Chapter 3: Operation Sunrise

"Good evening, Dr. Chang"

"Evening," Chang replied absentmindedly and continued his search around his office for a moment, before he realized he should be alone. Startled, he looked back over his shoulder for the unexpected company. Miranda was standing in the door, still clad in her business suit and apparently unarmed. Appearances can be deceiving, Dr. Chang, as you should know better than most.

"Ms. De Morgan? Is there anything I can help you with? Is it…."

Then he paled, as the significance of Miranda's presence dawned on him. After everyone had left for the labs, she'd taken the opportunity to browse the documents Chang had left in his office. Hurriedly she'd copied her project files from Chang's datapad onto an empty one, scanned some of the other stuff into her omnitool without reading it, and gone back into her hiding place. It wasn't long before the lab door opened and her father, his bodyguard and Kavanagh had stepped out, making straight for the elevator. After about a minute Chang had appeared as well, taking the turnoff to his office instead.

She'd pondered hard what to do. There was no doubt in her mind that she couldn't stay here – 'here' meaning her father's domain – a moment longer, but she had to see her sister first. She didn't feel particularly sure about confronting Chang, but she was done playing the mouse, forever hiding in the walls of her father's tower. She'd planned for her eventual escape for two years. Now that the time was upon her, it wasn't as she'd envisioned it. 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy' was a catchphrase she didn't believe in. Good plans included contingencies and went without a hitch – all right, she conceded, at least without a major fuckup. Now she had to improvise. She could only hope her preparations had been enough.

But first, there was something she needed to know. She had no idea how to intimidate someone, but Chang wouldn't respond to friendly persuasion, and she didn't feel confident acting the seductress, even if the very thought didn't make her want to puke. Let's see if this stuff I've picked up from the movies is any good. First, a little show of power.

Chang's datapad had dropped to the floor under his desk – maybe she'd swiped it off the chair when she'd hurried out. This presented her with an opportunity. A beckoning motion, accompanied by tiny blue flames like 's fire running over her fingers, was enough to make it fly into her hand.

"You wouldn't be looking for this?"

Chang stared at the incriminating datapad – or perhaps her fingers – and backed away a step, his eyes flickering over to a closet. Again, she had no idea of its contents. It didn't matter.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you, Dr. Chang. You should know by now how easy it is to lose a hand around me."

She'd tried to sound as unconcerned as her father. From the expression on Chang's face, she hadn't done too badly.

"Wh...what do you want?" he stammered.

She sauntered into the office as if she owned it, faking an indifference she didn't feel as she passed Chang without meeting his eyes. What she really wanted to do was point her gun at his head and keep the trigger down until she'd splattered the brain that had designed her 'trigger mechanism' all over the walls of this room. Instead, she let her gaze wander the office, as if having entered it for the first time. She looked down at the datapad. She'd already memorized the contents but pretended to study it now for better effect.

"'Application of physical and emotional pain'," she quoted. "'Elevated stress levels, similar to – see attached documentation – those diagnosed in war veterans', 'threat of personal violation'. All clinical euphemisms hiding the true nature of the 'event' rather than clarifying it, don't you think? Considering all this, I'm sure an intelligent man like you can imagine... what I want."

"I was doing my job," Chang replied more firmly. "It was nothing personal."

The pistol was out almost before Miranda realized it herself. Chang backed away, but she followed him, keeping her weapon trained on his forehead until he reached the window.

"Nothing personal?" she hissed, "I can tell you it was pretty personal for me. Perhaps you'd better think on that in future. If you have one. Fortunately for you, I'm not here for revenge. I'm here for information."

"You'll... let me go if I answer?"

"No promises. Let's say there might be a chance." In fact, she had no idea what to do with him if he did answer. Intimidating Chang seemed to work, but if she let him go, he'd trigger the alarm. Let's see how it goes first.

"What do you want to know?"

"Where are my older sisters?" she asked without breaking eye contact, keeping the pistol leveled at his face.

"I...I don't know. Really. He never told me."

He was lying, she was sure of it. Perhaps he feared her father too much. Let's give him something else to fear.

"Do you have a daughter, Dr. Chang?" she asked. "No, you needn't answer, I know you do. You know, I'm leaving this place. No cameras and bugs to track me anymore, isn't that inconvenient? You'll never know where I might be hiding. You wouldn't want to wake up one day and find your daughter missing, possibly finding herself in the same scenario you so diligently designed for me..."

