AEGIS was just straight freaking out at me, which was the opposite of what I needed.

For my part, I was whole again, but didn't feel that way. After I'd realized Alyssa was dead and that my body was mutilated past being able to stand and run…

It felt shameful to admit it...even to think it, but I just laid there and waited to die. I'd tried so hard when Dragon was coming after us. I'd thought about so many things, and laid so many plans, and came up with so many ideas. And for what?

She was dead. That's where my cleverness got us. In the end, it would have been better just to hand the device over to him and pretend I was never there.

The fire had spread slowly, but soon engulfed the rooftop in a ring, leaving me lying on the burning, nonflammable rock like some viking funeral barge. Within minutes, all I could hear was fire. All I could see was fire and my dead friend.

It wasn't long after that emergency services arrived. Firefighters found me and I was carried away in a harness swinging below a VTOL which braved the rising flames. As far as I knew, Alyssa was left there to be kindling.

When the others heard, Lia swung in and slammed a handful of millions on the counter, demanding I be put in a regenerator at once. When they couldn't immediately clear it, AEGIS put Cosette on the phone, who demanded the same with the clout of the XPCA. That was apparently enough to get me there and home.

But even after the drugs wore off from the regenerator and I woke up again, I didn't feel awake. I felt like I'd fallen asleep from my idyllic college life and was still drifting in a nightmare. Half my mind couldn't believe Alyssa, sweet, innocent, human Alyssa was gone, but the other half couldn't shake the sight of her dead face from it.

"You realize," AEGIS continued, currently in the angry half of her rant, "none of this would have happened if that girl wasn't there. She slowed you down so much, she was sweating everywhere, of course Dragon was able to track you! You think he wouldn't notice puddles of sweat leading up stairs? He tracked an Exhuman artifact across the country twice."

"That girl has a name, AEGIS," I muttered at her.

"Well not fucking anymore. Now she's just a corpse, and one that almost killed you." Her arms switched from crossed to pulling at her hair as she swung back into the other half of her tirade. "I was so worried, Athan! You were literally going to die from this one! What was I supposed to think, seeing you with knives and burns all over you? Covered in blood? I was so scared!"

I closed my eyes but found no comfort in the dark either. She just. Kept. Talking.

"I mean, do you have any idea what would happen to me without you? Or anyone here. Lia? Tem? Do you think any of us have much to live for past you? Do you even consider these things before you go dashing to save every damel in arm's reach?"

Her voice rose as she started yelling again. It'd been over an hour and I was still sitting here, enduring this abuse. AEGIS didn't get tired or need to eat or use the bathroom, and she thought as fast as a computer. She could literally keep it up forever.

But as much as I wanted to tell her simply to shut up and fuck off, I couldn't. I felt leaden. I felt...felt like, in some sense, I'd died too, and what was left of me here was just shambling.

"But of course, Athan the hero sees a bitch in trouble, he's gotta go save the day. Never mind the fact that we had a perfectly good plan he was ruining by sandbagging with her. If you went straight up those stairs, you'd have gotten reception when you got up there, I guaran-fucking-tee it. But no. Instead, all this shit. Knives and blood and bodies. This is where your heroism leads, you dumbass."

She switched again, and I didn't know which one I hated more at the moment. Pissing on the memory of a girl still not even buried, or going on like everyone else in the world would die if I did.

"And now he knows where the device is, and we can't stop him. The XPCA isn't going to just let us put our hands on it, y'know. They're going to think it's safe wherever they're keeping it, and if we want to intervene, we'll have to go to war with them, or at best launch a campaign of subterfuge. Which we don't have time for, given how efficient Dragon operates...so it's basically in his hands already, and we're all fucked."

She was pulling at her hair so hard I wondered if it would come off.

"All because of that bitch," she fumed suddenly. "You and her sneaking around behind my back, like I wouldn't notice or care. Dragging you to your death was bad enough, but being a little harlot too? She deserved what she got."

"She didn't," I growled.

"What?" AEGIS snapped her head towards me from her visceral rant. "What did you say?"

