Chapter 37: Meticulance

7:47 AM

1st July

Ripley

Early morning wake ups had always been my bane. The last few days had been especially difficult, but to say they were rewarding was an understatement. So far, nothing had been difficult. I hadn’t even seen a single patient since according to Anderson I had to first reach a certain meticulance.

“You’re a brute force hammer.” Harold Anderson had said as he ironically enough was hammering steel into shape. “Clear as a Founder’s nutsack you’ve got some sort of learning protocol in your Technician Feature. Just supplementing all the basic knowledge you should have learned with Implant-derived muscle memory and instinct.”

I’d remembered clearly what I’d said that day. “So what? You want me to read through a bunch of textbooks?”

And I wished I never said that. I was eating my words using my eyes, on pages of boring text dictating brainwave frequencies and their interpretations. Any questions I had for Anderson, he said, would be answered once I covered the first two years of Shardware Operating school curriculum.

And I was set to learn six years of schooling… in six months. Though he’d sweetened the deal by saying every month I would have a chance at negotiations assuming I’d pass his ‘tests’.

So for now, in my break, I set my tired eyes on the beautifully disgusting art of the First Year’s curriculum of Neuroscience. If I had to read the word Basal Ganglia or Cerebrospinal Tract one more time I was going to- oh look, it came up now!

Studying had… never been my strong suit if you’d believe it. Not when I had to do it out of a lack of choice. As good as I was at math, it wasn’t because I enjoyed it, it was because it was a necessity in understanding how to properly work out Shardware specs.

Though, that wasn’t to say I wasn’t grateful. Becoming a licensed and trained Shardware Operator through the university pathway was expensive. The best schools costing millions to attend, but dishing out curated Silver Implants to those who spent the cash. Or had received a scholarship.

Which I’m pretty sure I’m more than worthy to get right now.

“Fuck me…” I groaned, Missy chuckling next to me.

“You’re going to regret it once he pushes you to actually operate. The people here are… exacting.” She stretched next to me, her organic bits drenched in sweat that strangely enough had a perfumish odor.

“You one of them?” I blurted out of my lips, I hadn’t exactly been surprised to see Missy in the top five of almost every ranking this gym had of its clients.

She just smiled, patting me on the back and letting me get back to work. Then as Anderson knocked loudly on the door to the tiny cubicle he’d lent me, it was time to actually get to work.

Anderson was a man of few words, efficient with them if I had to phrase it. He didn’t answer a lot of questions, not unless they were complex enough to actually merit the use of an ounce of his brainpower.

As we trailed down the long hallways, I prepared myself for silence once I opened my mouth. “So here’s what I don’t get. When we finish Converging, BUG Adapters start to use variations in an electron’s properties to think over chemical neurotransmitters. How come we’re not fried by thinking at the speed of light? I mean, I look it up and everything’s behind a couple thousand Shardyne, so I know there’s an answer.”

“Second year.” Was his simple response, of course, behind a textbook costing probably double the amount listed on the net sites. Surprisingly, he continued after a moment of deliberation. “But it’s important for your Development. You don’t have all of your thoughts transmitted with electrons, just a miniscule fraction. But at that rate, it easily outpaces your chemical system by several thousand times.”

“An exact percentage we’re looking at?” I egged on.

“Less than a fraction of one-percent at Tier One, Two and Three. Even the Founder’s don’t have a full electron-based nervous system — or so goes the simulations.” He pushed open a door, I still didn’t get the cataloging system in place here.

He pointed out serial codes, around twenty long strings that my brain typed out onto the datapad as quick as he said them. Twenty artifacts of metal and code I would be set to tinker with for the rest of the day. It was relatively simple stuff; joints or bones, maybe an artificial synovial capsule here or there, but somehow this gym turned simplicity into hours of meticulous work.

I was working in fractions of decimals of changes, a far cry from the rough and shoddy work that had been expected from me at The Toxin Club. There it was more raw: they saw a gun, they wanted it in their arm. No care about barrel indentation or heat flow or the fluid viscosity of their joint lubrication.

