The sound of gunfire made her jump and drop the penicillin she'd been putting away. The bottle smashed, immediately forgotten as she rushed for the infirmary door only to duck back as men in GDF uniforms rushed past. Each was clothed entirely in black and each was holding a sub-machine gun. Once she was sure they'd gone she tried the door. Still locked, not a surprise.

The rat-a-tat of gunfire sounded again, this time followed up by screams.

Part of her fought it. Fought against reliving this day yet again. But she knew from bitter experience that the only way out was through because, if you got to the end of the nightmare you ended up exactly where you were. IE not still trapped there but out. Free. Able to move on.

She never could recall how long it was between the first incursion and the fire alarms going off but the moment they did she pulled the infirmary door and was glad that at least one safety feature still worked. The fire system unlocked the building, now she could move.

Oracle had a plan. The objective here was simple: stop the incursion, neutralise the enemy. To do that she needed information and for that she needed a Master. There had been very little in the way of weaponry in the infirmary, the Master's having removed all sharp objects and sedatives once they'd killed Doctor Leonard. The thought made her grimace. They were still wary of her; Doctor Leonard would be disappointed in her. Hide in plain sight, he'd said. Make them trust you so that you can move when the time is right. Well, the time was now.

Instead of trying to arm herself with a biro or something equally stupid she opted for heading straight for the master's quarters. There would be weapons, and more importantly orders, for her there.

She was following a path of destruction. The walls were lined with bullet holes and smears of blood. She stepped round the puddles on the floor, and the occasional body, without so much as a glance down. The first door she passed lead to the receiving room for the latest intake. She didn't look inside; the soldiers had done a thorough job and anyone unfortunate enough to be in there was already dead.

She came to the main junction of the building. To her left lay the master's quarters, ahead the corridor leading to the stairwell which would take her deep below the building and her own former room. To the right was the way to the arena. She went left stepping over a fallen body – one of theirs she noted dimly. Slated for conversion in the next month. Oracle took the combat knife from what was left of him.

She was all too familiar with this section of the building. Through the double doors and the industrial façade would fall away, leaving in its place a grand reception room designed to impress clients (with a different door for them obviously.) She had spent many an evening in here entertaining their guests with Warren at her side. Until someone asked for him, of course. Maybe she should try and find him? No, that wasn't the mission.

All signs of opulence had been stripped away. A battle had taken place here and the fallen from both sides littered the floor. The paintings on the walls were either shredded or smothered in blood and the rug on the floor squelched in an uneasy kind of way.

Oracle ran an eye over the enemy soldiers recognising immediately the handiwork of her biomechanoid 'brother' Roman. The man was a bastard before he'd been converted and his clear joy in his work was on show here. She smiled. At least she had some back-up.

She crossed the entrance quickly, making for personal quarters and the armoury. Three corridors later and she skidded to a stop. The heat had been gradually growing since she left the infirmary but here it intensified seeming to billow round the corner in front of her. Ahead, she could hear the panicked shouts of Master Branagon.

Wait, they were screams, hysterical screams, not shouts. Not calm orders. She pressed back against the wall listening as Master Branagon ordered Roman to take out the enemy.

She risked a glance round the corner.

At least twelve GDF had lined up behind a shield wall using, ironically, the old roman turtle to cover themselves as they advanced.

She hefted the knife. She could take down four before they managed to turn on her. Roman, on that side of the shield, hadn't a chance. But then, he wasn't stupid enough to blindly follow orders into a meat grinder, was he?

The order was screeched again for Roman to engage but at the same time another sound took Oracle's attention. It was a cry of pure frustration and desperation and Oracle would know it anywhere.

Round the corner Roman stepped out and was met by the firing squad he had to have known was waiting. He caught her eye briefly before she ducked back the way she'd come willing the cry to come again.

It did.

Just ahead.

Which door? Which door?

She turned into a new corridor, one she had never been down before, glad that the heat of the blaze was somewhat diminished here. Most of these doors stood open revealing private living areas. One was closed. Oracle pushed through it, closing it carefully behind her and found herself in a neatly appointed flat. It was incongruous to everything that was outside. The sight of it alone made her freeze. There was a coffee table and couch facing a holo-projection system. A dining table with four chairs and a vase of flowers stood off to one side. On the walls were photos of what looked like a family at the beach. In one a small blond boy was holding up a bucket and spade and grinning for the camera. In another a much younger child was covered in ice cream.

"Come on!"

She crashed through a door at the rear of the room, knowing what she'd see – she'd seen it before after all – but still not prepared for it.

