Karu's room was...not exactly big enough for five people, even if Tem hardly counted. On our way in, she sprung for an additional room which was, naturally, across the building. Yet still, all five of us were packed into the one room for the moment, a strange chain of dependencies across us as a vital task was being performed.

AEGIS had determined that it was of critical importance to have myself and Tem checked out medically...but being defunct herself, she was relying on Karu and Whitney to act as her hands and eyes, having the two of them hold her broken body for her and press her still-warm hands to mine to read vitals and the like.

"Karu, can I borrow your visor?" AEGIS asked.

"Most certainly not."

"My optics are only barely superhuman. If I'm going to check for broken bones, I need to be able to see inside there, come on."

"I am merely concerned what your big head will do for the size adjustment," Karu sighed.

The two of them did, ultimately, function quite smoothly, though you wouldn't be able to tell by what came out of their mouths. Karu's medical knowledge was relevant, though focused more on emergency treatment, while AEGIS was definitely more on the legit doctor side of things, with actual diagnoses and treatment plans. And both were interested in my well-being. Also...Tem in there somewhere.

In the end she sat back, looking equal parts mystified and impressed.

"You're chock-full of nanomachines right now, Athan, and I don't know how they got there, but I'm incredibly glad they did," she said.

"Nano...machines? Tiny robots?"

"Nanomachines?" echoed Whitney with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Next time you pee, consider that toilet is holding several million credits," AEGIS sighed. "It looks like you had a ruptured liver, contusive hemotoma, and broken bones all over, but thanks to your buggers, you're actually in fine shape, just a lot of mild bruising, some hemorrhaging, and a lot of need for rest."

"My head spins whenever I move," I complained.

"Your body is super confused," she said, trying without functioning limbs to push her glasses up her nose. "I mean, you're beat up too, but imagine having surgery all across your body, from within. It might be exactly what you need to keep going, but your organs aren't happy with all being stitched back together. You're gonna be really sore for a while, but you're also going to be just fine."

"Next time you pee...can I have it?" Whitney asked. "For the...nanomachines of course." She looked around at the faces of the girls around her. "What? I've never even seen one."

"And unless you have a microscope, you never will," AEGIS said. "I can't pick them up with Karu's visor, even a little bit, but the signs of them being there are all over. I think you'd probably have a lot of fruitless hours sifting through urine without much payoff."

"I think it is a fairly obvious question, yet one which nobody here seems to be asking, but how was Ashton loaded with nanomachines?"

I shrugged, and realized again that was painful and I should stop. "It must have come from the drone which woke me up. It gave me medical aid in the middle of the fight after Dragon took me down. I thought it was AEGIS' at the time."

"No, not mine," AEGIS said with a frown. "I only had time to put together this body, much less a medical drone. Much less fill it with nanomachines."

"This is no mere random passerby," Karu mused. "Nanomachines are delicate and expensive in the extreme...typically only used in situations where traditional surgery would be impossible, and only by the very richest in the world. Whomever it is, they are quite the benefactor, Ashton. Are you certain you do not possess a guardian angel?"

"There was the rifle shot, too," I said. "The way the bullet hung in the air...it was exactly the same as when Lia shot Blackett. Maybe I'm misremembering but...it looked and sounded exactly the same, didn't it?"

"Karu, if you plug me in, I have a recording…"

When AEGIS was attached to the room's wall holo, it took her a few false starts before she could get video up, and even then it had some display issues.

"Sorry...a lot of my systems are...not operating optimally," AEGIS apologized. "I swear, I've never had a problem getting it up before," she said with a half-grin at me.

"Have you tried hardware-level dynamic allocation?" Whitney asked. "Like, if your CPU core is nonresponsive, offload to a GPU?"

AEGIS gave a tired smile. "Yeah. Though I'm not really laid out that simply."

"I was being simplistic for an example. I don't really know how intimate you are with...um...yourself. That could have been phrased better."

"No, I'm doing it. That's why I'm still thinking okay, but lower-priority operations like displaying video are turning out like shit."

"Ah, gotcha. Well, if you can override the boot manager, would it help to plug in my mobile to have more offboarding resources on deck? The specs are worth the overhead, probably."

"That might be helpful, thanks."

The two went back and forth and spent a few minutes plugging various things into AEGIS, and despite my exhaustion and the situation, I couldn't help but feel a warm little glow watching them work at it together. It wasn't long before she was able to show us the video she'd captured at the fight, in fine quality give or take some audio artifacts and chromatic aberration.

I heard the boom of the gun moments after the bullet lodged in the personal barrier and sent Dragon flying. It was too distinctive not to recognize, not just any gun, but Lia's, or at least something extremely similar.

