It took me three tries to get the key right for the lock, but we'd only moved in less than a week ago so I guess that was to be expected. At least the mailbox key looked different from the others, but why'd the rest all have to look so dang similar?

Down the hallway in front of me, a head popped out around the corner, adorned with a broad smile, long copper pigtails swaying as she peeked out. "Welcome home sweetie," AEGIS said.

"Sweetie?" I asked, feeling a wry smile creeping onto my face. She stuck out her tongue at me, but that didn't stop her from intercepting me in the hallway and stealing a kiss anyway.

"Would you prefer honey? Babe? Cutie-patootie?"

"How about something reflecting my awesome manly prowess. Like...Chariot, the Bear-Slayer?"

"Oh please. You're like, bear-inconveniencer at best."

"I killed a bear!"

"Yeah, one Saga messed with. Wasn't a fair fight. If I put tomatoes on your salad are you going to eat around them again?"

"Yes. And she--"

"You need to eat more veggies. Life isn't just all carbs and meat, Athan."

"Well, ever since you took over my life, I think I've been eating tons of veggies."

"Haven't you, though?" she said looking hugely pleased with herself. I hadn't intended it as a compliment but she certainly took it that way. "How was your Exhuman friend?"

"A pain in the ass. I don't like fighting shape-shifters. I kept swinging at him and he just kept having his body be shaped just so, where I'd cleave right past him."

"Nobody got hurt?"

"Jack got some barbs in his leg, and Tem caught one with the side of her face, but pretty superficial overall."

"It hurt!" Tem's voice added from behind me. We both carried on like we hadn't heard.

As we talked, she moved the last few dishes to the small table we had in the tiny living space surrounded by machines in the main room of the apartment. I sat down, and she pushed my chair in for me, like I couldn't do it myself.

"And how are you? Is Lia still here?" I asked.

"She left a bit before you got in. And I'm fine. Didn't crash today."

"That's good."

I hadn't planned for us to come together like this, but AEGIS' crashing had become more and more frequent. It seemed almost daily now, she'd seize up, get a startled look on her face, and then collapse. It's not like a hospital or anything would do her any good, so one of us had to stay with her pretty much all the time to keep her up.

Obviously, Lia wasn't booking a hotel room for perpetuity, so we got a small apartment and AEGIS spent her alone time in here, going out when one of us could keep an eye on her, but otherwise staying in, where if she crashed, she wouldn't get hit by a bus or carted off to a morgue or anything. I stayed here most of the time, and Lia came by when I couldn't be.

She took it with good humor, saying she was crashing just for the attention, to get me spending more time with her. The apartment certainly seemed to magically fill itself up with a bunch of incomprehensible machinery and techno-crap whenever I wasn't looking, and despite the severity of the situation, she maintained an optimism I found impossible not to return.

So...without us ever even officially dating, somehow we'd skipped right past a whole bunch of steps and here I was coming home from work to a beautiful woman making me dinner. I slept here too, most nights, in the interest of being there if she needed me...but she was so shameless she hadn't even taken a day to begin sneaking into my bed and cuddling me all night. Or worse. Or better?

It was hard to tell how I felt about everything, honestly. Sitting here at the table while she watched me with her excited, shockingly-yellow eyes, catching every detail and reaction I had to sampling her food, it was impossible not to feel lucky. In the entire time since she'd dated me without my consent, she had not yet let up on being as accommodating and convenient as possible, doing her damndest to anticipate and fulfill my every need.

And say what you would about her, AEGIS' damndest was a hell of a thing. The girl was tenacious and sharp like none other.

But on the other hand, it all felt artificial to me. I loved her, I really did, but my main concern here was protecting and caring for her. She was like an old woman who flirted shamelessly with the nurse at the hospital...not because I didn't like her or find her attractive or interesting...it just...wasn't possible for me to look at her and not see her as a victim, as someone I had to save.

I'd only mentioned that once, because afterwards, AEGIS had been completely livid, enough to forgo sleeping with me that night, even.

"I'm not sick, I'm not dying, I've got a bug, that's all!" she had screamed at me. "I'm not helpless, and I don't need your fucking pity! If that's the only reason you're here, then you may as well leave, asshole."

Of course I didn't. But yeah, never brought that up again.

I reached for the bottle of soy sauce but my hand froze when I saw a look of stifled shock cross AEGIS' face. I stood up, sending the chair behind me sliding into a machine of some kind.

"Ah...hah...sorry…" she said, trailing off as her eyes unfocused. She fell forward, limp, and it was all I could do to keep her face from slamming into the table. Swearing, I dug through her hair until I found the cable with a right data jack and jammed the boot drive into it. The light on it flickered a few moments, and then she sat up again and sighed.

"Damn, almost made it all day," she muttered, like she was disappointed in herself.

"It's not your fault." I squeezed her hand reassuringly.