"I said, don't fucking say that," I stood up and roared at her. "She didn't deserve to die, she was an innocent kid who got fucked by my bullshit life!"

"She knew you were with me. She didn't care about other women's relationships. She was a fucking whore."

"She was more respectful of you than you've ever been of another woman. She cared more than you ever have."

"She was a moron who made every possible worst decision and died for her stupidity. She wasn't fit, she wasn't smart, she wasn't capable--"

"She was a regular fucking person, AEGIS. Do you think every woman in the world should be able to bare knuckle box against Dragon before they're worthy of talking to me?"

"I can," she shouted, sounding disbelieving. "I can go nine rounds with that asshole. But you'd rather go chase some regular tail, right? No point to a woman beside how often you can kill yourself saving them, right? Because literally building a body and being your faithful, devoted servant isn't enough for you?"

I had to laugh at her. "Devoted? To whom? Not to me, that's for fucking sure."

Her face flinched. "Who the fuck else--"

"Her!" I shouted, pointing back towards the bedroom and her machines. "AEGIS Prime. You worship everything she did, everything she was. You idolize and fetishize and dream of someday becoming worthy to lick the scum off her soles. But you've never done a single fucking thing on your own, haven't taken one single step the same as she did. You've been looking back at her so hard, you can't even see the present. You haven't done a damn thing since you got rebooted and found out who you are. You're just a brittle, ugly echo of someone who already died!"

She froze entirely, her face contorted in hate, her yellow eyes burning as she stared at me. There was a bang and Lia emerged from her room, shoulders square, face as mad as AEGIS'. She stomped towards me and then shoved me into the couch hard.

"What the fricking gopher do you think you're saying, you turd," she screamed at me, her hands flying in the air. "You are crossing so many fricking lines--"

"Lia, shut up," AEGIS barked. "Don't fucking yell at him."

"You shut up!" Lia shouted, turning. "Both of you! You've been screaming for an hour now, and do either of you feel better at all? You're just pissed about something horrible that happened, and you're taking it out on each other."

"Yeah, horrible because of that slut," AEGIS said, turning back to me, speaking icily. "Who did deserve to die, by the way."

I was back on my feet again as Lia stood between us, pressing with all her strength to keep us apart.

"Guys, stop!" she screamed.

AEGIS pushed her halfway across the room with a flick of her wrist.

"Don't you fucking touch my sister!" I screamed at her.

"Then tell her not to get in my fucking way!"

Lia was back and pulling at my arm, still struggling her best to stop the fight but unwilling to touch AEGIS now. "Athan, please," she pleaded at me. "Please. Stop this now."

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"I'm not the one picking fights and crapping on dead people, Lia," I growled at her. "I'm not the one who's so fucking insecure that she's jealous of a dead girl."

"Jealous? I wish," AEGIS scoffed. "The only thing I'm jealous of her for is that she got to be there, because I would have done it all better. If it were me instead, nobody would be dead and you wouldn't have almost died. She fucked everything up."

"Yeah, instead, she was there because you're fucking insufferable. I went to campus that day to get away from you. Like every day. Because you're so fucking ugly inside, I can't stand being around you without hating you."

Her face twitched and for a second, her engines flared to life like she wanted to punch me straight in the face. I raised my chin for her.

"Take a shot. Put me back in the hospital like you already did," I whispered at her.

"Athan!" Lia shrieked.

But AEGIS took a step back, looking as ravaged by my words as I wanted. Expressions flashed past on her face, her lips and brow contorting as she wordlessly fumbled with a response.

I didn't even care right now. I was just so livid with her, with all the shit she'd been doing, not just to me but to everyone around her, I wanted her to feel all of our pain. It didn't matter to me what damage I was doing, I just wanted to twist the knife.

I eyed her as she sagged away from me, the more desperate and pathetic expressions on her face growing in frequency.

"It's over, AEGIS," I said, my voice sounding cold even to myself. "We should have broken up a long time ago."

Lia, notably, tensed on my arm, but didn't speak up.

"No," AEGIS whispered. "No, no, no. Please."

"Yes."

"No, I can...I'm sorry. I said some things I shouldn't have."

