LOST IN TRANSIT

You didn't think much of it for the first day. Things happen. They're busy people. You learnt your lesson and you wanted to put your trust in hir. It was the continued radio silence well into Tuesday that had you concerned. And when you tried to call, and the number didn't even ring out, but sent you straight to voicemail, that's when you knew something was wrong. It's not like you can lose or break a comm that's hard-wired into your skull without getting some very delicate brain matter ripped out in the process.

You've been trying really, really hard not to think about that.

You've been trying not to think about this at all, actually. Remember what happened last time? Maybe if you just wait long enough, ze'll pop up again, completely fine, just like before, and you'll be mad because you worried over what turned out to be nothing but it's better that than never hearing from hir again.

You left a message. Actually, you've left several messages, because it's the only outlet you have, and you gave yourself this ultimatum: if one week passes with no contact, then you're allowed to freak out.

Well, your week is up.

You have work. You need to get out of bed. You don't, though, instead falling onto your side and pulling your knees up to your chest. This tension has been building all week, winding your strings tighter and tighter, and you can’t take it any more. They’ve snapped. It takes a minute for you to realise that you’re crying, but when you do, you go from silent weeping to big, ugly sobs in a matter of seconds.

What happened?

What if this is it, forever, and you never find out what happened?

It's been a long, long time since you felt truly, entirely helpless. It's not a feeling you've missed. For five years there's always been someone to catch you when you slip, someone to pick you up when you fall, even when it felt like your entire life was inches from collapsing. Now? Now you have nothing. Nobody knows about this. Nobody can know about this. And even if they did, they couldn't fix it.

You didn't think you'd have to live through another loss like this.

You sit huddled on the bed like a pathetic idiot until you run out of tears and your throat is sore. You're going to be late to work, but it's hard to care. Your feet feel unsteady beneath you as you make your way out to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of water with shaking hands. Stupid shitty fucking tremor correction not working properly. You need to get it looked at. You'd also rather crawl right into a gigagiant’s mouth than let anyone pull your cybernetics apart right now.

You're already exhausted and you haven't even left the house. Crying has, though, cleared your head, you'll give it that.

This is exactly the same panic you found yourself in a week ago, and all you did then was sit around and wait. Sad, scared, anxious, and completely useless.

You’re not fucking doing that again. No. Look at you. You’re better than that.

You want to find Zenith, yes? Yes. Alright. You don't have contact details for hir friends, but you know their names, or their aliases, at least, and you know where people look when they need a shadowrunner to do their dirty work for them.

You still have your old Darkmovers account credentials from your ill-fated attempts at a couple of jobs as a teenager. It feels like such a long shot. Like, no way is it going to be this easy. But your login still works and you look for Dak Rambo and he's

Right. Fucking. There.

His profile is... something. A lot of jobs. A lot of reviews. Most of them bad. You have reservations. But Zenith is there in his connections, plain as day (no recent activity, because of course there isn't). So are the other runners ze worked with.

You consider the wizard. You think about some of the shit Zenith told you and showed you. You tap on Pox’s profile instead.

Mercifully, she looks competent. But the contents of her profile fall away into the background of the job listing she has posted.

MISSING: 40,000 nuyen reward for information regarding location of ZENITH. Last seen 8/15, Houndstooth, AZ.

There's a photo attached: her and the wizard are cropped out at the sides to allow a smiling Zenith to take centre focus.

Okay. Okay. So she's not dead. Or, she wasn't, as of one week ago, when Zenith apparently vanished. She was alive long enough to post this. And maybe Zenith isn't dead, either. If she has faith, then you can too. Yes? Yes.

But if they don't know where ze is, then your job is about to get a whole lot harder.

So, what now? You could message her anyway. She knows who you are. Kind of. Maybe? She's seen you. She knows what you look like. Hopefully that recognition's enough for her to trust you. Maybe they know something useful. You'll take anything. You can ask them to keep you in the loop.

How deep do you want to get embroiled in this? Is it even worth it? Yes, your brain offers up as the immediate answer to that question, it is, because you haven't stressed yourself sick over this fucker for the past week only to cower from the opportunity to actually do something.

(Your Darkmovers account is still in your old name–you catch it and correct it before you actually send anything.)

You agonise over how to phrase it for longer than you really need to before deciding to cut straight to the point: I'm Zenith's friend. You saw me outside the hotel last week. Can you call me?

You spin up a softphone number, tack it on the end, and hit send.

And now, you guess, you wait.

***

You barely make it to work on time, and you hate that even after five years and enough opportunities to demonstrate with your cybernetics they still make you fuck around with a stupid arbitrary holster for a stupid arbitrary gun you don't need that you're still struggling to strap to your belt as you pile into the transport. (Yes, there are legitimate reasons to carry it, but it doesn't make it any less annoying). It's a short contract, just a few days for some conference you don't care to know the details of. Normally you'd be more attentive, but these aren't normal circumstances. All you need to know is where to stand and where all the doors are and whose legal team will have your head on a platter if they, specifically get assassinated.

You have a pretty good track record of not letting people die even when you're stressed to hell and back. Today might yet test you.

You've been doing an okay job of hiding all of your inner turmoil over the course of the week, because you have to. Explaining it to anyone is a slippery slope to your carefully-constructed life coming apart at the seams and rendering all of the work you've done these past five years pointless. These are extenuating circumstances, though, and you’re approaching your limit. You've been shot and lost your home and endured more mental and emotional crises than you can keep track of, but there was always a way to navigate through them. A way out. A resolution.

You don't have a way to resolve this.

Despite it all, you manage to hold it together until noon. People have flocked in, nothing suspicious has happened, and the worst anyone's dealt with is a few assholes getting pissy about weapon permits at the doors (they're lucky it's not you they have to answer to today). You've just about convinced yourself that you're acting normal and not at all like someone trying to hide a cornucopia of deeply upsetting secrets.

Then Pox calls you.

Well, no, it's an unknown number, but who the fuck else could it be? Seeing the alert pop up makes your stomach lurch. You're paralysed for a moment as you try to decide what to do. You could turn it down, ask her to call again later, but you don't know what's going to happen between now and "later" that could completely throw that plan, knowing what these people get themselves into. They might actually die before you get to call her back. Which means that instead, you have to make up an excuse to go and find a hole somewhere to shove yourself in where you can go and potentially have a little meltdown without being seen.

The excuse part is easy. The hole part is harder, but you manage to find a courtyard that isn't seeing much foot traffic, and tuck yourself away in the alcove of a closed-off doorway where you'll hopefully be left undisturbed.

You accept the call.

“Hello?”

“Is that Aubrey?” The accent is English, so, definitely Pox. There's some scuffling and poorly-disguised whispering in the seconds that follow.

“Put it on loudspeaker.”

“No, hold on.”

“Yeah, it's Aubrey. Don't put me on loudspeaker.”

“See, she can hear you, shut up,” Pox hisses. It'd be funny if you weren't so tense. She jumps straight to the point. “Have you talked to Zenith?” she asks, and she sounds so hopeful, it crushes you to have to say,

“No. That's what I was calling you about, actually. I haven't heard from hir since Sunday, and then I saw your ad on Darkmovers…”

“Sunday? That's…” She mutters quietly to herself for a moment. “Wow. Yeah. I guess it's been a week already.”

“Since what?” You can't stand this anymore. The tremor in your voice is obvious despite your utmost efforts to keep it at bay. “What happened?”

“Should I do this–you know what? I'm gonna go in the back.” She's talking to the others again, you think, so you wait. There's some dull thumping before Pox eventually speaks again. Her voice echoes slightly, like she's in a much larger space.

“Sorry, I had to go to the trailer.”

“It's okay. I just…” You trail off. What do you even want out of this? What did you expect you would get? They're in Arizona. You're in Maine. What are you supposed to do from all the way over here? “Ze said ze was just going to sleep. I've been trying to call hir all week. What happened?”

It takes her a moment to respond, and her answer comes slowly, but she tells you about the three of them heading down to the town for ice cream and returning to find no sign of Zenith whatsoever. No tracks. No witnesses. Not a trace. A night-long search of the area turned up nothing. Unless someone was lying through their teeth, ze may as well have vanished into thin air.

“...And you definitely don't know anything?”

“No. Nothing, I swear.” You shake your head, even though she can't see you. “That's all ze said, that ze was... safe, and going to get some sleep. Nothing happened before that? Before you left hir alone, I mean?”

“No, I…” Her voice peters out; you can hear her stutter faintly, as if she's not certain she wants to continue, but then she does: “That was, um. I don't know how much ze told you.”

That's when it dawns on you, and you feel like a total dipshit. “Oh god, right, the whole thing with–yeah, um. Your dad?”