"There'd be no point to it. She's not a biotic."

Miranda frowned. Didn't he understand her threat? Or would he really do this to his own daughter if she was a biotic? She wished her biotic abilities enabled her to read minds, then there'd be no need for this. Let's bring it home to him what this is about.

"Well...", she said, using the image of squashing a bug to give her voice the necessary callousness. "That's too bad for her, then, don't you think?"

His adam's apple moved up and down. Apparently that had hit home.

"Where. Are. My. Sisters? I won't ask again."

"They're... in an asylum." The panic showed in his eyes as they flickered around the office as if looking for an escape. Just as I had, Miranda thought. "Somewhere in the Ural Mountains. I don't know where, but he owns it. That's all, I swear. He's keeping the information in the data vault, I never saw the details. You won't do anything to my daughter, will you?"

Damn it. The data vault was an isolated system keyed to her father's biometric data. She didn't even know what exactly. DNA, fingerprints, retina patterns, facial configuration. Probably all of that. Getting in would be time-consuming, and one more day in this tower would be too much. It also required physical access. Once she was on the run, she could forget about it. Perhaps she'd be able to find the location on her own. There couldn't be many asylums owned by CAE in the Ural Mountains.

As for Chang, there was no doubt in her mind he deserved death. If she wanted to spare him, she could bind and gag him and put him in one of closets to be found once she'd be gone. Half a dozen other scenarios went through her head in the few seconds she considered. In the end, the decision was easy. She met his fearful gaze for one last time. Then she pulled the trigger.

The shot resonated like thunder in her ears. Chang fell to the floor, a trickle of blood flowing out of the gunshot wound. Miranda took a deep breath. She was committed now. There'd be no going back. Of course I won't do anything to your daughter. But you didn't deserve to know that.

+O0O+

Thoughts and emotions, mixed into an indecipherable maelstrom, went through Miranda's head as she made her way to the labs where they'd put her sister. Had she really killed someone in cold blood? Why had she killed him? Wouldn't it have been better to leave him alive? Had it been just revenge or to protect any future sisters her father might make after her departure? Had she wanted to close off any way back in case of second thoughts? She thought of Chang's daughter, a girl of fourteen, like she'd been. Would she be better off without her father? How could you feel both guilty and relieved at the same time after having killed someone?

No point in brooding on it, she thought. Perhaps this was why people found it easier to just stick to "You don't kill people". Trying to weigh the consequences, second-guessing yourself, what you were thinking and feeling, what ultimately pushed you into making your decision – you could go insane as you tried to follow an infinite, ever-expanding tree of possibilities. Having enhanced mental acuity only made it worse. Yet in the end it didn't matter. Once you lost the delusion the world was simple, all that was left to you was to navigate the web of reasons, causes and consequences to the best of your ability.

She'd reached the actual labs. They weren't exactly suitable for keeping a small child. There were rows of tables with lab equipment of every imaginable kind, various chromatography systems, microscopes, shelves with literature and reference books, rows of test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks, cupboards with chemicals, centrifuges, liquid nitrogen freezers, deactivated holoscreens and so on. At any other time she'd have been very curious about what they did here, but now only finding her sister mattered.

Near the back of the area, one room was different. Someone had attempted to make it look pleasing to the eyes. The walls were covered with pale green wallpaper, and there was an picture of a sunset over the sea hanging on one wall. There was a crib near the far wall, painted in bright red, blue and yellow and surrounded by medical diagnostics equipment. An inactive humanoid mech was standing a few steps off. There was no sign of any caretaker, but a small microphone was fastened to the crib's frame.

Miranda turned off the microphone and looked into the crib.

Her sister looked ordinary. A small girl of eight months, or so the file said, with a patch of dark hair on her head. She was sleeping peacefully, her breathing slow and regular. Miranda couldn't suppress a giggle at the thought she'd 'expected someone taller', as the famous quote went. Instead, the tiny hands and feet looked unexpectedly vulnerable. She'd expected to feel resentment at the sight of the one made to replace her, but there was none of that. This was her sister. Often she'd imagined having a sister of her own age, someone she could talk to and trust implicitly. At this moment, the difference didn't matter. This little one was made to live the same life she'd lived, imprisoned in this tower by her father, never knowing that he was her enemy. There was a sudden surge of...empathy? Love? Protectiveness? Maybe a bit of everything.

