So if things weren’t awkward before he arrived, they certainly were now. I simply stood there in silence and watched those two light up a couple of cigarettes before we went in.

“Want one?” He offered.

“Oh, no thanks,” I declined.

“So Emily, what brings you back around here…let me guess, your Lazarus Chip is on the

fritz again?”

She let out a sigh and took another drag of her cigarette before saying, “yeah. Some psycho messed with it awhile back and had it retrofitted to control me. Thanks to Eric and some other friends, I made it out.”

Other friends.

“Psycho huh? Any Psycho I know?” Victor inquired.

“No, it was a long way away from here.”

She was smart enough to not mention the world walking. Last thing we needed is more people from Murk passing through the well. Especially not this 80s post-punk goth rock looking guy.

“So how did you two meet anyway?” he asked.

Emily gulped a little and glanced at me quickly before replying, “Eric was a client. We ended up helping each other out.”

So I’m a client now. First, I was just another one of her friends. Now I’m a client.

Victor smiled as he finished his cigarette and said, “I’ve really missed you Emily. It’s a shame that you left the way you did. Could’ve been fun if you had stayed.”

She didn’t respond to that. She just looked down to the ground as she put out the reminder of her cigarette as well.

“Well, let's go on in. I’ll put on some coffee, then we can take a look at it,” Victor said, as he motioned us into his home.

His house was nice. Fairly simple, but the product of a man who worked for what he earned. He was certainly a lot further along in life than I had been before I inherited my estate. This guy had a lot going for him. I was starting to think that maybe the reason Emily wanted to come here alone was because she was reevaluating her current situation. She had gone through absolute hell with me recently. No wonder she was so vague and quiet about our relationship. With Alabaster gone from this world and this guy available, why would she want to stick around with me anymore? All I had to offer was a life of slaying Devils.

Victor had Emily sit facing towards an inclined table, like an easel, where she could lean at an angle and he could operate on her neck. I sat behind her with him so I could observe and see for myself how all of this worked.

She moved her hair out of the way and waited for him to get to work. First, he put on a pair of gloves and started snipping open the row of stitches on the back of her neck. He sat the scissors down and started to part the skin away. This exposed a metal panel on her spine that looked sorta like a motherboard.

“Okay, Emily. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

With her consent, he flipped a small breaker lever downward. This caused Emily to fully collapse forward onto the easel. She was out completely. No one home. Now he could mess around with all the little components at his fingertips. He was kind enough to explain everything to me as he went.

As he went to work I decided to ask him, “so how old were you when you were under that quack's control?

“I was thirteen when he took me in. But I was fourteen when Emily destroyed the lab and freed me. By the time I came back, she was already gone and I never thought I’d see her again. About four years later, she looked me up and asked for help. She’d blown a fuse and it was messing with her.”

“Is that what's wrong now?”

“No, she hasn’t blown a fuse. There’s two in here and when one blows the other one is on borrowed time. If she ever blows both of them, she’s screwed if no one can replace them for her.”

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“How come you didn’t teach her how to replace them herself?” I asked.

He smirked at me and said, “I would’ve but last time she was here she was interested in learning other things.”

That felt like a slight jab, but I couldn’t take it personally. He was probably at least a little upset that she took off without saying anything to him.

He went back to work on her and I asked, “Can you show me how to?”

He turned to look at me and said, “yeah, of course.”

Luckily, the types of fuses she took were very similar to the ones found in my world so I was certain I could replace one if need be. Assuming she was actually coming back with me that is.

“Ah ha! Just what I thought,” he said, “Yep. Somebody put a governor on her. See that? That little device is a receiver that can control her by way of a transmitter. Every now and then, this thing will ping the remote and if the connection is broken it’ll start to spaz out and give her a little jolt. Interesting design though, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I decided to change the subject so that he wouldn’t question where we had been for her to get this modification, “so if you were thirteen when he put the implant on you, how is that you’ve aged so much when she hasn’t?”