“Yeah. That happened. But after that, we were all sitting on top of the truck, and Tech even made us a little star show, and it was like… I dunno. It felt like everything was gonna be okay. Then we got back, and just… nothing's felt right since then.”

A silence hangs between the two of you for a moment, filled only by the dull rumble of the truck's engine and tyres against the road in the background.

“Will you call me?” Pox asks, quietly. “If you do hear anything?”

“Yes. Yes. First thing, I promise. I'm not even in this for the nuyen.”

“We're pretty fucking rich, now. I can still pay you, if you want.”

“I'll. Um. I'll think about it.” It'd feel dirty, taking payment, but 40k would almost quadruple the emergency escape fund you’ve been quietly paying into for the last five years, and you have a horrible feeling that you might actually need to use it in the not-too-distant future.

“Cool. Hopefully Dak doesn't gamble it all away before you have a chance to find anything. I should probably go back and–”

“Wait.” You do actually know what you want out of this, now. You can't stand to bottle it up any longer. “Can we just. Um. Talk? For a little bit?”

“...Sure.”

“Sorry. This has just–I've been going kind of crazy over this, you know?” You laugh weakly. “It's, um. Nice to actually speak to you. Zenith told me a lot about you guys.”

“Like what?”

“Shit, I don't know–ze told me about the thing with your dad, and Dak's kid, and Tech Wizard’s… I don’t know, whatever he has going on. Ze was kind of vague about it. He got shot or something, in Denver?”

“Yeah, he’s been going through it. It’s a long story. We’ve pretty much had people trying to murder us constantly for the last three weeks.”

“That's… rough. I mean, it’s not like I don’t meet plenty of people who want to do me grievous bodily harm, too, but not that much.”

“What do people want to kill you for?”

“...I'm a security guard.” As expected, she snorts with laughter.

“Wow, I bet you would hate us. We have a bad track record with security guards.”

“Don't most shadowrunners? I don't know, you seem okay.” You actually smile for what feels like the first time all week. “But, yeah, most of the time when I bump into runners, it's... not on friendly terms. It pays, though, and it's–I mean, it's all I really know how to do.” You're painfully aware of how quiet your voice becomes as the sentence tapers off. You’ve never spoken out loud your justifications for doing what you do, and now that you have, you’re struck by how pathetic it actually sounds. Wow. “I'm not cut out to be a shadowrunner, but... y'know. This kinda work is, um. Kinda comes naturally to me.”

Another silence falls; you're eager to fill it with something, anything. “I'm... sorry. About your dad. He sounds like he was a piece of shit that got what was coming to him, but... still. You shouldn't have had to do that.”

“...Thanks.” All her bubbly energy seems to have dissipated in an instant. “He was. Like. He was... evil, but–”

“You don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to.” You can hear the wobble in her voice, and a pang of guilt strikes you. “Sorry. I didn't mean to kill the mood like that.”

“Yeah, but you're right. He did deserve it.”

“Sure, but–like–” Time to overshare? Fuck it. Why not, at this point? How much worse can anything get? “I always, like, wished I knew who my family were. Even just one parent. So, having that, and then having to kill him because he was such a fucking monster, like... I can't imagine how hard that would be.”

“...Yeah. I–Yeah.” You feel shitty for obviously making her cry, but you want her to know your sympathy is real.

“What about your sister? Like, with him dead, I guess–do you have any way of getting her out, now?”

Pox gasps excitedly, like she just remembered something important. “Yes! She got out! Or, at least, I think she did. We went and spoke to this lich, and they showed us–”

“A lich.” A lich. A lich.

“Yeah, but they seemed cool–we gave them back this gem thing from one of their followers–and they showed me that she was, like, running away from the house–so I don’t know how, but I think she managed to escape.”

Is she always like this? Like, just–like this? She's not going to go into any more detail about the fucking lich?

“So–okay, well–have you been able to contact her?”

“...No.” All the vigour drains from her voice again. “She doesn’t know my number now, and she didn’t even have a comm when my dad was… keeping her down there.” She sighs quietly. “I don't know when I'll get to actually talk to her. I just hope she doesn’t think that I ever… forgot about her.”

That stings in a way you didn't anticipate it would. It reminds you of… well. Are you going to cross that line today, too?

You glance nervously around the courtyard. It's empty.

“...I think I know how you feel.”

“Have you got someone waiting for you, too?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, my–my sister. And my brother.” Your voice shakes as you admit their existence out loud for the first time in almost four years.

“Are they still with Legacy of Adam?”

“No. I mean, I hope not. They're out there, somewhere, probably. Assuming nothing bad happened to them. We. Um. Escaped together. Us, and a few others.” It feels like you’re doing the impossible, finally speaking about them, about the truth of them. Pox’s situation is fucked; you knew that, the abstract of it. Being faced with it, though, one-on-one, the reality of it, it's dawning on you that you share more in common than you initially thought.

“You said you didn't have a family!”

“I don't! We weren't, like, related.”

“I think you can still be a family without being related.”

“I meant, like, a family before Legacy. Anyway–we split up after we got out. We thought they might come looking for us and figured it'd be harder for them to track us if we were all going in separate directions, so… that's what we did.”

“You couldn't even message each other?”

“No. We were really scared that if they found one of us, they'd use us to trace the others. We scrambled all our contact information. I don’t think Legacy went looking for us–they never came for me–but I don't know where the others are now.”

“You could put up some ads. If you’ve all got the eyes and the arms and–”

“I wish it was that easy,” you laugh feebly. “Nobody here knows anything about where I come from. I can't risk blowing up my whole life like that.”

“Well, what do they look like?”

“What?”

“Your brother and sister. What do they look like?”

“Why?”

“In case we see them.”

You blink at the wall you’ve been staring distantly at this whole time. Wait. Back things up, real quick, just for a sec. You need a moment to process the offer she's making.

You know, statistically, that it’s unlikely they’ll just come across either of them wandering around in the wild. But it was statistically unlikely that you and Zenith just so happened to be in the same convenience store at the same time, too, and even more statistically unlikely that you’d just happen to be in the same hotel in the same nowhere town in Utah a week later. Statistically unlikely things seem to be happening to you a lot lately.

You’re putting a Iot on the line, here, by walking down this road. If they find anything, you will have obligations. Those obligations will eventually pull the ugly truths of your life into the spotlight and force you to do the unthinkable.

Can you stand the alternative, though?

You made promises. Keep them.

“Um.” You have to force the words out. You’ve trained yourself so hard to not talk about this that talking about it now takes concentrated effort. “My brother’s an elf. He's Black. Kind of amber-brown  eyes, black hair. He’d be 23, same as me. He was trans, but they wouldn’t let him have T or surgery or anything, so… he might have done that by now, or he might not. I don’t know.”

“Mhm. Mhm. Your sister?”

“Half-ork, half-elf, really, really pale. She hasn’t just got the one eye scar; she’s got these two other massive scars across her face from when she got attacked once. It took out her other eye, so she’d have two drones, too. Really distinctive. She was younger than us, so she’d be, like… 18, 19 by now? Maybe she had a growth spurt, but she was always really small for a half-ork.”

“Big scars. Two drones. Really small. Got it.”

“Okay. I. Um. Thank you.” There’s a huge lump in your throat all of a sudden, making it difficult to talk again. “Like, I don’t… nobody even knows I have siblings, ‘cause I can’t tell anyone without people asking questions, but–I miss them. I really, really miss them. I wanna know they’re okay.” And if they’re not, you want them back here, with you. Where you can protect them from all the things you couldn’t back then.

“I can’t make any promises, because we have a lot going on,” Pox says gently, “but if we hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks. Really, it means a lot.” You wipe at your right eye with your sleeve. You probably look like shit. Perhaps you can slip away to a bathroom and wash your face off before you go back to patrol so it isn’t blatantly obvious you’ve been crying.

Pox is silent for a couple of seconds while you recover yourself, then speaks again: “Can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I'm scared.”

“Of what?”

“...That we won't find Zenith.” You can hear the rustle of fabric, and her voice becomes muffled. You can picture her bundled into the huge coat you always saw her wearing in videos despite the summer heat. “I don't… understand. I don’t know why ze would leave us.”

“...Yeah. I don't... I don't know, either.”

“Was it the stuff from Fyre Tower? Do you think…” Her voice stalls before she can finish the sentence, but you know exactly how it was going to end. It’s why you’ve kept the truth of your past under lock and key ever since the day you dragged yourself out of that ice cold water. Does Zenith feel the same? It’s a struggle to imagine, given the life ze leads. You of all people should know how well a person can hide their feelings, though–and how irrational those feelings can be, sometimes.

