Lucas was now past the city limits. A treacherous mountain road lay ahead but he didn't care. The highway was poorly lit, and the city lights behind him just blocked out the stars. He knew it was dumb to be speeding, but he didn't let up and the Fiat reached its unimpressive top speed. Thankfully, the bus slowed down when it made turns on curves, and he miraculously managed to overtake it. He honked and waved at the bus driver's attention, but the bus driver ignored him. This left him no choice but to speed ahead and block the bus, which is what he did.

The bus came to screeching stop.

"What the hell?!" the bus driver pounded on his horn.

Lucas got out of the car and approached the bus, his hands spread wide apologetically. "Sorry but I need to speak to one of your passengers."

"No! Stay right there!" the driver barked. Lucas couldn't blame the driver, a lot of armed robberies had taken place on this highway.

The passengers inside began to stand up, tiptoeing to watch the scene unfolding. As they chattered among themselves, an androgynous figure made its way down the aisle and to the door.

"… Lucas?" her eyes widened as she stepped out of the bus.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw her. Cybersix looked the way she usually did as Adrian: messy pompadour, white shirt, suspenders—the only thing missing was the eyeglasses. But Lucas could only think of her as Cybersix.

She furrowed her brows. "What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you. I thought you were dead."

She didn't step forward.

"We need to talk."

"Sorry, I can't," her voice cracked.

He felt his frustration rise. "You can't keep leaving without an explanation."

There was an audible groan from the bus driver. The passengers looked on with a mix of impatience and amusement.

She shook her head. "I have to go. It's an emergency."

"I can drive you there"

She raised an eyebrow. "In that Fiat?"

"It overtook that bus."

"I'm headed to a part of Tierra del Fuego where there's nothing but tundra."

"Not a problem."

"You don't understand. I'm going to the end of the world."

"Got it. We'll split the gas."

The silence grew.

Lucas reached into his pockets and pulled out her eyeglasses.

She froze. "So you know."

Lucas nodded grimly.

She entered the bus and spoke to the driver. She reemerged with her luggage and walked towards his car. Lucas maneuvered the Fiat out of the way, and the bus closed its doors and drove off into the night.

Cybersix shut the passenger door and looked straight ahead.

"South then?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Where's Data 7?"

"They must've taken him."

"I'm sorry. We'll find him." Lucas started the ignition.

He wanted to talk, but the adrenaline of the chase wore off and his stomach tied itself into knots. She looked exhausted and deep in thought. The next half hour was quiet as he drove on in near darkness, with only the occasional truck passing them by. Dirt mountains gave way to sparsely inhabited plains dotted by closed corner stores and dimly lit gasoline stations. He kept an eye out for a place that served brewed coffee, but no luck. That single mug back in Meridiana wasn't enough.

Lucas stifled a yawn. "Should I call you Cybersix? Or Adrian?"

"Either I suppose." She looked down and fingered the eye glasses on her lap.

"But Adrian is just a disguise."

"No, he isn't. I am Adrian."

"So Adrian, where are we going?"

"Before we go any further, you should pull over first."

Lucas pulled over into the shoulder and turned off the ignition. His hands grew clammy.

"I don't even know where to begin," she whispered.

"Why didn't you come back to me?"

She grew silent.

"I'll be dead soon, Lucas."

His insides grew cold. His vision blurred at the edges and the world suddenly seemed unreal.

"I know that you've developed feelings for me," she continued, "but it's best that you don't get caught up in them. I'm sorry."

He finally spoke. "How much time do we have? How can I save you?"

Cybersix smiled briefly. "If I stretch it, I have enough sustenance for a week. But I'm more concerned about protecting everyone from what's coming next."

"I want to know everything."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm ready."

She opened up about her origins: Nazis. Von Reichter's Experiments. The Cyber children. Memories of running barefoot with other children through concrete floors and flickering fluorescent lighting—playing hide-and-seek amidst mysterious laboratory equipment and decrepit pre-World War II artefacts. The words spilled out of her, as if she were releasing what she had held back for so long. But her face was vacant, her eyes unfocused, and Lucas knew that she was in a place that he couldn't reach.

Cybersix continued, speaking of her years of confinement, shivering in freezing cells, and hearing the cries of her siblings in adjacent experiment rooms. Then the Cybers rallied, and came the uprising—and the massacre. She was the only one who survived. As a teenager, she lived in hiding and hitchhiked across the country, constantly in search of Von Reichter's other creations—driven by the necessity of feeding on the sustenance that ran in their veins. Nameless and homeless, she was a scavenger that lived on the margins of the human world. And yet she was not human, and the other creations hated her for hunting them down.

