A/N: Y'all get an extra-long chapter, because there was a fair bit of ground to cover.

I have literally one scene left to stitch together for the remaining two chapters, so at this point I think I can safely promise a chapter a day for the next two days, and then done! It's been quite a while, so thanks to everyone who's still checking in on this! I admire your dedication. ;)

The Bane factory was not exactly what Clyde had expected. The outside looked like a cross between a factory and an airport, of all things, rusted over from months of disuse. Sarah Jane had fussed with her sonic lipstick for several minutes to open the padlock on the chained-shut gates, and then Clyde had had to get out as well to help move the chains enough so they could open the gates and get the moving van through.

"Are we really going to need all this space?" Clyde asked, as Sarah Jane pulled them up haphazardly to what looked like it had once been a loading area.

"I don't know," Sarah Jane said, "but better safe than sorry. Come on."

Clyde was increasingly sure that "better safe than sorry" didn't actually apply to this situation in the slightest. The first clue came when he had to brace himself against a collapsed part of the wall as Sarah Jane adjusted piping so that they could both actually get inside.

"So there was an explosion here?" he asked as they made their way inside.

Sarah Jane turned on the torch she'd brought in her bag and began sweeping it from side to side, probably looking for something familiar. "More or less," she said. "It was a bit of a mess, really. The Bane Mother wasn't willing to leave, and once she was gone, the whole operation went under fast."

"Huh," Clyde said. He watched as Sarah Jane picked up the remnants of a sticker on the floor, and began to follow it further into the factory. "And the Bane made Luke?Even though he's a human?"

"Yes," Sarah Jane said. "Apparently, they wanted to do some marketing research."

"By building a human?"

"I've seen marketers with worse strategies," she quipped, and then her flashlight moved sideways. "I think this is leading us to the entrance. But that could be good. Let's go this way for now."

Their path led them to what looked for all the world like an ordinary metal detector door. Clyde looked it over, confused, but Sarah Jane seemed pleased.

"This is a good place to start," she said, and handed him the sonic lipstick. "Here—I brought some anti-grav crates, but I'm they won't do us any good if we can't find a way out. See if the main doors are intact, will you?"

Luckily, they were, and with the crates Sarah Jane had found, they had the disassembled parts of the scanner into the van in short order.

"That's half of what we needed, hopefully," Sarah Jane said, dusting off her hands on her trouser legs. "This next bit could be a bit harder."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," she said. "We need to find the place where Luke was originally made."

Luke woke up to the sound of Maria's voice. Or it felt like he did—he hadn't been sleeping, not really, but it was hard, not to get lost in the song of muscles and firing nerves and cellular respiration.

"Luke?"

She sounded quieter than normal––probably worried, he thought fuzzily. He uncurled himself from where he'd been facing the wall and forced his head up, looking over at her.

"Did you have a good nap?" she asked, and then a hint of an irrepressible smile stole around the corners of her mouth. "You look like you've been sleeping."

Part of him wanted to smile back, even though there wasn't anything funny about their current situation. "I guess so," he said, flexing his fingers pensively in his lap. The circulation there was less than optimal; they felt cold. His whole body ached, as though he'd gone on a long run the day before, or had a really bad PE class.

When he turned to look at Maria, she was still staring at him. He blinked at her, confused, and she smiled again––her awkward one this time. "Is it all right if I sit down?" she asked, gesturing at the spot beside him on the floor.

"Sure," he said by reflex, and she leaned back against the wall, one hand twisted in the blankets, looking up at him expectantly. He shifted towards her, being careful to keep several feet of distance between them in case he burned her by accident.

She placed her chin on one of her hands, tracing the grain of the wood flooring with the other as she watched him. "How are you feeling?" she asked quietly.

"A little sore," Luke admitted. As his mind cleared of drowsiness, he was remembering more and more of what he'd been thinking about before. I might be dead in a few days. Really, properly dead, he realized. I might have been doomed to die from the beginning.

It put rather a different light on things, he realized, to see himself as someone who was always going to be around only temporarily. In a way, it was peaceful––but it also made talking to Maria, who didn't know yet, hard somehow. He wasn't used to that feeling. He didn't like it.

