Well Athan was in shit condition, but I guess that was the natural outcome from dueling a professional assassin, pushing yourself past your limits, and then taking a pair of explosions in the face. He was fading in and out so hard that I put him under, just as a mercy to his tortured consciousness.

He wanted nothing more than to know what happened to Dragon, and while I’d have loved to indulge him, the simple fact was, I wanted out of here. Things had turned too spooky for me once I met yet another person I couldn’t seem to touch. I might have been in shock, or being paranoid, or however AEGIS wanted to psychoanalyze me, but the fact was, I’d already almost died once, and that was one more time than I ever thought I’d have to face. I hoped they’d forgive my totally reasonable moment of weakness.

Hoped Athan did, mostly. The two others could kinda go fuck themselves if they had an issue with it. Not like either of them were exactly scott-free when it came to having mental hang-ups.

Speaking of whom, they descended on me at that moment, Athan sideways in AEGIS’ arms and Karu flitting in the air like a moth.

“We’re leaving,” the bevisored one spoke.

“He wants to know if Dragon’s dead”, I thought at her.

“Nothing could have survived that blast,” she said with confidence.

I shook my head. “Aren’t you a professional? Isn’t she a huge weeb?”

“Weeb?” Karu echoed. “AEGIS are you a ‘huge weeb’?”

“Um. I guess you could say that. Not huge but…”

“And is this relevant to our current critical situation, or is Saga merely wasting my time with her errant thoughts?”

AEGIS blinked at me. “Uh, I can’t imagine how that’s relevant right now.”

“Seriously?” I said, feeling the dust in the air choking my throat. “Nothing could have survived that, she just said. Have you guys never seen a single holovid?” I turned to AEGIS and glowered at her. “Or like, four hundred different anime shows where that shit happens all the time?”

“I suddenly understand the relevance,” AEGIS confessed. “And no. He’s dead as hell. There’s pieces of him all over, if that makes you feel any better. Come on, the XPCA is coming.”

“The XPCA is nothing,” I told them, with more bravado than I felt. “I can keep them away from us forever if I have to. But if he wakes up and Dragon isn’t a smear on the desert, I will never stop living it down. In his head.”

“He is dead. AEGIS and I both confirmed,” Karu said. “Now let us go. I do not fear the XPCA’s weaponry so much as their knowledge. We have breached their perimeter; if we flee now, it is likely they will lose us yet. But every moment spent in pointless reflection puts us at further risk.”

I shrugged. “Sure, whatever. If you’re sure he’s dead, no need to linger. Get us out then. Waiting on you now.” She gave me a toxic glare. I snapped my fingers obnoxiously. “Come on, move your fatty cans.”

I probably deserved getting shot in the face. When I came to, we were far in the air, the ground whipping past as plasma-emitting arms snaked and twisted and angled right in front of my face.

“Anyone ever tell you that you need to lighten up?” I thought at her.

“I did lighten up. I unloaded some excess munitions into a garbage receptacle before taking off.”

If I wasn’t part-way in her head, I wouldn’t have at all picked up on the fact that she was talking about shooting me. Karu made a joke! I was so proud. Almost.

“You need to work on your sense of humor. You know that nobody’s ever going to go for the stuck-up bitch thing if you don’t have a hint of personality behind it?”

“It would be very easy to drop you right now,” she said flatly. I looked down again, at the endless desert we were whipping past, featureless except for the typical desert garbage, and AEGIS sprinting along under us, Athan in her arms, bundled in something.

“What’s up with the burial shroud for our boy?” I asked. “Oh, I see, it’s to keep him from getting burned as she runs. Why didn’t you trade who you’re carrying? She can’t burn me. Oh, you can’t put that much extra weight on your jetpack. Well it’s a good thing you got it all sorted out without my help,” I said, stretching out over her shoulder armor as comfortably as I could.

“When you ask a question, do you ever wait for an answer? Or is this brand of irritation something you reserve exclusively for me?”

“I kinda feel obligated to annoy you,” I thought back. “After all, you make it a point to sing that stupid song at me constantly, and I like to make a point of how much it does nothing.”

“It irritates you, does it not?”

“It sure as shit does that.”

“Then it achieves its intended aim.”

“You’re a lovely girl. Y’know, if you weren’t so porky, you probably could carry Athan and all your gear?”

I clung to the arms of her jetpack as she shrugged me out of her grip, but apparently she didn’t enjoy the death spiral that sent us into because she gave up almost immediately.