Victor stopped working for a second and pointed to his own stitch on his neck. He said, “see what I have is a Lazarus Chip Mark I. It can only reanimate someone and keep them going. What Emily has is a Lazarus Chip Mark II. It alters the state of her cellular structure and keeps her from aging.”

This was truly wild stuff. It wasn’t enough that my life was full of fantasy, adventure, and science fiction…no, we had to throw technological gothic horror in there too. At least she wasn’t a Synth.

”Alright, there it is. I got it off,” he showed it to me before continuing, “now we just gotta let her cool down for a little bit before starting her back up again. The chips used to her normal body heat, but no sense in firing her back up right away after we’ve been tinkering around.”

He leaned back in his chair, grabbed his coffee mug and turned to me. He said, “Oh, if she ever does blow both fuses, you’ve got about twelve hours before her body will start shutting down so no big rush to get all the components together. However, after about seventy two hours, her body will start naturally decomposing and it might be too late to save her. So keep that in mind.”

“I will.”

“Here, I’ll put together a kit for you that has everything you need to work on her should the need arise,” he paused for a moment and then added, “it’s crazy isn’t it? She’s such an independent spirit. But with a little know-how, and a little work, someone can easily control her. Get her to do their bidding like a mindless automaton.”

It was a stark reminder of the fate she had so narrowly escaped twice in her life already. I would do what I could to see that it would not happen a third. That is, if she still wanted me around.

A few minutes went by and Victor handed me a little maroon zipper pouch with some basic tools, some stitching thread, and a few spare fuses. I was grateful for that, even though I could tell he looked at me like what would be considered a ‘normie’ in my world, but a freak in this one.

“Alright, we can wake her up,” he said, before he started closing the stitches on her neck.

He threw the little breaker switch and she started to move a little as he closed the remaining threads up.

“Did it work?” she asked, grasping at her lucidity.

“Yeah, you’re all patched up. It wasn’t bad at all. I even showed Eric here how to fix you next time. So you don’t have to come all the way out here unless something really bad happens,” he said, as he winked at me. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy.

“Thanks Victor. What do I owe you?” she asked as she stood back up and stretched.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. It was just nice to see you again. Can I put you two up for the night?”

Moment of truth. Were we staying? Was she staying? Was I about to get a gentle nudge to the road?

“No, thank you though. Eric and I were going to do some sightseeing before we found a room.”

What's this? Was I really this bad at reading women? I mean, in my defense, she was the queen of mixed signals. When we first met, she came on so strong and direct. But ever since the Celica incident, she reeled it in. Our conversation in the park that day of the attack on the mansion really showed me that she wanted to take things seriously for a change. She wasn’t doing it for me, she was doing it for herself. Maybe I had been thinking the worst of her lately.

We said our goodbyes to Victor and thanked him once more. Rather than take a cab from his house, we decided to walk into town to find a place to grab lunch. It was a quiet stroll at first. Neither one of us wanted to be the first to speak. Finally…

“”Hey,”” we both said, simultaneously.

“Sorry, go ahead,” she conceded.

“Emily, I’m really sorry. I owe you a huge apology. I’ve had some bad thoughts about you that you didn’t deserve. Between my assumptions of your time at Clint’s apartment and your intentions in wanting to come here alone. It really wasn’t fair.”

“It’s alright. It’s not like I haven’t given you and the others plenty of reasons to think those things about me. But the truth is, I knew how Victor would come across and that’s why I didn’t want you to meet him. I wanted to spare you from all that tension and discomfort.”

She stopped walking and turned to face me before adding, “I swear to you, nothing would’ve happened if you hadn’t been here. That’s why I asked Arduwan to come.”

“I believe you, Emily. I appreciate your honesty, I just wish I understood why you want to tiptoe so much around the others.”

“I know, I know. It’s just…this is my own way of letting myself feel something real for a change. Just give me a little more time and I promise we can let everyone else in on it. Okay?”

Her eyes looked more green than ever with the sunlight radiating from them as she stood there in front of me on this gorgeous late winter day. I won’t bore you with the rest of our trip, but I can promise you this…it was the start of a beautiful relationship.

For now.