Present day...

The bus creaked as Nanaue stepped on board. For a moment he questioned it's ability to move with him inside let alone contain him, but he was proven wrong on both points. Tanya told him to relax, and that's all. He had to assume she'd get to him before they made the twenty-two hour trip to Bell Reve, but as time passed he increasingly became more anxious. It had to have been twelve hours by the time he felt like giving up. Did Tanya even love him? Or was she just pretending so he wouldn't eat her? He turned thoughts like these in his mind over and over until his blood began to boil, half convincing himself that he was right and she wasn't coming for him.

BANG!

Something heavy hit the side of the bus and the tires squealed on asphalt. The driver cursed loudly, his last words, before the bus fell off the side of the road and crashed into a ditch. Nanaue hit the roof hard and groaned, inconvenienced but not harmed. "What the fu-" He began, but went silent when he heard a familiar, muffled voice outside the bus.

"That was excessive, Sark." Corvo. Who the hell was Sark?

"Corvo, quickly, help me get the door open, we don't have much time." Tanya. Thank goodness.

"Yes, mother." The locks on the door whined under the pressure and snapped after a moment, letting in a gust of humid, piney air and sunlight in.

When Tanya walked in, the light encircled her like a halo as if she were an angel. His angel. She lept into his arms and squeezed him.

"I thought you weren't coming for a second, I take it back." Nanaue pushed his face into her dark hair, inhaling her scent. She always smelled like sweat and oil, but he enjoyed it.

She kissed his face and dug in her backpack for a moment before producing a bizarre looking device, obviously of her own making, with prongs like a stun gun and a holographic projection of numbers and figures. "Okay swallow this."

"WHAT?!" Nanaue stared at the thing, obviously he could do it by why did she want him to do that?

"The pill, swallow it, quick." In her other hand she held a large pill filled with what looked like metal shavings. He hadn't even noticed it.

"Oh..." He plucked the pill from her palm and tossed it into his mouth, wandering what would happen next, but she barely gave him time to swallow before jabbing his neck with the device. It was a stun gun, a really strong stun gun. Nanaue shouted as electricity coursed through his body, searing his flesh into smoke.

Click.

Something loud clattered on the ground and the pain subsided. Little black spots danced in his vision, making it hard to collect his thoughts through the nausea. "WHAT THE FU-" He checked himself for burns, but only found a slightly sore spot on his neck, and the security collar broken and smoking at his feet. "Oh...I forgot that was on me. How did you get it off?" It seemed obvious, she fried the collar with electricity. She must have known he'd survive that volatage. But what about the pill?

"Oh, if I touched you with this thing and you hadn't swallowed that pill you'd be dead. ZAP!" Tanya smiled carelessly and tossed her "death ray" unceremoniously into her torn and barely functional backpack. Nanaue's mouth was left agape in shock, but he didn't have time to shout at her before they heard sirens.

"QUICK!" Tanya grabbed his arm and practically threw him into Corvo's back. "You let Corvo take you, I'll take Sark." She climbed into the back of an intimidating machine Nanaue hadn't noticed until now. This was Sark. He wasn't as benevolent looking as Corvo, and Nanaue hadn't realized Corvo looked that way before seeing this thing. Sark remained still, as if not having heard anything. Tanya huffed with frustration and opened his shoulder plate.

"We don't have time for this Sark..." She muttered and looked at her other child, "Corvo, go ahead, we'll follow."

"Mother, I cannot leave you in danger." Corvo argued.

"Priority override. Mission objective. Deliver persons: King Shark, to: B.O.O. I'll follow you soon, baby."

Nanaue didn't realize the last part was for him until she rushed over and kissed him before Corvo lifted off the ground and flew like a jet away from the trouble.


B.O.O., as it turns out, was a shack in the middle of a wheat field. Nanaue had noticed that there were no signs of civilization for miles and miles before him and Corvo landed. "Where is Tanya?" He paced in front of the shack for a moment.

Corvo was silent, then, "Mother will arrive in two minutes and thirty four seconds."

He approached the shack and made a strange chirping sound. The door opened. All that was inside was a single room, with a bed, a small stove and a table scattered with papers. Nanaue could smell Tanya in here.

