Hey guys. Just a slight trigger warning for suicide ideation with this chapter, and frankly for the rest of the story.

I Love to Hate You

What. The. Fuck.

Emilee felt she had a fair grasp of the basics when it came to wielding bioresonance. Pull the threads, and things change. So long as she could see them, it was usually straightforward. It got more complicated when it came to the more strenuous acts, like influencing multiple minds at once, which required weaving a web, up to warping time…which, well, she wasn't sure how that worked. She'd got lucky a few times.

The more forbidden shit, like raising the dead, was a new one, although in hindsight animating a corpse isn't that hard.

Fully creating a person…Emilee had spent a long time thinking about that one with whatever was left of her broken brain. And of course, it had to be the white-haired bitch she'd thought about squeezing the life out of for the past…Emilee could only guess how long by now.

But to be honest, that wasn't really what was bothering her. When she'd finally wrapped her hands around the woman's tiny neck, there was practically no fight…no will to live from her. After all she'd put her through, she at least expected a bioresonant apocalypse, but all she got was a limp body and eyes that looked like she'd enjoyed it.

Who the hell was this depraved woman? She wasn't supposed to want her to kill her. That just ruined all the fun.

Your mind's a fun one to be in.

"Fuck you," Emilee huffed, lying back in the bed her clear-walled containment cell had to offer, tossing the nightstand trinket into the air over and over. "I'm so tired of your voice."

I don't really understand—

GET OUT.

Emilee grinned to herself as silence was granted, sighing with a heavy rush of bliss. That felt good.

It lasted until there was a knock against the glass.

"Can you at least tell me where we are?" Ariane asked, now standing at the glass between them. Her Rotfront accent was extremely heavy, but she spoke with pure fluency, just as she did with every other language bioresonance had granted to her. "None of this looks familiar."

Emilee shrugged. "I'm sure the Nation has told you all about the impoverished, barely functioning, on the brink of collapse, yet impenetrable floating cities of Buyan, where they let rapists go unpunished and let crime run rampant?"

Ariane's eyes panned up for a moment, seemingly checking her memory. "Yeah?"

She spread her arms out. "Here you are. Impressed? You'll just have to trust me when I say only most of that is bullshit."

Why the fuck was she even talking to this bitch?

"No one is forcing you to talk to me," Ariane frowned.

This box is.

"You asked me to stay out of your head. You could at least do the same."

Emilee was about to ignore her entirely, but she bit her tongue, frustration at the reasonableness of her request boiling in her gut.

"Fair…enough," she bit out. "I guess you were literally born yesterday."

"No, I wasn't," she denied. "I still have all my memories."

"Yeah? Even the ones where you tried to steal my face and imprison me in some bioresonant death box?"

"No!" Ariane pleaded. "I don't even know who you are! How many times do I have to say it?"

Emilee spread out her arms, letting the trinket levitate for a moment over her chest. "Then I guess you don't."

"What you're saying is impossible. I hadn't heard another mind for nearly a decade until I last went into kryo. It couldn't have been me!"

"You don't have a clue," she sighed, retrieving the trinket to continue tossing it into the air. "Bioresonance doesn't restrict your consciousness to one personage. How the hell else do you think we blink from place to place?"

"Blink? I've never seen anyone do that before."

Emilee couldn't resist grinding her teeth. Damn Nation brats.

"Replikas can't blink because their minds are artificial. They can't stretch and squeeze like a natural-born human can."

"Human?" Ariane trailed off. "Oh…right. Gestalt."

Emilee raised a brow, catching the trinket to finally look her way. "Who taught you they were the same?"

Ariane bit her lip, seeming to finally be unwilling to open her mouth for once.

"There's no cameras here."

Her crimson eyes panned towards the clearly obvious monitoring lens at the end of the cell block.

"Listen smartass. You know what I mean," Emilee huffed. "Obscenity to the State is only a fine here."

Ariane was unmoved, her brow only furrowing in confusion.