“What the hell are you two doing up there?” AEGIS yelled at us.

I opened my mouth to yell back, but the air whipping past just seemed to blow into my lungs in a very uncomfortable manner. Which was a shame because I had a great line of BS all ready to spout off.

“I am considering a detour to a volcano,” Karu answered. “To drop off a load of garbage.”

“You already used that line,” I informed her.

“I did not use it on AEGIS already.”

“Pfft, repeating your jokes is low-class.”

“I do not understand how you have not already been sufficiently killed to still your tongue,” she sniped. “Surely somebody must have tried by now, and I cannot see how they could want for motivation to persist.”

“Oh, I’m adorable. Spend a hundred years with me and you’ll see. I grow on you.”

“Yes. Like a rash, I imagine.”

“Maybe one of those fun, incurable, STI ones. I could be the bumpies on your fun spot.”

“I will murder you.”

“Girls aren’t usually my thing, but I’m really not sure if you count.”

“I will murder you.”

“Afraid of what I might awaken? That’s understandable. Sometimes I even frighten myself. This one time–“

She tilted again and tried to throw me off, but I just giggled as I threaded my fingers through the arms of the jetpack, sending us veering wildly sideways towards a hilltop.

“Unhand…my…” she growled, which was impressive given the G’s we were being pushed through.

“Guys, what the fuck,” AEGIS shouted at us over the wind whipping past.

Karu levelled us out and stopped us midair, levelling a gun at the side of my head.

“You may cease your chatter, or you may be shot and disposed of in the desert. I am well willing to suffer Ashton’s wrath if it means being rid of you.”

“Aw. I thought we had a thing between us. Some kind of STI.”

“Are you quite done?”

“Last one I promise.” She sighed enormously at me, her head rocking backwards like I was breaking her neck with my words. “Ahem. I wouldn’t want you to do something rash.”

“Are you satisfied?” she growled.

“I mean, I could go another two or three rounds, but if you’re spent, I guess we’re donesies. You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke, would you?”

We flew off again, and as much as I liked tormenting her, I also knew she was completely serious about dumping me off somewhere for the XPCA to find. If nothing else, walking out of this big bowl of sand didn’t seem like a fun time, and I wasn’t quite so immature that I couldn’t put off a little fun now to avoid a lot of suck later.

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Besides. Athan being down there, head cradled in AEGIS’ arms, all full of confused and pained thoughts was kind of putting a harsh on my buzz up here.

“He’ll be happy we got Dragon,” I thought at Karu, aiming at a more reasonable conversation. To distract myself from Athan’s thoughts, if nothing else.

“He may be,” she said, with some reservation. “Yet I sincerely doubt it.”

“Why not? He’s been all after that guy for…months now. I thought he’d be buying a new pair of dancing shoes for all the celebration he’s gonna be doing.”

“How is it possible for you to allegedly know everything, and yet to be so ignorant?”

“Sometimes, I try to block out facts so I can see the world from another point of view. Like yours. Keeps me young.”

“I assumed it was your powers which provided that perk?”

“Yeah, but even so, a girl’s gotta have a regimen, you know?” I ran my fingers through her short mane of hair. “Of course you do. How do you get this so soft? My hair just sits there like a beaten dog.”

“Kindly refrain from touching me or commenting on my person ever again.” I considered going back to arguing with her…which seemed inevitable, given how long it’d taken us to wind up doing it again, but instead decided to try out one of the tricks I’d picked up lately.

I focused back on the topic of Athan and Dragon and subtly let the barrier between our minds slip open for a moment. Earlier she’d asked why I asked questions if I was just going to mind-read the answer. The fact was, unless I wanted to go digging — which was, ick, effort — it was usually easier just to prompt them to think of the answer and then skim it off their surface thoughts.

This trick did the same kind of thing without them noticing anything more than a random change of thought. As the topic resurfaced in her mind, she began speaking even as I could peek at her opinions on it.

“While it may not be as apparent to one as insularly and self-focused as yourself, today’s excursion was very much a disaster. While it is true that we killed a man who was apparently Dragon, that was not the same man who had clashed with Ashton in the past. I expect he will similarly see them as two threats only half addressed.”

“Hmm,” I mused. Honestly, I didn’t go by faces or bodies or anything that much. People were minds to me, and having never met the apparently real Dragon, I could only judge by his crazy competency and the fact he was a Sino assassin who was here when Dragon was supposed to be. Like, how many of those could there be?

