He could only sit still for two minutes before anxiety made him stand, and Gabriel went through the door of the bedroom to stand by the bathroom, and knocked, “Hey, I’m gonna sit out here until you’re done...”


    There wasn’t an answer.


    “Ren?”


    Still nothing.


    He sucked in a breath, held it for a moment, and then pushed slightly on the partly-open door, “I’m coming in; last chance to say something…”


    She couldn’t anyway.  He spotted her through the frosted-glass shower door, sitting against it with her head bent down.


    “Ren!” There wasn’t time to worry about modesty; he quickly rushed over and pulled the door open, catching her and going to a knee before she could fall out and onto the floor.  Dubious of the gel-sleeved arm pressed between her and himself, he did his best to prop her back up again and gently pat her face, “Ren?  Are you there?”


    She managed a slow blink, and her eyes turned towards him, but it took her a moment longer before she had her wits again, and she forced herself to sit upright with her own strength, “Sorry, I…didn’t even feel it coming…”


    “You’re doing too much.  You’ve been awake for less than an hour and you’ve already tried to make a break for it.  Why do I get the distinct feeling that you’re running from something?” He asked cautiously.


    There was hesitation in her reply, and in the end, she deflected it entirely, “…Where…did I lose my arm?  Where did it break, I mean?”


    He blinked at that, but sighed and shook his head lightly before he pulled back a bit – out of the spray that had gotten all over his pants – and softly set a finger to a spot about two inches above her elbow, “This is where the stump ended…but from what I saw once we were here, the docs took it a bit further up, and cut the skin into sectional flaps.”  He drew a rough outline of the vertical zig-zag that went half the rest of the way to the deltoid, “I got to see how the selective cloning folks crafted your replacement.  It’s…really incredible, actually.  They basically 3D printed it from harvested cells, starting with the bones, and-“


    “I’m gonna be sick-“ She interrupted, and dipped to her right side, slapping her hand on the wet shower-tile to catch herself.  She hadn’t eaten real food in days though, so all she could do was spit-up bile, “How miserable…”


    “You could do worse.”


    “I know it’s an awkward imposition, but…could you help me finish?  I just…want to wash my hair…but every time I lift up my good arm, I get light-headed…”


    He was surprised at the request, “…You really want me to?  Last time we spoke, you were on my case about being a sourpuss.”


    She set the back of her head to the frosted-glass behind herself, and managed a wry smile as she closed her eyes to the oncoming water, “I recall saying I was also proud of you for being honest, and we got reacquainted.”  She opened one green eye to her left, “Or did I make that up from wishful thinking?”


    Gabriel swallowed a nervous lump in his throat, but he shook his head, “No, that definitely happened…  You’ll be happy to know that I’ve even made one whole friend over these last several days.”


    “Big progress…” She smiled and closed that eye again, and drudged-up the strength to lean forward and wrap her right arm around her upturned knees.  Water cascaded over her then, saturating her dark, thick hair, and after a moment…that water gave away the last bits of bloody residue from where her ‘beans’ had been so callously extracted.  She was confused by the sight of that red run-off, “…What’s…that?”


    “Your arm wasn’t the only thing you lost.” He answered, and reached through the spray to find a bottle of shampoo on a hanging shower-caddy.  He set it down beside himself as he continued to explain, and pulled off the long, grey, fingerless-gloves of his uniform, “The Magistrate you fought seems to be a bit of a sadist, and he…took all our nano-nodules out, too.  Everything’s been put back since then, and you can access the World Cloud again anytime you want, but…the nurse-assistants could only do so much with dry shampoo while you were bedridden.  This would be the last of the evidence that anything happened.”


    “I see…” She mumbled, and made sure to close her eyes completely as she felt the cold squish of shampoo-gel on top of her head.  She’d seen Gabriel roll back his sleeves, and simply resigned to let him do what he had to, lathering the shampoo until every inch of her hair was covered in white foam.  The gentle jostle of that work was a small comfort, and the warmth of the water soothed her frayed nerves, “…You’ve…met the Captain, then…”


    “Yeah, but I wasn’t really aware of it until after we were already back, and Xanarken had taken me to come see you.  The Captain and Seth showed up together with the same idea.”  Gabriel answered, and stood up briefly so he could reach for the hand-held shower-head, and clicked the switch so water would rush through it instead of the overhead one.  Once he was sure any cold water left behind from the last four months had sprayed out, he took it to Ren’s hair, and rinsed thoroughly, “They’re the spitting image of each other, give or take a few years.  Heh, the Captain’s old enough to be Seth’s own father.”


