I didn't know exactly what Athan was up to, but I knew he needed me there with him. Yet the eyes and ears of the XPCA were relentless, scrutinizing everything we said and did for the smallest hints of his location.

I was already worried he wouldn't have figured out the meaning I'd put in my messages to him. I needed it to be conspicuous enough so that even that dummy would figure it out, but not so much that the XPCA could see through it, and that was a real nonexistent amount of space to maneuver in.

It helped that for whatever reason, Micaiah was being really nice to us. He'd explained the situation to us when I knew he didn't have to, and promised he'd leave us alone as long as we weren't going to interfere in trying to capture their fugitive. He apologized for putting us under surveillance, but at the end of the day, I was just confused why he was being so transparent with us. It didn't seem like he had some other hidden agenda, but surely trying to trick us into giving away Athan's location, or dragging it out of us would have just made his job easier.

One might think he was actually trying to be decent to us, which was just a weird thought, given our positions at the moment. But that's really all I had.

I was lucky that a lot of my hacking tools were already successfully remotely installed. It meant I could still peek into the XPCA without being overt in what I was doing...if I was trying to hack a new source, I couldn't very well hope to hide my sudden bout of one-way traffic against a XPCA datacenter...but with my tools already in place, I could have an encrypted two-way conversation with my tools, which could be hosted and running anywhere, as casual as any 'net site traffic.

And oh did I. I was ferenic in finding any scrap of information I could about Athan or Micaiah's plans. But the more I dug, the more nothing I found, and the more frustrated I got. I knew he took careful notes constantly, I'd seen him scribbling away on his mobile enough during his interview with Athan. But was that it? Did he honestly keep all of his notes and everything on his mobile? Hadn't the guy ever heard of backups?

Poor data retention habits aside, it was infuriating to get nothing. I wished Athan had handed me Micaiah's mobile when it was in his possession. If I'd just had the chance to drop even an indexer in there…

But I couldn't focus on what wasn't. Athan needed me, and I was doing everything I could to that end. In addition to the normal 'net traffic I was generating, I had dedicated a ton of my new enhanced system resources to just browsing the 'net constantly. Posting constantly and anonymously on forums, making sure that all my comments included words and phrases I knew they'd be listening for; "XPCA", "A than", "hiding", and as many references to cities as possible. If I could waste their time blasting them with useless data, they might miss it if Athan did screw up and accidentally did let something slip.

And meanwhile, as inconspicuously as possible, the 'net relays I'd infiltrated began to suddenly have issues. Dropping packets destined for any XPCA addresses, sending them around the world a few hundred times, causing entire milliseconds of irritating lag, basically anything I could manage which couldn't be traced back to us, or too obviously connected to the situation at-hand. I still might be arrested, and I was masquerading as a mere human after all. And so I gave them a break for four hours that night while I was ostensibly sleeping.

But it didn't seem like enough. Last time Athan was out surviving in the world, I'd been there for him, working his mass-fab and putting my head together with his to ensure his safety however I could. This time, he was alone with Rito, and I didn't trust that girl to keep him safe, no matter how much Lia paid her.

And also, they were cutting my ability to leverage the 'net by monitoring everything I did, and there wasn't anything that pissed me off more than getting between me and the 'net. A girl has needs.

I'd spent a lot of time studying the memories of last time I'd done this, back-to-back with Lia, with her insight and my insider knowledge, we wrecked those noobs, hacking our way to the very heart of XPCA infrastructure, until they had more security vulnerabilities than defenses.

Those memories were so bittersweet now. On one hand, I had been truly, truly happy. I felt so useful and wanted, and thought constantly about how happy Athan would be when our big plans paid off and he was set free.

But on the other hand, it was in that period I got my hands on the keys to Skyweb. It was a strange feeling, looking back at how happy I was to be holding the weapon which would kill me.

I banged on Lia's door and then let myself in.

"Hey girl! Ready to get started on Operation: Athan two?"

I stood there frowning when she didn't respond. I'd seen her deplorable state over my cams, but thought that coming in here might get a reaction.

Instead, she just stayed where she was, curled up under her covers, two conspicuous empty water bottles knocked over on the floor. It'd been a little less than a day, and this was her already.

"Come on, Lia. Athan needs us. Up you get," I said, pulling off the sheet to reveal her seemingly frozen in the fetal position, eyes shut tight against the world.

I frowned again. I'd remembered in my memories talking about Lia having depression but...never like this. While I tried to get any reaction out of her whatsoever, I also simultaneously reviewed more footage of her from before, as well as looked up treatment and handling of those suffering depression.

