It was Saga, of that I was sure. She'd been in my head too much and too deeply for me not to recognize her presence. But how...or what...or...even who, I couldn't begin to understand.

Because...the girl reclining under the tree wasn't Saga, despite being her exactly. The same mannerisms, the same pose, more like she was a corpse than relaxing, the same look in her eye, the fascination with the fractal patterns of leaves and baums. On top of the brushing in my mind, it was her.

Until she spoke. Greeting me pleasantly, asking me if I was new, what my favorite parts of Oasis were, and why they were not being in the glasslands anymore. She spoke of being a refugee, an entire life story and narrative, told easily, readily, not in the least made-up sounding or hole-ridden.

And entirely too sedate and mundane to be a prank of Saga's. The whole time the girl spoke, the images were insistent in my head, showing me a man, like myself, just talking. Two completely normal conversations playing out in my senses. And I had no idea what it was meant to mean.

But it meant something, I could tell by the depth to which Saga had connected us. Rarely had she forced our minds so intimately, almost never, not since the first time she'd tried to kill me had she completely hijacked my senses, and this was a million times more confusing than that. That...the blackness and seeing Saga herself in front of me...that was her as I knew her. Direct, confrontational, confident, domineering. But this whole thing with seeing too many senses at once?

I didn't know. But it felt like a plea for help. And so I sat there for two hours, just listening to both conversations without a single clue. Without a single word spoken in my head, or a single thought or feeling or even idea where Saga was. It was like...this kind of direct connection was all I was going to get out of her, and I just had to take my one puzzle hint and solve it.

And frankly, that scared me. Because I knew Saga hated that kind of bullshit. It meant, everything else she could normally do to get through to me, either she wouldn't...or she couldn't. And I had no idea what that meant.

"Look, I'm sorry," I said, interjecting into a wistful and vivid description of the lady's parents and cocoa plantation they used to work at. "I'm just...super confused right now. Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure," not-Saga replied with an enthusiastic grin that, again, wasn't like Saga in the slightest.

"I have a friend named Saga. If you see her, can you tell her to reach out to me?"

"Umm. Okay. You know, we don't...get a lot of visitors here in Oasis, right?"

"Sure. Yeah."

"Okay then. Nice to meet you, Mister."

I headed back to the rooms, my head spinning with possibilities. It hadn't helped that as I'd said my parting words, so too had the man in my visions, and then he left as identically as I had.

I stumbled upstairs and found half of the girls, anyway. Tem was there, inanimate as ever, since I'd told her not to follow me. Karu was polishing up guns. But no AEGIS or Lia, whom I had come looking for. I turned to leave when Karu called out to me.

"Ouch," she said, and I turned to see what'd injured her, and found her looking only at me.

"Ouch?"

"The sting of a handsome man entering your bedchamber only to look upon you with disappointment and an eye to leave," she clarified.

"Sorry. I'm...not my intention. Hi, by the way. Uh. Just got something on my mind."

"What is it?" she asked, pulling out the stool next to her and patting it with a gloved hand. Even dressed up in the silks of this place, she still kept her gloves and sleeves on to cover up the scars. The reminder of it made me frown, and I tried to sit down without making my staring obvious.

"Just...something with Saga."

"Something sexual?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. I couldn't quite tell if her green eyes were glittering with curiosity or irritation.

"No. Worse. I think."

"My, that is a situation. Explain yourself."

And so I did, while she sat and listened patiently. Aside from muted nods, she said nothing until I'd talked myself out, and even then, her silence lingered for a time.

"And you are certain this is no prank?"

"I don't think she'd do this. Especially not in such a relatively serious situation."

"We are safe and at rest for the first time in weeks. She may be blowing off steam, as it were. But if you are so concerned, why not ask her yourself? Or is that the woman whom you seeked when you entered the room?"

"I guess I could," I said. "It just...seemed...I don't know." I shook my head. "Where is she?"

"Where you would expect, I imagine. Where the food is."

I stood up. "Thanks, Karu."

"Ashton, before you go," she added. "Perhaps you should consult the local administrator? She seemed a dependable sort from my few interactions, and I have witnessed her assisting your sister in getting 'net access throughout the day. Though above and beyond as it were, she has spent several hours troubleshooting and proving herself both pliant and helpful. If you face an issue, she is not an unreasonable resource to which to turn."

