“It’s not some grand secret Mal. It’s just painful and in many ways quite silly but too serious a topic for that word to approach it. Which just makes it more difficult to discuss. You don’t want to bring it up because it’s distasteful and troubling, but it also makes you seem ridiculous which just paints it all the worse.” Allie said with a frown. “I don’t know if you’ve asked Marchand, I’ll just assume you did. Anyway, the short story is we were to have a child, a little girl, during the height of our relationship. But then Anna’s work took a troubling turn and naturally I stepped in to help her, we were both living in Luna’s Sukaiparesu complex. Basically Luna cities are called complexes for the most part. Anyway, yes, her work had hit several problems throughout the system and she was losing teams. I stepped myself and my teams into the situation and soon discovered a small cabal of major logistics corporations had made her their enemy due to a job that she’d undertook.”

“That sounds pretty major. Is that why she’s down in the water district now? Hiding?” I asked, a little confused by the scale.

“Pfft. Anna doesn’t hide. Corporations go after operator groups all the time, it’s nothing new. This time though they had an unusually effective method of tracking Anna’s teams, their objectives, their travel routes and their logistical weaknesses. If I didn’t personally make sure that we didn’t have an information leak several times I would have suspected a traitor, or several.” Allie said with an angry frown. “It was when they hit Anna’s base itself with a large corpo strike team that it all fell apart. Our daughter was still months from being ready to be born from her artificial womb, neither of us had one any longer and even if we did it’d be long past usability. Anna saw the scale of the team that had been sent to her location along with the losses of some of her best Luna based agents and personal harm to both her and me and something broke in her.”

“What… What do you mean?” I asked, a little scared to hear. This was heavier than I thought it would be. I thought they’d just had a melt down argument and fallen out.

“Anna went on the warpath, she scuttled her Luna operations. Or what was left of it. Locked down a lot of her activities outside of some civilian logistics enterprises and some minor research stuff. Then she left me behind and went dark, but before she left she sent me a video explaining how she wasn’t going to let them burn her surroundings so she was going to keep tight and mobile and cut down the corporations responsible on her own. I quite supported her choice and bravery in doing so, almost as much as I considered her a senile gonk in doing so without at least me involved. The worst part was that she guessed she would die, or be captured and rendered down for information. She didn’t want to leave any meaningful trails or connections behind for them to exploit so she broke up with me and told me words that still ring in my ears today.” Allie said as she looked out the window and away from me, I couldn’t quite see her expression in the dark of the tinted glass but when a streetlight passed I could catch the small glint of tears. “She didn’t want me to love her, or like her, or want to save her. She wanted me to want her to die if the corps tried to blackmail me with her life. She also didn’t want the corporations to hunt down our child. So she solved both of those problems at once in her mind, she terminated our baby girl’s pregnancy with the genetics company. At six months.”

We both sat in silence for a while as the car smoothly passed through the dark streets, not entirely empty of traffic but less busy than it had been when we on our way here. It was lightly raining as it did a lot in the city at night but soon we’d be back underground and out of the rain.

“I don’t understand… Well I do a little, like logically from what you said, but what…? If it was that bad then how is she here? Why did she go so far? How could she even do that?” I asked, totally confused.

“She succeeded in the end. It was extremely unlikely to work, too much of a operational scale for one person, but she pulled it off and the corporations took back their kill orders and made peace. The instigators in that decision were already dead so the corporations just took the loss and moved on with only a small grumble.” Allie responded. Still looking away. “She spent a little while putting her finances, logistics and connections back in order and then headed back to Earth to slowly rebuild and calm herself down, I suppose.”

“How does that fit you into it? Were you already here? Did she find you and move in nearby?” I asked tentatively.

“No, that was me. After her name started popping in around Earth and Luna, or at least her alias. I looked into her and found where she was. I, at first, wanted to talk to her. Then I didn’t. I decided I just wanted her to know I was nearby, that I hadn’t forgotten and that I was still around and that I wasn’t going anywhere. Spiteful, in a word. Just keeping myself close enough to be painful but with no closure. We were like that for decades before we eventually started exchanging simple messages, too close for our spheres of activity to not overlap a little even if mine was barely active. Then you, the young neighbor boy I’d watched grow up, came along and joined her as an operator a few years ago, doing little jobs and not being shot. I kept an eye on you as a neighbor. Now you’re her hand, just as I start getting to the end of booting up and moving on. You’ve pulled me and her closer just by wandering around doing whatever it is you do. If only a little, and that stings all the same. I really, really hate Anna with a kind of passion that seems to physically hurt me even with pain disabled on my sensors. But I never stopped loving her, much as I scoured my soul in trying. Now you’re around, it feels a little like a grandson between us even if it’s not quite how it is in any sense. It hurts even more for it, both how it is and how it isn’t quite how it is, even after eighty years. Not that it’s your fault.” Allie said quietly, towards the end.

I didn’t know what to do, emotional situations were not my area and this was beyond the scale I was used to. The Sanctum presence attribute wasn’t helping much, just pinging me to do something with no details. I resorted to my primal instincts and did the only thing a kid can do when an adult is sad and the kid doesn’t understand. I went for a hug. Except I didn’t have arms so I basically just slumped over against the seatbelt’s pull until my torso was resting on Allies left arm and my head on her shoulder with my eyes closed. It was the most I could do.

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We just sat like that for a little while as Kaiser drove along in total silence, nothing but muted street sounds and gentle rain noises. Eventually, as we pulled onto the highway, Allie reached up took off her cap and started smoothing my hair with her right hand and leaned her head on mine. We sat like that for almost the whole way back.