    “Yeah…  Furio-…er…the Captain has been a Fafnir longer than Seth’s been alive.”


    “First-name basis with a superior officer, eh?  Scandalous.” He teased.


    Ren buried her face against her knees, “It…was nothing.”


    That was an obvious lie, but Gabriel wasn’t ready to push her on it, so he just made a mental note and shelved it for the time being.  He switched the spray-head back around and went looking for the conditioner next.  The bottle was nearly empty - and he had to shake it just-so to dislodge that old paste from the bottom and get it to the nib - then squeezed several times to get what he could out of it, and went back to that massaging movement, “…I don’t know if now’s the right time to say so, but…I’m sorry…that I wasn’t more helpful back there.”


    She turned her face towards him, but couldn’t open her eyes for risk of the run-off, “…You’re…sorry?  Why?”  She asked skeptically.  The spray switched-over again, and he washed out the conditioner, leaving that dark hair smooth and silky, “…Gabriel.”


    “So much of my work requires me to be unapologetic in everything I say or do.  It all has to be calculated, deliberate…intended, no matter the outcome.” He attempted to explain, “So…’sorry’ isn’t a word that comes out of me often.  …But I’ve had a lot of time to think over these past several days, and no excuse to avoid reading your file anymore…so, I did, and…I’m sorry.  …For…how I treated you these past four months.”


    The water cut-off, and Ren rubbed the left-overs from her face.  She did her best to squeeze the rest from her hair with her one good arm, and waited for Gabriel to return with a towel or two.  A big one went over her back and shoulders, and the other carefully collected her head.  Gabriel clearly had experience managing long wet hair and knew how to wrap it up to keep the towel in place – pulling the furthest two corners of the towel back around to tie around the front of her head like a turban - then offered what assistance he could to get her back to her feet again.  It was an awkward shuffle to get her back to her bed, but he managed, and with some guidance, found a big t-shirt and some sweatpants for her to put on.  Ren couldn’t help but shake her head and huff a laugh as he helped get one foot into each pant-leg, “You have nothing…to be sorry for.” She tried to explain, and hooked her right arm over his shoulder as he stood up.  He lifted her with him so he could get the waistband up around her hips.  From that angle, there was a moment where they were rather closely face-to-face, “…You’re a good guy, Gabriel.  When you…let yourself be.”


    His face went red, and quickly put some ‘professional’ distance, “Thanks.”  It was easier to get out to the living-room at that point.  Gabriel guided her over to her couch, and helped guide her down to sit, minding her left arm in particular, “Seth should be back soon with something for you to eat.”


    “What are you running from?” She suddenly asked, which threw him off, “Gabriel Lugios.”


    “…Why do you ask?  That’s a weird question.”


    “Because…for a guy whose job it is to talk a lot, you’re suspiciously mum about yourself.” She explained meekly, and reached a hand around to curl her fingers around the gel-sleeve, feeling for whatever might lurk beneath it, out of sight.


    He hesitated to speak again, and sat on the couch at the opposite end to her.  He set his elbows onto his damp knees, and tapped his fingertips together as he thought, “…I…feel like I could’ve done more to help, if I hadn’t spent my whole life running from what I am.” He answered vaguely, “Rylen has so thoroughly convinced me that my affliction is too dangerous to be allowed to breathe, that I’ve become ashamed of it, and avoid acknowledging it as much as I can.  But I can’t help this nagging feeling that if…I was more adept with its use, I could’ve done more to stop Regulus before he hurt you as badly as he did.  But then, I find myself in this weird situation where I remember…I’m on the Aegis!  In the company of a caste of elite warriors whose entire business – and reason for existing – is for the elimination of dangerous Limitless users…and in that moment, I’m right back where I started; face-down in the snow, with my mom using her body to protect me from a Fafnir who has a weapon trained on us.”