“But what is potentially worse is how the XPCA regarded him,” Karu continued. “They saw and acknowledged him, and then permitted him leave without question. For him to have such a level of influence, and for us to be wholly ignorant of it until now, it speaks of a power far greater than we had thought.”

“Greater than a globe-trotting unstoppable killer with basically unlimited resources?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

“Neat,” I said, feeling my thoughts beginning to turn towards the muddled mess which were Athan’s.

“And what of you?” she asked. I wasn’t deluded enough to think she was asking about my well-being, which was good because she continued right on. “Why were you unable to affect him as we had planned? Had I known that you would have been useless in this encounter, I would have opted to leave you behind.”

“You already opted to leave me behind. AEGIS thought I might come in handy, and Athan agreed.”

She just smirked at me, so I felt her silky-smooth hair again.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I could feel him, it wasn’t like he wasn’t there. But it also wasn’t like…a mind as I’ve always experienced. It was…animal, almost. Like, not even mammals and birds and shit that I can do things with, but small dumb animals, with brains so stupid I can’t even touch them.”

“Such as…goldfish?”

“Oddly specific guess, but no. More like insects. Ants. But at the same time, nothing like that. There were thoughts, lots of thoughts, just…”

I thought about it for a minute. It was kind of like trying to describe blue to a blind person. The shape and feel of a brain and the thoughts in it weren’t exactly something I’d spent a lot of time trying to explain to others. Karu seemed content to think and wait in silence as well, and I thought for a moment she was just enjoying my shutting up before I realized my thoughts were leaking out and we were still having kind of a one-sided conversation.

“So, ants,” I told her, forcing my thoughts into one direction. “They’re really stupid. They don’t really think or make decisions, they’re just kind of…input-based reactions. You take any given ant with a similar disposition at the moment and put them in the same situation, they’ll always react the same. Pick up this chemical trail, do this thing. It’s why a lot of them die fruitlessly doing nothing.”

“They pursue a trail without consideration for self-preservation?”

“Pretty much. Doesn’t matter if they’re walking in circles for hours until they keel over dead, their inputs say go that way, so they go that way. It’s not a brain for thinking. And that’s what I felt inside Dragon. No thoughts means I can’t influence them, means I can’t really touch him.”

“What manner of man has no thoughts?”

“I don’t know. Because, like I said, he’s a lot more complicated than ants. He was on his feet, predicting what we’d do, analyzing the battlefield, keeping tabs on you, Athan and AEGIS all at once and evading and moving and striking as best he could…but none of it were like…thoughts, if that makes any sense.”

“Instead of an insect, perhaps a computer analogy,” Karu mused. “They always do as programmed.”

“Sure, same thing, except I’m more accustomed to wetware,” I grinned at her.

“So you are saying that, for example, he is a program which is specifically capable of high-complexity combat situations with multiple combatants, with varied capabilities, with regard to shifting objectives and probabilities. These factors are fed in by his senses, and his actions are mere output, without a thought given?”

“I…guess? But you realize it’s nothing actually like that.”

“Then what is it like?”

I frowned at the back of her head, and then played with it more, because she honestly did just have really nice hair, the bitch. “I don’t know. Stick with your analogy if it works for you. AEGIS is exactly what you described, right? She’s just an AI.”

Karu shook her head, both in disagreement and to untwine my fingers. “She is an AI, true, but she is a simulation of human intelligence. Her thoughts are very much the opposite of what you described, I imagine.”

“I guess,” I sighed. It wasn’t exactly comfy up here, and while every few moments of discomfort, I reset and it started fresh, even that sensation was getting tiresome.

“Oh, silence your complaining. We are very nearly through.”

I craned my neck and saw roads in the distance, and shimmering on the horizon beyond them, the first traces of civilization.

“You should all sit down, strip down, and eat a nice juicy hamburger to celebrate,” I informed her. “You could really go for that right now.”

“Do not project your desires onto me, cretin. I am well aware of my own wishes, and see no need to indulge yours.”

“Sheesh. I’ll just sit in Athan’s head while he eats then. Much comfier in there anyway. Got myself a nice little corner hollowed out where I can curl up with a good read and a cozy fire–“

She twisted and I felt myself falling, thrown full-force over her body with merciless seriousness.

Huh. Didn’t know what I said to set that off, but apparently that was even worse than inviting her to a sexy soiree. Was she just that protective of Athan’s mind that mentioning I was in it warranted summary execution?

“Oh for fuck’s–” I heard AEGIS shout before my spine shattered on the ground. A moment later I blinked and looked up at the sun and the AI standing over me.