“There’s gotta be a reason. Ze–ze loves you guys a lot. You know that?”

“So why couldn't ze tell us where ze was going? Or tell us ze was leaving at all?” Her voice cracks. The sound of it is piercing. You don't want to admit that the same fear is looming in the back of your mind. “It’s like with my sister, and your siblings. I just…”

“You just wanna know ze's safe?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

This time, you let the silence that follows be. It's not comfortable, per se, but peaceful, if sombre. You wish you could hug her. You wish she could hug you, actually. You have all the support in the world in every other aspect of your life, but for this? Nothing. You'd kill just to embrace someone who knows this specific pain: this specific grief, for this specific person.

“Can I ask you something?” Pox murmurs, after several minutes.

“What is it?”

“How much did you know about Zenith?”

“What do you mean?”

“We went to that Sons of Adam place in Neo New Mexico. Y’know, when they were talking about tours and clone memories and everything–did you know about that when you talked before?”

“...Yes. I mean, kind of–like, not specifically about Zenith, but they put me through all of that, too, and I didn’t get my memory wiped. I grew up in Canada, though, not Thailand.”

“Do you know why they said ze's going to die?”

“...What?”

“...That's what they said at the shop.” She pauses, like you're supposed to know what the fuck to say to that, like you're supposed to know what that means at all. “Zenith didn't tell you that?”

“No? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Okay, okay, so, look, I think it's total bullshit–” She’s flipping into damage control mode, you’d know that tone of voice in anyon, “–but the person in there, they said–they said Zenith had a life expectancy of eight to twelve months, something like that–”

The blood in your veins runs ice cold.

Whatever else she has to say melts into a noisy sludge in your head. Eight to twelve months. Eight to twelve months. Eight to twelve months.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why that long?” Tremors have you quivering where you sit. “What happens then?”

“I don't know, that’s why I asked you! They didn't say, which is why I think it's fucking… made-up. They just told us to go to Los Angeles, or Buri Ram, or something, if we wanted to find out more.”

Okay. Okay. Twelve months is a long time. Eight months is still kind of a long time. But you don't know how long this could take to fix. Or if it's fixable. Or where the fuck Zenith is so you can start fixing it.

“Is this a–” Your mouth finds the question first, but when your brain catches up, you stop mid-sentence, unable to finish.

“Is it what?”

“Is it–is this a Legacy of Adam thing? Like, is this just Zenith, or–”

Or...

“–or does it apply to all of us?”

Pox goes quiet. Very quiet. You feel sick. You might be sick.

“...I don't know,” she replies, finally. “I'm sorry. I don't know.”

“...Sorry, I shouldn't expect you to.” There's tears flooding down your cheek again and you make no effort to stop them. What are you supposed to do? What's the protocol for this? “I just–fuck. Fuck.”

“Hey! Listen.” You slowly sink down against the doorway you've been huddled in as Pox gets right up into the mic on her comm. “Listen. I told you, that timeframe is bullshit. They don't know how long you'll live based on some numbers when they haven’t seen you in years! They don't know you!”

“They know everything about us, Pox!” God you hope there’s nobody around to hear you yelling. You don't want to scream at her but the weight of this whole week has come crashing down on you, backed by an avalanche, with a thunderstorm brewing in the sky, and she has no idea what she's talking about. “They raise us. They cut us up and put things in our bodies and our minds that we don't even know are there but they do. They know. If they said twelve months, tops, it's twelve months. And if they'd do that–put something that does that–into one of us, they'd put it in any of us.”

She falls silent again. You don't know what you want from her. You don't know what she could possibly do that would make any of this better.

(There isn’t anything. You know this.)

“It'll be okay,” she offers tentatively, in answer to your quiet sobbing. “We'll–we'll find Zenith, and we'll find out what's wrong.  There has to be a way to stop it. There has to be.” Oh, she's trying so hard to convince you. To convince herself. “Can you, like–go to a doctor? I dunno, there has to be, like, some tests or scans or something they can do to see if anything is wrong with you, right?”

The last thing you want to do right now is think about subjecting yourself to medical investigations. She's right to bring it up, though. You know it's inevitable, too, which just makes you want to cry harder. (You don’t cry harder. You breathe in deep and force your diaphragm not to spasm and try to hold yourself the fuck together.)

“Probably.” You haven't let anyone do any thorough medical exams on you since you were hospitalised at the start of your employment with Zodiac five years ago.

“Okay, so, do that! And then if nothing comes up, you're probably fine, right?”

“Yeah. Sure.” It's not that simple, and you both know it, but her bold optimism is certainly a force to be reckoned with.

“Can you go and see them? Sons of Adam? Like we did?”

“No. I can't–I’m not going back to them. Ever.”

“...Okay.” You can tell she wants to say something but she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut. “Well, if you do see a doctor, will you... tell us? Because it might be the same thing that Zenith has.”

“I–Yeah. I'll let you know.” Now you have to get checked out. You've locked yourself in. It's not just you who needs answers. Good job, saddling yourself with that responsibility.

“Thank you.” And then she murmurs gently: “It really is gonna be okay. I promise.” She says it with such quiet but certain conviction that you almost feel like you have no choice but to believe her.

“You'll tell me if you find Zenith, won't you?” you whisper hoarsely. “I mean, if ze can't tell me, or…”

“Yeah. I'll tell you. When we spoke to the lich in Moab–” Yeah, you still can’t believe she’s just dropping that like it’s normal, “–they told us to look for a sigil guardian if we want to know about Zenith, and someone else told us where it is. That's where we're going to look next.”

Because that sounds totally legit. Sure. Okay.

“Where is it?”

“Point Reyes, or something? It's in California, and we're only a few hours from Los Angeles anyway, so…”

“Okay. Just. Um. You know. A fucking lich told you that, so, be careful.”

“The lich was nice! They didn’t try to kill us or anything. One of their followers did, but the lich was fine.”

“Do you get to go anywhere without someone trying to kill you?”

“...Not really. We're kinda hoping it'll stop when we get to LA.”

“Yeah. Me too. I like not having to worry that my... friends might be dead just because I haven't heard from them in a few days.”

“We're doing our best not to die, alright?” God, she has that same indignance about it that Zenith does, and you wonder if ze picked it up from her, or if she picked it up from hir, and it's enough to make you laugh despite the morbidity of the situation you find yourself in. Yeah, alright, you may as well just start cracking up about it at this point. Crying isn't exactly getting you anywhere.

“I believe you. But really. Be careful.”

“We'll definitely be careful.” She's a terrible liar but you don't tell her that.

Okay. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath.

“I should... go, probably. I'm supposed to be working right now. Someone's gonna come looking for me eventually, and I don't wanna have to explain this whole fucking mess to them.”

“Yeah, I don't blame you. I guess I'll... let you know what happens when we get to Point Reyes.”

“Sure.”

“...Wait, just–just one thing.”

“What?” Your eyes dart nervously around the courtyard. You’ve already been here too long. Someone’s going to come looking for you eventually–

“I'm sorry. About... you know. The Legacy of Adam stuff. What they did to you and Zenith is... it sounds fucked up. It's fucked up that they did all of that to you and it's fucked up that they made you fight in wars, when you were little kids. What happened to you, it's... none of it was your fault. And I think... you're probably a way better person now than whatever they tried to force you to be. Um. Yeah.”

Her words feel like a coin that the vending machine in your head refuses to accept.

For the first time in your life, someone is saying that you didn't deserve the brutality Legacy inflicted on you and you don't know what to do with this.

The tears are still running down your cheek, ice cold against your red-hot skin, while your left eye socket burns with the impulse to cry from long-excised tear ducts. People have told you before that you didn't deserve the things that have happened to you–but those people have all been fed lies. It was your 'family' that beat you down, shaved your hair, deprived you of emotional connection. None of them know the truth. None of them know what you've done.

Pox, though? She knows. Not like Zenith does, as someone who shared the horror of your experiences firsthand, but as someone watching the bloodshed from the outside. She still has sympathy (maybe it’s pity) for you. Her moral compass is, arguably, skewed, but she sees you.

It's unbearable.

So you do what you've always done: you run away.

“I have to go.” You hang up before you can even think about what you're doing, and you slam your head back against the brick, miraculously managing not to concuss yourself in the process.

Zenith might be dying.

You might be dying.

You're waiting for somebody on the other side of the country to confirm that based on whatever information they can pry out of someone they're visiting on the advice of a fucking lich.

And you have to get up and go back to work like there’s nothing wrong.

“I haven’t cut it in, like, three years.”

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to.”

“No!”

“Good. You’ll have to let me do it up all nice for you, one day.”