Oriana, she thought. My sister. Auriana, the golden one – wasn't that the name the ancient Romans had given their goddess of the dawn? No, that was Aurora. But the picture refused to budge. At that moment, the child turned its head. A burp escaped its mouth. Then it opened its eyes. Big blue eyes, just like hers. Seeing Miranda, it...she...greeted her with a gurgle. Miranda couldn't help but smile. She'd never cared for small children. They couldn't talk and had needs she didn't understand, apart from eating and sleeping. She wasn't sure she understood her sister's needs either, but seeing her was – she mentally berated herself for the cheesy metaphor even as she thought it – like watching the sunrise her name was surely meant to evoke.

Miranda's thoughts raced. She'd been planning her own escape for more than a year, and that she'd have to set it in motion earlier than planned was unfortunate but not fatal anymore at this stage. Her sister, however, was a complication. Small children didn't adhere to plans and didn't follow orders. She brought up the layout of the tower in her mind, checking the different ways to get in and out. She could come back later and get her sister out with a better-laid plan. Any plan was better than improvisation, but her father would upgrade the security and cancel her clearance and systems access once she was gone.

She looked down at her sister again. No. He will not have you. A plan took shape in her mind. It would be dangerous, most notably a risk for Oriana, and a jump into unknown waters for herself, but much better than leaving her sister with her father. Wouldn't anything be, she thought sarcastically.

"I'll be back," she told Oriana softly. "I promise." Then she turned to set her plan in motion, leaving her sister in the company of the mech for now. As she left the room, she took one of the gas masks they kept here for emergencies. As far as she was concerned, the situation qualified.

+O0O+

Her quarters greeted her with darkness and silence. Only the moonlight made the walls and furnishings visible. She let her eyes wander over the familiar outlines. This would be her last night in what had, despite everything, been her home. It looked like the safe haven a home was supposed to be. With the penthouse located at the corner of the tower, both the big lounge and her office cum study had completely transparent walls on one side. Often, there was nothing but clouds and sky to see outside, giving life up here an unreal, dream-like atmosphere, as removed from the Earth as her father's ambitions.

Sometimes she'd wondered if this life would turn out to be a dream, if this 'cloud-capped tower' she was living in would some day reveal itself to be an illusion and dissolve into thin air like the towers in Shakespeare's play. Her father would never relinquish his powers, that was for sure, and unlike the original Miranda, she'd grab them from him if she could. Her namesake had been naïve and idealistic, and for all her courage she'd fought with the means her culture would allow her. She'd not make that mistake; she couldn't afford to with her father as her enemy. Strange, however, that the classics and the even older mythology therein could echo the present so well, with her having powers and abilities which would seem magical to those who didn't know better.

Enough of that. There was work to be done. She went over to her computer and called up its holoscreen. A jumble of symbols and virtual screens and boxes appeared. There'd be a lot of going up and down the tower this night, but that couldn't be helped. She had the best systems access from her office, and this needed to work perfectly.

A blinking symbol in the holoscreen informed her she had a new mail message. Noting the sender – someone named 'youknowwho' on a node named 'anonymizer217693' , followed by a sequence of characters indicating Omega as its origin. She was about to delete it when she noticed the subject line – two words no content recognizer would find suspicious, but as obvious as an explosion to her:

"Distasteful setup".

Instinctively she looked back over her shoulder. Stupid. Fighting panic, she realized if her father had found out, the security would already be here – and the knockout gas she'd brought the gas mask to safeguard against would already be emitting from the jets in the ceiling.

Someone had heard the phrase "distasteful setup" being spoken, discovered her presence, not told her father – probably not – and sent her a message. There weren't many scenarios that fit this evidence. Blackmail would be the best fit. Or it could be from Kavanagh, who had an interest in her. Anyway, she was good enough to catch any intrusion attempt, and this was something she couldn't ignore. She set up additional anti-intrusion measures and opened the message. No text, only an encrypted file asking for a password. There was no hint to the password, but it couldn't be a word or a name. The security monitoring her mail would've hacked that in seconds. It must be something she and the sender would know, and each knew the other to know. That ruled blackmail by an unknown observer out. Almost.

