Whitney and I...we didn't talk much, and that was by design. Her life had gone to absolute shit, and running away from it all was pretty much all she knew how to do to cope. The whole point of the exercise would be futile if I just invaded her space and brought her problems in with me.

But today I had something so burning I had to breach our unspoken agreement a little. As we swung together in silence, I slowly picked up the words I wanted to say to her.

"Hey...last time you saw Moon...did she seem okay?" I asked.

There was no sound but the rustling of leaves and the gentle creaking of rope on bark for a long moment.

"Same as ever, I think," she gave a measured response. She knew I was asking for a reason, and didn't inquire. If something was wrong, she didn't want to know.

So I felt really bad as I pressed on. "It's just, I found her mobile on the ground and she seems to have run off. It was open to a message from her father...well...kinda. The message said she should come back to Japan."

"Then I guess she did that."

"But she didn't warn you or anyone about it?"

She skidded her feet along the grass and slid to a halt. "Why don't you ask Tower, Athan? He knows her best."

"Yeah, I should. Just...not supposed to reach out to the P-Force, you know."

"You've already run away from home and lying in bed with me and messing up my private place here. Is 'not supposed to' still material to you?"

"I guess not. Sorry."

She resumed her gentle swinging.

"Is there anything you do want to talk about?" I asked her.

"How are your classes, I guess?"

"Pretty great. I feel like everyone else is so far behind because they just don't do the reading or look up things in the syllabus. I do, and then I'm in the top ten percent of the class."

She smirked at the wall in front of her. "Yeah, freshman year is like that. The first year is more a lesson on how to be a college student. If you're lucky, you'll have a class or two which will stick."

"Yeah, I kinda skipped both one-ten and one-twenty, the intro courses by transferring in. Physics and semiconductors right out the gate, but it's not so bad."

"Tech electives are the real exciting part. That's when it really opens up and you can start focusing on what you want. And then after that you get elective labs, and everything opens up again. You'll move from mostly GEs to major classes, to specific fields you want to study, to hands-on working with the stuff. I'm a little jealous."

"When you...were in college...did you find yourself like...obsessing over things? Like a lot?"

"My school credit after I discovered the quesadilla bar, maybe."

I laughed politely. "Um, no, I meant...like in your major."

"Sometimes, I guess. I wouldn't call it obsessing. I had dreams about things I was working on, thought about problems I was trying to solve at all hours...but that's not any different than who I was or who I am."

"I find I'm like...unnaturally distracted by electronics. House current. Delith cells in cars."

She looked at me lazily. "No, you're just a freak."

"Do you think--"

"I do," she interrupted me, which was a rare occurrence for her. "I do think it's related to that, so we're not going to talk about it."

"Right. Sorry."

She sighed heavily enough for me to hear it over our swinging. "This is the last thing I'll say about it, okay?"

"Okay."

"Then yeah. The same thing...happened to me backwards. I can't focus on my work anymore. I said I closed down the shop because it wasn't working...that was...kind of a lie. The one that wasn't working was me. I just can't do it anymore. I can't focus like I used to."

"Is it--"

"Nope," she said. "That's the last thing I'll say on it."

"Yeah, okay. Sorry again."

"Stop apologizing."

We swung for another while in quiet. I could see how she could spend hours and hours in here. She had access to the whole of the 'net out there, any number of video games she could dive into, or even create whatever virtual space she wanted, and this is what she'd constructed as her 'home'. White walls and a little greenery, with nary an electronic in sight. Enclosed and safe, but not cluttered like her real life.

It made me think of Saga the first time I saw her lounging here under the tree. Of course, at the time she was just pissed that I was in here, we hadn't quite worked out the system we had now if I needed to alert her of goings-on in the real world, and she certainly hadn't left a second VR uplink lying around with the intent of someone else using it.

But I had and I did and I came into her little escape world, and we'd repeated this many times over the last while. It was nice here. I just couldn't imagine choosing it over the real world.

"So why are you running this time?" she asked. The unspoken rules only applied to her real-world issues, because frankly, I didn't have hangups talking about mine.

"AEGIS again," I sighed. "We got in another fight last night and she was trying twice as hard this morning to compensate. I'm not sure which was worse."

"Break it off, friendo," she said. "You two are just no good."

"We were good, though."

"When she was someone else."

"But she's trying to be that someone else." I kicked at the grass underfoot. The server mentally notified me that I didn't have permissions to modify that object.

"She is who she is, friendo. You're not dating the person she will be in five years. It's unfair to you to spend your life miserable, and it's unfair to her to be pressured to change. It's best for everyone if you just let go."

"Is it though? Neither of us want to break up. Why would two people who don't want to leave each other leave each other? Sometimes it feels like I'm her whole world, and sometimes she reminds me of just how smart and compassionate she can be."

"Reminds you of someone else, you mean."