"It's a fuckin joke, by the Empress, what a dense…"

"Have you ever been to Rotfront?" she asked, seemingly out of the blue, but Emilee could feel a certain anger swirling around her mind as she continued to stare from the glass.

"No," Emilee answered. "Most of my adult life has been on Vineta."

"So, you have no idea what it's like to have eyes on you every second of every cycle, spending each minute of your life worrying if you said the wrong word when asking your mother how her day was, or wondering if taking your trash out at night instead of midday makes you look suspicious."

Emilee turned away, focusing on her physical activity. "No. I don't."

"So maybe instead of mocking me every other sentence, you can give me a little legroom when I'm more hesitant to speak than you are."

A growl rumbled in her throat. Instinctively she wanted to mock her for being so uptight, but then that would just be cruelty, something Emilee didn't have much of a stomach for. Useful cruelty was fine, but senselessness made her no different than the mindless replikas they'd come across on Lager.

"Very well, Ariane. We can table that for later, I suppose," Emilee conceded. "As I was saying earlier, just because you don't remember trying to take my face doesn't mean you didn't do it. Time, after all, means nothing to people like you and me. The past and the future are canvases for us to enact our will…the future being the easier of the two to influence."

Ariane frowned. "But normal people can influence the future with their actions in the present. Are you talking about actual time travel?"

Emilee had to stifle a chuckle at the obviously silly implication, doing her best to respect Ariane's request. "Time travel is too simplistic. Bioresonance can allow us to exist outside of time, and our movements leave behind echoes that influence our corporeal forms. It's how the Empress was able to klimaform the planets of our system before we had reliable space travel, just as an example."

"I thought that was still a mystery. How do you know?"

Her eternal glow basked her as an armored red hand gently grasped her shoulder.

Emilee exhaled deeply. "Because I was there."

Ariane gasped. "But that would make you…oh," she seemed to click, putting the pieces together. "So…when do you come from?"

It was only then did she realize that she'd just told this random stranger more than she'd ever revealed to anyone not named Suzuya, and a cauldron of anger began bubbling in her chest. How could she possibly lower her defenses so recklessly? Was it really that comforting to be able to talk to another bioresonant?

Maybe it was. Maybe Ariane wasn't so bad, and maybe she could finally have someone to relate to for once.

Maybe that was exactly what she wanted her to think.

It didn't matter. She couldn't trust her. Not yet. Not for a long time. No matter how tempting it was to unload all her burdens on someone who might actually know the right words to say, she couldn't let her guard down. She still had no idea what had happened to her on Lager and what lengths she'd had to take to escape the trap Ariane had seemingly laid out for her. She needed more information, and it would take time to get it out of the white-haired woman who seemed nothing like the entity she'd been at war with.

Still, she seemed rather curious about learning to control her powers. Perhaps she could use that to her advantage. Emilee could feel her even now probing her mind, wondering why she'd taken her time before answering her next question, but Ariane would find nothing of value. Despite her obvious potential, she was yet to learn the techniques of hiding her thoughts from others, and if she was ignorant of those, Emilee would still be able to plot reliably.

"That's off-limits," Emilee finally answered with a firmness that wasn't too harsh to seem suspicious, but enough to make the point. "And doesn't matter anyway. I'm here now, and so are you."

Ariane's groan in disappointment was subtle, but obvious. Good.

"Forgive me if being on a starship light years away one day and waking up on Buyan the next is unable to square itself in my head."

"Get used to it," Emilee warned. "This is the boring stuff."

Ariane didn't spend much more of her breath asking Emilee more questions. Trying to get anything constructive from her was like pulling teeth, an experience she was unfortunately well acquainted with. Most bioresonant people she'd known in hindsight were replikas, who either hid the extent of their power for the most part, or gestalts, who didn't even want to mention it in the first place. Emilee was nothing like anyone she'd ever met, seemingly so in control of her gift that it had become part of herself entirely instead of some affliction she couldn't wait to get rid of. Ariane herself didn't even know she was bioresonant until she had left her old world behind for good…or so she had once thought.