"You mean Rio?" I asked. "Local administrator, heh."

"The very same. And forgive my invented title, but...high priestess rubs me the wrong way. There is enough holy about this place but little enough about her to suppose her a priestess."

"Thanks again. I'll ask if we run into each other."

"Save your gratitude--"

"It is unnecessary between comrades. I know. Thanks anyway, Karu."

"Express it carnally next time," she said, blowing me a kiss. And I left shaking my head.

Saga was right where Karu said, and it didn't surprise me that the huntress was keeping tabs on the code-X. Maybe not exactly where Karu described, because I found her face-down in a bowl of food. Not eating, just...y'know...looking dead. As she did.

"You uh, okay there?" I asked.

"I can't eat it," her voice moaned from through the stone bowl.

"Yeah we all know that. So why have you got your face in it?"

"Because it smells good, and everyone here is a toad so I can't tell how it tastes." She sat upright with a pop and brushed her food-streaked hair out of her face, small rivers of fruit juice running down her chin. "Why do we keep vacationing in such shitty places?"

"It's not a vacation," I reminded her. "And...are you okay? You seem okay."

"I've been better. Are you volunteering? I can always use more live test subjects."

I stared at her, trying not to watch the bits of food slowly slipping down greasy trails on her hair. She certainly looked like the Saga I knew, and nobody else in the world would behave like she was. It was hard to believe that this was the same person so urgently linking our minds earlier but...there wasn't exactly much else of a possibility.

I gave her another few seconds of scrutiny before flat-out asking. "So, did you do something to me earlier today or what?"

"Oh shit, you found out?"

"Of course I did. It's my head, Saga, of course I'll notice if you're screwing around in it."

"In it?" she asked. "So to be clear, you didn't notice your eyebrows plucked in your sleep?"

"...what?" I asked.

"...what?" she echoed.

"I'm being serious here."

"Unibrows are serious."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Saga, earlier today I was feeling you in my head and having sensory visions. Did you do that or not?"

She blinked at me. "No. Why would I do that? That's not fun or funny."

"Is tweezing eyebrows?" I had to ask.

She shrugged.

"Okay. I need you to please, please, be completely serious and tell me you didn't."

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"O...kay. I didn't. Swear on me mum."

"Then...what? It was you. Absolutely. I felt you in my head."

"Maybe you're going crazy," she shrugged, like that was not a big deal. "I've been here most of the day, after they asked me to stop lying down in front of every wagon on the main street and screaming 'I'M A SPEED BUMP'. I think they just don't know what speed bumps are out here."

"Jesus Christ. Saga. Serious, remember?"

"I mean...I was being serious. That was my alibi."

I stared at her as only Saga could be stared at. That twisted feeling of hearing her out, and not being quite sure which one of us was actually insane. Like one of those cursed books that drove you insane if you read it or something, except...instead of being full of dark magic, she was a fucking goddamn idiot speed bump.

"But it was you," I insisted. "I know your mind anywhere."

"And I'm very glad you do. But you're wrong this time, buddy."

"Then who...then how…?"

"Maybe you should take a nap or something," she frowned at me. "Your head's going a mile a minute."

"Maybe so," I agreed, trying so very hard to put everything together in a way that fit. The itching at the crown of my head of a headache starting to build wasn't helping. "I'm gonna...gonna go find Lia or something."

"Okay. If you see any out of control wagons, let me know."

I blinked at her.

"Speed bump," she reminded me. And I left, shaking my head, wondering if any girl I knew wasn't insane.

It seemed like there was just too much going on in my mind. Bits of sensory input from before and snippets of my last few chats were bouncing in and out, seemingly at random, my brain thrashing through data, looking for anything that made sense.

AEGIS wouldn't be helpful here, I didn't think. She'd just worry about me. I needed Lia's enthusiasm to solve any situation laid before her. But I'd also forgotten to ask Saga where she was, and on turning on my heel to go back, suddenly stopped as a thought crossed my mind.

"My head's going a mile a minute," I repeated. To myself. Like a crazy person. I scratched my chin and agreed but…

But she knew? And yet I'd never felt her brush my mind. I mean it was obvious to anyone, I imagined, but Saga wasn't just anyone. I knew by how she saw the world that lots of very obvious things slipped right past her if they weren't in the mind. Which this was...but still…

I revisited the whole conversation with Saga again, every nuance of it I could remember. And at no point did I ever feel her familiar influence. It was bizarre.

