I had to buy my own ticket to Albuquerque, since this wasn't official XPCA business, with Jack's reassurance he'd pay me back. In the interest of saving him a few bucks, I was packed into economy for the three-hour flight, and so I was just getting feeling back into my knees by the time I made it from the VTOL to the loading zone in front of the airport.

I hardly had time to check my holo and confirm the time when a burgundy sedan rolled up in front of me and the window lowered to reveal a pair of green eyes and a dazzling smile.

"Need a lift?" Karu said.

"Even if I didn't, I don't think I'd be able to resist jumping in a car with you." I threw my bag into the backseat and sat down next to her and buckled in. That last step was a critical one, because Karu typically had a driver for city traffic, meaning the only times she found herself behind a wheel were in warzones or the like. And she certainly drove like it.

So I braced and waited for her to tear into traffic, but instead, we continued to sit like a rock at the side of a river.

She cocked her head at me when I finally turned questioningly towards her. "Oh, did you think this ride was free?" she asked, and pointed at her lips.

"Karu, I'm living with AEGIS."

"And are you dating exclusively?"

"I mean...no, but…"

"Then you can spare a kiss."

I sighed but relented. It was hardly the worst torture in the world, and she seemed incredibly happy with it. And then, without warning, we lurched off, tearing between two cars and crossing three lanes.

"Holy shit, we're gonna shoot off into traffic and die," I muttered.

"What? This? Hardly. This vehicle only has around a hundred seventy-five horsepower. We will hardly be 'shooting off' anywhere. Regrettable, as I prefer a bit more oomph under my control, as it were, but a rental car is what it is."

Even as she spoke, the RPG gauge jumped upwards repeatedly as the medium sedan raced through opening after opening in the traffic in front of us making me think of nothing quite so much as how Karu's jetpack let her rocket off and switch directions constantly. I supposed, compared to the Gs she was accustomed to, the car probably did feel sluggish to her.

Still, it was enough to throw me around in my seat and very much make me wish I was back in the safety of the metal VTOL...if we were going to fly anyway, I'd very much prefer doing so in the air where there was less to hit.

"So how is AEGIS?" Karu asked with a light, conversational tone.

"She's...Jesus, Karu! Left. Left!"

"I saw it already, calm yourself. By your response, you would think this is the first time I am behind the wheel, as it were."

"If a shriveled, grey-haired man emerges from the passenger-side of your car when we arrive, that's me, just so you know."

"So. AEGIS?"

"Can't you focus on driving?"

"I am giving exactly enough focus to the road as is necessary. Continue."

"She's the same as ever. Crashing almost every day, reassuring me that she's got things under control, and wasting time pampering me instead of--Karu!"

"He was hardly in the crosswalk. Continue."

"For fuck's sake--"

"You realize that your criticism of my driving is more distracting than anything else?"

"Look, I'm not asking much just…" I glanced at the speedometer. "...just like, twenty MPH less."

If anything, the car accelerated in response to my reasonable request.

"Not that it is my business, but perhaps AEGIS is 'wasting time' on you because it is her preference to do so?"

"Even if it is, I'd rather her be better than happy. We have all the time in the world to be happy after she fixes herself. I just don't get it."

"Have you considered the possibility she enjoys being defective?"

I looked at Karu. Her eyes darted back and forth faster than I felt mine could ever move, blinking rapidly as she processed all the cars and road flashing by around us.

"Why the heck would she want to be defective?" I asked, realizing she wasn't even remotely joking.

"Because it is almost certainly the surest route to ensnaring you."

"Ensnaring? Me?"

She sighed softly in a way which didn't reach her roving eyes or hands locked on the wheel. "Would you have moved in with her had she not been suffering from this computer virus? Would you have put up with half of the pampering you currently endure?"

"No...I guess not…"

"So the outcome is confirmed. The question remaining is if those were truly her means.

I sat there feeling vaguely dirty and used for a minute, distracted even from the road whipping past us. "Do you think she is doing this on purpose?" I asked.

Karu shot me a sidelong glance for a fraction of a second, but took another several before responding. "Honestly, I do not. She is certainly capable of formulating such a plan, but I do not believe she would be satisfied with using such extreme means upon you. Perhaps this is merely wishful thinking, however. I have some trouble believing her at face value at the best of times."

"You do? You guys seem...on the same wavelength whenever you're together."

"That is often helped along by your bumbling incompetence."

"Gee, thanks."

"I was being serious. When it comes to you, and personal interaction, we are often in the same boat, as it were. We are peers...friends even, I might speculate, and I do wish her the best in her endeavors." Her brow furrowed slightly. "But that does not change the fact that she is an AI, a foreign entity, and therefore cannot be counted upon to behave in a rational, human manner."