To be back was so…wrong, in a way. Nothing about it felt right. She should be beyond elated, so relieved that her prayers had been answered, thrusted back into a healthy body and away from the Nation she had learned to despise so deeply, but all she could feel was…disappointment? She was alive and free…what more could she have possibly asked for?

Perhaps it was her bioresonance that was warning her that this blessing did not come without a cost, that it was all a lie that her own power had convinced herself of…but it felt so real. The dreams she'd experienced in kryo had inconsistencies and irregularities that she'd learned to detect, but she couldn't find any of them here. Her fingers, her toes, her legs and arms…she could move them all at will, test their feeling, work out hunches; the depth of her thought in this place just felt too complex.

So, if this wasn't a dream, then how did she get here?

She'd already tried to delve into her memories, strolling through them with detail only a mind of her strength could muster, but there was nothing to be found. The last thing she could remember was entering kryo without a waking date, only days after she'd discovered that…

…she couldn't remember. No matter how much she'd focused or begged the stars to grant her clarity, the glaring dread in the pit of her stomach had no face to attach to. Her mission had been a failure, and hope of rescue had been a laughable prospect. As her ship deteriorated and the radiation from the flight drive began to flood the ship she'd called home for over eight years, she hadn't been ready to die yet, even though living had become so utterly pointless.

Why would she press on? Why subject herself to such suffering? Was peaceful oblivion such a terrifying concept?

It was all she had ever wanted, and that fact was her most potent memory. Perhaps that was why she felt such disappointment. Her reasons for death had left her, and her excuses to leave this world no longer had the same sway in her mind as they still did in her heart.

What cruel monster had forced her to live on this way?

She felt the urge to ask Emilee, the only other living being in this place, but already knew the answer she'd receive. She'd already tried to kill her as soon as she'd woken up, so she'd probably just tell her to take a long walk off a short plank.

What fun that would be.

She heard Emilee grumble in disgust. "Your thoughts are like acid in the air. What's with the death wish?"

Ariane felt her teeth grind. "I thought we agreed to stay out of each other's heads."

"That's not how it works, hun," she patronized. "Especially not for you. You're like a radioactive isotope everywhere you walk, infecting everyone's mind with your demented thoughts. Why else do you think they shoved you in that box?"

Exhaustion overtook her, the will to respond crushed under her shoulder as she turned away in her bed.

"You don't care, do you?" Emilee accused, her voice still at the same volume despite the pillow muffling her ear. "All those undead reps and melted flesh heaps. It was all just a means to an end."

"For the millionth time," Ariane sighed. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Then let's see for ourselves."

Ariane was in what looked like a mess hall, a dead eule unit staring up at her with vacant eyes, and a storch with wrists bound and a stare that could kill.

"Wha—," she stammered. "How did we…"

"It's just a memory. Relax."

The storch's expression melted into raw terror, trying to slink away from her against the wall.

"What do you know? She's scared shitless of you."

"But I—,"

Now they were somewhere much darker, and the most horrifying thing she'd ever seen nearly made her scream…a kolibri without any of its synthetic skin curled into the fetal position surrounded by soldiers.

"This is the last thing I saw before I saw you," Emilee explained, appearing on the other side of the body, to which Ariane had to force herself to turn away, unable to stomach it any longer. "Before you tried to rip my mind from my head."

The smell…she felt like she'd faint.

Hands clasped around her head from behind, forcing her to look at the body.

"YOU did this, Ariane," Emilee growled, her breath against the back of her neck sending shivers down her spine. "Don't ever run away from your work. The Song can't handle its conductors being reckless."

Words raced through her head. Too many at once. Sentences became paragraphs. Entire books read themselves in mere moments. None of them gave her the words she needed.

She just wanted to be safe again.

Safe.

SAFE!

The smell was gone.

Emilee's hands softened against her head, and slowly traced themselves to her shoulders, gently squeezing.

"Now we're getting somewhere."

