Hana typically considered herself a pretty stubborn person. Once she set her mind to something it took a monumental effort to knock her off course.

As it turned out a war of attrition, a slow but steady assault on her willpower, could apparently add up to a monumental effort.

Days of imprisonment at Vishkar slowly melted into weeks. Every day the routine was exactly the same – she was woken by a weird sound in her room, signifying it was time for her to trudge to the showers and half-heartedly bathe. Breakfast at first was delivered to her room, where she remained locked inside, but as time went on she was allowed out to the kitchen for breakfast with the employees. After breakfast she'd be taken by a labcoat for some stupid thing, usually a "fun little activity" that was just thinly-veiled positive reinforcement of the company, like showing her how certain parts of the facility worked and how those parts ultimately served to "help" their clients. For lunch she would usually eat alone in her room, then spend the afternoon with her thoughts. At dinner, the most crowded time in the dining area, she usually ate alone, but would sometimes pair up with Satya and eat with her. Satya seemed pleased with Hana's progress, which only depressed Hana further. At one point Satya complimented her hair, which was starting to grow back out. Hana responded by snapping at her. They didn't dine together for several days after that.

At least you're safe here, the employees always told her when Hana tried to voice a complaint. Safe, clean, well-fed – what more can a human ask for? At first Hana would rise to the bait and answer them. Freedom, she'd say – to which they would respond with, The 'freedom' you're seeking destroyed your home and killed nearly everyone you know. It was a stupid response she could easily combat, but when the answer was the same every single time it began to feel like arguing with a machine instead than a human being. So Hana stopped answering. Eventually she stopped even thinking the answer in her head. She would simply shrug or nod and say "Yeah. I guess so." It was exactly what they wanted to hear.

Her brain felt constantly fuzzy, and she was pretty sure it had something to do with the weird sounds that looped in her room. She supposed they also could have been lacing her food with something, but there were several nights where she and Satya split a single dish, so that most likely wasn't the case.

The scariest thoughts were the ones she found herself struggling to disprove. Every so often Satya or one of the other Vishkar workers would ask her, Why do you want to return to the Junker lifestyle so badly? To that, she had no real answer. Well, she did have an answer – she felt that, after all she had been through, no civilized part of the world would ever accept her again. But Vishkar seemed willing to try. So was that really true? Maybe she was just being her usual stubborn self and clinging to a false assumption.

"My brain hurts." Hana massaged her temples. She and Satya were working on the Outback map together – well, working together wasn't quite the right phrase. It was essentially Satya doing the work while Hana watched and gave occasional commentary. Maybe it was from staring at the blinding light of the map for so long, or from all those weird noises night after night, or maybe the fact that her brain was deep-fried from nuclear radiation, but she found herself developing frequent headaches of late.

"Perhaps you should rest?" Satya was not the best at dispensing advice, far from it honestly, but she always tried. "Or would you like me to see if I can get you some pain medicine?"

"I don't know. I'm probably fine." She rubbed her eyes and looked away from the map. "Are they ever gonna have a doctor check me out here? Seems like something they should have done already."

"I am not sure."

"Jeez, for someone who's been here twenty years you don't seem to know very much about what the company's doing."

Satya's lip curled in annoyance, though her response to Hana's bluntness had softened over the weeks they'd spent together. "One limb of the body does not need to know what the entire body is doing at all times. I simply play my part."

"Yeah, yeah. So when am I gonna get some proper medical attention?"

"Would you like me to ask?"

"I mean, it's not a big deal. I could just drop dead at any second."

Satya's eyes widened. "I had no idea it was so urgent. I'll go ask for you."

She left the map up when she walked away. Hana leaned over and studied it. They had some grand plans for the wretched Outback. Satya seemed to think it could be some sort of gorgeous utopia. Hana knew better. The place was wrecked.

Something on the map jumped out at her – an area she recognized, despite the ultra-gentrification on the Vishkar map. My street! She'd recognize McClure Street anywhere. Her house was the second one from the end of the road, a cute little…perfect rectangle of light on a street full of identical light blue rectangles. Her father had just finished adding on a little deck to their backyard a few months before everything happened. The house hadn't been touched by the explosion and was still standing perfectly when Hana had been forced to flee the radioactive smog in the air. Even though it was fine, and had been her parents' final contribution to the world, Vishkar was still planning to destroy it and build one of their ugly little cube-houses in its place.

