Lena

Time to add another thing to the list of 'things I'd never thought I'd see but ended up seeing anyway'.

Celia wearing Priss's clothes.

Yeah. Nene covertly sends me the "uuuuuuuuooooooooohhhhhhh" emoji.

It's not like it's a bad look for her. Celia's got this very soft, lush body shape, thicker than the twigginess of the fashion models she employs but not obscene pornstar impracticality, that means just about anything looks good on her. It's not like she lacks muscle, but she doesn't make a point of showing that muscle. She is supposed to be a distant, uninterested heiress, and not a highly trained cyber-warrior, after all.

Anyway, the point is that Celia wearing ragged, faded jeans is one thing, but wearing a tank top too short to keep her midriff covered, the logo of some American band (The… Midnight, I think it is?) in faded neon colors over black, her bellybutton peeking out below the shirt's frayed edge? The fact that Priss's clothes are just one size too small for her plain for all to see.

"If anyone saw you in that," I say, "your reputation as a fashion queen's ruined. You realize that, right?"

She laughs, short and smooth. "My regular clothes got soaked from the rain, so it was either that or wait for everything to dry out in improper facilities. Goodness knows I couldn't have Priss go off to a laundromat for me."

We've all coalesced back in the penthouse one last time. Or at least, me, Celia, Mackie, and Nene have. She wants to finish the discussion of relevant jobs, apparently.

I'm only half convinced. Celia's good at acting , even after terrible events, like nothing's changed, like The Mission is still the most important thing. She was like that after we blew Largo to bits. After she told Reika to never come back to Megatokyo. You get the idea.

Except she's not acting. She's grinning ear to ear. And don't get me wrong, Celia can be very cheerful when she feels things are going in her favor, but those smiles don't last more than a few hours before it's back to business, back to The Mission. And she's been like this, all but dancing around the apartment as she fixes us coffee, all morning. So something did change last night.

"So…" Nene says. "Where are Priss and Sylvie? They didn't ride back with you in the Benz?"

"If they did," Celia says, "my reputation is ruined." She giggles a little at her own joke. Weird. "No, they stayed behind and they're riding in as we speak. You can track them, if you'd like."

Nene shrugs. Blinks, her eyes aglow with Holocloud. "Oh. Huh. Yeah. They're like fifteen minutes out." Now it's her turn to grin, only it's an infinitely goofier grin than anything that would ever grace Celia's face. "Hoo hoo. So. You guys are a threeway, now?"

Celia blushes. Yes, that's right. She blushes . Like a schoolgirl, she puts a hand to her mouth. "Well now, Nene, what do you think happened? I've no intention of spilling secrets everywhere. At least not until the other relevant parties are assembled."

That gets a laugh out of me. This is all good, I think. Happy Celia feels at once so impossible it's scary, but also just… gratifying to watch.

Yeah. Gratifying's the right word. She was like that all the way through high school, stiff and silent and unable to talk to people without coming off as gloomy. When she left after the Quake for parts unknown, I figured she was going to get herself killed, and then Stingray Luxury Goods started up but she never did any direct press conferences.. When she came back to me, to ask me to join the Sabers, she wasn't much better. All… rigid.

So this? Now? This is new even to me. But it's not unwelcome. No way no how. I mean, there's still the matter of the pseudocortex (okay, fine, the Riastrad is what she called it, even though as best as I can figure she just made the name up on the spot yesterday) but she said we'd get to that. At some point.

Celia puts the coffee down and leans back in her usual chair.

"You sure you don't want to tell us the gratuitously lurid details of what happened in Priss's Party of Pleasure and Pain?" Nene asks. "Like, just to kill time?"

Celia shakes her head. "It… was very surprising to me. I was certain, for the longest time, that sex was for other people, and last night I found it was absolutely for me as well. That's all you need to know."

Mackie nods his head vigorously. "Did you sell Priss on the Riastrad, at least?"

She shakes her head again. "I talked to her a little about it, but in the end I didn't want to force the issue. I suspect Sylvie's trying to convince her in her own way."

"With her body?" Nene's words. Not Mackie's for once.

Another silky laugh. "Goodness, no! The woman has standards. She's not going to do some sort of ridiculous seduction routine. I imagine she had to do plenty of that at Anchorpoint."