Kavanagh would be most likely to send her a secret message. Her organization wanted her. She had seen... Miranda took out Chang's datapad and started a search for anything not a word or a name. A few items came up, but one immediately got her attention:

DM3F-2150.9723!BT4-Miranda

"Her" project ID. She entered it into the password prompt. A picture appeared. It showed a logo she'd seen somewhere – yes, the University of Tasmania in Hobart – and very faint writing that would likely pass a script detector and confuse even standard-issue surveillance cameras. It was an attendance card for a conference on xenobiology, and said:

Katherine Kavanagh, DSc
Origins Institute
Nos Astra Free University, Illium

She memorized the contents and closed the message. As she'd suspected, the package immediately proceeded to delete itself. Looking up the latest news in xenobiology, she found the conference was presently in session at the Hotel Grand Imperial in Hobart and would end on the twenty-second. Should she take this invitation? Trusting Kavanagh might be a bad idea – if she'd known about her presence she might have said everything for her benefit. On the other hand, having an ally would be invaluable. She'd never thought the chance would present itself, and if it was a trap, that hotel wasn't an easy place to kidnap someone. It couldn't hurt to talk to her, and having her address removed a possible kink in her plan. She safe-deleted the now empty message and went back to her preparations.

Use of her executive overrides would be logged where she couldn't erase them, but the logs were only analyzed at need. If this went right, she'd be gone by the time the security recognized the need. The time for caution was past, now she used her overrides in a way she'd have considered reckless only a few hours before. She called up her infiltrator programs, others to hide the infiltrators, mislead security and cover her tracks, and to shield everything from the VI's attention. All of the electronic resources she'd collected in two years, all the programs she'd taken over, the traps and the bugs she'd set became active, serving her and her sister's escape. Some would be impossible to hide for long, but for now all of them should remain undetected by CAE security.

The only thing she left alone was the backdoor virus she'd embedded deep into the network's substructure, its primary copy hidden in a specialized piece of espionage hardware she'd stolen from CAE's prototype labs. She smiled at the memory. One of her greatest achievements – not that anyone would ever know of it. She'd modified the research data to make it appear as if the research was flawed. The prototype was considered unfeasible by the research team, and no one paid much attention when it vanished. She owned the only one in existence.

About half an hour later she sat back, satisfied. Some of her electronic tentacles were still tunneling through the tower's information infrastructure in preparation for stage two of her escape plan, but for now she only needed to infiltrate the logistics and storage departments. CAE Tower wasn't a production site, but the labs needed resources, and a lot of technical equipment went in and out, always carefully screened. No screening system was perfect though, and it could leak like a sieve if an executive-level insider wanted it to.

Now for the legwork. Down the tower again to pick up the things she'd ordered from storage. A portable cryostasis chamber shaped vaguely like a coffin, a radiothermal power generator the size of a small suitcase to power it, and an an anti-grav sled to move everything over to the only freight elevator with access to the biolabs. The elevator was heavily monitored, and she needed her override once again. Down to the biolabs. She picked up the crib wherein her sister was still sleeping peacefully and pushed it into the cryostasis camber. The RTG followed. She connected it and opened the chamber's control panel. Six weeks should be enough. If she hadn't recovered it by then things would've gone so horribly wrong that planning for the eventuality was a waste of time.

After a last look at her sleeping sister, she set the activation sequence to start in ten seconds and closed the lid. It wasn't the safest procedure – cryostasis hadn't been extensively tested with children – but the box was the best chance to get Oriana out, and its trail would be more easily confused than one of a teenager carrying a child. Oriana wouldn't survive what she had in mind for herself anyway.

Logistics was next. Resources such as food and other materials needed to keep a building like CAE Tower operational were coming in night and day, so logistics was never entirely abandoned like the labs, but out-processing was mostly automated. Taking the freight elevator again, she and her package went up to logistics, located on the ground floor for convenience. She'd prepared the "paperwork" – people still used that term, even if it had all been electronic for at least a century – for her package beforehand. It would send the box on a convoluted path through space for five weeks. Now she entered Kavanagh's Illium address as the final destination and pushed the box out onto the freight-processing belt.

