#choco maize

‘Threat and Vulnerability - periodic motion’ (which was arranged by Shoji Meguro and it’s pretty much just an extra that came with record breaker special edition so it doesn’t actually play anywhere in game, but i love it and it deserves mention)

No, he thought, whipping his phone out of his black leather jacket to confirm that this is where his GPS app confirmed their location.

A big red dot on top of the building in front of him blinked at him, and he shoved his phone back in his pocket.

Oh no they fucking didn’t.

Junpei opened the door to the tiny cat café, and heard them before he even got a good look at the place.

“This is great, man.”

“Yeah, meow that we know about this place, we could come here every day!”

“Haha, that’s funny, Sigma.”

“No, fur real, I’m not kitten around.”

“Sir,” a woman at the cash register said to Junpei as he honed his attention on two grown men sitting in the center of the room, playing with cats, “Did you make a reservation?”

“This is business. Even though it feels more like a terrible joke,” Junpei muttered the last part as he took out his wallet and flipped open his detective ID. She opened her mouth to say something, but he blew past her, stuffing his wallet back in his pants pocket.

He slammed the narrow gate all the way open as he barged into the café, stomping toward the center of the room. A grey and white tabby tried to slink out through the gap between the swiftly closing gate, but the attendant at the front grabbed her from around the middle, glaring at Junpei as he came to a stop in front of Sigma and Carlos at the far end of the room.

“Fucking Christ, you two!” Junpei shouted. “Enough is enough!”

“What? Feels like we just got here,” Sigma asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor and dangling a feather on a string in front of a black cat. Its large yellow eyes followed the feather as it lied sprawled out two feet from Sigma, but didn’t budge.

“You two have been here for four hours. Aren’t you sick of this by now?”

“What’s to get sick about?” Carlos asked, shaking some cat treats out onto his open palm. The black cat jumped up and padded over to him.

Junpei slapped his face across his forehead, dragging it down his face as he squeezed his eyes shut. “This is hell. I’m literally in the deepest circle of hell right now.”

“Don’t hissen to him,” Sigma told Carlos, watching with a faint bit of envy as the black cat rubbed up against Carlos’s leg. “He’s exapurrating.”

“They’re not even doing anything,” Junpei said, gesturing around at the other handful of cats in the vicinity. Two of them were lying on shelves, sleeping, and a ginger kitten was struggling to climb up Sigma’s back.

“Cats don’t have to do anything for you to appreciate them,” Carlos pointed out, feeding the black cat treats one by one.

“Okay, fine,” Junpei snapped, balling his hand into a fist when the kitten heroically reached the top of Sigma’s shoulder and gently headbutted his cheek. “Whatever, but we’ve got an important trip to go on.”

“Where mew?” Sigma asked.

“Japan. So put the damn cats down and let’s get going.”

“Aw, can’t you give us five more minutes?”

“Yeah! Paw-leeze?”

Junpei resisted the urge not to seize both of them by the scruff of their necks and drag them outside. “You dumbasses, we’re trying to save the world, here!”

Carlos sighed, petting the black cat on his shoulder before gently scooping him up and placing him down and getting to his feet. “He’s right, you know. We can always come back later, Sigma, once we’ve stopped the religious fanatic.”

“I’m starting to think that guy’s got more sense than the two of you put together,” Junpei muttered, keeping a watchful eye on both of them as they slowly, reluctantly, parted from their furry friends.

 ———

Six hours into the flight from Tokyo to Narita, Junpei regretted picking the seat in front of Carlos since he was still comparing hundreds of cat selfies with Sigma and arguing about who had a better – sigh – hisstory with cats: Carlos taking pictures and slow dancing with his cat at Prom, or Sigma insisting he could still understand what they were saying, which was likely a result of one too many childhood sugar rushes.

Junpei crossed his arms and fumed silently as he listened to them go on and on about their dumb fixation. He’d tried sleeping, but no dice. He tried watching a movie, but it didn’t distract him from the two bastards behind him. He didn’t drink anymore, and there was literally nothing else on the ride to distract him.

“You know, at this point, you’re being obvious to the point of obnoxious.”

He turned his head to the left, glancing at Phi. She turned the page of a magazine idly, and Junpei huffed loudly.

“Oh, give it a break, already,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We get it: you’re jealous.”

He shook his head, snorting incredulously. “What, me?”

“They have something in common. You don’t like it. It makes you feel left out, doesn’t it?”

“What?” Junpei nearly shouted, then lowered his voice. “No, I am not jealous!”

Phi turned her head away from her magazine, looking straight at him until he started to fidget nervously, and then she pronounced very slowly as she glanced back down at her magazine. “No. Of course you’re not.”

At that moment, Carlos said, “Aww, look at this little guy and his little paws.”

Junpei wanted to grab Carlos’s phone from him, run to the bathroom and try to flush it down the toilet, but he made do with pressing the button to push his chair all the way back.