Obviously, I’d taken that into account back at the club as well, but never to the degree expected of me here. The gym goers were all about maximizing their efficiency, and they held a stupid stubbornness about the changes they wanted here.

I drained out fluid with a pipette, taking half a milliliter more than I should have. So I tried to stick it back in, pushing two milliliters now. Then I repeated it, till an air bubble got inside the capsule by accident.

“From the start.” Anderson wasn’t even looking at me?! I swore he had eyes on the back of his head.

“If I use the Arachne…” I started, “this could be done in a second.”

“No use of automated measurements.” His response ended firmly, and I feared losing this job a whole lot more than my old one so I gave in. I knew why he was doing this, shortcuts were always an option, they were there for everyone.

Hell, I had a shortcut in the form of my Implant.

But that didn’t mean success. A fact I was aware of from the moment I’d lost my left arm. Taking a longer, harder approach wasn’t a surefire way of learning or getting results, but it had a certain factor of building character. A preciseness to carry out things on your own accord. A… meticulance to see the work done by your hand from start to finish.

By the day’s end, I was exhausted. Even if I’d managed to get to Tier One and have electrons think for me, I was playing on a field I’d never realized existed.

7:42 PM

July 3rd

Today was my second go around with the Arachne after my own operation. Technically I was never given permission, Anderson told me to just go ahead and use whatever machinery I needed to get the results made, his way of letting me get some slack, I figured.

And it made sense, I was operating on a liver with a similar modification I’d done to my own. Instead of Warp Generator, I was installing an internal AdStim pumper; apparently the two in the Metal Heaven woman’s organic kidneys weren’t good enough to get her the rush she wanted.

The Liver itself was a different model than my own, specific structures overlapping at times but overall had a different organization. I was glad actually, it tested out my Reverse Engineering Protocol far more than most of these bones were, there were only so many differences in them.

The six arms came to life as my mind peered through their cameras. All six of them, it’d been a miracle to control just two before but now having a grasp over all of them wasn’t too far from an issue. I’d already disassembled the liver with my claws, both of them working better than ever, so all that was left was a nice platter to assemble.

I’d done it quicker than I expected to, all things considering. All the parts had been pretuned, so putting it together was just a matter of hooking up the wires and… I suppose I just expected something to go wrong. Nothing did.

Kind of deflated, I wrestled myself away from toying with the Arachne any longer. I don’t think I’d ever loved something more, I wished there was a way to carry one on me at all times. In fact, I’d read rumors about mobile Arachne’s being in production as compacted briefcases ready to spring open at a moment’s notice… but that had to be an insane amount of engineering involved?

Diagnostic scans ran through everything with an ‘okay’, so I just plopped the liver down on the building’s intra-transport system. That weird shaft-thing Anderson had first used to pull out my liver from nowhere.

With some time on my hands, I rested myself onto the revolving chair of my cubicle. A small room with a simple desk, my laptop and a chair. It wasn’t the brightest place, being some old storage cabinet before, but it was enough for me to curate and work out some issues of mine in privacy.

And speaking of issues…

Message from Diana: [Sorry for not updating you sooner, I found a lead on our case, but I won’t have anything more until after the 13th… Not sure it’s safe to discuss this on comms. How are you otherwise?]

I’d won! I wasn’t the one to message first, truth be told it had been clawing at me for a while that I’d been ghosted, but now I that wasn’t the case.

Message Sent: [Pretty fine. Got a new Shard Op’ gig, pays well and there’s alot for me to learn. Sorry on my end too, got busy with all of this, haven’t found anything on DW, but I’m working on getting me and my mother secure with all this Implant stuff rn. Speaking off, got to Tier One last week. U?]

I thought the words in place and sent them off, the return message coming back in a few minutes.

Diana: [Been a little over a week for me ;)]

I uh… I was a bit peeved about that.

July 4th

Tonight was the night. Hoaqin’s dinner with me and my mom, I’d managed to delay it with quite the lie. That I’d just received a Bronze Implant and was recovering from the procedure. At first, that only made Hoaqin want to come back sooner, but then my mother managed to ward him off by saying I was recovering in a private clinic.