"It sounds like Lia, but she'd tell us if it were...I think. If only she was using armor penetrating rounds," I said, watching the bullet in slow-mo as it impacted the barrier with a white flash.

Karu shook her head. "Kinetic barriers operate almost opposite traditional armor in this regard. A typical penetrator round sheds much of its mass for greater speed and smaller profile, with lethal effect against armor...however a kinetic barrier does not have 'weak points' as it were, and instead simply absorbs and disperses energy sent into it."

"So the AP-round goes faster, so there's more energy," I said.

"What it gains in speed, it loses in mass," AEGIS said. "F equals MA." She made a frustrated face as she failed again to push her glasses up her nose. I wondered if Karu was oblivious, or just choosing not the help her with that.

"Or perhaps more simple to understand, there is only so much propellant in a bullet regardless of what type it is," Karu explained. "Changing the properties of the projectile does little to affect the amount of available force, given that limitation."

"That makes sense," I said, though it made me a little sad to think that we weren't just going to be able to blow Dragon's head off. I saw a funny look on Whitney and turned to her. "What?"

"It's just...I'm sorry, this isn't what I expected."

"Expected from what?"

"From...Exhumans. I'd always thought...they...you...just were these uncontrollable, angry, instinct-driven...crazy people." She crossed her arms and frowned. "I didn't know there was so much planning put into it before you knocked over a city and killed everyone."

"We tend to save the moustache-twirling and evil maniacal laughter for after we blow up an orphanage. Or an animal shelter," AEGIS said.

"See, this is what I wanted you to see," I said, ignoring AEGIS. "I think you're right, that most Exhuman events are just someone short-sighted with more powers than sense. But there's also people like me, like...Tem...kinda. Who are just normal people trying to get by."

"By murdering police officers?"

"That wasn't...my best moment, no," I said, my heart falling. "It wasn't anything I wanted to do."

"So you admit it is true," she said, her shoulders tensing with her arms still crossed. "Exhumans are always a danger."

"That's propaganda--" AEGIS said.

"No, it is true. I am dangerous, even when I don't mean to be, exactly like you said. Exactly like the propaganda says."

"Then why don't you turn yourself in?" Whitney pleaded. "Why are you out here...just...proving how irresponsible you are? If you are this decent person, why can't you do the one good thing all Exhumans are asked to do?"

I gave her a sad smile. "Whitney, I already turned myself in once."

"They tried to kill him and dump him in the wilderness when it didn't work," AEGIS said.

"Hunters were sent after him, and he was being groomed for the machinations of an XPCA official," Karu added.

"And if good Exhumans are just sent to die or be detained...how are things ever going to change?" I asked.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She looked between the three of us with a small, sharp frown. "Why should things change?"

"Because this world is shit," I said with a snort. "I've met Exhumans who are as good as any human I've met, who try so hard and the only thing messed up about them is what the world did to them for being Exhuman." I gave Tem an affectionate pat, even if she wasn't my first pick for those criteria, but it was enough to make her go fully red, and then fully invisible.

I continued. "People are being lied to every day by the XPCA. There's world-ending nightmare scenarios like the Defiant going on all the time, and the world is just barely hanging on, it feels like. If nothing changes, eventually, the XPCA is going to fail, and then everything's gonna be over. Or...we prepare before then, get the truth out there, get Exhumans on the same page as humanity...so that when something does go wrong, we're ready to fight it, instead of just roll over and put an end date on humanity's tombstone."

Whitney frowned and seemed to think it over. "You talk about the world ending a lot. I really hope it's just pessimism. It'd be pretty unnerving to think about it being actually true."

"Well...on the whole, I don't know. Like the Defiant...if I wasn't there, Dragon may have just killed them all anyway. I was apparently just wrong about his motivations, so I don't know. And if they did go on a rampage, you can bet I and everyone else here would be fighting them before letting the XPCA fail, so it's not exactly like something happens and the world ends."

AEGIS gave a smile. "No, more like two or three things happen and the world ends."

"The balance of harmony is more fragile than that," Karu said. "Injustices live on in the hearts of men. Even should events unfold in a manner not fatal, those who endured them remain touched, and in many cases, fester. Should we not strike with decisiveness, the end of one apocalypse may just be the start of another." She gave a bitter smile. "Or, I should say, they must be decisive. I am but a humble waitress."

"Karu's right," I said, feeling my head spin.

"That I am a humble waitress?"

"Yeah, not that," I said. Painful memories boiled in me as I relived the last hour in a second. "That...wasn't all the Defiant who died."