 ———

The lead turns out to be a bust, so the four of them agreed to sleep at a hotel for the night and head back to California the next day. Phi went off to a bar, and Sigma and Carlos chose adjoining rooms across the half from Junpei and Phi’s separate ones, which only made Junpei more frustrated. He took an angry shower, then sat on his bed in his towel, texting Akane about how their lead was a dead end – literally. She was disappointed, but understood. Junpei briefly considered getting something for Akane at one of the shops, but decided to bring her back to Japan after they stopped the terrorist from blowing up the world, so Junpei and Akane could fully appreciate visiting their home country, and there was that whole wedding thing he kinda wanted to do. He got dressed, then started pacing back and forth, seething about how Carlos started doing the stupid cat pun thing on the plane ride to Tokyo, and it was really getting on his last nerve.

He called Phi and could almost see her rolling her eyes when he launched into his rant about Carlos’s newly acquired cat tic.

“Oh, give it a rest, already,” she said. “Hey, maybe if you lock them in a room with fifty cats and leave them there all day, eventually they’ll get sick of them. Or end up choking on a hairball. It’s win-win.”

Junpei, who had been lying flat on his back on his bed, bolted straight up and said, “That’s it! Thanks, Phi!”

“You’re all a bunch of weirdos,” she muttered, and he heard her slam down a shot glass before she hung up the phone.

When Carlos let Junpei into his room, Junpei was a little relieved to see Carlos actually talking to another person, without saying anything cat-related.

“Just chatting with Maria,” Carlos said, holding up his phone to show Maria’s beaming face on the other end.

“Hi, Junpei!” she said, and he waved back at her, then asked Carlos where Sigma was.

Carlos’s eyes darted over to the door joining his room with Sigma’s. “He’s, uh, talking with Diana in the other room.”

Junpei headed over to the door, putting his hand on the doorknob, but Carlos called out, “Uh, better not go in there. I think he’s having a… pretty private conversation.”

Maria giggled from the other end of the phone as Junpei jerked his hand away from the knob, taking several long, quick steps backward. “Then why are you here? Listening in on them like some kind of creep?”

Carlos walked over to the side of his bed and plugged a cord into his phone. “No! I needed to charge my battery. Used it all up on the plane ride here.”

“Yeah,” Junpei said, refraining from grinding his teeth, “about that. Can I talk to you about something?”

Carlos wrapped up his conversation with Maria and they did their silly ‘I’m hugging you through the phone’ routine before Carlos ended the video chat and put his phone on the night stand. “What’s up?”

“Let’s stay here another day,” Junpei suggested.

Carlos furrowed his brow in confusion. “But I thought we were done here.”

“Okay, look.” Junpei began pacing back and forth in front of Carlos. “If I take you and Sigma to the best cat café in the entire world, you both have to promise you’ll stop going to them in the States.”

“All right,” Carlos said, and Junpei screeched to a halt in his tracks, nearly leaving skid marks on the carpet.

“’All right?’” Junpei echoed, staring at Carlos. “That’s it?”

Carlos put his hands on his hips. “On the condition that it really is the best cat café in the world.”

“Oh, it is,” Junpei said. “Deal.”

They shook hands, and started hearing muffled noises coming from Sigma’s adjoining room.

Carlos said, very quickly, “Hey, uh, weren’t you at a bar with Phi?”

“O-oh, yeah,” Junpei said, “she’s probably still there. Let’s go, right now.”

And they both left in record time, just as the sounds were starting to get louder.

 ———

Sigma and Carlos gasped as Junpei looked on, sipping coffee as he leaned against a scratching post that was taller than him.

“It’s purrfect!”

“Litterally heaven!” Carlos said.

“Cats!”

“They’re everywhere!”

“I’m not even lion, this puts the other place to shame!”

“Where have mew been all my life?”

“Look at all the types there are! They’re so purr-ecious!”

“Yeah, I see a Maine Coon!”

“There’s a Bengal!”

“A Siberian!”

“Carlos,” Sigma said, very seriously, “I think I’m going to faint right meow.”

Carlos put his hand on Sigma’s shoulder to steady him. “No, don’t! You’ll hiss out on all the fun!”

Junpei didn’t say it out loud, but he was also kind of impressed. Japan had always been famous for its cat cafes, but this one took the cake. The building wasn’t some rinky-dink one-story box with eight or nine cats. No, this place was as big as a warehouse, huge enough to house at least fifty felines, and Junpei looked on as Carlos and Sigma petted cats, fed a few of them treats, and followed others that were idly padding around. The two big lugs carefully weaved in and out of makeshift trees and caves that were spacious enough for them to stretch up on their toes and pet cats that walked on balance beams, which were interconnected all over the place, halfway between the ceiling and the ground.

It actually wasn’t that bad, watching all the different types of cats hang out with human visitors. A few of them slept, but most of them were eager to approach people, looking for a treat or a friendly scratch behind the ears.

Almost as if she sensed Junpei via homing beacon, a large fluffy cat with light and dark brown patches sniffed him for a bit before rubbing her side against his legs, and he tried twisting away, but Carlos caught him doing that and walked up to him, murmuring, “Don’t worry, she won’t bite.”

Junpei knew she wouldn’t, but he was fine just staying in one spot as Sigma and Carlos disappeared at random intervals, then came back juggling their phones, cat treat bags, and a different kitty to dump their phone in Junpei’s hands and instruct him on taking a picture of them with their new furr-end.