Warren was standing naked next to a large bed, pulling with all his might on the chain that attached his left wrist to the bed post. The manacle on the right was still in place, a few chain links still attached and showing where he'd managed to get one to break. Neither the chain or the bed were giving but that didn't stop him from tyring.

"Warren!"

"Oracle?" he spun round giving her a complete view of the abuses that littered his body. "You're alive!"

"Keys!"

"Over there." He pointed to a dresser well out of his reach. The keys to his manacles were sitting on the top in plain view. Just another way to hurt him she thought. The welts, bite marks and hand prints aren't enough. No, you have to give the illusion of freedom being so close but so unobtainable.

In that moment she wanted the GDF to win.

Crossing the room quickly. She scooped up the keys and tossed them to him.

"Where are your clothes?"

"In the drawer" he said. "NOT THAT ONE!"

Oracle carefully removed her hand from the drawer she was about to open. A quick glance at her brother showed the naked fear of her discovering whatever was in there. She didn't want to know. It could burn along with everyone here.

She dropped her hand down a few more drawers until he nodded.

As he dressed, she ravaged the flat for anything she could use to get them out of here. The hand gun was a nice find but it only had half a clip. She armed Warren with a kitchen knife and small frying pan knowing full well that if she got them into a situation where he'd need to use them, they were as good as dead.

"We're getting out" she said.

"What?"

"We're leaving. We'll live in the world like normal people."

"We can't! We won't survive out there. The world isn't meant for us."

Old words. A forced indoctrination she'd broken through months ago. What had once been an obvious truth now an obvious lie.

"It doesn't matter. We'll fake it till we make it. We'll figure it out. Together. No one is splitting us up again, okay? I promise."

She took his head in her hands - an awkward manoeuvre with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other – and kissed him on the forehead.

"I promise. Now stay behind me and do what I say."

"Pro tip" came a voice just outside the bathroom door jarring her from the waking dream. "If you're gonna have a freak out in the bathroom, one, don't tell people that's where you're going and two, turn on the shower so people can't hear."

The door pushed open cautiously and a mop of damp blond hair poked through.

"You okay?" Gordon asked.

"Why is your hair still wet?" Oracle deflected, leaning her head back against the tub and dropping her hands between her knees. There was no point in trying to disguise the fact she was sitting on the floor trying to keep things remotely together.

"I went for a swim this morning" Gordon said taking her comment as an invite to come in and sit himself next to her. "I do most mornings; it helps clear the mind."

"A hang over from the military" she guessed. "WASP, right?"

"Yes" he confirmed "but no. Early swimming was part of the Olympics training. I've been doing it since I was so little it feels wrong to start the day without it now."

"Olympics training?" she queried watching as the fond, reminiscing smile was replaced by pure disbelief as he realised she was asking what the Olympics were rather than about his participation in it.

"I… er… It's a sporting thing. I… ah… It can wait" he rallied.

"Smooth" she said. "I'm all caught up now, thanks." It was meant to be quirky but her voice just sounded tired. Now she thought about it, she was bone weary and mentally exhausted. She should have slept the night before instead of spending half of it up with Virgil.

Gordon regarded her openly, weighing up whether or not to say whatever was on his mind.

"No one ever gave you permission to be free, did they?" he said finally, flummoxing her completely. "I've seen it before" he continued, staring at his hands now clasped between his own knees. "We – WASP - liberated a boat of the coast of Tanzania. Intel said they were running guns. Turns out it was people. I ended up staying on that ship for three weeks due to some paperwork shit which meant some of the girls couldn't make landfall. They had no idea how to act around us. It was…" he drifted off looking to the side.

"They needed you to tell them when to do everything" Oracle said, recognising herself and the person she'd been before Doctor Leonard. "To them, even going to the bathroom without permission was unthinkable. Terrifying even."

"Yeah" he said softly. "One of the girls, she took a shine to my colleague Sarah. Maybe coz she was a woman too, I don't know. But one evening I found Sarah holding this girl as she cried her eyes out and Sarah just kept saying that it was okay, she was allowed to be free. The next morning the girl took and extra slice of bread for breakfast without asking and it was, like, the biggest deal to her."

"It would have been" Oracle nodded, remembering. "I can't describe to you just how terrifying it is to even attempt something like that the first time."

She turned her head towards him.

"I don't need you to tell me I'm free, Gordon. I worked out that I could be before I ever left the complex. This is just a reaction to nearly losing it all again."

Gordon blanched at the stark way she'd stated things.

"I'm so sorry" he said.