Ariane could hardly believe it…she was home. The same kitchen she remembered seeing her mother cook in every day. The windows crusted in frost as the endless snow covered the mountains all around them. The soft carpet against her feet…

Silverware clattered against each other, and her moment was ruined.

"Do you make a habit of going through people's things without permission?" Ariane asked as Emilee helped herself to the surroundings. Her surroundings.

"I'm sure you'll forgive me," Emilee snarked, shutting the drawer. "Explain magpie to me."

Ariane frowned. "The bird that likes to steal shiny things? Kind of like you…"

"You really are a smartass," Emilee sighed, and proceeded to turn the volume up on the radio transmitted her mother often used to maximum, only to hear obnoxious static. "Does it mean anything when it comes to radio…uh, stuff."

"What? I can't hear you!" she shouted over the blare in a coy manner, to which Emilee finally turned it down with a look of strained patience. "No, not really, but any signal could be named anything."

"Wow, how insightful," Emilee deadpanned, turning towards the book laid on the desk beside the transmitter. "I'm sure you had to dig deep for that one."

Ariane found herself beside Emilee, and with a death grip around the woman's wrist. Her fingers had nearly grazed against the book's cover…one of a yellow man outlined in red on a black cover.

"Hey…" Emilee looked over to her, the woman's taller stature making her displeasure towards the abrupt intrusion on her personal space more pronounced. "This book means something to you?"

"It's my mother's!" she blurted, not releasing her wrist. "It doesn't…I can't let you touch it without her permission."

She fully expected Emilee to shove her aside and carry on…but she remained in her place, her violet eyes searching for something elsewhere.

"I…sorry," Ariane apologized, slowly letting go. "I honestly don't know what came over me."

Why was she apologizing? Emilee would never show her the same courtesy…

"No," Emilee spoke, her gaze slowly returning to their present moment. "No, you did good."

Ariane blinked. "I…what?"

Footsteps trudged against the snow outside, a sound so unexpected Ariane couldn't even move. Before she had a chance to look, the two of them were through the wooden door on the far side and into her tiny bedroom, looking through the empty keyhole. A scream nearly loosed itself from her throat, but Emilee's hand muffled any noise she could've possibly made.

The front door slid open, and in walked a LSTR replika unit carrying a standard-issue pistol. Tension between their minds thickened like cement turning to concrete, and the exchange at the sight made it nearly impossible for Ariane to string together any coherent thoughts. Why was a replika unit in her home? Why didn't it feel so…invasive?

The unit looked around, and an untold longing stirred in her heart, memories churning within her mind that felt so powerful, yet were so fractured and incomplete. Their name was at the tip of her tongue, but her mind was blank.

"Alina?" they called out…their voice only turning her surge of emotion into a maelstrom, and if it hadn't been for Emilee's impossibly strong vice grip around her and her mouth, she would've rushed through the door and begged the replika for answers. "Alina? Are you here?"

Familiarity stirred around Emilee, which must've been a shock to her, because it was gone before Ariane could explore it any further.

Who the fuck was Alina?

Why did that…why did that make her so angry?

The unit didn't look around much longer. Like a machine sent to complete a task, they swiped something off the radio desk and proceeded to promptly exit the house.

"Interesting," Emilee mused to herself.

Ariane tried to ask what was interesting, but only muffled nonsense came out of her mouth.

"You need to get better at analyzing your surroundings. A little replika almost made you scream? Really?"

Ariane hissed an expletive in Rotfront dialect that was again muffled by Emilee's hand.

"Only nice girls can talk," Emilee chided, to which Ariane could now tell she was enjoying this a little too much. "I'll let you go if you can be quiet for ten seconds. One…two…thre—hey!"

Ariane pulled at her hair bun, freeing her mouth and herself at last while her captor's brown hair fell to its full length, covering her eyes.

"Only nice girls don't get their hair pulled," Ariane jibed, and couldn't help but chuckle as Emilee struggled to pull it back into a bun. "So, who's Alina? You seemed to recognize the name."