I stopped swinging and hopped to my feet, feeling a little too antsy to be having this conversation in a little paradise. From my mental inventory, I dropped a training dummy in the world and equipped six psi-blades on my character, which hovered in the air around me, controlled by my will.

Kind of a neat concept. I should someday ask the devs who wrote them where they got their inspiration. Though in practice, it was nothing like having my swords, as those felt like an extension of me. The psi-blades felt like I was issuing orders to a unit in a video game.

I focused for a bit on pummelling the dummy, watching damage numbers pop into the air like bouncing fleas as I struck. Whitney was smirking at me.

"Damn, you're so low level," she said.

"I spend all day at college, not playing games."

"Ouch, my lifestyle," she kept right on smirking. "You imagining that dummy to be your girlfriend? You're certainly giving it quite a pounding there."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"No, I am not an abusive boyfriend, thanks. Just seemed weird to be talking about serious issues when I'm swinging away carefree as anything."

"And instead you're beating the tar out of a dummy."

"It just doesn't seem right to leave her, Whitney. I basically...brought her back from the dead to be with me, I can't discard her after that because I'm unhappy with how it turned out. I'd be like...Frankenstein's creator."

"You mean, Frankenstein."

"Wasn't Frankenstein the monster?"

"I think the point was the monster's creator was the monster."

I blinked at her and my swords floated around aimlessly for my lack of focus. "What?"

"Look, here's what you're saying, phrased differently -- you'd feel bad breaking up because she's got no life outside of you."

"I...guess?"

"And that's no good, Athan. That's a big part of why it's not working, I bet. Nobody whose entire existence is someone else is gonna be any good for that someone else. Or for themselves. I bet she's so captivated by the idea of being with you, she doesn't even think about what it means to be with you."

"I don't think that's entirely right," I said. "But also...not entirely wrong." I gave the psi-blades a flourish like I had with my swords, but it wasn't the same. "Man, it sucks just talking about your problems like this. No wonder you avoid it."

"It's not avoiding," she said, her mouth a small frown. "There's just no reason to do something if you don't want to do it and know it won't help."

"Then why are we talking about my shit?"

"Might help," she shrugged. I dropped the subject. We both knew talking about her problems really couldn't help with them, there was no denying that. I pummelled the dummy a little more until that felt stupid too, and then put it and my blades away and sat back down on the swing.

"No life outside of me, huh?" I asked.

"Can't really say, I don't know her that well, but it seems that way to me. The whole time I was putting her back together, she was always saying 'hurry up so I can show this to Athan', or 'get this working so I can do this for Athan'. She's like a kid with a crush."

"How would I even begin to think about leaving her, then? She'd have nothing."

"It is pretty cruel," she said with a sad smirk. "But some of the things that have hurt me the most are also what taught me what matters and what doesn't in life. I wasn't born this cynical and wise, you know. The world worked me over on an anvil a bit first."

"And you think that's what she needs? Pain and abandonment?"

"I think...that what you two have is the opposite of what she needs. People talk a lot about discovering themselves or being in a good place for a relationship. She's done none of that, and being with you is keeping her from wanting to. Prime went through a lot of things that forced her to grow as a person, and a lot of that was being separated from you and dealing with situations without you, wasn't it?"

I hadn't thought of that before. I had all of Saga's memories of the time they'd all lived together while I was slaving away under Blackett, and I pawed through them delicately, trying very hard not to think of anything that involved Lia's then-boyfriend.

It didn't work like that of course, and I wondered for a minute what would happen to my connection if I threw up. But the thoughts faded as I focused on AEGIS.

There wasn't that much there. Saga couldn't see AEGIS' mind, and she didn't exactly spend all day walking around watching things go on. They had relatively few interactions as a result, but in those, I saw AEGIS much as I saw her today.

She was irritable with the Exhumans, constantly stressed and worried about me and my state, frustrated by incompetence as she saw it. In fact, looking further back, she hadn't even originally wanted to go with the others, she'd intended to strike off on her own, out of dislike of Saga.

More than anything, she was hurt, and she saw the others hurting as well, and realized that anyone who bled the same as her couldn't be all bad. Saga still scared the crap out of her, but Prime was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that AEGIS never would because she'd seen that Saga had put up and suffered and held back for my sake the same as she had.

And it was a crappy realization, because as Whitney had said, it was really misery which had forced her to grow as a person. But it seemed like completely shit advice to go around hurting people just to make them better. If I were going to do that and force people to improve without their consent or happiness or self-interests in mind, I may as well also unleash Saga to redevelop humanity a little bit.

"I won't do that, though," I said. "I'm not going to do something I know will hurt people."

She snorted a little bit. "Aren't you here running from her?"

"Yeah."

"And you think that doesn't hurt her?"

I stared silent at the grass underfoot.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a hypocrite?" she asked.

"Yeah, sort of a...shocking number of times, actually. I don't think I have much choice but to believe them." I turned to her. "But what's wrong with what I do? I want to help people, I don't want people being hurt. Sometimes...that means doing what I think is right, even if they disagree."