"Yeah, Dork-Hand got away," AEGIS said. "And...I counted eighteen total casualties today. Together with Dork-Hand, Talon, and Mini, that's only twenty-one, which leaves a Defiant unaccounted-for."

"He didn't get away from Dragon did he?"

AEGIS shook her head. "I think he wasn't here today. Just missed the meeting maybe."

"Or he died elsewhere and we never knew?" I asked.

"No, the Defiant were pretty good about delivering threats every time one of them went missing or dead," AEGIS said. "I don't know."

As glad as I was that at least the two of them had lived, I couldn't help but to feel like Karu's words made news of these survivors more a dark omen than it should have been. Hopefully, scared and spared, these two would run and hide and forget everything that happened here. But there was that chance that there would be scars and resentment instead.

"This is all so complicated," Whitney said in a low voice. "I...I don't know what to think anymore. I haven't known since...since the body." She gingerly set AEGIS on the floor and then slumped down the wall to sit beside her. "I want to go home."

I gave her a reassuring smile as best I could. "I know. I know, and I'm sorry. But, don't you think these questions you're having...don't you think that indicates...maybe Exhumanity isn't as simple as you thought? That there might be good ones, too?"

She shook her head. "It's a lot to ask, to overturn a lifetime of beliefs like that."

"It is a good thing we are not asking," Karu said with a little manic smile. "If you wish it, you may flee any time you desire...but I will find you."

I saw Whitney shiver, and wished people would stop setting us back like that.

"Karu, can I have one more stim?" I asked, and she nodded. "Last one before bed, I'm just going to get these two situated in the other room. You can get started working together with AEGIS, Whitney. Do something 'simple' for a bit, does that sound good?"

"Yeah, actually."

"Wait, you're gonna sleep with Karu, just because I'm busted up? This is BS. As the girlfriend, I demand--"

"AEGIS, just chill, Jesus," I sighed, as the patch hit and I felt my pain bubbled away from my mind, felt myself just a little faster, a little sharper, and a little less patient for AEGIS' bullshit.

"I will not just chill. She just swoops in here because I broke myself trying to save you, and you're willing to repay her by shacking up right behind my back? How is that anything other than fucked up, Athan?"

"Tem's gonna be right here, too, okay?"

"Oh she doesn't count and you know it. Just the thought of her probably gets Karu's voyeuristic fetishes going."

"Excuse me?" Karu interjected.

"I just want you and Whitney to bond. Look at me, I'm going to do nothing but crash when the stims wear off."

"Well you've got like most of an hour to do plenty of Karu in that time, huh?"

I picked up AEGIS' too-warm body and carried her in my arms in front of me, heavier than she looked, and awkwardly pressed to my chest with her face only inches from mine. The smell of her synthetic skin, eraser shavings and bubblegum filled my nose and brought me way back to a time when there was someone less petulant in this body.

Last time AEGIS had broken herself to save me, I'd been doing it all for Saga, and AEGIS had still died with a smile. Not that I expected or demanded that kind of willingness for self-sacrifice, but the contrast disgusted me, honestly.

"We haven't had our talk yet," I remembered, and the AEGIS in my arms tensed, froze, and cowered.

"I'm sorry," she said as I took her outside, into the early night air and began walking the long balcony to the other room, Whitney trailing behind awkwardly. "I'm really sorry. Don't be mad at me. Please?" Her yellow eyes blinking slowly at me. "I didn't mean what I said in there, promise."

"AEGIS, just...give it a rest," I said, not sure what I wanted to bring up or how.

"Hey...um...if you'd like, you can...uh...play with my controller, if you know what I mean. It's...got a touch-screen and it's motion sensitive?" She gave me an awkward smile, her eyes flickering back and forth between me and Whitney. "Or...is your princess really in another castle?"

"AEGIS, I meant what I said. I'm tired. Those nanomachines might have been awesome for sewing together my kidneys or whatever, but there isn't a part of me that doesn't hurt. I just want to sleep for like, three days, but I know I won't because all I see when I close my eyes is the holes in the bodies of the Defiant, and their pained, stunned faces, and more blood than I thought I'd ever see in my life. I've still got the XPCA out there, I've still got Dragon out there, I'm now the proud bearer of the device he's looking for, we kidnapped poor Whitney because I'm a selfish prick who doesn't want her hating me, and you're upset about me trying to set her up to be a little happier, even if it means I'm sleeping in another room."

I realized I'd stopped walking to rant at AEGIS more effectively. She seemed to cower in my arms.

"I already apologized," she said gently. "I'll do it again and again."

I started moving again. "Whatever. Let's just shelve all of this for when I'm not angry and tired and on stims."

"Yeah...let's not say anything rash, right?" AEGIS said with fleeting hope. I waved the key Karu gave me at the door and it unlocked, and I pushed the handle open with my knee.