"It's not your fault. I forgot that's all."

"Forgot what?"

"That whilst Warren might actually be able to transition properly into the world, I can't. It's not my fault, it's what I am. Literally what I am and I'm usually okay with that. I just got swept up with everything and I forgot: everyone is terrified of the biomechanoid threat." She laughed suddenly, a hollow sounding thing not even loud enough to echo in the tiled room. "Of course, I look terrifying right now."

"Virgil made you forget, didn't he?" Gordon said seeing the answer on her face. "He does that. See's the best in everyone and waits to get burned by it all later. He's different with you though" he mused. "I've not seen him like that for a while."

That caught her attention and she swung to face him and ask just exactly what he meant when Gordon did the same thing but got his question in first.

"I need to ask you something and honestly, I don't know if I want the answer but I think I need it and I need t you be honest with me" he said in a rush. "Okay? And not tell a soul, most probably."

"Er, okay? Ask."

"Why can I understand you?"

Confusion crossed her features as she studied his. What could he mean, understand her? His wide, desperate, eyes searched her face seeking the answer she had no idea about.

Until she did.

Fuck no.

"What do you mean, you can understand me?" she said slipping back into the gibberish overlayed by the godawful electronic burr.

"I could understand you" he said sounding a little frantic. "All the time. When the others just looked confused and when you spoke with that weird… electronic… voice."

Realisation dawned for both of them. Gordon could very clearly understand Oracle when she spoke in a language that only biomechanoids knew. Something that should be impossible.

"Okay" she said taking his hands in hers and forcing him to look at her. "Okay, this, this is not a good thing and no one can know about it."

"What does it mean?" he asked desperately.

"Well, that you'd take conversion for one thing" she said. "Or, more accurately, that you already have nanites inside you."

"No!" Gordon made to rise but Oracle kept her grip keeping him on the floor. "No, that's not right, they got them all out. They had to, they said, or they'd attack my system."

"Who said? Gordon? Gordon, calm down!" She grappled to keep him on the bathroom floor, to make him face the situation fully. "Who said? Who put nanites in you?"

It took Gordon a moment to settle his breathing and another before he was able to face her again.

"The doctors. After my accident they had to use nanites to repair the damage to my spine. It was cutting edge, they said and they didn't guarantee it would work." He took a shuddering breath. "One of the risks was the m-my body would try and fight them as it would an infection. S-so they had to get them all out. There were programmed to leave."

Oracle nodded knowing immediately what had happened but unsure how to break it to Gordon. Instead, she held up a hand palm upwards.

"Can I?" she asked.

"Can you what?" he asked.

"See what the damage was. Like I did by the fountain."

"Oh" he said "Sure."

"Okay, turn around."

He did so slowly and she rested the hand gently on his back just between the shoulder blades. She closed her eyes as she ran a light touch down his spine wincing as her own nanites bounced back images of the damage that had been done there. He was right. Without nano-therapy there would be no way he'd be able to walk again.

"Tingles" he said. "What are you doing?"

"The nanites are, primarily, a medical invention" she said continuing her examination across his rib cage and down into a formerly shattered pelvis. "They want to heal. When I ask them what is wrong with the person in front of me, they scan." She ran her hand lightly back up to the base of his skull and nodded to herself when she found what she expected to find. She removed her hand and turned him back around. "It makes my hands tingle too" she smiled. "At first it was just broken bones but I got better at it. I can sense torn muscles and sometimes even ruptured arteries as well."

"Sense?"

"Yeah. I don't have a better word for it" she admitted. "I said to you before that the nanites don't control me, I control them. The truth is a little more symbiotic. I would not be able to function without them, they essentially are my nervous system. But I can tell them what to do. If I want a bruise healed faster for example or a broken bone. I also get this weird little time estimate when I tell them to heal something so, because it makes me feel better to think of it this way, I like to think they're talking to me."

"And you think they're in me. Now."

"I know they are" she said bracing for him to try and run again, but he didn't. "They're sitting dormant in the base of your skull, well, most are. Clearly some have integrated into your brain or you wouldn't understand the language."

"They're what?!" Now he did try and scramble up and it was only Oracle's purchase and the tiled floor that kept him from bolting.

"Easy" she said "just breathe, this isn't a big deal."

"Not a big deal?! I'm a freak!"

"Thank you" she said dryly and he had the grace to look a little abashed. "Gordon, your pelvis was shattered in that accident, your spine broken in multiple places, there's muscle scarring like I've never seen before. You should not be upright."