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Emilee deflected.

"You're lying. You know exactly who that is," Ariane accused. "What? You're afraid of someone digging through your past?" she gestured around her bedroom.

Emilee finally secured her hair and bound it tightly with a hairband. "When you search the dark, you get dark things, little girl."

"Ooooo," Ariane mocked, wiggling her fingers. "Threatening a woman with…what did you call it? A death wish?"

"I can get very creative…"

"Nothing will compare to what I'VE BEEN THROUGH!" Ariane shouted, her voice projected through the cosmos and beyond, enough to finally, euphorically extract a single droplet of fear from Emilee's gaze. "NOTHING!"

The woman raised her hands in an easing gesture. "Ariane…don't do something stu—don't do something you'll regret…please."

"Regret? I don't even know what's right or wrong. I've had all this power, and all it's ever done is ruin me. It's supposed to make my mind greater than any other…and yet I can't even remember…" she was sobbing, and she didn't even know why. "…I can't even remember her name…"

"Who?" Emilee furrowed her brow. "You mean Elster?"

The world ended.

Elster.

"You…" Emilee grumbled to herself, finding her surreal surroundings pierce her heart with a dread that oddly filled her with a sense of nostalgia. "…okay, maybe this one is my fault."

Ariane was…well, she was here, but also everywhere. Emilee could feel her expansive essence permeating itself into every corner of the space she had forged in a period of time so fast that milliseconds weren't viable enough to measure it. Gravity was unreliable, substances did not take their usual properties…but of all the wildness of the human mind, structure tended to be its first impulse.

"Ariane…you have to—," she was cut off as she tried to step forward, finding her feet sealed against a massive canvas of dried paint. "—you have to face your trauma, or…well, your brain will do this."

She tried to force her feet free, but to no avail. Normally she'd just bust herself out without much issue, but that would be like lighting a match inside a barrel of gunpowder.

"I can't help you if you don't let me," she called out, her voice echoing into the distorted void, other images of past events playing out over an endless space.

…DON'T WANT YOUR HELP.

Emilee winced, the weight of Ariane's power squeezing her skull with a pressure that could threaten to drain her brain matter out of her ears. So badly she just wanted to unleash her own power and beat the reckless woman into submission, but it would be no use. This wasn't her home field, so she'd have to play on guest rules.

"That's fine," she admitted, stifling a groan as her vision began to tunnel. "I know you probably don't understand what's happening, and you might be a little scared—."

SHUT UP!

She felt her bones begin to quake and groan, and a scream loosed itself from her throat. Every muscle in her body pleaded for her to fight back, but she bit her tongue, pocketing the urge for a bit longer.

"Ariane, please!" she begged, her vision turning to squiggles against darkness. "This isn't you! I…I—AGH!—I know you're not a monster!"

The pressure let up for a moment.

"Look into my mind! You'll see…you'll see that you're not alone—!"

It was like a long needle stabbed itself into her frontal lobe, and she unleashed the loudest scream she'd ever heard…but she held fast, clinging desperately to life; to a promise she'd never made to a part of herself she'd never known. She could not die in this place…

The pain released itself from her, and she gasped, tears bursting out of her eyes as her feet were released from the paint, and she collapsed onto the flaky canvas. Breaths were so hoarse that she hardly felt any air reach her lungs, and terror forced her muscles into an endless spasm, shuddering uncontrollably as she slowly curled into a fetal position. She couldn't fathom what made her tears fall more: the pain itself, or the humiliation of having to beg for release.

"Hey, hey it's okay," someone soothed, this voice sparking firecrackers of recognition in her heart, but blank confusion in the depths of her tattered mind. "Don't try to move."

She was swept up into strong arms, far too weak to protest, and was immediately hit with the scent of a fresh repair patch.

"Damn rep…" she croaked. "Let me go…"

"Shhhh," they eased, the onslaught of sparks within her chest only growing. "Try to clear your mind. Just focus on my voice."