Hana bit her lip. I'll never see my house again.

Maybe if she was still stuck here when Vishkar started their rebuilding they'd allow her to at least take some things from the house and keep them. Ugh, you sound so whipped. She should be fighting them on destroying her home. She should be looking for a way out of here while she was left alone. Instead here she was, patiently waiting for an employee of her captor to return and let her know whether or not she was to be allowed basic medical attention. She'd become a lazy, spoiled house pet eating out of the hand of its owner, while her friends were probably still caged up like wild animals. What's wrong with me?

"Hana?"

Hana startled a little as Satya appeared at her side.

"Swarnali informed me you've been under medical supervision the entire time you've been here."

"What? Really?"

Satya nodded. "I would guess your room has been outfitted with monitors to keep track of your health status."

"Is that what makes all those weird noises all night?"

Satya blinked. "What?"

"All those weird sounds I hear at night."

"Hm. Possibly?" Satya studied her with concern in her eyes. "Does it disturb you?"

"I've just kind of learned to sleep through it."

"Well I suppose that's good…" She ran a hand through her hair.

They avoided looking at each other after that. Hana stared down at the map, thinking of how different her home, the Junkers' home, was going to look once they were through with it. Everything her parents knew and worked for would be buried beneath a sea of hard light.

There was nothing she could do about it.

"What's the matter, Hana?" Swarnali asked as she was escorting her back to her room that night. Hana did not provide an answer. Instead she just kept walking. "Hana, if something's wrong you can tell us. We're here to help you."

"I want to go home," Hana muttered.

Swarnali did not immediately answer. She must have been cooking up some sort of corporate doublespeak answer, Hana figured. And she was right. "Once Vishkar cleans up the Outback you'll be able to travel there. It'll be beautiful, and a lot safer than it is now."

"It won't be my home."

"Well, once the rebuilding is complete we could look into securing one of the properties for you. I'm sure you'd be given preferential treatment for housing."

"It won't be my house. It won't be the house I grew up in. The house my parents bought and fixed up." Hana glared down at the floor. "I don't want to live in a house made of 'hard light'. I want my old house, with the mismatched walls and rattling windows and squeaky floor boards. With the ugly deck my Dad built."

"We can simulate all those things. It wouldn't be difficult to recreate–"

"Ugh!" Hana clenched her teeth. "Forget it. You're purposely not getting it. Just leave me alone. I'm going to bed."

She let herself into her room and slammed the door behind her. A few seconds later she heard the door's electronic lock activate. "Yeah, goodnight," she spat.

She spent the next few hours curled up on her bed, hugging her knees. It seemed she was out of tears to cry – she didn't shed a single one while huddled there feeling miserable. I miss everyone so much… She hadn't been allowed any more visits after that single meeting with Ana. Every day she felt more and more isolated from them – hell, she didn't even know beyond Vishkar's word that they were still alive. She knew it was all intentional. Vishkar wanted her to move on from the Junkers. They purposely surrounded her solely with Vishkar staff, some of whom made sad attempts to act like friends to her. It was all so god damn fake. The only person she felt genuinely cared for her was, ironically, the one who never had any qualms about voicing her unwillingness to associate with Hana when she had other things to do. But Satya was eyeballs-deep in Vishkar's bullshit just like the rest of them. Maybe even more than the rest of them.

They'd probably treat the Junkers better if I cooperated more. That thought sat in the pit of her stomach every minute of every day she spent at Vishkar. Her stubborn protests were probably just making everything worse in the long run. Maybe she should just give in and let them use her as their stupid mascot or whatever. It wouldn't really be the end of the world, would it?

She sat mulling it over for the better part of the night. Maybe she was being selfish. Maybe she should be working with Vishkar and using her status with them to get the Junkers freed. Ugh, why does it all have to fall on me? She gnashed her teeth in frustration. Maybe I should just…

A slight change in the room pricked her ears. Something had been making a noise, a noise she had apparently been tuning right out, and the noise just stopped. Uncurling herself in the bed, Hana climbed off of it and shuffled over to the security camera in the corner. The noise had been coming from that area. It was quiet now. Something looked different about it, too – it usually had a tiny red light near the top of it, she recalled. Now it didn't.

Piercing static made her heart jump. She whipped around to find the holovid powered on. What the heck?

The screen was black save for a glowing purple emblem in the middle – it looked like some sort of skull. Hana backed away from it.

