The Syndicate had declared war on some largely-unknown settlement beyond the Outlands. Fiery tornadoes swirled, raining down a cascade of deadly, burning debris. People tried desperately to flee– their screams were distorted by the roar of the storm. At the center of the chaos was an ornate skyscraper, somehow untouched. It was as if the storm was projected from the building, destroying everything around it in a sweeping, expanding circle.

She recognized the building, Lifeline noticed with an uncomfortable pang in her chest as the devastation swirled around her. That was her parents' corporate headquarters. Though the medic couldn't see them from the ground, she had no doubt that her mother and father were standing on their balcony at this moment, planning how they would rebuild and profit from this ruin.

She screamed for them to stop, despite knowing full well that they couldn't possibly hear her from so far away. Over the roaring storm, she couldn't even hear her own voice. Her pleas were drowned out by the disaster.

Dust and ash caught in her throat. She was choking. She was suffocating–

"Wake up, skinbag."

Lifeline looked around in a frenzy. She was standing outdoors, in the middle of the street. Metal fingers gripped her shoulder and dug uncomfortably into her skin. Her eyes snapped open– Revenant's orange ones stared back, an eerie glow in her dark quarters. He quickly released her shoulder and backed away.

The medic blinked several times. Those images rapidly faded from the foreground of her mind, replaced by the dark and quiet of her bedroom. A flaming tornado– how overly dramatic was that? Internally, she rolled her eyes at her subconscious. The greatest threat in the real world - the worst adversary that an emergency management worker could face - was an ignorant person in a position of authority. They blended into the background and didn't make nearly as exciting historical photos as a fire or a severe weather event– but they were always present.

Her family was a part of that accidental evil. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't separate herself from it. She could only attempt to undo a small portion of the harm they'd caused, and hope that it would be enough– but it never was. It never was–

"Thinking about me– something I've done?"

"Huh?" Lifeline looked up at the assassin with a confused frown. "Oh– nah. My parents."

Revenant let out a low growl. "What did they do to you…?"

He was crouched low, up on the balls of his feet, slightly hunched as if ready to lunge at an unsuspecting adversary. Lifeline quickly shook her head.

"Nothin' like what you're thinkin'," she answered firmly. "I don't want you to hurt 'em. Yuh hear me? Leave my family alone."

She pulled back the covers and swung her legs off the side of her bed. A heavy sigh escaped her as she brushed her hair away from her face. The assassin silently repositioned himself to be next to her, kneeling next to the headboard.

"If you ever change your mind," he said, "I can end them."

Lifeline shot him a glare, along with a longer, more aggravated sigh. "Yuh might think yuh mean well– but you ain't helpin'."

"What… would be helpful?"

He spoke awkwardly, like he wasn't certain of his words, and his harsh tone of voice didn't match them. The assassin didn't know if he cared about Lifeline's feelings, beyond the simple and obvious solution of erasing the problem from existence with a sharpened blade. He couldn't say with conviction that he didn't care, either. It was all so foreign to him– difficult to make sense of, impossible to navigate.

"Don't suppose yuh could build a better society," the medic finally replied. She stepped out of bed and lowered herself to sit beside him on the floor, hunched over with her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest. "One where everyone is equal, and no one's made to suffer…"

Not even you. She glanced at him. The words went unspoken– she couldn't tell if he'd shared that understanding.

"If I could," Revenant growled, "I wouldn't. Your purpose as a medic is defined through suffering. With none to battle, you would become obsolete."

"That's your fear," she answered with a slight shake of her head. "It ain't mine."

"But you are afraid of your parents…"

"Not– exactly." Lifeline sighed. "It ain't like that. They'd never hurt me– but they're makin' decisions that are gettin' other people hurt. And that– yeah, that scares me."

"Then do something about it," hissed the assassin.

"I don't want 'em hurt, either– don't yuh get it?"

The medic's words were snappish now, impatient– with an undertone of sadness. It wasn't fair that she had to care so much. It wasn't fair that she, who wanted nothing more than to help people, had been born into a corrupt family of corporate tyrants– but life failed to work by justice or reason.

"Fine," Revenant answered in a low tone. "Don't hurt them. Threaten them. Convince their stockholders to sell out so they lose profit– I'm sure you've saved that pathetic schoolboy with the drone at least once; he owes you. Get him to steal classified information from their company. Hold it against them as leverage."

Lifeline tilted her head. "Yuh thought about this a lot."

"I don't sleep," he growled. "Nothing better to do than find ways to destroy my enemies."

"What–? My family? They're your enemy now…?"

Her voice trailed off, confused. Revenant stared at her in awkward silence. The seconds that passed turned to a minute– two minutes–

"They're your enemies," he said finally, "and you know. You see everything that they're doing to wrong you. Don't take that for granted, skinbag, and don't ignore it. If I'd had the chance to get my hands on those engineers–"

The assassin's words cut off abruptly. He looked away from her, suddenly very aware of the information that he was revealing about himself– information that could be used against him. He shifted position, not wanting to remain in her company any longer. A hand clasped around his forearm pulled him back. He spun around and glared menacingly into the medic's eyes.

Lifeline didn't flinch.

"If yuh want to tell me about that," she said in a quiet voice, "I'd like to listen."

She let go of his arm and leaned back against the side of the bed, waiting patiently. Revenant stared her down– silent, unmoving.

"Such a human thing to say," he replied, hissing the word human like it was some kind of lesser parasite. "Tell me, skinbag– why are your kind so quick to want to talk about what happens to them? It's because your memories are scattered, altered, broken– and they fade with time. None of that happens to me, human– I recall every detail, exactly as it occurred, forever."

