Athan had told me AEGIS rebooted and then just sort of abruptly ended the call. I loved my brother, but damn if he couldn't be an inconsiderate dumbbutt sometimes. Now I had nothing to do but worry and pace around while worrying, until their date was over and AEGIS came home.

Assuming she did, of course. If things went really well...or really poorly, I guess, she might not even be back tonight. And I doubted Athan would consider this and give me a call. Made me want to pull my hair out a little.

I was in the penthouse suite of a reasonably fancy hotel, which we'd booked for the next couple of days with the intent of throwing a Christmas party in here. We didn't have enough people to book a ballroom or anything, and this suite was actually pretty freaking huge, so it'd suffice for our needs. I was busying myself with decorations, allegedly, and was having a pretty decent time of it before that call.

Now the sprigs of holly and adorable little poinsettias seemed so pointless and vain. AEGIS was in trouble out there, potentially, and I was stuck at home like a worried mother. For a while I tried to work anyway, but I wasn't AEGIS, I didn't revel in throwing myself into mindless work, stress just made it harder for me to focus.

With a defeated sigh, I gave up on the garland I'd been torturing in my hands instead of hanging up, grabbed a wreath, and hung it on the door as I left. Maybe food would help. There was a little place on the ground floor.

When I arrived, the host asked if I wanted to sit at the bar, and I realized I might be in trouble. I gave him my room number and fake ID, and sat down to a nutritionally-balanced meal of a double vodka and the nebulous promise of a pork tips sandwich whenever that was ready.

I slammed the first double and then took out my mobile so I'd have something to do other than pulverize my liver. I hadn't been on Kingdom Blades in a while, the whole Exhuman experiencing having soured it for me some, but without much else to do, I booted it up.

First thing I saw was a few dozen requests and messages from people in my clan. I tapped through most of them, sending off some of my characters to assist people I was pretty close with, and replying to a message or two, feeling reasonably welcomed and missed as I dug through my queue.

Finally, I got to the last message, sent last night by AEGIS. A note and a gift.

> hey gurl

> plan is for me to be with your bro all day tmr so try not to miss me too much found these wizard boots last time i ran 5T from the set i know you were looking for

> when i get back lets do some LW runs!

> all my love, sexibot

> ps thx for all your help with athan and planning i dunno that i could do it without you, sometimes seems like he and karu would just be so much happier with each other but then you root for me anyway dunno what i did to deserve a friend like you but thx for everything

I opened the present and it was the boots she'd mentioned. Actually a really rare and valuable piece of gear, and I know she had a wizard who could use them, but she was giving them to me anyway. It was a really nice gesture, but I didn't appreciate it half as much as her postscript.

"Another drink miss?" the bartender asked, picking up my used glass.

"No, I'm done drinking tonight, thanks," I said.

And just as fast as my feelings had turned around the first time, they turned around on me again, and I felt stupid for worrying. Athan might be a dummy, but AEGIS was careful and competent, a meticulous planner and if she was determined to do something, she'd do it. If she wasn't asking me for help, she didn't need it, and it wouldn't do any good to sit here worrying about her, or worse, getting myself wasted so she had even more to worry about.

I'd get my food, I'd eat it, and I'd go hang up some freaking Christmas lights. AEGIS would come home whenever she came home and we'd talk until way later than I should go to bed. That was the game plan, and I was gonna stick to it.

And...I did. The sandwich was alright. The couple shots I had in me seemed to help me worry a lot less, though another couple more would definitely help, but by the time I finished putting lights and garlands around the walls, I was singing Christmas carols obnoxiously.

"Wow, is someone killing a cat in here?" I heard over my own din from behind.

"AEGIS!" I turned and ran at her, throwing myself at her in a full-bodied hug that staggered her a couple of steps.

"Hey girl. What's with the waterworks? Singing so bad it's making you cry?"

"Shut up. I was worried, okay? Stop being a dick."

She smiled earnestly and held me as long as I wanted. She was so warm and soft, I never wanted to let her go. She smelled good too. I'd asked about that once, and she said she had no idea, she couldn't smell. Just components from her synthetic skin might have a rubbery or sickly-sweet effusion. She'd actually been surprised she had a smell, it wasn't something she'd ever considered. She was happy it smelled nice though.