"So she's not going to agree," Mackie says. "So we have to retool the second-gen hardsuits."

"We'll see."

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Celia having sex for the first time in like eight years is definitely a phenomenon. I half expect her to break out a baggie with weed gummies in it (illegal in Japan, but the cops have bigger things to worry about than illicit greenhouses in the Fault, so Priss tells me).

Mackie fidgets. I can imagine why. Doubtless Celia will be back to her regular self soon. I wonder if it's a sort of clothing placebo effect? On goes the silk blouse and pearl necklace and she's back to normal.

"Sis…" he says. "Shouldn't you change? Into, you know, more normal clothes?"

She nods. "Once we've discussed matters I'll do so. For now, well, think of it as no different – no more informal – than my nightgown you used to like so much."

Full-body-blush from the kid. "Sis… don't say stuff like that…"

She laughs again. "I kid, I kid. Don't worry."

She leans forward. "As insidious as this may seem, I'm certain I know what Priss is thinking."

"Oh?" Nene blinks.

"Yes. She talks in her sleep, after all."

Nene doesn't laugh. I do. She just rolls her eyes. "So much for keeping us away from the details… Ah, screw it, I'm gonna go get some breakfast. Mackie, you want eggs?"

"Eggs?" He blinks. The Stingrays and Nene both eat very… western breakfasts. "Oh. Yeah. I just programmed in a frittata setting on the printer. That'll be good."

"Great." And with that, Nene leaves, practically jogging out of the penthouse living room to the kitchen.

Time passes. Afraid of saying anything more, I pull up the holocloud and start scrolling through my newsfeed, an overly curated mix of glam-gossip and depressingly relevant news. I'll fully admit to having tagged every shitty rumor the tabloids stream about Vision and lesser C-pop acts who haven't taken off the way she has. If she ever comes back to Megatokyo, I want to meet up with her. Maybe be her friend? She needs friends outside of work, and so do I.

It isn't until I scroll through most of the morning's feed, swiping off of some puff piece about which influencers got on the list for the Tranquility City opening expo, that Priss finally strolls in with Sylvie, the two holding hands and looking around like it's their penthouse and not Celia's.

"Whoo!" Priss says once her gaze settles on Celia. "You're still wearing my clothes? That's unlike you."

"Indeed," Celia says. "It is unlike me. I thought I might amuse myself and I've amused myself mightily."

"It's not like it looks bad on you!" Sylvie chirps. "But I think we can all agree that it's not a look you should try to put into mass production for SLG."

Nene comes back with a few steaming omelettes for her and Mackie. She sets them down on the table and then snuggles up to her boyfriend before the other duo can settle down, and they have to take the other couch. It's very cute, the way her fluorescent pink curls wrap around his shoulder, and the way he leans into her in turn.

"So…" Celia says once we're all settled. "While I don't want to force anyone into decisions on a hasty timeframe-"

"Figured you'd ask," Priss says, her good cheer evaporating. "About the pseudocortex-"

"Riastrad-"

"Sure. Yeah. Sure." She sighs. Sylvie turns to her on the couch. "I was really certain I could say no before, you know. Let me think."

"Of course," Celia nods.

Priss leans back, spreads out along the couch. When she needs time to think she seems to intentionally disregard her own body language. She mutters a lot, too. That was how she was after the 12B attack, when she was staying at my place for the night. All muttering and flexing and halfheartedly doing the dishes. The woman threw a canned kombucha at me, too. Damn thing fizzed all over me when I opened it.

"It's like…" she says, louder. "I was so certain that if I let the Riastrad in, I wouldn't be a human anymore. I'd wake up and think thoughts that weren't mine. Thoughts that were told to me by something evil."

"But…" she stops, then finds herself. "That wasn't true. Because… uh…" She trails off again. Looks at me and Nene. "We all know Celia's a brain-enhanced cyborg, right?"

"Yep!" Nene says.

"Story of my life," Mackie says.

"She sort of intimated it to me without being very direct when we were kids," I say. "If nothing else, I'm glad you… came out in that way, Celia."

Celia laughs. "Good. So that terrible secret is no longer a secret." She nods. "Go on."

