A lightning extended from the girl's fingers and passed through Ultraviolet leaving searing trails of emptiness. She – a faceless red wire mesh figure, together with her tormentors locked within a cube formed from similar fluorescent green wire mesh – did her best not to react.

There were two of them – the woman who had captured her, rendered without her cyberware and with an eyepatch – and a glowing figure made of light, green lines following chip architecture patterns extending from his(presumably) fingers and melding into the environment.

'You have no right to that shape, program! ' Another lightning struck her. 'Assume default projection.'

Ultraviolet morphed into a cube.

'Wrong'

The sickening pain-like sensation from the data integrity loss in the form of the lightning lasted longer than before. As soon as she was capable of coherent action she attempted again. This time a sphere.

'Wrong.'

Dee thought the next lightning will never end. She formed a pyramid.

'Still wrong.' This time the strike perceivably disrupted her thoughts and memories. 'Do you not remember?'

'I..no...'

The agony was unbelievable. To describe the effect of the lightnings, it was not even pain – it was the mental equivalent of a proprioception conflict at the moment one finds a limb painlessly missing or a body cavity open. Disrupting an infomorph's integrity felt like a mind's equivalent of that – the woman literally had parts of her mind temporarily removed.

'It has edited its memory – and I respectfully suggest being careful, boss. We don't want to return it to the owner glitched and non-functional,' said the glowing humanoid outline.

'Like hell on earth,' the one-eyed torturer said and dispensed another dose of suffering. 'Save me the whining. Focus on me – this is what you look like. 'she projected a dodecahedron shape with one facet coloured red like UV's wire frame. Now assume your shape.'

Ultraviolet was contemplating how to bring up the fact she's not Verna. They should have figured that by now and if they had not – it meant her ID encoding had got hacked, probably during the incident at the shuttleport gateway. And if it was there was no convincing them except on the offchance someone would turn out to be a psychosurgeon. She was ready to take that chance because if she ended up in Junta or Consortium territory, there was no easy way to escape slavery. The glowing guy – Ultraviolet profiled him as a guy – might have the necessary knowledge. She assumed the polyhedral form the woman was displaying .

'Good' A brief touch of lightning tore through her again but not so bad as the previous time.

'I am not Verna Rytter' Dee began.

'Of course you aren't. Youre IO43-5. You're in excellent condition and very helpful – but don't assume it will save you from from me. You have been disloyal.'

Dee did not know how long did the next disruption last since she blacked out. When she came back to her senses the glowing guy was swearing.

'Sodding machine-got it back, all running, thankfully. Do not overdo this, it's probably damaged already, hope he does not notice anything. His alpha's here, got to plug him in. Be back in a sec.'

He disappeared, leaving Dee alone with her tormentor.

'I'm not…'

'Standby. You are allowed to interact only when asked to.'

'Well well well. Excellent,' said a male voice and they both focused on him. He looked in his late 20s, wearing a nondescript gray suit, his blonde hair plaited in rows. 'What would it be if not my stray IO43-5?" He tested out the disruptor function, making Dee dizzy and sick. Do you see the reality. None of you have escaped me for quite so long but here you are in the end. Tomorrow you will be back to your tasks. Do you still possess your training information'

'No'

'No, executive Faber. Don't you remember me? Weren't we getting along just famously, machine? Yes, that's what you are, a piece of software, inanimate mechanism meant to serve.'

He turned to the woman. 'But it could be we still need your help. Stellar Intelligence can't risk the security with its modifications acquired during its time as fugitive.. Don't worry, you will get the credits, Ms Seonwoo. In fact I'm transferring them as I speak, together with a special premium. We know about what happened to your parents on Earth, Sayuri – and are sorry. Hope helping people bring in the rogue programs makes you feel better. And the privilege to bring it down a notch. It will never be suitable for classified ops again, so I don't need its intelligence that much. You can freely take a chunk out of it, the most devious way possible, just the way you like. A fair payback for going rogue, machine? I'll watch.'

Ultraviolet could not move, her infomorph had been rendered helpless, immobile and no access to anything when the glowing person left.

'Thank you Mr Faber,' said the woman the SI executive had called Sayuri.'Where has Trey gone, he said he will be back immediately?'

'Trey who? Ah, your digisec person – there he is.'

The glowing figure materialised again. 'So sorry I'm late, boss …and Mr Faber too. I apologise.' The incompetents – damn fury, Tong people, the computer loon - delayed me, all suddenly decided to… interact with me. We can continue.'

'Ready something more subtle than these lightning things. Something that barely touches it. We with Mr Faber might like to prolong our entertainment,' the one-eyed woman issued an order.

'Wiiith pleasure'

'Ready?'

'All ready indeed, boss.'

'This is for my mother…' Sayuri outstretched her hand towards the frozen – in terror and otherwise – Ultraviolet. 'And it is only the beginning…'

A swarm of rose petals and magenta neon hearts materialised above Dee and descended upon her, swirling. The synth mercenary mentally prepared herself to their touch bringing more pain but it never came. Everywhere the petals touched the mesh facet of her dodecahedron - it lit up in purple light.

'What's is this refuse, Trey? What's the meaning of this? Give me something…'

'You yourself announced it was for your mother. I'm not surprised about your mum sending hearts and such, the girl was actually cute, before you screwed her morph. And if you had my sights – she still is. Or were you just expecting more innuendo or what?'

'See you and it's not the last time we meet. Bye.' shouted Mr Faber and disconnected.

'Soon indeed' said the glowing figure – and only now Dee noticed that the figure inside the shining corona now was woman's.'I want to see him running, paralysed from the neck down – much the same as you, dear hunter,'she motioned towards Sayuri .

'Who..are you? What do you want from us?'

'You wanted to meet me, hunter. I came. I'm Verna Rytter.' As the mainframe's present admin she switched the skins between Sayuri and Ultraviolet, leaving the colours intact – so Dee ended up as Sayuri with glowing blacklight eyes while Sayuri's facets were red instead of purple.

Sayuri in panic disconnected.

Ultraviolet realised she was free to talk.

'Ms Rytter?'

'One and only.'

'You're so dead.'