After a minute of making an embarrassment of myself, I forced us apart and put a smile on. "So! How'd it go!" I asked. Her stupid grin told me everything I needed to know even before she gave me the blow-by-blow of how very nearly every single part of the plan almost failed, but in the end, everything had worked out. She likened it to driving an old tractor which threatened to fall apart but still plowed the field successfully at the end of the day, and I had to wonder just how many tractors this girl drove to come up with that kind of metaphor. But more importantly…

"So, did your fields get plowed, at the end of the day?" I asked, with a shit-eating grin.

"Okay, this was definitely a bad metaphor," she said with a grin to match my own.

I fell onto one of the several couches of the suite and put on my best serious detective face, stroking an imaginary beard. "Someone's blushing and dodging the question."

"Just...just a little. After...I guess when we got to dinner, Athan suddenly seemed a lot more into it than the rest of the day. Not like he was miserable-looking all day or anything, but it felt like...like he was trying not to smile, or be happy. Frustrating as fuck. I dunno why he'd do that."

"Because he's an idiot, probably."

"Well, if we agree on that, we're probably right. But at dinner, something changed, and he just seemed a lot more committed, like instead of just being dragged around, he was taking it seriously. I dunno how specifically to describe it, but fuck if it didn't get me all tingly and bothered."

I couldn't not giggle, blushing, despite my brother being part of this equation.

"Sometimes, he's just the biggest dumbass in the world, and I just look at him and go, what the hell, why'd I have to fall for this monster of an idiot. But then sometimes, he's just so...confident. So there, you know? Like he'd claim he'll fight the whole world for you, and fuck, you know, he fucking would. And he's not stupid, he's just oblivious, some of the things he says or thinks...there's so much passion in him. Just gets me...uh...wet as hell."

"Yeah, I don't exactly relate."

"Anyway. So...when we...finished dinner...I took another pass at him, asked him if it would be too silly to get two hotel rooms in a day...and to my total surprise, he went with it. Nothing more serious than what we've done before, but I made sure he had a nice time, and I practically had to carry him home, he was so spent--"

"AEGIS, ew!" I laughed.

"You think that's ew? I need to take a shower. I think I still have some stuff in my hair. And definitely in betwee--"

"Ew! Ew! Ew!" I was still laughing even as I got up and covered my ears to get out of the conversation. I was glad they were having fun, but as someone who visualized everything that came to mind, this conversation was rapidly veering out of control.

It got a smile out of AEGIS though, who settled for the sympathetic smile instead of torturing me. Once I'd made sure the danger was gone, I came back and faced her squarely.

"So tell me about the crash," I said.

She frowned. "I don't know. Diagnostics take up most of my system resources so I was going to leave them for tonight."

"Athan didn't do anything or anything?"

"No, we argued a bit but things didn't really get heated, and I crashed after that anyway. I don't know, and won't until I see what's up."

It sounded earnest and plausible but I knew this girl way too well. Something was unsaid. Maybe it was just normal fear. I recognized too well the mask she was putting on, saying everything is okay when you suspect it isn't. If she had anything concrete, she'd tell me, probably, or I might be able to read it off her. But instead, she just had scary, vague guesses.

Stolen novel; please report.

I decided to push my luck. An aggressive attack now when we were just so relaxed together would have a lot of shock value which might get a response out of her. AEGIS was also pretty servile by nature, and couldn't really stand up to a strong demand by someone she liked.

Trick was to get the info from her before she stopped liking me.

"AEGIS don't bullshit me."

"What?"

"I'm not stupid enough to fall for that garbage. Now tell me what's really got you worried."

She bit her lip and immediately moved to play with her hair. Reluctance and stress. Eyes looking involuntarily around the room, avoiding me. Wanted to end this by escaping somehow.

I closed the distance on us and put my hand on her shoulder. Break physical contact barrier, invade personal space, cut off escape. I even chose the side with the pigtail she was stroking, pushing that comfort out of her grasp. I needed her to be more uneasy than reluctant.

"Hey, who's to say I didn't say already?" she laughed. Nervous laugh. Trying to diffuse the situation.

"I'm not an idiot. Just tell me AEGIS, you know it's better if we're all working on the same page."

Maintain authority, but build compassion. Put pressure on that human instinct to want to come clean. If I had an inkling of the truth, I'd dangle it in front of her now, but I had nothing. This was all on her to give up or not.