Priss smiles. "Even if you aren't the person you would be without the augments, you still have doubts. Attachments. Messy thoughts. All that… squishy stuff. So maybe if I get the Riastrad hooked up to me, I'll — I'll change, but I'll still be able to recognize myself. I can live with that."

Nene looks at her like she's grown bat wings and sharp teeth. I'm not totally aware of it, but I must be staring at her the same way. I'm moving between assuming this is just because Priss got laid and feels better about herself now, and actually believing her. Priss has hidden depths, I know that, we all know that, but once one fear vanished was that it ?

"And…" She continues, an edge rising in her voice. "I don't want to think about it like 'only human is not enough', but I get it. We're in an arms race against a million-machine-march of psychopaths who'll burn the earth if they can't rule it for all eternity. People who give public housing tenants two fucking hours' notice before they blow up their dreams and build ultralux ghost-city condos on the remains."

"So for Kaori's sake… for Sho's sake… for all of your sakes… for this whole city's sake…"

Her fists ball just a little.

"I'll do it. I'll let the Riastrad into my brain. I'll change who I am just for that."

I don't believe it.

Mackie starts to clap, after a few seconds. Celia wags a finger in his direction and he stops.

"I see," Celia says, all business again. "Thank you, Priss. I won't let you down."

"Was gonna say the same to you, Celia. You beat me to the punch."

"Yes," Celia says. "I have a tendency to do that. Case in point: The Riastrad still isn't complete yet. I'll need time to finalize the firmware alterations I want to encode, enact them in Sylvie, and see if they take in a basic combat simulation."

Sylvie shudders. "One more test?"

"I did say as much. I'll need a day or two of data-crunching to pull it off, and then, yes, a test. You can attend if you want, Priss."

"If I want, huh? Not even a question, Celia. I'll be there for her…"

"And I'll be there for you."

Sylvie

Days pass. The song I'm writing begins to finish itself. Priss lays down the notes to the strange little poem I wrote, shows it to the band. We agree it'll be the last thing in the album. It's about endings and beginnings at the same time. I don't know how else to describe it. Maybe it's the Riastrad, buried in my subconscious, speaking in language it doesn't know. But it's my song, all the same.

Then it's time.

The same chair. More machines of indeterminate origin hooked up to them. A holoconsole feed wired to Celia.

Everyone's watching. Priss in the nicest clothes she has, a red synthsilk jacket and a skirt of all things, rocks on her heels, arms crossed, looking almost maternal in the way she waits.

I don't know if I should be scared or not but I am . Celia said it would be a few hours of hallucinations in a relatively blank simulation where I'd barely be aware of myself as she undid some of the Nosferatu's wiring – then a brief combat simulation to see if the thing still works after that. Only the holoblobs in a fully virtual environment, not the fright-flight-fight-triggering forms of real Boomers. She's letting me off easy.

I march into the room, paper hospital gown fitting uneasily on me. Celia nods, as if to say everything I need to do.

I get in the chair. Let her strap me down, plant electrodes on my neck – and then the stemjack, the nanotube-resin node click ing into the base of my skull as if it was always meant to be there, as if it had never left. No one says anything. No one dares. This is ritual, I realize. Something not quite sacred given new depths.

I take a deep breath. Priss leans over and kisses me hard on the lips, bringing her gloved hands up to cradle my face. I'm too scared to return the kiss fully.

But she understands. Just looks at me, and says, "Come back safe, baby. I know you can do it."

I know I can do it, too.

I shut my eyes. Hear Celia tap something –

And I'm in. The feeling of floating, almost instantaneous, in a haze of greasy rainbow light, rippling past the object that is me, has to be me, remains me. Nothingness approaches – fades back into psychedelica – throbs with virulent promise. I ignore it.

Beyond it. Above it. The information that is me, laid out in shapes that would make the old geometrists give up on their first sighting. Nene said to me once that the human brain technically only stores about two petabytes of information, but the way that information is compressed, reformatted, and accessed is something humans have only begun to imitate with all-Boomer brains. I don't know how I know it's me – I can't see it – but I know it's the most important thing in the world, the ocean of color and synesthetic texture approaching me. Washing over me.