"So...basically, you're prejudiced against AI."

"If you wish to call it that. I prefer to think of it more as a paranoia than prejudice, and in my line of work, the question is not whether one is paranoid, but rather if one is paranoid enough."

"Boy does that sound crazy and unhealthy."

"Does it? I had figured having a similar occupation and surviving this long, you would have drawn the same conclusion by now. I am again simultaneously impressed by your capacity for optimism and mortified by your lack of self-preservation. Have you not taken my teachings to heart, I wonder?"

"I have. But that doesn't mean I have to assume every Exhuman I meet is about to kill a city full of people, or that anything which isn't human is incapable of thinking like one."

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She smiled smugly. "Humans are also fully capable of being incapable of thinking like one. I do not draw the line at AI, as it were."

"You are paranoid."

"An occupational hazard."

I sighed. "So if she isn't deliberately keeping herself broken, why do you think she's wasting so much time doing stupid things like learning to cook, making the bed, cleaning the house, and stuff?"

Again Karu's brow furrowed and she stole a glance at me, before throwing the glance at the side-view mirror, and then lurching the vehicle sideways.

"I always find myself thinking you must be speaking in traps when you ask a question such as this before I remind myself that you are, to my knowledge, not a liar or devious, and are rather simply sometimes an idiot."

"You really can spare me the insults, I don't mind."

"And yet you ask questions befitting a moron. Is the answer not utterly apparent?"

"If it were, I would certainly not be bothering with all this shit-talking I seem to have brought on."

"She likes it, you nitwit. Caring for you makes her feel happiness, or whatever analogue exists within her cybernetic heart."

"...Oh."

"It may be that she has realized she is incapable of defeating her cyber-attacker, and rather than devoting all of her time towards drawing out a losing battle, she has decided to spend her remaining days with you as best she is able. Those facing impending death often react very unpredictably. Perhaps she sees this the same way."

"That's a pretty...cold analysis of your friend potentially dying there, Karu."

"Would you prefer me march over to her, demand she take better care of herself, and elicit a sobbing hug? I apologize, but I am not that kind of person. While I obviously prefer people to take care of themselves, far be it for me to determine on another's behalf what is best for them. Doubly so, if that person's time remaining is limited." She raised an eyebrow at the road in front of us. "I suppose this line of logic does not resonate with you?"

"I mean...what you said makes sense, sure, but...bus, Karu. Bus. Bus. Bus. Bus. Jesus. Uh, makes sense but like I said before, if she can just be miserable for a while and fix her shit, then she'd have the rest of her life to be happy afterwards. I wish I could make her just buckle down and work on it," I finished a little bitterly.

"And what if, by her estimation, she cannot simple 'buckle down', as it were, and fix her problem? If your solution condemns her to a life of misery and then ultimately death, with failure as her only companion?"

"I...I mean...that sucks...but she still has to try, doesn't she?"

Karu sighed and shook her head minutely again. "For her sake, I am glad this is one situation where you cannot try to fix everything for her, as you have attempted so many times in the past. You are intolerable as ever."

"There actually is...some connection between the XPCA and her virus, we think."

"Oh. So all you must do is destroy every computer on Earth which has ever had a connection to the XPCA. Simple."

"Yeah," I sighed. "I was going to, but the girls pointed out that even if I did somehow manage that, there was still the option that the program could be running on a satellite somewhere."

"Incredible that it takes leaving the very planet before you will finally agree not to commit to a course of action."

We drove on out of the city and into the vast open of the New Mexico desert. What seemed like just another city slowly gave way to an endless expanse of sand, pocked with scrubby bushes every few feet and yielding to monuments of stone, jutting from the ground like ancient red half-melted sandcastles, built on the shore of an ocean which never was.

We rode on in silence for a long while, and the empty vastness of the space crept into my mind. Despite how fast Karu was pushing the poor rental car, the looming mountains seemed to move hardly at all. While sometimes in D.C., I felt like there were entirely too many people in the world, out here it felt like there was hardly a soul alive.

I'm not sure what that thought meant for the placement of New Eden out here, exactly. There were hardly any Exhumans compared to humans? I'd read somewhere that, despite their seeming commonality, Exhumans were less than one in a million. I guess I was just lucky like that.

In practice, I knew that the camp was put up here for the same reason Indian reservations were, hundreds of years ago. It was a crap piece of land that nobody else wanted, so we shoved people we didn't want onto it and effectively got rid of both at the same time. Shitty way of doing things, but it wasn't like anyone was going to take desirable land they had already developed and lived on and volunteer to give it up to house a bunch of Exhumans.

No, I sighed. We weren't worth that.