Friend. Junpei shook his head. What was happening to him?

He went to the bathroom while the cat fiends busied themselves elsewhere, figuring he’d give them about five more minutes before they left to meet Phi and head to the airport.

When he came back, however, it took him a few minutes to locate both Sigma and Carlos. He finally found them in a dimly lit side room, a cavelike structure with a ledge propped up against the wall, covered in cushions for people to sit and cats to sleep. There were about eight of them crawling all over both of the other men, who looked more like blissfully overgrown children.

Junpei sighed, kind of bummed that he had to tell them to leave their furry sanctuary. He looked at Sigma, who was holding an orange tabby and saying he would take her home and name her Luna if he and Diana didn’t already pick a name for their future child. Junpei then looked at Carlos, who was serenely petting both a cat with flattened ears and letting two blue-grey cats gently headbutt his arms.

“See?” Junpei said, “What did I tell you?”

“Okay, Junpei, you win,” Carlos said. “But before we go, why don’t you join us fur a moment? Sit down, pet a cat, relax a little.”

“I don’t know,” Junpei said, but Sigma and Carlos both set down the meowing cats they were holding and dragged Junpei over to an empty spot on the ledge.

“Guys,” he said, “It’s okay, really.”

“You’re not allergic,” Carlos pointed out, “and I can tail you’ve been wanting to pet one since we got here.”

“Right,” Sigma agreed. “We’re not coming back for a while, so how about we make the most of this before we head back home, nya?”

Before Junpei could protest, Carlos put a sleek, black kitten with large yellow eyes in Junpei’s lap. The kitten had large yellow eyes and stared up at Junpei for a moment, before she started to lick his hand and then burrowed herself into the crook of Junpei’s arm.

Junpei’s heart truly melted as the kitten started to purr.

“Oh, no,” Junpei said.

“Oh, yeah,” Carlos said. “Meow this is purrfect.”

“What did I tail you?” Sigma said, nudging Carlos with his elbow as he scratched the top of a majestic Persian’s head with his free hand. “He’s one of us meow.”

“Am not.” Junpei said, tears welling in his eyes as the kitten slowly kneaded his arms, then looked up at Junpei, meowing plaintively.

“Don’t worry. I’m not budging from this spot,” he whispered, kissing the top of the kitten’s head. “Nothing and no one can make me, nya.”

 ———

“Junpei,” Akane said, hands on her hips.

“Oh shit – I mean, hey!” Junpei whirled around to look up at her as the Scottish Fold that had been resting in his lap leapt to the ground and bounded out of the small cave. “Akane! I didn’t think you were going to come all the way over here.”

“I had to!” Akane said. Sigma laughed until she turned her wrathful gaze upon him, making him freeze up. “Diana said that although she likes the two hundred Snap… cat pictures you’ve sent her — ” Sigma grinned proudly at that, puffing his chest out a bit, “—  she’s starting to get a little worried.”

He visibly deflated.  “She is?”

“And Phi has been pestering me all weekend to make you fly back. I think she’s also worried about you two – don’t tell Phi I told you that – and more importantly, we all need to find out who that religious fanatic is and stop him before he destroys the human race! But instead of coming back to help search for him after the trail went cold here, the three of you stayed clear across the ocean to play with cats?” Akane was nearly shaking with disbelief and rage.

“Hey, not just any cats!” Carlos protested, gently putting his hands around the ears of the striped gray kitten in his lap. “They’re purrfect!”

“Yeah!” Sigma said indignantly, “they’re the most ameowsing cats in the world!”

“You two haven’t seen the island full of cats, either,” Junpei said, a devious smirk on his face.

Sigma gasped, pressing a fist against his chest. “That’s still around?” Tears sprang to his eyes. “Oh man, we knead to go there right away!”

“No! No, we don’t! Junpei!” Akane stomped her foot in frustration.

“It could just be for a day. Then we could go to Rabbit Island,” Junpei said, winking at Akane. Her expression didn’t change much, but Junpei could see a muscles in her jaw twitch.

“Fine,” she said after about a minute of silence passed. “Then we’re going back and saving the world.”

“Of course,” Carlos said, “we don’t want this to turn into Apocalypse Meow.”

“Yes,” Sigma agreed, nodding sagely. “That would be clawful.”

Junpei managed to not burst out laughing and instead picked up a sleek-looking Abyssian Gray that had paused – pawsed, he corrected himself – to rub up against his legs. He held the cat up toward Akane and the cat sniffed at her, then started purring.

She sighed and said, “Damn you all,” and took the happy cat, cradling it in her arms.

“What a wonfurful day, Carlos said.

“Kyle, calm down.”

The voice makes him pause for a moment. He knows that voice. He struggles towards it, ignoring the repeated pleas to calm down. It’s a woman. Or… a simulation of a woman.

“He’s fine. He should be fully functional in a moment.”

The second voice sends a chill through his body.

The second voice brings the world to a halt.

Kyle inhales.

He forces his eyes open. Everything is unfocused. The room is a muted gray and there’s a smear of clinical tools surrounding him, but his bleary eyes are only seeking one thing.

There, at the foot of his bed, the bed he now realizes he’s strapped down to, is someone wearing his own face. Someone he knows to be his father, 45 years younger.

