Leaving Mark’s room, I was greeted by Mia, with a red face and an enraged expression on her face.

Predictably, she launched into another tirade the moment she saw me, even before I managed to close the door.

“What the fuck are you thinking? Ordering me out of the room like that? I have the right to be at Mark’s side in this fucked up situation. The fucked up situation that is your fault. I warn you, don’t get in the way between me and Mark again, or I tell you, something will happen.”

Her wildly gesticulating hands actually made me duck back into the door to prevent her from slapping me. I was not quite sure if it was intentional or not, but I slowly got to a point where I simply did no longer care about it.

Just as I drew a breath to shoot back we both were surprised by a loud “Shut the fuck up!”

Both of us turned towards the hallway, and the furious Darren walking towards us.

And both of us were shocked into silence, though Mia was the first to recover. Just when she lifted her hands again and opened her mouth, Darren growled again.

“I said shut the fuck up! We are all recovering and your screaming is making it hard for all of us. And you don’t even have the decency to point your anger at the ones that fucked up.

Yes, Veronica could have acted better. If she did that you would right now be living in a war zone. Do you want that?

Of all of us here, she is the only one that could get out of here. She has the money and the skills to land everywhere. You certainly don’t. Me and my crew, we might find work elsewhere. Jacky would be fucked. You would be fucked. Your fucking family would be fucked.

Yes, what she did to prevent a gang war attracted attention, and led to an attack. It is still fucking better than a fucking gang war.

And you fucking scream around as if she personally moved out of her way to fuck up your life. Did or did she not give you the courses to get your education? Do you think that disassembling the one fucking cyberheart comes even near the worth of those courses?”

He stood now directly in front of her, snarling in her face.

“Think again. These fucking courses would cost you around $500k here. And you would have to enroll in college. I doubt you could afford that.”

I had never seen Darren this angry, and I was wondering what Mia had done to enrage him, but things were going too far. I intervened, softly.

“Stop, both of you. If you absolutely have to have an argument now do it somewhere where you don’t bother the others. Ryan looked like death warmed over and Mark has just lost his fricking arm. I don’t think the others are particularly rested either. So keep it down.”

Darren flashed his eyes towards me, but then took a deep breath and calmed down.

“You are right. Here I am, berating Mia for doing something and then doing the same shit myself.”

Mia on the other hand looked as if she still wanted to go on. When she opened her mouth, Darren unceremoniously put his hand over it, silencing her.

“Did you not listen? We will talk later.” He hissed into her face, before removing his hand.

She still wanted to continue, but when she opened her mouth again, nothing came out. For a moment she looked confused, before a panicked expression set on her face.

Darren softly continued.

“Don’t worry, it is just a short paralysis of your vocal cords. It will get better in a few minutes. But I can have you silent for days if you don’t remain quiet. Nod if you understand.”

With wide eyes, Mia nodded.

I took the opportunity and squeezed into the hallway, moving quickly towards the lift.

After a few steps, I heard somebody walking behind me, coming closer fast.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“A moment of your time, please.”

Darren sounded much more relaxed, and I turned toward him, looking him in the face for a moment before I nodded.

“Ok, but not here. Let the others rest.”

He nodded as well and waited until the doors of the lift closed with us in it.

“First, thank you for what you said to Ryan. The stubborn mule seriously tried to keep watch the whole time.”

“Yes, I realized that. Sadly too late. I would have told him to sleep way earlier otherwise. Sorry for that.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for that. Hell, we had to carry you to bed yesterday. No way for you to tell somebody else to go sleep. What knocked you out so hard anyway?”

The doors of the lift opened, and we were on the lab floor. I made my way towards the bio lab, while I answered.

“You were in the fight for what, five minutes? Ten? The matrix fight lasted for around ten hours for me. And I had to concentrate the whole time. It did cost a lot of energy.”

“Oh, wow. You told us about the time compression but I had not thought about that. Yes, that is rough, I understand. I did not think that it would take that long. From what I heard, matrix combat is over pretty quick normally.”

I sighed.

“You are right, normally that is so. The first phase of combat with the two corporate hackers was over quick. But against the Justicar, we both had to fight without killing the other.

He had the kill switch for the cyber zombies, that I had to reach while he was still alive to take them out, and he had to keep me alive because I was the target.

Unfortunately for me, he had a utility that causes pain, sadist that he was, while I had to cobble something together, evading him.

In end, it worked, but I have to reevaluate some of my approaches.”

“I see that. And then Nats ripped into you for not being in the physical fight. Now, how is Mark doing?”

“Better than I expected honestly. He decided on a quick and easy prosthetic for the time being. Nothing crude, but also nothing better than the arm he lost.”

He hmd at that.

“Yeah, Mark is an odd one. Unless you know him he comes over as a clueless, obnoxious asshole, and to be fair, he is to some degree, but much of that is a front.

He is not the smartest or the strongest, but he is reliable. And tough. Sadly, you have to muzzle him around foreign females.”

