Even when the matters at hand concerned me, I was always more comfortable letting someone else speak for me. Elma was right, she really did know me better than anyone at that point, maybe even myself. Despite the quiet way I could tell she was watching every move in the room, she and Eli shook hands.

"Colonel Elma."

"I apologize I didn't recognize your name when it was mentioned over the phone," Eli said. "I don't think we've ever met, but my father always spoke highly of the great Colonel Elma."

"And he spoke highly of you as well," Elma said. "I was surprised to see your name on this office door. Is he well?"

"Oh dear, no. It's well… it's perhaps conversation for another time. Why don't we all sit?"

Elma took the chair next to mine, Ashley at to the side and Eli remained behind his desk. "So," he said, "How in the world did you come into contact with my Joanna?"

I was starting to get control of the spasms when I heard him speak, but my head still hurt horribly. It didn't make any sense, nothing else about him troubled me, I'd even been comforted when I first saw the mark on his right side.

"The details still aren't clear, but I found her pod a few miles outside of NLA in Starfall Basin. She didn't remember anything, even her own name."

"What have you been calling her this whole time?" Eli frowned when he asked and adjusted his glasses and looked toward me. "Actually, I should probably ask you myself. I'm sorry, Jo, I just know you had that malfunction a moment ago."

"No, no it's fine," I said, rubbing my forehead. "I have another friend with BLADE, she suggested everyone call me Aina."

Eli's look hardened a little. "Another friend with BLADE? How many friends do you have with BLADE?"

"I've been with them since Elma found me," I said.

Both Eli and Ashley's eyes went wide at this before Eli turned toward Elma slowly. "Why in God's name is my amnesiac fiancé serving with NLA's military?"

"We didn't have anything to go off of," Elma said. "The journey from Starfall was lined with indigens. I was carrying some spare weaponry in case a case like hers' happened. We had to fight our way back here."

"That's all well and good for a journey back from the fields, but why would you have her go back?" Every word out of Eli's mouth seemed to get sharper.

"She proved herself well on the battlefield." Elma wasn't giving him anything, her tone still cool and collected as she looked between him and me. "We offered her a chance to serve beside us. She made that choice herself—"

"I'd hardly consider a woman who couldn't even remember her own name to be in any shape to be making a life-changing decision like that. For God's sake, woman, my father was killed when those damn things attacked the city!"

I flinched, both from the damage his voice continued to deal and the meaning behind his words. "I'm so sorry," I said.

"I guess that explains a few things," Elma said. "You have my condolences as well. He was a good man. I don't know if it is of any conciliation to you, but we were both there, fighting off the Ganglion and protecting as many people as we could."

After permitting Eli and Elma those sentences, it was then Ashley reminded us she was sitting nearby. "So what, you've had her fighting those monstrosities outside the city? I know my cousin, she was never a fighter. She could never hurt a fly."

I looked to her swiftly. It felt like something inside me had just come alive. "I wouldn't?"

"Don't tell me you can't even remember that," Ashley said. "You refused to dissect a fetal pig back in our biology class. It was already dead and you still couldn't cut it open."

I couldn't remember any of that. I couldn't remember biology class or school or pigs or any of what Ashley had just described. And it wasn't as if I was a pacifist. Hunting tyrants is, after all, in the description for Curators, and who knows how many Prone I'd slain during the war.

But if I could manage, I didn't fight. I avoided fights with the indigenes as long as they weren't threatening other BLADEs or their environments. I hadn't said anything about my work with BLADE to Ashley the other day. For the first time since I had awoken on Mira, someone knew something about me without my telling them. At least, something other than my reputation.

In my moments of thought on this, I faded out of the conversation, but could soon hear them all talking again.

"Aina wasn't coerced into doing anything," Elma said. "After I saw her prowess, she was offered the opportunity to join BLADE. After some quiet reflection, she decided to join us. It was her choice, and she has been an asset to the war with the Ganglion ever since."

"If my fiancé has proved such an asset to you," Eli said, "Then I think she has more than earned the right to come and be away with her family. Especially considering that would give BLADE one more soldier than it had ever been prepping for in the first place."

My response was instinctual. I regretted my word choice nearly as fast as it came out of my mouth, but there was no masking it. "They are my family."

Ashley and Eli both flinched at this, Ashley's mouth in particular slipping open in disbelief. Eli slipped off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. Ashley looked away, as if I had made myself too difficult to face.

I immediately attempted to backtrack. "I mean… I can't remember anything else. The people with BLADE have been with me as long as I've been on Mira. They've fought next to me, they've protected me. They've—"

"You can't remember anything?" I don't know what I heard in that already-cutting voice of Eli's, if it was pain or bitterness or both, but I shook my head.

"There has to be something," Ashley's voice grew seemingly more frantic. "She can remember things, we just had to give her a chance to. There has to be something. Those family trips we took to the redwoods in the summer every year?"

"I… I'm sorry," I said. "No."

"My dad taking us out to that cabin in Yosemite? Christmas at Grandma's? I don't know, Cammy? That dog I was allergic to?"

In my head, I flinched again. "Cammy? I had a dog named Cammy?"

"He was mutt, a spaniel-beagle mix or something… are you seriously telling me you remember her more than the other stuff I've told you?"