“Welcome back, Kyle.”

The next few hours are a hazy blur. At times, Kyle is a passive third party, watching Luna nervously tend to his body. Other times, he’s angry and uncooperative. His voice is weak and hoarse and his tongue won’t form the words, but the anger drives him to keep trying to make contact with his father, who won’t even look away from his computer.

When the fog finally lifts, Kyle is calm. One moment he’s staring vacantly at the wall, and the next his mind is buzzing. He remembers being on Rhizome 9, remembers Luna coming to him, relaying a message from his father. Remembers the confusion, the hurt, the reluctance.

He remembers SHIFTing.

“Oh, Kyle!” Luna is at his side, peering into his eyes. They dart away from hers and she smiles. “How are you feeling? You should be able to speak now.”

He opens his mouth. “I’m… I’m fine,” he spits out. The voice coming from his mouth doesn’t feel like his. Nothing feels like his.

“Here.” Luna offers him some water from a straw, but Kyle painfully hauls himself up into a sitting position before he will accept it. His body is heavy, unwieldy.

Kyle swallows a mouthful of water, winces as the cold slides down his esophagus. “I want to talk to him.”

Luna’s eyebrows draw together. “Are you sure? I mean, maybe you should wait until you’ve recovered?”

Kyle nods, struggling to maintain his calm. He feels volatile, dangerous. “No. I won’t be staying that long.”

Luna worries at her bottom lip. “Alright.”

She hesitates for a moment before touching his shoulder gently, lovingly, and Kyle lets her. He’s not angry with her. He has stopped wasting his energy being angry with her. She’s a fancy toaster, a collection of gears and wires that his father has programmed to be kind to him. Programmed to show Kyle the love that his father never had for him.

After the Nonary Game, Kyle never expected to see his father again as he knew him. His body had been left behind, inhabited by a younger version of himself. The real Sigma had left to a better timeline and never looked back. Even though he claimed he was doing it for humanity, for the future of the planet, at his core, his father is selfish.

So when Luna approached him, just days after the Nonary Game, claiming that Sigma wanted to speak with him, Kyle knew Sigma had an ulterior motive. Still, he agreed. With her help, he SHIFTed into the past.

And now he’s here.

“Kyle.”

He looks up sharply, eyes narrowed and heart racing. Sigma is standing at his bedside, within range of his fists and there’s nothing to hold him back now.

But he doesn’t strike. His body is still weak and he has never been one for violence.

“Father.”

There’s a long silence. Kyle exhales.

“So I’m here. What do you want?”

Sigma crosses his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a lab coat that looks out of place on his younger self. “Nothing.”

Kyle furrows his brows. “What?”

Sigma regards him calmly, no hint of emotion. “I don’t want anything from you. I just wanted to bring you here, to this timeline.”

The words hit Kyle like a punch to the stomach. The air flees his lungs and he struggles to rearrange his face into something that’s not total shock. But his surprise is quickly replaced with suspicion. “Why?”

He wants something.

He always wants something.

Sigma’s eyebrows knit together. He looks almost wounded. Almost. Kyle can never tell with Sigma. “Because you’re my son. I thought… I thought maybe you could live here, with us.”

The anger rushes back into his blood.

“Really?” Kyle bites out. “Am I your son? I’m not just one of your toys? Like her?” He jabs a finger at Luna, who has been sitting quietly at Sigma’s computer. She stops typing for a moment, but doesn’t look over.

“Kyle–”

“No.” He can feel his heart floundering against his ribs. “You don’t get to call me your son. You can’t just expect me to be okay with… with this.” He gestures to his body, a body he knows was grown for him, a body that had it’s own mind, a mind that is now floating out in space, living in Kyle’s suit.

Sigma swallows. “I know what you’re thinking, believe me, I do.”

“Do you?” he spits. “Do you–”

Sigma holds up a hand and Kyle nearly explodes with rage. But he doesn’t. He inhales and waits for Sigma to continue.

“The other Kyle, the one who’s body you’re in, has never been conscious.”

A cold feeling settles into Kyle’s stomach. He opens his mouth but Sigma’s not done.

“He was grown here, never woken.”

“But did he have brain activity?”

“Yes.” Sigma’s eyebrows are furrowed again. “There had to be in order to SHIFT. Right now he’s on Rhizome 9 in cold sleep.”

His voice is clinical, even though his expression is troubled. He needs to work harder on his acting.

“And that’s okay with you?” Kyle asks. “Wait, don’t answer. I know that’s okay with you. You were fine to abandon your younger self to come here.”

Sigma opens his mouth, no doubt ready to spew more lies and excuses, but Kyle doesn’t want to hear it. “No, don’t. I know you feel something. That’s why you brought me here. You think this is going to make up for all those years on Rhizome 9. For all those timelines when you forced me to play that game.” Kyle’s voice has gotten louder. He can feel Luna looking at him now. She’s stopped typing.

“Well, it’s not alright. This doesn’t clear your conscious.” Kyle tries to push himself from the bed but he’s still too weak, too unused to the foreign limbs he’s inhabiting. Luna is at his side instantly, her gentle hands on his shoulders, guiding him back down.

