue is successful, what will you do with him, as the one that dragged your family into all this?”

Su crossed her arms.

“We honestly haven’t thought that far ahead,” Richard admitted. “He says he didn’t mean for all this to happen.”

“Hm,” Kaczmarek grunted.

A long pause set in. Itching to shift the subject, Richard spoke up. “If I may ask,” he said, indicating his right ear. “What are those marks? Some kind of group signifier?”

The leader of the Conxence and his associate paused. Kaczmarek cracked a wry smile.

“Oh this?” he said, tugging on his ear and turning his head so they could see it better. “Gift from the feds, bestowed upon anyone arrested for ‘political deviance.’ Tags you as a threat.”

Richard hesitated. He looked at Ganymede, who nodded. The latter came as a surprise.

Kaczmarek exuded the calculating confidence of a seasoned rabble rouser, but Ganymede’s soft voice and kindness of expression didn’t quite fit the bill of what Richard had always imagined when hearing about the rebel group.

“Still up for associating with us?” Kaczmarek asked.

“Yes,” Su said, and Richard nodded, readjusting his glasses.

“Good. So, a high profile extraction. I’m sure Ganymede here has already warned you that we’ve never done a job quite like this, and that preparing for it won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, is your daughter reasonably safe, at least?”

“We don’t know,” Su said.

“I see. And we’re not giving up the possibility Siles survived whatever Empetrum’s director did to him?”

Richard nodded along with his partner, trying to swallow the tightness in his throat. “Also, there’s another prisoner James and Heather wanted to break out. So the extraction would need to be for three people, if we can manage it.”

Ganymede blinked and Kaczmarek’s lean face broke out into an impressed grin.

“Well, we got our work cut out for us, then,” Kaczmarek said. He looked at Su. “In planning tonight’s escape attempt, I don’t suppose you picked up any of Empetrum’s security protocols that can help speed this along?”

“Not that specific,” Su said. “But Heather might, if she’s in a position to check in.”

Su handed over a folder from her bag containing a stack of printed pages, which held the contents of the flash drive Alice Benson had given them. “The defector we spoke with gave us this. They told us as much as they could, but they haven’t been near Empetrum in three years.”

Ganymede flipped through the pages while Kaczmarek read over his shoulder, arms crossed. Richard held his breath as the speakers for the Conxence read up on the nightmare lab he and his family had been pitted against.

“Human weaponry…” Kaczmarek mused. “Have you come across anything mentioning the ICNS?”

“No,” Richard said. “Though James said they were steering him into something other than the project he came in with. Could that be related?”

“Possibly.” Kaczmarek said. “Hope he really did make it. I’d like to talk with him and see what he knows. The government’s released what I guess you could call ‘human weapons’ just recently, and we’re still trying to figure out how to deal with them.”

“How recently?” Richard asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“About a week,” Ganymede said.

“But they’re not—” He glanced at Sesame, who knew where this was going. “—robotic, in any way, are they?”

The rebels looked at each other.

“No, they’re organic, as far as we can tell,” Ganymede said. “Why?”

Richard and Su hesitated. Sesame shifted from foot to foot, and Richard thought if he or Su didn’t speak up, the ex-mouse would.

Richard took a breath. Then he told them about organorobotic transference. About Sesame’s journey, about Heather.

The two stared at him. Even Kaczmarek looked nonplussed, and he seemed to Richard someone who didn’t truly surprise easily.

“I’ll admit, most of what I’ve heard about the Conxence is from the news,” Richard went on, before that information could sit for too long. Heather’s transfer was done. Reversal was impossible, and what mattered that night was bringing her home. “They say you’re a gang of anarchists and vigilantes…”

“And what do you think?” Kaczmarek said, eying him, as if sizing him up, looking into his soul and assessing what he saw there. Something about this man seemed dangerous, but Richard wanted more than anything to trust him. The leader of the rebellion, perhaps the only person left with the resources to organize a successful rescue mission, who also, miraculously, both believed them and seemed willing to help.