She looked at me and smiled. "That's BS, Athan, and you know it. Whoever's hacking me, they've got my number. If I were better, I'd have beat them by now."

"That's their fault, not yours."

"It's my fault I'm not better than them. Sit down, your dinner's getting cold. You haven't tried the okonomiyaki. It's got cod in it!"

I sat down opposite her again but didn't touch my food. Her smile fell off as though she knew what I was thinking.

"AEGIS, I think we should talk about using the backup again."

She shook her head violently. "And lose the last two months of memories? The best two months of my life? You're crazy."

"I'm not going anywhere. There will be another two months, and another two after that. The sooner you roll back, the more time you'll have to make new memories, and the less time you'll lose."

She still shook her head. "Or I can just beat this thing and be fine and lose nothing."

"You're getting worse, not better. You're crashing more and more."

"And you're getting better at getting me back up! I was out for what, five seconds just now? That's hardly a blip."

"I don't want you to lose these months too, AEGIS, but I don't want you to live like this either. I don't want to live like this myself, either."

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Her eyes narrowed. "If you want to leave, you can. It's fine, you know."

"You know I didn't mean--"

"No, I understood. It's probably a huge pain in your ass to have to spend all your time out here looking after me. Tell me, Athan, if I fixed everything tonight and you didn't have to worry about me anymore, would you still stay here every night?"

"Uh. I don't know. Probably not? But I'm more--"

"So you are only here because you think I need taking care of."

"I didn't say that," I said. Somehow we'd gotten way off-track of the original conversation in record time. "Look, all I said was--"

"To wipe me out and replace me with a backup, I know."

We stared at each other for a few moments.

"I'm confused," I confessed. "I thought, in general, you were okay with creating and using copies of yourself. Heck, when you changed into Rua, you switched yourself off to let a copy take over completely. Why would...why would you phrase it as being wiped out and replaced?"

"You mean aside from the argument we were just having about losing memories?"

"Yes."

"Who I was a few months ago isn't me, Athan. When I moved into Rua, the me in question were only minutes apart from each other. We were the same person, and whichever of us was going to shut down knew that the other was still out there, doing exactly what they'd do in every situation, acting as their agent perfectly in all cases."

She pushed her glasses up her nose, making the familiar gesture looked irritated this time. "I've changed a lot in these months. The copy on that drive isn't me. If I die, everything I would do would go un-done. She'd have her own thoughts and decisions and behave completely differently than I would."

"She's you, just a little...younger."

"Really? You think she'd be making you dinner like this? You think she even knows how to cook any of this stuff? Or before you got home, all the work I was doing on myself against the virus, you think she has even a hundredth of the experience with my core systems that I do now?" She spread her arms at the apartment. "You think she'd know where this house even is? Or what half this stuff is in it? Every second of her day here would be different from mine. We're two different people who would do different things."

"And in two months, she might be just like you. You just have this head-start."

"And in those two months, I'll be someone else again. No, Athan. It's just not an option. I know it's a weird distinction for you...you just see one version of AEGIS or another, but to me, it's the same as dying and being replaced with a stranger. Or a sister maybe. Imagine if I thought you and Lia were interchangeable."

She stood up and walked behind me, draping her arms over me, resting one hand on my chest where the backup drive sat always in my pocket for safekeeping, in case she ever went down and couldn't be revived.

"I know you want to help, but don't ask me to die for it, okay? I cherish our memories together, but I also...I don't want to die, okay?"

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling the weight of her arms on me, but more the weight of her words.

"Let me try things my own way for as long as I have," she whispered sadly. "If I fail...you have the backup. Tell her to take care of you for me. Okay?"

"It won't come to that," I said.

"You're sweet, but you don't really get a say in this."

We put the seriousness behind us and ate and withdrew to the bedroom in a melancholy silence. I laid on my back on the bed and she curled up against me sideways, stroking her hair idly while neither of us spoke. I'd ruined the evening with my thoughtless words, and we were both lost to our thoughts.

My holo sounded, and she almost jumped.

"Uh, phone call," she said, laughing in surprise, stupidly.

"Yeah, I see that," I said and smiled. I brushed her cheek with the back of my hand gently before sitting up to take the call.

"Jack, what's up? How's the leg?" I asked.

"I am well enough. I cannot walk, holed up in the infirmary, but not severe enough to warrant a regenerator. Colonel Dawn suggested I take it easy and if something comes up, she will get me a tank before we deploy."

"So they don't want to pay for it unless they need you?" It was practical. And shitty.

"In essence, yes. In that vein, I have a request, if you are available. It is something I think you may find a personal interest in as well."

He explained a little redundantly how he'd been in contact with Steffie in New Eden, something we all knew and had even helped him with when we could, but apparently something had happened with her. She hadn't made their phone date as pre-arranged, which ordinarily he wouldn't make a big deal of, except that she'd been out-of-sorts recently, and all the dark rumors swirling around New Eden.