"It's really okay, Lia. I'll just run the diagnostics and see what shakes out. We can talk about it then."

Soft no just means yes.

"Okay. I was just...really worried about you. I got this phone call, and then Athan just hung up, and I couldn't stop crying just thinking about you."

Kick up the guilt. I left out the bar because that would give her some indignation to stand on. Fake a retreat to encourage a pursuit.

"Oh, Lia, I'm so sorry."

And bingo.

"Look, it's really nothing. I'm just...it's a little worrying that it doesn't seem like it's a hardware failure. Rua didn't crash, I did. I don't know why, but that means there's something wrong with my code somewhere. I've got backups of course, but they're not much good except to see what's changed, since I'm not going to go restoring older versions of myself unless I have to."

"But you've never crashed like this before? How could it be your code?"

"I don't know. Could be anything. Probably just a bizarre complication of small things, like coming down from an argument while worrying about trying to feed Athan while standing in the cold or something, I don't know. But I'll have a look and figure it out, so don't worry, okay?"

"Okay. Let me know if I can do anything."

"Sure will. Now I'm gonna go find that shower if you don't mind."

I let her go. She gave me a wan smile and left for the larger of the two bathrooms.

'Don't worry', she'd said, but it sounded like there was plenty to worry about. Still, I trusted AEGIS absolutely, and she was both aware of her problem and looking into it seriously, and there wasn't much more I could do than that, but from the sound of it, it was possible she could crash like this again.

I flopped down on the couch, upside-down, with my toes kneading the air over the back and my head inches from the ground.

She hadn't needed a reboot to come back. It wasn't a total system failure, just something had failed. But like AEGIS had said, that could be anything, from something she was thinking or trying, or a combination of events.

To be safe, I pulled out the transfer core I had gotten from AEGIS and plugged it into my mobile. I made an image copy to send it over to Athan with instructions on how to make a copy.

Before I did, I had a thought and deleted my message and started up a few other programs I usually used for 'work'. This boot driver was a very low-level interface with AEGIS' most fundamental code, I couldn't just send it out carelessly.

I encrypted the sea lion out of the driver image and put it on a virtual host which would only accept a direct connection from Athan's holo, and would only allow him to stream it directly onto another transfer core without saving it locally, to be decrypted only after the entire transfer was complete. After that, the image I put up would zero itself out.

It wasn't flawless, and if Athan wanted to and had the right software, he could capture the image on his holo without too much trouble, though it'd still be encrypted. It wasn't like I was typically in the business of keeping data out of the hands of people I was sending it to, but it might be a disaster if he left his holo lying around and the XPCA decided to go through it or something.

In all likelihood, I was just being paranoid and stupid, outsmarting myself again, like when I'd tried to break Saga's compel, but this time there was no downside to it, so what the hell. I realized at some point the shower had stopped and AEGIS had walked past me, probably saw me working and left me alone, or maybe was mad I'd pulled her secrets out of her and was avoiding me. I hoped it was the former and finished up what I was doing.

Finally satisfied with the mess I'd made and hoping it would never even be touched or looked at, I double-checked all my work, my toes curling and uncurling in the air, and then sent the file off.

Good waste of an hour. It was way too late, and I wasn't putting up any more damn decorations today. I wanted to go talk to AEGIS more about the date, but was also tired. If I didn't sleep now, I'd regret it tomorrow when I would be putting up decorations AND sleepy.

But hell, that was future Lia's problem. I went to the little study area which I think served as another bedroom if guests wanted more than one, and found AEGIS sitting at a desk with her mobile and a desktop terminal and the wall holo all plugged into her.

She was also 'open', which always kind of freaked me out. Her front casing on her chest was sitting on the floor next to her, like a bloodless, dismembered torso. Instead of soft skin and perky breasts, there was a hole in her, filled with machinery which moved constantly, even while she was still, cycling air and coolant and pressurized gels and oils through her like blood. So many parts with so many purposes, all so tiny and precise.

I guess humans were the same way. All of our guts had their own specific purpose. Ours were just a lot messier to look at after you opened us up.

"Hey. Need another device?" I asked, holding up my mobile as means of greeting.

"No, I'm good. Sorry to leave my tits just hanging out on the floor like this," she grinned.

