Disclaimer: Sorry for the bad formatting the first time around, no idea why FF has such an issue with copy/paste. Also for those who think Carolyn Wheeler is an original character, check the Wiki (or the Talos 1 crew roster assigned to the Lobby next time you're in game).

The pair of women faced each other inside a small office of the TranStar Yakima facility's main administrative building. Although the sublevels of the secret installation below ground were overfull with survivors, refugees and actual base staff, ground level utilization was much smaller. After all, TranStar had previously staffed the place to maintain the appearance of a small admin outlet to prying journalists and rival corporations. And neither were much of an issue anymore.

Besides, when Earth was overrun by an alien infestation, being underground was much safer.

Carolyn Wheeler swept her blonde hair back off her shoulders before pulling it up into a ponytail. The action bought her a minute to think as she processed her situation. The other woman in the room with her resembled Morgan Yu, TranStar's prodigal daughter, the hero of Talos 1. Except this Morgan was a copy; a Mimic, one of the Typhon that had invaded Earth.

Despite that, they were allies. Sort of. An hour or so ago, Carolyn had met the Mimic for the first time. An hour or so ago, an Operator loaded with a trap Mimic had tried to kill them both. When that failed, a security team had been turned loose on them and both had their transcribes shut off, isolating them. Only through some expert fast-talking by Carolyn and hiding by Morgan had the pair escaped TranStar's subterranean base and made it up here to the surface.

Where the Mimic had just confirmed the identity of the one responsible for all their misfortunes. The original Morgan Yu herself.

"Are you sure?" Carolyn asked, the words slow as her mind raced to consider the possibilities.

"How well do you understand Rust+?"

"What?"

Carolyn blinked. Morgan sighed. Then the Typhon stared blankly at the computer screen before looking back at the blonde.

"Can you recognize handwriting?" she asked instead.

"Only if I know it well," Carolyn replied.

"I recognize my handwriting on the code used to issue orders to that Operator, to the code that turned off our transcribes. Yours is probably fine now, by the way."

"It is?" Carolyn peeked down, then drew her transcribe out of her corporate uniform top where, sure enough, it had a steady blue light indicating good connection. "Blimey. Why?"

"I think Morgan believed your performance down there," the Typhon answered, tilting her head slightly as if trying to get another angle to better see Carolyn. "I'm not sure why. Perhaps she doesn't have access to the surveillance cameras in my suite I'm not supposed to know about. The story you told the guards was public, though, or at least accessible to anyone with standard security credentials. The fact that there's Mimic remains...well, they could be mine. It's not a perfect story, of course."

"To whoever's behind this, there were two Mimics and now there's only one," Carolyn said slowly, speaking the words as she thought of them. "But which Mimic survived. So she'll still be looking."

"Yes, but not at you." Morgan grinned and there was something impish in the smile, a kind of roguish whimsy that made it very difficult to think of the woman as a Typhon. "As we speak, those Security Guards are probably searching the whole Sublevel for me or it. It wouldn't occur to her that you might help me escape."

Carolyn leaned back against the wall and felt her eyebrows draw together as she peered curiously at the dark-haired Yu. "Why not?"

"Because it didn't occur to me, not at first. And because I never actually believed you'd do it." Morgan shrugged and swiveled back to the terminal. "I don't have Morgan's memories but I do have the shape of them, of the personality and mind that experienced them. I don't know if that's the same thing, or close enough to it. But the fact is, we did make it off that elevator and get away. For now."

"For now."

Silence fell as Morgan resumed doing whatever she was doing with that terminal. Not quite silence, as the hum of the terminal display mixed with the occasional chime of a system function executed. To say nothing of the sound of the ventilation system itself.

Time to think.

This morning, Carolyn woke up expecting a usual day of PR work. Alex called her in to be part of an experiment for reasons unknown and then vanished on business. And shortly after meeting the experiment itself, the other Yu sibling decided to try killing it, and Carolyn herself, for reasons equally unknown. The logical thing to do was go to her head. Harold Alistair was the VP of News and Communication. While something of this scale was well outside his usual bulwark, he reported directly to the CEO.

Unfortunately, that happened to be Morgan Yu herself.

