Technica paused in taking off her helmet, before continuing her movement. The look on her face was a combination of surprise, sadness and joy but it quickly vanished under her poker-face.

“Let’s take care of your friend, before we get away from here.” she ordered, getting into one of the compartments in the back of her helicopter and getting medical supplies out. She directed me on the best way to take care of Sophia, showing quite a bit of experience when it came to taking care of injuries. Soon, we had Sophia secured on a stretcher, not tightly but tight enough to make sure she did not hurt herself.

I stayed with her in the back, while Technica got in the front and we quickly took off. Sophia looked so beaten, so broken, tears were running down my face unbidden. My hands went to her hair, gently brushing it, stroking her face, trying to reach her mind, to soothe it. Hopefully, she knew I was with her, that I was here for her. I wondered if I had done the right thing, back when I left her behind, if I had caused her current state somehow.

The movement must have disturbed Sophia and she started to stir, her arms quickly being stopped by the bindings we had used to secure her. When she was stopped, I saw her tense up, as if readying herself for a blow.

“Be calm, my dear, you are safe. I am here, nothing will happen to you.” I spoke soothingly, hoping to reach her before she aggravated her wounds.

Her eyes fluttered open, focusing on me after a moment, “Alex...? Am I… dreaming?” Her voice was weak and it was obvious how much talking took out of her, how much it taxed her limited strength.

“No, Sophia, you are not. You are safe, they will not hurt you again!”

“He asked… about you… And about… someone called… Diana...Wanted to know why... we killed Alexandria.” Sophia tried to continue talking, despite the pain it brought her. I wanted to shush her but the pleading look in her eyes stopped me.

“Do not worry about it. Everything will be fine.” I continued stroking her hair.

“He… hurt me… And she… did something… in my head. I could… not resist her.” she paused again for a moment, before continuing. “They know… Alex. They know... who you are.”

I closed my eyes for a second, processing that information. It could be problematic but in the grand scheme of things, it did not matter. It could become an ugly scandal for the King-family or the Guild but if we spun it the right way, it could gather some sympathy.

Pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, I told her to safe her strength and to sleep. Even the few words she had spoken had been enough to exhaust her and she quickly fell asleep, her eyes fluttering closed again.

Considering my options, I moved forward to talk to Technica for a moment, leaving the sleeping Sophia behind.

“They know my original identity.” I told Technica when I got up front, checking on the surveillance-script while speaking.

“What do you think they will do?” she asked, undoubtedly thinking over different scenarios herself. I had done so myself and the scenarios ranged from embarrassing to problematic but in the grand scheme of things, I doubted that they would overtly use it. And I had a plan on my own, something to do.

“Honestly? Not a lot. If they try to openly use it, they need evidence. Even if they filmed their torture of Sophia, using that footage would be hugely damaging. A tortured young woman, or teenager, saying something to stop the pain? I can hardly imagine footage that would make people side against the torturer faster than that.” I mused, while realising that the script had lost the car it had followed. The car had pulled into the underground parking lot of a mall and there was nothing a satellite could do.

“Can I link directly into the net from your helicopter? I need to look for cameras that follow our two runners.” I asked, breaking my previous line of thought.

Stolen story; please report.

“I’d rather you don’t try. The whole helicopter is driven by my power, so if you directly interface with it, our powers might repel each other. We can try but I’d rather do so on solid ground.” Technica rejected my idea and with good reason. While I had no qualms about potentially dangerous experiments, being willfully reckless was just stupid.

Instead, I focused on the memories I had mostly ignored, what I had seen in the house as I went in. They were not so much my memories as it was what Galatea had recorded using my visual cortex to observe. I was almost certain that Clark was not amongst the corpses in the house, unless he had been so weak to fall to one of Technica’s grenades. So, he was one of the two that had gotten away. There were corpses that looked female, two of them, but I was unsure if the ‘she’ Sophia had spoken about was one of them.

I forcibly tore my mind away from the amount of death we had dealt in that house, doubt and guilt would have to wait for later. And I had a feeling I would add some guilt before the day was done.

“Can you drop me off in New Brunsburg? I would like to get my armour and a few other things from my old base.” I asked Technica, presenting a plausible if unconvincing argument for me to go there.

Technica frowned but nodded. “Yes, I can do that. It will increase our flight-time but your friend is stable. She’s asleep, right?”

“Yes, I talked to her for a moment and she fell asleep.”

“Stay with her for now. Maybe, she’ll wake again and you can explain to her why you had to leave.”

I went back to Sophia, watching her sleep. She looked rather peaceful, now that the blood was cleaned from her face.

In a soft voice, I started talking. Not so much to her, more to myself, telling her what had happened in my life since I left. Explaining why I had left, voicing my fear of her rejecting me. Explaining my plan, to make sure Clark would get his just punishment. Or, maybe just retribution, making sure that he would never do something like this again.

Sophia was still sleeping, when we got to New Brunsburg and with a soft kiss to her forehead, I told her I would meet her again, soon. I would no longer run, I just had to take care of something.

Getting out of the helicopter was simple, there was a winch to allow for rapid descent and I just had to rappel down. While someone might have wondered why a grey helicopter was hovering above the forest for a second, there was little anyone could do. It took me less than a minute to get to the ground on one of the clearings I had used before. My bunker was nearby.

Entering back into the bunker was a slightly strange experience, I had not been here for almost a year. There was some dust in the outer layer but the inner layer, only got very well filtered air. Once inside, Galatea linked into the mainframe, taking me along with her. We had things to do. And someone to find. While part of my mind was looking at footage from the surveillance cameras in the mall, only to find nothing, the biggest part was occupied with maintenance on my drones. They would play a vital role in the events of the evening.

The next step was to search for his phone and this time, I found something. It was quite obviously on the highway, driving from the same direction we had come from. Hacking into cameras on route showed me that he was alone. And would be in New Brunsburg in about an hour.

It took me a second of deliberation where he would go, either to the League-Building or home but I decided to assume he would go home first. I would have to throw him a surprise welcome home.

Maintenance on my armour took only minutes, nothing had changed, nothing had corroded, only charging the crystals would take some time. It was the same with my flight-frame.

With over thirty minutes to spare, I headed out, up the hill, to a vantage that had good view of the Greene’s driveway. The drones were already in the area, dangling strings of nanites down to measure air-currents. I would not want to miss Clark now, would I?

I got into position, looking down at the driveway, when the car Clark was driving roared in. The mansions door opened and an older woman got ready to welcome him home. So was I.

Focus...

Slowly breathing in and out, I stared through the heads-up display, waiting for the right moment. But, for once I did not have to wait for it, not really.

“Now.” I asked Galatea and she started a call, a well spoofed call. It was spoofed using an old number. A number registered to me, before I burnt Alexandria.

I could almost hear Clark’s ringtone go off and he stopped.

Taking the movements of the air around my shot-path into account, I shot. Not once, not twice, my rail-rifle let three shots fly as fast as possible, slightly stressing my armour to absorb the recoil. For most targets, one shot-one kill, was a great idea. But, sometimes, you just wanted to make sure. Very, very sure.

Clark looked at his phone and for a split-second his expression changed. Maybe, he had truly missed me. And his expression changed again, when the first bullet hit his chest, the second bullet hit a little higher, ripping through his throat and the last bullet higher again, striking his right cheek-bone, pulverizing it before tearing through his head.

I had not missed him.