We spent the rest of the Saturday morning in the park, looking at the river, enjoying the breakfast I had brought and talking. Well, not just talking. We practised kissing a bit more and discovered that Sophia was the perfect height to kiss me, if she sat on my lap. Sadly, our time was limited, Sophia had to be at a function all afternoon, so we made plans to meet up the following day and after making sure that Galatea had access to her mobile device, I accompanied her home. Like that, Galatea was able to keep an eye on her, just in case something bad happened.

With that, I had the rest of my day for myself so I went to the bunker. I wanted to create something with my hands, the giddiness I had felt with Sophia had transformed in the itch I had to make something new. I wanted to make a gift for her, something useful that she could wear and that would protect her if we were out together.

My mind went over possible things to make, and one idea was to further improve her suit. Sure, the visor she was using was not bad but I wanted to protect her head with more than the flimsy shawl she was using. It felt stupid to have almost impenetrable armour covering everything. but one of the biggest weak points. To protect her pretty face, I adjusted her hood, giving it more structure and anchoring it to the neck piece of her suit. Like that, I was able to fit a mask into the hood, leaving about a cem clearance from her nose and making any identification impossible. It also looked seriously menacing, everywhere but on the visor, the basic colour of the mask was a grey-black that shifted depending on the light, giving it the appearance of a corporeal, black cloud. It had the usual features of voice-distortion, flash-protection and a heads-up display so Galatea could help out but it was not on the same level of environmental protection as my suit.

While I was working, I had another idea, as the black cloud-look of the mask reminded me of a particular character in one of my favorite sci-fi franchises. It reminded me of the background of the name Anath, and that Sophia had chosen that name for herself, so there might be a reason behind it. To me, Anath was an old-egyptian warrior goddess, wielding a sword and other tools, so a fitting weapon for her Anath-role would be a khopesh. My take on the ancient weapon might be a bit peculiar but I was certain it would serve her well.

My khopesh had the basic form of a khopesh, but that was it. For one, it had a serious cutting edge, just like my k-bar, it had a monomolecular-edge as well. In addition, I had added a small energy-gem into the pommel of the weapon, powering another built-in gimmick. The hook had a taser build in, allowing her to grab enemies and deliver a stunning, but ultimately non-lethal attack.

I spent the night in my bunker, after Galatea made sure that nobody was home and placed one of her drones in a spot to detect any family member heading home, far enough out to let me beat them there. Like that, I felt safe to spend the night and continue on my projects. Some time, during the night, I realized something. That morning, I had more physical contact to another human than in the previous decade combined. It was a sobering and depressing thought. I had enjoyed the contact, relished in it. It made me even more certain in my plans, I had to break free, or I would break.

One of those, was a way to protect myself from the current induced by strong electric flows, I was not sure I could take one of that electro-girls lighting strikes without problems. My suit was insulated to an awesome degree but the induction could cause short-term problems, locking my servos for a moment or two. But sadly, that might just be one of those ‘non-fixable’ problems, unless I totally changed the way my servos worked. While I would love to do so, I was lacking a lot of science.

To cure my frustrations on that problem, I made more gifts for Sophia. I had no idea if she knew how to use a khopesh, so I added spikes to a pair of gauntlets, giving her strikes more power and I made two extra blades, basically copies of my k-bar.

It was early afternoon when Galatea warned me that Sophia was coming closer to the bunker door, and I felt the giddiness return. I heard the door shut in the distance and a bit later, Sophia’s voice echoed through the bunker. “Honey, I’m home…”

The cliché expression caused me to giggle, it was a little incongruous, someone walking into a bunker as if it was a suburban dwelling, complete with white picket-fence. I walked over, greeted her and got a soft kiss in return, making me smile.

Happy to have her with me, I showed her the new toys I had made. The khopesh made her especially happy and she wanted to try it out for a bit. I had a few test-targets set up from my own weapons-testing and I watched her go to town with it. At first, she just tried movements out and those looked rather straightforward, mostly slashing or cleaving movements with a few added flourishes to make use of the hook. Then she started on the test-dummies and I had to admit that the combination of superpowered strength and an incredibly durable and sharp sword made for efficient destruction. Sure, my railgun and plasma-cannon had higher overall damage, but a lot less controlled.

After the testing, Sophia proposed a relaxing evening on the couch. I agreed and soon after, we were snuggled together, watching a sci-fi movie. I had to bite my tongue at the beginning so I did not start ranting about all the errors, inconsistencies and pure stupidity but at the end of the day, it was about fun, not realism so I focused on the warm body in my arms and just enjoyed the evening. During the climax of the film, however, we were interrupted by Galatea.

