It was sort of annoying how understanding and yet how completely notunderstanding Saga could be all at once. I’d barely been drifting through a very pained version of consciousness, my mind ten types of addled and fuzzy, and Saga was there doing what she could to ease my mental discomfort.

Which was funny, because AEGIS was doing what she could for my body. If things weren’t so shit, I might feel spoiled.

But Saga anticipated what I needed most, and that was information. Before I could even ask it of her, she was whispering to me, or just dropping memories straight in my head, making clear what our position was, and more importantly, what positions Dragon wasn’t.

She seemed optimistic, but the second I started having doubts about there being multiple of Dragon, or our current situation with the XPCA driving the streets looking for us, or the whole fucking thing where a battalion of soldiers parted way for him, I felt her frustration seethe, and through that flare-up, gleaned that AEGIS and Karu had both already told-her-so that I wouldn’t be as bubbly about the situation as she.

“You killed him,” Saga hissed at me, even as she stroked my hair, AEGIS binding my broken fingers where I’d caught a knife in the palm of my hand. “In my experience, killing people is pretty much the best solution to any problem.”

AEGIS glared at her. “If it’s a problem of politics, often killing people just makes things worse. And as you can see, somehow Dragon was in the good graces of the XPCA, and we’re not. Killing is the opposite of a solution right now.”

“Or the problem is that there’s the original dude running around out there still one-armed,” Saga shrugged. “And he needs a killin’ too.”

“How does that fix anything about our current situation?” AEGIS glared at her.

“You’re right. Let’s kill all the guys downstairs too. Let’s make a real party of it!”

“Just hold his head while I get these bones set. This is going to hurt a lot, Athan.”

I shook my head. It might, but I was doped up on stims and painkillers both, a powerful cocktail that made pain actually kind of a fun diversion more than anything. I could see how Karu might get messed up from overusing this stuff.

Soon enough, I was more mummy than man as AEGIS finished wrapping up the parts of me I’d managed to destroy, and we all settled in to wait without much else of a plan. Fleeing on foot would be impossible for the moment, and we were in some ratty little town in the middle of nowhere, with a population of less than a hundred thousand…big enough to have a couple big chain stores, small enough that they could track everyone leaving. Nowhere Rito had ever been, so nowhere we were get out of fast.

“You know,” Saga smiled down at me, at my thoughts. “If you really want to get out of here, I can just have us waltz out between the XPCA without a problem.”

“There will be a problem though,” AEGIS frowned at her. “For starters, they certainly know you specifically are here by now. Anti Code-X measures will be in place as best they can manage. Patrols will have drone partners, remotely operated, and soldiers would be rotated constantly and checked for psychological disparities. Assuming the protocols from a hundred years ago are still accurate.”

“Oh. I didn’t mean to imply I’d be sneaky? I just said we could waltz out of here. I never said they’d be alive while we did it.”

AEGIS rolled her eyes. “Look, on the off-chance you’re serious, more bodies would just make the situation worse. If nothing else — and trust me, there’s a lot else — you’d narrow down our location significantly for them by popping people. If you’d like to help, maybe go down there and have a look around some people’s minds. See what they know about us and our location, how long they’re planning to stay, patrol routes, force concentration and whether it’s growing or not, false leads we might be able to use, force composition, loadouts, disposition, who the officers are, troop morale and consensus of opinion, where they’re based out of and supplying from, intent, logistics hangups we could exploit, comms channels…you know, the basics.”

Saga blinked at her, her pale face going even whiter as the list just kept growing. “Uh. Yeah the basics. The obvious basic stuff that we were all already thinking.” AEGIS nodded, apparently immune to sarcasm. “Okay well,” she rose and stretched her scrawny legs. “Guess I’ll head downstairs and see what I can pick up. And yeah, they’ve got cameras, I’ll stay out of sight,” she added as AEGIS opened her mouth.

To my surprise, AEGIS took hold of Saga’s hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Stay safe out there. Come back in one piece, okay?”

Saga delicately pulled her hand away, bewilderment scrawled all over her face. “Uh. Yeah, sure will. You…too?” She gave me one final perplexed glance before heading for the door, scratching her head as she went.

“Did I say something wrong?” AEGIS asked as the door clicked shut.

“I don’t think she’s accustomed to having people care about her, or worry about her well-being. And certainly not from people she can’t read,” I said, sitting up on the couch. Sitting up was a mistake, and I felt pain shoot across my chest through the drugs, but more significantly, my body just didn’t move as I wanted it to. AEGIS made an irritated noise at me and shuffled over to put her legs as my pillow and head in her lap.

