Gwen's singular source of pride and amusement in her first week of suspension was her ability to keep herself from going insane from boredom. She had spent the majority of her time alone, and this Monday morning in particular, she had hardly been motivated enough to get out of bed, let alone get dressed appropriately to do much of anything. Still dressed to be able to go back to sleep at any moment, she sat on the couch and turned on the small television set to the morning news, balancing a bowl of oatmeal in her lap.

"This is Lena Miramonte, reporting live from outside of the Gatekeepers Headquarters -"

Gwen's eyes widened at the sight of the scene - a large crowd of protestors with signs and burning effigies of the Gatekeepers' logo. She reached for the remote and turned up the volume, leaning closer and frowning.

"Since early this morning, the militant anti-technology organization, Revolutionary Independence from Technology - or RIFT - has staged its first major public action since the Great Collapse. Several small explosions have been reported, without any injuries or casualties…"

But Gwen began tuning out the news reporter's voice when she noticed in the corner of the screen that in the crowd, clad in a dark hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses, was a familiar figure who seemed to be looking for something, not even noticing he was caught as part of the crowd.

"Will," she said, her eyes wide in disbelief. In a hurry, she hurried upstairs to change her clothes so that she looked at least somewhat less of a mess before rushing out the door to her car. Will Caster was making a careless mistake, and careless was something that neither of them currently could afford to be. Max Waters had described Will Caster as one of the most brilliant minds of his time - so why was he doing something so obviously foolish?

When she arrived in at his Berkeley home, she found that she had beaten him there. Not caring much for niceties, she used the key that Mr. Waters had given her and Bryce long ago to get inside where she would wait until finally, about an hour later, Will walked through the door. He removed his sunglasses in the dim light of the house and stared at Gwen in surprise as she stood from the chair she'd taken up station in, striding across the room so that she was toe to toe with the man.

"Why were you there?" she asked in outrage, her face contorted into a furious frown. "I saw you on the news, that's dangerous! No one is supposed to know -"

"No one saw me -"

"I saw you!"

"Maybe you saw me because you wanted to see me. You… created me, in a way, and any scientist worth their weight is attached to their work. I'm in no position to judge," he said dismissively, walking past her and towards a table in the back, where she realized he had rigged together and old computer from parts that had remained strewn around the long abandoned house. He was still at it - whatever it was. Gwen sneered slightly and rolled her eyes.

"You realize that if people trace you back to me -"

"No one's going to do that. I made sure Max took care of it," he said simply, attempting to boot up the makeshift computer with little success. He frowned as the screen briefly flickered to life, but went dead again. He muttered a string of curses and struck the monitor on the side with his hand before looking back at Gwen. "I was the one who told him to take the footage. I've been… worried about you."

Gwen crossed her arms and looked around the house, realizing that while there were lights still around the house, and that there was obviously power if he was running a computer, the entire house was still fairly dark. At the idea that he had actually been concerned for her, she felt her resolve to hate him waver. He was right, after all. She had brought him back, and she, like any scientist who loved what they did, cared for her work. "You have electricity - why don't you turn on a -"

"No!" Will said suddenly, walking over and grabbing a hold of her wrist as she reached out to turn the switch on a nearby lamp. She blinked at his hand enclosed around hers with a raised eyebrow, and he let out a heaving sigh before explaining, "The light and the noise are all - they're a lot to process. It's a little overstimulating."

It hit Gwen that if that was the case, then going out to the protest at Headquarters must have been excruciating - and that he had still gone out to look for her, thinking she had been there. She gently pulled her hand away from his and dropped it to her side, her temper finally calming to the point that the anger faded from her expression entirely. "It's understandable," she said in the calm, almost clinical voice that she associated more with work than with anywhere else. "You have all your memories, all of your mental faculties, but this body is practically brand new. It hasn't been conditioned to tune out noise, or adapt to light - it'll be a while before -"

"Theoretically, I understand everything you're saying," Will answered with a weak laugh; Gwen realized it was so jarring, even now, to hear him express actual emotion when she had grown so used to him simply being the voice from a small computer. "But in practice, it's hard to consider it completely normal when I'm like… well, I'm like a damn toddler. I get hungry, I need to eat. I get restless, I need to get up and move around. It's hell," he admitted, looking down and scratching the back of his neck in shame. "But it works out - I generate my own electricity so no one can trace that I'm back here," he added, gesturing to an old exercise bike he had rigged to hook up to a makeshift power generator.

"In fairness, that's pretty ingenious," Gwen said with a slightly grudging smile. She wasn't sure if she was still truly angry at Will, or if seeing him simply made her remember how angry she was at herself, but in any case, she couldn't stay mad for long when she saw the conditions he was living in. "It'll get better," she supplied gently. "It just takes some reconditioning."

There was hardly anywhere else for the conversation to go from that point, and she couldn't simply power him down and go about her life like before. He had run impulsively out to the protest because he had been worried about her; she had run impulsively to his house because she had been worried about him. It was uncomfortable and strange - and, having satisfied her concern about his well-being, Gwen decided it was appropriate enough of a time to leave. She turned towards the door when suddenly, Will grabbed her by the wrist again and pulled her to turn back around to face him. His expression was one of unexplained tumult, and he seemed to search her face for a moment as though he were troubled by some kind of mystery and somewhere in her features there was a hidden answer.

