I was hardly back into civilization before my mobile began blowing up with messages. I couldn't exactly sit back and read while I was holding onto Lia's waist for dear life, so I just had to hold on and wonder who the heck was making my mobile go off in my pocket every few seconds as we rode out the last leg of the crawler ride.

It wasn't until we were transferring to a VTOL back to Vegas that I had a chance to see what was going on. To my surprise, I had one call from Tem, a couple from Tower, several from Jack, and one from Moon. Some had also sent messages and all of them had left voice, although Tem's was just a few seconds of heavy breathing, but Moon's summarized the situation most succinctly.

"Hello. I hope that is sufficient small talk to fulfill the social obligation in leaving a voice message. Cosette is wondering where you are and does not have your mobile number. You are not answering your work holo, and she is fairly livid. There is a situation and you are needed. By her, not by me. Please call her back so she stops harassing me."

Ever the charmer.

I watched Lia handling our boarding passes at the single counter in the tiny airport, basically the only thing in the place other than a small cafe and a glass room with security stations and winding barrier posts for a line which never existed.

I sighed heavily at the lack of distractions and turned to AEGIS, who was discreetly hiding her holo so that she could pass as luggage.

"Sounds like a mess," she whispered, the box speaking without the image lighting up.

"It does. I should probably call in now and see what's up."

"Well, don't worry about me, at least. I'll have plenty of data to catch up on, and then probably some research to make sense of it all, and then I'll need to get manufacturing back online for a body...not to mention whatever world events and technology I need to learn about from the last hundred years. I might be busy for...I dunno, two, three days?"

"That few?" I laughed.

"Well, I could spend a lot more on it, but honestly, I'm really eager to get this whole relationship thing jump-started. Actually making me a little jumpy. So I'll just jump through a primer and then I'll jump right in. Jumpity."

"Jumpity?"

"Yeah, I'll jump you," she giggled, and for a moment, her holo flickered on dimly to an image of her with some kind of grin I hardly noticed above her bending forward with her arms smushing together her modest cleavage.

"Are you trying to get me in trouble?" I hissed at her with all the irritation I could muster, which was not much, admittedly. "You're supposed to be luggage, and I'm supposed to be calling in to work."

She flickered back on again, still almost completely transparent, turned around and bent over, making her dress ride up just enough that I could barely not see under it.

Then, at max volume, she slapped herself on the backside with a smack that made Lia look around across the room.

"Bad AEGIS," she chided herself, back at a reasonable volume again and grinning at my reaction as much as she was blushing.

I muttered a few non-words before I succeeded in standing up and fumbling my mobile out of my pocket. "Put...that away...and I am...going to make my call," I said.

She cackled and disappeared as I wandered outside and held the phone to my ear, muttering impotent indignities about the crazy woman inside.

"Who is this? How did you get this number?" Cosette barked into my ear.

"It's me. Hiyas."

"Who's it's me, why are you calling my line directly? I'm very busy."

"It's Athan."

"Oh. Why is your number blocked? Is this your personal mobile? Why are you breathing so heavily, were you running? Never mind. Where are you? We have something big, and you need to get your ass away from wherever you are and back to Santa Fe."

"I'm at some tiny airport in Ontario. We have a charter flight to a real airpot and then out to Vegas. I'll be a few hours."

"Well, get here as soon as you can. If you need to rebook flights, I'll reimburse you. Or, better, if you can show up at any XPCA facility...even national guard--"

She spent a minute breathlessly looking up flights and facilities and talking at me the whole while, occasionally yelling at someone or something else in the background about the unfolding situation. But as she always managed, it wasn't long before I had a clear plan set out for me to follow.

"Okay, through Chicago then, and I've got the base administrator promising me he'll have a VTOL fueled and waiting for you," she said.

"Great. So glad we got that sorted, but what the heck is going on? You're like, frantic-sounding over there. Is there an event happening now?"

"No...not yet anyway. But if there is, it'll...be a big one. We need every possible available resource to make sure that doesn't happen, or if it does, it's contained. Jack seems to be under the impression that you have some experience with our adversaries here, and given that you...were uh...were...in New Eden, uh..."

She trailed off, but I understood. Talking about my involvement at New Eden was just asking for trouble if anyone overheard her or the records of the call were pulled.

"So it's more New Edeners making trouble?" I sighed.

"Something like that. But like, twenty of them, unified. It'd be a real shitshow if they went off, four times the size of the P-Force doing whatever the hell they wanted. And if the public catches wind that New Eden is a place for crazies like this to meet and mingle, we'll all lose our heads."

"Then we'll just have to make sure they don't," I said.

"But there's no way they'll even listen to us if we can't put up a sufficiently compelling force. This is just negotiation, but there's no peace talk in the world that's gone well for the guy who didn't have an army behind him. So get your ass over here, capiche?"

"Right," I said, and hung up, flipping through the messages she'd sent me about my itinerary. Lia and I would still be together on this flight, but after that I was on my own.

