We just stood and held each other for the longest time, and she squeezed the tears right out of me.

“You look like butt,” she whispered.

“I missed you too,” I replied. We broke off the hug but she kept leaning on me because of her leg.

I frowned. “We need to get that cleaned up,” I said, and she nodded. “What did you do to that bear anyway?”

“Seriously, nothing. You know me, I love animals. It just came out of nowhere, knocked me off my crawler, and then chased me for the entire last couple of hours. Dang thing was like, possessed.”

“Hmm. Maybe AEGIS was onto something about bears.”

“Who?”

“I’ll explain more later…for now, let’s get you to…” I stopped and thought. “In fact, let’s go meet her right now. That’s probably the best place to treat your leg.”

“I…didn’t know there was anyone else out here. I thought you were out here alone this whole time.” She leaned on me heavily as we walked, looking a little distraught.

“Don’t feel bad, I missed you.”

“Thanks. Ouch.”

“It’s pretty far…we’ll take all day with you limping there. Here, let me…” I stooped in front of her and offered her my back.

“Piggy-back rides?” She laughed. “Aren’t I a little old for that?”

“Just get on, you’re bleeding.”

“Oh all right.” She gingerly stepped her way around me and leaned heavily on my back, before wrapping her legs and arms around me. She was incredibly warm and light. “Mmm, you’re warm,” she said.

“Just like the old days where you’d attack me in my bed with your freezing hands to warm them up?”

“I could take off these gloves and try.”

“No thanks,” I laughed. I kept laughing, even if things weren’t that funny. It was infectious happiness, just being with her again. How easily we’d fallen right back into our dynamic, like we’d only been apart a day. It made me realize how much I’d missed her, and maybe that’s why I just couldn’t stop tears from randomly falling out of my stupid eyes.

“God, we have so much to talk about,” I said hoisting her and starting off towards AEGIS’ base. “But I guess the obvious question is, what are you doing here?”

“Looking for you of course, dummy.”

“I thought…you and everyone else didn’t care about me anymore once you found out I was Exhuman. Are they…?”

“No, just me. They’re 100% anti-exhuman, just like all the others. You’re uh, dead to them.”

“Oh.” It was stupid for me to allow myself to get my hopes up.

“Yeah. They’re actually all kind of…weird now. I wouldn’t recommend going back.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, but what do you mean?”

“Uh. Well. Kind of hard to say. Dad’s abusive, and mom’s depressed, and Brick’s about one defenseless girl away from being a rapist.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, things just fell apart after you left. It’s not your fault! Everyone just coped with you leaving in their own way and…some of those ways were not so good.”

“How did you cope?”

“I didn’t really have time to. I was trying to avoid pissing off everybody else. Once I finally ran away from home–”

“You ran away from home?”

“Did you not hear the part where Brick was going to rape someone? How do you think I figured that out?”

“Fuck, Lia.” The world suddenly felt very red and hot. “Did he touch you? If he laid a finger on you–”

“No. Not like that anyway. He hurt me, but goose him. I got away. Anyway, after I did that, I spent all my time trying to find you. And now, here I am.”

“I don’t think there’s very much ‘and here I am’ about it. How did you find me? How did you get here? Why are you dressed like a ninja?”

She leaned forward and rested her cheek against the back of my neck. “Feels like I’ve been looking and going forever, but I guess you probably want to hear it.”

“I mean, if you don’t want to, I understand.”

“No, I’m just uber tired right now. That bear did a number on me. And the weeks of travel before that. And the months of research before that. I’m just so happy I’m here. I can’t even believe it.”

“I can’t believe it either, Lia.” I gave her legs a gentle little squeeze to reassure her.

“Brick is the one who turned you in,” she murmured into my neck. With her leaning on me, her voice vibrated and tickled, which I tried to ignore so she could rest.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I know. I didn’t figure it out on my own, but I did learn.”

“AEGIS help you?”

“No. Saga dumped it on me as some kind of psychological blackmail. Again, I’ll tell you more later.”

“He thinks he’s a hero…or…I think he’s trying to convince himself he is. That’s why he came after me, I think. Wanted the person closest to you to agree with him, because if I did, then he was right.”

“So what, he was going to torture you into agreeing with him?”

“Is there really any other point in torture?”

“I…guess not.”

“And then Dad wanted a substitute for you so badly, he was going to go with whatever Brick wanted.”

“You’re seriously telling me Dad and Brick took turns…”

“Hitting me? Yeah, pretty much.”

“This all sounds impossible. Dad loved you.”

“You don’t have to hate someone to hurt them, Athan. You just have to be sick in the head.” I thought of Karu and AEGIS and had to agree I guess. Still. Our own dad?

“So you got away,” I said, not sure how much more I could take of that conversation. “How’d you find me?”

“Uh, funny story. I got to Las Vegas and decided that was far enough to run and big enough to hide. Lived in a tiny apartment near a college with 3 roommates, trying to make the money I stole from Mom and Dad last as long as I could.”

“You stole from them?”

“Yeah.” She shifted guiltily. “I’ll pay them back if I get the chance.”

“I don’t think that matters so much, it’s just nothing I thought you would ever do.”

“Me neither, but I needed the money. It wasn’t exactly all planned.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“That you had to go through so much all because of me.”

For some reason she laughed. “None of it was your fault, bro. Mostly it was just like I said, people trying to cope. It’s ugly.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“If I say I forgive you, will you promise never to apologize for it again?”

“Yes. But I will probably be lying.”