And also, kinda scary. Because...what? What'd that leave me with here?

An unexplained, disembodied Saga-like sensation I could feel in my head.

And Saga, sitting there, talking to me, quite obviously herself, that I couldn't feel. Although 'couldn't feel' wasn't quite the right way to put it, if I reached out, she was there, and I could get a grasp of her surface thoughts, emotions, feelings...same as usual.

Just not on my mind. Which was exactly what that phantom sensation had been. It was almost like someone had divvied up Saga's powers and I could only feel half at a time.

I continued forward, back towards Saga after my heel turn and found her again, face-down in the bowl.

"Saga," I announced, and she came up for air with a white ring of fruit under her left eye. "I need you to do something for me."

"Aye, aye," she saluted, and began undressing.

"Stop it. I need you to connect us, real deep, in our minds. Like we've only been a few times before. I want to feel you from the inside." She'd stopped playing around until my last line and then started faking undressing again. "You know what I mean," I sighed.

"I do," she said, letting the joke go and putting her hands on the table, her face wrought with concern. "But I also really, really don't. Athan, you're head's going a mile a minute, and it's actually bugging me now. I don't know what you're trying to achieve here."

"Just…" I shook my head. "Just do it, please."

She eyed me up and down a little warily. "Okay. Can we...go back to the bedroom though?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because…" she wrung her hands. "Honestly, because I feel really vulnerable doing this. I don't want to be out where anyone can just...step up when I'm preoccupied. At least if AEGIS is there...well...at least she can watch my back. Or...at least she has a good reason to stick a knife in it."

She gave me a little simpering smile and I agreed. It broke my heart every time I saw Saga being serious, I thought. It just didn't match her persona, and I didn't know if that meant that she was just that good at acting, or was a tremendously fake person, or...what. But it did impress upon me both the seriousness of my request, and the lengths she was going to fill it.

"When we're done I'll eat some fruit for you," I apologized.

"I like the white ones. Try the white ones first."

"I'll do just that."

We situated on a bed together, cross-legged and facing each other. I asked Tem and Karu to make sure we weren't disturbed and this was serious code-X stuff, and that was enough to put the visors and guns on apparently.

And then she was taking deep breaths while my mind felt nothing.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Ready."

And then she was in. I could tell by feeling her surface-level thoughts, a strange echo of my own, muted and twisted through her perception. I could see her seeing herself through me, could feel her inside me from inside herself.

It was all very trippy and existential, as it ever was when two minds became one. Except for one little thing.

All of it happened in her mind. Mine was completely the same. It was like...it was like someone had made a holovid of tripping into minds, and then played it for her and all I could see was the reflection of it in her eyes. It was weird and wrong, and though she could see all my thoughts, feel all my senses, being me, I couldn't feel her feeling them.

She gasped as she came up for air, breaking us off.

"What the fuck?" she asked, her face reddening.

"I don't know," I explained.

"You don't know? You just sat there thinking about how little that affected you, how completely unphased you were by the most...the most intimate thing two beings on this fucking planet can ever fucking do. And you don't know?"

"I...don't know...why it didn't work?" I stammered.

"Didn't...didn't...didn't work?" she spat, standing. "Didn't...fucking work? Didn't work!? I could have felt shit through your asshole, it worked! What the fuck do you mean it didn't work?"

"It didn't!" I pleaded, not sure why she was so angry all the sudden. "I felt nothing."

At this she went white and froze. "Nothing?"

"Yeah, nothing."

"Is that what I am to you, you fuck?" she screamed, suddenly animate again. "You're deep inside...you're...you're in my most vulnerable...my most private...and you feel….nothing?"

"Saga, calm down, you're spitting on me."

"YOU ARE SPITTING ON ME!" she screamed, enough to make Tem jump. "Spitting on my whole fucking life, on our whole fucking relationship. You'd better come up with something better than nothing to describe what feeling me is like, or...or I'll...I'll--"

Her face was twitching unpleasantly and it looked like she was seriously about to blow. I had no idea how else to explain myself, but felt like we were having two completely different arguments right now.

I stood up and put my hands on her shoulders, bony and cold, even in this climate. "Saga. I'm not talking about you. I'm saying I experienced no sensation of being in your head."