It took me as long as going back inside before I realized I should be mad at myself. Cosette'd mentioned that we needed to hide this whole affair from the public, and I'd just rolled with it, never even gave it a thought. Not so long ago, I would have argued the point in defense of New XPCA transparency...wouldn't I?

I mean, keeping it secret seemed like the only real option, but still. I worried I was getting too into the politics of the XPCA and forgetting why I was even with them to begin with. If we were building New Eden on lies, we should be changing things, not hiding them. Right?

"You look lost," AEGIS whispered as I sat down next to her. "I have a variety of other bits of me I haven't flashed you yet if that'd make you feel better?"

"No, not really," I said.

I mean, it might, but I also wanted to actually have the thoughts I was thinking. I had already spent a lot of time thinking about AEGIS' boobs, but that hadn't noticeably improved me as a person that I could tell.

"Well that is a frickin' shame, my friend. So at the risk of opening a giant can of worms right before we board, why so sad, Chad? Why so glum, chum? Why so...morose...uh...Choros?"

"Not sad, just thinking. Kind of sounds like a lot of shit about New Eden was and is turning out to be a disaster. Pissed-off Exhumans, the war we fought there to depose Blackett and TARGA...all the innocent XPCA and Exhumans fighting and dying, and you as well, of course. All for what? I mean, stopping Blackett, obviously, but he's gone, and shit is falling apart even faster now. It felt like even though he was a cruel, shitstain asshole, he was doing a lot to hold things together."

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"Cruel shitstain assholes are sometimes the best at holding things together. One could argue the only point of an asshole is to keep shit from spilling out," she grinned, improbably pleased with herself. When I didn't react she continued more seriously. "Like how I was when I was following my programming and tried...and hurt you. I was programmed to be so cruel to you, because that's what the XPCA thought an ideal AI would be. Run the world, be a dick to Exhumans."

"And that's wrong, right?"

"I mean...on one hand, of course. Killing you was wrong, stopping Blackett was probably right. But on the other hand, killing you would have been...I don't know...tidy? I wouldn't have had to figure out my own purpose or try to put myself in a new body or anything, you'd be dead and I'd just keep on truckin' in my cruel sociopath AI way. I don't know the details about Blackett...like who he even was, other than the XPCA director...but if you say you killed him, and the world is going to shit, yeah. That's what happens when you do the right thing sometimes. Revolutions are historically bloody messes."

"Great."

"Sorry. If it makes you feel better, talking about hurting you makes me feel like absolute crap."

"Why would you feeling like crap make me feel any better?"

"Oh Athan. You're too good a person," she sighed. "But," she added quickly before I could respond "It sounds to me like all you need to do is go out there and fix everything and then...everything will be fixed."

"Yeah, sounds like it, I guess."

There wasn't really anywhere else for the conversation to go from there. My thoughts kept making the same loop in my head. I could hear in Cosette's voice just how tired and stressed she was from handling this situation these past weeks, a situation I caused both by demanding New Eden be built and by killing both of the people in charge of running it. But they had needed to be stopped. They were fucked-up and evil. But they were fucked-up and evil and creating order. And without them, things were now going to shit.

"Okay, I'm just gonna unleash my power move and flash you my panties if it makes you stop making that face," AEGIS said.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, a little annoyed to be pulled from my thoughts again.

"Because you look like someone is torturing you? Because it costs me nothing but a little embarrassment to make you feel better?"

"You weren't like this before. I mean...both befores. You weren't like this back before we buried you, and you still weren't before you died. So what are you doing?"

"Well, before you buried me, we weren't a couple, were we? I can't exactly hug you and hold you in my arms and tell you it's gonna be alright so...this is it. This is all I've got. My useless words, talking about shit which is bothering you which I don't even know what happened, and my panties. So. Panties?"

I sighed. "No thanks, but I get it, and I'm sorry. This probably sucks for you, just getting thrown into this situation."

"Honestly, it's a bit confusing, but mostly...really awesome. Yesterday, I went down for a nap, woke up, and find out the guy I'm crushing on loves me. I haven't been doing the best job, I know, but I really just wanna scream until I cry. In a good way."

I laughed. "Well that's one good thing in my life, I guess."

"You know it. And once I get my memories and a body and can start loving you properly...I'll show you just how good a thing I can be. You'll see. Which is another reason I don't mind uh, showing you the goods...since the second I get outta here, I'm gonna put them all over you."

"Gross?" Lia said, and I realized she'd just walked up on us, a sheaf of paper in her hands.

"W-w-what's that?" I asked, very smoothly changing the subject.

"Boarding passes."

"Why are they paper?"

"I think this airport is older than digital. Come on, they're ready to go whenever we are."

I picked AEGIS up, and after winding through the pointless maze at security, walked through a door right out onto the tarmac where a tiny two-prop VTOL was waiting for us, same as we'd used to get out here before.

I kept AEGIS in my lap for the flight, though there were six seats in two rows facing each other, so she could have had her own if we wanted. Lia and I sat in the middle seats facing each other, and after we buckled in and our sparse luggage was put in the back, the pilot took us up and out.

