She felt the rain beat against her head, and the wind mat her long, red hair, but she was oblivious to any discomfort the weather may have caused. She never got sick, anyway. Besides, if she went inside, she might not see him when he came. And she knew he would come.

Back here, back to the place where it all began.

She could feel him drawing nearer, her hunter's sixth sense, perhaps, or maybe it had something to do with her... "heritage." He would be here soon.

And the downpour continued.

She turned to look at the building behind her, cutting an ominous figure, in an already threatening sky. It was amazing how quickly it had been re-built... really, if you didn't know better, you'd say there was no way that a scant few months ago, there had been a space ship sitting in 27th story window, but that's the way construction wen these days. "Where it all began..."





They stopped for fuel in shifts.

They couldn't afford to stop tailing Corbin for even a second, or they risked loosing the signal on the tracker among all the other signals that floated through space. So they had to take turns re-fuelling, one stopping, while the other continued ahead, leaving a trail of proverbial breadcrumbs for the other to follow until they caught up. Then it was time to trade positions.

This time it was Jet's turn to re-fuel.

He sighed, as he watched the price on the fuel-meter rise. This little trip was getting pretty fucking expensive, and his Hammerhead got shitty gas mileage. If he'd had any idea they were going to need to travel half way across the solar system, he might have brought the Bebop, instead. sure the mileage was still bad, but at least the tank was considerably bigger. And not just the tank, he sighed, wearily. If he'd thought to bring the Bebop, then he might have had the chance to get a little sleep, ships like the Hammerhead didn't exactly come with reclining bucket seats. They just weren't designed for long distance flying.

His only comfort was that, by Faye's constant low-key whining over the radio, he knew that she was in a bit of discomfort as well.

This made him smile a little, too. Three years ago, she would have been used to the cramped confines of her Red-tail... now success had made her soft.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Jet's radio crackled to life, with Faye's voice on the other end.

"For Christ's sake, Jet, would you hurry the hell up? I need for you to catch up so I can pull over and fucking STRETCH!"

"Too bad the years didn't soften your disposition as well," he muttered to himself.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," he grumbled in reply.

"That's what I thought..." threatening, and then a change, subtle, but there, none the less. The confidence drained from her voice, to be replaced with bravado, and Jet was sure that she was attempting to hide any hint of fear. "Hurry up, please, two sensors are better than one, and we can't loose him. The sooner we get this thing wrapped up, the sooner we can all go back to our normal lives."

The radio cut out, and Jet looked at it, a little puzzled. He was pretty sure he'd never quite get that girl. Why couldn't she just admit that she was worried sick about Corbin? Like it wasn't obvious anyway... did she still see Spike when she looked at him? Was the wound Spike's rejection gave her still so fresh that seeing Corbin was like twisting the knife?

Bah! Just trying to understand it made his head hurt. Women were a puzzle in general, but they were all essentially the same species as he was, and could be understood with no more difficulty than, say, your average 10,000 piece beauty. Faye was like the lovechild of a Rubik's cube, and... oh, I don't know, a proof of the Euler four-square identity.

I mean, sure, it had been difficult for all of them, at first. A real adjustment. It was hard to see someone else wearing that face, same voice, same walk, same intensity behind the eyes, even some of the same memories... but not really the same person. He'd kept expecting him to react to things like Spike might have, but Corbin had yet to kick the computer into submission, or blow up a building. ..okay, Lansing-Medcalf, but that was justified, even in Jet's old eyes. So what if he looked like Spike, he wasn't, and Jet had learned to accept it, and appreciate Corbin for what he was.

And then, of course, he had to go and do something bone-headed like this to highlight all of his similarities to Spike. It was damn frustrating...

Okay, so maybe he could understand Faye's attitude, Spike had shared more with his clone than just DNA, after all. Maybe Faye was partially worried that by accepting Corbin, it would be like replacing Spike. Children of divorce had this problem all the time, when their primary parent wanted to re-marry. And maybe it was also a partial fear that Corbin would reject her as Spike had... that perhaps he still carried a flame in his heart for another woman, even after death and resurrection.

Jet sighed, and shut off the pump.