“This isn’t doing it up nice?”

“Nicer than this. Something really pretty.”

Pretty. Like you never got to be when Legacy shaved you and everyone else’s heads clean every two weeks while you were in Saskatchewan. After you left, you told yourself, you’d get to have long hair, like all the people you saw in the movies and TV shows they let you watch.

Yeah. Pretty.

That’d be nice.

---

The world’s a bitch and everyone is out for a piece of it. Most of the time, it’s just petty thieves and burglars, people that spook at the first sign of real trouble and either clear out before they even make it into the building or get cornered by five fully-armed private security guards and are smart enough not to put up a real fight.

Tonight, though. Tonight, they’re really giving you a run for your money.

They’re still no hard-hitters, but they’re quiet, and they’re fast, and keeping pace with the human you’re chasing down a corridor is becoming harder and harder. He’s about to turn a corner when Kaveh makes his convenient appearance, and the man goes barrelling into him; it staggers both of them, but the smaller human more so, and Kaveh recovers quickly enough to seize his weapon hand and throw him to the floor. With a sigh of relief, you begin to slow your pace.

“You got him?”

“Yep.” He’s no match for Kaveh’s strength, and he knows it; he doesn’t even put up a fight as his arms are twisted behind his back and his gun wrenched from his hand. Kaveh zip ties his wrists, and hauls him up onto his feet, only for an expression of panic to strike him when he looks your way. “Aubrey--!”

You hear it, then: the near-silent footsteps racing behind you. You turn slightly, see the flash of a blade in the corner of your eye, and with a perfectly-timed sidestep, the slash whips past your head. Crouch, spin, swing your leg out; your foot hooks behind your assailant’s knee, sweeping their leg out from under them. They swing the blade in a panic as they topple, and it strikes your arm, cutting your sleeve but barely inflicting a superficial scratch on the metal. Your right hand closes around their wrist, and when they move to grab you with their free hand, your left meets it, while your foot shoots out to deliver a solid kick to the jaw. Their head flies back and hits the marble tile with a dull crack.

“Enough!” You flip yourself atop them, using the momentum to push their arm back, but in their dazed state they try for one more flailing stab up at you.

You feel the blade catch in your hair.

You feel it yank straight back out as you slam their arm down to the floor.

Jamming your knee under their ribs knocks any remaining air out of them with a wheeze, just for good measure, and the knife finally clatters to the floor. They’re stunned from their skull’s sudden introduction to the marble, too–probably concussed, but they’ll live–so the risk in releasing one of their arms to grab a zip tie is one you’re willing to take. You manage to get their wrists bound and stand before you realise your hair is slipping out of its tie. Something feels… off. You reach back and pull the elastic out.

A cascade of loose copper falls at your feet.

The next few moments are a blur. You get about five seconds of lucidity, when you’re sure this is about to be revealed as some kind of prank, or a bad dream, or that you’re about to discover you have the ability to wind back time or something. When none of those things happen, the floodgates open.

You remember crying. And shouting. Not exactly what you shouted, bar all the profanity, but you threatened to kill them. You remember the crunch of metal knuckles against weak, inferior bone, over and over until Kaveh pried you off them, yelling something about incident reports, and you thought about how easy it would have been to throw him off and floor him and break his stupid fucking face, too, if you wanted to.

If you wanted to.

But you don’t. You don’t want to be like that. Not really.

So you let him pull you off your now-groaning victim and crumple to the floor. You let him finish binding them, and though you remain a trembling heap as he assesses their injuries, you don’t protest when he pulls you to your feet and walks all four of you outside, where the custody van awaits. While Kaveh recounts the events to another pair of guards, you find yourself delegated to another one of the vans, a packet of alcohol wipes thrust into your hands to clean the blood from them. Try as you might, they can't reach what's crept into the seams around the joints. It needs flushing out with water. It can wait until you get home.

It’s not like you have anything better to do than keep trying, though. You fold the wipes and try to poke them into the tiny gaps until a shadow falls over you. You scrunch the bloodied wipe into your fist.

“Hey.” The van dips slightly under Kaveh’s weight as he takes a seat beside you. “Are you okay?”

“Mm.”

“I thought you might be thirsty.” You glance down at the bottle of water he’s offering out to you. You are--your throat is raw from the crying and shouting--so you take it with only a moment’s hesitance.

“Thanks.”

“Aubrey, why’d you freak out on that guy?”

You knew the question was inevitable, but that doesn’t make the resulting conversation any easier. Your grip on the bottle tightens and the plastic crinkles under your fingers.

“They cut my hair off.” Doesn’t that sound so, so stupid when you say it out loud? You know it does, all the more so from the way Kaveh sighs.

“Okay. I get why you’d be upset, and I'm not asking this to be an asshole. Did you really need to attack them like that?” He thinks you’re crazy. Everyone will, if they find out what happened.

“They used to--” Wait, wait. Take a moment, reassess, revise the story. Try again. “I couldn't grow my hair when I was a kid. My parents never let me. I've been letting it grow for three years. And I get it, okay?” you interject, cutting off the lecture before he can start giving it. “I know I still shouldn’t have done it. I know I can’t just beat people up because I have problems, and I’m sorry, okay? So you don’t have to give me a whole speech, because I get it. But he cut half my fucking hair off.”

You toss the bottle behind you in favour of folding in on yourself, hands on your head, fingers twitching with the urge to rake them through your hair even though you know that feeling that missing swathe all over again will only make it worse. Great job, idiot. You have to file an incident report and probably get written up and the psych department is going to hassle you about it and--

--and Kaveh drapes one arm over your shoulders and pulls you into his side, and you remember that you don’t have to navigate this on your own.

“It’ll grow back, you know,” he murmurs, his thumb rubbing circles against your shoulder. “It’s okay. Nobody’s going to stop you from growing it out again.”

“I know. But they--they took that away from me. The choice. Just like they did at home.” You uncurl yourself and pull your fingers through the left side of your hair; where the right side falls down your back, much as you’re used to, the left now only passes a few inches below your shoulder. The odd angle of the cut, stark differences in length, and random, stray longer locks that escaped the blade make it woefully apparent how unintentional it was. You can’t keep it like this.

“I’m gonna have to cut the rest off. It’s a mess.” Kaveh gives you a look, like he wants to rebuke you, but you both know it’d be a poor lie. “You can do it when we get home. It’s whatever.”

“Uh, no.” He sounds offended, reeling back from you. “Do I look like a hairdresser? We'll go find a salon tomorrow.”

“What?”

“A salon.” He’s giving you a look. You’re supposed to know what this means.

“I don’t… I’ve never been to a salon.”

“...Okay, and? There's a first time for everything. You know what a salon is, right?”

“Yes.” You kind of know what a salon is. You've seen them (from the outside, anyway). People talk about them.

“So, go see someone who’s qualified, and they’ll fix you up. I promise you don’t want me to make it even worse.” Kaveh raises his hand to ruffle your hair, and you reflexively swat it away, instead gathering your hair back up into a ponytail. If you can kind of twist the left side under the right, maybe the length discrepancy won’t be so obvious. “You wanna get out of here now?”

“Do I still have to file that report?”

“...You know I have to say yes.” You groan. He sighs.

“Really?”

“Aubrey…”

“Please?”

“You did a number on that guy’s face. Maybe we can downplay it on the paperwork, but even if nobody asks us, they’re gonna start talking the second we walk them into HQ.”

“...Okay. Sure. Fine.” Fuck it. He’s right. May as well get this shit over and done with.

You follow Kaveh back to the custody van, where--after a brief conversation with the two guards currently watching it, and some convincing on his part--he manages to secure the keys. You clamber into the passenger side of the vehicle, while Kaveh occupies the driver’s side; as he starts the engine, you pull back the grate that separates the cabin from the cell in the rear. Several people are inside; disarmed, restrained, and too worn or injured to keep fighting back. Your unfortunate victim is slumped on a bench, hands cuffed. The sound of the grate moving draws their attention, and even in the low light, you can see the extensive bruising blooming across their battered face when they look up at you.

“Sorry about your face,” you offer, painfully aware of how hollow it rings. “Like, really. I didn’t mean to go completely ham on you like that.”

“...Fuck you.” They spit--ineffectively--a mouthful of saliva and coagulated blood in your direction. It lands on the floor just below the grate with the faintest tink.

“Leave them, Aubrey.” You glance back at Kaveh, and slowly pull the cover back across the grate. “They won’t listen.”

“I wanted to at least try.”

“...Look, don’t feel too bad. They weren’t aiming for your hair when they took a swing at you. They were aiming for your head. They were ready to kill you.”

“But I didn’t have to do that to them. You wouldn't have done that to them. That's why I have to fill out a fucking report."