With the box itself out of her hands, she hurried up to her rooms again. Her computer had used her overrides to infiltrate logistics security, so she could now monitor it and ensure the box would pass all the scans and avoid those scans that would harm a living organism.

After a harrowing two hours of following her package through out-processing, paying constant attention to diverting security scans, forging in-house documentation, making sure her sister wasn't either detected or harmed, and deleting the electronic trail as soon as it was feasible, she was done. Her sister was out of the tower. Now she had to take care of herself.

+O0O+

"Miri?"

"Niket," she answered. "Over here".

In the dimly lit hall, she'd look like a shadow stepping out of the walls to him. Around her, the soft humming of fusion power generators suggested that everything was running perfectly in CAE Tower. Which it was. For now.

Niket stepped out from behind one of the gargantuan cylinders housing the reactor cores. It wasn't dangerous in here. All radiation was safely contained in the cores. People tended to avoid them anyway, being concerned about accidents and uneasy with the knowledge that the temperatures inside exceeded those of the sun's interior by an order of magnitude. Which is why she'd selected this hall as one of their meeting places.

It was impossible for her to move around outside the tower and remain unobserved, but she could get Niket into the tower without too much effort. She'd pinged him their number for this place – they'd set up a set of numbered meeting places in the past – and now here they were.

Coming face to face with him, his face obscured by the low lighting, she suddenly didn't know what to say to him anymore. Like always, there was this tension between them, and she wished – oh, how she wished for it – that she could follow where it pulled her and forget everything in his embrace. No more. Perhaps not ever again.

"What is it, Miri?"

He sounded concerned. He'd always been able to tell if something was wrong. She couldn't deceive him, or maybe she didn't care to. Even so, her voice came out cool and detached.

"Niket. I'm leaving." She moved her hands forward to touch his, felt their familiar warmth as he softly pressed her fingers, never demanding, but letting her know, in his subtle way without words, that there would be more if she wanted. She'd never wanted it more than now, and could never afford it less. She felt like she was being torn to pieces. Tears were running down her face, and she noticed she didn't care. She stepped forward and let herself collapse into his waiting embrace.

To his credit, he did nothing but hold her until she was done. Embarrassed, she took a step back. She was better than this, breaking down like one of those insufferably emotional women in cheap romance stories. It didn't change anything and didn't lessen the pain, but it had made her feel better.

"You'd better tell me," he finally said, his voice carrying a hint of amusement. He was right, damn it – here she was, usually so proud of her hard-won composure, having a teary-eyed breakdown at a secret meeting of almost-lovers in, of all things, a hall full of fusion reactors. Damn it, who was he to make her smile in a situation like this. Even more embarrassed, she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up to face him again. Better make it short.

"My abduction was a setup," she said. Her voice was still hoarse from crying, but her composure had returned. "My father did it to trigger more of my powers."

He was silent for some time, just watching her. Was there any appropriate reaction to such a revelation? There weren't any words to do it justice.

"How do you know?" he asked.

She took a data-pad out and offered it to him. "You might want to have a look. Brace yourself, it isn't pleasant."

She'd never told him exactly what had happened on that day, only that she'd killed her kidnappers before they could go through with their plans. She'd be gone soon, but someone else had to know. Who better but the only human she trusted with her secrets, though it was almost too personal to share it, even with him.

He let the recording run. Silently, thankfully.

"He let you go through this, watching while it happened?" he asked incredulously. "What kind of man is your father?"

"Now you know," she answered quietly.

He hesitated before continuing. "Will you...kill him?"

"Too risky for now. His bodyguards have kinetic shields, I don't know if I'd get through. One mistake, and I'm dead, or worse."

He waited.

"He'll put me in an asylum if I get too rebellious. There's nothing about that in what I've given you, but I have evidence." She didn't tell him about her sisters. Not the twins, and not Oriana. He couldn't tell what he didn't know.

"This copy is only for you," she continued. "So you know why I'm leaving. Don't talk about it to anyone. My father has too many important people in his pockets. Going to the law with this will achieve nothing." Even more than that, she didn't want this to go public. It was too personal. But she didn't say that. "There's also a little gift I've prepared for you. I don't want that other stuff to be how you remember me. You'll find it among the...other stuff."

He took the datapad and turned it about in his hand. "I...understand. But where will you go? You're not prepared for a life on the run. Is there...anything I could help you with? Do you have anyone you can depend on out there?"