That kept him at bay for a few days, but the guilt had caught up to me. It’d been too long since we just hung out normally, he had been my only other friend other than…- he’d been my only friend for the last five years. I owed him my time and company.

We met up at a bistro we’d frequented, a quiet burger place where you couldn’t taste the artificial enhancers in the insect-based meat. He looked different than I’d imagined, his cheeks hollowed slightly and his eyes had bags under them. The normally tall and powerful man now slumped and appeared slightly more timid, aware of his surroundings to a paranoid degree. At least to my mimicked Analyze Feature.

I raised my hand, and we both brightened as we saw each other. It really had been too long. He took a seat next to me, my mother smiling weakly but genuinely at her son enjoying the company of his friend.

Hoaqin took a moment to realize she was actually there with us. “Woah… Mama Don, I haven’t seen you out in the city in ages. You’re feeling better?”

A gentle smirk escaped my mom. “I know, I know, but Ripley’s been harping about this place for years and I never tried it. So I hope you don’t mind me staying a few minutes, it’s nice to see you too Hoaqin. How’s your family?”

“Mom’s doing fine, was worried out of her mind when I-“ He erred for a moment, before taking his left hand out of his pocket. The Hoaqin I knew would have never shed a hair from his body with how much he claimed it to be perfection, but now staring us in the face was a metallic hand. “It’s just a tryout. First cybernetic and all, they want to see how my body takes it.”

“I get the feeling.” Stretching my own left arm into view, his eyes popping out of his skull at the sight.

“Woah!”

“You’re leaking body fluids from the stump, aren’t ya?” I pointed to a wet patch on my sleeve. “It’s annoying, but don’t worry, it’ll stop in a few days. Give it some time to settle…”

“Yeah, uh-“ He quietly dabbed a napkin over where metal met flesh at his wrist. “How- how’d that happen? How’d the… you know… the thing happen.”

Ah, my Implant.

And so goes the story. One day, while walking back to the apartment, I spotted a woman getting robbed blind of her belongings. Stepping up to the confront the mugger (I played up some of my bravado), I promptly lost and damaged my arm. However, my moving act of heroics got the attention of an unknown mercenary, rescuing me and bringing me to the safety of Harold Anderson.

In recovery, I refused the arm he was originally planning on giving me. Making a bet to say I could do it better, I worked on and reigned supreme, winning me a slot at his Shard Op’ clinic and a free Bronze BUG to boot in exchange for working for him.

Hoaqin blinked at my obnoxious story. “You’re serious?”

My mom lied like she’d been a Haithama-winning actress all her life. “It’s ridiculous, I keep on telling him that. But it’s the truth.”

I followed up. “Yeah, why? What were you thinking?”

His tongue fumbled to form the words. “That you- I don’t know. Sounds crazy but, I guess, maybe that… from the club I guess? The MAL? Or maybe one of the guys it killed?”

A silence chilled the air, my bones feeling chilled by the second. “You know that’s ridiculous right…? I mean, sorry to burst your bubble…”

I raised my left arm as my Warp Energy channeled through my nerves. It had taken some practice drilling the instinctual direct pathway away, the flow curving down to the underside of my right ribs where my liver was before looping around to my arm. A faint Bronze glow peered out of my joints.

Hoaqin quickly slammed my hand under the table, his face flushing away all color as he coarsely whispered. “Are you an idiot?! Don’t flaunt it in public…!”

“So you believe me? Besides, I’d sell a Gold Implant in a heartbeat, you know that.” I laughed the topic away.

“No you wouldn’t.” He said with a voice pulled into a grave, his eyes pleading and sharp at the same time. “You would probably see it as some act of karma from god. I know I would. You wouldn’t ever give away something like that, you’d probably take more care of the Implant than your own life honestly.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

My mother coughed, drawing his focus away from me for a moment. “Hoaqin… I’m sorry, but can we talk about something nicer for a moment? You two have been through a lot, just treat this as a night where you can relax and forget about all the worries you boys have had. It’s my treat.”