"I'm not surprised," Maria said, shaking her head. "I still can't really believe this all is happening, but it must be so much worse for you."

For a second, Luke agreed with her...and then, thinking about it a little more, he shook his head. "Not really," he said.

He'd meant it, but Maria gave him a disapproving look. "This isn't a time you have to be brave," she said, looking him in the eye. "We're here to help you. And if you want to talk about something, or complain, I'm going to listen. Sarah Jane and Clyde are at the factory right now, and they'll be back soon."

"What about you?" Luke asked.

"Sarah Jane asked if I wanted to come, but…I thought I should stay here," Maria admitted.

"To keep me company?" Luke asked.

"Yes. And to listen if you need to talk," Maria said. She toed off her shoes and moved into a cross-legged position on the floor. "I can't imagine what I'd be thinking if I were in your place...but I bet I'd like someone to talk to."

"Did you hear me talking to Clyde before?" he asked, frowning.

Her eyes widened, and he immediately saw that she hadn't, and that he'd possibly made a mistake. "No? Why, what were you saying?"

Luke didn't know what to do. The gentleness in her voice hurt, somehow, in a way that was more urgent than the throbs of slight pain in his head and the burning weakness in his limbs. It made him feel like he wanted to explode, but at the same time he felt more tightly tied off than ever. She was so full of hope, he thought. Deep down, she truly believed that he would be all right...and sometime in the last few days, he'd stopped believing that, but he didn't know how to tell her.

"Luke?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. He wasn't even sure he wanted her to know. He'd told Clyde, but words didn't always count the same way with him. He hadn't told his mum, and wasn't sure he ever even could. So which one was she more like?

"Are you having trouble remembering?"

"No." No, he remembered all too well. He wished he could remember a little bit more about how Clyde had reacted, though; looking back on it, he'd been so focused on getting everything out, making it make sense, that he hadn't really thought about how Clyde would feel. And then everything had gone blank, and there'd been a stranger in front of him…

Now he felt guiltier than ever, and that settled it. If he had to tell Maria something, then he'd do it in a way that wouldn't make her as sad. "I guess it's…difficult?" he tried. "I'm…wondering how it'll all turn out."

"Oh." Maria nodded, as though that somehow made sense. "I guess I hadn't really thought about it."

Luke got the feeling that they were maybe having two different conversations, but he'd grown up with that being pretty normal. He could work with it. "Oh?" he asked, waiting for her to elaborate.

"Yeah," she said. "It sounds like...maybe we can't get your original code back. That's part of why Clyde's idea was such a good one. You got built once, so it should work to maybe...repair you? But it's possible that you won't be the same."

It was also possible that he'd be...well, he hadn't thought of that happier alternative. "Interesting," he said.

Maria smiled, the kind of expression she made when she was surprised. "'Interesting'?" she said. "You're not scared?"

He shrugged, feeling the familiar crease between his brows as he searched for the words for a complicated feeling. "I'm scared, but what you're talking about is the best-case scenario," he started, but the concept was starting to sink in. "Are you saying that I could become something different?" It was a concept that he hadn't considered.

"I guess. It just...it seems possible, you know?" Maria paused. "Luke, have you...have you ever written in a diary or anything?"

"We had those vacation journals for school," Luke told her. She'd done it too, he knew—they'd worked together to come up for a cover story for the incidents their teachers probably shouldn't read about. "Remember?"

"Other than that." Maria bit her lip. "I just...you've been having trouble with your memory, Luke. What if...what if whatever fix we come up with doesn't keep your memories?"

"Then..." Luke was sort of wishing she hadn't brought this up, for all that he thought himself foolish for not thinking about it sooner. This was the danger of pessimism, he decided—it made you miss other possible dangers. "Then, I'll be like Mr. Smith, I guess," he said. "I'll have to start over, or something."

"You're my friend," Maria said. She reached out like she wanted to touch him, hug him maybe, but she stopped before she could hurt herself. He was grateful. "I hope that doesn't happen."