Some text started to appear on the screen, as if it were being typed up in real time. Reluctantly Hana stepped a little closer to read it.

Do you want to see?

"See what…?" Hana looked over at the camera on the wall again. What was going on here?

As if the holovid could hear her, more text appeared. The truth about what Vishkar does.

"Who are you?"

I'm a friend.

"A friend of Vishkar?"

LOL. Hardly.

As stupid as it was, the splash of text speak made Hana feel oddly more at ease. She'd become so accustomed to Vishkar's painfully formal vernacular that any momentary deviance from it was refreshing. "Are you one of the hackers Vishkar's been having problems with?"

Oh? They been talking about me?

"I just heard them mention a hacker trying to get into their system."

Lmao, "trying". So anyways Miss Song, you want some help getting out of there?

Hana stared at the screen, nonplussed. "I'm supposed to just trust some shifty no-face hacker who broke into my holovid?" She'd never had a good experience with a hacker. Their stupid aimbots and junk ruined all of Hana's favorite online games.

Well, you don't have to trust me. Honestly I'm just looking to take Vishkar down. You're kind of a means to an end. The text sat on the screen for a few seconds, the hacker seemingly finished with their message. Then they added, Let me show you something.

The text faded away. The screen now showed something else entirely – it looked like security footage. The room in the video was dark, preventing Hana from seeing much. All she could make out was a softly glowing tank of some sort.

Then the lights in the mysterious room flicked on, and Hana gasped.

"Vanessa? Vanessa Calgori?"

Boss glared up at the man in the white coat staring down at her. Whatever crazy sort of material they were using to hold her in this cage…tank…thing, when she tried to phase through it it disrupted her energy and knocked her back, leaving her with a sensation akin to being shocked. Some kind of sci-fi shit.

The man sat down on a stool in whatever weird room Boss was being kept in and leaned down to her level. She continued to stare him down, but apparently he wasn't going to be shaken by that. "You're a fascinating specimen," he said, his tone implying it was supposed to be some sort of compliment. "Tell me your story."

"I ain't telling you shit." Boss folded her arms and crossed one leg over the other. Let this asshole try her. She'd been dealing with Junkers for the past month. After them nothing could faze her.

The man's friendly face fell for just a moment before he quickly re-plastered a smile on. "Okay, fair enough. We know what we need to know. Do you have any questions for me?"

"Sure, how about why the hell am I in a tank like I'm some kind of giant lizard?" The man chuckled at that. "Wasn't a joke," she added.

"Well Vanessa, I don't know how much you know about us, but here at Vishkar we're constantly striving to develop new and better technologies for the good of all humanity. Your abilities are fascinating! They could definitely find some great use once we figure out how to replicate it."

"How the hell are you gonna do that?"

"Well, first we've got to figure out exactly what happened to your atoms to grant them such flexibility and rapid recovery. 'Radiation' is the simple answer, but it's not specific enough. So we'll run some tests on you, pretty much process of elimination until we isolate what in the radiation did this to you, and how."

"Then what? You let me go?"

"Oh, of course."

Boss huffed. "Yeah, right. Okay. So where are my friends?"

"They're all fine. We've just settled them into their–"

"They in cages, too?"

"–rooms, and we'll be meeting with them soon. Oh, by the way…" He picked up a clipboard off a table nearby. "What can you tell me about the older woman who's with you? All her records seem to have been scrubbed. We couldn't find anything about her."

Boss laughed. "First thing, I have no idea. Second, I wouldn't tell you if I did. Mind your own fucking business."

That shook the man's fake friendliness for real. "All right," he replied. "Would've made it safer for her when we attempt replication, but…"

Boss crawled toward the front of the tank, closer to the man. "Wait, what the hell does that mean? You're not testing on them, are you?"

The man strode over to a panel on the side of her cage and started to input something. "Obviously the procedure to replicate your abilities will be an experimental and very dangerous one. We'll absolutely have to test it numerous times before we can perfect it and present it as our latest invention."

Boss drew back. "No…you're not…"

"And thankfully we've got an entire Outback full of Junkers to test on, too. The Australian government was very interested in us cleaning them out quickly and quietly. Why waste perfectly good test subjects?"

