The only good night in the first days after the accident in the tunnel and the nightmarish search and rescue-operation was the first. Simply because after we got back to the base, neither Sophia nor I felt as if we could manage to be alone, so Sophia decided to stay with me. Something I was truly grateful for. Holding her, made the nightmares seem less horrible, even if both of us suffered. During that first night, I woke up a few times, chased out of hypnos’ garden by the terrors I had seen, not inflicted by any rational mind, but by the uncaring forces of physics. The worst were a child, maybe eight years old, and the parents had not made perfectly sure that he had used his seat-belt. Maybe he had unlocked it because he thought it was cool. His body had been half-way through the windshield, before getting mangled by impact with another car. Inertia could be a cruel mistress and there was no appeal against the laws of nature.

Another nightmare was just as bad. It was of the first casualty we found, the woman with the broken neck. Apart from the neck, she had looked unharmed, healthy. In my nightmare, she was on the stretcher, to be carried out, before suddenly rising, her head twisting around a full hundred-eighty degrees, asking if I knew what was with her baby.

But, once I was awake, tears streaming down my face, holding Sophia made the world seem less grey, less horrible. For her, it was similar, I was awoken by her sobbing as she clung to me.

Sadly, the next morning, she needed to go to school and I buried myself in work, so my mind would not think.

During the day, she sent me a message that her mother had thrown a total fit when Sophia had not been home in the morning, causing her to be officially grounded for the first time in her life. So, I was without someone to hug and hold. For some reason, that made the nightmares more frequent, ripping me from my dreams the moment I closed my eyes. I did not want to use drugs to knock myself out, so I went the opposite route, going into my gym and working out, until I literally dropped on the gym-floor. I was stiff and sore in the morning, but if I had dreamed, I did not remember it. I only worried about Sophia, she was denied the option I had chosen. Hopefully, she had not tried to self-medicate with her mother’s booze.

I had looked at a few articles, regarding PTSD and while I believed that my nightmares were simply part of a normal trauma-response, I was by no means an expert. But I doubted that any sane human being was able to carry the broken bodies of children out of that tunnel and feel nothing afterwards.

Sophia and I talked that day on the phone, and she sounded tired. I tried to cheer her up, at least a little, but sadly it did not work. But there had to be something I could do to help her, even if I had to sneak into her bedroom through the window, like the protagonist in some victorian era romance novel. I explained and described it as much as possible, asking her to leave open her window that night, so I could come call on her.

I think the mental image of me, in those ridiculous get-ups got her to smile, but I could not be sure, not over the phone. Sadly, she declined, telling me that we had caused her mother needless anxiety the night before and she did not want to defy her. Apparently, her mother had been disturbingly controlling, making sure that she knew Sophia’s plans in minute detail.

Over the next two days, that routine continued. I tried to bury my mind in work during the day and exhausted myself in the gym to get some sleep during the night. I talked with Sophia each day and each day I got more worried. Thursday, she sounded as if she had not have a good night’s sleep since Monday. Finally, I decided that I would spent the weekend with her, no matter what. I might have to have strong words with her mother and defy Sophia to do so, but I was willing to do so, if I had to.

On Friday, I was done with the flight-frame and had built a test-dummy for Galatea to try it out. Sure, I wanted to test it for myself, but not on the first flight, I had no need to splatter myself in a testflight if I had a perfectly capable AI that would not suffer any harm from having a remote-controlled aircraft crash. Well, she might suffer a little from broken pride, but that was a risk both of us were willing to take.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

There was only one problem, I needed my armour to move the flight-frame, lugging it around on my back. Part of me wondered about the practicality of it, but at the end of the day, I decided that it did not need to be truly useful. It was my version of a sports car. Fast, overbuilt, impractical, but utterly awesome.

After lugging it into a nearby clearing and placing it on a large, heavy tarp that should keep it from damaging the ground underneath when taking off and landing, I moved back, far back. There was enough explosives packed into the dummy to make sure that, if the thing crashed and burned, nobody would find a lot of information about my tech. So, the first serious flight of my flight-frame was as a cruise-missile.

“Well, Galatea, what do you think? Are we ready to soar?” I asked over the com.

“Yes, I think so. Signal-repeater drones distributed and active. Take-off in…”

“Three” I heard the air-intakes spin up.

“Two” A soft glow was visible on the clearing.

“One” The glow got brighter and the sounds of electric hair-dryers echoed through the forest. Well, maybe they did not echo.

“Lift-off!” The hair-dryers got louder and the direction the sound came from shifted, upwards. Moments later, the thing was far enough up to be no longer audible.

Galatea showed me the vision from the nose, showing the dark sky above.

“Leveling out, overall sixty percent maximum thrust, thrust-distribution fifty percent forward, fifty percent downward. Flight stable.

Airspeed rising…”

Now, I was seeing darkness above and darkness below, with the only indicator of up and down, the shine coming from the distant city.

“Minimum ramjet velocity acquired. Initiating…” It was strange, nothing really changed. Without any obvious indicators, it was almost impossible to tell that the acceleration had just massively increased. I only heard a strange noise in the distance, reminiscent of some strong wind, maybe. It was hard to identify, I only knew what it was because my designed equipment caused it.

“Can you give me the altimeter and airspeed-indicator?” I asked.

At the edge of my vision, the instruments appeared. The altimeter showed a height of roughly forty meters, over a forest with maybe twenty meter high trees. At the same time, the airspeed was rapidly climbing, passing through hundred kilometers per hour, and rising.

“Reducing throttle.” Galatea announced. Neither of us wanted to risk the craft losing reception and blowing up. The airspeed stopped climbing and held steady, before dropping as Galatea started to maneuver it, testing its capabilities. Not to destruction, we had quite stringent operational parameters, so that the pilot, meaning I, was able to survive. If the craft could make a fifteen-g turn, great. But not if it killed me. Which it would, with certainty. I watched through the screen as Galatea twisted and turned the craft, moving it in ways few systems in the sky could. At least, technological or strictly natural systems. Powered were a wholly different ball-game. Part of me was still a little salty that I had not manifested the Hermes-Set. But I would fly. Not as graceful, but probably a lot faster than most of them.

Maybe thirty minutes later, Galatea announced that the test had been successful and apparently nobody had noticed anything. I heard the hair-dryer sounds return, as Galatea landed the craft on the prepared tarp. Part of me wanted to throw out the dummy, to take its place and rise to the sky. But no, doing so would be utterly stupid. No, first I would have to go over the airframe and the thrusters with a fine-toothed comb, making sure that they did not suffer. And then we would do a longer test. Maybe even with a copy of Galatea in the frame, even if it was not something she enjoyed. But it would let her test the frame to much higher tolerances. Then, it would be back to the lab before I would consider it safe.

And once that was done, I could try it myself.

Picking up the flight-frame and the tarp, I started my way back to my bunker, thinking about the successful test. It was an excellent distraction, that was for sure.

Once I was back in the bunker, I placed the frame in my work-area and deposited the dummy away from it, after making sure that I had removed all detonators from the self-destruct charges.

Time to work….

“Cat, Sophia is on her way here. And she’s moving fast, without her phone.” Galatea told me, causing me to frown. If Sophia was running, seriously running, without her costume and phone, something must have happened. Something bad.

Leaving the workshop, I moved to the entrance Sophia was heading for and opened it.

Moments later, a human-shaped missile crashed into me and heart-wrenching sobs started to tear at me.