“Unless she manages to escape on her own,” Richard said. “I think you may be our best shot of getting our daughter home.”

+

CHAPTER FIFTY—CHANGED

After the initial meeting with the Conxence, Kaczmarek and Ganymede took the Knights and their robotic charge to an unmarked brick building in a decrepit district of the capital. The area appeared to have once hosted business parks, but for reasons unknown to the Knights, had since been abandoned.

Ganymede drove the Knight’s car. He turned the headlights off, driving slowly past dark, condemned houses with overgrown yards, and long stretches of homeless encampments on the fringes of dead and mouldering office blocks. Richard had heard once that this was a signal used by local gangs, which only increased his apprehension.

The outside of their destination wasn’t any more reassuring, and Richard held his breath as they followed Ganymede and Kaczmarek through a back door and up a narrow stairwell, landing on an old linoleum hallway that seemed sturdy, at least. They went to a large meeting room to start setting up for planning, but Richard and Su were starting to feel the strain of everything that had happened that night. Ganymede suggested they rest and pick things up the next morning.

“You’re probably right,” Su said. “What’s done is done. There’s nothing we can do for them tonight, and we’re not going to be much help with stripped nerves.”

Ganymede directed them to a different room, in which they found a couple couches around a central coffee table, and a mini fridge in the corner. Sesame plugged himself into an outlet, and Richard and Su made up a bed on a pullout couch with clean sheets and pillows from a nearby closet. Ganymede had said they were clean, anyway. They just had to take his word for it.

Richard lay still in the dark, listening to the soft rumble of voices across the hallway as the rebels regrouped, and prepared to sign off for the night as well. Footsteps filtered past their door, and the foreboding din of sirens wailed in the distance.

Richard closed his eyes, breathing a shaky sigh. Su lay her head against his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Sesame said quietly from where he sat hooked up to the electrical outlet. “I’ll stay awake and keep watch.”

“Thank you, Sesame,” Su said quietly.

“Do you trust them?” Richard didn’t know why he was asking. Hoping Sesame had retained some animal intuition, perhaps.

“I don’t know,” Sesame said. “I want to, though.”

“Me too,” Richard said.

+

James felt the pain before he even knew he was awake.

A heart monitor beeped languidly beside him, the sound oddly muffled. He thought the wires running across his chest had been fused to him, because there was something very wrong with his skin. When he tried to move, he felt it stitching, as if all his tissues were melted together, held intact by tiny metal barbs. His head throbbed, and his eyes felt hot and sticky in their sockets. His mouth tasted like copper.

He managed to crack open one eye, and the air needled cruelly on its dry surface. Slowly, he turned his head and opened the other eye, craning his painful, stitching neck to take stock of himself and expecting to see a charred mass. He vaguely remembered being on fire.

There were electrodes taped to his bare chest, the latter miraculously whole. Jagged patterns of dark unnatural black engulfed his ribcage, like ink spilled under the skin. Dimly, wincing, he bent his arms upward to find them swirled and zigzagged with the same dark hue. His hands completely drowned in it. Anything not claimed by the stain was red and swollen and peeling like a bad sunburn.

He realized then, that he wasn’t strapped down. Instead, he was enclosed in a cylindrical chamber with a transparent, domed lid. Some kind of pressurized oxygen chamber, he guessed.

He stared up through it at the paneled ceiling in dumb, emotional shock. As he slowly grew more lucid, he could only despair about what he and Heather were supposed to do now.

How had he even survived the infusion? No one survived the Q-13, Yeun had said. Not even Benson had expected him to make it.

He lifted a trembling hand to his jugular to feel his heartbeat for himself. He really was alive. But now would come the tests and humiliation, the poking and prodding and eventual dissection.

He closed his aching eyes. Being a test subject meant his only interactions with Heather would be when Benson used them against each other. The time for mind games had passed. The director would likely give him black and white options from here on out: Comply or die.

