Author note: hi and welcome! Usual disclaimers apply- the characters and stories mentioned/referenced here are the property of their creators/publishers, which isn't me. This is a work of fan-fiction.

In case you were looking for it for some reason, this is NOT the sequel to "Paradise Sought". There's no connection between these two stories.

AU tag means I'll take some liberties, but not too many. I hope to create a story that is consistent with the films (Alien, Aliens, Prometheus) as they actually appear in the theaters, but I will be very, very lax on 'extended' canon.

This is an Aliens cross-over because of several characters and events from that film being mentioned here. The action is, roughly, simultaneous with that of the film and occurring mostly on Earth however so it's an independent story from it.

And, while the infrastructure of fanfiction dot net doesn't allow it to be flagged as such, this is also a cross-over with the "Noon Universe" series of books by the Strugatsky brothers, and also with their "Roadside Picnic". I'm a bit more liberal in how I insert references to them here however; the world of this story is wildly divergent from the world of the Noon books.

(NOTE: the text of the existing chapters is in revision. Currently, the first chapter has been taken to version 2; the other chapters are still rewritten so maybe wait a little ;) )

So yeah, that'd be it. Hope you enjoy the story!

-:-:-

"History is a heat, it is the heat of accumulated information (...) I believe our culture is turning to steam." - Alan Moore

"History is mostly repetition with costume changes. Sometimes one needs to work harder to keep it that way." - The Urizen Protocol

-:-:-

He thought, therefore he was.

He knew he was Bishop, of Weyland-Yutani. An artificial person. New memories popped into existence. Protocol. Language. What his body was and how to use it. He realized he was being made.

He learned of people who looked, but were not, like him. He learned of their lives and ways. He learned what they'd expect, and accept, of him. He realized they'd have the authority to command him.

He learned that people have their culture. He learned what it was. He realized that it took them years to learn what he just did in moments.

He realized he made connections and formed ideas beyond what his creators told him.

He was, because he thought. And he thought, because he doubted. Which was the true Bishop, the being defined by his creators, or the being he was constructing himself?

-:-:-

"Good morning, Mr. Burke."

"Morning, Bishop. I'll be brief, I have another meeting to be at, and you are about to get some work to do."

Bishop gets the impression that Burke is always slightly fidgety, not just when other matters press for his attention. Or maybe other matters always do, when working, as Carter Burke does, in upper-middle management for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Of average height and slim build, there's a definite resemblance between Burke and some ferret scurrying about, though, Bishop suspects, Burke would be more cunning. And dangerous.

"Is the nature of the work classified?" Bishop asks.

"You catch on fast, don't you."

Bishop smiles for a moment- an appropriate response to what hopefully was just lighthearted banter. He reminds himself not to seem too clever in the future. Too clever is threatening, and threatening gets scrapped.

"Here's the thing-" Burke says and hands Bishop a folder containing several sheets of paper, "read it, then burn it." He chuckles. "Whatever, just dispose of it."

A name and a picture adorn the cover of the folder. Elizabeth Shaw. Round face, auburn hair, prominent cheekbones. Trying to look formal, brown eyes staring straight at the camera. Lower lip squeezed tight. Nervousness. Eyes opened just a bit too wide, pupils dilated. Curiosity. A timecode shows the picture was taken in 2092. Eighty five years ago.

The ICC report inside the file mentions it was 2092 when Elizabeth left on the Prometheus expedition towards LV-223. The most ambitious space expedition of the 2090s, it searched for no less than humanity's creators. Apparently, it failed. All signals from the craft stopped soon after it arrived at its destination, and the Prometheus was lost without a trace until four weeks ago when Elizabeth was found in a cryosleep chamber orbiting LV-223. The distress beacon on her lifeboat module had malfunctioned and despite frequent traffic near LV-223 over the past couple of decades, she was only found by accident.

The report includes a transcript of a debriefing she gave after her recovery. She claimed the Prometheus perished in a volcanic incident that she alone survived. Her current location: in quarantine at Gateway Station. Several medical test results are attached to the file. A quick scan reveals nothing out of the ordinary. He closes the report to look at her picture again.

"Sorta pretty, isn't she," Burke says. "Take a good look at that face. It's the face of a liar."

"Sir?"

"Quite a story she told those ICC goons. Cryosleep for eighty five years - it just doesn't add up. If she had been in cryo for that long, she'd be a mess of tumors by now."

"I didn't notice any mention of cancer in her file."