"The report is to cover corporate’s ass, not theirs. We're corpsec, Aubrey. If someone gets a little more roughed up than intended? That's just the job. It happens. It's what we do. Criminals know that. Runners know that. They know what they're risking. You could have done them a lot worse, honestly--"

"Oh my God, do you hear yourself? What happened to not wanting me to beat the shit out of people just because I'm emotional?" Are you going insane, or did his tune really change that fast?

"You shouldn't! I'm just saying, you shouldn't be too upset about your choice of target this time. They knew they were breaking into a building with armed guards, and they were prepared to murder you, whether you used them as a punch bag or not. It's not like you assaulted a civilian. I don't want you to get hung up on it, that's all."

It's not like you assaulted a civilian. Would it make a difference to him, if you had? Of course it would, answers the voice in your head, and you wordlessly sink down into your seat, staring out at the rows of skyscrapers looming over you on the surrounding streets as you pass through downtown. Would it make a difference to him, knowing all those times you already have--and worse?

You're back in the corridor, with a metahuman pinned beneath you. Not the shadowrunner. A middle-aged man pleads with you in a language you can't understand. He brings his arms up to shield himself, but they do nothing to keep your knife from sinking into his neck.

On the second strike, it hits a teenager, barely an adult. On the third, an elderly woman, her thin fingers pulling feebly on your shirt. You feel Kaveh’s hands on your shoulders again, pulling you away as blood pools around her body. You spin around to look at him: the expression on his face is one of pure, abject disgust. Repulsion. Horror.

"Are you okay?"

The real Kaveh's voice snaps you out of the vision.

"What? Yeah."

"You were, like, hyperventilating."

"Oh. I was just, um--I feel kind of sick. That's all."

"Do I need to pull over?"

"No, no. I'm okay." He eyes you for a second, but then fixes his gaze back on the road.

"We're almost home. If you do decide you need to puke, try and hold it until we're there. Or at least do it out of the window so we can wipe it off. They'll deduct the cleaning fee out of your salary if they have to scrub the interior."

You love working for Zodiac.

Several other staff are ready and waiting for you as the van pulls into the compound to help you offload your arrestees. Someone makes a snide remark to the elf with the bloody face, and how nobody should have let you get your hands on them. You don't look at either of them. Kaveh is chewing her out for it, but you can barely hear.

She knows what you are. A weapon. A thing for killing and maiming. You were designed like this. It's etched into your bones and everyone can see it, no matter how hard you try to cover it up. It bleeds out on nights like this, when your frustration gets the better of you, when your hold slips and instinct wins out, and your body feels like it's moving on its own. No thought. Only violence.

Always violence. You can't escape it.

The intake process takes forever. It’s always tedious, but tonight, it’s even worse. You stand in the back as they fill out paperwork, take photographs, and march each runner off to a holding cell, one by one. You can hear the elf you punched up telling the clerks exactly what they think of you, and they sneer at you through bruised lips when they’re finally led away to a holding cell.

“So, how did all of that happen?”

You whip back around, and--you’re at the desk, now, the clerk looking up at you with one thin eyebrow raised and an expectant look on her face.

“It was an accident,” is what tumbles out of your mouth, and the clerk just laughs.

“Right. Well, since we all heard that, I guess you’re going to want to file a report.”

“...Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll call someone to do a full debrief, but you’ll need to fill out a form, first. Here.” The clerk picks up a slim tablet and hands it to you over the desk. “If you have any witnesses you’d like to corroborate, there’s a section for them to fill out at the bottom.”

You look to Kaveh, and he gestures for you to follow him to the benches across the room.

The first part of the form is easy enough. Name. Employee number. Date of birth. Start and end time of shift. Location of shift. Time of incident. Nature of incident.

“Brief summary of incident.” You swallow thickly. “Where do they want me to start?”

“Go from when he attacked you.”

Truth be told, you don’t entirely remember what happened beyond that point, aside from the obvious. You can’t say that, though--not in your current state, not unless you want Kaveh to think you’re really unhinged. So they cut your hair off, and on realising, you attacked them with your bare fists until Kaveh was able to pull you off him. Done.

Were any weapons involved? Did the victim require on-site medical attention? Was the victim unresponsive at any point? Did you have reason to believe the victim was under the influence of any drug(s)?

“Are you--” You start to read the next line aloud, but what meets your eyes makes you falter. “--Are you currently receiving treatment for any mental health conditions.”

“They’ll know, anyway, from your records. Don’t worry too much about it.”

“They’re gonna be on my ass for this.”

“Maybe, but what are they gonna do if you don’t put it down?” Okay, fair point. “It’s okay. I promise, this whole deal isn’t as bad as it seems. It’s just a formality.”

So you tick the stupid fucking box. An array of extra fields springs up beneath it, asking for your diagnoses, and your forms of treatment, and whether you’re seeing external mental health services, and you scowl at the screen the whole time as you fill them out, like you can spite the fucking things back into oblivion. Unfortunately, they stubbornly remain, and the best you can do is scroll them out of sight once you’re done.

Have you previously filed reports of assault against arrestees? Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a violent crime? Further comments?

“I’m done.” You thrust the tablet into Kaveh’s hands. “You have to fill out the witness section.”

You can’t bring yourself to watch as he taps away at the screen in silence. After a few minutes, he hands it back to you, and you return it to the clerk at the desk just as a sharp-dressed, horned woman walks out from a door in the back with a tablet of her own tucked neatly under her arm.

“Ah! Bia.” The clerk looks up at her, then gestures at you. “This is Aubrey. She needs to make a statement for an incident report. Let me just check her form, and I’ll send it over to you.”

“Right.” Bia looks from the clerk’s screen to you, and something about her eyes brings a lump to your throat. “Do you have any witnesses you’d like to bring in to corroborate?”

“Yeah. Um, Kaveh--”

“I saw what happened,” he says coolly. “I can attest.”

“Great. If you’d like to follow me.”

She lets you behind the desk, and leads you down a corridor, past several more doors. It’s all so cold, so clinical. The only thing missing is the chemical smell. It’s enough to have your heart hammering by the time she stops at a vacant room and gestures for you to enter ahead of her. There’s a barren desk inside, some chairs, a water cooler, a plant you immediately clock as fake, and little else in the way of making it feel welcoming.

“Take a seat.” You do, and she locks the door before taking up the seat opposite you at the desk. “Let me just pull some things up… you look like you’ve had a long night.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, what was your full name?”

“Aubrey Still.”

“Employee number?”

“506988.”

“There you are. And you?” she asks, glancing at Kaveh.

“Kaveh Kesh. 502215.”

“Right. This will be recorded, obviously, and transcribed later to go onto your employee record. So…” She taps at her tablet a few times, and you spot the reflection of the form you just filled out in her glasses. “Tell me what happened.”

Don’t think too much about it. Just talk.

“They came at me from behind with a knife. They didn’t hit me, and I knocked them down, but then I--I noticed that they’d cut half my hair off.”

“And that was the provocation?”

“Yes.” She’s giving you a look, and you can’t figure out what it means.

“And then?”

“I started punching them in the face. They’ll have the photos of their injuries on record. I stopped attacking them when Kaveh pulled me away.”

“Is this accurate?” Bia asks, glancing across to Kaveh.

“Yes,” he affirms, in a voice that makes it obvious he’s far less stressed about this than you are. He’s done this before. “She didn’t assault them until after they’d cut her hair, and she stopped once I separated her from them.”

“That’s quite the response to being given an impromptu haircut. I bet it took you a long time to grow that out, though, didn’t it?” She points at you with her pen, and something about her tone of voice makes you bristle. “That's all there was to it?"

"Yes."

"You're not under the influence of any illicit substances?"

"No. You can test me, if you have to."

"She's barely left my sight all night," Kaveh slips in preemptively. "I haven't seen her take anything suspicious, and she hasn't acted in any way that seems out of the ordinary."

"You have no internal augmentations that could release drugs discreetly?"

"No." You hope not. It’d be news to you if you did.

"Right." She's tapping on that tablet, and you try not to think about what kind of notes she's taking. "Are you sure nothing happened before this that could have resulted in their injury? You said they came at you with a knife."

"They did." Come on. You remember how to do this. Detach yourself. "They  took a swing at me from behind. I had to incapacitate them."

"How did you do that?"

"I ducked the knife and swept their legs. Once I had control of their arms, I kicked them in the jaw. It would've hurt them bad enough to distract them, maybe stunned them when their head hit the floor. They might be concussed."

"It sounds like you hit them hard. That would have left a mark."

"It would."

"So when did they cut your hair, exactly?"

"When we were on the floor."