Corporate Compliance usually handled whistleblower actions but they also reported up to the CEO. There weren't any provisions internal to TranStar she could avail herself of, short of possibly appealing directly to the Board. The next logical thing to do was go to the government. The FBI had a whistleblower line as well and certainly the overarching Department of Justice could handle a case of criminal malfeasance.

Except neither existed anymore. Washington DC had fallen within days of Seattle. All field offices were likewise located in cities, all prime targets for the Typhon during the invasion. While several other corporations, and even governments, had survived the fall of the world, TranStar was the de facto ruling power as far as she was concerned.

Which left Carolyn Wheeler with very few options. Go directly to Alex? Where was Alex? Could she do more than send him an email? And what would she even say? What were the odds that Alex would side with a PR Director and a Typhon over his own flesh and blood sibling?

For better or worse, she was stuck with that Typhon. And probably going to die because of this.

A brief bitterness twisted through her stomach and up her spine before she shoved the emotional response aside. Carolyn had training to deal with surprises and upsets. Losing her head wouldn't do her any good here.

"Right." Carolyn straightened her back, pushed away from the wall and stood behind Morgan once more. "We've been lucky so far but it won't last. If nothing else that medical tech will likely draw Neuromod Research onto the scent. I don't suppose you have a plan, do you."

"Escape," Morgan said, her tone somewhat absent as she studied list after list.

"And then?"

"Find myself. Morgan. Find Morgan."

"What do you plan to do when you do?"

"Ask her some questions, then plead for your life."

Carolyn smiled. "Kind of you. I believe she's somewhere on the East Coast, however."

"Which is why we need to escape first." Morgan finally pushed away from the terminal and walked to the door. With an incline of her head, she said "Coming?"

Charmed, Carolyn followed the Typhon out the door and down the white-on-white hallways with their red doors. When a Security Guard rounded the corner, abruptly Morgan was a Neuromod in her hand again. It made for slightly awkward walking given she didn't know where they were going.

Until the corridor ended at a side exit from the Yakima Facility's admin building.

A pair once more, Carolyn wilted at the blinding sunlight with all of its heat. She was a native of London and this wasn't remotely the climate she was used to. A slow turn of her head took in the endlessly empty high desert landscape with only a smattering of outlying buildings to break up the monotony of brush, dead brown grass and rock.

Beside her, Morgan frowned to herself, then looked thoughtful when Carolyn turned to take in the expression. The Typhon noticed the scrutiny and responded to the raised eyebrow with a shrug. "I didn't realize where we were. This place is safer than I thought."

"What?"

"There's little to no risk of the Typhon ever coming here."

"Really?" Carolyn was usually good at concealing her surprise but some things were worth showing it. "Why?"

"Let me answer your question with a question," Morgan said as the two walked briskly across the pavement towards one of the flight hangers. While there was evidence of a few desperate souls moving about in a nearby depot, the surface remained deliberately deserted. Which of course made Morgan's enigmatic remarks that much more compelling.

"Alright, what's the question?"

"Do you remember the first Weaver?"

"What, on Talos 1?"

"The one from the Vorona-1."

Carolyn thought for a minute, dredging through memories she rarely examined and didn't much care to think on. "Right. The Soviet satellite, the first one to encounter Mimics. What about it?"

"The Typhon were encountered in 1958. The Kletka Program began immediately after and, for the last 79 years, it's been isolated. Contained. Only one man died, producing a total of four Mimics, one of whom was repurposed into a Weaver."

"Right, I remember the old camera footage. He was in space and it just floated on by before coming after him. What of it?"

As they drew near the hanger, Morgan ventured a small smile. "Do you know what Coral is?"

"It's commonly understood to be a kind of nervous system spun out of the consciousness of Typhon victims." Carolyn heaved a sigh. "What do any of these questions have to do with this base being secure?"

"In the 1950s, a man died, produced a Weaver and the whole satellite was quarantined. There weren't any victims in that observation bay after the Weaver was made and that Russian died before the satellite was relocated there. Here's the question, then." Morgan stopped just before the hanger door and that small smile turned into a grin. "What did the Weaver spin the Coral from?"

Carolyn opened her mouth to answer, paused, then blinked. When she opened her mouth a bit further to inquire, Morgan pried open the keypad lock and toggled the door open. The Typhon grabbed Carolyn by the elbow and drew her inside.