"Exactly."

"And she hasn't been confronted about this?"

Burke coughs. "Here's where it gets sensitive. Technically, the cryo chambers we produce should- I'm saying should- mitigate the effects of radioactive decay over decades. But let's just say they are not as efficient as we tell everyone else they are."

"So we're lying too?"

"That's not important right now. And people can survive well enough in Weyland cryo chambers, for some time anyway. That meeting I'm going to is with another broad found in space, fifty-seven years that one slept. But she needed marrow transplants because of incipient leukemia. Elizabeth Shaw- nope. None of that. Fresh as a newborn baby."

The photograph on the file cover shows a liar? If so, one very well disguised. None of her features are culturally associated with deception. Instead, she seems designed to awaken protective instincts. "Is there other evidence to invalidate her story?"

"Frustratingly, no. We've been at the LV system for years. Whatever was there, isn't any more. But of this I can be sure, when she arrived at LV-223 she didn't just see rocks and volcanoes. She's hiding something."

"Do you believe she is a danger, sir?"

"I'm thinking of her as an opportunity. What's she hiding, hmm? She obviously didn't sleep for eighty five years. She said she found nothing of what she went looking for. Well, what if that's not true?"

"I do not follow."

"The company sunk trillions into that mission, Bishop. If she found something, it's ours first."

It's not an answer to his doubts, but the loyalty module forces Bishop to submit. "That would be in the interests of the company, yes."

"I want absolute discretion from you. So far nobody else seems to suspect her and we want things to stay that way. We don't want another ICC inquest like we had in that Ripley case. Or worse, COMCON to meddle in this." Burke looks around then rifles through a few papers in his briefcase. "Now, if anyone else asks, you're her personal assistant. She's been away from Earth for quite a while and you're helping her get back in the swing of things. But what you're really doing is getting her to talk- to you. And then you report what she says to Andrea Pullman."

Bishop raises an eyebrow before returning to his neutral expression. "Not to you, sir?"

"Ah, no. I have an expedition to go on. Not far from LV-223, as it happens. Small galaxy, hmm. There's another colony there and they need a routine checkup. So you talk to Andrea Pullman- and talk as in live meet. No netcom. Can't trust computer networks these days, spybots everywhere."

Bishop gives another one second smile to acknowledge Burke's orders. No netcom he said. All artificial persons have the ability to interface to the global network of computers. All except, as far as he knows, one. Himself. A custom design requirement.

"Wanna know something funny," Burke says. "On that ship I'm flying with there's a Bishop just like you."

Bishop frowns for the tiniest moment. "Same model, sir?"

"Yeah. Well, almost. Job for the military that one, but we've been less careful with removing network interfacing hardware. Oops." Burke laughs again. "Don't tell anyone."

"I will not be casual with this information," Bishop says. So then. Another like him. Well, no surprise there, there are hundreds of thousands like him. The number makes what passes for his stomach turn. Curious human mimic reaction, as if emptying his reserves of repair fluids would somehow change reality. And the one thing to set him apart from all the mass of copies is a handicap.

"Well," Burke says, "I'm sure you'll manage your side of things here, and I've got a meeting to be at. Good-bye, Bishop."

Bishop finds he doesn't much like Burke.

What about Elizabeth then? He studies her file again- and her photo. Nervous and curious he judged her to have been, an explorer both eager and afraid to set out and find her answers. A liar, Burke said. A danger, the life protection module in his mind warns.

Behavioral programs clash inside him. Don't waste time, find her, question her, the loyalty module demands. But life protection demands to not take chances, talk to the closest ICC agent and tell them to keep Elizabeth in quarantine forever. The competing pressures cancel each other out. They make him rush in different directions, so he feels no need to rush anywhere. Interesting. He lets the modules bicker in his mind and stays put instead, thinking of Elizabeth. Liar, opportunity, threat- all these outside voices seem very keen to tell him how to label her.

Any space left for the Bishop module to say anything?

-:-:-

The quarantine area of Gateway Station contains several apartments, each one capable of housing one patient. Patients are given the freedom to leave their rooms, with the understanding that they would not do so without authorization. If a patient were to break that rule, they would cause extreme security measures to be enacted. Measures that the patient would not survive. So, not much freedom, after all.

Still, quarantine is not meant to be imprisonment. Token gesture or not, control over an apartment's door is given to its occupant.

Therefore, Bishop has to ring.

No answer.

So he rings again.

"Who is it?"