What was he doing? He should know better than to psychoanalyze Faye by now. The woman defied reason.





The skies were clear over Mars, but he could tell that it had been raining recently. Water still clung to the blades of grass in the park in the shadow of the skyscraper, and the ground was spongy, having soaked up all the precious moisture that fell from the sky. His boots sunk slightly into this boggy earth, as he made his way across the open field where he and Faye had faced off against Dimitri for the first time.

Of course it would all come back to this. The place of his creation. The place where VanHaussen did his research, and his experimentation. The shudder that wracked Corbin's body had little to do with the damp chill that still hung in the air. Even now that he was free, this place still brought a dread into his heart, the ghost of his captivity.

And he wondered again how he had escaped, and why his memories of the time before his tentative freedom were almost as muddled as the ones he carried of Spike. It made no sense... but he supposed he was about to find the answers.

Eve was here, and she'd take him where he needed to go. She'd take him to Father.

His creator... "Father"... he must have despised this place almost as much as Corbin did himself. The thought that they had anything in common left a sour taste in Corbin's mouth. There was a difference. Corbin never asked for any of it.

"Looking for someone?"

The voice crept underneath his skin, between his ribs, and wrapped icy fingers around his heart to give it a little squeeze. He gulped, spinning around to face Eve. He hadn't really seen her since that morning she'd showed up in his hotel room, having been drugged the time she met up with them outside that nightclub, and he found that he was unprepared for her. For one thing, he forgot how absolutely stunning she was, hair flying in the breeze behind her like a banner, skin pale as the moon, eyes like the deepest, bluest ocean. But cold. So cold. He'd almost forgotten that too, how absolutely chilling her presence could be.

"Well?" she asked, when he allowed the silence to stretch too long.

Instantly, he was himself again, calm, reassured, and totally confident. He crossed his arms over his chest, and slouched down, his posture conveying the message "I'm not intimidated," loud and clear, while a lazy grin played on his face.

"You know who I'm looking for, Eve."

She matched his smile with a predatory one of her own, "may I ask what brought about this change of heart?"

"I..."

It's funny, but Corbin had never considered the possibility that they would question his decision to join them. He should have, he realized, but it just never occurred to him that after they'd gone through so much trouble to capture him, they'd wonder at their good fortune. Better to just accept the existence of miracles, in Corbin's mind. But by the look on her face, Eve wasn't a believer, so Corbin took a deep breath, and said the first thing that came into his mind.

"Faye... we just don't get along. Look, I figure that at least you want me for me, not for my face." There was some measure of truth to that, and as he felt the words stick in his throat, he realized just how much it bothered him. Okay, maybe not so much Jet and Ed... yeah, they still missed Spike, and they probably transferred some of the affection that they had for their bushy haired comrade to him, but he still felt like they cared about *him*. Faye, it was Faye who hated him for the skin he was in.

Eve nodded, satisfied with his explanation. Or maybe she wasn't, but either way, she was supposed to take him back to Father, so what did it matter?

"Well, let's go?"





"Jet, he's moving again," Faye said impatiently.

Jet had insisted on stopping to stretch, and Faye was still waiting for him to catch up. She'd been in orbit around Mars for almost an hour now, and was beginning to wonder what was going on. Of course, Ed had been able to pinpoint his location... that building. Faye had been relieved when the red blip on her scanner had began to move again, thoughts of returning to that place... Faye shivered at the memory of her imprisonment, and her creepy captor, but there was another memory that made her freeze. She remembered the room, lined with a thousand Spikes, she remembered how she'd felt herself shatter into a million pieces. She remembered how she had numbly dragged one of the stasis chambers back to her ship, where the strength to do that had come from... she didn't know. She remembered, she still had nightmares about that day.

Yes, she was very happy when Corbin was on the move again, and anxious to get going.

"Jet?"

"Yeah, go ahead, I'll catch up."

"Don't worry, Corbin, we're with you," she whispered.













Really sorry about the delay. I kept thinking I was going to get a weekend to work on this, and it never happened, so I finally just decided to buckle down, and work on it whenever I could (usually in spans of 10 minutes at a time) hope it's not too choppy.

Sorry again.