    Ren’s brow furrowed with every word, and she looked aside, “…I…feel really stupid suddenly.”


    “You’re not stupid…”


    “All this time, I thought that by joining the Fafnir, I was doing the world a favor, hunting down the beastly creatures whose diabolical abuse of their power were what caused that mission to deploy to begin with…” Ren shook her head, and curled her right arm up over the back of the couch, resting her fingers against her chin and lip, “The circumstances that…led to us getting partnered…  It’s all starting to feel like a joke at both our expense.”


    “Well, let’s turn the joke around then.” Gabriel suggested, drawing those evergreen eyes back his way, “Everyone’s expecting this partnership to fail.  That I’ll do everything I can do drive you away, like I’ve done with everyone else.  What if we actually make it work?”Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    “…You mean it?”


    “Sure.  I owe those two jackass Eidolon a payback anyway.”


    Ren’s eye twitched, “…Those two what.”


    .


    Regulus’ district flagship was slated for decommissioning after the slaughter that took-place on its decks, and the Magistrate oversaw the service that recognized the deaths of many of his staff.  He was still in those funeral blacks when he made his way back to Stoneface Bluffs, borrowing the use of a much smaller skiff in place of the former.  He was taken past his home-office though, and flown far past the city’s northern edge, towards an old-growth forest…where a research and development facility was based.


    Further west than the late Gavin Mallerd’s homestead, the forest was situated at the southernmost tip of the Exclusion Zone, which expanded far to the north, through the mountains, and all the way to the open waters of the bay that capped it.  A hangar near a waterfall opened wide, and the small skiff went within its dark confines.  Regulus disembarked directly into the presence of his mech, stored in a corner, with a number of technicians working to restore it.  The severed arm had been retrieved from the causeway, and repairs were taking place to both ends of the clean break.  With nought to do there for the time being, the Magistrate continued on and into the belly of the facility.


    Waiting for him on the next floor up were a pair of lab-rats – working there were technicians, researchers, scientists, and the like – and three others whom he didn’t recognize.  Regulus went right up to his people though, “How’s it doing?”


    The first to speak was an elder – tall, thin, and balding for the most part, save a few wisps of hair around the sides and back of his head.  He stepped forward with a large FlexiGlas tablet in his hands, pressed casually to his chest; he didn’t need to look at it to know what to say, “The transport was uneventful.  Whatever the Fafnir did to it was enough to render it into a passive state, but…it does appear to be recovering.”


    “Even after getting clobbered in the head as hard as it did?”


    “Correct.” The older man nodded, twisting slightly into a nod for emphasis, “The things this creature is doing to acclimate are quite remarkable, and it shows no signs of slowing down…  As it restores itself from the damage it sustained, it’s continuing to evolve further.  It even appears to be growing a pair of rudimentary wings.”


    “Set a time.  I want to hear about all of it.”


    Another body-moving nod was given, and the thin-man stepped back into the gaggle.


    Regulus turned his attention to a mousy young woman in the middle of the group, all-but lost in the forest of taller figures, “Kourin, I have something for you.”


    Her hair was practically white, with subtle lavender streaks, which she held back in a thick ponytail, wrapped by a braid that arose from behind each ear.  She stepped through to the front, and adjusted the frameless-glasses sitting on her nose, “Yessir?”


    The Magistrate withdrew two glass vials from the inside pocket of his long black coat, and put one into each of her expecting hands, “These came from two Knights of the Luminary Council.  We’ve been waiting a long time for this opportunity; do whatever you can to reverse-engineer them.  After what happened at the border, we urgently need a way to safeguard against the World Cloud.  We also secured two entire nanotech containment pods; they should be arriving in the next day or two..”


    She gripped her fingers around them, and jangled the nodules around carefully, then nodded, “Of course.”


    “And that wraps-up what I needed from the people I was expecting to see.  What are the rest of you here for?” Regulus wondered as he turned his eyes to the remaining three figures; none of them wore the characteristic research jackets that Kourin or the thin-man had.  They looked more…governmental.


    “Your Honor, we come from the border office at Soothton.  We bring with us an urgent petition from…” A worried-looking older woman started, then looked to her cohorts for a moment of support before continuing, “It’s Prince Aamin.”