"So you're willing to hurt people in order to help them. But not willing to hurt AEGIS to let her grow."

"What should I do, then?" I yelled at her suddenly. "If it's all so easy and analytical, then just tell me already. I do one thing, I hurt someone, I do something else, I hurt them some other way, I do nothing, I hurt them yet another way. It's just pain, pain, pain, pain, and I don't want to cause any of it. I just want everyone to be free and happy and live their lives without all this shit and suffering, and why the hell is that so hard?"

She seemed taken aback by my sudden outburst and froze up. I tried not to look too guilty about suddenly yelling at her and began to swing so I wasn't staring at her, too. Even here, I was just hurting people, apparently.

That thought led to another which made my stomach clench. The stupid, certainly-wrong, completely cynical conclusion that all personal relationships were pain. Moon's fucking philosophy. And here I was proving her right. Nothing felt worse than being a counterexample against your own beliefs.

Just ask Karu. Oh wait, I couldn't because she'd snapped from my influence. Another point for Moon.

"Maybe I should go," I said, standing up.

"If you want," she said, apparently recovered from her shock. "It's only been an hour."

"Already?"

"Gotta say, as much as I'm fine with being alone, time does pass a lot quicker with company. Both a blessing and a curse."

"Yeah," I said. "I should unplug. Get back to the real world. Maybe even talk with AEGIS." I let that thought hang in the air for a minute. "Maybe just those first two."

"Coward," she said. I was going to reply in kind, but her gentle smirking let me know she was well aware. I settled for shaking my head instead. "Before you go," she added, "a question."

"Yeah, shoot?"

"Have you had any of those...obsessive thoughts since you came here?"

"About who?" She glared at me like I was kidding. "Oh. The electric circuit stuff. No. Been thinking of other things."

"And if you consider the precision components in the machinery currently wrapped around your head and face, the woven cable, the power regulation required to get a super-clean voltage from the shoddy mess which is house current?"

I shook my head again. "No, actually."

"Hmm," she said thinking.

"Got an idea? Something about the neural uplink or VR maybe?"

"No. Maybe. But probably not. Just a data point."

"Well if I need to get away from the world for awhile, or from circuit diagrams, I know where to come. Thanks for letting me stay, Whitney."

"Thanks for cleaning my kitchen. You didn't happen to bring any food, did you?"

"Please go to the store. And please buy more than instant noodles, you're going to die of scurvy."

"There's orange juice in the fridge, friendo. Got it covered."

The last thing I saw before I mentally logged out and found myself staring at the inside of the visor was her gentle smirking face. I looked over and saw her body lying there, pale and tall and thin compared to her avatar, like it was her soul and this was the corpse it'd left behind.

I sat up and immediately remembered pain was a thing as my broken ribs announced their existence. Another nice perk of VR.

I didn't want to leave, really. I just had this continuing feeling of not being able to stay. It felt like I was intruding...felt like anywhere I could just be for a while, I was intruding, and everywhere I was supposed to be, I didn't want. I realized with some dismay that I was looking forward to being back in class and on a schedule again. That was my safe space, that was my 'normal' life, away from all these people touched by Exhumanity.

Or...maybe not. Maybe I'd infected yet another. After carefully crawling over Whitney's long legs, I'd checked my mobile and saw half a dozen messages from Alyssa.

They began somewhat benign, apologetic for what occurred. Songs she thought represented her feelings, asking if I was alive jokingly, and then less jokingly. Asking why I was ignoring her, and more apologies. I held my head with my other hand as the messages slipped towards madness. Asking why I was still with 'that girl' if she made me so unhappy, and then saying she thought we should still be friends, and I'd misunderstood our 'date', telling me I was a jerk, and then inviting me over with a salacious winky emote that wouldn't have been out of place on the pixels face of AEGIS' temporary body.

Maybe Moon was right. Alyssa was clearly in pain. She'd taken us seriously and I hadn't, I couldn't even act like this entire new life of mine was anything more than pretend. But Alyssa...Darris and Sebastian too, they were real. This life was the only one they had, and for me it was just some...some...some escape?

Almost like Whitney's VR world, I wondered? I didn't know. I felt shitty, and that was the concrete part.

My mobile buzzed again, and I braced myself for another message from Alyssa, but instead saw it was Lia. She'd been right about this whole thing, too. I should apologize for ever not believing her.

But all thoughts of that fell right out of my mind the second I read the message's contents. My mouth went dry and I almost dropped my mobile.

It was a picture, lettering in the corner identifying it as an airport in New York, taken yesterday. A large commercial VTOL filled with what looked like Europeans disembarking down a loading bridge.

And circled in red near the back, a skinny man with toned skin, a thin moustache visible under the hood pulled down his brow.

But there was no mistaking him. Not for me. Not with the number of hours I'd seen his face in looped holovids, or when I closed my eyes.

Dragon was back in the states. And he was probably coming for his toy.