Once more, anonymity showed its face to Noem. But he knew the one behind the veil had a reason for it, and she identified herself more than enough with her braid and pin. He wiped the frost from his Qi, let his skills fall, and nodded a greeting to his old friend.

“Right back at you, Sylvie. You too, Punk. How’s life been since I got kicked out?”

Sylvie shrugged. Her bond, Punk, a clockwork chameleon made entirely out of silvery gears and glass tubes with liquid yellow electricity, returned Noem’s nod with a small one of its own. Punk stuck out his tongue, which was a long sticky tendril of electricity, and splattered it against Noem’s shoulder in greeting, then pulled it back with a shift of contentment.

“Well, that confirms it’s actually you. Never thought I’d see you again, not after what happened to Mona. So d’ya finally end up abandoning her? Izzat why we found you while we were lookin’ for her letter’s signal?”

Noem shook his head. “Nope. Finally got her to wake up, but she’s got some horrible fuckin’ amnesia. Can’t remember much beyond her name.”

“Oof, that’s too bad. And congrats, I guess.” Sylvie leaned to the side to see around Noem’s shoulder. “So where’s the little sis? She still workin’ out how to walk, or did you manage to get those thingies you were talking about up and runnin’?”

“Got ‘em up and running. It took her a few days to get used to being awake, but she’s as good as new. Even her memory’s got a factory reset, that’s how well it worked.” Noem chuckled humorlessly at the end of his lie, then tapped his foot on the ground. “She’s working to bond with something right under our feet, and since I can’t hide anything from you, it’s an apex.”

Sylvie tilted her head to the side, then shared a look with Punk. Punk stuck his tongue against her hood in a reminder that he couldn’t see her face, and after a moment of reluctance, Sylvie pulled it down. Revealing a face horribly scarred with scalding burns, eyes that had been gouged out and replaced by silver cameras, and a head full of brilliant silver hair. Both her lips and eyebrows took on the same colour, and from all the people that had teased her about it, Noem knew it was natural. Her scars were the colour of a partial shadow, and the rest of her skin was as dark as the space between stars.

Noem caught her eyes glancing towards him for a split second, but he was used to her face. He still didn’t understand why she didn’t get corrective surgery for the horrible burns, but he’d learned to stop asking.

“If I wasn’t sure enough before, I am now.” Sylvie said. “So Mona found herself an apex, huh? Good for her. What’s she doin’ to get its trust?”

The ground rumbled under Noem’s feet, followed immediately by the sound of a contained explosion. Sylvie raised the one eyebrow she could move, then looked down in surprise when the second blast rang out.

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Noem pointed down at his feet. “That.”

“She gonna be okay?” Sylvie asked worriedly. “She ain’t a monster like you, Noem.”

Mona hadn’t been a monster like he was. Now that Keira was in there, everything that had held Mona back was gone. One skill slot turned into two. Aphantasia that made it nearly impossible to visualize her Qi moving through her body completely gone. And a personality that had made progress through all the difficulty nearly impossible was wiped away and replaced with one so bubbly and forward-facing that Noem couldn’t bring himself to hate the girl who’d taken over his sister.

But Sylvie was starting to stare at his silence. Noem forced a wide smile, like the proud brother he should be, and let out a single dry laugh. “You can be the judge of that when you see her for yourself. She’ll surpass me in no time at all, since she can actually get beyond the mortal realm. Speaking of, how’s your cultivation going? Hit the peak of the genetic realm yet?”

Sylvie crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Not lettin’ you change the subject that easy. Last I saw Mona, she was one half of dead and gone. And I don’t gotta repeat everything the docs told you was gonna happen to her. But now she’s alive and well, and she’s suddenly better than she ever was. What did you do to her, Noem?”

Noem’s smile became even more forced. His teeth ground underneath it, and it took all of his self-control to not walk away. “I thought you’d trust me, at least. All I wanted was Mona back; nothing else.”

“That’s not what I–” Sylvie began.

Noem tuned out Sylvie’s pointless justification. He looked beyond her, and in the distance, he could see the other two. Running towards the sound of the explosions, which could now only escape through the one unblocked exit. If they saw his things, they’d know what he’d done to keep Mona alive. And they’d turn him in the second they saw little miss meteor. Or Mona’s unused anchor.

He needed to stall them. It wouldn’t be a huge ask, and he didn’t mind playing the villain if he had to. But he needed them to take Mona without asking too many questions. No matter if he believed it or not, Mona was supposed to stop the end of the world. Only a monster would get in her way knowing that.

“I don’t care. I don’t judge you, so don’t fucking judge me.” Noem said flatly and let his smile fall. “If you think I’d do anything to Mona that wasn’t only to get her back, then you don’t know me at all. And you had more than a decade to do that, so I’m not holding my breath that you will any time soon.”

Sylvie frowned at his stark dismissal. “I’m just worried about Mona. Your parents pushed her hella hard, and now you’re forcing her to bond with this apex. What’re you gonna do if she can’t handle it?”

“She can handle it. And I’m not the one forcing her.” Noem said calmly. He took a step forward, and Sylvie instinctively took a step back. Punk clicked and whirred something Noem knew was an attempt at mediation, but there wasn’t anything to mediate. Sure, he was annoyed with Sylvie, but it wasn’t anything worth fighting over.

He left his knife in its sheath and poured two continuous skills into his slots; Sprint and Resilient. Along with them he readied Block and Dash, two skills that would supplement the others he had on and amplify their efficacy by a good amount. Something only someone with an excess of skill slots could comfortably do.

Sylvie held up her hands to show she didn’t want to fight. “So we’re fightin’ over that one little sentence? That ain’t like you, Noem.”

“Four years can do a lot to a person. Though you’d know that.” Noem countered. He raised one hand with his fingers pointed down at the ground, then brought them towards his wrist as if he was digging a small hole. “And yeah, we’re fighting.”

Sylvie blinked in surprise, then snapped to attention and summoned two of her own skills. Noem recognized them as Nimble and some variant of Punch, but they were amplified with Punk’s electricity. He couldn’t count on them acting like his own.

“Guess we’re doin’ this.” Sylvie flipped her hood up to cloak her face in unnatural absolute darkness. “Too bad our happy reunion lasted all of two minutes.”