He shakes her off. “I’m fine.” He exhales hard. Sigma meets his eyes and he doesn’t look away. “I’m done here. When the other Kyle comes back, wake him up and start fresh. Don’t let him know how much of a cold hearted bastard you are.”

Luna looks to Sigma, eyes sad and imploring, but Sigma doesn’t move.

“Kyle, please stay. Even if you don’t stay here with me, stay. I couldn’t bare it if you went back up there.”

Kyle laughs and it’s a hollow thing. He’s tempted to SHIFT right there, just to spite Sigma, just to imagine his reaction, but he resists. He has nothing back there, not even Akane. She lived in this timeline, sure, but he hasn’t spoken to her in months. Thinking about her still hurts.

There is nothing for him here either, but there are possibilities.

He’s on Earth.

It hits him all at once. Earth. Not even his father can ruin Earth.

“Fine.”

Sigma visibly relaxes.

“But not because I think you care about me. I’d believe this cares about me before you.” He jabs a finger at Luna and her face falls. He feels a pang of regret, and tries to remind himself that it’s all a simulation.

Still, her sad, wide eyes haunt his dreams.

CHAPTER 2

It’s a few days until Kyle is strong enough to leave the bed he’s been confined to. During this time he learns he’s in the basement of the house that Sigma shares with his wife and daughter. It’s only been two years since Sigma SHIFTed from the future and he’s wasted no time making a life. It makes Kyle nauseous thinking about it.

Kyle doesn’t want to meet the wife or the daughter, who is probably small and formless anyway. He makes it clear during his recovery that he’s going to leave the moment he is able. The only person he sees is Luna, who, as far as he can tell, is exactly the same Luna as the one who lived with him on Rhizome 9. He asks her about it idly and she tells him about quantum computers, but he really isn’t interested.

Despite his protests, Kyle is moved upstairs into the spare room. Luna insists he’ll be more comfortable there until he leaves, but he suspects that his father has put this idea in her head. Sigma is going to try to charm him with a room of his own.

Even though it’s an obvious ploy, Kyle accepts. He’s going to show his father he can’t be swayed.

Kyle tells Luna as much. The disappointment shows clear on her face. He thinks Sigma has programmed her to be sweeter and sadder than usual because lately all she does is tug at his heartstrings. He tries not to let it get to him.

The room he’s given is clean but sparse. There’s a bed and a night stand and a few bland pictures on the wall of landscapes of an Earth he’s never seen with his own eyes. It makes him even more eager to leave, or to at least go outside. But Luna has warned him he can’t leave until he gets the last round of immunizations. He openly wondered why his father hadn’t just given it to the body before Kyle arrived. Why he would try to keep Kyle hostage longer than necessary?

Luna had no comment for that one.

There’s a bookshelf in the corner but Kyle is too restless for reading. He wryly takes note of the fact that his father has not left him a computer. Sigma doesn’t trust him.

A knock at the door snaps him out of his thoughts. He narrows his eyes and takes a step toward the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

Kyle thinks he recognizes the voice, the flat, measured tone, but he can’t place it. It triggers something in his brain, the muddled, confused feelings he gets whenever he thinks of that tangle of timelines where he was forced to play the Nonary Game.

Suddenly, he knows who it is.

“Phi?”

“Just open the door.”

And he does because he knows it’s her now. He’s never met her in this timeline, he hardly can make sense of other timelines, let alone follow one to the end, but he knows the person behind the door and he wants to know what the hell she’s doing here, in this time.

The person standing before him is a short woman with bleached white hair. She has glasses perched on the bridge of her nose and an amused expression. Everything about her feels familiar especially now that she’s a real person and not a mishmash of confusing memories.

Somehow, he trusts her.

“Damn, that’s creepy,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. He squints at her and she gestures to his whole body. “You’re him.”

Kyle grimaces and Phi waves a hand apologetically. “Sorry, it’s just weird.” She brushes past him and perches at the edge of his bed. He stares after her, still feeling vaguely disoriented. The memories of the Nonary Game are washing over him. Timelines where they worked together. Timelines where they betrayed each other.

And yet…

“You have questions.”

Kyle comes back to himself. “Of course I do,” he mutters, feeling stupid for being so distracted. “First of all, what are you doing here?”

Phi pats the bed next to her and Kyle grows even more annoyed. This is his room. He instead pulls the chair from the corner up to the bed at takes a seat across from her.

“Suit yourself.” She watches him for another minute and he hates that she’s thinking of Sigma right now.

And then she tells him.

Some of it, he vaguely remembers, some of it, he’s sure he’s never heard before. She tells him about the timeline where she SHIFTed back to her body before it was put into cold storage, about how DCOM turned into another sick, twisted game. About how she was there with Sigma and Diana, who was now his wife.

“Are you ready for the next part? You need a drink or a piss first?”

Kyle blinks in the resulting silence. He’s been listening so intently that he didn’t realize he was being addressed. “I’m fine.”

“Well,” and here she hesitates, “during one timeline, I died. Most of us died. One of us escaped. And then Sigma and Diana were left in the bunker. Forever.”

