Everything was done. She had piled up any last remaining bit of evidence, the will, the passports, the mem disks, anything that said Arienne Rayder ever existed, and had drenched it with lighter fluid. Then she poured gas everywhere, in every room of the tiny cottage by the sea, pouring a trail out of the house finally stopping a distance away, where the dirt ended and the sea grass began. The house was isolated but the neighbors would come. Dubris would probably not see a fire like this again for a good long while. Arienne sat down facing the little house, the life that she'd created, and lit a match.

So Plan B it is.

The will that would soon burn had left everything to one girl. Anastasya. Arienne had only met her briefly all those years ago.

Genatech, the UN, Dr. Devnic, tiny Anastasya with her huge green eyes and that ridiculous rag tag doll; it all seemed like a dream now, like something she'd read about in a book once and only half remembered. But now the book was lost and she couldn't be sure what was real and what she'd made up.

"Have you ever heard of the Crusnik virus?"

She remembered Dr. Devnic...Gavin. All she could recall was that had died horribly, so horribly. He'd been the one to tell her about Genatech's experiments to generate the crusnik race, superior in all ways. She'd been part of the experiment to advance that race but no one was left to see it through.

"You have to commit to the changeover, the g-force will trigger the rest."

It was that simple. After her fall, after the impact, Arienne would cease to exist. The nanomachines in her body, the ones that had preserved her for 900 years, would take over and create, or rather re-create, an entirely new being.

Anastasya.

At least that was what Arienne called her. The kicker of the whole thing was that Arienne couldn't even remember her real name. It had been folded into the many memories that Arienne had lost. Her brain simply wasn't equipped to last this long. The nanomachines kept her alive but she knew she'd been slowly losing her mind.

But perhaps...

Perhaps the reality was that she had been edging towards insanity all her life. She knew her madness been assiduously 'managed' by Genatech, but whether they had driven her over the edge or pulled her back from it, she didn't know.

All she knew now was she was holding onto a slowly burning match.

She tossed it.

The flames snaked hungrily toward the house.

Her backup plan was, in fact, not exactly a fully formed plan but it would have to do. Her original plan had involved flying under the radar, involving wills, affidavits, witnesses and securing a legitimate identity for little Ana.

The problem had been the overpowering thrall effect she would have in the first few days, or few weeks of her life. Back then, a high security lab would have been the answer, but those were in rare supply these days.

As soon as she saw Father Tres Iqus, many years ago on security detail after a bombing in Londinium, she knew he was her opportunity to fix things.

It had taken years to procure the right contacts to get her enough information to start working on Tres' program and several more to code it, but it kept her alive, kept her sane. She had been waiting, treading in the slippery shadows of the Londinium underworld, for exactly the right time.

But now, after everything, all she had to go on was the possibility that this Abel Nightroad, the one who had played a hand in destroying her world, was someone who would help.

Or...had Father Tres just told her what she wanted to hear.

Or had she somehow, again, misunderstood, misremembered what he'd said to her.

It was too much to work out in her already addled brain.

Arienne stood back from the slowly forming crowd and waited. The priest would come.

The flames were low flickers by the time Father Abel Nightroad arrived on a Vatican motorcycle.

She calmly strapped Tres's refashioned holster around her waist. She'd driven her own reappropriated Vatican motorcycle all the way to Dubris, but had stopped off at her soon-to-be abandoned car to retrieve Tres' Jerichos.

Through the dispersing villagers and the billowing smoke Arienne stared at the priest. He was searching the crowd for her, his long silvery blond hair tied up behind him with a black bow, revealing a perfectly beautiful, sorrowful face. She knew she had hurt him earlier, reminding him of the past, of things he could not change. But even after that, he had helped her. He brought her back from wherever she had faded to.

A wind blew, and a few orange sparks escaped the glowing ruins to dance in the cool night air. Her eyes were drawn away from the priest and fell on the distant horizon where she saw a dark speck in the sky growing larger.

So...the Department of Inquisition had found her as well.

Arienne had rehearsed her fall so many times in her head she knew what she would be thinking - what she would try to etch in her memory for Anastasya.

Ana, remember Father Tres. Father Tres will help you.

All these years she had yearned for her end to come and now, at the brink of her pending death, she wavered.

Could I...

Almost as if he could sense a breach in her resolve, the priest's eyes found her. He took a tentative step forward. Arienne reflexively drew back.

No.

Arienne had made a promise to little Anastasya many years ago. Since then she had done a lot of things in her artificially extended lifetime, things she wasn't proud of, but she was going to be damned if she didn't keep that one promise.

She was ready for her final act to begin.

Arienne turned and ran up the grassy slope, towards the sea, to make her last leap of faith.

END of The Fall