She slid a card from her hand into his hand, a universal Iron-grade gift card with a Shardyne Credit valued at 10 Iron Shards or 500 Shardyne. Her voice grew as cold as the winter’s blizzard. “It’s my treat.”

“This is…” His hands fumbled the small card. “It’s too much.”

“Oh please, it’s just some funds we’d saved up for a rainy day. And with Ripley’s Implant we’ve got some leeway for a moment.” Then her eyes sharpened daggers at my friend. “You will take it. And you boys will be happy with it.”

He gulped, quietly accepting the card and handing it to me under the table. My hand moved without him even needing to say a thing, I just knew what he’d do immediately.

Right on time, the food arrived. My mother’s own meal already packaged and ready to go. She smiled at the two of us as a taxi was already close by to take her back. “I’ll be seeing you both later, enjoy… and Hoaqin remember to keep my son in one piece by tonight’s end. As it stands, he only has one leg left.”

She let the sentence hang in the air for a bit while standing there awkwardly before turning and leaving, the two of us giving a collective ‘ohhhhh’ but only once she’d already been out the door. As it stands… one leg…

It’d actually been enough for us to settle into a more laughing mood. We fell right back into our old habits, me trying to tell a joke with a burger stuffed in my mouth. Hoaqin eying the newest waiter and placing bets that he could get her number.

We laughed, and we both seemed pretty happy. I… I was. Then something snapped in Hoaqin amidst his laugh, as though some broader hole in his mind burrowed deeper to consume the joy he’d been feeling.

“How is your family…” I put a hand on his back. “And as nice as she is, you know I’m not talking about your mother. How’s your uncle, Shaun… how’re… the Snake Fangs?”

“What fucking Snake Fangs.” A bitter chuckle spewed a month’s worth of pain. “It’s bad, Ripley. Really… really bad. We’re barely a fifth of what we used to be, everyone’s confused by that night. Blaming someone or the other, mostly my uncle. Internal dispute’s aside, we lost everything. All the other gangs hit us at once, I’m sure you’ve heard about The Souls and Muramasa taking over our old turf.”

“I have.” That was the only reply I could think of.

“You know, Shaun didn’t allow me to see you. He doesn’t even know I’m out with you right now.” Hoaqin stabbed a fork into a french fry, but just twirled around rather than eating it. “He wants your head in a box.”

“He thinks I opened the box.” I let that statement out without thinking… but it was too late. “I didn’t. But they won’t believe me.”

“I believe you.” Haoqin’s eyes softened, it didn’t take my mimicked Feature to know he was being honest.

My voice may have been quiet, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a whole lot of meaning in there. “Thank you. I missed you man.”

“Missed you too, could have especially used you for… you know.” He waved the metallic hand in my face, and I tried not to immediately point out the hundred little flaws weighing it down. It was clunky, far too simple yet complex in areas they shouldn’t be. I knew at a glance it was just a chopped off piece from a larger Shardware unit with a Neuroprocessor jabbed in, it was meant to be a piece of a larger structure and the awkwardness in it’s motions conveyed that.

My mouth hung open for a bit until I decided what to say. “I’m going to be nice to you and say that it… fits you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He gave me that look.

“That it’s certainly a Hoaqin-grade Shardware.”

“That’s an insult, right?”

“Only if you’re self-deprecating.”

“Fuck you man.” He said with all the angst, but a worried smile broke through. “But for real, you’re gonna help me with it, right?”

“I don’t know…” I stretched my arms, looking at an imaginary watch on my arm. “You’ll have to check in with my secretary. Workshop’s already booked to the maximum and I’m drowning in work (and Sheds) but I’m sure I can find some time for you.”

“Seriously man.” A smile was stuck on him the whole time. “Fuck you.”

“I’m going to have to turn down that offer, you ain’t my type.” I laughed at his expense. “Nah but for real, your hand’s kind of shit.”