Kyle nods. Savagely, he’s a little bit pleased that, somewhere, there’s a timeline where Sigma is just as isolated and alone as Kyle was. But then he thinks of Sigma dying slowly from starvation and feels guilty.

“Before they ran out of food, Diana gave birth.”

Kyle wants to know why this is important, why Phi knows this, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“Twins. A boy and a girl. Of course, they all weren’t going to survive down there, so they did the only thing they could.”

Though he tries not to make a face, Kyle winces visibly. He opens his mouth, to stop Phi from telling him a gruesome story, but she doesn’t stop.

“They sent the babies into the past. One of the babies grew up to be Delta, the one who arranged the whole game and was responsible for the death of 6 billion people in your timeline.”

Part of Kyle wants to laugh. Even though Phi is totally seriously, even though, somehow, he trusts her, the whole story has fallen apart.

“Okay,” Kyle says, skepticism apparent in his tone. “And how was that possible?”

Phi sighs and presses her glasses further up her nose. She tells him about a transporter. It sounds ridiculous and hardly makes sense, but when she finishes, she looks him straight in the eye and says, “I was the other baby.”

That knocks the breath from his lungs. Because when she says it, he believes her. When she says it, he feels something deep in his chest.

“So I’m your sister, I guess. And your daughter, kind of. Isn’t that messed up?” Her eyebrows are raised and there’s a little smirk on her lips, but he can see she’s nervous.

And then Kyle actually laughs. His shoulders shake and he covers his face with his hands. It’s wild and ridiculous and joyless and he can’t stop.

When he finally quiets, Phi is looking at him with a little concern, but she’s smiling. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You want to know what else is fucked up?”

Kyle coughs out another laugh. “There’s more?”

“Oh yeah.” Phi grins. “Guess who Luna looks EXACTLY like.”

There’s a moment of silence before Kyle says, “You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was,” Phi says, pushing some hair from her eyes. “That Sigma is one screwed up bastard.”

And at that, Kyle smiles. He can’t remember the last time he smiled.

“You should meet Diana, you’ll like her. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom.”

Instantly, the good feelings drain out of Kyle. He’s on the alert. This has been a trick. Sigma sent Phi in to break him down, make him feel at ease, convince him not to leave. He can’t believe he’s been so stupid, trusted so easily.

“No,” he says sharply, getting to his feet. Phi doesn’t move. She just watches him mildly. “I know what you’re trying to do. He sent you.”

Phi snorts. “Uh, no. He didn’t even want me to see you. He was just gonna let you go. Which, I guess, he thinks is his way of saying he loves you or something. You know, by letting you do your own thing. I guess it’s sweet. I just wanted to see you and fill you in on what he obviously didn’t tell you.”

For a moment Kyle is outraged that Sigma was just going to let him out into the world without telling him anything. Not telling him about his sister.

His sister.

He looks at Phi with new eyes, tries to find the bits of himself in her. She watches him evenly, as if she knows what he’s doing.

“You can go if you want. But you don’t know the first thing about Earth. I know you think you do, but trust me, you don’t.”

It’s a fair point. And, if he leaves, he won’t even have a pretend person to talk to. If he leaves, he’s truly alone.

“But if you stick around, I can help you. Hell, maybe I’ll even go with you.”

Even though he can’t help but feel trapped, even though he wants to be a thousand miles away from his father, Kyle finds himself nodding. He trusts her. Against his better judgment, he trusts her.

“Okay… okay.”

CHAPTER 3

Kyle doesn’t meet Diana right away. Partly because he feels awkward leaving his room, feels too exposed even slipping down the hall to use the bathroom. Instead, he spends a lot of time staring at the same page in a book he’s picked up off the shelf.

Phi has replaced Luna in checking up on him. Her bedside manner is, frankly, atrocious, and he tells himself that’s the only reason he misses Luna. It’s strange and unwelcome, but he does. He’s lived with her for years and a day without seeing her unbalances him, makes him think about the future.

A future she won’t be in.

The thought shouldn’t trouble him, but it does. She’s not his mother, she will never be his mother, she’ll never even be a person, but the thought of never seeing her again still hurts.

The door opens. It’s been nearly 24 hours since Phi first visited and already she’s decided she doesn’t need to knock.

“Cool, still here, still alive,” she says by way of greeting. “Listen, Diana made dinner and wants to know if you want to come eat with us. I thought maaaybe you’d want to because Sigma’s not here.”

It’s only dinner, but the whole notion makes him feel small and stupid and vulnerable. He can’t help but think that Sigma has set this up. That Sigma remembered his childish desire for a family who eats dinner together and set this whole thing up. It was foolish and sentimental and goddamnit Kyle isn’t going to get upset.

“No, I’m fine,” Kyle says, keeping his tone measured and even.

Phi must see something in his expression because she shrugs a bit too casually. “Okay. I’ll have her bring something in after, if that’s okay? I mean, I can’t keep being your slave forever.”

Kyle swallows. He still doesn’t really want to meet Diana, but this is as good a time as any, he figures. “Sure.”

Less than an hour later, there’s a knock at the door and Kyle tenses. He gets up from his bed, letting the book he’d been staring at fall away, and moves to open the door.

The resemblance is striking, but what hits him most is Diana’s clear blue eyes that are the same exact eyes that he’s been scorning since he was kid. Her appearance makes him pause, makes his chest twinge.

