My body gave an abrupt spasm and I opened my eyes, gasping in large breaths.

Just as the blinding white of the hospital had startled my vision, the pure darkness of the room in which I now lay made me cringe and blink furiously.

I sat up quickly, and my head immediately began pounding in pain. I gasped and clutched at it, reaching up and feeling not my own forehead, but… a helmet.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I looked down. I was wearing my armor.

My armor!

I felt over every part of my body, even ripping off my helmet to check the side of my head; I had never been so happy to discover a sensitive bruise. Meta really had punched me. Thank God!

I put my helmet back on and looked around, really seeing my surroundings for the first time and my feelings of elation decreased immediately. I was in some sort of cell. I was tempted to turn on my armor light, but refrained from doing so; I had no idea where I was and didn't want to attract attention to myself. Quietly, I crawled toward the door of the cell and pushed against the door hesitantly; it was locked.

"Eleven?"

I started and turned around, seeing a familiar face from the next cell over.

"Church!" I whispered excitedly, crawling over to the other side of the cell and curling my hands around the bars. Church looked tired and anxious. "What's going on?"

"You're awake!" Church replied nervously. "How is that possible? Are—are you ready to help Meta and Tex…?"

"What are you talking about?"

"They took Gamma and put him in your AI slot to brainwash you! They wanted you to help them find the Director!"

"I know," I replied gravely. "I… I killed him…" My voice trailed off as I realized what I was saying. Panic struck me. "I killed him!"

Feeling as though I couldn't breathe properly, my rear end crashed against he floor of the cell and my eyes widened in terror.

"You did what?" Church sputtered, dumbstruck.

My head spun as the pain intensified. I had murdered Gamma inside my own head. He was dead. Just… just like Epsilon had been terminated while still attached to Wash's mind. I began hyperventilating, by breaths coming in petrified squeaks. Was this the beginning of it? Was I going to suffer the same fate Wash had?

"Eleven, calm down!" Church hissed, looking anxiously toward the entrance of the cells.

I held my aching head in my hands. I needed to focus, but the fear of the impending insanity was barring any logical train of thought.

"I—I—" I stuttered, reaching behind my head to my AI slot. Gamma was still there, and that only sent more panic through my system. "He—Gam—mind—"

"Eleven, stop!" Church commanded quietly. "You have to shut up or they'll hear us. Just tell me what happened."

"G—Gamma!" I breathed quietly, still panicking. "He—he created this world inside my head! Made everything wrong—made everything the opposite of what it should be. Made you patient and likeable—"

"I'm patient and likeable!" he protested.

"—And everyone else wrong. Did it so—so I would forget everyone." My voice seemed stuck in my throat. "He was going to torture me!"

"Oh, God," Church whispered. "How did you… kill him?"

"He could read my thoughts," I said, focusing on speaking clearly, though my voice wavered shakily. "I couldn't plan any way to escape because he would know. So—so I just stabbed him without thinking about it or planning beforehand. He sort of snuck up on me and I was holding a knife so I just… stabbed him."

My head gave another throb of pain and I doubled over, gasping. "Now I'm going to go crazy like Wash did with Epsilon!"

My breaths became shallow again and Church's face was lined with real alarm.

"Stop it!" he said, shocked at my fear. "You have to stop!"

I couldn't. No. The thoughts of Wash and Epsilon. Those repercussions. The memories and imaginings clouded my mind and—

"Eleven!" Church whispered fiercely. "You aren't going to go crazy!"

That stopped me abruptly. I looked at him, confused, as another painful stab shot through my head. "What?"

"If you'd just shut up and listen to me for two goddamn seconds, I'd tell you!" he said irritably. Amid my terror, I dimly registered how nice it was that he was being irritable. "You won't go the same way Wash did."

"H—how do you know?"

"Think about it, Eleven. Epsilon committed suicide. He terminated himself. That meant that he purposely went through his own programming—his own code—and destroyed it. When you were with Gamma in your mindspace, you were only communicating with an image of him that he showed you in your head."

"So?"

"So this is different. It's as if you shut down part of Gamma's power. You didn't actually hurt his programming. By murdering him while he appeared to you in your head, you only stopped the part of his code that was projecting images and manipulating you. 'Killing' him only severed the connection between his control and your mind. My guess now is that you've put him in a dormant state. He must be in shutdown mode. He's not destroyed yet, but he probably can't control you anymore."

I gaped at Church. "How do you know this?"

He rolled his eyes. "Actually being an AI sort of helps with understanding how they work, Eleven."

I reached back and felt the filled AI slot again nervously. "I just want to take it out."

"Well, you can't just rip Gamma out. That would cause you to go insane."

"I—I know. Just like when Gamma and Wyoming were forcibly separated." I sighed miserably into my hands, tears coming to my eyes. "Church... I can't keep Gamma in my head. Not an AI. I can't. I just can't." My voice cracked as I felt a lump at the back of my throat and I sniffed loudly.

"Eleven…" Church replied slowly. "I've never seen you like this. So… scared. Did Gamma do something to you?"

I shook my head.

"Then what?" Church insisted. "You have this… irrational fear of AIs."

"You think it's irrational?" I snapped, sniffing. "You think I'm scared of AIs for no reason?"

"You're not scared of me."

"You're in your own body. You're not attached to a human. You aren't volatile or unstable or prone to destroy a person's mind."

Church was quiet.

"Something happened at Project Freelancer," he finally said quietly. "This is why you won't talk about it."

He was wrong.

Many things had happened at Project Freelancer.