The interior of the hanger was vast, wider than Wembley Stadium. It held rows of airplanes, from fighter jets to small passenger planes. One of which was rolled up to the hangar-bay doors and prepped for departure. A dozen ground crew were busy retracting a fueling assembly and clearing the plane to leave.

"What the-"

"Ms. Wheeler?" A pair of TranStar Security Guards approached her before one beckoned her towards the plane. "Right this way."

"Of course," Carolyn said, effortlessly handling her surprise with the indifferent expression she often used to conceal it. A quick glance to the side revealed Morgan was once more a Neuromod, this time weighing down a pocket in her TranStar corporate uniform.

A slight chill crept down her spine as she advanced towards the plane. The Mimics had devastated the human race with a single trick. They killed millions despite people knowing exactly how they did it, despite training, and even despite the Typhon themselves. As good as the Mimics were at copying an object's properties, they were pretty bad at understanding their qualities. Cups moved, chairs floated. And still people died, over and over to them.

Mimics weren't every object in a room. But they could be any object in a room.

This Typhon was something new, though. She had all the agile grace of a Greater Mimic combined with something the Typhon had never had; understanding. She transformed when no one was looking. She didn't move when she shouldn't move.

Was she trustworthy? If she wasn't, the human race didn't stand a chance.

Carolyn stepped up the walkway, ducked her head slightly for the plane entrance and stepped into an opulent passenger cabin. Rich dark mahogany with glossy metal hull accents made for an appealing interior. She swept herself into a comfortably upholstered swivel chair bound with red leather and briefly considered the mini-bar nearby. It was still morning but with this kind of day?

Seeing as she was alone in the interior, she leaned back into the chair and sighed heavily. Then she produced the Neuromod and eyed it sternly. "We need to work on our communication skills."

"I thought people liked surprises," Morgan said a second later, as a fear-inducing black twist turned the small apparatus into the Chinese-German woman who now sat opposite Carolyn. The other woman leaned onto the short table separating their chairs. "Don't you?"

"What ever gave you that idea?"

"Izumi Minami's birthday party."

Again, Carolyn stiffened. For all that the recent hours were filled with action and a certain immediacy of present, this day had been one of recollecting the past. The painful past. Once more, this Morgan Yu reminded her of a place she'd tried to forget. Of people she didn't want to remember.

The pretty communications chief had been a friend. Might have been more than a friend, possibly. Certainly Izumi had hinted at some interest. The flirting had been nice enough. Life aboard Talos 1 could be monotonous, though, for anyone not conducting research directly. As the sole PR Director aboard the space station, Carolyn had plenty of meetings but not much else to fill her time so a little flirting had been welcome. Even if she remembered feeling a bit guilty about it given she'd been married at the time.

And now Izumi was dead. Sue was dead. Most of Earth was dead.

"Where did you go?" Morgan asked. Her face seemed guarded now, wary of something.

"I knew Izumi. It's...strange to hear you talk like you knew her."

"I didn't. I don't. In the simulation, she was already dead when I found her." Morgan smiled faintly. "But it looked like a nice party."

"I was planning to go but I had a press release at the annual TranStar Investor's Meeting to support," Carolyn said distantly.

"I don't understand you."

"What's to understand, Morgan?" Glaring, Carolyn leaned back in her chair as the plane began to roll forward, out of the hanger. "Where are we going?"

"East." The word was short, sharp and clearly an afterthought. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

Morgan's eyes narrowed. "My instinct is to take you at your word. I suspect that's what Morgan would have done. But something tells me that's wrong. You're saying one thing but the way you say it, the way you look tells me there's more."

Carolyn sat up in her chair, at least for the next minute. The plane would be lifting off soon, judging by a pick up in pace and the slight turns that suggested it was maneuvering for a runway. Across the table, the Typhon looked annoyed. Looked human. Intuited like a human.

So she did what any human would do; avoid the subject. "Morgan, what's going on here? How did you get this plane? Where are we going? What is…" Carolyn paused and peered suspiciously at the Typhon. "Why are you even doing any of this? Why do you care?"