“Alex, Sophia, I think the two of you want to see this.” she said and after a short acknowledgement, she changed the scene and showed us a group of gangbangers gathering in the vicinity of a few old warehouses. It looked like they were mustering troops for something.

“Looks… entertaining.” Sophia said with a vicious, little smile on her face.

I thought about it and had to agree. If they were doing something big, I’d love to get in their way and repay the pain they had caused the last time. It had worked out in the end, but still, they deserved what was coming to them.

Both of us got into our costumes and for the first time we changed in different rooms, both of us a little shy now that we were in a relationship. I felt it was silly, but the feeling changed not one bit, just because of my rational opinion.

Once we had left the bunker, we let Galatea set us waypoints and it became something of a race. Anath had better acceleration and maneuverability but I had my new wave-drive, allowing me to ‘surf’ on a contained field under my boots, giving me higher top-speed and allowing me to move over water. The gang was still gathered in front of their warehouse, as if they were waiting for something.

Over com, Anath spoke. “Why did Galatea only spot them now? She explained to me the amount of drones she’s got and their capabilities. She should be able to find them easily, shouldn’t she?”

“She probably could. But she is expressly forbidden from using biometric recognition without specific orders. I don’t even want to know their identities. As long as they don’t go after us while out of costume, I want to return the favour. I don’t doubt that other groups could do what she does, just with more manpower and if they did, there would be no secret identities. I believe that the Guild exerts influence to prevent that and I really don’t want to piss them off.” I explained to Anath.

My own feelings were conflicted but I understood the basic idea. Sure, the government could probably crack down on any secret identities but would they really risk it? I knew that I would be able to overload my energy crystals and at full charge, they could explode like a small nuke. My railgun was not that bad, maybe three times the charge of the drones, but the plasma-cannon or my armour? Those would get in the vicinity of a little boy, or maybe even a fat man.

Soon, we were close to the warehouse, Anath beating me in our small race, thanks to the small alleys Galatea had sent us through. I tried another new feature of my boots, overcharging the hover-field just at the moment I pushed off the ground with my feets, allowing me to jump higher than normal. I was not quite sure how high I got, but it was enough to land on one of the higher warehouses and a moment later, Anath joined me.

From our high perch, we looked down on the gangbangers and I used my sensors to get a better picture of their warehouse and what I saw made my blood run cold. There were multiple tubes that looked like rocket-launchers and a few small boxes with a putty-like substance in them. My guess was that those contained plastic explosive. Galatea showed Anath the scan as well and I heard her swallow hard over com. No, we did not want them to get those weapons out of there.

Suddenly, our planning was interrupted when the warehouse door opened and the gangbanger-monk came out and started shouting orders and pointing towards us. I had no idea how they knew we were here but they knew.

I asked Anath for cover and started charging my plasma-cannon in hot-mode while using the railgun to blow a hole into the warehouse wall.

“Leave the warehouse or burn!” boomed in a distorted voice through the area and a few seconds later, the first plasma-bolt, glowing in an angry red, arced through the air and into the warehouse, heating the air inside enough to cause burns. No, I was not playing nice right now. A hail of bullets came down on us and Anath smashed something large out of the air, thrown at me from the monk while I shot two more bolts into the warehouse. By now, the munitions inside started going off, adding to the inferno. They must have had other explosives, or maybe just very bad plastic explosives, because suddenly the warehouse blew up in an impressive explosion. It was seriously a movie-quality explosion,

“Oops…” I said over com, causing Anath to giggle.

In the area before the warehouse, nobody was on their feet.

“You should leave. Now! HURRY!” Galatea ordered over com and I had never heard her so, commanding, causing Anath and me to turn on the spot and run. Again, Galatea placed way-points, this time guiding us to the river and telling me to carry Anath over. I did just that, picking her up in my arms and surfing with her. It was quite a bit harder, I was hardly used to the normal operation of my wave-drive and with her in my arms, my balance was off but I managed to get us to the other side.

“What happened?” I asked Galatea.

“You had incoming. I don’t know who it was, but after that explosion, I would guess ‘Everyone’ would be a good idea, so I felt that getting out of there would be the best course of action.”

While we made our way back to the bunker, guarded by Galatea’s overwatch, my mind went somewhere else. I had warned them to leave the warehouse. But had I just killed a bunch of people? It was a sobering thought. I believed that I was prepared to do anything, pay any cost, to get my freedom. Had I just become a murderer to achieve my goal?