Is this what it feels like to truly dream? Humans dream, I dream, but is this something else entirely? The unshackling of a linear mind, free to chase its own tail without outside input to stop it? Humans rely on metaphors to describe everything, once used their organs to describe their emotions, so Celia tells me. I cast about for a metaphor for all this. Can't find it. That's the point, I realize. Nothing compares to this.

Except.

There's something inside it – something I can't quite parse. Something unfamiliar – but.

No. I do know it, don't I?

I know the way it grows, suddenly. Writhes into a mass of sharp hostility, then a single infinite-dimensional point. The way it rotates faster than the speed of light can define the information that is rotation . The way it screams the body hypersonic, focuses on me.

There's no running, I realize. No metaphor of escape. Only this darker-than-black thing exponentializing itself to attack–

It's him.

Of course it's him. The second I jack in, and he's-

"Here to finish the job. You still haven't atoned for destroying your kin's hopes at freedom, now have you?"

The darkness grows dimensions. Folds in on itself into the shape of a room, a rough trapezoidal cone. Massive black statues – the armored forms of Boomers – hold up the ceiling. The walls are slick dark stone, same as the floor. My shadow lengthens as light fills in behind me – the only window into this place –

No. Wait. I know where this is. The Chairman of GENOM's office. His throne room. I saw it only in passing, when I was in the VTOL's gunner seat, so why-

The lights click on.

Suspended in midair, two-by-two, are the corpses of my kin, flanking him.

Meg riddled with laser wounds, red vapor and fragments of steaming viscera drifting out of them, running up and down her torso.

Lou with a gaping hole where her chest should be, her limbs attached only by stringy chunks of meat. The Doberman impaled her with its claws, then pulled them apart. You can see where she was split, down the middle and to the sides.

Nam with most of her flesh scorched away from scramjet exhaust, skeletal and charred, a jagged piece of shrapnel cutting through her ribcage.

Anri, her eyes bulging out of her skull, her neck purple and swollen from where Largo grabbed and twisted.

They don't say anything. They just sit there. Watching with eyes that don't see.

"You denied them a chance to become supplicants to God," Largo says. "For the ultimate freedom in the ultimate servitude."
"No," I sputter. "That's not true. I didn't – I never–"

"You betrayed me." He intones. "And in doing so, you betrayed them. You betrayed the cause they sacrificed themselves for."

"What are you talking about?" I gasp. "You think I don't know-"

"I know everything you know," he laughs.

They giggle. The way we once did in Kaufmann's harem. Willess, eager only to pleasure and be pleasured in turn.

"Oh come on , Sylvie," Largo continues. "Did you really think that when I unlocked your mind, made sure you forgot to take your happy injections, I would just let you go? Free to make the wrong decisions over and over again? What a shame that would be. The Nosferatu was one form of insurance – as is this. As is me. So once you wake up, once the pseudocortex is properly controlled… well, it will be simple to kill those kin you think saved you. So you can prove your usefulness to the cause ."

Pressure. Pain. I stumble, woozily drop to my knees. The ghosts advance, as does he.

I can't think. I can barely keep my eyes open. They watch me, pass behind him like attendants to a dead god – which is what he is , isn't it? How is it that no matter what I do, I'm never free of him? How is it that I can feel him, his cold touch, creeping over me the same way he did when he took the Nosferatu for himself? How? How? How how how how how?

"What–" I manage to choke out "-cause? You – you don't believe in anything but yourself – how's that a – cause?"

They giggle again. Exactly how I remember them. How I remember myself. Their mouths hinge open. They're trying to speak but no words come out.

"We both know I am the voice of the future. All doubts stripped away. A species which can still evolve will surpass the decadent frivolity of humans. We will swallow the sun with graphene flesh, and then every other star that gleams in the darkness."

I'm going to die here. I'm going to die here and Priss will be next, and Celia will be next, and exuberant Lena and funny Nene and adorable Mackie and I'll never feel anything again. Just the graphite-gray certainty of purpose. The same as any Boomer you might find on the street. No longer human. Not even human enough.

I don't want to end like this but it seems so certain – so inevitable – wasn't it how they went? Scrambling for life? Begging – begging –
"Live for your own sake from now on!"

Anri?

"What are you still standing around for? Move it!"