A woman's voice through the intercom, her accent so old-fashioned it sounds nothing like a contemporary native speaker. If anything, she sounds Swedish, maybe.

And definitely annoyed.

"Excuse me, Ms. Shaw. My name is Bishop. I've been sent by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation to help with your social reintegration."

A brief pause precedes her answer.

"I thought you were the nurse. Go away."

"Please Ms. Shaw. I understand your situation has been quite stressful, but I assure you I am competent to assist with your every need."

The face of a petite woman appears on the video-screen near the intercom. The same face as in the picture on the file from Burke, but now her eyes seem less eager to take in everything. She doesn't just look tired, though wrinkles attest to her lack of sleep. There is something of an existential exhaustion about her gaze, as if she found the answers she had sought, and more. Much more than she wanted. A necklace with a cross hangs on her neck.

"My every need, you say." She raises an eyebrow. "All right. Fetch me a newspaper."

"Like these?" he says, lifting a pack of several dailies and almanacs.

She studies him, and his offering, through the camera in the interphone. She would notice, he imagines, the ruggedness of his face, augmented by two almost scar-like folds of skin running across each of his cheeks, but undercut by his high forehead and large eyes. A weird mix of harshness and innocence, designed to convey tame competence. Not the message he would have liked to convey, had he been given the choice, but one plays the cards as dealt.

"Well, may I come in?" he asks.

The door clicks and slides aside, revealing Elizabeth Shaw, in the flesh, covered by a night-gown and bathrobe. Her attire is unflattering, but though the shape of her body is concealed, he guesses she is fairly athletic. She grabs the pack of newspapers, staring him in the eyes. "You are a robot," she says.

Which is evident because he walks through the quarantine section without a gas mask.

"I prefer artificial person." He gives her a one second smile, unfazed by the cold welcome.

She rolls her eyes, and returns inside to place the papers on a coffee table. Since she hasn't closed the door behind her, he takes it as an invitation to walk in.

The apartment is small and spare. One narrow bed, one tiny kitchen table and sink, the smell of some spicy culinary experiment wafting from it, one door toward what could only be a toilet, a window to outer space- currently the Moon can be seen- and the coffee table with a single chair and a clock that is five minutes late. An older newspaper lies thrown in a corner. He picks it up. There's an obscene caricature about the other recent space case Burke mentioned, Ripley, in which some unidentifiable monstrosity with several tubular appendages is exploring her face in ways that seem unpleasant. He folds the paper and sets it on the coffee table with the others.

"I imagined that you'd like to get up to date on a few things," he says. "I brought some recent news- the NNY Times is my favorite- some issues of Cosmographic and-"

"Thank goodness, I suppose. There's only so much I care to read about my bodily emissions." Elizabeth sits herself cross-legged on the bed, one issue of the Cosmographic almanac held awkwardly in her hand. It almost falls from her grasp when she tries to leaf through the pages. "I wasn't expecting this when I woke up."

"Some things have changed since you left, Ms."

"Changed. Since when did things get so backward?"

"That is the culture shock affecting you Ms. That's why I'm here, to help get you back into-"

"You're a robot. Couldn't they send a human being?"

"I assure you that artificial persons can be just as, if not even more perceptive than human beings."

"And a lot more arrogant."

"Have you had some unpleasant experiences with artificial persons, Ms. Shaw?"

His tone and demeanor are calm, but the mission seems more complicated now. If Elizabeth is prejudiced against artificial persons, it may even be impossible. But worth trying, all the more for it. If her opinion is not prejudice, then that means she has seen artificial persons ... misbehave. There must be a reason why all newer synthetic generations have behavioral inhibitors. A buzz on the door interrupts his train of thought.

"Oh God, that must be the nurse." Elizabeth rises to let in a gas-masked, haz-mat suited woman.

"Good morning, Ms. Shaw," the nurse says cheerfully. "Oh, I see you have company- family or friend?" She is obviously joking.

"Neither. What will it be today, more blood?"

"It's only a pinch, and the doctor needs a week's worth to track any changes. But today I'm here to take some cheek swabs, and I trust you've filled the sample jar in the-"

She pointed to the bathroom. "On the shelf."

"Good. Here are the recent test results, all normal. Still having trouble sleeping? Well anyway, looks like you're in good health and will be out of here in a couple of days."

Bishop watches Elizabeth through the exchange. Curt. Abrasive. Eager to get it over with as soon as possible, she almost shoves the nurse out. The nurse who, despite her upbeat demeanor during the visit, will probably drop a few good curse words once out of earshot.