"So they struggled?"

"...Yes. They tried to stab me. They missed my head and caught my hair."

"They were still a threat, then."

"If they went unrestrained, yes."

"Did you restrain them?" You nod. "Before or after you noticed the hair?"

"I…"

This question interrupts the clean trail of memories you've been sailing along this whole time, forcing you to dig deeper into your conscious mind. The dull tapping of your fingers against the chair frame is the only sound in the room.

Because, see, that's the problem.

"...I don't remember."

"Kaveh?" Bia looks to him, as do you, but he only shrugs.

"I couldn't say. I was too far away to tell."

"So, would you say, then," Bia says, her calculating gaze swinging back to you, "that if they had been unrestrained at the time, you would have had to negate the threat that they posed?"

"...Yes." You don't like where this is going.

"Would punches to the face have done that?"

"...I mean, yes. There are other ways I could have done it, but the pain and impact would have stunned them further."

"It sounds to me like you were defending yourself. Or, you foresaw further problems, and took steps to avoid them." You wish you could remember when you'd got that zip tie on them. You wish. You wish.

But there's an ugly little part of you that's glad that you don't.

"You… could say that." You wanted out of here, didn't you? You wanted to leave and go home and be able to forget this ever happened. Yes. So let her jump to her conclusions. If you don't make trouble for them, they won't make trouble for you.

"Kaveh." Bia's attention slips back to him, and so does yours, from the corner of your eye. Fingers on the chair frame. The rattling fills the whole room. "Do you think she took effective measures to eliminate a threat?"

Effective. Not reasonable. Effective. You want him to vilify you. You want him to defend you. You want him to say whatever helps you leave this place sooner.

"I would definitely call it effective." Your stomach lurches but you don't know that the other answer would have felt any better. "There was no way they were going to lay a finger on her after she punched them."

"So, to summarise." Bia leans back in her chair. "Aubrey, you were attacked, and in the process of defending yourself, eliminating a threat and making an arrest, the subject was injured out of necessity during said actions. Is that accurate?"

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"Yes."

"Kaveh, as her partner on duty, do you agree that this is an accurate description of the events?"

"Yes."

"Then I think that much is settled. Now, Aubrey--I do have to file this under your employee health record.” You know what that means. You can only manage a stoic nod as she goes back to flipping through things on her tablet.

“Okay.” Don’t argue. You're so close to this being done.

“If the victim opts to press charges, we’re required to submit this interview, the incident form, and any relevant information from employee records to the enforcing law agency. Do you consent to having your records shared?”

“...Yes.” It’s not a choice, is it?

“Great. Sign here, please.” Bia spins her tablet around and hands you the pen, watching as you scrawl a messy signature in a box on the screen. “You too, Kaveh.” You hand him the pen, he signs in a second box, and Bia takes the tablet back. “Any further comments?”

“No," you answer in unison.

“Well, then, I think we’re done here. End recording.” She shuts the tablet off and stands abruptly, holding a hand out towards the door. “You’re free to leave. We’ll contact you if we need anything else from either of you.”

“...Okay. Thank you.” You hesitate to stand, almost, half-expecting her to slam the tablet back on the table and bark at you to sit back down. But she doesn’t. You exit the room without incident and your feet carry you unthinkingly out into the lobby. Kaveh asks if you want to go home, and you nod. You’re so, so done with this night. You’re ready for it to be over.

Through a dissociative haze, you’re vaguely aware of being led to the locker rooms, changing back into your day clothes. The presence of other people there barely registers. The harsh fluorescent white of the interior lighting gives way to the relative dark of the street-lit parking lot. The slamming shut of the car doors is what brings you back to full awareness with a jolt.

“Are you okay?”

You look across at Kaveh and nod.

“Yeah.” It hits you suddenly how dry your mouth is; you unzip your bag and root around inside, only to find your water bottle empty when you shake it. “Fuck.”

“Do you want a drink? I can go back and refill it, or--”

“No, no. It’s fine. I can wait.” You drop the bottle back in the bag and shove it into the footwell. “I just--am I gonna get pulled up on this?”

“...Honestly? Probably not. I’ve seen corpsec fuck people up way, way worse over much less. Besides, shadowrunners don’t tend to be fans of the judicial system. It’s not like they’ll sue. They just wanted to scare you.”

“Good for them. They got me. My psych is gonna have something to say about it. They’re gonna put me on fucking desk duty again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No. Really, Aubrey, I’ve seen people do some reprehensible shit before HQ started paying attention. This isn’t like you. I know you wouldn’t normally do something like this.”

“What if it happens again?”

“It’s not like they can cut off your hair again. I don’t know, maybe if something else triggers you–but until that happens, this is a one-off incident. Your job performance has been flawless until this point.”

“But I got shot--”

“Not your fault.”

“I freaked out at the hospital--”

“And you took measures to fix that. You are not the first person to get aggressive with medical staff.”

“What about all of my medical shit?”

“Aubrey, if they had a problem with you, you’d know by now. Trust me.” Kaveh lays a hand on your shoulder, and despite the initial urge to shrug it off, you let it sit there. “Look. I think you need to get some sleep. It’s been a rough night.”

“...Yeah. Okay.” He’s right, and you’re out of arguments, so you relent and sink back into your seat as he starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

With dawn on the horizon, the city around you is bathed in a pale blue light. The shadowed figures of metahumans dip in and out of the glare of street lights, backed by the neon glow of those few stores that have remained open all night. It all blurs together as the car picks up speed. After all the noise of the last few hours, the incomprehensible nothing of the window view and relative silence within the car bring welcome respite.

The full weight of it all doesn’t slip from your shoulders until you’re safely back inside the apartment. Here, behind closed doors and hidden from the rest of the world, the last of your resolve collapses. The door has barely clicked shut before you fall into Kaveh’s side and the tears come spilling out.

“Hey. Hey. It’s okay.” He turns into you and wraps both arms tight around you, pulling you against his chest. “You’re good. You’re gonna be fine. I know it. Don't worry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. Being difficult.”

“You don’t need to apologise.” You can feel his fingers slip under your hair to rub gently at your almost-bare scalp at the back of your head. “Do you need anything?”

“I--yeah. A drink. And I’m starving.”

“Go get changed. I’ll get it.” He relinquishes his hold and gently pries you off him, nudging you towards your bedroom. Swapping your clothes for pyjamas brings an extra layer of relief, and without even Kaveh here to see you, you take a moment to bury your face in a pillow and scream. Silently, but the energy is there.

Nobody cares. Nobody cares that you just beat someone senseless, unless it’s going to look bad for the company. Or they decide you’re too much of a loose cannon--and no longer financially viable.

Just like before.

Is this just it? Is this a cycle your life is doomed to?

Your head hurts. You remember Kaveh, and the drink, and how hungry you are, despite a lingering sense of nausea. You're not thinking straight. Maybe the world won't seem so bleak once you've eaten and slept.

Despite how comfortable your bed is, and how badly your body wants to stay put, you drag yourself from the mattress and out to the kitchen. Kaveh is fixing himself what smells like oatmeal. A plastic cup sits waiting for you on the counter.

"Thanks," you preempt, before he can point it out, swiping it up and taking several long gulps. The fatigue is really starting to set in, and you can’t help but wince slightly at the foreboding ache in your hips that comes in response to hopping onto one of the bar stool chairs. Cool. Exactly what you need.

Kaveh joins you after a few minutes, and you sit together in silence while he eats. You can’t tell if it’s tense or peaceful. Not that it matters. You’re out of energy to be angry, or upset. The only person left to take it out on is Kaveh, and he doesn’t deserve that. With thirst and hunger both taken care of in one hit, sleep is rapidly superseding them in priority.

“Don’t fall asleep at the table.”

“I’m not.” You were. You blink yourself awake and force yourself up from the position you’d adopted, melted across the countertop, but keeping your eyes open is a Herculean effort. You do keep them open long enough to see Kaveh’s incredulous look. “Okay, okay, I’m going to bed.”

“Hey.” He opens his arm out as you slide off the chair, and you let him pull you into a hug. Kaveh’s hugs are magic. They make it hard to feel like there’s anything wrong with the world. “We’ll get everything sorted out tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah.”

Bed hasn’t felt so comfortable in a long time.

Despite the exhaustion, it takes some time to fully settle once you’ve relocated. Your eyes follow the faint cracks in the plaster on the ceiling, hoping one of the trails will finally lead you to sleep. A sense of guilt has settled in your stomach, and threaded its way up to your mind.

You got off almost scot-free tonight. You shouldn’t have. But they spun the story in your favour, made it perfectly viable that they earnt that violence. And you sat there and let them.