"And finally," I said, picking up my rant again. "My girlfriend, who saved my life back there at least a couple times has been shot and stabbed and still has a couple knives sticking out of her. She can't move, her speech is jarred and broken, and seeing her like that makes me angry and sad. So maybe I have another legit reason to ask Whitney for help right now, okay?"

AEGIS didn't reply, but that was better than the moronic quips she'd been giving out the rest of this walk.

"Are you two set in here?" I asked, looking at the scant stuff Whitney had brought from her shop.

"Enough to get started," Whitney said apologetically. "If I need anything specific...and I will...I'll let you know tomorrow."

"Thanks," I sighed and put AEGIS on the bed. "I'm really sorry for everything, Whitney. I know this isn't your idea of a good time. I just…"

"No, I understand. I could hear you on the way over," she said with a wry smirk which faded quickly. "Look, I'm just going to pretend you're not an Exhuman for a while and try to let that not cloud my judgement. I have a place to stay, I'm not here in chains, I have...some really interesting work to dig into," she glanced at AEGIS with barely-concealed hunger "I can tough it out for a couple of days. It helps knowing that...well this is kind of crappy to think or say...but it helps knowing that you're suffering so much."

I gave a bemused snort.

"Seriously. It doesn't feel like you're an evil, thoughtless person, and that helps. You're just an...evil...thoughtful person, I guess. And that's better. Somehow." She shook her head.

"If you need anything, you have my contacts," I told her. "Though I'm probably asleep for the next day or whatever."

"She can use me to contact whomever," AEGIS volunteered. "It'll be fine. Go...go sleep, Athan."

"Thanks," I said, giving a final nod before I left the two of them.

When I re-entered our room, I found Karu still sitting there in a chair, opposite Tem on the floor by the bed, looking pensive.

"What's up, Karu?" I asked, sitting down heavily and giving myself a minute before I took off my shoes and put them next to the sneakers that accompanied Karu's street clothes by the door.

"I noted with some dismay that you are no longer wearing your choker," she said with a frown, that didn't quite reach her green eyes. "I am...well...there are a variety of emotions I feel over this." She swallowed heavily.

"I've still got it here--" I said, pulling it out of my pocket and dangling it for her. "The clasp broke when it tore off my neck. Which was so weird, because I'd swear I've worn it before when using my magnet." I gave it another thought. "Yeah, in New Eden. I was fighting the resistance, and threw some nails into some guy's back, I definitely had it on then."

"How very peculiar," she said.

"Yeah, def--" I had leaned forward to take off my shoes and stopped, face-to-face with Karu's sneakers. "How long have you had these?" I asked, picking one up and turning it over in my hands.

"Oh those things? Years, though they have seen more use of late than ever before. Are you developing a sense of fashion, spontaneously?"

I checked inside. Men's nine and a half.

"You wear mens' shoes?"

"I have broad feet," she said, crossing her legs to rest her boot on her knee. "Why all the inquiry?"

I felt the fabric of the choker in one hand and the weight of her shoes in the other. One thing not adding up was pretty typical for me. But two was starting to get suspicious, and three…

"Karu, can I ask you something?"

"Certainly."

I turned towards those dangerous green eyes. "Last week, you said you had to leave Vegas on a trip, said you were going to see your father about your relationship...remember? He was calling me and telling me how he hated your waitressing?"

"I fail to see the question posed," she said, watching me tensely.

"Oh just...how did it go with him? How are the two of you now?"

She gave a disarming smile. "We are fine now. I let him know exactly his place in my world, and that he ranked far below waitressing even, in my list of priorities."

I stood up, returning the choker to my pocket and letting the other shoe drop.

"That's strange," I said, staring into her eyes. "Because I just talked to him earlier today, and he said you never spoke."

"Ah," Karu said, shifting so her feet were on the ground again. "Well...what I meant was...in ignoring him, I let him know--"

The tiny room echoed with the booming thunder I discharged between my fingertips. Outside of the stims, I felt my ears ring and my head spin, but within them, all I saw was the green eyes in front of me.

"I don't want your lies, Karu. I have plenty of bullshit going on around me already right now, and I don't need you adding to it. Tell me the truth."

She also stood up, walking further into the room to pick up her visor, and looked into the face of it.

"The truth," she mused. "Such a beautiful concept. Such a painful concept. Truths are whatever we make of them, Ashton. And there are many truths of this world you do not wish to face."

"Stop speaking in riddles and just fucking tell me."

She gave me a manic smile as red eyes replaced green.

"Do not say I did not warn you. This was all for you, Ashton, my love."