"You're not doing this to anyone else! I'm not going to let you!" She felt her body start to melt, the way it always did now when she got emotionally overwhelmed. She struggled to hold herself together and maintain a form solid enough to bang on the wall of the tank. "Are you listening to me? And you can't hold me like this and test on me without my consent anyway, it's a human rights violation. You'll get shut down for–"

"Using a corpse for scientific research is perfectly legal." The man's voice was calm, eerily so. "And you were donated to us by the Australian government for just such a purpose."

"I'm not a corpse! Not…really…"

A half dozen wires wormed out of the walls of the tank and embedded themselves in Boss' flesh. They were made of the same bizarre translucent blue material as the tank's inner walls, and she could not escape them by melting herself into energy either. Boss writhed and struggled to free herself, but they only sank themselves in deeper. The man sat back down in front of her, clipboard at the ready. Boss was just opening her mouth to yell at him again when suddenly a searing heat, much stronger than the shock from the walls, arced through her body. She couldn't feel pain anymore, but she felt an overwhelming drain on her energy that made her sick and dizzy with how quickly it overtook her. Her vision went white and her hearing dropped out. It was like the material world fell away from her – or she fell away from it. She didn't even have time to think about what was happening before she lost all awareness and lapsed into total blankness.

Hana's hands covered her mouth as she watched a half dozen agents of Vishkar dissect Boss' body, with about as much care as high schoolers dissecting a frog. They separated her into a bunch of different pieces – could she even come back from that? Bile rose in the back of Hana's throat as she found herself unable to look away from the horror scene.

Thankfully the horrifying images eventually cut back to just the black screen and purple skull logo. "Wh…" Hana could barely even finish her sentence. "Why…would they do that?"

Because they're evil. They're evil and they're coming for your home, for my home, eventually they're gonna come round up all us derelicts and force us all into their bullshit "utopias". Well, that or kill us. I'm guessing your friends are gonna fall into the second category.

Hana swallowed. "Are you just guessing? Or do you know something?"

Well, Vishkar has a complete medical profile for a Jamison Fawkes and a Mako Rutledge, and a partial one for your pal Ana. They literally said they were gonna try to replicate your friend Vanessa's weird radiation powers using Junker test subjects, so yeah, doesn't take a genius to figure out they're going to be the first test subjects. And it looks like Vishkar's fully planning on them not surviving it.

Hana sank to her knees. Her whole body suddenly felt cold, a deep chill that couldn't be shivered out. Her hands trembled. She stared down at the floor, afraid to look back up at the ominous holovid again. "This...is all my fault. Everyone's going to die and it's all my fault."

When finally she dared to look up at the screen again, the hacker had written, Oh quit being so dramatic, chiquita. We can still get them out.

"You're going to help me?"

For the right price.

"I don't have anything." Hana turned her pants' pockets inside out in view of the holovid. "If you can get me back to Australia you can have whatever money is left at my parents' house. It's probably not much, but…"

I don't want your money. What do you think I am, some kind of common criminal? After a few seconds the hacker added, Actually, don't answer that.

"So what do you want, then?"

We'll talk about that later. But trust me, it's something you have.

Hana didn't like this one bit. For all she knew it could be an attempt by Vishkar to get Hana to put her trust in someone who was actually working for them. Why would they send someone to talk to me about escaping, though? Thoughts of escape grew further from her mind with each passing day. She was becoming passive and spoiled at Vishkar, their constant mind games dulling her willpower and rewarding her for unquestioning obedience. It didn't seem likely that they'd try to re-invoke escape fantasies in her mind again.

"So what do you want me to do, then?" Hana asked.

Just pay attention to everything around you. Maybe take some notes if you can. I'm gonna need an insider perspective if I'm gonna shut this place down.

"Okay. I can do that."

Good. I'll be in touch again soon.

"All right." Hana paused a moment. "Thank you."

Lol. Don't thank me, kid. I'm not doing this for you.

The holovid powered down. Hana turned it on again only to find normal holovid channels and nothing else. A moment later the camera in the corner powered back on and resumed its quiet, constant humming.

Guess I'm an accomplice to a hacker now. Hana crawled back into bed and flopped down on her stomach. The person seemed shifty as all hell, but they did seem genuine in their desire to attack Vishkar, if they were the same hacker those employees had been talking about a few weeks ago. It's not like I have a lot of options for allies. Especially if it was true that Vishkar was planning on using the Junkers as lab rats.

She spent the rest of the night thinking. Thinking and planning.

Author's Note: Just wanted to thank you guys for sticking with me throughout this fic! Reviews are greatly appreciated, I love hearing from readers!