"You've done nothing but say and do things you shouldn't have since you came back online, AEGIS. You're shallow, bigoted, hateful and spiteful, petty and jealous."

"I am. I know. But I can--"

"And I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of waiting for you to change. I'm not doing it anymore."

"AEGIS...it'll be fine," Lia muttered. "You guys are no good."

"No," she replied. "No!" she yelled. "NO! I dedicated my life to you, Athan. You were my everything!"

"You did a shitty job of it."

"If you dump me, I have nothing left. I gave up my whole reason for being, my programming, everything to be with you. You can't just leave me like this."

"You'll find another reason," Lia reassured. "There's so much more to you than Athan. Let's all just...calm down a little and--"

"You don't know anything," AEGIS gasped. "Anything about how I work in here," she pointed at her heart. "I am...I am fully dedicated to you. In every sense of the word. Athan, without you, I would be nothing."

"Then you're nothing," I said opening my hands as though letting her go. "I have no interest in being with anyone who's gonna tell me who among my friends deserved to die."

"I...I misspoke. She was...she was a fine girl."

"Bullshit," I said, advancing on her. "Bullshit. You think you're just gonna lie to my face after all this? After all this, the second you get threatened, you turn to fucking lying to me? This is why we can't work, AEGIS. Even when you're trying with everything you have, it just comes out toxic."

I turned to go. I felt hollow and bitter inside, and Lia's cold hands slipping off of my arm as I pulled free of her felt like a soul leaving my body.

I had nothing. No powers. No strength. No girlfriend. No Alyssa. In less than a day, it felt like I'd just completely ruined everything in my life with remarkable efficiency.

I just wanted...wanted to disappear. To go somewhere far removed from whatever pitiful existence the guy in this house must have lived and be someone and somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I sat down at our little college student excuse for a dining room table and pulled out my mobile. It sat there, mocking me with a reminder that I'd scheduled to meet Alyssa this morning. The stupid piece of shit.

I flipped it open and scrolled through the contacts until I found who I needed right now.

"Hey. Sorry to bother you. Can you talk for a sec?"

A voice came clear over the line that wasn't Whitney's. It was her VR avatar's, a higher and louder voice, as though always just a little excited. She was answering the call from within the VR. "Not another event, I hope?"

"No, nothing that drastic. Well. Maybe a bit drastic."

"Something happen?"

"If you turn on the news you might see it. But--"

"Hang on," she interrupted, and I closed my eyes in irritation that I'd derailed us already. "Oh. This fire. This is your campus? Athan was this you?"

"My point was," I pressed on, "to ask if I could stay with you for a while. Things in my home situation have turned volatile." I glared at AEGIS as I spoke, as she silently bawled, Lia flitting nervously around her murmuring reassurances.

"Um. Well, you know what my place looks like, but I can hardly say I ever use it. Are you cool with paying food and rent?"

"I am very cool with that," I said curtly, feeling like the negotiations were pointless.

"Uh, sure then. Come on by whenever. I'll...I guess...I'll clean a little."

"Don't bother," I said. "See you later, Whitney."

"Sure thing," she said, and then I hung up.

Even with the simulated voice of her avatar, I could hear some trepidation of words unsaid. She was probably wondering what had happened and why I was so pissed sounding. Well, she'd get the full story eventually, but I wasn't going to spend another minute here with AEGIS that I didn't have to.

I marched into the bedroom and pulled a bag from under my bed, throwing possessions into it at random. Books, clothes, toiletries...really the amount of stuff I owned was negligible compared to the amount of AEGIS' machines and crap populating the room. Seeing them pissed me off all over again.

My fingers lingered over a few strips of wispy yellow material, stained black with blood. My blood, and AEGIS' dress. The real AEGIS. Makeshift bandages she'd wrapped around me, one of the last things she did before she'd died. Next to them, the EMP-fried boot drive and backup I'd carried with me on that day.

And on a shelf next to that, mirrored on AEGIS' side of the room, the hololens I'd given AEGIS as a gift so very long ago, the etched lines of my crude depiction of the two of us smiling in a way we couldn't anymore.