Memories were becoming a fragile thing for Luke. Once, he was pretty sure he'd had perfectly clear memories, but that certainty was starting to fade, and when he thought back, now, some things seemed less sharp, less defined. But he could still remember the big eyes staring at him, the slightly wild fringe from running and hiding in the factory, the hands on his own, the slightly incredulous smile.

He didn't want to die, but he didn't want to forget, either. He wasn't sure which would be worse. Looking at Maria, though, that wasn't what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to say something that would make her feel better, not worse. And if it made him feel better as well, then...that was just a pleasing side effect, right? Maybe he'd started focusing on the negatives too much.

"You'll still be my friend, right?" He found it hard to look at her, looking down at the blankets of his makeshift bed instead. "No matter what happens?"

The attic went dark suddenly, as a dark shape flew over him. It took him a second to realize that Maria had thrown a thick, fleecy blanket over his head, and another second to realize why as he was wrapped in a tight, comforting hug.

"I will," she said. "I'll be sad if we have to start over, but it'll be okay. We've become friends before; we'll just do it again."

Luke returned the hug as best he could under the blankets. "Thank you."

Maria just held him tighter.

Luke still wasn't sure he was going to make it, but somehow, paradoxically, the weight of Maria's arms around him made him feel lighter. Even if he died, he realized, Maria and Clyde would still be his best friends. Sarah Jane would still be his mother. He still would have saved the world, and left his mark on it in his own way. If he got a chance to keep going, or start over, that was great, but the past was already set, and for the moment at least there were no time-traveling alien menaces to take that away.

When he thought about it that way, even dying didn't seem so bad.

Clyde's opinion of the Bane's manufacturing policy was dropping by the second. There was no way this construction had passed health and safety, even before it had been blown up.

"This is nothing," Sarah Jane told him, when he nervously complained about the piping and exposed wires begging to catch them in their tangles like some vast spider's web. "You should see the interior of some spaceships."

"Still," Clyde complained, stepping over some debris and bracing his hands on the outer wall. "There's more soot here, too. Are we getting closer to the explosion?"

"I hope so." Sarah Jane peered ahead, readjusting her torch. "Here we go—I think we're starting to get somewhere. These look like old computer towers."

They helped each other through a last scattering of debris, until they found what appeared to be did indeed appear to be an old computer bank.

"There was a chair in here..." Sarah Jane said, turning to face a section of the wall. "Ah! Here we are."

Clyde looked the thing over. "There is no way we're going to be able to fit all that out the door."

"It's all right," Sarah Jane said, "we don't need the entire thing. We'll figure it out."

She set to work disassembling the chair. Clyde, not having the technical knowledge to do much more than pick things up and move them as directed, settled down in a part of the room that he judged the least likely to attack him at any moment.

"So, once we've got all this out," he asked, "What then?"

"Then, we find a way to put it together back home, and we use it to fix what's gone wrong."

Clyde paused. "Luke said something. The last time we talked, you know, before I went and found you and Maria."

Sarah Jane kept moving, but when she spoke her voice sounded more tense than before. "What did he say?"

"I didn't understand all of it," Clyde hedged. "But...seems like he was thinking about the Bane, you know? How he was only going to be a test subject, and how once they'd taken over the world they wouldn't need him anymore."

Sarah Jane nodded. "I see."

"And he...well, I think he's been thinking about it." Clyde twisted his fingers together, thinking. "Sarah Jane, what if this was something that was always going to happen? What if it's just part of how he was made?"

"Then we fix it," Sarah Jane said, simply. She wrenched off the piece of plastic molding she'd been working on and started to scan the wiring underneath.

Clyde was taken aback. "What, just like that?"

"Of course," Sarah Jane said. "Imagine how it would be if every time a person got sick, everyone just gave up––'guess that's just how it's meant to be, sorry, all there is to it.' It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?" She paused to wipe at her eyes, and Clyde looked away to give her some privacy. "We're not going to let something happen to Luke," she added, voice rough, "even if it once upon a time someone meant it to happen."

"Yeah," he agreed softly. "Yeah, I see what you mean."

"Good." Sarah Jane pushed away from the chair and turned her attention to the computer tower. "Now. Just the motherboard left, and if we can salvage that, then I think we'll have a fighting chance."