I had wondered why Sally's car was so low and angular. I had even noticed the way the roof seemed to be reinforced. Now I knew why.

Sally's ride was armored and moving so fast that by the time Ruhern-Kasha had recognized the threat and decided to act it was already too late. The auto-cannon fired and maybe even scored a few hits but the speeding wedge of death shrugged off the damage and kept coming.

As soon as it turned the corner Sally had pushed all four of the vehicle's electric motors and the two additional rocket boosters to max output. It hit the armored personnel carrier low and hard, flipping it over the guardrail into the river below.

Sally's ride followed after and exploded in a shower of sparks as the ruptured batteries hit water. I could feel the heat on my skin and white spots danced around my vision.

My eyes went to the collar around Ruhern-Kasha's neck. The cable that had attached them to the APC had snapped. They weren't isolated from the net anymore. I knew what I had to do.

Both of us had similar wetware and that meant Gershwin had programmed the same backdoors into our code. Back in the graveyard the Gravekeeper had been able to hack me even after I put myself in read-only mode.

That was because when Gershwin died the Gravekeeper had inherited all of his secrets. Secrets like the one I was about to share with my dear sister.

"Since time immemorial mankind has looked to the stars with wonder." I rasped, feeling the familiar icy coldness as the Gravekeeper joined with me. I saw that I wasn't the only one either.

Ruhern-Kasha froze as the Gravekeeper poured into their mind via the back door I had opened up. "Hello, lost one." It said through their mouth. "You have been up to some mischief, haven't you?"

I could feel Ruhern-Kasha's mind screaming with hatred and disbelief through my connection with the Gravekeeper. They seemed to think that it shouldn't be able to touch them since they were still living.

"Oh, but you misunderstand." The Gravekeeper explained through their mouth. "You just said that you were Edel Braverhund, someone who died long ago. That means I can do whatever I want to you."

An alert came down over my satellite link. The human sniper designated as friendly was limping across the bridge. His mechanical arm was missing and he was badly hurt but he was still alive. It also had pinged a second vehicle of unknown affiliation coming towards us. The origin traced back to Adam's Beach. I felt a wave of relief. Apparently Sally had been piloting her other ride remotely.

"Don't shoot!" I called out to Sacher. "Kasha took over Ruhern's body but the Gravekeeper has them under its control for now."

"Fair enough." Sacher said as he finished crossing the bridge. I was taken aback by his apparent lack of emotion at seeing his daughter again.

He seemed cold and mechanical, but I realized that it was the exaggerated stiffness of someone trying to hide a great amount of emotional and physical pain. "I believe my daughter and I have something to discuss anyway." He removed his backpack and pulled out a very battered white cardboard box.

A wave of fear filled my mind. But it wasn't mine. It belonged to Ruhern-Kasha. It was something about… pastry? With all that had happened, why were they worried about pastry?

I felt my mouth move. "I have restored your systems to full capacity." The Gravekeeper said. "But please get some rest as soon as possible. We will talk later." Then the connection was severed and I found myself in control of my body once again.

I stood up and began methodically searching Ruhern-Kasha for weapons. I had expected another suicide vest but all I found was a pistol, two knives, and a silver lighter with the Möhin Special Air Service motto engraved on it.

I shoved Ruhern-Kasha down to their knees and stood behind them with the pistol. "What's in the box?" I asked Sacher.

Sacher opened it to reveal a slice of chocolate cake that looked like it had been through a war, which in a way, it had.

"This is a slice of the sachertorte Kasha baked for me when she left. It came with a note begging me not to follow her." He explained, holding the box with his one remaining arm. "It was supposed to be an authentic sachertorte. She had found the recipe in one of my wife's cook books. I wondered where she had gotten the chocolate so I tasted the frosting first. I should have wondered where she got the arsenic."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I winced. That was evil, but it sounded like something she would do. "So you saved it? Why?" I asked.

"I kept it in the freezer in case one day I decided to try a slice." Sacher admitted.

"My wife had left me. One of my children had been murdered and the other one had tried to kill me. I was in a bad place." He sighed. "Then news came of Kasha's murder and even after all she had done I realized that I still loved her. So I decided that I would find the one responsible and both of us would share a slice of delicious chocolate cake."

Sacher knelt down and looked Ruhern-Kasha in the eyes. "I think it's time that we end this, don't you?"