"At least you're wearing shorts. The first time I came in and you were open and naked, that was two shocks I didn't need at the same time."

"Funny, open and naked I think is just how your brother--"

"Okay! Not listening!" I said, humming defiantly with my fingers in my ears. She was laughing, I think, so I let my guard down. "But seriously, how's it going?"

"It's going weird. I don't want to get into the specifics because they'll bore you and you won't understand, but the broad strokes are, my code changes constantly as I learn things and pick up new memories which make an impact on me. Not much, but a little. I can also change it myself if I feel the need, but I never do that."

She looked at me seriously, which had extra weight considering the machinery exposed under her chin. "But it looks like the code has been changing a lot more recently, and I don't know why. It might be a natural response to a new type of stimulus, or I might just be unnaturally excited the last few days. Not to make you cover your ears again, but I do find your brother very exciting in a lot of ways."

"But you've always crushed on him."

"Right. Which is why I'm skeptical. Our relationship hasn't changed that much, so I'm skeptical my code would. But I don't know what else would be causing it."

I looked closely at the holos and saw nothing but thousands of lines of text flying past. For all the meaning I could get from them, I may as well be deciphering hieroglyphics.

"Is there any pattern to the changes?" I asked. It's the first thing I would look for if it wasn't in gobbledygook.

"I haven't really checked. I'm just kind of overwhelmed by the fact that I'm sitting here changing so much, even right now. A lot of it seems to be in alert and security protocols, which is stuff I absolutely don't touch, if I'm in a panic situation I don't want to be thinking any differently than I usually do, and rewriting security is just asking for a potential breach."

"A breach?" I asked, sitting next to her.

"Yeah. Well, I was designed to be running a lot of important stuff, so it only makes sense that I'd have a lot of security to keep myself safe from cyber-attacks. I'm a software like any other, y'know? My mom did a really good job with it though, I thought, pretty damn good code considering how old it is. But now it's changing and I don't know why."

"Uh," I felt panic bubbling up inside me and tried to keep my voice calm. "AEGIS? Code changing itself. Opening new security vulnerabilities. Are...you sure...you don't already have a virus?"

"No," she sighed, frustrated. "I'm not. That's kind of the unspoken fear right now. If I do, I can't very well go to the 'net and update my virus definitions. I don't run on anything resembling a conventional OS, which means...if I do have a virus, it was written specifically to target me."

How she could sound so calm about all of this, I had no idea. I knew panic wouldn't help the situation, but it was a very real possibility at this moment that AEGIS as I knew her was being corrupted from the inside-out.

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"I don't know. The smart option would be to roll back to an earlier version of me before I was infected."

"So do it."

"I would, but…" she sighed. "It's like everything that happened to me in the last few days would have never happened. If it were some of those years I was just sitting in the dirt, I could do it in a heartbeat. But these few days...tonight especially...and being with you all in Eryendria, that was one of the coolest experiences of a lifetime. I could--and would--save the memories for me to watch and relive but...it's not the same, you know? It'd be like watching a different version of myself do all these cool things, while I just saw it on the holo."

"But...you might die, or worse, if you have a virus."

"Yeah."

"I don't see how that's a better alternative to losing a few memories, even if they were good ones."

"Yeah, I know."

I wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know, so I shut up. She reached over and squeezed my hand gently.

"I think, before then, I'm going to take a crack at rewriting myself, seriously. I haven't done it, and I'm a little scared, but if it's a virus, that means it's somewhere in there, and if I can wipe it out, it can't wipe me out. I'm not like a human, it's not multiplying inside me, it's just one piece of code running that I need to find and kill."

"Isn't that really dangerous?"

"Maybe a bit. But I think I have two huge advantages in my favor."

"And what are they?"

"Well, one, a virus usually only succeeds because the user has to go through their computer to fight it. Users are slow and viruses are fast, and so it winds up being the user versus their own infected computer. That doesn't apply to me. If this thing is gonna beat me, it needs to be better and faster at shutting me down than I am at shutting it down."

"That is kind of reassuring. I've seen you code, you look like you're just writing a dictionary from memory when you are."

"Damn straight I do."

"And what's the second huge advantage?"

"I have something worth fighting for. These precious memories, I don't want to let them go. I will kick this virus' fucking ass before I let it take them from me, no matter what."