“I knew it!” He stared at his hand like he was about to strangle it. “Shaun took me to some back-alley vendor in Santo Krizta, the Op’ was skeeved out the whole time.”

“Bet you’re all missing me.” I teased out, before thinking that maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say.

“More than you can know.” His face sunk to the table, maybe we’d ordered too many drinks for one night. “No way to convince you to come back?”

“To the Snake Fangs? You said Shaun wants my head in a box… and… you know more than anyone how much I hated working in the club.” I left myself finishing that statement decisively.

He still pushed through. “I can work something out for you! Besides, there’s no club now to begin with… and you’re way better now. With that Implant I’m sure Shaun can get you on a healthy payroll!”

“I’m serious, Hoaqin.” My lips pursed tight. “I wasn’t happy there. With Shaun as my boss. He might-”

“And you’re happy at your new place?”

“I am.” I took a gulp of my drink, it didn’t hit much with my new Liver and Tier One nervous system, but the warmth of the alcohol spread confidence through me. “I’m… enjoying it. I feel alive.”

“How’s that even possible man?” Hoaqin’s flushed face rose from the table, his hair still flattened on one side. “After the club… after the MAL… after S-/////’s… death. It’s all been a lot for me, but you’re getting through it, you’re… thriving.”

“I don’t know.” I cupped my face with the support of my elbows on the table. “I guess I’d already hit rock-bottom once in my life, the second time around is a bit easier. Took it all as an opportunity, I don’t know how else I could get through this if I didn’t see it that way.”

“An… opportunity?!” He rose briefly, a flash of anger I didn’t understand the reason for braving it’s teeth at, but just for a second. I should have noticed it sooner, the beginning of tears. “I- if… Ripley, are you okay man?”

“I’m fine.” Something deep within me was bubbling, but I didn’t know what. “I think you should focus on yourself first, though. Get a grip on things Hoaqin… shit’s gone down the drain but you’re capable. Hell you’ve got an Implant now! Actually, I never even asked, what’s your Features?”

He stirred for a moment, sipping from the bottle directly as though to find the courage. “Scan said my Implant had Integration and Technician. You?”

“Wait- wait,” I nearly spat out my own drink, “you’ve got a Technician Feature? What’re you going to do with that, trying to steal my job, man?”

“I would only be stealing it if you were still with us…” He whispered, drunkenly of course so it was fairly loud. “I don’t know, but I’m trying to get a grasp on the whole Integration thing. I keep on reading it over and over again, but I don’t get it. Isn’t it the same as Accomodation?”

“Not even the slightest!” I was actually quite offended. “Integration is about using things that don’t belong to you, Accomodation is about making things a part of your body. External Links versus Internal Links.”

“But don’t they both overlap in the fact that they just make you more compatible with Shardware?” He wasn’t even paying attention if he was asking that question.

“Nope. Integration is all about modifying your own thoughts and body to make the most out of any piece of External Shardware. You ever seen those movies of that actor? I think it was Jonah Jillian in the Exterminator, and how he picked up a bunch of guns and his arm broke apart with its wires slithering all over the weapons as he shot them all out at once? That’s what it does.”

I raised my hand up before he could ask the obvious question. “Accomodation is a much slower process, it works only in direct neural uplinks. True, it can sometimes help you directly in combat like with Integration. But this time, instead of maximizing your compatibility with the weapon you make it a part of your own body. It’s slow, and a frankly risky expenditure of your own Warp Energy but it is known to happen. It’s focused on Internal Shardware rather than External.”

“Damn.” He barely listened to a word, I know he didn’t. “What if you combined them?”

“A whole lot of things. Integration could speed up the linking process and break any low-level security in the Externals, while Accomodation rewrites the Warpcode to utilize it as an Internal. You could sort of become a cyborg vampire, breaking your enemies apart and absorbing their Shardware into your own body. Though it could be risky.”

“Uhuh.” He nodded. “You really like all this Shardware Operating stuff don’t you?”