Emilee had never felt so safe in this person's grip…like the whole universe could descend upon them and everything would be just fine.

"Remember the line in that shitty movie we always watch?" they chuckled, entering another room that practically reeked of medical equipment.

Emilee's muscles in her mouth moved as if they'd been trained for years. "My service to you pales in comparison to any service to myself."

What the fuck?

It was finally happening. She could feel her mind slipping away, allowing another to take its place. Only mere moments had to pass until this form would be lost to her forever, and her anchor into this space free to be abused by another being. How could she have ever let her guard down? Why hadn't she disposed of this body when all hope was lost in the first place?

"Ah, yeah," they snickered. "So cheesy."

What was this? Why could she still think? Why was she still…her? Her body was totally lost, carrying what was left of her conscience inside a vessel that no longer belonged to her. Why hadn't she been purged?

They set her body on a medical bed, her muscles feeling a desperate ache so powerful she couldn't stop the groan that burst from her lungs.

"I'm so tired," Emilee whined.

The replika's hand firmly rested itself on her shoulder as they tapped away at an interface, and the relentless hum of a scanning apparatus ran itself up and down her body.

"You're going to be alright…" they insisted, but this time Emilee could hear the uncertainty in their voice. "I promise."

Despair rattled her mind, and a distant scream barely registered in her ears as the scanning continued, begging for something.

Begging for something to stop.

The interface returned three negative tones.

"Elster," the name formed in her lips, and Emilee's eyes focused on the face she had seen countless times in her dreams.

"Just…stay still," Elster commanded, this time with desperation shivering with her chin. "I'm going to run it again."

"Elster…I can't…" Emilee practically begged. "I can't do this anymore."

"Just stay still! I'll run it again. They're probably just false alarms."

"Elster…" tears began to flow from her eyes. "…don't be selfish. Please."

"I've fixed everything else on this ship. I'll fix this too. I don't care what it takes—"

ELSTER!

Emilee was now propped up on the bed, meeting the replika's gaze at level with their hands now clasped together. "Promise me…"

Elster's expression was one of defeat, but the determination in her hands was almost strong enough to crack her bones. She remained there, unmoving, unable to meet her gaze…until she slowly turned away.

"I promise…" the replika said and disappeared into the ship's darkened hallway.

LIAR!

Years passed in seconds. She felt her body age, weaken and rot away in its motionless state. No matter how powerful she was, the continuous march of time never relented; the vessels she had grown so used to jumping in and out of had become her prison…left to watch as the spacecraft around her deteriorated until only death and darkness remained.

Death would've come for the fortunate…to which she was not.

She never saw Elster again.

At last, Emilee understood.

Instead of fighting for control of the vessel, she let go, allowing her consciousness to slip into inactivity and invite the proper host to assume its territory. She felt herself drift through space, layers and layers of time passing through her until recognition was a luxury she could barely comprehend. The deep red she remembered remained down the tunnel of color that consumed her, growing further and further away as she fell. Smells of rotting flesh became that of pleasant perfume…then to gunpower and the salty ocean.

At last, she slowly stopped.

This place…she'd been here before, but it had never been so obvious. She remembered the pathways that Ariane's mind had formed upon her deterioration, and how easily they had come into being. Emilee had never managed to form something so vivid, as all her recollections of the past and future were nothing more than shifting moments that displayed themselves in her present. Only once before had she been able to travel…and that had come about without her input.

Was Ariane truly this powerful? Was the Song itself at her beck and call, able to be reforged on a whim without protest? Emilee's power had always come through coercion and dominance, the side to which she had seen Ariane employ when she had attempted to siphon away her mind…but this…

This was beyond her.

She'd been going about it all wrong. Ariane was not a woman to be whipped into line…she was to be unleashed, for this could change the very fabric of humanity itself, just as the Grand Empress had done before her.

A woman that the Nation had just…thrown away.

She had to find her…train her to get a grip on her power…or the tragedy her original vessel had faced would only happen once again, over and over for eternity until the custodian of their universe grew bored enough of the charade.

