[quote=@Tatterdemalion]
Euna’s coming back. She’s coming back and then Sara can invite her over to the couch, just to hold her and be held. The apartment was changing, becoming something shared, something lived in, and that was good. It was [i]good,[/i] and her nightmares of waking up and having a Euna-shaped hole in the world in bed next to her, ground down to feed her light, her everything fading away until she couldn’t remember the color of her hair or the sound of her ridiculous snorting laughter or the feel of her hand on her skin...

That’s when the phone rings.[/quote]

"You have to hide me," said Locker. "They're relentless, they just keep coming - oh shit, they'll find me at your place. Shit. That's the first place they'll look. Okay, I've changed my mind: you have to help me fake my own death. Kill me on camera. You owe me, Sara."

[quote=@Phoe]In the light of the hospital signage, Errant glows like a creature from some other, more magical universe. Or just a certain someone a little closer to home. She reaches out her hand and shakes Doctor al Jamil's without hesitation. A thin smile creeps onto her face before quickly dropping away into a veneer of grim-faced professionalism. Or, was the smile right after all? God help her, she's still so bad at this. She shakes her head. 

"Of course, Doctor. What can I do to help?"[/quote]

"Do remember Project XNE-012?" said Doctor al Jamil, flicking the game off his screen and rummaging through his phone's files. "The cybernetics you got for your fourteenth birthday. Ah, here we go -" he flicks his phone to 'Project' and the holographic images fill the air.

How could you forget? These were your trainee limbs in the AEGIS Champion Course. And they were [i]extremely[/i] prototype-y. Your entire year was a nightmare of having too much strength, and then too little, and not ever being sure if you were going to launch yourself like a thunderbolt or kind of hesitate awkwardly in front of everyone for twenty seconds after the starting gun went off. The limbs' systems were gathering detailed biometric and neurological detail on you so they could calibrate your future editions, and getting you used to the complexities of piloting high performance cybernetics was valuable training, but it came at the cost of the worst year ever.

"With the critical shortage of adolescent cyberware, Museum decided to donate your childhood cybernetics to us," said the doctor. "These ones aren't ideal for civilian use, but they're better than the alternative. I was hoping you'd be able to walk Cinders through them a little, help her come to grips with their quirks."

It's clear from his tone that he's thinking of this in the way that a medical professional might politely think of 'side effects', far removed from what it is to live those side effects. 

[quote=@Balmas]Back then... Oh, it was heaven. Victor Jimenez, the hero of mankind, born to bring about the next great age of enlightenment, with his best friend Prometheus at his side. Plundering fire from the heavens and bringing it back to the poor and desolate masses. Saviors, together.[/quote]

"You've been staring at that box for twenty minutes," said Bode. After exactly the wrong length of pause, one that suggests that he's done talking he adds, "I like that we have the same hobby."

He gave you a clay plate yesterday, shaped like a duck. It was not the first. You have the ominous feeling he's going to replace all of your kitchenware.

[quote=@eldest]Ferra's already gliding on her own miniature Bifröst, ghosting along beside the ship. She catches up and waves, broadcasting on enough frequencies that the car radio picks up her "Hi!".[/quote]

The astronaut inside swears, jerks, and reflexively leans on the horn even though it doesn't do anything in space. Looks like being bad at traffic made it up here too.

As they try to get over the jump scare you start hearing a blumbering crackle at the edge of your consciousness. You know the shape of this - the same connection you felt that time before on the AEGIS pyramid, that vault into the skies. And sure enough on the fringes of your vision is one of Doctor Sylvanius' long range missiles, piloted towards its pointless task by a mad, unspooled artificial intelligence.