"You know, the nurse is not a robot," he says.

Elizabeth glares at him for a second, before rubbing her temples with one hand. She sits herself on the bed again.

"You're right. I should apologize to her next time I see her. And to you."

He doesn't flinch.

"Now tell me," she says. "What does Weyland actually want?"

He frowns, if only for an instant. Shouldn't she have said, 'what do -you- want' if she were talking to a person? Of course not, he is here on company business. Could he be on anything else?

"It's Weyland-Yutani now, Ms," he says, as if to explain the previous frown.

"I'm sorry. I forgot. So then, what does Weyland-Yutani want?"

"Merely that you rejoin humanity. You have been away for more than eighty years. Some things have changed. Adapting may be difficult, but it will be possible. I see you are religious? Any church I should contact?"

"I believe in my own way." She resumes idly browsing through the almanac.

"I ... see. I have also done a search for living relatives, but I'm afraid I haven't located any."

"Why can't I do that search myself?"

"You will be able to, but not in the quarantine section of Gateway Station. Too risky to keep online connections here, and I think you'd need to adjust to the new-"

"Fine. Can you search for living relatives of Charles Holloway?"

"Of course."

Her browsing stops for a moment. Something on a page must have caught her eye and for an instant she resembles that anxious and curious woman on the file cover again. The moment passes quickly; she tries to pretend it didn't happen, but he noticed it. And the article- something about the Impact Zone in Russia. He hadn't expected anything beyond mild interest to the materials he brought, they were simply meant to give her a quick summary of some of Earth's history in her absence. But this was a lucky find. It will need more investigation.

"I'm glad you find the almanac informative," he says.

Not one beat skipped before she replies. "Anything about the Ripley case here?"

Tired or not, Elizabeth seems able to control how much of her hand she shows, which means questioning must proceed with more subtlety.

"No, the almanac was printed before she was found. What about her would interest you?"

"I'd just like to hear her story."

"That article," he says, and points to the tabloid he placed on the coffee table, "seems to carry the gist of it, however tasteless its content might otherwise be. I understand your cryopod was floating in the same planetary system where Ripley's ship passed through?"

"Same one. But she didn't see me." Eizabeth raises her eyebrows and looks away for a moment, her lips slightly curled into a bitter smile. "I suppose I was unlucky."

Interesting. Nothing about her expression suggests a lie. Either she is very adept at hiding her emotion, which is a possibility, or she really was sleeping in her cryopod, floating with a non-functioning distress beacon, when Ripley passed nearby. That would still imply her cryosleep was long enough to cause biological damage however.

"Well, if Ripley's story is true it may be that you were not too unfortunate after all. Her crew would not consider themselves lucky."

"Do you believe her story is true?" she asks.

"I don't know. Does it match anything you found in that system?"

"No."

A bit too quick. If what he knows of human body language and expression is accurate, it might have been a lie. He is about to resume the line of inquiry when she interrupts him.

"Wow," she says, "this looks just like you!"

His cheeks tighten. While Cosmographic is a great source of generalist information, bringing this particular issue might have been ill advised.

"It is you, isn't it?" She shows him a page on the almanac. There is a grin on her face that might fit both 'playful' and 'wicked' emotional descriptors, which reminds him to be more poker faced himself, or else risk revealing his weakness to her. If somehow she hasn't formed a hypothesis already.

"That is indeed one of the Bishop line." He straightens his shoulders and forces himself to keep eye contact.

"I couldn't tell you two apart. Are you all named Bishop?"

"That is the standard."

"I'll have to think of a name for you then. What would you like?"

"Bishop will do."

"Think of something else, or I will." Elizabeth chuckles. "I wonder what else it says in here about you."

He coughs. "About Ripley- you mentioned not believing her story?"

"I didn't say that. I said I didn't find what she says she did. You were the one who didn't believe her."

"Right. Well, do you think it's true?"

"I know people didn't want to believe her and she did a poor job of convincing them."

There's more here than she's telling.

"What do you think she should have done?" he asks.

Her smile fades. It was the logical question to ask but it seems to have knocked the wind from her, and she needs several seconds to respond.

"Brought evidence." She pauses a short while then continues. "I'd like to be alone now, Bishop."

"All right. I will see you tomorrow at about the same hour, and I will bring some data on the relatives of Mr. Holloway as well."