It was one of her greatest fears, that she'd prove unable to cope with a life with no home, always on the run. Thinking about it made her quarters seem almost like a sanctuary. On the other hand, seeing the galaxy, or that small but still indescribably huge part known to humans and the species they were so uneasily allied to, all on her own, that must be exhilarating.

"I'll have to leave Earth and hope the galaxy is big enough. And no, and no. I don't want you involved. You'll have to face an interrogation by the security anyway. If they suspected you knew anything they'd torture you. I'll have to go on my own." She didn't mention that there was a chance for an ally. Better he didn't even know there was something to know.

"So...this is it," he asked pensively, "our...farewell?"

"You sound as if you expected it."

He nodded sadly. "I always knew you weren't for me," he said. "I'd never be able to keep up with you, and before long we'd hate each other. I've always wondered what you found in me. Only the cause is unexpected."

It was her turn to be amused. It was so like him, seeing one part of the obvious while being blind to the other. "Don't belittle yourself," she answered. "You saved me. Without you, I'd be nothing more than my father's tool – or insane."

He smiled wistfully. "I'm not sure I believe that, but...thank you. We had some good times together. I wouldn't miss them for the world."

"Not for the world," she whispered.

After a few seconds of silence, she continued: "And thank you, too. Would you mind if I stayed in touch?"

"Why would I ever mind?"

"Because you'd be my spy in my father's home. I have a few electronic ones as well, but...someday I'll come back and make him pay. And then it would be good to have an ally."

He laughed. "That's what I've always liked in you, Miri. You never give up, you always have plans. Of course I'll help you. I would've done so anyway, but I never forgot what you did for my mother. No, don't deny it, I know you too well."

The tears threatened again. This time, she fought them back successfully. Niket would remain her friend and her ally. A load she hadn't known existed fell from her mind. She grabbed him in a last hug. Then it was time to go.

"Goodbye, Niket. We'll see each other again," she said, and continued in a lighter mood, "it may be some time, though. Don't forget the codes."

"Goodbye, Miri," he said. He stepped back, taking her in as if to make sure he wouldn't forget her.

"Give 'em hell," he added.

She turned and walked away, taking a last look at him over her shoulder. His mouth moved, and the echoes of two more whispered syllables hung in the air, but were lost in the hum of the power generators before she could understand them.

+O0O+

She woke up from an unexpectedly dreamless sleep into a morning showing the first promise of sunrise. Her clock showed 0645. Quickly she got up, took a shower and ate a quick but nourishing breakfast. For her last outing from this tower - or her first true outing, as she'd rather think of it - she put on a dark close-fitting two-piece outfit she'd prepared especially for this occasion. Its main advantage was that it was suitable for diving while not looking outlandish when walking on land.

As she looked around and thought about what to put into the small backpack, she was astonished to notice how much stuff she had she hated to leave behind. Even if all of it was paid for by her father, some items had become hers in a way no money could pay for. That really beautiful evening dress he'd given her earlier this year when he wanted her to impress a business partner's son. The boy had come to fear her for no reason she could make out, but the dress had stayed and wasn't less beautiful for it. The mechanical pendulum clock that didn't only show the time but served as an anchor for her meditations. She'd learned to control her telekinetic powers with it, and – wonder of wonders – hadn't destroyed it in the process. The beautiful desk she'd spent countless hours with, an elegant old-fashioned piece made from rosewood showing a fine grain that caught the eye. Here she'd studied everything thrown at her and then some, planned her 'operations', infiltrated her father's systems. It was almost a part of her.

What she didn't have – and this would surprise the rumor-mongers in the media as well as the other high society girls who envied her to no end – was a big dressing-table with a make-up collection big enough to brag about. She didn't need one. It was enough to keep clean and comb her hair, and she'd be the showpiece of almost any event. Now both circumstances worked against her. Not only would she be conspicuous, but she owned nothing to disguise herself with and even worse, she didn't have the faintest idea how to use all that stuff once she acquired it. Of most items she didn't even know the names. Another skill she needed to learn fast.