"She really did love that dog," Eli said with half of a smile. "She once told me you couldn't come over to her house for over a year because of her before you'd gotten all your shots."

Elma was watching me intently now with those violet eyes. "Even I know that sounds familiar."

"Then let's try this," Eli said. :The Seventy-Fourth Humboldt Arts and Music Festival. Do you remember that?"

I'd opened my mouth to respond, but couldn't come up with anything to say when a million thoughts hit me at once.

Dozens of little white tents set up as if it was a Nopon caravan, surrounded by hundreds of trees that would easily be dwarfed by the ones in Noctilum. Hundreds of paintings in dazzling colors of everything from beautiful landscapes to monsters like I'd seen in the darkest depths we'd ventured to. Reds like blood, reds like fire, even reds like water, some way I didn't even understand. And music. A thousand strums at guitars, a million beats at the drum. Rock, blues, classical. Belly dancers, people in silly costumes, a sign with "Free hugs" written on it.

And a lanky redhead in glasses leading me from place to place.

"Twenty-fifty." I said, so quietly I wasn't sure anyone could hear me.

"What did you say?" Elma asked.

"Twenty-fifty. I was nineteen years old. The sights, the music… I can remember it."

The room went silent, the images and music still buzzing around in my head and making it difficult to concentrate for well over a minute. When things started to return to focus, Elma spoke first. "You can actually remember something that clearly?"

I don't know how to describe the smile that came across Eli's face, I think the word would have to be, "full." It extended past his lips, up into his cheeks and eyes.

When the day started, I didn't think anything could possibly have come of this. We'd only ever had guesses before, best estimations were all we could come to. And now these two, with no knowledge of what had happened since I landed on Mira, knew about me. I had been so ready for the whole situation to just be a mistake that the thought it could be real excited and terrified me all at once.

"Please," Ashley said. "Can't you see we're getting through to her? Maybe she just needs us to remind her of what Earth was. How is it fair to keep her away from that?"

Elma took a deep breath and a long sigh before she looked at the two again. She was once more in full negotiation-mode when she spoke. "I understand that both of you are in a very impassioned place right now. Someone you might have thought was gone forever just appeared again. But before we could even consider the idea of Aina, or Joanna, whatever she wants us to call her, separating from BLADE, she would have to take that first step and express it for herself."

"We've already established she's suffering from memory loss," Ashley said. "We can help her piece the rest back together."

"I've gotten to know your cousin very well since I first found her," Elma said. "Neither me nor any of the rest of BLADE has ever thought anything less of her because she couldn't remember Earth. I know your heart is in the right place, but I don't think it's fair to expect your cousin to drop everything for a life we have barely scratched the surface of than it would be for me to suddenly ask you to join BLADE."

"What, would I just have to lose my memory first—"

"Settle down, Ashley." Eli's voice seemed to have an inverse effect on her, seemingly quenching the fire that burned inside at his command. "I hate to admit it, but I think the Colonel may be correct… we can't just sit here and recite life events and think everything will fall into place. One step at a time, that's how we have to do it."

Ashley looked as if she was going to object, but after a few seconds, looked to have calmed. At least somewhat.

"I just need some time to process all this," I said with some struggle. "I just need some time to process this."

A last few thoughts were exchanged as Ashley and Eli both gave me where I could find them in the residential district. Eli seemed more open about my space. Ashley pled I talk to her again soon. I sighed in exhaustion when Elma and I arrived at the elevator again.

"I'm not going to say your cousin was entirely appropriate or sensitive to your situation," Elma said, leaning against the wall as the doors shut. "But I think it's clear she cares about you very deeply."

"I know," I said.

"I think Eli seemed like a good man as well… but I saw how you crumbled when you first heard him speak."

"Not much gets past you."

"How do you feel about him?"

"If it wasn't for his voice, I might be all right." As I spoke, the elevator gave a ding and we stepped out onto the first floor again. "But something about it… it made me uncomfortable. More than that, actually. It made me scared."

"That's unusual. I've never seen anything quite like that. We'll have to look deeper into that." As we walked toward the exit, she held the door for me. "I want you to tell me something."

"Yes?"

"Do you, or have you, ever believed what they said. About how you joined BLADE. Have you ever felt like we took advantage of you?"

I didn't even have to think about it. "No. I knew as soon as you saved me, it was the least I owed you. By the time I felt like I paid you back, I didn't want to leave."

"I just worry, sometimes," Elma said. "That you didn't deserve to have more options given to you. We never suggested just finding you work out in the commercial district or water purification or anything like that… did you really mean what you did say?"

"Which part?"

"That you consider BLADE to be your family?"

"I never could have made it here without you and Lin, Irina, Tatsu, Gwin and Doug and L and everyone else. Whatever comes back, nothing changes that."

"I'm glad to hear that."

When we came to the Mission Control panel, I said, "Wait," and pulled up the assignments being offered. A few minutes later I joined Elma again. "Sorry about that."

"Find anything interesting?"

"Jordanna the Abdicated, according to the request," I said. "Supposedly causing trouble in East Sylvalum. I've been meaning to go out on an assignment with Irina soon."

"Good. I wouldn't say it to most people, but you obviously need a break from your relatives right now."