Because at the end of the day, you’re still just looking to protect yourself, aren’t you?

Nothing matters but self-preservation, at any cost.

You don’t know what will happen to that elf, but tomorrow you will wake up and your life will carry on unimpeded.

Maybe next time you’ll have the spine to stick to your morals.

Because there will be a next time.

This is the path you walk.

---

Kaveh was right. You really did need some sleep.

You roll out of bed at noon, and you can already tell it’s going to be a bad pain day, but it’s nothing a couple of extra doses of painkillers won’t fix--you forgot to take your meds at all last night, you realise, as you swipe your pill case from the nightstand and slip out to the kitchen. Three priorities: Meds. Coffee. Food.

Kaveh’s already been up and made coffee, so you help yourself to some from the pot still sitting under the filter. He walks in on you at the counter, chasing down a handful of pills with a swig from your mug.

“Hey. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. Better,” you clarify. Not quite fine, but you’ll get there. You reach for the open box of meal bars on the countertop and rip one open; you can at least stomach the idea of solid food, now.

“Good.” Kaveh takes up the seat across from you and watches as you scarf down half the bar in a matter of seconds. God, you’re hungry. “You wanna go get your hair fixed today?”

Right. That.

“Yeah. Do you know where we’re going?”

“There’s a couple of salons in the mall. We can start there, see if they’ll take a walk-in.” This is going to suck. This is going to suck so much. But when you’re in the bathroom a half hour later, pulling a brush through your hair and inspecting the damage properly for the first time in a mirror, you know it’s necessary. It’s a mess.

You still know you went overboard, but maybe that guy did deserve to get socked in the face once.

And, yeah, he was prepared to kill you.

What you did is not the end of the world.

Is that fucked up? You think it might be, as you pull your hair through elastic--accepting it like that, like everyone wants you to. The left side of your bangs slip free from the hair tie and fall against your cheek. What choice do you have, though? You can either move on, or you can let it eat at you, like piling up enough self-inflicted shame will eventually lead to some cosmic atonement for something that almost nobody you ever meet will ever know about.

You know there’s only one option.

A few inches lower and that knife would have pierced your skull like a melon.

Maybe there’s no definitive answer to this. You’re eating your own metaphorical tail. You loop the hair tie around your ponytail one more time and flick the bathroom light off as you exit.

---

Okay, you were feeling nervous, but you assumed it was baseless anxiety. You didn’t know haircuts were actually this complicated.

The chubby, blue-haired orc at the reception desk happily informed you that they have a cancellation slot at two, if you’d like to hang around, so you made yourself comfortable on the couches in the waiting area and started flipping through a random selection of the magazines scattered around the place.

There’s a lot of hairstyles in the world, huh.

“You know what you want them to do with it?” Kaveh asks, glancing over your shoulder at the magazine you’re currently picking through.

“I… don’t know.” When you told Kaveh to cut it, you assumed he’d just… chop it off with scissors, and that’d be that. You didn’t think about whatever all of this is.

“You’ve never even thought about it before? Like, you didn’t think about stopping growing it at any point?”

“Not really.” You gazed longingly at all those people on the screens for years, but it was hard to picture yourself looking like any of them–and then you became so obsessed with growing it out that you put it out of your mind entirely.

In some sense, you’re feeling even worse about your outburst the previous night. Because sitting here, right now, seeing this infinite array of options, you're actually kind of excited about this.

Sure, your choices are limited somewhat--your perma-undershave will never grow back in thanks to whatever the hell Legacy did to you as a kid--but you've got enough hair left to entertain plenty of these ideas. That's the thing. You get to pick.

You could lean into the undercut look, flip the whole lot over to one side. The models pull it off, including the ones with obvious headware, but you're not sure you're ready to bare another big, ugly C&C brand to the world full-time just yet. It's bad enough having to see them on your hands and arms every day. The curls that greet you across the next several pages are nice, but with your dead-straight hair, they seem like a pain to keep styling.

(There's an ad wedged in between two model shots advertising a long-term curling product, and just looking at the box fills your nose with an unpleasantly familiar yet unplaceable chemical smell that has you hurriedly flipping to the next page.)

You can't really pull off the thick, voluminous layers some of these models are sporting, either. There's another ad, this one for extensions, and Kaveh's description of how they attach makes your skin crawl, so you can write off that possibility.

You keep coming back to one you saw in the first magazine.

“Look at this one.” You pick the booklet back up and flip to the page to show it to Kaveh. It’s simple. It’s sharp. It covers your implants. It does mean losing even more hair, but…

“It’s nice.” Kaveh nods his approval. “It’d suit you.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, if you’re ready to take the plunge.”

You think you might be. You carry on browsing through the magazines anyway, since you have nothing better to do while you wait for the hairdresser, but nothing really calls to you like that glossy, straight-cut bob.

“Aubrey?”

You look up. A dark-haired woman is watching you expectantly, and you jump to your feet, magazine clutched tight in your hand; she smiles and waves you over.

“Come on this way. Take a seat,” she says, gesturing at the unoccupied chair among the row of other customers. “So, what are we doing for you today? Just a dry cut?”

“Yeah. I. Um. I need to fix this.” You place the magazine on the little shelf in front of the mirror and pull your hair free from the ponytail. In the reflection in front of you, you can see the hairdresser’s eyes widen as the mishap becomes apparent.

“Oh, no. What happened?”

“It’s a long story. It was an accident.”

“...Well, I’m sure we can find a way to make it work. Your hair’s lovely.” She’s running her fingers through your hair, inspecting the shaved-down sides before combing out the longer top with her fingers. “Did you find a style you like?”

“Yeah.” Grab the magazine, flip back to the page. “Something like this.”

“You sure you wanna cut the whole lot off? We could just trim down the left side and blend it through. It’d work with the undershave you’ve got going on already…”

“No. I’m sure.”

“Alright! It’s been a long time since I’ve cut hair this long. How long did it take you to grow it out?”

“Like… three years?”

“Wow. Your hair grows fast.” Having covered your shoulders with an apron plucked from a hook on the wall, and brushed all your hair out straight, she takes the scissors from the pouch on her hip in one hand, and the longest section of your hair in the other, between her fingers. “Okay, big moment. Ready?”

“...Yeah.” Your heart jumps at the extended snip of scissors slicing through several inches of hair, and you watch in the mirror as it all falls away behind the chair.

It’s done. No turning back now.

“Your hair’s actually ideal for this,” she comments, as she works on evening everything out and tidying up the little wisps that escaped both the knife and her initial chop with the scissors, “because it’s practically all the same length already,” and according to her, the undershave keeps it from being too thick. (When she asks about that, you play it off as a style choice.)

You get the same sensation in your chest when she sweeps your bangs in front of your face, obscuring your vision momentarily until one clean cut trims it down to a fringe straight across your forehead. She’s careful and precise about it in a way you realise no home haircut would ever be, and you silently thank Kaveh for emphatically turning down your request.

By the time she’s finished, you almost don’t recognise the person in the mirror.

“There we go!” She smooths down the bangs that now frame your face perfectly one final time before whipping away the apron, sending all of your lost hair flying to the floor. “How does that feel?”

How does it feel. You lean forwards in the chair, tilting your head this way and that to examine your reflection.

It feels right.

“It’s--It’s great. It’s perfect.” You haven’t smiled like this in weeks. You can’t stop running your fingers through it, mesmerised by the way it falls back against your jaw as it slips through them.

“It’s a shame you had to cut so much off, but I think this looks great on you. It should still be long enough for you to tie it back, too.” She smiles as you stand from the chair. It’s kind of jarring to see exactly how much hair you’ve had off--it’d have been kind of cute to keep the longest part as a memoir, maybe, but it’s too late now, with it all piled on the floor, and with a cleaner drone scuttling around vacuuming everything up.

You half-stumble back out into the reception area as she waves you off, where Kaveh is still waiting. He looks up from his comm at the sound of your footsteps, and a beaming smile spreads across his face.

“Wow!”

“Right?” you laugh. “It feels amazing.”

“It was a good pick. It really suits you.”

“Thanks. Let me pay real quick, and then I’m good to leave.”

You can’t stop glancing at your reflection in every shop window you pass on your way back through the mall. You look cool. You feel cool. Feeling cool isn’t something you’ve done a lot of in your life.

“You know, I haven't even told Iloya what happened last night," Kaveh says. "They're gonna lose their mind over this."

"Oh my God, they are. I have to send them a picture."

"You're not gonna wait until you see them in person?"

"No, no, I need to see that reaction right now. Or, y'know, when we get back to the car. I want to get coffee first."

Because, c’mon, you can’t just go home without showing off in public a little bit first.