Corvo stepped inside and stood, awkwardly hunched under the low roof, in the center of the room. "Down, please." He ordered. A circular hole opened and revealed a plate of sheet metal. Nanaue stepped onto it, sharing the small space with Tanya's creation as they descended slowly. And they kept going down. And down. It must have been a mile underground, but when the elevator finally stopped, Nanaue laid eyes on a lobby, like one you'd see in a modern office building, only no one was here.

"Where are we?" Nanaue asked, wondering what the hell this all was. Corvo didn't respond. They passed what might have been a reception desk and into a waiting room, complete with second hand magazines and a child's toyset. Beyond that room, Corvo entered yet another elevator and they descended even further. Nanaue was getting a nervous feeling.

"Mother has arrived and will be down to see you in the lab, as soon as possible." Corvo said suddenly and gestured to the door of the elevator seconds before they opened and revealed a long hallway. "Follow to the end, take a left, first door on your right."

Marginally stunned for a moment, Nanaue cautiously stepped off the elevator alone and stood staring back until Corvo was gone. "All the way down, left, right. Okay."

He followed the vague directions and passed several ominous looking steel doors, took a left when he could not go further, and took the first door he saw. The sight of it caught him off guard. Sark was standing right there on the other side, his chest heaving almost as if her were breathing.

"Hello..." Nanaue hesitated in passing him and entered Tanya's lab. It was the size of a hangar, and although no one was here, there was still so much life. Things buzzed and hummed, several bird-like mechanisms flew over head. It was utter chaos, but familiar chaos. Nanaue smiled and entered the throng. He had missed her creations. Some of them were affectionate of him, some overs beautiful and mysterious, most of them autonomous. It was an awe-inspiring sight. So much life and not a single heartbeat among any of them.

"NANAUE!" Tanya screamed and ran towards him, she was bleeding.

He felt panic rip through him, "Are you okay?!"

She lept on him and smiled, "I'm fine. I'm fine."

It wasn't her blood, Nanaue could tell the difference. "Who's blood is that?"

Tanya fell back into a bean bag and sighed, like she'd been at work all day and was about to say "Im beat".

"Well, we had a minor malfunction, Sark is a newborn so he's having trouble adjusting. I uhm..." She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, "Well I accidentally yanked out a wire or two in the panic, the cops had a fuckin bazooka-" She made a face, "not really necessary of them, anyway, I yanked out a lot of things and Sark went into berserk mode and... well you know." She leaned back again and put her hands over her face. "Ugh."

Nanaue looked at Sark, who was still standing in the same spot as before. Corvo was in the doorway and seemed to be staring at Sark, although he had no eyes.

"ANYWAY!" Tanya jumped up, "You're here, you're safe. No one will find us. Who's hungry?"

She started off to the end of the room and Nanaue followed, leaving her creations to their devices.

"Tanya, where are we?" He asked once they were out of ear-shot. He wasn't sure why he felt that was needed. Sark made him uneasy.

"Oh this place? Yea, it was a private research lab, owned by some mad scientist in the eighties, and abandoned soon after. Couldn't get the funds to keep going."

"And...what were they doing here?"

"I'm not sure. Anything and everything. Mostly genetics I think. I found one room in the deeper parts of this place, looks like it had been the old lab, where they turned some poor guy's blood into peanut oil."

Nanaue's froze in place. Tanya took a few more steps before she noticed he wasn't following anymore.

"Oh don't worry, the entire family did a full scan for life. Not even a rat." All of her creations were considered family.

"Even Sark?" Nanaue walked towards her, wanting to close the gap between them. He liked being close to her.

"We found Sark here. Well...parts of him. I finished him. It seems like all the genetic experimentation was working towards an AI. Honestly it's all very fascinating, I've learned so much and I improved Corvo's AI, he's almost completely independent in thought now, and Sark is a unique case, I think he has-"

Nanaue kissed her, not to shut her up, but because he loved the way she talked about something she was passionate about. She melted around him like honey and shivered as his hand slid up her back and onto her neck.