Wynn and Tate were up and loitering patiently outside when I awoke. I imagined they probably got up with the sun and had been waiting for a couple of hours, but Wynn waved off my apologies saying he had nowhere to be anyway, and that was kind of the whole point of living out here.

Regardless, they took off after a brief breakfast, promising to visit again soon. AEGIS seemed sad to see them go, even though it seemed like she didn’t get along with them too well last night. She was quieter and more pensive than usual in general, and I was a little worried I’d offended her by bringing them over, somehow.

Knowing her, she was probably just worrying about them.

The mass-fab had run through the night and was finished already. My plan for the day was to load it up for AEGIS and then do some foraging and leave her in peace for a while to sort through her shiny new data.

“You ready for this thing?” I asked, hefting the crystal. It was a cylinder about two feet long and half a foot in diameter, perfectly flawlessly smooth and completely without imperfection, yet when looking inside, instead of seeing a convex distortion of the other side, a microscopic geometric lattice revealed itself by casting abstract geometric reflections. It was a little bizarre and disorienting to look into, so I tried to avoid it, as I carried the massive thing to the AEGIS box.

“There’s a port on the side. It should just look like a round plate, if you push against it, it should open inwards,” AEGIS informed me. I had to do some serious looking to find the spot she was talking about, as it was basically just a slightly more circular pattern of dirt at this point. Of course the port refused to open so I spent the next 15 minutes sweeping away dirt and banging away at it as delicately as possible with the biggest hammer I had, while enduring AEGIS’ constant worried glances.

She was also blushing for some reason, and I missed what was missing. I tried to ignore her and went back to banging away at her box.

Finally, the panel dipped inward, and it swung in and out of the way, revealing a large dark hole, deep enough that I couldn’t see the other end, the edges of which were studded with contacts of some kind. It looked like a snug fit.

“Okay,” I asked again. “You ready for this thing, now?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Okay. Here we go.”

I hefted the data encoding crystal, lined it up carefully with the slot, and pushed it in.

AEGIS screamed.

“Are you okay?” I asked, starting to pull the crystal out, my heart slamming in my chest.

“D-dont!”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pull it out. S-sorry. I just…wasn’t prepared. Oh my god. The system is making new data connections like…like…c-crazy.” She was sweating and breathing very quickly, and paused her frantic, manic typing to fan herself briefly.

“P-put the rest in. Slowly,” she said.

“Uh, okay.” I gave the end of the crystal a gentle but insistent shove and watched her as it sunk further in. Her knees buckled and she bit her bottom lip, almost doubling over and leaning on her keyboard.

“Oh god, this is what I needed. It’s…it’s…so big! So much data!” she moaned, shuddering bodily.

“I don’t think I want to do this anymore,” I said. “This feels really, reallydirty.”

“No, don’t you dare stop. You’re almost done. Just a little more,” she gasped at me, now leaning her entire upper body on the keyboards and standing with her shuddering knees pointed at each other.

“You are so not helping,” I gritted, and pushed the rest of the core in. It settled inside with a satisfied-sounding snap-hiss and a final flustered squeak of approval from AEGIS.

“So. You uh, okay there?” I asked. I was trying not to stare, but she was all…bent over, and distracted. A mess of her red hair stuck to the side of her face while she breathed deep and giggled at me.

“Better than okay. This is amazing. So much data streaming by already. This baby might be my ticket out of here. Probably not, but maybe. Oh how nice that’d be, I’d get to thank you in person. She gave me a saucy wink and grin. OMG, I am just so…satisfied right now, I don’t think you even know.”

She continued giggling like a slightly-disturbed, manic school girl. I considered that possibly she liked computers a little bit too much.

“As for you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she repeated. “Maybe I will get out of here someday and be able to thank you in person, but until then, thank you.”

“You are definitely welcome. I’m uh, glad you enjoyed it. I’ll, uh, leave you to it? Come check on you later?”

“Sure thing. I’ve got tons to do now, and some of this stuff is really interesting. I found more bear facts, if you’re interested.”

“Maybe later. Gotta go, y’know, not starve to death. Think I’ll try my own hand at fishing.”

“Okay, GLHF. And stay safe out there!”

I wandered randomly southwards until I hit the river, and then followed the current west towards the lake. I kept my eyes open in case Wynn and Tate were still around, but they’d wandered off to wherever it was they were going. The lakeside seemed much emptier without them, but holding the rod they’d given me gave me some small comfort, as I resolved to catch my own dinner this time.

My mind drifted back to AEGIS again. There was something seriously wrong with that girl, and I wasn’t sure if I should be seeing red flags, or diving in head-first. She wasn’t a very sexual person, normally dressed, no makeup, maybe a little flirtatious, but I felt like every time I talked with her it was a titillating, almost sexually frustrating experience.

I wasn’t sure if that was just her nature, or if she was innocent and oblivious yet hot as hell, or if she was deliberately playing with me. And I wasn’t sure I cared…it seemed obvious enough that she was into me at least somewhat. My first ever girlfriend, maybe, and she was a prisoner amnesiac. I wasn’t sure what that said about me.