My hand withdrew. I would leave them here. I couldn't hold onto AEGIS anymore, either one of them. These were just scraps of fabric from a long time ago.

I turned to go back to packing and found AEGIS standing silently in the door, tears streaming down her face. At meeting my gaze, she drifted into the room like a ghost and pulled something out of a drawer at her desk, her eyes on me the whole while.

"Before you go," she whispered, her voice choked, "there's...I…"

I sat down heavily on my bed, facing her with my head in my hands. I took a deep breath and then met her gaze. As much as I wanted her to suffer right now, I didn't want her to suffer. Each of the tears rolling down her cheeks stung, no matter how I recalled her biting words.

"What, AEGIS?" I asked, exasperated.

She flinched at my words and mouthed wordlessly for a moment. "I just...please...can you...without interrupting, hear me out? One last time? I know...know I don't deserve it."

"Just say what you want, AEGIS," I said.

She nodded and took several moments to compose herself, wiping away tears without effect. "I love you. I really do. And if I had it all over to do again...I'd do so many things differently. I...I wish I didn't...didn't blow it as hard as I have. Everything you said is true. I am just...just a shell of Prime. I don't know who I am...I was just...just figuring myself out when I first switched into Rua. And she was so successful. I thought...I could just...be her. But I guess that wasn't possible."

She looked up at me, her chin trembling. "I'm sorry I messed up. I'm sorry I didn't do it right. I'm sorry I'm so closed-minded and spiteful and jealous. I never wanted to be any of these things, and I know Prime wasn't, and I just wanted to be her so badly, I focused so much on all the things she did and never remembered to look at why. I'm sorry I failed you, and I'm sorry we couldn't be together because of my failings."

Despite her words, how much she was crying and trembling, I had the odd thought that she's taking this really well. Not in the sense of being happy, but that she'd accepted it. I'd...well, I'd honestly expected to have to fight her to get out of the house. But somehow she seemed to have come to terms with the fact that we'd be apart.

It...gave me a little moment of hope. AEGIS had been ruined by my influence. I'd put too many hopes and too much responsibility on her, from the moment she woke up, and she was so busy trying to live up to it that she never had time to grow. But now, if we could be apart, she'd find other things to live for, other reasons to be. She'd become a more complete person, maybe. Possibly even one day, if she didn't keep chasing dreams, she'd become Prime in her own right.

The thought lasted just a moment. Just one fleeting, stupid moment. Before AEGIS showed me what was in her hand, holding it outstretched as tears flowed from her eyes.

"I'll always love you," she said, choking on her sobs. "Always."

I had only barely gotten to my feet as she jammed the backup drive into her hair port as though stabbing a knife into her heart. Both of us stood still and transfixed, eyes wide as we stared at the other.

She trembled for long moments, her body shuddering as though some transformation was going on just under the surface. Something violent and painful. Something soul-erasing.

And then she blinked repeatedly at me and cocked her head.

"Huh?" she asked through a nervous smile. "Athan? Are you...okay? You look like you've seen a ghost," she laughed. "Or...maybe I have?" she looked around, taking in the room. "Where is this? I don't remember being here. And why...why…"

She advanced on me, reaching out to squeeze my hand in both of hers, hands warm and strong, as sure and gentle as her touch had ever been.

I couldn't answer her. I held her to my chest as tightly as I could, though I knew the person I cried for was already gone. Confused and lost, I just held her as much as I could, as though if I did, her spirit wouldn't slip through my fingertips.

"I'm so confused," she said with a small laugh. "Athan, what's wrong with you? And...and what's wrong with me?"

I pulled us apart to look at her and see what she meant. She looked...the same as she always had. Beautiful. Freckled. Coils of copper hair.

Her fingertips delicately probed at her cheeks and came away damp. She looked at them in confusion and smiled at me even as she sobbed involuntarily.

"Athan...why...why am I crying?" she asked, looking lost.

I held her again, closing my eyes and trying my best not to break.

"Because someone...someone imperfect...someone who loved me a little too wrongly and a little too much...has passed," I whispered.