He couldn’t believe that after everything, Heather had refused to leave him behind. The whole purpose of their escape attempt was to get her home. She didn’t owe him anything.

Why couldn’t she have just left him behind?

He thought he heard a sound, greatly impeded by the transparent acrylic chamber. He opened his eyes to see Benson had entered the room with a couple of guards. James blinked and returned his gaze to the ceiling, pain rising in his chest.

Benson reached down to a panel on the outside. His voice purred clearly in James’ enclosed bubble, making him feel increasingly claustrophobic. “You even made it through the night. I’m impressed.”

James winced, turning his head just enough so he could see him. He felt like he would disintegrate if he did anything quickly.

Benson slid a computer tablet off a nearby cart, consulted the panel at the base of the oxygen chamber, and made notes. The heart monitor continued to beep.

“Your vitals seem to have stabilized,” Benson muttered, as if mainly speaking to himself, though the speaker was still on. The right side of his face was swollen and bruising under a large bandage. “I look forward to finding out why.”

James swallowed with difficulty. It hurt. It hurt to breathe, to see, to think.

“Where is Heather?” he rasped.

“In her cell.”

“Have you…”

Benson switched off the speaker and stepped away from the chamber, ignoring him. James blearily watched him and the guards wash their hands in the sink across the room and don sterile gloves, coats, and face masks. Then Benson moved to the head of the chamber outside James’ field of vision. He heard clamps pulling back. The panel came free with a hiss of air.

“Don’t move,” Benson warned. He motioned for the guards to come over. They took hold of the edge of the frame holding up James’ thin inclined mattress, unhooked some safeguards, and carefully pulled the whole setup out of the chamber like a gurney. The air outside was freezing cold, like ice water soaking deep into his bones.

“Why was I in there?” James asked, shivering.

“Your skin was too fragile post-infusion to tolerate much contact,” Benson said, as one of the guards tugged straps out from under the mattress.

Benson turned off the heart monitor and carefully took to removing the electrodes from James’ stained chest. The adhesive seemed mild, yet the removal still ripped skin. James gasped as the sensation rippled around the removal point like Benson had carved the electrodes out with serrated spoon instead of simply pulling them.

Benson’s eyes tightened in annoyance. Once it became obvious there was no way to remove the electrodes without damage, he took less care in removing the others. James braced himself, his nerves sizzling in the strain.

The director disconnected the electrodes from the wires and put them in separate specimen bags, while James lay back, short of breath and sweat standing out on his forehead. He closed his eyes and felt tears track down his face, all his strength gone.

He faded in and out of consciousness as he felt the guards slip gauze around his wrists first, then straps. Benson made a physical examination, listening to his breathing, heartbeat, testing the quality of the stained and unstained parts of his skin, swabbing his mouth for DNA, and taking a series of photographs. Finally, deciding James wasn’t an infection risk, he ordered him taken to a cell.

They wheeled him out of the room, which he discovered was on the basement level, and down to the cell blocks. Anxiety bloomed up James’ spine as he realized the cell he’d been assigned to was the one next to Hodgson’s.

With Benson overseeing the operation from a distance, they took him inside the cell and up to the bed, where they lowered the gurney and undid his restraints.
The guards helped him sit up, the touch of their hands stinging and painful on his seared shoulders. He slipped his legs over the side of the bed, and, bracing his arms on theirs, they slowly raised him up.

James set his jaw, struggling to breathe while an unsettling, gauzy crackling overtook his body in the transition—like the metal barbs stapling his cells, crushed together, were now splitting apart as his muscles stretched. They practically dragged him over to the other bed, where there sat a change of clothes and blankets.

“How nice,” James muttered, weak and winded. “Thought a concrete floor was going to be it for me…”

Benson scoffed as he and his assistants took their leave. “Don’t push your luck.”

The door closed behind them, leaving James alone. He sat still for several long moments, then found a sweatshirt in the pile of gray and fluorescent orange fabric and pulled it on. The fibers scratched against his tender skin, but James was so cold. Nothing helped it.