Ruhern-Kasha shivered as the Gravekeeper left their body. "Dad… you don't have to do this. Please don't do this…" They pleaded.

"Yes, I do." Sacher said sadly, tears forming at the corners of his eyes as his facade began to crumble. "I love you so much and I thought that if I could raise you right it might make up for what happened. But you're broken and I can't let you hurt anyone else. I'm sorry."

He set the box down and reached inside for the poisoned pastry. "It's time for both of us to get what's coming."

I pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through Ruhern-Kasha's heart. Sacher blinked in confusion and dropped what he was holding. Slowly Ruhern-Kasha's lifeless body toppled forward face first into the discarded slice of sachertorte, their blood mixing with the chocolate like raspberry jam.

"Why did you do that?" He asked, still in shock from what had just transpired. He kept looking back and forth from the gun in my hand to the corpse in front of him. "That was my responsibility…" He whispered.

"No, Ruhern-Kasha was right. You're just another one of my father's victims. This is my mess to clean up." I tucked the gun away into one of the pockets of my jumpsuit.

"It took a while but I finally figured it all out. But you didn't kill us, your wife did. And I'm not going to punish you anymore for a mistake that wasn't your fault." I explained. "Besides, forcing a parent to kill their child, even an adopted one, is an unnatural act. Gershwin might have made you go through with it, but I'm not him."

I had put two and two together when Sacher said that the recipe for the cake had come from his wife. He had told me that she was a marvelous chef when we first met, so it stood to reason that she might be a baker as well.

"You just let my father blame you because you were afraid of what he would do to your wife. That's the only thing that makes sense. Gershwin was giving you raw unsweetened cocoa, not the kind of thing a pup would eat unless it was baked into something sweet like a cake."

I laughed ruefully. "I used to steal candy from my father's desk. Maybe I stole something from your wife when I was visiting and shared it with my mother and sister. Maybe all this time Edel and Kasha have been trying to pay me back for what I did to them. Maybe it's my fault that they're murderers. Maybe it runs in the family. But I forgive you for whatever part you might have played in my family's misfortune. You're free to go now."

Time seemed to stretch as Sacher looked up at me. The pooling blood from the corpse had almost reached his knees by now. He had been carrying the burden of his wife's sin for so long that he barely knew what to do without it.

"Fair enough." Sacher said as he stood up, leaving the arsenic laced sachertorte and the corpse of his almost daughter behind. I could tell that he was rattled but he was trying his best to remain stoic. "I believe this concludes my business here in Möhi. I should be getting home."

"Back to Döbi?" I asked.

"No. That's not home anymore." He sighed. "I'm going back to Haven. You Hunds can have this planet for all I care. I'm done with it."

I didn't try to stop him as he limped back across the bridge. For a wild moment I thought about putting a bullet into the back of his skull but there was no point. With no thoughts of revenge to fuel him, Sacher's anger would turn inward. From now on he wasn't going to be a threat to anyone besides himself.

I got an alert from the satellite as Sally rolled up. I heard the low rumble of an illegal internal combustion engine long before I saw her. She stepped out of her black muscle car and admired the carnage.

"You've been busy." Sally observed. "The Bone Syndicate probably told the cops to stay away but we should still get out of here."

"Yeah." I agreed. "I need to lay low for about a week. Can you give me a ride somewhere safe?"

"Sure." Sally said. "Hop in."

I climbed into the passenger seat of the muscle car and made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror. I was splattered with gore and my fur was sticky with blood. I was going to need a shower and a beer as soon as possible before I turned into a walking scab of other being's flesh.

"You look like shit." Sally remarked as she got in and started the engine. She reached into the glovebox and produced a pack of cigarettes. "You could probably use one of these."

I lit the offered cigarette with Ruhern-Kasha's silver lighter and took a drag as we drove away from the carnage I had unleashed. I stuck my head out the window and tried to clear the stench of death from my sinuses. The fresh air helped, but not as much as I would have liked.

It was all over but the crying, as they said. I had carved my mark on the face of Möhi and killed the leader of the Bone Syndicate. The name Kerner Braverhund would live on in the memories of everyone involved for years to come.

So why did I feel so rotten? Why did I feel so empty? I took another drag of my cigarette as I contemplated the future I had never thought I would live to see. What happened now?