She'd do anything.

"Ariane!" she called out, but the airless void didn't even recognize her voice. The stupidity of the act prompted her to smack her palm against her head. "Idiot…"

…Ariane! Find me!

On cue, the entire space began to close in on her, and only light remained to embody her essence.

Waves.

Ariane was waiting on that beach for her, nose buried between her knees as her white hair flocked to the minimal breeze. It was long, certainly far longer than Emilee had ever allowed her own to grow to…like the first time she saw her face.

Of course, now, she wasn't sure if that had been her at all. Perhaps she had misremembered, and now as filling in her face in hindsight as her memories became less and less reliable. Maybe she'd had it wrong from the start, and she'd strangled the wrong woman straight out of the bed that had birthed her.

She shook her head. No…this was her…the same person who had been trying to communicate with her all this time. There was no point in coming up with excuses anymore.

Emilee had been wrong.

The words wouldn't even form in her throat, so instead she just assumed a similar posture beside the woman, and followed her gaze out to the veiled island in the distance among the empty horizon.

"It's right there, you know," Ariane gestured, her tone reminiscent of someone about to do something reckless. "Just a stone toss away."

Emilee narrowed her eyes, and before she admitted she had no idea what she was talking about, the answer formed on her lips.

"Death?"

Ariane nodded. "I remember everything now. I wanted it for so long, yet I was so deathly afraid of it. My own power that had only brought death to everyone I'd ever known wouldn't let me have it myself."

Emilee couldn't even imagine what could possibly override her own indomitable will to live…but after experiencing what Ariane had gone through, she was starting to wonder.

The woman beside her began to chuckle darkly and proceeded to chuck a rock into the sea. "I have no idea what the fuck is happening."

She snorted with equal fervor. "That's just it. You never really will."

"I shouldn't even be here," Ariane shook her head, propped up by her arms as she spread her legs and looked towards the sky. "The last thing I remember was setting my kryo pod without a waking date…then it's just…hazy."

"What about Elster?" Emilee asked.

"What about her?" Ariane shrugged, and the harshness in her tone painted a lick of fear in Emilee's chest. "She was rotting synth flesh and dried oxidant by then."

Emilee gulped. "So…she died before you…"

"Need me to spell it out in my natural tongue?" the waves crashed with a more violent fervor, enough for the water to nearly reach her toes. "What's it matter?"

"I…guess it doesn't," Emilee accepted, taking the hint. "That's all you remember?"

"Right up until you strangled me? Yes."

She felt her teeth grind against each other. She was really trying to be patient this time around, but every word out of her mouth just nipped away at her bit by bit.

Ariane leaned forward, staring intently into her eyes as if she was waiting for something.

"What?" Emilee asked.

Ariane gave her a sideways look. "No threatening me? Did I manage to finally steal your face when I wasn't looking?"

It hurt just to think about it…like needles against her jugular as the muscles began their first movements. Acid bubbled in her stomach, and it felt like she would have to vomit if she had any chance of uttering the words.

"I'm sorry, I'm just…you know, sorry."

Ariane blinked.

"And I uh…I don't want you to die…anymore. I'd rather you not died, actually. I think humanity would really appreciate it if you uh…you know, stuck around a little bit—"

The woman had wrapped her in the tightest hug she'd ever experienced, and words had left her forever.

"Thank you…Emilee," the woman sniveled, on the verge of tears. "You have no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that."

Emilee blinked, still stunned by the gesture. "What?"

Two small hands clapped together, and they were both back in their rooms with their heads leaning on opposite sides of the same glass.

"I knew you'd be friends!" the Child Empress cheered. "I just knew it."

I always knew you'd be friends.

So, this was a little ambitious for me, bringing Ariane into the fray here…but I gotta be honest, she's been the character I've wanted to explore most. Don't worry, there's still plenty of twists and turns to come, and of course everything isn't always as it seems, but I hope you guys have enjoyed her so far.

Stay tuned and stay safe.