Carefully, agonizingly, he planted his feet apart. After a long while, he very slowly stood up, his attention on the acrylic mirror mounted above the sink. He was extremely dizzy and sick to his stomach, but he managed to shuffle across the room. Now that he’d been awake for more than a few minutes, he had begun to feel desperately thirsty.

He managed to make it to the opposite wall, but he was afraid to look in the mirror. He instead focused on the faucet, insulating his hand with the sleeve of the sweatshirt before pulling the lever. The action sent deep, groaning pain stitching up his hand and arm. He cupped his stiff, fragile hands under the modest water stream and endured several types of pain in his back enough to bend over and bring the water to his lips. It cooled his dry throat like liquid hope. And for just a moment, he felt relief.

He lifted his gaze to the small mirror above the sink, and that relief gave way to blank despair as he saw his reflection. The black stood out starkly against his pale skin. A curling stripe of it claimed the left side of his face, webbed and veiny at the edges as it ran over his cheek, down the side of his throat and under the collar of the sweatshirt. The ebony skin was smooth and cool to the touch, and everything else was swollen and tender, with burst blood vessels that were more black than red.

Patches of his brown hair had been burnt off at odd angles. His left eyebrow and eyelashes had met the same fate, everything above the black stripe burnt clean.

Even more disturbing, he realized his hazel irises had turned gold, reminiscent of the color of the Q-13 before it had entered his veins. As if he had become an incarnation of the substance itself.

The word “metamorphosis” tapped like a long fingernail at the back of his mind.

He took hold of both sides of the sink, his face going cold and a sudden high pitched ringing in his ears. He heard his breath rushing muffled and strained in his head. He tried to sit down on the floor, his joints cracking and protesting as if cushioned with glass.

He lost his bearings and sat down hard, his shoulders hitting the concrete panels of the wall. A shiver of needles radiated from the contact point, then heavy pain like the grinding of cinder blocks between his bones. His body seized up and he collapsed onto his side, a snarl of utter agony pulling from his throat.

After several eternal moments, the sensation began to fade, and James lay panting on the floor, the sound of water running in the sink keeping him dimly tethered to consciousness. Behind its obnoxious spluttering, a voice filtered into his cell from above.

“Hello?” it said. “Anyone alive in there?”

James opened his eyes. The prisoner cells were encased in concrete, but at the top of the walls dividing them spread a narrow span of empty space covered in a mesh of metal.

He realized the voice had to be Hodgson’s. Everything was hazy.

“I think so…” he said, wincing from the exertion.

“What is your name?” Hodgson asked.

Very slowly, he forced himself to sit up. His throat tightened, and tears welled up in his eyes. He exhaled, trying to get ahold of himself.

“I know you must be scared, and unsure of what’s happening to you,” Hodgson said. “But you’re not alone. I’m Erika.”

Benson probably suspected they had been in contact the night of the escape attempt, and had caged them in close proximity with hopes they’d incriminate themselves. Though, how that would benefit him, he wasn’t sure. To punish Yeun, perhaps.

“My name is James,” he said finally, hoping Erika understood the danger.

An extremely long silence answered him.

He carefully drew his knees to his chest. Bowing his forehead on them, he crossed his aching arms over his stomach.

Finally, she said, “Yeun’s lab partner?”

“Not anymore,” James said.

“What happened?”

“I tried to get a prisoner out but we got caught,” James said, hoarsely. “Benson injected me with his pet project.” His voice wavered. “I don’t think I was supposed to survive it. I don’t know if I have yet.”

Another long silence ensued, as she grappled with what both of them knew they could not say where someone could hear them. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” James said. He didn’t know if his survival was a second chance, or just a slower death.

He wanted to hope the former, but it was only a matter of time before Benson wanted to see if his serum worked.

In the silence, he debated asking Erika to take care of Heather after he was gone.

He almost did.