One night on a desolate highway, she found the bodies of a family who had died in a car accident, one of which was a boy roughly her age: his name was Adrian. She took his identification and became him, doing odd jobs like washing dishes in backwater towns—and disappearing to the next town Von Reichter's creatures moved to. She didn't know what they were doing, but she knew that Von Reichter had plans to capture more territory. Between the hunts and the jobs, she kept to herself. Humans fascinated her because of their diversity, contradictory natures, and freedoms but their unpredictability frightened her. So instead, she read books to take a glimpse into their lives and see how they responded to the same questions that haunted her. Fictional characters kept her company as she vicariously lived through their experiences—and they gave her the courage to further explore the human world.

She faked papers to enter college, and landed her first teaching job in Meridiana where Von Reichter's creatures were in large enough numbers to guarantee her a steady supply of sustenance. Then there were Von Reichter's plans to take over the city, the Isle of Doom, his death and Jose's escape to The Fortress—which now brought them here.

Sunlight began to stream from the horizon, and birds chirped in the fields beyond.

Cybersix bit her lip. "It's a bizarre story, isn't it?"

Lucas nodded, wide-eyed but exhausted. "But I believe you." He had deduced her dependency on sustenance and being more than human, but he didn't know how to process the rest.

Cybersix gave a pained smile. "You thought I was a hero, but in the end I'm just a parasite."

"You know that's not true," he protested.

"I only protected Meridiana so I could keep playing at being human."

Lucas shook his head. "You saved the city from a crisis nearly every week. We'd be all gone without you."

"But why didn't I remove Von Reichter or Jose altogether?" Anger crept into her voice. "Why did I only deal with the immediate threat, when I knew that more would come?"

Her tone broke his heart. "You're only one person."

"No, it was because I wasn't brave enough to do what was needed." She hung her head and balled her hands into fists. "To truly oppose them would mean letting go of my life as Adrian. And deep down, I wanted things to stay the same."

Lucas said nothing. He knew that he wanted things to stay the same as well.

The sound of passing cars punctuated the silence that hung between them, yet the air remained heavy.

"You're on a suicide mission, aren't you?" he finally spoke.

She was quiet.

His stomach churned. "You had just saved Meridiana and survived an explosion. Can't we find a source of sustenance and figure out the rest later?"

"This is more than about Meridiana. If I wait and let Jose fully take over, his strength and influence will spread. He's a danger to all. There will be more monsters and it'll never end."

Lucas slumped in his seat and looked away. It was all wrong, and nothing was going the way it was supposed to. He didn't sign up for an adventure just to watch her die. But this wasn't about him, was it?

She searched his face. "I owe you for everything you've done. But it's time for you to turn back and live your life."

You are my life, he wanted to protest. But instead he joked half-heartedly, "Can't. I made you miss your bus."

She didn't smile. "I'm serious."

"So am I. I'm telling you, I'll drive you there."

"What's the point of that?"

"I love you."

She softened and squeezed his hand. "That's what I'm afraid of".

He pulled her in for an embrace, as best as he could manage inside the cramped car. She stiffened but eventually relaxed. It was unfair. It was as if they were breaking up even before they had a chance to be together.

"As much I hate this, the least I can do is see it through," he murmured.

She pulled away as a warm smile escaped her lips. "Thank you. Perhaps it would be easier if you'd only see me as Adrian?" Adrian put on the eyeglasses. The feminine lashes were obscured by the large frames and drew attention to the jawline. It completed the androgynous yet masculine look.

Lucas nodded. "So Adrian, what's the plan?"

"We drive to the Fortress and destroy everything," Adrian said in a deeper voice, adjusting his hair in rear view mirror.

"Got more details to add?"

"Since when did we do details?

Lucas grinned. "Just like old times." He turned the ignition on and drove back on the highway.

Despite the brightening skies, Adrian dozed off while leaning against the passenger side window. Lucas noted that there were now more cars on the road. If they were truly going to a remote part of Tierra del Fuego, the drive was going to take the better part of three days. Lucas yawned and squinted blearily into the distance. He forgot to bring sunglasses, and the landscape became even less populated so there was definitely no coffee for a while.

Sleepy highway towns had given way to rocky desert-like terrain, small shrubs, and not much else. If he wasn't mistaken, there was a national park nearby with some interesting rock formations where dinosaur fossils had been found. He wanted to talk about it to Adrian, along with some of the more fun related conspiracy theories, but he didn't want to wake him.

Then the rear window exploded.

Tiny pieces of tempered glass flew in the air; a large object slit Lucas' right arm and lodged itself on the dashboard. A grappling hook. Blood flowed down his forearm.

Lucas cursed as he tried to keep on driving, and looked in the rear view mirror. Attached to the end of the grappling hook was a launcher mounted on top of a yellow Land Rover just behind them, with a pale man in bright red jacket sticking his head out the window. And he was with other strange men that resembled zombies more than people.

"They found us," Adrian said, now awake.