"Wave, in case you didn't notice, your doorbell rang."

"What?" Wave groaned. "Very funny. I can tell Hammer couldn’t keep his trap shut. I’m sure you would have overslept too after a day like that."

"And I wouldn’t have cared at all." Ember stuck her tongue out at her. "Now go see who it is so we can squeeze Aki some more, or call Hammer."

Wave rose from the couch and headed for the door.

"I don’t think Hammer would be as happy to leave his workplace as you are to leave your classes. At least not with so few consequences."

Ember laughed.

Using the lens, Wave was able to access the camera on the other side of the door. She looked at the door and with the video image superimposed over it, it appeared as if she could see right through it.

There were two men in blue worker uniforms. Technicians in the broadest sense, or, because everything was abbreviated at the Citadel, Tecs. Security Corps people were Secs, people who worked in the medical field, Meds. And someone like Wave, who worked in the Urban Expansion Agency, was simply called an Urban Expansion Agent. When she was a student and still attended social events, like parties, that was one of the jokes no one ever laughed about.

"Hello, gentlemen, what can I do for you?" she asked over the door speakers.

The Tecs looked like they frequented the gym fairly often and made formidable opponents for Ember in the Arena. One had the kind of face you’d see in documentaries about ancient superheroes. The guy with the S on his chest, Wave had forgotten his name. Black, short hair, and a perfect face with glasses on it. The other one had no hair at all, but also needed glasses. He stared at the door with narrowed eyes.

"Mrs. Nethuf," the glasses-wearer said. "We’re here for your hearing aid. You put in a request to the Med Center for surgery, and we would like to pick it up now."

"Wow, they’re on their toes with you," Ember commented.

Wave put her fingers together to open the door.

"Wait!" sounded Aki’s voice. "Don’t open the door!"

She hesitated. More in shock than at his warning. She really had to get used to him suddenly speaking out of nowhere.

"Mrs. Nethuf, did you hear us?"

"Wave," Ember came forward worriedly, "what’s going on with you? You’re not opening up?"

"No, Aki has -"

"Mrs. Nethuf," the man said more forcefully now. "Please hand over the hearing aid, you are no longer entitled to it. If you won’t let us in, we’ll have to open the door and take the hearing aid from you without your consent."

"What? They can’t do that, Wave."

Yes, even without Ember’s hint, this would have seemed strange even to her at this point. Something wasn’t sitting right with these people. Wave squinted to make out the names next to their company logo. Finn was the name of the one with the glasses, and Decker the other. Why was Akimoto sending such ... Why did Akimoto Robotics even want to pick up her hearing aid? She had gotten it from the Kanter group, after all.

"Ember, that’s weird. The two who want to get the hearing aid are from Akimoto, but ..."

"... the hearing aid is from Kanter. Wave, quick, send me a picture of them."

With a flick of her eyes, she had taken the picture, and with a two-finger movement, it was with Ember.

"Definitely don’t open for them." Ember’s voice was really concerned now. Wave had only experienced that twice before. That time when her mother went into the hospital and -.

With a thud that she even heard through the door, a black sack landed on the floor. The grim-faced Decker had carried it on his back. Now he knelt down and briskly unzipped it.

"Here, I’ll send you a report, Wave."

A translucent headline appeared in front of her. 'Akimoto employees terrorize residents.' Crap. She knew they looked kinda familiar.

"Wave!" Aki's voice boomed from the earpiece. "Run!"

"You're joking, right? They’re at the front door," she replied but was already on her way to the bathroom. Her heart was pounding. But it wasn’t fear for her life if she was honest. It was the excitement of having an adventure again. For real, not in the Arena.

She tapped the mirror and it dissolved. Revealing the closet behind it. From there she fished out a black button and a pair of gloves.

She pinned the button to her bare upper arm and turned it. Black honeycombs, accompanied by mechanical clicking, grew over her body until they completely enveloped it.

"Ah, you kept it," Ember said. The first birthday gift she had ever received from her friend. A configurable full-body synth. Clothing that could seemingly be created out of thin air and conformed to the wearer’s body. Ember had taken it from the Security Corps and her dad had probably turned a blind eye to it again.

"You don’t want to fight, though, do you?"

"I’m not crazy. I don’t stand a chance here in my small apartment against those big guys."

"Then ...," Ember's voice sounded excited.

"Yeah, right." Wave pulled the gloves on, opened the bathroom window, and stuck her upper body out. She looked down first, at the busy street below, and then up, where gray autumn clouds drifted across the sky after three more stories.

"If we fall down there ..." she heard Aki’s voice, which was trembling. That was unusual. Fear was not an emotion her favorite host had ever displayed in his broadcasts. Always positive, uplifting, and reassuring. However bad her mood might have been, when she turned on CCR and heard Aki speaking, she would become calm. That he now was afraid of heights was .... reassuring as well. It made him more human, more approachable. Well, for a dead man, that was quite an accomplishment. But maybe now it was up to her to reassure him for once, too.

"Aki, you’re already dead, nothing can happen to you."

"You don’t mean that, do you? If you fall, I’ll lose the only person who can still listen to me."

"Don’t worry, Aki." She reached for the ice-slick outer wall above her window. "I won’t let you down. We’ll find out what happened to you and then -"

There was a bang inside her apartment.

"Wave, are you still in your apartment?" shouted Ember, who hadn’t missed that bang either.

Wave’s gloves found grip and she pulled her legs up onto the window ledge. "Not anymore." She fixed her sight on the highest point of the building, then commanded, "Climbing iron!"

The synth suit changed shape. Sharp-edged soles and steel caps with thorns grew on her feet, which she could ram into the smooth walls. Along with her climbing gloves, no wall would resist her. They, too, were a gift. A parting gift from the Wanderers, her employer in the outside world, so that she could pursue her climbing hobby in the city as well. The buildings of Citadel City were always slippery and they repaired themselves with building synths on their own. Not the best place for climbing, if you can't find anything to cling to.

With her hands and feet against the wall and the wind whistling around the building, tugging at her body and giving her little jolts of adrenaline, she felt at ease. She could forget the grind of the city and for a moment, even the reason she was hanging there.

"Where’d she go?" bellowed Finn, the one wearing glasses. The other grunted something she didn’t understand out here. She wouldn’t stick around to find out. Like a spider, she scrambled up the wall, toward the autumn storm that was brewing up above.