+

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE—PLOTTING

Heather activated the pain simulator intermittently to check in. She received a text from Richard saying they were meeting with the Conxence, and then later, that they had agreed to take up their case. She couldn’t believe the very same rebel militia she had been afraid was after her dad at the beginning of the summer had become their allies. She hoped Benson was as afraid of them as she suspected. 

Since James’ traumatic infusion, the director seemed to be ignoring her for the most part, and she spent her time trying to squirm out of the rubber straightjacket binding her limbs, and wracking her brains on what her next steps were. Benson might have thought he’d already won, but this would never be over until one of them destroyed the other.

A faint sound attracted her attention, filtering through the vents at the top of the prisoner cells. A cry of pain. Heather tipped her face up, her eyes wide. She accessed the memory and replayed the sound several times in her mind, trying to figure out what it was, and it simultaneously broke her heart and made her dizzy with relief to find she recognized the pitch of that howl. James had survived.

Heather climbed up on her cot close to the vent, turning up her hearing as high as she could and listening hard. She heard Hodgson’s voice, “Hello? Anyone alive in there?”

Then James. “I think so…” He sounded weak, frustrated, but coherent.

The conversation was short and basic, and then silence settled in. After listening longer, with no change, Heather adjusted her hearing back to baseline and sat down on the bed, activating the pain simulator to let her family know James was still a factor in further rescue efforts. She clung to that tentative spark of hope and relief, that all three of them would see freedom if they could just hold on. 

+

Planning began the next morning. A young femme-presenting person with large rimmed glasses and a bomber jacket who introduced themself as Jaeger joined them. Richard gleaned that they were Kaczmarek’s intelligence and technology specialist, and together, they began organizing all the information they had about Empetrum’s layout and operations.

At one point, Sesame managed to make contact with Heather and spent the next hour downloading over their spotty cellular connection her visual memories of the escape attempt, from which Jaeger built out a map of the facility—where the prisoner cells were, and what it took to get to them. During this process, Heather mentioned the name of the other prisoner, which all the Conxence members present were shocked to recognize.

“I told her not to go anywhere near that place!” Kaczmarek declared. “Of all the stubborn, reckless—” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Ganymede crossed his arms on the table, troubled. At the Knights’ quizzical stares, he explained, “There was a death in her family, and she told us she was going to stay with them and needed to take a break from the movement, so I never thought to check. Her family must be worried sick. Do we have their contact info?”

“Heather does,” Sesame said. Heather was still connected, participating in the planning as much as she could stand, though she had to take breaks from the pain simulator. “Erika gave it to her.”

Sesame relayed the phone number, and Ganymede excused himself to make the call.

It was all so hard for Richard and Su to swallow. Heather tried to omit parts and pull punches in her own narrative, and Richard suspected Sesame further cleaned it up before passing it along, possibly even at her request. Richard wished she would be more open with them, so they could attempt to comfort her across the distance.

But Heather wasn’t looking for comfort in that moment. There would be time to grieve when she was safe at home, with James and Erika in tow.

Finally, after looking over the data, Kaczmarek sat back with crossed arms. “We’ll have to stake out the location from a distance before we even think about getting close. Then, a small infiltration to gain access to their systems—bootleg access badges, futz with cameras et cetera. After that, the extraction of three prisoners will likely get chaotic on the way out. I think I know how to get my hands on some equipment to help with that.”

Richard balked. “Equipment? You don’t mean…”

“Tranqs, gas, stun grenades,” Kaczmarek said without skipping a beat, watching how each of the list items landed. “We already have a good supply of smoke bombs.” He cast a grin at Jaeger. “We make ‘em in house.”

“We never use lethal force,” Ganymede gently assured the Knights.

“Just deeply unpleasant force,” Jaeger smirked. Then it was back to business. “What kind of device is Heather using to communicate? Maybe she can meet us in the middle for phase two.”

“She doesn’t know the mechanics of it,” Su said. “We’d have to ask James for that, but I doubt we can get ahold of him at this point, if he’s even conscious.”

“We’ll make do,” Kaczmarek said.