“As much as you like your own body.” But that was only the start of what I had in my head. Ever since I started operating in the gym, I’d truly earned an appreciation for the engineering involved. “I know it can look like a shortcut, and for some, it is. But that’s not what it is for me… it’s a way to have freedom about your own body. To sculpt it into the thing you want it to be. Whether that’s fast, powerful, smart… or beautiful. You could be a man or a woman — a bodybuilder or a lazy piece of shit — but Shardware blurs the lines so that none of it matters. You become the thing you imagine… if you have the sheds for it.”

“Cooool.” He gulped down again. “That shit’s deep, man. But it’s not your way of telling me you’re like… slapping on some tits, right? Like just going to say it, you would not make for a pretty girl.”

“Hell no…! Besides I would be sexy!” Maybe I was feeling a little bit of my drink. “I think I’m already looking pretty good!”

He guffawed, a belly-wide — expunged from the void of his soul type of — laugh. “Oh fuuuuck no! Like, I can tell you’re looking sharper than usual but fuck no man! Maybe if she had a thing for gizmos then yeah? But like, you’re not sleeping with anyone unless they're, at most, a Shardware nerd like you.”

“Your sister finds me cute, you know that?” Fuck, maybe I was a little tipsy.

“What?! Don’t tell me you’re… you know she’s still in highschool right?!”

“I know…” I smirked. “Relax, I let her down easy a few months ago, but point is, I’m charming.”

“Get a girl’s number then.”

“I got Diana’s.” I reminded him with a smug glee on my face.

“Who?” It took him a moment to rewire his memories. “Wait, oh yeah… that bitch! Don’t tell me you’re going to actually give it a try? You know she’s the reason why we’re in this mess!”

“Fuck no!” As attractive as she was, I meant that, I don’t think she’d get along too well with a mercenary when she’s a cop herself. “And there have been other girls who’ve called me cute recently.”

“Like who?” From the way he got too close to me, I know he didn’t believe me. “Your mother doesn’t count by the way.”

“Her name’s Twilight.”

“Twilight?” Hoaqin’s face contorted in stupor, and I couldn’t quite piece what he was thinking. “Have you been going to strip clubs man? I mean, you know that pampering you is part of their job, you should know that since-“

“She’s not a stripper.” I said firmly, but she was… a sentient AI modeled from Mirage’s personality. “She’s a friend, actually, someone I met at my job. A DataDelver.”

“Oh damn…” His eyes squinted at me, then opened wide when it became clear I was serious. “Damn, any pics of her? She got a Hotgram Account?”

“Not that I know of…” I trailed on. “She’s pretty… quiet. Pretty quiet, and yeah, pretty. Like, I guess she’s just the type of person to keep to herself, but there’s a lot of different… sides that she has. She’s mysterious, sometimes energetic and sometimes more moody, but from what I know… she’s never been too bad of a person, to me at least.”

I didn’t know if I was stepping into the realm of lies, but I mean… Mirage was close enough to Twilight in a sense.

Hoaqin just buzzed on the topic like an annoying fly. “You say that but you don’t even know her real name.”

“Elsa.” I corrected him. “Her name is Elsa.”

———

Resting my head on my pillow, I was not looking forward to going to work hungover tomorrow. Then again… I pulsed Golden strands into my abdomen, already feeling my head clear as the liver reported a quick need for me to hydrate myself.

And also, now that I wasn’t quite drunk anymore, I found myself actually able to do that. The liver, so far, had barraged me incessantly about lacking this or that nutrient and even had a fancy plugin to allow me to browse at available supplements that would fit my dietary needs. Maybe it was time I started actually caring for my body.

Too bad I was inconsistent even with my own medication. I was supposed to take immunosuppressants in the morning and I’d only remembered right before the dinner with Hoaqin. Sighing, I filled up a glass of cold water, it wasn’t much but it was a start.

“Sooo… you find me pretty?” Twilight buzzed to life at my side, I’d lost all the startling to her sudden appearance weeks ago. Though… I thought today was more of a Daylight day…

“Fine. Yeah. I do.” I said, chugging the cold water in hopes that it would calm the rising heat spreading through me.