“Nice panties,” I told her. She frowned as she pushed down her dress while still keeping Athan in her arms.

“The hell did you say to her?” AEGIS asked, glancing over at the blue streak vanishing over the city without us. “And now I have to carry both of you? Come on.”

I thought about it and what Karu’s mind had felt like the moment she’d snapped and thrown me off. It wasn’t anything to do with Athan. Strangely. Just the mention of fire. Karu had some deep-seated issue with the stuff, which was crazy considering the amount of people she’d just baked alive back there.

Or maybe not crazy. Maybe very much related.

“Eh, offered to use my long delicate fingers if an enema didn’t help dislodge the stick from her ass,” I told AEGIS. “I think throwing me meant yes, but I’m not clear?”

“You are just the worst, you realize,” she said. “I’m glad I don’t have to hear your thoughts sometimes.”

“Yeah, the absolute worst,” I smiled back at her. I wasn’t feeling the witty banter right now. Pissing people off was plenty of fun, but not so much when I did it accidentally. Kinda irked me, like this whole trip kinda irked me, and I was willing to sacrifice a few one-liners if it meant getting home sooner.

“Well…” she shrugged. “Climb on, I guess. Try not to bleed or melt into my air intakes. It’s gonna hurt a lot.”

That was an understatement, I realized, as my arms and legs immediately felt like they were made of fire the second I touched her. We still had a longass way to go though, and a little pain…or a fuckton of it, really…wasn’t anything to scare me off. In a way, it was kind of a comfort. Familiar, easy to deal with. Non-threatening. Distracted me from those scary thoughts.

Choosing my skin blistering off over having to think. Hoo boy was I messed up. Maybe if Athan and I ever settled down, we could get into some heavy S&M. That sounded fun. Or at least, novel.

“Keep your grip up,” AEGIS complained.

“Sorry. Think I’m passing out and-or dying from heat stroke back here. Did you know you’re kind of a hottie? Or are you just running a fever?”

“I always fever when I run,” she grinned at me. “For the Mk.4, I should consider more active cooling options though. But I’m not gonna add giant coolant tanks, so I’m sort of at an impasse on the heat issue.”

“I know where you could add a couple giant tanks,” I grinned, grabbing her frontside and making her stumble.

“If I fall and he gets hurt, I’ll kill you,” she groaned.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot today. Did you guys synch your periods without me?”

I did stop groping her though. No reason to get Athan hurt, after all. Not over a joke. No matter how fun and squishy the joke was.

Which left me back with hanging on, burning, clinging on as best I could through lethal discomfort, and pain-dulled thoughts. It wasn’t the most pleasant ride of my life, but at least it wasn’t the most boring.

We quickly found a place to crash…very nearly literally, breaking in to a disused but fully-furnished little unit, and the girls split up their separate ways, AEGIS treating Athan and Karu breaking down her whole outfit to clean and calibrate.

And I did what I did best and laid there on the bare floor, just happy not to be out under that stupid sun or bouncing off anyone’s back or shoulder anymore.

The hours seemed to crawl by as we just waited. AEGIS sent Karu out for food at some point, and then cooked it and got Athan to eat some with them. Police sirens were going off through the city constantly, and from what I could pick up…we were definitely the cause. Every once in a while, some truck or van of XPCA would trundle past, and I’d get a glimpse of a half-dozen exosuited soldiers, still combing for us.

“I guess we hang tight for now,” AEGIS sighed, peeking out the window as yet more lightbars flashed blue and red as they drove past. “Seems we stirred up quite the mess.”

“It could be worse. I could be trapped in here with a deranged psychopath,” Karu said, and then eyed me. “Oh, wait.”

“Hey, Athan’s hurt, and he’s not going to be happy if he finds out we spent the whole time fighting,” AEGIS said. “Let’s all just play nice for a while until we can get out of here, okay?”

“I’m game,” I said. “Plenty of other people around for me to mess with anyway. And I think our neighbor has like, fifty cats.”

Karu rose and glared at me, her green eyes smoldering. “Stay. Out. Of. My. Head,” she growled.

“Sure thing, princess.” I waved dismissively at her. “Nothing up there anyway.”

The contrary part of me wanted to deep dive right that moment and figure out what exactly had happened in Karu’s life to trigger her so hard, but I had meant what I said.

Cuz like, fifty goddamn cats. That was a fuckton of fluffy goodness to play with. I could deal with just that. For now.