He shifted slightly; the orange glow of his eyes glinted off the metal tips of his claws.

"I'm not like you– not anymore."

Wordlessly, the medic nodded. She stayed quiet for the next several seconds, expecting him to disappear into the darkness as he always did. To her surprise, although he kept his guarded posture, the assassin remained beside her.

"Maybe," she said softly, "yuh just want someone to listen to yuh story, and– and to believe you… to be on your side."

Revenant didn't answer, but something about what she'd said… intrigued him. She was offering something practical: an alliance based on what he'd endured, not a pointless and confusing emotional connection that he was expected to reciprocate. For once, her presence didn't feel like unbearable confinement.

He lowered himself back down to the floor fully, legs out in front of him with a slight bend in the knees. Lifeline held out her hand– the assassin ignored it.

"I was an experiment– a prototype," he finally growled. "The first successful attempt to build an artificial neural network off the brain of a dead man– to create this–"

His claws tapped against the metal plating of his chest with a soft clink.

"...thing, this machine– that has the raw instinct of a human being. It took those engineers a lot of failed tries before I reached the level of autonomy that you see now. I was conscious for most of it– fully aware of what they were doing; unable to react. They–"

The assassin hesitated. The information he'd shared already was more than he ever told anyone about himself. It was a mistake, he thought, to trust a human… They were unreliable, and their motives changed on a whim. Even if she was genuinely on his side - as she claimed - right now, that would be over in a week, a month, a year… The timeline made no difference to him. Nothing lasted.

Nothing except him.

Then again– did it matter if she turned on him like all of humanity inevitably did? He would just kill her when it happened, as he'd always done. Revenant glowered at the medic– she gazed back at him with a thoughtful expression, patiently waiting. Though he would never openly admit it, he realized that Lifeline wasn't wrong. He did want another sentient being to be on his side for once– one presence in the universe that wasn't some kind of threat to him.

"I… couldn't move," the assassin continued. "They used to take me apart, run their tests, switch out parts, whatever was on the agenda that day– I watched and I felt everything that they did to me. There was– nothing I could do about it."

The modulation of his voice wavered, as if emulating shaky breathing. When the assassin spoke again, he sounded distant, detached. He faced straight ahead, toward her bedroom wall– glowing optic sensors staring intently at some nothingness out of his reach.

"Sometimes I thought I was human in those experiments– bleeding out, suffocating, somehow never dying. Other times, I was– this– with all of the static, the broken signals, warnings… Either way, it didn't matter to those engineers. They ran their tests, collected their paychecks, and suppressed my memory of what they'd done. Suppressed– but not erased."

He ended the sentence with a harsh snarl.

"Two hundred eighty-eight years later, those cognitive walls have broken down, and I remember everything. Every detail, every wire, the face of every skinbag in that goddamned building. They're all long gone. They had easy, painless lives– I can keep snuffing out the skin-suits who follow in their footsteps, but I'll never get to do to them what they did to me."

Revenant turned toward the medic. The glow of his optic sensors bore down on her.

"You have the chance I never did: to confront the people who are taking your life away from you," he growled. "Kill them, don't kill them– it makes no difference to me. But don't ignore what they're doing to you."

"I– I won't," Lifeline answered, her voice barely above a whisper. "These times I've tried to fix yuh– that's what you thought I was gonna' do?"

"Yes."

He looked away from her, resuming his distant stare at the bedroom wall. The medic studied his face, as if that blank automaton countenance could display emotion for her to see. It didn't, of course– but she didn't need it to. She could read the rage and the fear that drove him from his posture.

"All I've ever wanted to do is help," she said wistfully. "I swear."

"I know."

His answer was spoken short and quick. Lifeline reached for his arm, which he held curled up in a defensive position in front of him. In a movement that was slow and cautious - yet deliberate - she brought her hand to rest lightly on top of his. When he didn't pull away, she curled her fingers around the underside of his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. The assassin tilted his head slightly, looking down at their hands. He didn't reciprocate, but he didn't break the contact, either.

"I need you to understand something," he growled lowly. "It wasn't a single engineer, or even a single department. Every executive, project manager, engineer, and technician with Division I security clearance watched it happen– over a century of staff coming and going, not one of them did a thing to stop it. Nobody who makes the choice to serve that company is innocent– and that is why they all need to burn. Every last one."

Lifeline let out a heavy breath.

"Can't say I approve," she replied stiffly, "but I'm tryin' my best to understand."

He stayed silent, though he nodded once to acknowledge her words. A storm of mixed thoughts and emotions swirled violently in the medic's mind. The harm that her greedy parents and their own corrupt corporation was inflicting– Revenant's never-ending determination to make those whom he perceived as his enemies suffer… She couldn't blame him for this one, but she couldn't just let it go either.

He had reason to see every person associated with Hammond Robotics as a unit; something that needed to be eradicated all at once to ensure that it could never come back. Until quite recently, she'd never really thought about the corporation. They sponsored the Apex Games and plastered their logo on everything, but they existed only as an afterthought in the background, if that. She wasn't sure if that perspective made her less biased or more– she did know that she couldn't stand to see anyone suffer needlessly. Not Revenant; not a bunch of techs and factory workers who were likely doing their best to survive with no consideration for the moral standing of the company they worked for.

For the time being, the medic kept her thoughts to herself. She needed Revenant to know that she was on his side– although eventually, she realized, she would have to teach him that alliance did not always mean agreement.