-

As we approached the parking structure from the spill lanes Allie sighed a little and put me back upright in my chair and sat upright in her own. It was time to go home. The car pulled into the parking structure and headed over to the exit door instead of going over to the parking areas. My belt came loose and retracted and my door opened smoothly.

“I’ll keep in touch Mal, no doubt we’ll be seeing each other about the place. I have a few deliveries I need to wait on before I’m back up to spec and I’m still tracking down staff after all. I won’t be disappearing just yet. I’ll have your packages delivered to Marchand’s clinic.” She said with a warm smile.

“Yeah. I’ll be heading back home to book in my installations and so on. See you around A… Grandma Allie. I know it’s not quite a fit yet, hopefully it will be in the future. I’m not going anywhere and even if you leave, I’ll still find you eventually for a visit. Don’t doubt it.” I said happily.

“You… Ugh. Goodbye for now, Mal.” Allie said before pulling her baseball cap back on and fixing her hair before knocking on her window prompting Kaiser to begin driving away, the passenger door I’d got out of closing itself as the vehicle moved.

The white sedan got up to speed and looped around the cars and back out of the parking structure onto the feed lane and was gone from sight. I turned around and started my way back home, I’d brought my bag for nothing in the end but that was fine. The door to the lobby was easier to open from the push side so I just bodied my way through it and out into the streets.

It was quite late but I wasn’t worried with Marchand’s tails on me, I headed off into the dark streets without concern. Though they were darker than I remembered with it being so soon since a trip to the surface. I’d settle back to normal soon.

-

I arrived at Marchand’s street and made my way over to my apartments lifting platform, when I stepped onto it I saw who I thought was my usual tail wander into the end of the street. The black ops looking lady. She saw me looking at gave me her usual mini salute and headed off onto a lifting platform closer to the entrance to the street.

As I stepped off the platform at the clinic floor onto the balcony walkway I saw another figure enter the street. A tall looking… possibly guy? With flat steel bar cyberlegs and a very long case on his shoulders. He was covered in a puffer jacket with a fur lined hood and his face was either totally borged or he wore a mask. The oddest thing was a cybertail that looked a bit like his legs, maybe he ran on it for fast direction changes? No idea. I’d never thought to look into cybertails. I liked to fit in, not stand out.

Possibly my other tail? He seemed a scout type. I’d have to ask Marchand.

Even before I got to the clinic door the gate was opened and Dr Wood came out to greet me.

“Hey there Mal, we got a message you were on the way. Thought I’d help you with the doors a little.” She said with a gesture indoors.

“Oh, hey there Wood. Thanks for the help.” I said as we walked into the hallway towards the clinic. “I just got back from the night market and I’ll be heading to sleep soon but I wanted to try and book in some installations if that was okay?”

“Sure Mal, that’s mostly what we’re here for. Did you buy a lot from the market? If you’ve got a list of parts that’d speed up us finding installation instructions.” She said as we entered the clinic, her holding the door open for me.

“Yeah, of course. Here it is.” I said as I looked at my interface and my lists of things to think about and things to buy and then the list of things I’d bought, including model numbers. I pinged a connection to Wood’s interface.

“Wonderful. Hm, looks like it’ll take about nine hours to get all this done at once on the table, that’s from the times listed though so it could be a little less or a lot more depending on issues. Is that how you’d like to do it?” Wood asked as she looked over the detail I’d given her.

“I’d like to get it all in at the same time if possible, only one period of recovery then.” I said as I sat down in the doctors shared office space on the visitor chair as Wood navigated herself into her own chair while reading on her interface.

“That’s fine. The arms look good out of the box at least, the biggest problem piece is the lifeline system because it’s last gen and there’s going to be pressure issues because of your small size but it at least has built in installation settings so we don’t have to make any hardware alterations to change anything. Also the reservoir included will take days to fill up because the marrow cartridge is the older design. This lot should slot in fine though. We’ve got a patient first thing in the morning but how do you feel about midday to night time tomorrow?” Wood asked as she looked away from her interface to look at me again.

“That’s a lot earlier than I thought you’d be ready to fit me in, so that’s great. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow doc. Thanks a lot for making time for me.” I said as I stood up from the chair carefully, I was getting better at balancing myself with my core instead of using my arms but it still wasn’t perfect.

“No problem Mal. The clinic only really serves forty people max and lately we’re down to half that with teams being away. Not everyone is in and out of here like you are.” She said with a smile.

“Hopefully I can take up less of your work time after I get this round of installation in. Do you think you can get some steel bones between the arms and neck? I just don’t want to have soft flesh between so much steel. You know?” I asked as Wood stood up to walk me out. This little trip to the clinic took less time than I’d thought, I’d figured I’d be booking a later date in and working out plans around each other for my long surgery.

“Oh that would have been done anyway, the arms would need a strong anchor to pull from and what is left of your normal bones wouldn’t handle the strain for long. You’ve already had new ribs put in and now with the lifeline as well there would need to be a lot of work around that area so putting in some steel replacements for what you’ve got left there won’t be an issue, even the vertebrae down to the pelvis and the pelvis itself will be swapped out to offset a little of the weight of your new parts, it’ll all be stock combat grade soldier surplus but it’s good enough to start with and will handle the job well.” Wood said as we walked back to the waiting room and stood there to talk.

“Preem. That’s all I have to worry about there. Thanks doc. I’ll head home and get some sleep.” I said as I suppressed a yawn.