We'd heard of some kind of sickness spreading through the camp, and of mysterious disappearances, and it was one of the topics of constant, uninformed speculation on the news. The XPCA had been slow to care about the potential issue, until they began to realize that with New Eden an apparent failure, the rate of Exhumans turning themselves in was at an all-time low. That was why we'd been out fighting earlier today...higher incident of events than ever.

So with public opinion turning on them and resources being stretched thin, it looked like the XPCA was finally beginning to make New Eden a priority, at least by the statements they were making, but that still left the awkward interim period of right now, and if Steffie had gotten caught in something because of the XPCA's shitty turmoil, I'd have yet another reason to hate them.

That is, on top of the source of AEGIS' hacking possibly being within their walls, and Blackett allowing Soran to walk free in New Eden. I had my own speculation why Exhumans were rumored to be disappearing.

So yeah. Wasn't really a big fan of my job at the moment. If it weren't for being there for AEGIS, I was all ready to start looking for some new employment. Send out some resumes, bring the XPCA crashing down, that kind of thing.

I sighed and hung up. AEGIS' hearing was good enough that she didn't have to ask about anything we'd said, just looked at me funny.

"You're really miserable, aren't you?" she asked, after we laid there for another ten minutes in silence.

"Why would you say that?"

"Because you are." She rolled off of me and onto her elbows to look down at my face. "I know it's probably really frustrating to hear about even more XPCA incompetence and just do nothing about it, but Lia and I really appreciate it. We really do."

"I just want to...do something. Fix it. Fix you."

"I know."

"At the very least, I'll stop in and check on Steffie. That's all legal and stuff, so you can't deny me that, can you?"

She chewed her lip for a moment while she thought about it, which made me smile and kiss her, since that was a much better use of her lips.

"I guess if you're going to be like that," she sighed. "You can go. Don't get caught up in anything stupid out there, okay?"

"Like what? Catching the Exhuman disease? Joining the phantom New Eden Resistance? Chasing down Soran?"

"Yes. Exactly like all of those." She paused. "Why am I letting you go out there again? This is a terrible idea."

"I'll be fine. I've been good all these last few weeks, I know how to be good."

"Not to say you need a babysitter, but could you bring someone with you, just to be safe?"

"I'm going!" Tem's voice volunteered, which we ignored purely on instinct by now.

"Hmm, Jack can't, otherwise he wouldn't need me. Tower's an option," I said.

"Tower would just get you in more trouble."

"What?"

"He's got most of your same love of trouble, but without your smarts."

"So he's perfect for the trip."

"Yeah, no Tower," she sighed.

"Moon's got a good head on her?"

She laughed. "Right up until she decides she's facing down someone evil. Hmm. Why are all your colleagues so messed up? Why is my boy so messed up? What did I do to deserve all of you?"

I shrugged. She let the conversation die for a minute.

"I might regret this, but...I have an idea. But I'm not sure if she'll keep you out of trouble, or get you into more of it."

"Karu?" I asked, a little disbelieving.

"Yes." Her eyes narrowed. "No sex."

"Hey, last time--"

"No. Sex." Her eyes smouldered into mine.

So yeah. My current relationship status was a little...confused. It somehow felt like after the disaster at Christmas, both AEGIS and Karu had interpreted my non-decision as choosing them. This manifest differently in each girl. AEGIS and I were living a cutesy domestic life. Karu flew in at random, practically kidnapped and ravaged me, at her whim.

It was...volatile. And confusing. And making the whole situation worse was that, in many ways, Karu and AEGIS seemed to be very nearly best friends, often getting along better with each other than with me. I had no words to describe what kind of fucked-up love triangle I'd found myself in, and didn't think I could pick one without hurting not just my relationship with them, but also their relationship with each other.

Not that I thought I could pick one, but just on the off-chance I somehow grew a pair miraculously.

AEGIS had her holo out, sending a message to Karu with the details when she paused and I saw her think for a moment and then switch apps. The one she put up didn't say or show anything I understood, just a series of dots on a screen. The kind of interface she set up for stuff she'd be using herself, since she obviously already knew what it all meant.

"Oh. Uh oh," she said, and tapped around a bit to reveal a console with thousands of numbers streaming by.

"What? Something wrong with Karu?"

"No...haven't even gotten ahold of her yet. But um, this app...I made it for Steffie, for Jack, from you. You remember that?"

"Yeah," I said, remembering having seen it once. "It's supposed to track Soran within New Eden, right?"

"More specifically, it tracks the drones which track Soran."

"Okay. So what's 'uh oh'?"

She held the app up for me to see. One dot was green, Steffie. The other dots, the cluster of drones, were near her. So Soran was on top of her. And worse, the color of the dots, they were all blinking red.

"He's on her, and the drones lost him."