Chapter Text
I consider stopping by a few hotspots that Luke and Kieran have identified. Usually, a bit of strategic bloodshed puts me in a good mood. But tonight it all just seems… boring. Nothing will compare to the thrill of facing down that Arbiterwings with her.
So I angle instead towards the Odd Workshop and park my bike out front again, pushing inside.
Philip is less surprised to see me this time, but I watch his eyes search the door behind me, noting that she isn’t there.
“So she absorbed the Aether Core?” he says quietly, ever wary of listening ears.
I give a tight nod, plucking a gear from the bench to be my fidget this time.
He breathes a sigh somewhere between relief and awe. “I can take some more readings next time you bring her by.”
“What did she say when you talked to her?”
A wry smile pulls at her lips. “She called you ‘heartless’.”
“And what did you tell her? About me?” I keep my eyes on the gear.
Philip gives a nervous chuckle. “Eh… nothing much. Just that… the N109 zone is a cruel place.”
“And?”
“And… strong allies are important.”
“Hm.” I roll the gear along my knuckles, knowing Philip is leaving information out, but this isn’t an interrogation.
“She… she learned about Josephine. Asked me if I’d worked with her. That might have… put her at ease.”
I grip the gear in my palm. “Her so-called ‘family’?”
“Yeah. And… I did a little more digging into the Bloomshore district explosion after she confirmed that Josephine had been a target. Josephine raised her as her own. Her and Donor-oh-oh-two. Or, well, ‘Caleb’. They really are—uh… were the closest thing to family that she had. It was only six months ago.”
“If you have something to say, just say it.”
Philip sighs. “Just maybe… cut her some slack. It’s a lot for anyone to deal with.”
She can handle it. I change the subject. “It’s clearly in Ever’s best interest to get rid of Josephine. But the boy… What do you think?” I already have my theories, but I’m curious to see if Philip’s align with them.
He shakes his head. “They’d never throw away an investment like that. I was going back through the coroner’s report. Said the bodies were identified by dental records, but there are… irregularities in the paperwork.”
“Keep an eye on your intel channels. I want to know the second anyone so much as thinks about the Unicorn program.”
“Already on it. And I take it the resonance was successful?”
Philip is smart enough to not add since you didn’t drag her back here again, but I can hear it in his tone.
“It was,” I say quietly, remembering for a moment that warm, familiar power in my hand.
“Well, that’s a relief. What kind of history do you two have? I might be able to figure out—”
I look at him, my gaze dark.
Philip wisely stops talking. “Sorry. The aimless curiosity of a scientist. Old habits die hard. But if the linkage is accepting you now, that’s a good sign.”
I let out a wry chuckle. “It was a little too accepting. An energy tether formed between our wrists after the resonance, lasted a half hour or so.”
Philip’s eyes light up. “Interesting… what else?”
“The energy was red and gold.”
“Hm, so it’s some sort of attraction between your respective powers…”
“I couldn’t control it. It went away when her energy dissipated.”
“Given how her Evol behaved before, it’s likely also influenced by her brain’s magnetic field… that is, her emotions and subconscious thoughts. Perhaps it was a polar alignment issue…”
“Explain.”
“Well, any two magnets will either attract each other or repel each other depending on their orientation. If her magnetic field was repelling you, but then the polarity flipped on one side or the other, the force would be attractive instead. Not the type of thing we see with Evols typically, but… there’s nothing typical about her power.”
“Hm. Does that mean there’s a way to control it?”
“Huh… it’d all be pure speculation without running some targeted experiments first.”
“Speculate.”
“Well, the more aware she is of her emotions, the more conscious control she’d have. Her lack of control suggests repressed emotions… potentially repressed memories. That was something we were never quite sure of with her—whether the loss of her memories after each ‘death’ was due to them being erased entirely, or simply becoming inaccessible.”
“…How can those memories be made accessible again?”
Philip searches my face, gathering that there’s more to my question than scientific curiosity. “There’s two key possibilities. One is the generation of new neural networks with each resurrection—we see a similar phenomenon in cases of dissociative identity disorder where parts’ memories are isolated from each other. In this case, the memories would exist in her neurology, but not be accessible to the currently conscious neural network. Switching networks is what gives access to those memories, and it can’t be forced, though there are also triggers. The second possibility is… more theoretical. Probably not of interest to you.”
“I’ll be the one to decide that.”
Philip sighs. “Alright. I mean, it’s the sort of thing that would be scientifically laughable before the emergence of the Deepspace Tunnel. But with advances in understanding consciousness energy… it’s possible that memories have an independent existence in the fabric of the universe. If the memories aren’t in her neurology, she may still be able to access them by essentially reaching across time and recovering them from a spacetime point where they exist, using the continuity of her soul as a tether. But like I said it’s… purely theoretical.”
“Hm.” Philip may be closer to the truth than he realizes. I stand and toss the gear onto the desk.
“You don’t usually tolerate my ramblings… anything else you want to talk about?”
“No,” I say flatly, and Philip accepts the answer with a deferential nod as he returns to his work.
***
I head back to the base, ducking into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee from the waiting pot—despite the hiatus, Yijun hasn’t forgotten my routines.
The elevator carries me to the top floor, and I bark a voice command that pulls all the motorized curtains aside. Beyond floor-to-ceiling glass, my territory unfurls beneath me. Pillars of smoke rise from smoldering remains, grand beacons that remind all the residents of the N109 Zone who really calls the shots.
Luke and Kieran identified a few of Sherman’s men who weren’t entirely useless. They’re currently undergoing a few… loyalty tests. The twins have become quite apt at such things.
All is going according to plan.
My fingertips tap restlessly against my coffee mug.
Only one challenge holds any interest right now, and she’s at three-ninety-one Garden South Street.
With Mephisto and the twins gone, the base is vacant. Quiet. Too quiet. I’d even be tempted to seek out Yijun, if I hadn’t already given him the order to lay low outside the zone until the dust settles.
My feet carry me to the stairs and I descend the layers of my lair, thoughts wandering, until I find myself standing next to the grand piano.
A distant melody echoes in my memory as I look at those black and white keys. I set my mug down with a sharp snap that scatters the fragmented notes, then I put my fingers to the keys and fill the room with a different melody.
Intense and complex, this one’s a new project that I can’t quite play properly. I cycle through a few repetitions, incrementally improving, until the melody no longer holds my attention. Then I move on to another, more familiar, but still challenging.
I soon lose myself in the music, one melody flowing into another, time melting slowly away like the wax of a candle.
And then it’s her requiem that fills the air. My fingers slow but don’t stop, each chord hanging in the air and gradually fading, lacking an organ’s voice to sustain them. They’re fragments of what they should be.
Fragments that sting and cut—memories faded with time honed again to a sharper edge.
They pour out like blood onto a stone sanctuary floor.
And then once again, the melody just… ends.
The penultimate notes, never to be followed by their proper finale. Never to reach closure.
The vibrations of the piano’s strings slowly fade to silence. I release the foot pedal, and there’s a soft hiss of felt on metal as the dampers slide back into place.
My elbows land on the wood behind the keys, my forehead against my palms.
Eyes slide shut and warm, clear droplets fall on ivory. A shaking breath brings no relief.
I had thought nothing could ache more than the decades of searching for her.
I was wrong.