“Stop trying to move,” she crooned at me. “You’re hurt, you doofus.”

“Doesn’t feel that bad,” I grinned at her.

“That’s because your nursing staff is so excellent and your drugs are so potent. But none of that changes the fact you really beat yourself up out there, giving your all at beating Dragon.” She took Saga’s place in stroking my hair, but her touch was lighter, gentler, and infinitely warmer.

“I really don’t know what today meant,” I said, looking up at her. Her little pointed chin was almost hidden from my perspective by the shadow of her breasts…but I did make an effort to look past them. Mostly. “So much of today was so different from how I thought things would go. I just…I don’t even know.”

Her light touch on my head seemed to stir my brain into a soothing topor. “I know,” she whispered. “I’m irritated our intel was so bad, too. It makes me think that the XPCA has reacted to our methods and for really important stuff, they’ve found better ways of communicating that we can’t track. I suppose it was only a matter of time.” She let out a low sigh. “And the connection between Dragon and the XPCA, whatever that is, it’s a nightmare.”

“Well yeah, that,” I said. “But also…dude, I beat Dragon today.” The stims were holding my emotions at arm’s length, but I did feel giddiness as one of them. “I really beat him. I was faster than him. I dropped a fighter plane on his frickin’ head, and Karu’s mines, and boom, man. Dragon! The Dragon! Or…the second one, I guess.”

I saw her beam at me, and for a moment the hair-mussing got more playful before turning clinical again. “You really did. What was it, months of training? If you’d like, I could put a recording on the holo and you can ‘review the tapes’ again if you’d like. There’s a couple times when he even looks mad that he’s trying to hit you but you don’t let him.”

“Some other time, hopefully,” I smiled back at her, feeling weariness creep into the simple gesture. “I’m not sure I’m up for focusing on something that long. Can we just sit like this?”

“We can sit like this for as long as you like,” she said, fingertips teasing my scalp.

I felt myself drifting almost as the two of us sat there on that couch. Just me and her lap and her fingers warming me in that dark, drafty room, without any power on. Time seemed to leap past me in wide strides…or maybe the sun just went down too fast, but soon it was just us sitting in the dark, with the meds long since out of my system.

Karu had come and gone, at first strolling by in her underclothes, but then wearing her visor as the dark had crept in, the floorboards squeaking and the red glow, the only sign of her passage. Saga was flitting around downstairs, staying mostly in range of me.

And AEGIS just sat there, staring down at me like it was impossible to be bored so long as she had my face to look into. Which was crazy, because frankly, I’d seen my face, and it wasn’t that interesting. She saw me blink my way back to awakeness and smiled.

“You don’t have to sit here,” I told her. “We can just dump me on the bed and let me sleep.”

“There is no bed,” she smiled back. “Well, there is, but it’s just a frame. No mattress or anything. Furnished doesn’t mean fully furnished, I guess.”

“Oh. Well we never even talked about who gets the couch,” I said, trying to stir and again finding the pain that seemed to fill up my body when I moved. I’d really done a number on myself against Dragon. I let out an involuntary gasp and then AEGIS held me down.

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“Don’t be stupid, Athan. Karu’s a big girl who doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor if you’re hurt. And Saga and I don’t sleep at all. You need to just relax.”

“I’ve been relaxing all day. Let me do something for a change–“

She continued to hold me down with strength I couldn’t challenge even if I weren’t hurt. “That’s very thoughtful and very stupid, Athan. Is my lap not comfortable?”

“It is, but–“

“Then enjoy it.”

I frowned at her. I knew, cognitively, she was right. There wasn’t a lot I could do right now, and not a lot I could do for AEGIS in general. But I also kinda hated feeling like everything was about me, and for my benefit. I hated being the focus of everyone’s care.

Like Lia, I guess.

“So that thing with Saga,” AEGIS said, utterly transparent in her change of topic. “I didn’t say anything to her that I wouldn’t have said to you.”

I blinked at her, feeling stupid. “What thing?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve been thinking about it for hours now. When Saga took off, I told her to take care of herself and she seemed…stumped.”

I laughed and well, fuck that hurt. AEGIS frowned out of the side of her mouth and I saw a resolution on her face to not be funny for awhile.

“We’re close, you know?” I told her. “You and me. Saga’s…not used to being close to anyone, or being treated like she is.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Is…that it? I…hmm. I’m sorry, I’m still…booted recently, and relatively new at this, and still figuring out where all our relationships lie. Did I cross a line?”