After she finished packing, she sat down at her desk, running her hand across its varnished surface as if caressing it. Its beauty wasn't its only appreciable feature, but the sheer genius of its design. Everything technical was so well hidden that at a glance nobody would ever suspect this was the workplace of a hacker of exceptional skill. Exceptional beauty paired with outstanding usefulness. She'd feel its loss keenly. After today, she'd never again put her hands on it. Never again, like so much else. Time to get to work.

+O0O+

As a rule, the VI controlling CAE's in-house security network was very effective at detecting intruders. Which is why the network had only one main console to be watched over by a human supervisor, instead of the ten or twenty required for a similar VI-less setup. The supervisor rarely had anything to do, which is why he was dozing in front of the console, with half of his last meal – a plate of pastries and a glass filled with a dark brown liquid – left uneaten on his desk.

There was a miniscule change deep within the apparent chaos typical for a haptic-interface holoscreen. The console pinged. The supervisor jumped from his seat, his arms imitating a windmill as he tried to find his balance, thereby swiping the glass from the desk and splattering sticky liquid all over the desk and his pants.

"Shit," he cursed.

"Hey Mart," came a female voice over the commlink. "Something unexpected happening in your wet dreams?"

"Shut up, Kaira", 'Mart' – systems security specialist Martin Lanick – answered as he glimpsed in the direction of the offending console, where one of several dozen status indicators had gone from green to red. "One bogie in two years, and it has to happen on my watch."

"Why are you complaining,, then?" answered the voice. "You've got two year's pay for doing nothing. And it's 'Kah-eera', not 'Kayra'."

But Lanick had more important things to pay attention to. The console showed the ID of the attacked node. He took a deep breath.

"Tracer, Kaira. Someone's hitting the boss's node. The VI didn't react."

The sound of something toppling – likely a chair – came through the commlink as his colleague Kaira Anand went into siege mode.

"Tracer on. Wait...did you say the VI didn't react? Guess what – the attack came from the VI!"

"You're kidding me. Our own VI attacking the boss's systems?"

"Go up and look for yourself if you don't believe me. The trail ends there. Someone's compromised our VI."

"We'll restart it. Go get the emergency codes. Hurry."

Both opened the drawers with the emergency instructions. The two passcodes for restarting the VI had to be entered within ten seconds or the general alarm would go off.

Ten seconds went by. The console showed a barrage of messages as it restarted CAE security's main VI. All outgoing and incoming electronic communication lines were cut during the restart, and a secondary system monitored the process, but it was less powerful than the VI itself. For about five hundred milliseconds, several systems within the network had a tiny security leak. This leak was known to the security operators, but considered inconsequential. Too narrow was the set of conditions to be met for an attack.

Which is why, after the VI came up again, the console showed nine red status indicators instead of one. The secondary system traced them all to one location: Miranda De Morgan's penthouse.

"I can't believe this," said Anand incredulously. "She's trying to take over the system. Isolating the VI."

"We have to call the boss," Lanick said. For a few long moments, there was no answer from Anand. They both knew if this wasn't important with a capital "I" they'd lose their jobs. On the other hand, only a handful of people had the authority to give orders concerning the boss's daughter, and most of them would only pass something big like this on and take the credit.

"Do it," said Anand. "I'll contact the Patrol." CAE Patrol was the enforcement arm of CAE Security. Things were going to get serious.

+O0O+

Pulling her hands out of the holoscreen, Miranda sat back and took a deep breath – and almost choked on it as something occurred to her. Eyeing the ceiling suspiciously, she picked up her gas mask and put it on. The backpack was next.

The holoscreen showed the progress of events in the tower and its network, including real-time video transmissions where she'd taken over the cameras. She could've done more damage to the VI, but that hadn't been her intent. Things had to appear repairable, if barely, and connected to her. The attack on the VI had to be dangerous enough to avoid any suspicion that it might be a diversion, but the real attack wasn't aimed at the VI at all but at external security. That was something she couldn't have done without being obvious in some way. She'd had to hide it under something even more obvious.

"Miranda? Stop this immediately, " Alexander De Morgan's voice came out of her commlink.

How should she answer him? As soon as someone discovered Chang, he'd know what had triggered this. He'd suspect she'd seen Kavanagh and would send people to contact her – or worse, given the way they parted. So far, he didn't know Kavanagh had contacted her. Every minute she could keep him in the dark about her plans was crucial, so she opted for the simple answer:

"No."

"You know you can't escape the consequences," her father went on. "Why are you doing this anyway? This is not a game."