"I know! Okay, I know, the doctors were all sure I'd never walk again even with the nano- therapy. But I was determined. I proved them wrong!"

"Yes. Yes, you did" she agreed. "But you had help. Gordon think about it. Think about what I just said."

He stilled then considering everything he'd learned in the last few moments.

"So, you're saying" he swallowed and started again. "You're saying that I can walk because I told the nanites that's what I wanted to do? That everything I went through to walk again was made possible because of them?"

"Sort of. What I'm saying is that those idiot doctors pretty much signed your death certificate by putting nanites in you. Most people reject them and, in some cases, its instantaneous. But you took control of them and used them to heal yourself anyway. I don't know if they then tried to remove them or just said they did but some are still there. They're probably why you're still functional day to day. Think about it, with the injuries you had, is it really possible to have no longer term side effects?"

Gordon didn't say anything as he digested that.

"I think they're probably still helping you" she offered. "So, if something comes up, like you tweak your back, they jump on it."

"That can't be right" he said shaking his head.

"Do you snack a lot?" she asked seeing in his expression that he did but that he didn't get the connection. "Do you come back off a rescue and sometime eat enough for three people but the next day everything is back to normal? No overfull feeling?"

"If I did?" he said cautiously.

"They use food to help. Brace yourself here comes the science part. They convert it all into energy for them and I think maybe use it as raw materials? Basically, the more you eat the more they can work."

"That's what you meant when you said to Virgil about eating regularly. Wait, that was the science part?"

"Not really my forte" she admitted pleased to see a ghost of a smile cross his face.

"Still hurts" he said pointedly.

"I wouldn't know about that" she said with an apologetic smile. There was a long moment as he came to terms with everything that had just been dumped on him.

"So, am I like, a biomechanoid now?" he asked but to Oracle's surprise he didn't sound scared. "Do I get cool x-ray hands and a secret language too?"

"Er-"

"Coz that would be so awesome. The pranks I could pull with you manning lookout for me. Man, they'd never see if coming." He flopped back against the bath, any signs of the panic from moments ago draining out. "I'm telling you Jasmine; it could be brilliant."

"Oh, it's Jasmine again now, is it?" she said before she could stop herself. Gordon bopped her on the arm.

"It's always been Jasmine. It's who Virgil thinks you are, it's who you want to be, so, be Jasmine. Hey" a thought struck him.

"Can you teach me to speak the language too? Does it have a name? Ohhh maybe it's top secret. Maybe we shouldn't give it a name or else the others will know" he said conspiratorially.

Oracle – Jasmine, giggled at his sheer exuberance. Most people would have been a gibbering wreck. Gordon had had what seemed to be a mild panic for a few minutes and was now plotting how to best use his new skills.

"What is going on in here?" Virgil said from the doorway frowning at seeing his brother and his… friend, looking like they were having a secret meeting on the bathroom floor of all places. Jasmine jumped, looking between herself and Gordon. But Gordon just waved him off making little shooing motions.

"We're plotting, go away."

"Plotting?" Virgil said warily. "What are you plotting?"

"Couldn't tell you" Jasmine said with a bright smile. "Where would be the fun in that?"

Gordon's face split into what could only be called an evil grin as he helped her to her feet.

"Well, he said, can't stay in here all day. Jasmine" he said adopting a tone that was meant to be someone mimicking a natural tone, "we'll talk about the thing later. Until then I'll leave you to it." He looked around as if suddenly noticing where he was. "In the bathroom. Say, I don't think you every got that shower did you, Jasmine? Maybe Virgil can help with that."

Unable to come up with a response Jasmine swung a half-hearted fist at him which he easily ducked laughing.

"I can see I'm not needed here" Gordon sing-songed on his way out. "I'll see you both later. Much later."

Still not able to make a coherent noise Jasmine turned back to Virgil, instantly smiling as he tried to regain some form of composure. Behind her the shower dripped.

Well, she thought it wouldn't be the first time and she arched an eyebrow at him.

"I, uh, you don't need a hand with a shower" Virgil said as he stumbled back out of the room. "I'll just, um, go and, er. I'll see you after." The bathroom door shut with what was very nearly a slam and footsteps could be heard hurrying from the room.

Jasmine laughed out loud as she got ready to actually take the long-awaited shower.

Having Gordon as an occasional teammate wouldn't be so bad after all. It wasn't until she was happily under a blissfully warm shower that she realised what he'd done. He hadn't given her permission to be free; he'd given her permission to be who she wanted and here she was feeling better about life in general than she had since she arrived.

"Cunning little sod!"