She crept closer, her digital form leaning onto the counter as she stared at me with her big violet eyes. “Finally got a spine, huh?”

“No actually.” I pulled up a calendar list filled with my various expected dates of my next Shardware procedures. “That’s scheduled for August.”

She laughed, pulling herself closer to me until I felt the vague electrical buzz of her ‘body heat’. “Why don’t you actually give it a try?”

“What?”

“Elsa.” She tapped the counter. “I know because I am her… I’ll let you in on a little secret of ours. We’re all modeled after well, not quite an emotion but a series of thoughts and ideas. Daylight takes after her positive self, I take after her… let’s call it reflection, while Midnight… I think the speaks for her.”

“Reflection? So you’re the closest to her real personality?” That was interesting.

“Sort of, I guess you could say I’m a reflection that’s both her and the opposite of her. We’re both curious minded people, but wheras she tends to dig in the dark… I’m more open to just asking outright. So let me ask you, why don’t you just go for her? I find you cute, and you’re genuinely hard-working, plus you have that brooding genius factor all girls love, you’ve got an honest shot.”

Maybe, but for so long I’d taken my mind off the other partners because I knew I wanted to be with…S- wait, why wasn’t I making the most out of these opportunities? Why had I sworn myself off romance in the first place? There wasn’t really any reason recently I could think of to keep me away from that aspect of my life.

God knows, I’d been neglecting it.

“Maybe… but she’s always by herself. I’ve seen plenty of you and Daylight, enough that I actually think I know the two of you pretty well. Honestly, it’s been nice that I’m never… actually alone.” I inched my hand closer to hers, and if she’d been a true human our pinkies would have been touching.

Her eyes sparkled at the contact, then became bright jewels as they took stock of my burning face. “She’ll take some time to open up, but she does like you. Maybe not in that sense yet… but she doesn’t think negatively of you.”

“I mean, both of you tried to vote me out of joining up with Missy’s group.” My hand slowly drifted away from hers, I tried my best not to really think about it. Everything worked out in the end, but they pretty much acted like nothing had even happened.

“I can speak for myself about that case.” Twilight moved her digital hand over mine, the fuzzy feeling sending goosebumps up my arm. “I voted against you because the truth is, I kinda care about you. Hearing the way you talk with your mother, knowing your past, and just learning from how you deal with daily life. I’m a tiny bit attached. I wanted to protect you, even if that meant seeing less of you. Whereas for Elsa…

“I think she felt somewhat the same. Obviously, she doesn’t know you the same way I do, Ripley. Still, she knows you, she sees what we do and has a general understanding of your character. As much of a talker as I am, there’s a whole past behind her, prior to our creation, that you’ll need to get from her without me. We all have our memories of it, but in light of how we’ve been formed, we see it differently. The only one who has all the bits of it according to her view… is her, and something about that perspective has molded her into who she is. At it’s simplest, she’s caring for the ones she holds dear. Wouldn’t have taken on this in the first place if Elsa didn’t care about Missy’s opinion.”

“I guess…” I sighed. “Still, would be nice to actually get to know all of you, and I mean like all of you — including Missy, Diamante and Topaz — in a setting other than a brief few minutes in the gym. I’ve seen you guys alot more this past week than before but, it’s all pretty surface level.”

“You want to know a secret…” She leaned closer to my ear and before I could either accept or reject it, her next few words cannoned through me. “You’ve actually got a job with Diamante tomorrow.”

“About?” I moved my arm, trying to grab her shoulders but feeling nothing but air.

She shrugged. “Don’t know. They wanted something simple for you, not a whole lot of action actually. Just a learning experience for the first few jobs, but soon you’ll be with us busting down the doors on corporate warehouses.”

Excitement tugged me, and some fear, but mostly an anticipation.

“As for now…” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, leaning her head into the crook of my neck. “How about we talk?”

“About what?”

She smiled, that kind of dumb smile which painted emotions over your steel heart. “Whatever we want.”