My mind stopped wandering as the line pulled in my hands. I pulled back, but the rod bent…was it supposed to do that? There wasn’t a reel or anything on this simple rod, just string and a pole. I tried to remember how Wynn had landed them yesterday, but I’d been more paying more attention to his stories than his fishing style.

After a couple of minutes of frantically pulling the fish this way and that, I hadn’t made any progress anywhere and was beginning to feel bad for the damn thing. I was here to kill and eat it, not drag it through the water until it died of boredom. Not sure what else to do, I channeled a little electricity down the rod.

The response was instantaneous. The struggling stopped, and the fish bobbed to the surface, dead as anything. Even with it no longer resisting, I still had no idea how to get it out of the water using the line, and did this awkward dance of holding the stick way up while backing up to get it swinging over the shore. Maybe I’d just chosen some poor terrain, I don’t know.

But as my dad liked to say, if it looked stupid and it worked, it wasn’t stupid.

Before long I’d landed another couple of fish and started to pack up. I didn’t have a nice knife to gut them, just some rusty disintegrating crap from the ops building, which I was pretty sure would give me tetanus if I used it on my food. I’d have ask AEGIS to assimilate me a real one.

Which reminded me of my train of thought before I’d pulled up my first fish, and the reality of what I’d witnessed. At the time, I’d been very…focused…on her reactions and didn’t really have any leftover brain capacity to wonder why. But thinking about it here, in the outdoors, removed from the situation and all the excitement of the moment…

“Man, what the hell was that?” I had to ask.

There was obviously something weird going on with AEGIS overall. Nobody just kidnaps a girl and locks her in a room for no reason, much less giving her a rig that would put most pro gamers to shame, and presumably access to facilities and food.

The amnesia was another thing. I didn’t think she was faking it, given her absolute lack of reaction before hearing about some things, and then her strong opinions afterwards. She was either telling the truth or a fantastic actor, but that would still beg the question of why she’d be lying to me to begin with? If I were truly cynical, I might think she was an XPCA agent here to keep me docile and keep tabs on me, but if that were the case, why make me dig her up in a convoluted chain of events where I could have easily missed her? Didn’t add up at all.

Which left one very obvious answer that I wasn’t sure either of us were ready to face. She was another Exhuman, like Saga, who’d been imprisoned. Maybe her powers kept her from being killed, but they still managed to lobotomize her or otherwise make her forget, and maybe her powers were some kind of technomancy, allowing her to build her rig and the AEGIS box out of whatever she found?

Or heck, if she was an Exhuman, her powers could be anything. She could be able to create and deploy millions of the boxes for all I knew. Stranger Exhumans had been found.

I got back home and peeked inside to say hello to her before heading back out to start a fire for dinner. She was absorbed in her work but perked up noticeably when I came in, and I think she appreciated me stopping in. Even for a stupid teen like me, the hints were pretty obvious.

Which was one of many reasons I didn’t think I could broach the topic of her being Exhuman. From personal experience, I knew how horrible it was to have that bombshell dropped on you, and I recalled the conversations we’d had about Exhumans…thought of all the horrible things I’d said about them, about me, and tried to imagine twisting those words around towards her instead. It made my stomach drop.

As far as I knew, she was an innocent prisoner who wouldn’t, and couldn’t hurt anyone. As far as she knew, too. The images of the XPCA soldiers’ bodies came to mind again, unbidden. I would fight to keep her innocence intact.

I cooked up two of the fish and dissimilated the third for later. I’d been putting away food — or more technically accurate, organic molecule fragments — with every meal now, trying to maintain a small bank in case I got hurt or sick. AEGIS always gave me an approving smile when I did, taking care of myself just like she asked, and had promised to make something tastier than the protein goo which had been her first culinary disaster. It often felt like a waste when my stomach was often so empty to be disintegrating food, but tonight with two full fish for dinner, it was hardly a sacrifice.

I ate outside, enjoying the last hours before sundown and trying to stay out of AEGIS’ hair so she could focus on her work. It was a lovely evening. The last few nights had been getting colder, and today was no different, but I had a warm fire in front of me, and there wasn’t any wind to tear through my clothes. I could just sit and eat and enjoy the nature around me.

I heard a distant keening sound, and sat up attentively, trying to pinpoint the noise. What was that? A persistent sort of whine, or a dim roar? It seemed to be growing louder, and in the distance over the trees, I could see a flock of birds taking flight, startled by whatever was making the noise.

It was too loud to be a motor, but sounded too close and too low to be an aircraft. I realized what it was the same moment it came into view, a human-sized spec racing over the treetops, a trail of shimmering blue plasma in its wake.

I swore and put my dinner away inside, telling AEGIS not to worry and to be quiet. Last thing I needed was for her to be discovered. Then I went outside and jogged west towards the nearest trees, to pick a more favorable battleground and hopefully put some distance between us and The Bunker.

It took less than a minute for her to catch up to me and descend, an incisive frown on her lips and a deadly gleam on her visor.

As she’d promised, Karu had returned.