"We shouldn't be alive." Megan whispered. She swirled her cup of tea, and stared into the depths of its contents.

I didn't want to look at them right then, but Megan's statement drew my eyes to her. I felt her pain, which I found odd.

Sally looked down at the coffee cup in her hands, her lips firmed up to prevent quivering. She hated the thought of being powerless.

"I had thought the same. But after everything that happened, I'm sure neither of you are agents." Life Control gave me a lot of information about whatever it focused on, and most of it was instinct driven. But I had no way before Regrowth evolved into it, to understand cyberware at all. Now I can measure the affect of the chrome versus standard functions of the body. It took some effort on my part, and a lot of attention, but that was all.

No one would be able to pull the face stealing trick on me again.

Megan stared at me intensely, "Are you sure?"

I returned her look, "Absolutely."

"They kept us hooked up to machines, half out of our minds with drugs." Sally dropped that into my lap. "We experienced everything they did, as they did it. But we couldn't do anything about it. I hated every second of it. It was like being trapped in a nightmare." She shuddered.

"It was some kind of experiment." Megan said, "I managed to stay a little more lucid than Sally, probably because of my experiences running the net. I occasionally heard them talking."

Now I could feel both of them, their pain and anger. It was faint, a half remembered thought, but it was there in the back of my mind.

Sally got up to get more coffee, but I knew it was to avoid letting me see more of her vulnerability. Megan kept her eyes down her usual playful nature choked out by the suffering. Memories haunted her, and would for a long time.

"Most personality implants are recordings. With a large enough sample to work with, they are fairly accurate. Maybe 80% of baseline. However, they break down when faced with traumatic or dangerous events. I don't know why, they never discussed that part in front of us." She sipped her tea, clinging to the cup like it would save her.

"We were kept alive to be throughputs for situations where the normal implants would break down. They would have killed us the instant their agents achieved their goals." Megan's voice was soft, gentle, and terrified.

"That's also why we needed to be healthy, our bodies' condition would have affected how we felt and how they reacted." Sally said from behind me, her voice was angry but I could hear the tears she was holding back.

"I heard one of the techs said they reached 98.4% even with stressors. A victory for them, more grant money for them, more people subjected to it in the future." Megan sighed. "Then you came along." She smiled, it was a weak and fragile thing but it was there.

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"We'd never been infatuated with anyone before. Usually we were the ones getting chased by people that meant nothing to us." Sally started. She had come back to the table and sat down. "You fucked us up in a way, we hadn't been before. It was a great test of their system, and you were definitely someone to keep an eye on."

"You broke their system a few times, you and your magic." Megan shrugged, "They fixed it up better than before."

She turned to Sally.

"Do you remember how we made a game out of breaking guys spirits. Setting little tasks we knew they couldn't complete." Megan added.

"That was all you, you evil bitch, I just told them to fuck off." Sally gave her friend a withering look.

"Bitch, please you loved watching hope die in their eyes." Megan smirked at the blonde. This was a kind of stress relief for them. They needed it.

I didn't need to listen.

Me, I was reminded of the fact that people are hard to get along with. These two were not women I should have gotten involved with in the first place. Does that count as failure in the opposite direction of my previous problems with women?

Their bickering went one for a few minutes, I tuned it out. No one likes looking at the horrible parts of people they love, even if it was a bizarre proxy situation.

Then I made myself examine them closer, maybe flinching away from the bad in folks we love is part of way relationships fail. At least some of them. Sally and Megan were badasses, but they were also fucked up girls. Sure we could argue why that might be all day, but it didn't change that they already were messed up. When it's pointed at others it can be funny, which says more about me than I'd like to admit. Yet when it's pointed at me, I can't help but think I made a terrible mistake by being involved with these two.

But was I ever going to be able to find anyone who wasn't fucked up?

Not in this World.

Best to find the women with the types of insanity that I could live with, even if only temporarily.

Megan, of course, missed none of that going through my head. She was smart and manipulative, and couldn't help but to pull the levers she saw that others often missed.

"If you really wanted a stable girl, you never would have given the bitches more than a couple of dates." She dug in deep there. There was also a bitter note in there. She knew I really didn't like what I was seeing.

I had been so happy to have attention, I ignored what was attached to it.

"Oh, I know. The problem is I don't have enough experience to know what I really do want." I locked eyes with her, "Cut that shit out, now is not when you should be rooting around in my psychology. Pissing me off is a negative sum game these days."

For once in her life, she backed down.

Sally wisely didn't say anything. While she might not have been the mental powerhouse her friend was, she was good at knowing when to be quiet.

"So that explains why you are both alive, but why did they give you back?" Rip that band-aid off.

"You again. They wanted samples of all the crops and livestock, for their farms back east. They knew once the Nations started arriving that fighting over them would be too expensive and likely would destroy what they wanted in the first place." Sally gave my shoulder a friendly tap.

"So they used the one thing they knew Amanda would want above all else to trade for unspoiled samples. Us." Megan finished.

I rolled that around. It made sense. I was obviously looking for the double play here. Corpos never do anything for just one reason.

"Yeah, we have no clue either. They should have killed us when you uncovered the agents. So we've been waiting for the iron to fall on us since we've been back." Megan's insight was eerie. Perhaps she was a latent psyker, or more likely she was just that fucking smart. Which I found more terrifying.

I heard a rooster crow. The new day was fast approaching.