12 years ago, in the testing and dev. room of Crathos Inc., a five years old girl excitedly rotates on her chair near a thirty-something man in a white lab coat. The girl had blond (almost white) hair, cute pink lips and dark blue eyes, instead the man had brown hair and black eyes.

"Lia, papa has to work and this part is reeeaaaaally hard, so could you please be a little more quiet?"

At the man's plea a few snickers arose from his co-workers, while Lia stopped and looked at her father with a cheeky grin.

"Nah!"

She jumped from her chair, hugging her father, who gave an helpless smile at his cute little daughter.

The men and women present felt their heart warming up, but they still continued to work. They were working on a supercomputer and also an AI. They were the developers of Hyria.

"When is mama coming back?"

Asked Lia while looking at her father's work.

Keeping his gaze on the computer in front of him and his hand on the keyboard, the man answered

"She's having an important talk with uncle Jack, so it will take a while"

Lia frowned a little but then quickly went back to her rotating chair.

A couple of knocks came from the backdoor of the laboratory. Everyone was a bit surprised, but it wasn't the first time this happened. Sometimes the guards would knock and enter to check if everything was alright. there was this kind of security because of repeated accidents of attempted burglary.

A man stopped working, looked at the time and said

"They are a bit early, but whatever, Mike could you please go open the door?"

Lia's father nodded, stood up and went to open the door, his daughter followed while grabbing the end of his coat with her adorable little hand. Facing the door, almost about to open it, Mike hears someone shouting in the distance. He puts himself a bit in front of his daughter and opens the door, and finally hears what was being shouted

"..ruders! Intruders!"

"..top or I'll shoot!"

The first voice was that of another worker of Crathos Inc., trying to call other guards, while the other was from a guard lying on the floor, with a hand on his side to stop the bleeding and a gun pointed at the men with knives in their hands in front of Mike and Lia. When the door opened, the nearest man quickly grabbed Mike, making Lia stumble ahead of them, and put him between the guard and himself. The other man seemed indecisive for a moment, but then he picked up Lia and put his knife at her throat like his accomplice did.

"No! Please! Leave my daughter alone!"

Mike screamed, struggling to get free from the armed man. The other man again hesitated for an instant, but he regained his composure when another guard came. Mike, noticing that the men were concentrated on the arrival of the new guard, dashed toward the man who held his daughter.

"Hey!"

Mike's throat was cut. But he didn't stop. He covered his throat with an hand and with the other went to pull the hair of the bastard who held Lia hostage. The man now without anything to protect him got shot in the chest by the guard lying on the ground. The guard that was still standing was surprised and shocked at what was happening but when he saw Mike pull the head of the still living intruder, he saw the chance to shoot him in the head. He pulled the trigger twice.

With all the noise, people came looking at what was happening and when they saw the guard and the floor, they called an ambulance.

When he heard the shot, the intruder tried to put Lia in front of him.

Jack Stanford and Elisabeth Ashenworth entered the laboratory from the front door after hearing the shots and saw Mike on the ground, blood flowing non-stop from his carotid. A look of utter despair was on Elisabeth's face, but then came another two shots. The man that was still standing in front of Mike, fell on his corpse. A little joy went through Elisabeth's body, until she was what he was holding.

Lia was on top of the intruder who just fell on the ground, her right eye opened wide, her left eye burning like never before. She wanted to scream, but a strange sensation of liquid filling her head stopped her. She was scared, but the only thing that she could do, the only thing her body was able to do at that moment, was humiliating itself, wetting her lower parts. Everything felt so dull. Even the sound rustling sound of someone picking her up. Even the warm but wet sensation of some sort of liquid falling on her face. Even the voice of her dear mother.

And then, everything was swallowed by darkness.

Slowly waking up, Lia felt a warm sensation coming from her right hand. Looking, it was her mother tightly grasping her hand, seated near her bed. Watching around, she noticed two other things: first, a, presumably, doctor was standing near her mother, and second, the bandages on her head obscured her left eye.

Elisabeth's blue eyes looked intently at her just awoken daughter. Elisabeth had blond hair, while her daughter had white hair. She was only five, but Lia already had white hair. Certainly before she already had nearly white hair, but the episode at the lab changed her hair, while the nano-machines changed her eyes, no, her eye. Right now, Lia's right eye was black with a tinge of purple.

"..Yvonne, how do you feel?"

Yvonne was Lia's second name, her father called her Lia, her mother Yvonne. Sometimes people who didn't know of this got a little confused, but it was their problem in the end, not Lia's.

Lia waited a second to asses her condition, if it was the past, she'd feel the need to make her mother happy at this point, but right now, she didn't feel that compulsion.

"My head hurts. Why is my eye covered?"

Her mother made a strange face, Lia tried to understand what that expression meant, but to no vain. Elisabeth put her right hand on Lia's cheek, and stroke it.

"Mrs. Ashenworth, now that your daughter is awake, we'll be conducting some test for the next three days and then you'll be free to return home"

After Elisabeth nodded the doctor left the room. other than Lia and her mother, no other was in that room.

"Mama, where is papa?"

All this time Lia was expressionless. Elisabeth thought that it was because of that incident.

"Papa.. is up in Heaven now"

Elisabeth's eyes were on the verge of crying, but Lia remained expressionless.

"I see"

She said, not really feeling something from her mother's words.

Later, when Lia fell asleep again, Elisabeth went out of the room and cried.

Her daughter was now incapable of feeling any trivial emotion. She could feel the strong ones, but the day-to-day joy of everyday living, the feeling of friendship, the small fear one has while watching an horror film or even the simple happiness of eating your favorite food were now unavailable to her.

Lia survived. But she was scarred for life.