"So what were you two talking about?" Lia asked with a raised eyebrow and a grin so unbearably smug I thought she might pull a muscle.

"I thought it was gross?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, that part. But I still want to know how you and AEGIS are coming along. She's my girl, after all."

"I am?" the box whispered at us, barely audible over the engines.

"Well...you were. We lived together and uh...and...I kind of messed things up with Saga."

"Saga and I aren't a good couple," I said simply.

"You and Saga were a thing!?" AEGIS yelled loud enough to make the pilot glance back at us. "Sorry. But what?"

"Yeah, that wasn't so great. We didn't know what we were doing."

"Um, is that a problem? I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm excited anyway," AEGIS said. "I'd think there were several...we'll say thousand other super obvious reasons nobody should ever date her. What the heck were you thinking, Athan?"

"She was really messed up at the time, okay? I wanted to help her."

"She's always really messed up. She's Saga. You said you found some way to put her down for good…?"

"Jesus Christ, AEGIS," I said, having the urge to throw the box out the window as I felt angry heat flowing through me.

"What? She proved me right, didn't she? Brainwashing all those people is why New Eden is messed up now?"

"Blackett is why New Eden is messed up now. Saga was just a tool."

"And if a tool is dangerous, we don't leave it lying around where it can hurt people. We hang it up."

Lia looked at me nervously. "I don't remember her having this much trouble the first time she heard about us releasing Saga."

"Yeah, I was just thinking that," I said. "What the fuck, AEGIS?"

"Don't you what the fuck me, she's always been a danger, and now I'm just being proven right. AND you hooked up with her."

"She's missing all the context," Lia said. "Last time, AEGIS got to see Saga help with the XPCA and then they had to live together and work together to help you. Well...until I moosed it all up. But I think that time was really important."

Lia sounded as scared and nervous as I felt angry. I just wanted AEGIS to take it all back and apologize for even insinuating that Saga deserved to die.

"AEGIS, you chose to die saving Saga," Lia said. "I mean, mostly Athan, but the only reason you guys were there was because of Saga. You cared about her more than you think."

"Even assuming you're right, which I highly doubt, do I need to point out the obvious in that I died because of her? Doesn't sound like such a smart plan. Also very convenient for her, she gets to roam free putting her hands and mind all over Athan, while her jailer, the one person unaffected by her mind-fuckery dies in the process? Are you sure I chose to die there, or was it all just a setup?"

"AEGIS, that's enough," I said, barely able to believe what I was hearing. "You shut the hell up about Saga, now."

"Why? You said it yourself, you guys are terrible together, and you chose me. Obviously there's something right about me, and wrong with--"

She went silent, cut dead mid-sentence as I ripped the deulith cell from the back of the box and dropped it in the seat next to me. Lia gasped at me.

"Athan! You can't...you…"

"She's fine. She just needed to shut up before I threw her out the window. I can't believe I forgot how much she used to hate all Exhumans. I guess she just hates all of them but me. Maybe not even that, now that I did this to her." I cradled my head in my hands. "She's gonna fucking hate the P-Force. Oh God, and all of New Eden? Goddamnit, how did everything get so fucked up."

My eyes unfocused on the metal floor of the VTOL. The box felt heavy in my lap with the weight of all the issues I was staring down. The future of the XPCA, the future of New Eden, the future of Exhumanity, to say nothing of AEGIS' and my future together. And here was AEGIS talking about how they should all die, while I'm flying off to some Exhuman summit to try to talk us into a future where we're all not killing each other.

Yeah. That's my girlfriend. The metal box that hates everyone. The one I just ripped out the power on. Fuck me.

"Well," Lia said, with a positive tone in her voice. I waited for the rest of it, but apparently that was about all she had in terms of optimism. "Um, I'm sure she'll be better...when she gets her memories back."

"Yeah, we'd better hope so. I'm still pissed though."

"And I'm still nervous. Reliving her memories might not be the same as living them. Like, the two of them living together...I think that was really formative for the tolerant person she wound up being. If it's not the same...if...if she winds up...if she's different from before...we'll still love her, right?"

I looked down at the dead box in my lap.

"I guess that's up to her, then," I said, frowning. "I don't think I can accept anyone who wants to hurt my friends, even if it's her."

Lia leaned over and put her hand on mine where I held the box.

"She'll be fine. I just know it. When you finish your op, she'll be good as new. Or...good as old. It'll all be fine. Just believe in her. She did it once, she'll do it again."

I felt the cold of Lia's always-icy hands on the back of mine, but it was nothing compared to the metal under them. I thought back to how freakishly warm AEGIS always felt and missed that with every fiber in my heart.

I tried to put out my anger and remember, remember AEGIS as I knew her. Lia was right, somehow in the past, this cold metal box had become the warm woman I loved, and she could do it again. I just had to believe.

Well...believe and survive. I was headed to an Exhuman summit, after all.