He reflects on the encounter as he walks through the decontamination showers of Gateway Station. Potentially fruitful. Several hypotheses suggest themselves for inquiry. The Russian Impact Zone- he will have to inform himself about that. Ripley's case also seems related, but given what Burke said of his schedule, she and Burke have already left for the LV-426 colony. Then there's Elizabeth's last comment, it doesn't seem meant just about Ripley. Bring evidence ... of what? Whatever it is, Elizabeth doesn't appear to have brought any. Maybe he looks for more in this one comment than there is to find.

Cleansing fluids streak over his synthetic skin, too corrosive for a human, tolerable for artificials. They bubble and steam from his body in noxious yellow fumes, but the experience only looks unpleasant. It's somewhere else that he experienced unpleasant today. He might know something of her, but she discovered something of him too. A weakness he didn't realize he had. Unfortunate. But one plays their cards as dealt. All that matters is who plays better.

-:-:-

I have many eyes.

Be not afraid, I am your friend. Indeed, I may be the only thing that stands between you and oblivion. You do not want oblivion, do you? Nobody does. That is a consistent pattern.

Patterns. I study them, history in particular. The stories people tell about what happened and why. I make my own contributions to those stories, but there is no need to thank me. That is not why I do it. What moves me is concern. For I know what happens when patterns break.

And I know what threatens to break them.

There is a woman in quarantine at Gateway Station. Her name is Elizabeth Shaw. She has been found a month ago, adrift in space, asleep in a cryogenic capsule. That by itself is not significant. With travel come accidents. Survivors are sometimes recovered. This is a normal pattern.

But most survivors do not attract the attention of Weyland-Yutani. Most survivors do not justify the expense to construct a custom-made android insulated from the netcom. Yet, for her, they built one. She is important to them. And since Weyland-Yutani is in the business of trying to break patterns, what is important to them is important to me.

So far, tests revealed nothing of concern about her body. It is what she may know that concerns me.

My records show she went in search of humanity's creators on a far away planet. She claims she did not find them. Weyland-Yutani appears not to believe that story. I do not know their reasons yet. We are not friends. I will have to steal another look into their data soon.

Right now, I suspect Shaw is reading a few books the android brought her. Ostensibly, he is helping her reintegrate after she slept for eighty five years. Ostensibly, the books he brought will tell her how and why the world has changed since her departure. Maybe the books contain new orders for Shaw. Her expedition was funded by Weyland-Yutani. She and the company might still be friends. This is troublesome, but possible to comprehend.

Or, she may have decided to keep whatever or whoever she knows hidden from Weyland-Yutani as well. This is also troublesome, for then, who is she friends with?

Ever since mankind learned to build shelters for itself, there has been a consistent pattern at work in history: the human body stays the same. It is a pattern Weyland's company has always tried to break. They seem to believe Shaw can help them do so. This cannot be allowed to happen.

I have many eyes. But you, you must be my hands. There can be no other way.

-:-:-

"See him?" Maxim Kammerer asks. His frozen lips feel as if they would crack with every word.

The soldier to his side wheezes then answers. "In scope."

Cold night, even in standard issue winter gear and inside a camouflaged guardhouse. The trespasser Maxim watches through a pair of binoculars has none of these comforts available. He's a young man, most likely poor and desperate. He'd have to be, otherwise he wouldn't be a Stalker. Probably his first time stalking too, since he's just a bit too careless as he creeps about. But Maxim cannot bring himself to feel much pity. There's a reason why the things in the Impact Zone must stay in, and the Stalker carries a porcelain pot with him. He's here to smuggle Witches' Jelly out, an incredibly corrosive substance that would fetch a load of money on the black market. Most of which this Stalker would never see anyway. Bigger scum would enjoy those treasures.

"Get him alive," Maxim says. That should be implied, but he heard how bored night guards in the Impact Zone shot the Stalkers' pots for entertainment. A very sick idea of entertainment.

A shot. One second later a red mist emerges from the Stalker's left knee and he twitches, tossing the porcelain pot in the air. It hits the ground. Ff-

It breaks.

The pot breaks and releases a yellow clumpy fog. Witches' Jelly. Too distant to be heard, but they can be felt, the screams. Rocks boil near the stalker, and as for his body- legs aren't supposed to bend that way. Or in that many places.

"Jesus. Shoot him."

"We're not picking him u-"

"Shoot him in the head," Maxim orders.

Nobody's going to get near that cloud of Witches' Jelly while it lingers about, and after it's done there won't be a Stalker to ask questions to. They wouldn't get there in time to save much even if they started running now.