    “Aamin?  He’s alive?” Regulus was surprised, “What does he want?”


    “Safe-passage to Oceanside.” She answered, “And political asylum.  We’re all here because we have…concerns…about that.”


    The Magistrate nodded, and turned away in thought for a moment, “With the way things are in Sargon…I can both understand and empathize with the Prince’s plight.”  He turned to the envoys again, “I’m confused why you’re here instead of at the main office in town though.  As you can see, this is hardly the place for political talks.”


    “We went there originally, but we were directed to come here.  They…said you were taking an extended leave from your ministerial duties after what happened on your ship.  To focus on another project.” The older woman answered.


    The second of the three envoys spoke after her; a darkly man with long, slick black hair, “We don’t believe that your substitutes are well-suited to this task.  Prince Aamin cannot simply be processed through the machinery of the immigration system.  This is sensitive.”


    “And what do you have to say?” Regulus turned his eyes to the last of the trio.


    “I’m here to deliver the report on his physical and mental health.” He answered, and offered over a closed FlexiGlas scroll, “I believe his current…mania, should be taken into consideration when you decide how you want to proceed with him.  He stated that he attempted to call an Inquisition onto his nephew, but in the ensuing disaster, his sister was burned to death, and he himself barely escaped.  The upper left half of him was – for lack of a better description – baked.  He was given first-aid by some sympathizers in Sargon, but he will need more specialized care if we accept him into the country.  Treating his condition alone could be a diplomatic incident.  I recommend we send him back to the Emperor.  He could be a liability to us.”


    “…Agreed.  And yet…” Regulus flipped the scroll end-over-end in his hand a few times before grasping it, “This could also be an opportunity.”


    .


    With a few days of recovery under her, Ren felt compelled to don her Fourth uniform once again.  Unlike a recovering active Fafnir, she had no pressing need to focus on the physical side of things; her mind worked as well as any other’s, and she was bored.  With that grey and red jacket manifesting around the material layers of the costume, she looked at herself in a full-length mirror in her room.  Her lips pursed as she made a face at herself – her long hair was down to her lower back in that condition, and with only one working arm, she couldn’t put it up.  She went back to her bed to grab her sling – put it on – and found a brush, her clip, and a hair-tie, then left.


    She may not be interested in training at the moment, but she did know where some of her closest friends would be hanging out, since it was incumbent upon them to do so.  She sought for one particular Knight though, and it felt like she found every single person on the team before finding her.


    “R-Ren!  What are you doing at this end of the ship…?” Ravan wondered quickly, and came rushing over to her at the side of a boxing ring.  She pulled off the foam helmet and gloves, and wiped her brow on her forearm, “Shouldn’t you be with Lugios or something?”


    “I need help that I don’t want to bother him with,” Ren answered, and held up her hair-things, “You know how I like it.”


    Ravan blinked at her, but turned towards Corbin – a lithe black man with a short-cut beard around his jaw, and long, grey-dappled dreadlocks pulled back behind his head – and gave a shrug, “I’m being summoned.  Sorry!”


    Corbin shrugged and shook his head as he laughed and trotted over to lean over the ropes at rink-side – Ravan had already slipped through them to get back to the ground, “You must be feeling pretty good now if you’re braving the dangers of this place to find someone.”


    Ren looked up with a wary smile, “I think the Captain’s avoiding everything right now.  Ever since he caught us in the hall, I haven’t heard word or whisper of him.  All the better for both of us, probably, cuz I don’t know if I could stop myself from clobbering him if I saw him now.”


    Corbin shook his head, “Careful what you say, lady-friend.  You’re in the Fourth now.”


    “I know…”


    “C’mon then, Ren, I’ll get cleaned up and back to ultra-normal mode, then I’ll help you with your hair.  Don’t wanna get all my sweat on you already.”


    “I appreciate that.” Ren laughed.


    While Ravan showered, dried, dressed, and made her way back, Ren went through a newsfeed of current events on the World Cloud.  One article that made her stop was the one describing the announcement of a week of mourning in Sargon, in the aftermath of the Empress’ death.  Not mentioned was Prince Aamin’s fate; she knew he had escaped the Bulwark, but supposed no one found him afterwards.