Morgan T. Yu, as her email titled her, sat up in her chair as well, echoing Carolyn's body language. With one hand, she brushed the dark bangs of her forehead before placing both hands on the brief table. The two women stared at each other for a moment before the Typhon at last relented. As usual, it was telegraphed the same way a human might, with a relaxation of the eyes and a firming of the lips. Could a Mimic copy a human so perfectly? They never had before. Did this Morgan actually feel what humans felt? Was she human, for all intents and purposes?

The plane abruptly sped up. Carolyn spun her chair around to face forward, eyes looking through the small transparent window pane as she watched the runway speed by faster and faster. In a matter of a minute, the ground fell away. Despite herself, she felt...exhilarated. She'd always enjoyed flying and all of her trips for several years now had been work-related.

Whatever this was, it was off-schedule. It wasn't to a conference or journalists. She couldn't call it a vacation, not with her life at stake, but it had a lack of structure she'd nearly forgotten could exist.

As the plane leveled of, Carolyn swiveled her chair back towards the Typhon. Morgan's gaze was fixed on her own set of window panes and there was a look of naked joy there. Despite how well the woman seemed to be Morgan Yu, it was in this very moment that Carolyn realized the Typhon's honesty. This Morgan really only had a day's worth of simulated memories, all of which had been in space. The rest of her existence had been in TranStar's Yakima Facility, down in the Beast Below.

The look of childlike wonder was surprisingly endearing.

"You're still waiting for answers, aren't you," Morgan said at last, finally noticing her companion's interest.

"If it's not too much trouble."

"I'm very good with computers. I simply reworked the schedule orders for the day and inserted your name in it, backdating the request by weeks. You're being sent to TranStar's INL facilities in Idaho, to be apprised of the local office's newest research in order to formulate a communication strategy with the public. It will look like a standing appointment so unless Morgan really digs into your records, she shouldn't wonder why you're on a plane today. Assuming she doesn't write you off as an accident in the first place."

"...Right. Clever."

"Thank you," the Typhon said, inclining her head and smiling faintly. "As near as I can tell, our destination is where Morgan's access was made. Hopefully she'll be there. If not, we'll know more soon enough once we get on the ground."

"As for why I'm doing this, I doubt my motives are that surprising, Ms. Wheeler." Morgan's smile grew slightly. "I want answers. I want to live. And I want to keep you alive." A kind of introspection crossed those pretty dark eyes of hers. "Did you know, not counting Operators, you and Alex are the only people from Talos still alive? At least that I know of."

"Does that matter so much to you?" Carolyn asked. "I wasn't even there."

"You were on the Advent. They had remote charges rigged on it, and I was in the position to detonate them before you arrived back on Earth." Morgan's smile slipped away, replaced with something colder. Not cruel. Something painful. "Everyone on the bridge was dead, Ms. Wheeler. Their records suggested there might be Typhon on your shuttle. Probably not but impossible to rule out."

Swallowing hard, Carolyn said "It was only a simulation."

"It was real to me," Morgan said, talking on as if she hadn't been interrupted, had only paused. "If I blew the charges, I might save Earth but I absolutely would kill everyone on that shuttle including you."

"You couldn't?"

"I couldn't," Morgan echoed, shaking her head. Her lips pressed together and her hands tightened on the handrests of her chair. Another smile but it was mirthless. "I wouldn't. I had to save you all. I wanted to save everyone. So many people died and I couldn't save most of you so I saved those I could. I had to save you, Carolyn."

The Typhon leaned forward at last, reaching across the table to grip Carolyn's hand. Finger squeezing, she felt Morgan's warmth. Just like a woman's warmth after all. The same tremble a woman might have, after experiencing something traumatic.

"Is this my fault?" Morgan asked at last. "All of this? Did I kill Earth to save you?"

"... No. No, Morgan, no, it wasn't the Advent at all." Carolyn didn't know why she had to reassure a monster, why she wanted to, felt she needed to. But looking at the obvious distress in the Mimic's eyes, she found the last of her disbelief falling away. These aliens couldn't figure out how to normally copy a person without falling over like a statue. It was impossible for them to copy that haunted look in Morgan's eyes without feeling it. Actually feeling it.

"I'm sorry," Morgan said.

"You've nothing to be sorry for, dear."

"I wish that were true."

And the two women spent the next hour in uncomfortable silence.