“I don’t mean to sound rude by asking this,” Richard spoke up, “But, why are you helping us? Empetrum is dangerous, and involved, and I’m sure is taking you away from other work. How are you benefitting from this?”

Ganymede glanced at the leader of the Conxence, who looked at Richard, his dark eyes steady and calculating. Kaczmarek leaned forward, lacing his fingers together on the table.

“In plenty of ways,” Kaczmarek said, choosing his words carefully. “On an immediate level, I’ll be damned if I let a government lab take children and get away with it. More transactionally, we’ll be retrieving one of our own, and moving on Empetrum will likely give us more information on the sudden rabbit hole of sentient bioweaponry we’ve fallen into.” He smiled. “So you could say I’m looking to karma for this one.”

Richard nodded and exchanged a glance with Su. Sesame sat next to her, watching Kaczmarek especially closely.

The door opened behind them, and a voice spoke up, “I’m here! Finally. How far did we get?”

Richard, Su, and Sesame twisted around to look at the young woman who had just entered.

Striding across the room like a champion returned to her king, she was the image of everything Richard had stereotyped the Conxence to be—cocky, athletic, and crackling with aberrant energy in a skull jacket and skinny jeans. In the gap between a black face mask and baseball cap bloomed a large dark bruise on her eye socket. She looked proud of it.

Ganymede’s expression clouded for a moment, his attention on her black eye. Then he smiled, gesturing her way, “This is Io, one of our main squad leaders. She’s agreed to work on this mission too.”

“Hey,” Io said, shaking Richard and Su’s hands with a firm grip. When Sesame extended a hand, she grinned and shook it too.

“Sorry I’m late. Day job woes,” Io said, dropping into the empty seat beside Ganymede. “So, bring me up to speed, how close are we to marching orders?”

+

Erika had a physical therapy session with Yeun that afternoon, and from the moment he appeared in her cell subdued and exhausted rather than his sunny, chatty self, she mulled over how wise it would be to ask him about James.

She burned with curiosity. Benson’s biggest threat to her had been to take her memories and sell her off to the military’s existing Compatible squadron. Siles’ actions, however, had earned him swift and explosive attempted homicide, and Erika wondered how anyone could have riled up the cold, invulnerable director so much. Empetrum was enough of a cult that she would have thought it standard protocol, except for how much it had disturbed Yeun.

“I heard your lab partner was a turncoat,” she said finally, once they were a few minutes into the session.

Yeun winced, handing a weighted ball to her right accessory arm. She sympathized with James and the robot, but it was also morbidly satisfying to watch how much drama their uprising had created among the other scientists.

Yeun didn’t answer.

“Benson did something to him and dumped him in the cell next to mine.” Erika said. “That’s weird, isn’t it? He was supposed to help you fix my modulators, and after a single misdemeanor, he’s even worse off than me? What kind of dumpster fire are you guys running here?”

“It wasn’t a single misdemeanor,” Yeun said, his voice a tired, worried monotone, as if trying to justify it to himself. “But that’s the director’s business.”

Silence sat between them as Erika worked. Her arms were finally starting to feel remotely useful. 

Yeun stood by, brooding. She hadn’t known it was possible for cheery sunflower Elias Yeun to brood. 

“Have you spoken with him at all?” Yeun asked finally.

“A little.” If she denied it, they’d find out she was lying anyway. They hadn’t said anything incriminating, and the resources James and the robot had given her were still safely stashed under the sink.

“What did he say to you?”

“Not much. He said he was sorry.”

“I bet he did,” Yeun muttered. As she finished a set and switched to a new exercise, she considered the dark rings under his eyes. 

Even though the escape attempt had failed, James had changed something. Broken something. 

“It seems like what happened actually affected you,” Erika said.

“Well yeah,” Yeun rubbed the back of his neck. “He was going to be my lab partner. He was a brilliant engineer and a decent person. I liked him.”

“You’re talking like he’s already dead.”

“He crossed the director,” Yeun said, not looking at her. “He might as well be.”

+