Like most mental conditions, everything I found seemed to indicate it wasn't something I could fix, only be there support her. To be reassuring that these problems will pass, and that I was here for her.

Which...I was. But these other problems weren't going to pass on their own. Athan needed us, and we needed to be there for him. My past life had a policy of not even mentioning or acknowledging Lia's depression, just being extra doting without drawing attention to it, and I had no idea if that worked or not.

And apparently 'just snap out of it' was one of the things not to say, though it's absolutely what I wanted her to do.

"Lia, can you hear me?" I asked, lowering my voice and trying to be comforting. "Just nod if you can."

She gave the very slightest of nods without opening her eyes.

"I know it seems rough, but we'll all get through this. Your brother's too stubborn to die."

Her eyes opened and I gave her a smile, but her reaction was...very much the opposite of how people reacted to a smile. She buried herself into her pillow like she was trying to smother herself with it and writhed slightly as though in pain.

"Lia, what's wrong?" I asked, holding her gently across her body with my fingers. I took the opportunity to read her vitals, which were way elevated. Her BAC wasn't really that high yet though, but I had read how the lapse of judgement from first drinks led to second drinks.

She muttered incomprehensibly into her pillow, and while I asked her to repeat herself, ran the audio of her utterance through several reconstructive algorithms to see if there was anything salvageable in there. This new body did have its perks.

"I said," she said, pulling just her mouth free of the pillow "I am a horrible sister. I'm a horrible person."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because he's gone, AEGIS," she said, her voice filling with a choking sob as her throat closed up on her. "He's gone, and he's out there trying to do what he always does and fix everything and save everybody, and all I can think about is how sad I am because he's gone. I don't care about the world, because I'm just a horrible...selfish...awful person."

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"Lia, oh sweetie. You don't have to beat yourself up for that."

"But it's true! The whole time he was leaving, I was just thinking, he can't leave me again. And now you want me to help rescue him and I'm drunk and pathetic and useless, I can't save him or do anything. All I can think about is how unfair it feels and how stupid I am. I'm so useless, it's like I don't even actually care about saving him, I just want him back."

"You're not useless though!" I shouted back at her. "I...I...actually came in here...because I was so excited. About the prospect of working with you. I've never done it before...in this life, I mean. AEGIS Prime had the highest of respect for your abilities, and I just...just wanted to see them."

She looked at me like I was crazy. But something like anger had lit in her eyes.

"Seriously," I said.

"Go away, AEGIS."

"I'm serious."

"I don't need you lying to me to make me feel better. I'm garbage and I know it, okay?"

"You're not--"

"I'm garbage. I'm here with my thoughts all day, AEGIS. You want to tell me you know them better than I do? I'm just a stupid, selfish, egomaniacal little girl that just makes everyone stop everything and focus on me, me, me--"

"Lia, that's enough."

"Here you are, trying to comfort me, when you should be working on Athan instead. It's always got to be all about me."

"Lia, seriously, I know you're having...an episode or whatever...but seriously. What would Athan think if he heard you talk about yourself like this?"

She sat up and stared at me with small, wild eyes. Dangerous eyes, which looked like they'd just stolen knowledge forbidden from the world, and saw clearly for once.

"That's the point, AEGIS. I don't want Athan to have to think about me. Ever," she added dangerously.

"No, you're missing the point. I want you to stop and think about what you're saying. I want you to imagine what Athan would think and say and do if he walked in and found his sister dead."

"That's disgusting," Lia said, looking back at her pillow. "And morbid. And unfair."

"Yeah, and that's the conclusion of your train of thought. So stop romanticising your death and how perfect a world it might create, and realize that people love you, and we'd all be very hurt and very sad if you died. You're not alone, nobody hates you secretly, and nobody thinks you're a burden, okay?"

She just stopped and stared back at me, looking half like she just wanted to give up and accept what I was saying, and half like she was angry at me. For what, I had to wonder? For ruining her fantasy with a reality check?

Well fuck her. She could be mad at me the rest of her life if she wanted, I wasn't going to let this go any further.

"You look angry," I told her.

Her eyebrows narrowed noticeably.

"I like that. You should be angry."

"Because you come in here, and tell me I'm wrong about everything?"

"No, because your brother is on the run from the XPCA, and he did nothing wrong. That's why I'm mad, and that's why I'm gonna go kick their asses, and save his stupid butt. Are you in?"

She seemed to waver, my sudden reversal knocking the anger out of her and she was threatening to fall entirely into that side of her which had given up again. I saw her face change again and again as different emotions played across it, before finally she sighed, and fell over again.

"No? After all that?" I asked, trying to prod her back to life again.

"You're right. I need to. I have to keep trying. I must always keep trying. I can never give up."