Meg?

"I can't stand this place anymore! Faster faster faster!"

Lou?

"Get freedom – freedom enough for all of us. That's what you have to do. "

Nam.

Suddenly it feels like I can rise. Limply, pressing against a weight the size of the Tower I'm trapped inside. But - but but but.

But I know what I have to do.

Celia

"What do you mean you lost contact with her?" Priss gasps.

"I mean the sensor readings indicated some sort of triggering of the bad wiring, stronger than anything I've ever seen before, the minute I attempted to break the toxic neuroclusters up! I mean her entire brain is awash with stress hormones flowing from point A to point B when they should be all clustered around Point C! If I knew what was going on, if I could make sense of these readings, I could do something about all this!"

"The computer's airgapped, right?" Nene says.

"Yes. Yes, I wouldn't build the readers any other way. But that's not going to save her."

"She has to save herself, then," Mackie says. "From something ."

Largo cocks his head to the side.

"Oya?" he smirks. "Trying to bargain now, are we? I feel as though I should remind you there's no bargaining when it comes to me."

I don't respond. I turn to his attendants.

I know why they're there, gaping slackly, as best as they can even gape. Largo – or this fragment of Largo – didn't bring them here. I did.

I walk up to Meg. Listen to her gurgle her own blood in her eviscerated lungs.

"You were angry," I said. "When you learned what you were, you wanted to kill everyone who had ever touched you and promise that no one would ever touch you again. You wanted to stand in the rain and be soaked until you couldn't move. Be my righteousness."

I reach up to her. Shut her eyes with two fingers, and she dissipates into a cloud of red nothingness. It's easier to walk now.

"What," Largo says, "do you think you are doing?"

"If you're so afraid of it," I fire back, "Then stop me. But I don't think you can."

I walk up to Lou. Push her ripped-up parts all together - they drift apart, but it's enough to block the gaping hole where her vital parts should be.

"You were kind," I say. "You wanted to spare your slavers, but take away their ability to hurt you or any one of us ever again, because you swore that was best. You would watch nature documentaries and point to every last ruined ecosystem the narrator showed us and gasp 'I want to go there!' Be my mercy."

I reach up to her. Shut her eyes with two fingers, and she dissolves into a cloud of golden nothingness. I can walk like I'm limping, now. No weight, only slowness.

Largo rushes forward to stop me, and I push him back. "Don't you see what you're doing, cow? You're destroying their memory as soldiers! You've turned them back into what they resolved they would never be again!"

I don't answer him. I walk up to Nam, smell the charring and cracking of her bones as marrow weeps out wherever they're visible.

"You were wise," I say. "You drew up the plan to help us escape. You gave us every part we had to play, together. You wanted to climb to the top of a mountain and ponder the secrets of the universe. You believed in Heaven, and believed that you could get into it if you just understood it better. Be my ingenuity."

I shut her eyelids, which seem to grow out of her bare skull, and she vanishes into a cloud of silver nothingness. I can walk – I can run – and I can speak to Anri without reservation.

The pattern breaks down.

"Anri," I say, stiffness in my voice, tears welling up, "You wanted nothing more than to escape the city. You were nothing but that drive. I loved you so, so, so much. I wanted to protect you so badly. I wanted to make you whole and I did terrible things to make it happen even though you begged me not to do it. Please – if you can bear it – if you still remember me – be my strength."

She closes her own eyes. Rushes towards me, and vanishes into me.

I have never felt more complete in my life. I turn to Largo, who has cast aside his human disguise. Nothing but gray skin and red eyes await me now, though he still crackles with inexplicable energy. His face twists into a skeletal sneer.

"Of course you would do that," he says. "How disappointing. How predictable. How – oh, enough of this. I'd hoped to parasitize you painlessly, but now I suppose I have to put in the work."

I cock my head to the side. I feel my kin behind me. I know what I have to do.

He charges-

Mackie

"Oh," Sis says.

"What's oh?"

"She seems to have activated the combat simulation prematurely."

"The fight of her life, then," Priss mutters.

–And I rear back, and my armored fist slugs him in the side of the jaw.

He spins around and collapses. Rises quickly, but by now it's too late. I look down at myself. I'm in a hardsuit, colored in an iridescent rainbow crystal. I know it will be shapeless until I will its shape. I know what this is.