“Then I forgive you.” She stretched a little and muttered something, and then laid back down against me. “In Vegas I spent most of my time on the ‘net trying to find you without flagging myself as a domestic terrorist or anything. A lot of time on public computers in the library, pulling data from wherever I could. Eventually, I found something very interesting.”

She continued, “I found if I cross-referenced US exclusion zones, reported firing patterns of Skyweb, and satellite maps, there were a few places listed as exclusion zones from the Sino War which had never actually been nuked, or protected with Skyweb. So I figured, those must be not-irradiated areas that the government doesn’t want anyone going into. Exactly the kind of place you’d want to hide military facilities or stuff.”

“That makes sense. And this data was all just lying around?”

“Yes and no. A lot of times the government reports things like Skyweb shots because it makes them look good, and because Skyweb can only fire so fast, they want to document what it’s shooting at so they can point at it and say, ‘hey, sorry that Phoenix got nuked, but look, we were spending that time defending New York.’ I don’t think they expected people to use where it didn’t fire as a resource.”

“So anyway, now I had all this data nobody really expected me to know, but what was I going to do with it? Well, as it turns out, there are people who pay a lot for that kind of thing, but nobody would believe the info was any good if it came from a high school freshman girl who ran away from home, so I had to reinvent myself.”

“I started posting from all sorts of accounts in these dark circles making references to an Exhuman who had information-gathering powers, and people just went nuts. Sino and Exhuman sympathizers, anarchists, independent militants, criminals, all sorts of crazies. Well, once they started looking for this new Exhuman, all I had to do was be her. I spent the rest of the money on a crazy network setup, private servers, VPNs, bouncing my ‘net connection all around the globe, the best I could do, and then I contacted the crazies in private and tried to make some deals.”

“No…you’re…Black Shark?”

“I am. How’d you hear about her?”

“Everybody knows Black Shark. She’s legendary.”

“Really?”

“No.” She kicked me. “But I have a friend who’s in those circles and warned me that there was a new info broker called Black Shark who was asking around for me.”

“Hmm. I guess I didn’t do as good a job covering my tracks as I thought.”

“On the contrary. If you hadn’t done as good a job as you did, you’d have a professional hunter kicking down your door.”

“Jeez, Athan. Is this hunter AEGIS, or Saga?”

“Neither. I’ll explain later.”

“Are you just making people up, or is this exclusion zone just crawling with people?”

“They’re real, I swear. I actually have two more people to mention, but am saving them for when they become relevant to your story as well, so I can tell you I’ll explain them later, too.”

“The heck, dude.”

“It’s been a weird few months. Continue.”

“Yeah, so anyway, I created Black Shark. I thought if I named her that, you might realize it’s me. Go Black Sharks, bite ’em.”

“I…feel really stupid now.”

“Really? You did all the work of hearing about me out here in the middle of butt-nowhere, and couldn’t put two and two together afterwards?”

“It could have been anyone! Or just a weird coincidence.” She stayed silent and let my own stupid words sink in, a tactic she liked to employ when she thought I really didn’t deserve a reply. “Yes, I’m just a big dummy dumb. I got it.”

We were drawing close to AEGIS’ base and I waved at one of the DOG-Es at the gate. The red light came on and it looked at me sideways, but didn’t try to stop me as I punched the elevator and sent us to the second basement.

“Nice setup you’ve got here,” Lia said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “Robots and elevators and friends and everything.”

“I told you I’m happy you’re here and missed you, Lia. I don’t have to be alone in the wild sitting under a rock to miss my sister and be sad.”

“I know. And I knew you were sharp enough you’d be doing okay on your own. I just…didn’t expect how okay. Why does this room look like a hospital?”

“Well, if you were looking for how crap my life was out here, this room looks like a hospital because not too long ago, I had…an accident, and almost died. AEGIS here saved me, and I’m hoping she won’t mind disinfecting and sewing you up.”

“You almost died?” I nodded. She went pale a little bit. “AEGIS is…where?”

The holo lit up on the box next to the bed. “Hello,” she said with a restrained wave. “Athan, who is this?”

“This is Lia, my little sister. I don’t know why she’s here, but she came out to see me, apparently.” AEGIS’ face brightened instantly at hearing she was my sister. Maybe happy she was a known quantity, or not an Exhuman, or not a romantic rival. Probably all three.

“Lia! So nice to meet you. I’m AEGIS, I’m an AI that used to run this facility and your brother found and fixed me, so I help him out with things.” She lowered her voice to a confidential tone. “Your brother and I are also exclusive lovers, and if you hear anything about him and some other girl, you should tell him off.”

“Uh. Okay. Don’t know how the lover thing works.” she glanced at DOG. “Don’t want to know. Weird to meet you, AEGIS,” Lia said, shaking invisible hands with the air while looking at me for help.

“AEGIS, despite being an AI, has some strange ideas about appropriate conduct and tries to sexually harass your brother constantly,” I explained. “We are not and have never been lovers.”

“Hey. Not tries. Succeeds,” AEGIS said.

“Are we still doing that joke?”

“It gets funnier the more I say it.”

“Anyway, even if she’s kind of an idiot, AEGIS is actually amazingly competent. Would you be so kind as to patch up my sister? She had an encounter with a bear.”

AEGIS’ eyes went wide. “I knew it,” she whispered.

“Are you sure–” Lia looked like she was ready to run all the way back to Las Vegas.

“It’s fine, I promise,” I said, gesturing for Lia to sit down. “Like I said, it’s a little crazy here but everyone is a really good person, I promise.”

“I…sure hope so,” Lia said as she laid on the bed and the red light on one of the surgical robots came to life.