Her breathing was ragged and her side hurt, but adrenaline was a hell of a drug.

Leaning against a bulkhead, Apollonia listened carefully and looked back, to see if there had was any sign of pursuit.

But no one seemed to have followed her. Which, frankly, she found surprising. Even if she’d just been a bystander, security would usually want to talk to you. Though maybe her view on that was skewed – on New Vitriol she’d always had the reputation as being the cause of trouble, no matter what.

Still, if they looked at the security footage, they’d see she was a part of it. She might even be held responsible . . .

What she needed to do was get back to the Craton. Surely once she was on the ship Brooks wouldn’t turn her over. But what if she’d caused a diplomatic incident? The kind that led to damaging relations with Gohhi, or worse – war with the Glorians?

‘The War of Apollonia’s Stupidity’ sounded like the kind of thing that might end up in a history book.

Putting her hands on her head, she rubbed her face vigorously. The alcohol was making her give in to her own fears, she realized, and she had to fight that.

Despite the alcohol, her mind felt like it was working more clearly than it had in a long time.

Thanking adrenaline again, she looked around and realized that she had no recollection of what her path had been that had brought her here.

“Fuck nuggets!” she spat. “Shitting dark-licking . . . gun-fuckers!”

A stream of the worst profanity she could think of came from her mouth, and she kicked a broken crate, shattering pieces of it.

The sound of movement behind her made her turn, and she saw a man, his skin oil-stained and dressed in parts of other outfits watching her from down the alley.

The whites of his eyes stood out against his dirty skin, and she did not like his stare.

Part of her wanted to lash out at him, to snap at him to look away, but she didn’t quite have it in her. He didn’t make a hostile move, but she began to move away deeper into the narrow tunnels between the buildings that reached up high towards the center of Gohhi station.

She wondered if she should go higher, but really had no idea what she’d be looking for – the giant tube that made up Gohhi would curve away from her and possibly hide what she was looking for, if even there was a gap between the tops of the buildings and the roof above.

She took a turn, found it was blocked off, and went back, noticing that the man who’d been staring had followed her. He was still distant, but now he was not alone, as two others were with him.

She did not like this at all.

They were still not moving towards her, at least, but she picked another route and hurried down it, coming out into a lane between businesses, though hardly where she wanted to be.

This was a red light district, and she nearly choked seeing the amount of clothing a lot of the dancers in window bubbles were lacking.

The fact that New Vitriol had been originally a religious colony suddenly snaked up in her memory, and she realized just how much worse a place could actually be than she had ever imagined.

Steeling herself, she tried to reassure herself that it wasn’t that much worse than the red light district on New Vitriol. Larger, probably with more violence and murder and oh dark she stood out like a sore thumb-

She was about ready to turn herself in to station security, as numerous sets of eyes came to start watching her. She had to blend, act like she was just another customer, but of course very few of their customers were young women, that was mostly what the merchandise was . . .

Walking swiftly, trying to seem self-possessed, she passed storefronts that were offering increasingly disturbing services in veiled language, and decided she was definitely headed the wrong way.

She might actually need to turn herself in.

Somehow she could do that with her system, but she did not want to whip out her tablet in this crowd. Nor could she go into a store and ask to call security.

One sign glowed in white above a storefront, and she winced at its brightness, reading it off-handedly before pausing.

Unless it was the strange name of a club, this was not like the other places here.

The sign said ‘Salvation’, and standing out front were dumpy men in simple, uncomfortable looking garments – shawls and robes.

Dark, were they actually missionaries? Here?

She took a risk, and stepped towards the men.

“How much?” she asked one skeptically.

The man met her gaze evenly. “Salvation’s only cost is sin,” he told her.

Oh shit, these guys might be legit.

“Can I come in and . . . make a call?” she asked.

The man studied her a moment, contemplating, then nodded and gestured her inside.

The interior of the building was smaller than she expected. It was very simple; the floor was simply buffed deck and the walls were covered in images of frescoes; not shown on screens, but actual cloth that depicted images of hewn rocks, with strange patterns on them.

“You were lost but are now found,” a voice said.

It was calming, and she looked – and was surprised to see that the speaker was a young man. His face was symmetrical, his chin and nose strong, and his eyes vivid green. He wore a brown robe no better looking than the men outside, though it seemed like it fit him better. His hair was a paler shade, but not the radiation-washed type of pale, just . . . blonde.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Not quite yet,” she said. “But hopefully going to be found. Can I, er, call the spaceport? I need to get back to my ship and don’t know the way.”

The young man nodded. “Of course. But if you simply wish to be guided back to the Craton, that may be simpler.”

Her heart raced. “How do you know what ship I’m from?” she demanded.

“You’re wearing a Sapient Union fleet uniform,” the young man replied calmly. “And the Craton is the only Sapient Union ship here. The local contingent at your people’s station would never come to this area.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “You truly are lost.”

She felt foolish now; she was wearing a Craton jumpsuit, and all of that made sense.

“Ah, right, yeah . . . sorry. I’m a bit worked up.”

Dark! What a phrase to say in this area. “I mean stressed!” she added quickly. “You know . . . getting lost and found. I guess I did need salvation after all, huh?”

The young man, who she could see now had some kind of metal symbol pinned on his chest, smiled easily, apparently not judging her for her poor choice of words.

Was he someone with some authority, she wondered? The two outside hadn’t had that symbol on them, and it looked official. Almost like a stylized eye.

“May I ask what faith you are? There is no wrong answer, of course,” he said.

“Oh, uh . . . Reformed Tedian, but not really practicing . . .”

“I see. You are from the Begonia system, then? I am sorry for your people’s troubles.”

That caught her off-guard. “Thanks,” she said, unsure how to feel about it. “It’ll work out, I’m sure.”