She squinted at me repeatedly, like somehow she could blow the extra rage inside of her out through her eyes. For a minute she stood there, not exactly cooling off, but not going on a murdering spree either. Which was...progress.

And then she bared her teeth at me with a snide hiss. "I don't get it," she spat. "I'm tearing my way through your thoughts and you believe every word you're saying."

"Look closer," I told her, staring into her brown eyes. "I don't even feel you looking through my thoughts right now."

Her eyes widened. "Shit, you're right," she said. And then they narrowed again. "Or you think you're right."

"What's the difference?"

"The difference," Karu said, "Is that your senses are immediate and irrefutable, but your thoughts are subject to tampering." She began to pick up pieces of her armor and to strip with alarming speed. "A code-X is at work."

"It's impossible," Saga said stubbornly, staring even harder into my eyes, leaning her forehead inwards towards me, like if she could close the distance she could dispel this entire situation. "It's...im...possible…" she grit her teeth.

I was so focused on Saga's face, I missed Karu's moment of complete nudity, because when next she stepped into view, she was adjusting the neckline of her flightsuit and donning white plates. "I fear code-X are not impossible, and you will soon learn the terror the rest of us share of them."

Tem stood and the lights dimmed slightly as she gave a dark nod.

"Whoever it is, I'll rip them apart," Saga growled. "From his cerebrum to his cerebellum."

I looked at the three of them, armed and armored, powers and weapons ready, so certain, so ready to go, while my head was still just spinning. "Who?" I asked them. "How?"

Two of them paused and looked at me. And I could tell by their glances that they didn't know either. Theirs was just bottled rage, ready to spill on any who threatened. It was directionless and useless.

Tem looked the same though. Directionless and useless was fairly standard for her.

"It is obvious then, isn't it?" Karu asked. "Whom else have we met recently, but that Rio woman? And with such authority within the city, despite knowing nothing of her powers. It bristles me so...this is why I loathe Exhumans, you realize."

"It's not Rio," I said, sitting back down.

"How do you know?" Saga asked.

"I spent hours with her today--"

"Aha!" Karu shouted.

"--and she's got no reason to fuck with my head, or do anything stupid like that. She runs this place and does a good job of it. The people are happy, and not because she's making them be. And besides, even if it was her, even if it was a code-X, what possible reason would they have to screw with Saga and my connection, or fake a new one?"

"She's jealous," Saga huffed, sitting next to me and crossing her legs. "She wants to be the only thing allowed in your mind. But that's my job."

"Look you guys just...keep your pants on. Don't blow up the city," I said, holding my head as I stood again. "I need to think on this more. Maybe we get AEGIS in on the conversation so that we can be sure there's no code-X messing with all of us before we jump to any conclusions.

Karu frowned. "A code-X is an insidious, deceptive thing, Ashton. They make you doubt your own thoughts, your own memories. Time is their greatest weapon, time to work, to cull unannounced and to rewrite as services them."

"She's right," Saga said, and I could see how serious she was in not minimizing the accomplishment. "Given enough time, I can turn anyone into anything. It's not something I'd want done to any of us."

"But bringing in the AI is a cunning workaround. We must find her at once," Karu agreed.

"You do that," I said, heading for the door. "I'm going to go follow up another lead. We'll meet back here in...ten?"

"And if you do not return, there will be no keeping pants on and much and blowing up of the city," Karu said. "Erm, as it were."

"Sounds good," I said, heading out. I ran full-tilt down the white street, the stones under me radiating heat from the afternoon sun. With every step I took, I prayed that she'd still be there.

And when I got to the tree and found her still there, still exactly still, still exactly...her, I knew. I knew what the visions meant, what the Saga in my head had been trying to tell me.

I knelt beside her and whispered, "Saga?"

"Excuse me?" the girl replied, but my mind opened up again and showed me again, the man, who moved like me, who was in my place and talking to her.

I knew without a doubt what it all was, and they were right. There was another code-X in play here. There was someone or something screwing with my head and thoughts and perceptions.

But I also knew that this person in front of me was, without a doubt, the one who'd spent so many hours in my head. The thing in my room, that moved like her, spoke like her, acted like her, even got scared and anxious like her...it wasn't in my head. And if it wasn't in my head, it wasn't Saga.

"Come with me," I said, offering my hand to the girl. "I need your help to…" I paused, unsure of what, even we would be doing. "To fix everything, I guess."