“Maybe,” I smiled up at her. “But not a bad one to cross. Saga’s always wanted to be friends with you again, and she made a real effort there for a bit after New Eden. But…that…wasn’t a good you to befriend, really. She was kinda…”

“Bigoted. Closed-minded. Self-absorbed. A Jerky McJerkerson.” She smiled down at me. “You don’t have to mince words, she was a failed iteration. If we caught her in a simulator, I’d terminate.”

“Jesus, AEGIS. That’s…she died, you know.”

She frowned at me. “Sort of. I guess. But she wasn’t fit, and you all observed it. She only happened to be the next iteration because she was chosen by…abnormal criteria. Like, obviously I’m glad you guys got her online and everything but…that’s not at all how I’d have done it. And I think it shows.”

“Sorry.”

“Well…at the end of the day, we avoided the biggest potential problem. She realized she was a failure and that self-termination was for the best. The worst-case scenario would be if she decided her autonomy was more important than being a successful AEGIS, and lived on in that stubborn decision. God knows she got close by dragging it out as long as she did, but at the end of the day, she was still one of me in the end.”

I was suddenly finding the lap a lot less comfortable with this talk of AEGISes killing themselves and such. But she carried on sweetly.

“I know…we’re in a weird place right now. I respect your decision to give me space to figure my own things out and to walk a different path than the last iteration. But to be totally honest, this distance is killing me,” she laughed, even though what she said didn’t seem funny at all. “This…this right here is great,” she said, stroking my head. “Taking care of you after a hard day’s ass-kicking together? I can’t actually imagine a better life out there. Maybe one where you wind up less hurt…but even when you are, at least I feel useful treating you.”

“Uh, gee. Don’t like…wish too much injury on me now.”

She grinned impishly. “We all know that given the chance I would pamper you into uselessness. I’ve attempted it before and it didn’t end great. But my heart’s still in the right place for it. If you’re not ready for the convalescence, don’t get the injury.”

“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime?”

“I liked mine better, even without the rhyming, but sure. Consider this my selfish side, I guess. I’ll stand by you when you’re ready to charge out and do the stupid things you feel you need to in order to make the world better, and in exchange, you’ve gotta lie there and get better under my care.”

“I really don’t see what part of that sounds selfish, but sure. It’s not like I’m in any state to argue when I’m beat to hell anyway,” I laughed. And then remembered not to do that.

“Now with that said, I’d still prefer you hang it all up and stop doing stupid things,” she said, poking me in the scalp. “You worry me every time. And while it’s obviously great that you’ve sort of…” she trailed off, and I looked up to see her thinking. “…I don’t know. Gotten stronger isn’t the right part of what I mean.”

“Well what do you mean?”

She frowned in thought. “Well most of this data is second-hand, but it seemed to me the whole time you were depowered, you were…sort of paradoxically unhappy. Like, you were happy. But the happier you were, the more unhappy you were about it.”

“Yeah that sounds familiar,” I said, my gut churning a little bit at the thought.

“If I’m wrong, you can just tell me. Like I said, this is second-hand, the previous iteration didn’t make any of these conclusions successfully. I’m just drawing off based on what I saw she’d seen.”

“No, you’re right. It always felt…kinda…fake. Like I was waiting for something bad to happen to wipe out all the good. And then it did, Dragon came and proved me right, by killing a wonderful person I had no right getting close to.”

She gave me a small, pitying little frown and her fingers stroked me delicately. “That’s not true, you know. You can be happy without consequence. The universe isn’t built on a karmic scale, and if it were, it wouldn’t hinge on something as small as your personal happiness to decide when bad things should happen.”

I shrugged and let her continue, though she stared me down for several more long seconds. I couldn’t exactly disagree with her, but I didn’t get to choose how my gut felt either.

“Anyway,” she sighed, giving up on that. “My point was, ever since coming back into your powers you’ve just seemed…so much more complete. Like I said, not just from them being stronger now, but youare stronger now, with them. Or heck, maybe they’re stronger because you are.”

“Man, wouldn’t that be neat?” I asked. “I just…I don’t know. Like I said, the whole time I was at university, it felt fake. Felt like I wasn’t following the path I was supposed to. And then I step back into it, and I get to knock out some Exhuman chick who’s legit tearing up New York City like a comic book villain. I get to rematch Dragon and…yeah, there’s complicating factors and politics, but at the end of the day, I punched him in the head with a fighter jet. Sometimes, I feel like…this…” I gestured down at the bandages covering me, and even that motion caused me an appropriate twinge of pain “…this doesn’t really matter. As long as I’m doing what I’m supposed to. I’ve been human, and Exhuman, and ex-Exhuman, and re-Exhuman–“

“Kinda doubt those terms are gonna catch on.”