“Things always work out how they should in the eyes of the Infinite,” he said. “Though sometimes it takes longer than we should like.”

She nodded, unsure what else to say to that. “What church is this, anyway? Are you the leader?”

“We are the Esoteric Order,” the young man said. “And I am merely a novice Priest.”

She had not heard of that – it must have told on her face, as he continued. “We seek order in the cosmos by reaching out into the places man has never tread. Only by experiencing the Infinite can we truly understand our role in the universe.”

“Wow, that’s . . . well that sounds pretty neat. Do you guys really get a lot of souls to save in a wretched hole of scumbags and pervs like this?”

“You would be surprised. Sometimes people achieve clarity after moments of their greatest darkness, and seek a deeper meaning. When they come to us, we help them as best we can.”

He inclined his head towards her. “And in that vein, may I show you the way back to the spaceport?”

Apollonia swallowed. “Yeah. Thank you, I’d . . . really like that.”

She kind of hoped he’d actually be the one to show her the way.

----------------------------------------

Urle was only vaguely aware of anything. As augmented as he was, even the most powerful sedatives that shut down the living body had no effect on his hardware.

These moments were rare, and in a way he found them wonderful.

The outside world and his concerns were beyond him until a certain time. He could simply be, by himself.

It spoke volumes about how much he had been augmented that there was enough mental power to be aware while he was technically not awake. His flesh-and-blood brain was almost fully unconscious, and he became a being of pure algorithm and code, aware, even feeling, yet no longer biological. It was not fully human, not even fully him, but he often wondered if this was better.

Sometimes he longed to break that last tether, to cut away the last of his flesh and become purely electronic; more than nature could ever devise, with none of the weaknesses of the biological. Alive for as long as there was a server somewhere that retained a copy of his consciousness.

Immortal and that much closer to being his greatest self.

The technology still was not quite there, the wetware that composed the human mind was just not built to be digitized, and the server power and storage needed to truly replicate him was more than any one person could reasonably allocate.

But even if that was no longer an issue, there was something else that would have stopped him; his daughters.

Not that they actually had asked him not to – they didn’t even know about his wish.

But if he did end his mortal life, he knew that they would not share in it. He would not even have a real body, only a shell like Dr. Y. While that might function just as well, and he knew he’d be able to experience their hugs and warmth and love-

What if they felt he was gone? What if the code that would be his person was not enough for them?

Or, what if, even though the odds were small, that the brain scan failed or messed up and he became faulty code, unable to be himself or even self-aware? It was a one-way trip, the best method being a full scan that required slicing the physical brain into thin segments to get every detail. An external scan was safer, but it was much more likely to make mistakes and result in a broken consciousness, which would then be his burden to bear.

Even if Verena was still here with them he could not knowingly take himself away from his children.

They were too young to safely begin getting their own augments, and he did not feel that children could truly understand and consent to such body modifications – let alone to being fully uploaded as they were, never to mature and grow. As much as he might wish to keep his children small forever, it was a selfish thought.

No, not until their minds had fully formed. No matter how intelligent, how learned, how advanced their children became, they were still that – children.

But one day they would be grown. And if they decided they wanted to follow his path, as he hoped, then they might all become more.

So for now, he would just enjoy these rare moments and how they renewed him.

It was trance-like, and he knew that when he awoke, and the cuts had been fully sealed with protein glue and his organic brain resumed consciousness, he’d feel whole – restored.

He felt something connect to his internal system, felt the extension of his capabilities. The new port had been installed by Madspark – or more properly, by his surgical machine. Who wanted a person’s hand inside their body? That was barbaric, a machine should always be the one doing the actual surgical work.

That meant his skull was opened, but that hardly worried him. In a few minutes it would be closed again, as if it had never been opened.

It was just odd to realize.

His system automatically began to scan the new port, checking it.

Something was off. He lacked the computational power to really think through it at the moment – all he could really do was consider past memories and decisions dispassionately, not deductively reason.

His system noted several errors, alarms began to go off. This part was not right, it-

The port’s memory storage contained data – a program that had just executed.

His system was trying to quarantine it, but it was nothing like any virus it had ever seen. It had been hidden, deeply, as if deleted and only scraps of it remained, but the sense memories were strong, and as it had been for a visual port he was getting images-

The insensate darkness was split as suddenly he found himself in a room.

Red was over his vision, and he knew it was not the effect of rage upon the living but splattered blood. A scan told him that it was not his blood, but he knew somehow that it was.

He raised his hand to look at it, but it was gone.

Missing, from the wrist on, and he saw blood splatter out of it, pushed out by the pressure of his pounding heart.

The rate of which was through the roof, and a thousand alarms of injury and malfunction were going off for parts he didn’t even think he had.

The room around him was cold, his infrared sensors could detect it and his body reacted, feeling the hard cold floor against his back, under his kicking legs. He was barefoot, and his bare soles were dirty and cut, trying to push him away from something.

He had no control over himself, and the audio cut in suddenly, and the vibrations he’d been dully sensing were the feeling of his own screams.

Someone loomed over him, their body hulking. Despite the shadows, he could see the man perfectly.

It was Madspark, watching him coldly.

“—agreed to this,” he said, his strange voice lacking any humanity.

Urle only screamed again, and the large man stabbed downward with a stiletto-like knife that Urle realized was a shock spike; a device that would shut down augments with minimal damage.

He tried to wrestle with the man, but the spike lowered closer and closer to his eye. It went in just next to it, and he felt the sharp pain as it pierced his skin, then began into his skull.

Alarms shrieked, all new alarms, ones he’d never even heard before, that he couldn’t understand in his panic.

“You should have stayed asleep,” the man said, and then the blade pierced his skull and sunk deep into his brain.