“Hi,” she says brightly. Her voice even sounds similar. “I’m Diana. I brought you something.”

Only now does he look at what she’s holding. It’s a tray with a bowl of soup perched on it that looks warm and smells better than anything he’s ever eaten.

“Oh.” He struggles to form words. “Um, thank you.” His hands automatically reach for the tray, but he’s still staring at her.

Unwelcome thoughts flood his mind. He can’t help but picture growing up with her, having a normal life, having a father who loved him…

But then he thinks about Akane, who had given him everything he ever wanted and then betrayed him. How can he trust Diana and Phi so easily? He can’t. He needs to keep his guard up. But he has to push his thoughts away because Diana is still standing there and he’s very aware that he must look like a fool.

“It’s chicken soup. I hope that’s okay,” Diana says. She’s smiling but there’s a nervous quirk to her eyebrows, an expression he’s seen on Luna many times. The level of detail that went into Luna is almost sick. Something happened to Diana in another timeline. And Sigma never got over it.

“It’s fine,” Kyle says, still running on autopilot.

Diana hesitates for a moment. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Sigma always talks about you.”

Kyle’s hands get tighter around the tray.

“He’s proud of you.”

He exhales hard, he feels his hands shaking. “For what?”

She reaches out and touches his shoulder, exactly the way Luna always does.

“For being here.”

Their brief meeting keeps Kyle awake at night.

He can’t remember the last time he felt that way. Felt loved. Loved by someone he’s barely just met. He can’t help but think of Akane and the stories she would tell, the way she would make him laugh, the way she could just sit in the same room without saying anything and make him feel loved. He misses her. He misses her so much that he wants to SHIFT back and see her. But he can’t.

Kyle had woken from cold sleep, disoriented and weak and full of intrusive memories of a game he’d never played, to find that Akane had vanished.

It nagged at him, no matter how much he tried to tell himself he didn’t care. Akane had already betrayed him. Her disappearance meant nothing to him. She left him, just like his father had.

There’s one person who’s never left him.

Sleep seems far off. It’s two in the morning and he doesn’t feel tired. Kyle slides out of bed and slips into the hallway. It’s dark and he’s instantly disoriented. He doesn’t even know where he’s going. The whole thing seems stupid now. He wants to see Luna. After years of rolling his eyes at her, years of denying her sentience, he wants to talk to her.

“Kyle?”

Her voice startles him. He turns towards the source and there’s Luna, standing at the end of the hallway. She steps towards him and Kyle ushers her into his room.

He turns the lights on, like he should have done earlier, illuminating Luna’s worried features.

“Do you need something?” She asks, rearranging her face into something that looks more mild.

Kyle shakes his head. “I…,” he pauses for a second, narrows his eyes. “What were you doing in the hallway? How did you know it was me?”

She looks sheepish. “I… Listen, please don’t be mad. All the doors have electronic locks, right?”

He nods, waiting for her to continue. He hasn’t locked his door since Phi started letting herself in.

“Well, that means the main computer knows when doors are opened or closed. Normally I don’t pay attention but… I’ve been monitoring your door. Please don’t tell Sigma. He told me to give you space.”

Even though the look on her face and the sincerity in her voice are a simulation, Kyle feels his stomach drop.

“I won’t tell him,” he says. “But, why?”

He thinks he knows. He thinks he knows but he wants to hear her explanation.

Luna takes a deep breath she doesn’t need. “I’m worried about you. I’m afraid you’ll leave without saying anything. That’s why…,” her voice breaks, “I haven’t given you the last injection yet.”

Kyle blinks.

“I’m sorry. It was me. I told Sigma I already gave it you. I logged it in the system. But I still have it. I was going to give it to you tomorrow, I promise. I just… I wanted you to meet your family. I wanted them to give you what I never could.”

It’s a simulation. It’s a simulation. It’s not real. It’s not–

The tears build at the corners of Kyle’s eyes. His chest is tight and he can’t look at Luna anymore. He grits his teeth and roughly wipes his eyes. He tries to formulate some kind of response but Luna touches him so gently on the shoulder.

Kyle can’t remember the last time he cried.

He feels everything at once. The grief of losing Akane, the swirl of an endless number of timelines, the love that Luna has for him. It all pours out of him as Luna wraps her arms around him. And he lets her. He pulls her in and cries into her shoulder like a child.

It’s ugly and gasping but he needs to say something to her. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles wetly. “I’m sorry.”

She rubs small circles into his back. He can feel her shaking.

When they finally pull away, Kyle feels tired and drained but one look at Luna makes the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile.

She’s beaming at him. Her eyebrows are knitted together and her lips are trembling, but she’s positively glowing. It’s enough to make Kyle want to cry again, but he pushes back the emotion.

Even though his father has created her, even though she’s nothing more than a database of responses, for once, Kyle can see past that. For once, he’s made her happy.

And it feels real enough.

CHAPTER 4

Luna gives Kyle the last booster shot first thing in the morning. It feels important, final. With this he can walk out the door. With this, he can leave and never look back.

The pull to leave is still there but now it doesn’t feel as urgent.