It wasn't until evening began painting the sky with purple hues that the lights of New Eden crept up on the horizon. It was small for what amounted to an entire small town, built densely and tall so that it could be walled in easier, with towers at even distances along the perimeter giving the definite impression of a prison, despite the XPCA's claims.

I'd never been out here in person. I'd seen lots of pictures of the place, both in technical diagrams and in holos showing smiling Exhumans 'beginning a new life in a New Eden', but neither of them seemed to capture the impression of the place I was getting now on actual approach.

It was so...grey. From out here, I couldn't see anything but walls and lights. Dragging Exhumans out of the dark and surrounding them with walls. This was what I'd been working hard for, and seeing it at last, I couldn't help but sigh and frown.

It definitely wasn't a normal city.

"First time seeing New Eden, I assume?" Karu asked.

"Yeah."

"I have been once before, during its early days. I was...impressed by the cooperative nature of its inhabitants. It truly did seem to me that they were innocents who wished only to live in peace, and for giving them a place to do so, I commend you."

"Thanks," I said, hoping Karu was right. I just couldn't shake the way the guards on the walls all seemed to be looking in rather than out for threats. "It just looks like a prison to me."

"Does it? It looks like a military base to me, and I have been to plenty of both. It evokes to me images of an austere, honest lifestyle. There is a noticeable absence of barbed wire to be a prison."

Which was funny of her to say, because there still was barbed wire on the walls. Just not as much as a prison, I guess.

"I think you may be projecting your own experiences a little," I said. "I don't think austere and honest is what most Exhumans were going for when they volunteered for relocation." I paused to think a moment. "Hey, is it possible that right now, you're being more of an optimist than me?"

She laughed. "I suppose that is a possibility."

"I wish I'd kept track of your insults better. Foolish, naive nitwit, or something is what I get called when I talk optimistically about something like this."

"Ah, you misunderstand. It is not the optimism which makes you a foolish naive nitwit, it is your foolish nitwit-like naivety. I am happy to have the opportunity to clear this up for you."

I rolled my eyes at her even as we rolled to a stop at a gatehouse in front of a large parking lot.

"State the nature of your visit," said the bored-looking trooper from under his black fatigue cap.

Karu looked to me. "Visiting a friend," I said, leaning over her.

"Name?"

"Uh, Steffie. Uh. Stefanie Jorgensen."

"Her name is?" said the soldier, pointing a pen at Karu.

"No, she's K...Karen."

The guard sighed like we also did this a hundred times a day and were doing it wrong deliberately to annoy him. "Your names?"

"Karen Irenside, Athan Ashton," Karu answered.

"Thank you. Any controlled substances, firearms, explosives, subversive propaganda, or anything of that nature in the vehicle?"

"Yes. One scattergun, one shotgun with solid, buckshot, and less-lethal cartridges, two semi-automatic ninety-calibers, a grenade launcher and forty rounds compliant with XPCA extraordinary munitions policy, one AT-cannon, eight fragmentation mines, and ninety-six micro-missiles, split between concussive, fragmentation, and extraordinary munitions. And a modified airborne armor and jump-pack."

As her list grew ever-longer, the guard moved from bemusement to open worry, and apparently finally landed somewhere in denial.

"Ma'am, this is a military facility. This is not the place for jokes."

She held up something small and plastic-looking between two fingers that I thought was a credit chit, but was apparently an ID of some kind. He looked at it, and then her, and then it again.

"You're visiting?" he asked, dumbfounded. "You, a hunter?"

"He is," Karu answered. "I am here to ensure he does not get into trouble."

"Ma'am...Miss hunter, this is a secure facility. You are not permitted to bring weapons in. Nothing will happen to your friend."

Karu just smiled and took back her license. "Officially-licensed XPCA-authorized hunters have the authority to bring arms and armaments into secure areas as though we were XPCA entering an active engagement. Please make whatever calls you deem necessary, we can wait."

He shook his head and did in fact make a call, but after a couple minutes of explaining the situation, simply waved us into the parking lot without a word, the grid of lasers in front of the rental car vanishing silently.

"You know...this is just a visit," I said while she maneuvered the car to rest.

"As I mentioned before, Ashton, it is a mark of my line of business to be paranoid. And as far as I am concerned, when it comes to you, nothing is ever just what it seems. Trouble has a way of finding Exhumans, and within those walls, there are over three-hundred of them. Should trouble arise, I would prefer to be too prepared, than not-prepared-enough."

I shook my head. Nothing was going to happen. We were just going to look into Steffie's well-being and bounce. I had AEGIS back home to take care of, and despite my reservations about him, Soran hadn't done anything overt in the entire month he'd been monitored. What were the odds he'd be doing something on the one day I was here?

Karu shook her head like she could see my thoughts. "Well, one thing is for certain," she said. "You have won back your crown of optimistic, foolish, naive nitwit."