She eyed the ceiling again. No way to tell if they'd activated the jets.

"No," she said loudly. "It is not a game." Outside the doors to her penthouse, three security guards were preparing a forced entry. Time to go.

A finger pressed a virtual button in the holoscreen, making her systems execute the last chain of commands she'd set up, cutting primary and secondary power to the grounds' automated security and setting off the virus to scramble CAE's satellite links. As the main doors splintered, she focused, her hand reached out as if to push something away, only with her fingers slightly closed over nothing. The familiar blue fire ran along her arm. The transparent wall separating her office from the sky flashed in a blindingly bright blue.

A crack appeared in the wall. It didn't break. Shit.

"If you give up now, all this will be yours one day, did you ever think of that?"

The security guards made careful but determined progress along her hallway. As if I were a dangerous criminal. It was even true, though they didn't know it yet. She pulled her pistol.

"This is beyond bribes, 'father'," she answered. "I've always hated you. Do you know how liberating it is to admit that at last?"

She pulled her pistol. As a shadow appeared in the archway leading to the hallway, she fired a warning shot. The shadow vanished.

"Hate fuels ambition. Hold on to it. But it serves no purpose if you don't keep control of yourself. Stop this now."

No time left. I should've brought a grenade. Focusing again, she sent another wave of space-warping micro-singularities in the direction of the wall. The flash sent shards flying in every direction as the material shattered. A blast of wind made her stagger as a circular opening appeared. Another shadow scurried across the archway. She fired another shot in its direction. Someone cursed. An object came flying through the archway. She answered with a burst of bullets as she retreated onto the ledge. The object exploded with a small puff, and smoke began to obscure her vision. Too late.

"It may have escaped your notice, father," she answered him, "that I am in control. Me. Not you."

At a command from her omnitool, her electronic systems overloaded, sending a cloud of sparks over the beautiful rosewood surface. Goodbye. Then she closed the commlink and jumped.

The wind pulled at her clothing as she fell, and she felt her hair streaming upwards. Breathing became difficult in the low pressure created by the headwind, and her brain, feeling itself falling, flooded her bloodstream with adrenaline. It was difficult to focus.

The most basic function of biotic powers was to affect mass, and the behavior of any object with mass, limited only by the energy the biotic had learned to control. In some way, all biotic powers known to science could be attributed to the so-called "mass effect". A biotic didn't need herself as an anchor, any object would do, else every biotic would be affected by a counterforce as she applied her power. This meant there was no reason why a biotic shouldn't be able to affect her own mass, or apply a pulling or pushing force to herself.

Miranda had always wondered why nobody else had thought of it, with both human history and human mythology being full of dreams of flying. Not that she could fly, but she'd researched asari sources and experimented with her own mind, and found how to reduce her mass and push herself away from other objects. Now, as never before, her life depended on it.

She recalled her meditation exercises, her combat training, wherein her instructor taught her to remain attentive and focused in the face of fear. The strike of her old clock echoed in her mind as she pushed out both hands along her body as if trying to push the fast approaching ground away from her.

Her descent began to slow, first from the headwind affecting her lowered mass, then from the push she was applying to herself. More. Brilliant blue fire flickered across her body. Why is this always so damned obvious? She felt her energy leaving her as if she were in an Olympian sprint. More. She saw the ground approaching.

She hit with a rolling motion. The ground gave her a dizzying jolt. Pain spread through her arm as it got caught between her body and the ground. Shit. Then she came to rest.

For a few moments she was unable to do anything but lie still. There were no sounds except the wind in the trees. The rising sun cast their long shadows across the grounds. Nothing seemed out of order. She tried to get up. Moving her arm was painful, but it didn't appear broken. Every part of her body was working as it should, except that she was still dizzy. There was a painful pressure in her ears after having fallen two kilometers in less than a minute. After shaking her head and opening and closing her mouth a few times, it vanished in an almost audible pop.

No guards were in sight, and no gun turrets rose from the ground. Trying to ignore the increasing demand of her body for energy, she hurried in the direction of the marina where a set of diving equipment was waiting for her. Neither guards nor cameras observed her departure. Only some of the spying nano-machines caught flickers of blue fire and the outline of a figure walking the grounds, and stepping into the waters of the Indian Ocean.