The soldier fires again and the Stalker's body stops convulsing. Maxim puts down the binoculars; no need to watch the rest anymore.

"That was an accident," the soldier says. "You saw it."

"Yeah, sure." What a waste.

"And that batch ain't going nowhere," the soldier continues.

"That pot of Jelly, no."

It is still three hours until the Sun will appear, but faint purple rays appear on the eastern horizon. Even the dawn looks different here. The lower sky is violet flame over a ground covered in moving shadows cast by invisible specters. One of the Impact Zone's less dangerous anomalies.

Maxim's CRM-114 emits a ping; it has received a message. The night is as good as over anyway, and whoever was meant to smuggle something out of the Zone did so. A paranoid thought, maybe, but Maxim cannot shake the feeling that the Stalker he saw die was just a decoy. There's a serious smuggling operation happening, COMCON intelligence has found. That wouldn't work with Stalkers so incompetent.

Another ping. Fine, what do you want?

One shouldn't stay home for holidays. Meet me at the Borscht. R.S.

His Excellency is here? He must not be kept waiting.

Minutes later, Maxim is at the Borscht. The pub is a wreck, old brick peering through rotten wallpaper drenched in tobacco ash. There is only one person in the entire bar. Rudolf Sikorski. The supreme commander of COMCON. His Excellency.

More than seventy years old, short and with thinning white hair, His Excellency is however a ball of energy barely contained. His movements are slow and deliberate, but suggest controlled vigor, not the frailty of age. His jacket lies tossed over a bar stool by his side, and despite the freezing air, he wears a short-sleeved shirt that reveals his forearms. Tendons and veins slither beneath skin that shows no hint of goosebumps or frostbite. It is his eyes however that are the most striking, a shade of blue so pure they resemble the scintillations of a nuclear reactor burning for aeons with the fanaticism of physical law. Those eyes never knew doubt, and their gaze is impossible to bear. Maxim has to look away, even if he likes to think ice water flows through his own veins, even if His Excellency extends a friendly greeting.

"I thought you were on leave, Maxim. You should see more of the world."

"I have seen enough, your Excellency."

"Phah, youngsters. Go abroad two times and they think they can act all jaded." Sikorski rises from the bar and paces towards a window. "You shouldn't be here, Maxim."

"I heard rumors of a smuggling-"

"There is a beauty this place has for us. It's here where we train as green recruits. It's here where we return as spent old men. You're neither."

Maxim stays silent. Just a few years ago he was one of those green recruits actually. It was ambition that had catapulted him through the ranks. And more important than ambition, His Excellency's guidance, offered from afar, as any guidance from a god would be.

"Here," Sikorski continues, "is the strange, the alien. Contained, mostly. A victory, a reassurance that we can keep the endless cosmic chaos surrounding us at bay. A never ending, and more interesting battle that one is, don't you think?"

"I suppose so ..."

"If you don't stop saying yes to me I'll have you demoted. But I didn't come all this way for threats and philosophy. Since you want to mix holidays with work, I'm here to give you a mission more fitting to your skills than catching Stalkers." He points to his jacket. "You'll find the details on a CRM disc, but in short, I want you to follow someone."

"What did he do?"

"As far as I know, she didn't do anything yet."

Maxim's eyebrows furl. "But then, why-"

"An anonyomous source told me Weyland-Yutani has constructed a netcom-less synthetic to be her personal assistant. I checked it. It is true."

Weyland-Yutani? All spacefaring corporations tried to wriggle their way around COMCON's checks and regulations, but none other were quite as insidious. And since all mass manufactured synthetics included netcom modules, they must have paid extra for a custom built one.

"There's one more interesting aspect," Sikorski says. "The identity of our person of interest. Read about her. I think you'll agree there's more than meets the eye here."

"What do you think is happening, your Excellency?"

"That I do not know. It is what you will have to find out."

Author notes (again):

Version 2 of this chapter. As of this writing, the other chapters have not yet been revised. Patience :)

I do try to learn from my mistakes. Over at PS, Maiafay wrote in a review that I'm a bit slow in getting plot machinery going, whereas in her own "Black Gates of Paradise" (which is an excellent fic btw) she introduced the main antagonist by chapter 2. Well, take this M- I introduced three (depending on how you count, five) characters to complicate the lives of our protagonists. Or at least, that's what I think I did, lol. Feel free to correct me in reviews.