“Luna,” he says as she dabs a cotton ball over the tiny hole in his arm. They’re down in Sigma’s lab and Sigma himself is nowhere to be seen. “I want…” He closes his eyes for a long moment. “I want us to eat dinner together. All of us.”

A smile breaks out across her face. “Of course.”

It’s not a spur of the moment suggestion. He has been thinking about it since last night. He still doesn’t trust his father, hasn’t forgiven him, but at this point he’s at least willing to speak with him.

It’s 10:23 when Kyle takes his first step outside.

He had passed on Phi’s offer for company but accepted the coat and shoes Luna thrust into his arms. He’s glad of it as he steps out into the garden and the cold air stings his cheeks.

It’s winter but the garden is alive with flowers. It reminds him of the garden on Rhizome 9, but more beautiful because he’s actually outside.

For a moment he hesitates just outside the door, feet glued to the cement patio as he takes in the whites and yellows and blues. Some of the flowers he recognizes, some of them are as foreign as the bird perched on the bench. He takes a step towards it. He’s seen pictures of birds, videos of birds, but this is the first time he’s seen a living creature other than a human.

It’s a tiny brown sparrow that chirps at him before taking to the sky. He watches it go, transfixed before he settles into the bench.

The air is cold in his lungs. He’s never felt cold like this. His body temperature had always been regulated by his suit. He used to hate his suit, but without it he’s vulnerable.

There are footsteps on the cement path behind Kyle. He doesn’t turn around, assuming it’s Phi.

But when the person sits down on the bench next to him, he knows it’s not her.

It’s Sigma.

Kyle tenses and sets his jaw before turning to look at his father. He can’t read his expression. He never could. He wants him to say something, to speak first. But he doesn’t. They sit there until the silence is unbearable.

“What are you doing here?” Kyle asks. He doesn’t look at Sigma. He keeps his eyes trained on the fence surrounding the garden. Another sparrow has perched there.

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. For everything. I know you think I’m a monster, and I don’t blame you. I have done bad things, Kyle, things I’m not proud of in the name of good. I don’t expect you to forget everything I’ve done, but I just want you to know…” Sigma trails off. Kyle looks at him out of the corner of his eye and he can see Sigma wringing his hands.

He lets the moment linger, lets Sigma become increasingly more uncomfortable.

“I want you to know that you are loved.”

Never in his life has Sigma told Kyle he loves him.

Kyle doesn’t know how to process it. His first instinct is that it’s a farce, another ploy for Sigma to make him stay. But hasn’t he thought that all along? Hasn’t he been told again and again that Sigma wants Kyle to do what makes him happy? There’s a small, conspiratorial part of him that says Sigma has orchestrated this whole thing, has manipulated every member of his family into making Kyle stay.

Not even Sigma would go to that trouble.

“I understand,” Kyle says, because he knows he has to say something. It’s not the emotional understanding he came to with Luna, not even forgiveness. It’s a placeholder while Kyle attempts to make sense of everything.

“Okay.” Sigma gets up and Kyle is glad for it. Neither of them are very good at this. “I’ll see you at dinner?”

Kyle nods and watches his father walk away with mixed feelings. He wants to feel angry, to shout after Sigma, to ask how dare he say such things now after a lifetime of neglect. But the anger has gone. Just like he’s stopped being angry with Luna for not being what he wanted her to be, he’s stopped being angry with his father for not living up to his expectations.

In that way, Luna and his father are the same. Luna has been programmed to act a certain way and draws her responses from a database. On Rhizome 9 Sigma was working towards something that Akane had already seen, something that always had to happen. His responses were limited to things that would produce the desired outcome.

Kyle understands and, one day, he will forgive.

“I can’t believe you spent like five hours outside in the cold,” Phi says over dinner.

Kyle’s sitting next to her with Diana directly across from him. Sigma is next to Diana with Luna on her other side. Luna, of course, doesn’t need to eat, but it wouldn’t feel right without her.

“It was only an hour,” Kyle replies, realizing too late that Phi is teasing him.

As Phi snickers, Sigma looks down at his phone. He mutters something to himself as he pushes his chair out from the table. “Continue without me, I’ll be right back.”

Kyle stares after him before looking to Phi. She shrugs as she shovels a forkful of salad into her mouth. Apparently Diana and Luna know what Sigma is doing, because they both look away when Kyle looks to them.

“Sorry I’m late.”

Standing in the doorway is a woman who Kyle would recognize anywhere. She’s so much younger than Kyle has ever seen her, but he knows exactly who she is.

“Akane.”

Kyle is standing before he consciously thinks to do it. His body takes him over to her, a woman who has never met him, a woman who meant so much to him in another timeline.

“Kyle.”

She hugs him and he lets her. He hesitates a moment before wrapping his arms around her. His chest feels tight as she leans up on her toes and whispers in his ear.“It’s been a long time. I’m glad you’re here.”

Dinner is everything Kyle has always wanted it to be.

Phi continues to tease him, which makes Diana laugh. Luna watches him from the corners of her eyes, even when speaking to others. It doesn’t annoy him like it used to. Sigma starts telling Akane about a project he’s working on, but Akane tells him not to discuss work at the dinner table.