I blinked at her, confused. Her voice had gone from so emotional and weak to more robotic and steely than mine. The words sounded well-rehearsed, they came out of her rounded and smoothed. A mantra?

"Every step is just a step," she said, still laying down. "I can't cry if I'm too busy smiling. I must always keep trying. I can never give up."

"Lia?" I asked.

"Let me finish, I'll see you in the garage," she said without looking.

I lingered for another few moments before letting myself out.

What had transpired was...it was something. I knew very well by now that she always took a few minutes in the morning to work herself up to facing the day...but I'd never heard her thoughts out loud.

I felt very dirty and like I'd just seen something I never should have. It was like...seeing ground veal being made, backward. At the end, there was an adorable mooing little cow...but underneath, you couldn't help but know that there was a lot of grinding and breaking and reshaping which went into it…

Which was dangerous, I knew. I remembered having this discussion with Athan at Christmas. That the last thing in the world Lia wanted was for anyone to see her as shredded meat wearing a calf skin, with raw torn flesh hiding behind the eyes.

I was getting morbid. I blamed the talk of suicide. This was ten types of messed up, and I was no longer certain that Athan was the Ashton in need of help.

But at the same time...she was coping. Setbacks of alcohol and Athan aside, she got up and brushed her teeth every day. She knew she had a problem, and had a strict routine to deal with it, words she'd found or written which reminded her of truths of her reality. She was stronger than she was broken.

A minute later, through my drones I saw Lia's door open, and she took one shuffling staggering step. And then one deliberate stomp forward. And then one springy stride, and then she bounced down the hallway like the world had invented hopscotch just a minute before, and she found it irrepressibly charming.

She knocked and then entered the garage door. "Hey," she said, with a flip of her hair and a cocky grin. "We ready to put some hurt on the otter lobsters that are trying to pin a crime on my bro?"

I smiled back at her. "Sure am."

"Do you have a plan?"

"I have...pieces of a plan. I've been thinking of doing something...rather extreme, and wanted to run it past you."

"Extreme like, very likely we'll get shot? Or extreme like, very likely someone else will get shot?"

"Neither. I'm...I'm not a fan of the plan, personally, but I think Athan will be, and I think...it will help him more than anything else I could do at this point."

"So this isn't a violence plan? Is it a hacking plan?"

"It is in part a hacking plan, which will probably end with a violence plan, given the trouble Athan tends to get into, but I think you'll see when we get into the details."

She nodded seriously, and I noticed that her vitals were still elevated. There was still so much fear and uncertainty in her eyes, but it was hidden away behind the fire burning in them.

She was such an amazing person. I began to see what AEGIS Prime saw in her.

"The hard part is going to be doing this all covertly. We're going to need to secure and move around a lot of materials, and none of it is even going to pass through our hands."

"Ooh, I like it," Lia said. "I could set up a shell company or a dozen to have assets being moved around in their names. Or, that might be suspicious...I might just buyout some small existing ones. If they have workers already, those are hands doing work for us too."

"Wow yeah, that'd help us a lot. I was just thinking of trying to run machines remotely, but if we had our own agents…"

Lia paused. "Can we talk about this out loud without being monitored?"

"Yeah, I checked. It looks like they're just trying to keep us from contacting Athan and that's it. I don't know what's up with this guy. He seems like he's terrible at his job."

"Or maybe he's a decent guy."

"After laying the blame on Athan? Not possible."

She shrugged. "Good people do bad things sometimes for their jobs. It's possible. Well if they're only monitoring our communications...it'll still make it hard for me to get started...but if I could get my hands on a burner mobile or something to make some calls they don't know are me...I could start getting some people I know working on this independently."

As soon as she said 'burner mobile', I was already drawing up designs and syncing into my machine shop. Mass-fabs and loaders and conveyors and assemblers sprang to life at a thought.

"So what do we need to procure and move?" Lia asked. "As much as I'd like to send him money and care packages, the more tying us to him, the easier it'll be for the XPCA to catch on. We should only do one or two drops, I'm thinking."

"Yeah. I agree. So I thought, what's the single highest-impact thing I could send over there to improve his life and help him out with his situation."

"A presidential pardon?" Lia laughed.

I smiled, and traced my fingers in the air, forming a floating square about the size of a tablet, an emitted holo hovering between them, and floated it over to her.

She took one look and beamed. "Yes. Yes, very yes. He's going to love it. I love it."

I sent a few of my other finger-drones to pick up the newly completed burner-mobile from my machines and dropped it in Lia's hands while I began crunching the numbers on what kinds of machines and materials we'd need, and where.

"Then let's get to work," I said, grinning at her.