    They probably think he’s dead, but don’t want to say anything without a body to confirm, she thought.  She glanced up though when she spotted a shadow coming up on her right side.


    In her regular Sixth Wing uniform, Ravan was decked with the usual design of dark grey trimmed in silver, but the blocked-in colored section – a strip down the back that wrapped halfway around the front of the chest, and went down to the bottom of those long coat-tails – was blue.  Ravan kept a towel around her shoulders to keep the uniform dry, and rubbed the end of her wet hair in it, “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you wearing red.  It’s…weird.”


    “I know, right?” Ren sighed and smiled, but offered up her instruments, and turned to put her back to the Knight where she sat on that locker-room bench, “It’s weird enough for me being here again…”


    “You’ve been scarce since you woke up,” Ravan commented, and threw a leg over the back of the bench before she sat as well.  She took hold of the offered brush and got to work, “Was starting to think you were avoiding us.”


    “I did just get a factory-reset on my left arm,” Ren countered, “I’ve been doing therapy.”


    “Mhm, 24 hours a day?  For three days straight?”


    “Fine, fine…  I’ve slightly been avoiding.”


    “Care to explain?”


    Ren went quiet for a moment, “…You know full well why.”


    “I feel like if you gave him a chance to talk to you, you wouldn’t hate him as much as you did when you left.” Ravan pointed out, “And to this day, no one knows what happened between you two that made it turn out that way.  Insubordination only describes so much when we all knew-“


    “You can’t say it out loud like that.” Ren turned and looked over her right shoulder, “It’s bad enough that you know.”


    “You two weren’t exactly the subtle sort,” Ravan raised her brows, “I honestly think the Captain himself is the only one still in denial about how widespread that info was.  At least, on the team, I mean.”


    Ren could only sigh and lower her head; Ravan went back to her task.  She felt most of her hair get twisted-up and clipped loosely, then felt the deft tugs of fingers on a thinner segment over where she’d recently had her stitches removed, “…I came down now because I knew he wouldn’t be there.” She started again, “When he feels hard-done-by, he tends to want to work-out alone, late at night.  When I hadn’t seen him lurking about since I woke up, I knew…”


    “So, you’re just going to spend the next little while avoiding one another?” Ravan wondered, finishing the first of a few braids she had a mind to thread, and went to pull-free the next length of black hair, “It’s been four and a half months…  Surely you’ve both cooled down since then.”


    “I don’t know that I’m allowed to talk about what actually happened on that last mission, now that I’ve been demoted to a rank that doesn’t even have permission to know about it in the first place.” Ren sighed, and reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, “But it’s still fresh for me.  It’s refreshed since being on board.  I…  I mean, as soon as Lord Rylen gives us permission to deboard, we’ll be on our way.”


    “You’re really just gonna leave again…?” Ravan wondered carefully, finishing the second braid, and adjusted the clip so she could do the same again on the other side, “Seth told us about how you guys reunited in Kitez.  He was absolutely devastated by your leaving.  It was like…you’d died or something.  You just stopped talking to everyone.  It hurt all of us…”


    “Sorry…” Ren answered sullenly, “I couldn’t face you guys after the trouble I’d gotten myself into.  I considered it a miracle that the worst punishment I ended up facing was being demoted and transferred.  I was facing a Court Martial. I lost everything…and I didn’t want to drag all of you down with me.  Misery spreads…”


    Ravan finished the last braid, and pulled the clip back out.  She stood up to get a better vantage as she tied the whole ponytail together at the base of the woman’s head, lifted it up, put the clip back in, and let all that Persian black hair fall into place.  With a few adjustments to the braids so they’d be even on each side, Ravan was satisfied with her work, and put her hands down on Ren’s shoulders, “…We were sisters.  I could understand not wanting to talk to Seth because of his proximity to his brother, but…me, too?”


    Ren reached back to make a tiny adjustment to the placement of the clip, so it settled better against her scalp, and lifted her left leg back over the bench to see her friend better.  She set her hand against the woman’s knee as Ravan sat again, “I promise, I won’t fall out of touch again.  I’ll be better this time.”


    Hazel eyes looked on suspiciously, but Ravan eventually relented, and nodded, leaning in to hug her friend, “I’ll hold you to it…”