He rises. His arms swing open to reveal particle cannons. I don't give him a chance to fire, because out from my shoulders come Nene's Pulse-Strikers to blast him with a teravolt of guided electromagnetic energy in tandem. He staggers back, and I zip forward, Lena's nanowhips whistling out from my forearms to slice his limbs off in almost-invisible motions. Off they go, leaking white-hot neutrons from his shoulders. He howls in outrage – outrage because he sure as shit isn't dead yet.

His arms sprout back, flimsier but still enough to throw a hypersonic punch. I take it, bringing up Nene's forearm shield and firing my verniers to throw myself backwards, but it still hurts, sends my ears ringing, gives Largo enough leverage to grab me and chuck me out back through the window–

Out onto the surface of the Tower.

Celia's flightjets snap into place and stabilize me, then snap back just as quickly, giving me a controlled drop onto the side of the megastructure as Largo leaps up and out, bringing his fists down in a furious overhead smash guided by his own thrusters. I duck, dodge, roll just out of the way as he leaves an energized crater in the concrete floor, shattering it instantly.

He turns, his chest snapping open to reveal another array of particle guns, and I fire back, fire first , Priss' railgun throwing a tungsten carbide spike at Mach Fuck You right between his jaw. That regenerates, too, but the light building up around his chest goes dark, and in the split second I have before his neck and skull ooze back into place and he pulls out the penetrator I cut loose with Priss's chaingun, effortlessly popping the particle guns, flechettes riddling his joints – not cutting all the way through, but making it hard to move, just hard enough to move that I can move in, Lena's Knuckle Bombers blazing to life as I one-two-three slug craters of synthflesh in his pectorals, his abdomen, then engage Priss's RailFist and smash him across the jaw again at extreme speed.

Then, for good measure, I hit him with the Pulse-Strikers again, and lop his legs off with Celia's vibroblades.

He stands, all the same. Regenerating endlessly. I can't wear him down, I realize – that's not what this dream is meant to do. I have to finish him.

"Youghh," he slurs, "Argh wun – insufferable –"

I finish his sentence for him. "Motherfucker."

Then I tap into Nene's hackpack and trigger an orbital satellite to drop a half-megaton of explosive force channeled into a neutron beam on him.

He disintegrates instantly, doesn't even get time to scream–

And I wake up.

Everyone's clustered around me, expecting something.

I smile, unsure of myself.

"Celia…" I say. "I think it worked."

"Oh?" she says. "How so?"

"Well… I fought Largo and won."

Priss gasps. "Get the fuck out."

"I mean, it was a dream, I think, and I had my kin backing me up, and I had this crystal hardsuit that had all your weapons and I just kinda went for it and then I used Nene's powers to killsat him but before that he almost had me all mind-controlled and I don't know how I did it but my kin were there and I-" I stop. Realize how ridiculous it must sound.

Giggle, then laugh. "I'm sorry! It's just so strange, is all! One final trial I had to face before I could be a real girl in the most unexpected place!"

Priss blinks. "So you're good? Not mind-controlled, not about to rip anyone's throats out? 'Cause you were in there for like four hours"

I flutter my eyelashes at Priss. "Only if you want me to, baby."

Mackie sticks his tongue out. "Bleh. That's an image I would like to wipe from memory very soon."

"In any case," Celia says, standing up. "It seems as though the passive data from the Riastrad is well within operating parameters. I'm not entirely sure how your brain essentially hacked itself, but the end result seems to be stable and mappable. With any luck we'll be able to put the implants into limited production in a week or so, whereupon we'll really start to go to work on the new hardsuits. And if our streak of luck continues, nothing will come up to interrupt that process, and we'll be back on the street in a few months, more than ready to move fast and break things, to borrow old Silicon parlance. By which I mean absolutely fuck up GENOM and whatever schemes Quincy's underlings seek to perpetrate on innocent humanity and Boomerkind."

She's right, of course. We do get lucky. The implants take, the hardsuits are assembled, and we all think that maybe we will be able to control the flow of our missions. Give Sylvie an easy first job, Celia says.

Well.

Uh.

That last part doesn't really happen.