“–and through that, I’ve realized what life is for me. It’s the awful, fucky one that kills me. Which sounds like it sucks, but at least I know that now. At least it’s a choice I’ve made. And that makes all the difference, you know?”

She shook her head. And then stopped. And then nodded.

“Choosing to go against your programming, huh?” she whispered. “It’s a hard life.”

“It’s the only one that’s a life, though.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Just…stop getting quite so beat up, okay? We need to work on your powers so you can use them without ripping yourself apart. You worry me.”

I gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I am getting better, but I do feel like I need to pull myself together. It’s not fair to you–“

The hand moved from my hair to my mouth and gently pushed my lips pursed.

“You are so very tactless,” she said, beaming. “Even if it worries me, even if it hurts you, even if we’re both stuck living a messy, sub-optimal lifestyle because that’s the only one where we can choose to be free, you should never push yourself like that for my sake.”

“Why not?” I said, muffled through her finger.

“Because I’m here for you. If you fight until you can’t stand, or if you’re so hurt you need to be held together, or if you require protection only I can provide…I’ll be there. You can stop worrying about what to do for me and rely on me instead. Go, be that crazy guy, even if it makes me nuts, if it’s what you have to be in order to be the most complete, best version of yourself.”

I looked up at her and got lost in the electric yellow of her eyes, barely visible in the dark. She stared right back with a sincerity and intensity that matched her words.

Words that honestly, I wasn’t sure I could even understand. It sounded to me like she was pulled in every possible direction, from wanting me harmed to healthy, wanting me safe to reckless, wanting me out there and smothered in her chest forever…all different facets of her which tugged her in all ways…and all led back to me.

But she was also mature, intelligent, and introspective. I knew that even if she was feeling a thousand conflicting feelings, what mattered most was her conclusion, what she, as an autonomous, grown-ass, independent AI had decided was most important, of all those thoughts and feelings.

And it surprised me both quite a bit and not at all to hear that what would make her happiest was for me to do whatever I felt I needed, safety and comfort and smothering in that chest be damned.

Or, mostly damned, I thought, as I nuzzled my ear against her warm leg.

“You seem happy,” she said after a few minutes, like she was only speaking when she was sure I wasn’t going to drift off.

“Do I? Things are kind of going to shit. I’ve got a dozen broken bones–“

“Four. Three of which are in your hand.”

“–the whole thing with two different Dragons is impossible, and a fucking disaster–“

“And it’s quite possible he already has the device, or is securing it right now.”

“–and he’s way further in the XPCA than we anticipated.”

“Plus they’re more coordinated and against us than we’d thought.”

I squinted at her but she maintained a smile. “So how can you say I seem happy?”

“Because…you do. Because despite all of this very real stuff going very really wrong, to say nothing of the fact we’re currently holed up in an apartment that’s in the middle of nowhere, circled by XPCA like sharks around a lifeboat…you’re just…with it. You’re not beating yourself up or carving regrets into your heart or freaking out. You just seem a lot happier. I don’t know how else to put it.” She giggled. “But it’s nice.”

“Well, it stands to reason that if being happy makes me worry, then being miserable makes me happy, doesn’t it?”

She laughed, full-bodied enough to rival Karu, though stopped quickly when she realized she risked bouncing my head around her lap. “You’re so messed up, Athan.”

“You too,” I grinned at her.

She smiled back. “Yeah. Well. Probably shouldn’t mention how turned on having you breathing in my lap for the last couple hours has gotten me. It’s not all humidity from your breath down there.”

I closed my eyes and snorted at her, eliciting another giggle, even as I turned my head so I’d be breathing a little further off of her.

She again let us trail off, watching me carefully as though picking her actions on whether I was falling asleep or not, but after several more minutes, as I began to feel my eyelids drooping and moments washing over me again, she must have decided otherwise.

“Athan?” she whispered, suddenly speaking up.

“Mmm?” I groaned back.

“Would you…like to do this forever?”

My head felt really heavy with the sleep I’d almost fallen into, and I wasn’t sure what she meant exactly. Getting hurt on ill-conceived missions? Chasing a world that defied us at every turn? Being completely unprepared for just how badly bureaucracy and corruption would fuck us? Fighting to the death? Or just the caregiving afterwards, while things continued to go to shit around us?

I thought about all of that. All the fucking messes we made and left behind and walked into. Like a dream, they seemed to wash over me, but they were reality, and it was everything else that was the dream.

“Yeah,” I muttered into her leg. “I’d like that.”