"You don't realize what this is like," he said, shaking his head sullenly. "I - I should be like Max. I should be old, I should be growing old with my wife."

He walked across the room to the window, which had the shutters drawn, and peered outside only as long as he eyes could bear before looking away again. "But instead, I'm back - my body and my mind feel like they did when I was thirty, it doesn't make sense."

"It does, actually," Gwen said, crossing her arms over herself and taking a few careful steps towards Will, unsure of how frank she ought to be. "Aging is the process of degeneration of the body you had - this is a new one."

"Then why didn't I come back as a newborn?"

"You're thirty because Milford Duggan was about thirty. It was a first trial, I never expected it to work perfectly," she explained, feeling a strange sense of power yet again at being the one who could answer the questions of a man who was a verifiable genius. "I've had a little bit of time to mull things over, believe me. I wondered about it too."

A silence settled between them again, and once more, Gwen was wondering if she had worn out her welcome. She cleared her throat and shuffled her feet slightly. "I'm gonna get some water," she said, glancing over in the direction that she knew the kitchen to be in.

"Max dropped off some food too, help yourself," Will said - when Gwen walked towards the kitchen, he didn't follow, but she didn't bother to ask where he was going. She instead made her way to the kitchen alone and managed to scrounge up a plastic cup from the supplies left on the counter - Max had probably left him enough for at least a week. She poured water from a large plastic jug into the cup and took a slow drink, leaning against the counter and sighing.

She took another swig from her water and shook her head, pushing her disheveled hair out of her face. Gwen was livid with herself more than she was with Will, because she did not have the excuse of being a machine, of having pre-programmed algorithms that set her limits for her. She had played a complacent role in all of this, and she had consciously made the decisions that had made everything worse.

Whatever the influences had been, the fact still stood that she had gotten herself into this mess.

She glanced around the house and, in a gap between a doorjambs and walls that peered through the outside, she noticed that Will was standing outside in the backyard where she'd first found him - and at the realization of what he was probably going through, her own misgivings suddenly seemed rather small. Refilling her own cup of water as well as a second for Will, she walked out quietly to the garden, leaning against the rickety frame of the back door. She watched him in silence as he stared around the garden before clearing her throat.

Will turned to face her with a sad smile on his face. "It's - a very unkempt garden nowadays, isn't it?" he chuckled bitterly. "Evelyn - my wife - was always the one with the green thumb. I guess I like to think maybe she's still here, like I was."

"You don't need to explain yourself to me," she said, holding the water out to him. He muttered a brief 'thank you' as he took it from her hand and looked back around at the old plants now interwoven with thick overgrowths of weeds. "It's natural, you know - not to want to be alone. Humans are made to seek companionship. You're a doctor, you should know that."

"I do. I…" He froze, not even realized he had opened his mouth to speak before the first word left his lips, and by then, he had already been heard. "I don't think I ever really thanked you. For bringing me back. For - for going through all of this," he said. Gwen laughed sadly and looked over at him.

"Yeah. My biggest achievement, and no one can ever know about it," she said in a strange mix of humor and bitterness. "Just my luck."

"Why weren't you at Headquarters?" he asked suddenly, evading the pang of guilt that accompanied the idea of her bringing him back needing to remain a secret. "I went looking for you."

"I've been - put on leave. Suspended, for my own good," Gwen recited with derision, rolling her eyes and taking a swig from her cup. "And if you say 'you are displeased', I'm probably going to kick your ass," she added with a smirk. They both laughed, albeit weakly, until Will could no longer keep it up. He walked over so that he was standing just inches in front of Gwen, gently cupping the crook of her arm with his hand.

"I'm… sorry," he said, shaking his head. The amount of emotion in his eyes now was still no less novel to Gwen, and she founding herself drowning in them. "I hate that I'm benefitting from all of these terrible things that are happening to you. You were living your dream when you were accepted into Project Generativity, and… I used you."

"To be honest, I don't think you had the capacity to do otherwise," Gwen shrugged calmly - but rather than being comforting or reassuring, Will found her calm demeanor terrifying. It meant she had grown complacent, that she was defeated. "It's nowhere in a computer's mindset to do something counterproductive to its own survival. I'm still fairly convinced that you couldn't help it."

"But I can now," Will pointed out. "I - I could turn myself in, end all this trouble you're in."

"I don't want that," Gwen said, shaking her head. Their eyes met again, and this time, Gwen turned away out of an inability to submit to that kind of intensity again. She took a few steps back and drew a few deep breaths before looking at Will again. "Do you - do you still want me to stay here for a while? So you're not alone?" she asked hesitantly. Will, on the other hand, did not hesitate for a moment.

"Yeah."

A/N's

A lot of talking going on in this chapter, setting the stage for more action to come. In the next chapter, there will be some significant events that force Will and Gwen to learn to trust one another. Stay tuned! Cheers!