I had to chuckle at the last sentence.

“I’ve come to realize that too. I hope Mia is good for him in that respect.”

“Her!”

Apparently, she was not quite Darren’s favorite person.

“Hu, what is with her?”

He sighed, wary this time.

“She is so judgemental. And permanently riling up the people. Seriously, when we got here, I feared you would be the holier than thou, arrogant Pure. Nearly made me refuse your offer. I am glad that I was wrong. But what you were not, she is.

She found out about Nats and Jacky, and Ryan and me, and since then we got little barbs from her all the time. That was one of the reasons we tried to hide it from you.”

“Well, honestly, you and Ryan did a good job at that, but Natalie and Jacky were not quite so good. I was honestly surprised about you two. Is that why you were so, I don’t know, aggressively defensive about it?”

He chuckled at that.

“Partly. But mostly it is the reputation you Pures have.”

Wait, what reputation? I looked at him confused, and my puzzlement had to be plain on my face because he continued.

“You know, your reputation of being prudes.”

“We have the reputation of being prudes?”

“Uh, yes. You do.”

“Where does that come from?”

“I don’t know, you just have it.”

“But…”

I took a deep breath.

“Ok, that reputation is false. I have absolutely no idea where it comes from, but it is false.”

“So pures are not mostly homophobic?”

“No, of course not. If you think about it, most of the prejudices against homosexuality stem from religion. If there is one rabbit hole Pures won’t get led down then it is religion. We as a race have been burned too hard by it.

So no, Pures are vindictive, arrogant, holier than thou, condescending, and jerks in general, but not really against homosexuality.”

“But all your neat little family units? What about that?”

I threw up my hands when he said that.

“Urgh, don’t mention that. It was some of the meddlings of the idiotic self-proclaimed gods unleashing the Nephilim virus.

That is also the reason why so few Pures break the law. Most of us have a strongly increased instinct about social structures. Including an increased tendency for male-female relationships.

But we generally don’t judge others that are not hetero. Just don’t expect many of us to play for the other team.”

He raised one eyebrow, looking at me.

“So the Pures are the good ones again?”

I got immediately riled up again.

“I thought we had…” I stopped when he began to grin.

“Gotcha. I am slowly learning what buttons to push on you. But seriously, sorry for assuming you would be against it.”

“No harm done. Change of topic, do you know how Kate is doing? I don’t want to come over as pushy here.”

He made a throwing gesture with his hand.

“Don’t worry, other than the shoulder she only got scratched by her standards. She is one tough cookie. And I am more impressed with cyberware now, but not that much.”

“I was surprised that Kate managed to keep four zombies at bay, but don’t read too much into it. These were Falconer zombies. As far as I know, they are way down the bottom of the heap concerning cyberware. If it had been any of the other Triple-As it would have been a different story.

Even some Double-As have superior tech than Falconer.

And believe me, one Kawamoto or Burgmeister cyber zombie and we all would have been toast. Maybe even a Panacea, but that’s a bit iffy.”

I then looked at the state of my BOUs, noting the changes the growth accelerators made overnight, which was not all that much.

“By the way, where are the cyber zombies? They may be at the bottom of the barrel, but they could give me some info on how to design cyberlimbs myself.”

“Don’t know. The bots took them and moved them somewhere else.”

“So I have to ask the VI? How nice.”

He showed a small smile at my sarcasm.

“Yeah, I get you. That thing gives the creeps. Are you sure it is safe to keep around?”

“No, not really. But it is safe enough, and almost impossible to take out. So keeping it around we will. Oh, before I forget, I managed to negotiate a tempering of its objectives, as well having you lot designated as ‘to be protected’. Should make things easier for you.”

He tilted his head, looking at me questioningly.

“You managed to negotiate? I thought you could not negotiate with a VI.”

“You are right, in a way. The point is, that it used the objectives I wrote for the expert system.

And these objectives were simply not usable for a VI.

Its own objectives were a threat to its objectives. So it requested my help in adapting the objectives to something workable. It is still a dangerous watchdog, but it won’t launch weapons of mass destruction at the slightest provocation anymore.”

“It… you seriously are telling me that it wanted to use WMDs?”

“Yeah. It wanted to use a backdoor into a freebie orbital nuke satellite to launch eight 15 megaton-warheads on Falconer. And steal all their money.

After considering the reaction of the banks to that, it decided to then use other WMDs and whatever means necessary to destroy the banks. And kill most of the Abyss-dwellers.

When I then pointed out that the destruction of the banks would lead to riots and open warfare with a distinct probability of me not surviving it accepted that its objectives were flawed.”

“Hm, ok, so now it won’t launch nukes anymore?”

“I did not say that. It now will consider all other options, and give me the possibility to prevent an escalation, but if it decides it is the only way to protect me, it still will use nukes.

Sorry, no changing that. And before you ask, it only protects you because you are a defensive layer around me. So no nukes to save you, I fear.”