Back in the safety of Kaveh’s car, you pop your drone out and let it zip this way and that until you hit the perfect angle for a photo–you don’t normally like taking photos with your empty eye socket, but you can make an exception for Iloya. You snap the picture and hit send. No caption. No explanation. You need the raw reaction from this, and you get it 30 seconds later in a string of emojis.

❗❗❓❓😱😱😱💀💀💀

You’re laughing so hard when you answer the call that immediately follows, you almost spill coffee down yourself.

“What did you do?! You told me last week you weren’t going to get it cut!”

“I wasn’t! Okay, so, like–last night, at work, I was grappling with someone, and they caught a knife in my hair–”

“Okay, so it’s not you I have to kill.”

“--but they only got half of it, and it was all fucked up, so I had to go and get a proper haircut.”

“Doesn’t she look great?” Kaveh, who’s been outside flicking through his comm, sticks his head in through the driver side door.

“You do! You look fantastic.” Your heart swells a little bit at that. “It’s just weird seeing it so short.”

“You’ll get used to it. I don’t think I’m growing it out again. It feels… I don’t know. Right.” Is it silly? That suddenly so much of your identity feels like it hinges on a haircut? Maybe. Don’t think too hard about it. Ride this high.

“As long as you like it. I’ll just have to find a new way to do it up for you.”

“Oh, shit, you can’t braid it back like that anymore–”

“There’s plenty we can still do with it! I’ll show you.” You did want to see it styled all nice, just once, like they told you they'd do. Letting Iloya gently work with your hair feels familial and warm. You’re glad you won’t have to sacrifice that.

Kaveh climbs into the driver’s seat and pulls the door shut. “Okay, I think we’re headed home, so–” You knock back the rest of your coffee and shove the cup into a cup holder, and your drone zips back into place. “I’ll see you at work, probably.”

“Did they freak out?” Kaveh asks as the car purrs to life.

“Oh, they freaked out. But they liked it.”

“It’s just–”

“Weird?”

“Yeah, seeing you without it all.” You smile, and tell him exactly what you told Iloya.

“You’ll get used to it.”

You look up, and, of course, who else but Dak Rambo comes sauntering out of the darkness, cat eyes glinting in the neon light from the store signage. In one hand, a joint you can smell from all the way over here sits between his fingers; the other is tucked loosely into his pocket.

"Yeah! Yeah. Hi." Everything is normal and you are not plagued by disturbingly realistic visions of merciless homicide. "Just, you know, wanted some fresh air. We should get the cabin cleaned properly at some point. No offense, but it stinks in there."

"Hey, that's just part of her character. Trust me, there's some smells in there that no amount of cleanin' is ever gonna get out."

"Gross." You laugh, but you're painfully aware of how hollow it sounds. Dak says nothing more. It's like he knows. Like he's waiting.

Well. If anyone would have an answer to something like this, it's him.

Doesn't make it an easy question to ask. The tension is palpable for the full minute you spend trying to swallow the lump in your throat before you can finally form a calm, coherent sentence.

"Dak?"

"Mm?"

"What do you do when you feel like you might hurt people you love?"

Dak stares pensively; first at you, then off into the distance. The smoke from the cigarette resting between his fingers curls upwards and around his jaw. For a split second, you can feel him teetering on the edge of vulnerability.

"I ain't done nothing but hurt people I love, Z. You're asking the wrong guy."

"C'mon, man."

"Where's this comin' from, anyway? What's got you so worried all of a sudden?"

He looks back at you, and you look away, noting the distinct dryness in your mouth as you stare down at the ground instead.

"I dunno. I was just. Thinking about it."

"About hurting us? You're not about to flip and start putting bullets in us, are you?"

"Don't. Dak. Don't." He nailed it in one and he doesn't even know it. The tears you're only barely managing to keep at bay might not be an immediate giveaway, but the tremor in your voice certainly is. You're trying, hard, so hard not to let your cool-headed veneer slip, but for all the effort, it's a battle you're losing fast.

"Hey, hey, I'm kidding, I'm kidding--"

"But what if I do?" It's supposed to be a bark, angry, aggressive, but your voice breaks mid-sentence, reducing it to a muted whine. "I keep getting these--seeing these things in my mind, where I'm doing that exact shit, and I keep asking, like: what if it actually happens? What if I lose control and someone ends up dead?"

The words just keep coming. You wish they wouldn't. An uncomfortable, anxious heat rises under your skin despite the relatively cool night, bringing with it a wave of nausea that makes you glad you haven't eaten. When you face Dak again, you deliberately blur your vision so that you don't have to see the expression on his face. He's looking at you, you think. He brings his joint to his mouth, takes a pull, exhales a billowing cloud of heady smoke.

"I don't think you're gonna kill any of us, Z."

"It's not that simple, Dak--"

"Zenith. Zenith." Dak claps a heavy hand on your shoulder, and the weight of it knocks the rest of your sentence out of your mouth. "Listen. I don't know what the hell’s going on in your head, all this 'losing control' stuff, but I know you. Just 'cause you're thinking it, doesn't mean it's gonna happen, alright? You wouldn't let anyone else hurt us, and I don't think you'd let yourself hurt us, either. And if you did, well--whatever put you into that state, we'll be right there tryin' to pull you back out."

You tentatively let your vision swim back into focus, but the moment you see the rock-solid conviction on Dak's face, tears start to blur it again. (He has faith in you, so much faith in you, not knowing what you've done, what you can do, what you might do again.) He gently pulls you forward, towards him, and you barely need the invitation; you fall face-first into his chest and sob weakly into his shirt. He smells like weed and sweat and oil and there's maybe nothing else in the world more comforting right now, save perhaps for the hand gently rubbing your back.

"Easy, now, buddy, easy," Dak murmurs softly. The depth of his voice resonates into you through his chest. You coiled your arms around him, it seems, snaked them under his jacket to cling loosely to his vest. He's probably getting ash in your hair. You don't care.

"I just don't want to lose this," you manage to croak. "Don't want to lose you. Any of you. And I don't want it to be my fault."

"Yeah. Yeah." Dak lifts his hand slightly to stroke the back of your neck. Underneath you, his chest heaves a weary sigh. "Welcome to the club."

You stay like that for a while. You don't know how long. You aren't keeping track. Dak's hand remains on your back and you're grateful for its presence, for his presence. For him. For Pox and Tech, too, hopefully both still sleeping and not silent witnesses to your little episode. You've had friends before, but not like this. Not ones you've felt so personally responsible for and not ones who you'd tell your deepest fears to in the dead of night.

Not ones you love.

"Hey." Dak nudges you gently; you open your eyes to see the stub of his cigarette smouldering on the ground by your feet. "You good there?"

"...Yeah." You don't know that that's true, but you do feel a little bit better. Just a little bit. You lift your head and straighten up, sniff, wipe the tear residue off your face. "I. Um."

"S'all good, Z." Is it? You have more you want to say to him, after the admissions he let slip. But Dak pats your cheek, almost playful, and it’s disarming enough in the moment to make you forget. "Go on back inside, now. Get some sleep."

"Uh huh." It takes several seconds for you to recollect yourself, but as you're prying the cabin door open (as quietly as possible; you'd still rather not wake the others), you pause, one foot on the step.

"Dak?"

"Yeah?"

"Love you, man."

He chuckles under his breath, and you wonder if he knows how much you mean it.

"I love you too, Z."

You crawl between the seats once you're back inside and carefully slot yourself back in place, tucked between Pox and Tech in the nest of mismatched blankets you found in the trailer. If they're awake, if they noticed you were gone, they barely show it; the only clue they give is the way they both burrow back into you, pressed close against you on either side. Sometimes it feels oppressive, but not tonight. Tonight, you're glad for the reminder that they're here, real, alive. Safe. You with them, and them with you.

Maybe Dak is right. Intrusive thoughts, as unwanted as they are, are not clairvoyance. You're not predicting the future. You're seeing glimpses of the past entangling themselves with your current state of mind. Yeah. That's it.

...That's not actually comforting.

But Tech's leg kicks against yours, and you think about holding him, bloody and unconscious in the back of the truck. Pox drapes one arm over your chest, and you feel the prickling, defensive anger rippling under your skin when you think about her dad, and how gut-wrenchingly evil he is, and how you'd love to get your hands on him and--well, this train of thought isn't exactly assuaging your fears. But there's a point to it.

If there's one thing you know for certain, beyond all else, it's that you'd fight tooth and nail to keep these people safe.

You fall asleep with Pox's hair in your face, in a cabin that smells like drugs and blood and dirt and worse, knowing you'll ache in the morning from your shitty bed setup.

You wouldn’t let anyone take this from you.