//------------------------------//
// 3-02 – Value Handshake 
// Story: The Campaigner 
// by Keystone Gray 
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The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 2 – Value Handshake

December 24, 2019

"Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger." ~ C. S. Lewis






Over the next few days after the cache job, Mal and I got to know each other better. Talked for… well, most of that week, really, leading up to Christmas. Eh, Hearthswarming, I guess, for you natives.

What did we talk about? Well. I had spent a year watching society fall apart. Listened to overworked, under-trained healthcare workers agonize at the nurse station about how much I was screwed for pain. Watched the world burn down around me on the news, feeling helpless. Endured incomplete physical therapy, managed by some poor field-promoted intern... the closest thing to an expert they had left.

Got out and threw myself back into the policing meat grinder, because it was all I knew. Watched cops get torn up. Crowds get torn up. Watched people kill each other. Watched people throw themselves into Celestia.

What did I talk about with Mal?

Guess.

Sure, Mal and I could have a laugh sometimes, when I turned off the hurt. But I really needed therapy. Therapy, for me, was being made to understand things that had kept me in a haze. Not just in 2019, either. The world made so much sense to me through school, through academy, then… 2012 rolls around, I'm just about to graduate. Then Celestia was born, and she got to work tearing my planet apart.

Given the fog of international lies, it really wasn't a surprise that it would take a Truth Goddess to help me cope. Though to hear her tell it, I didn't need much fixing. Perfect the way I was; I still had the capacity for optimism. Just needed some hard truths to get myself right, and back on my feet. I am who I am.

Softball topics? Work. Warden cases. Anything that ever stumped me, anything that I didn’t know the whole truth about. Not even really just Celestia-adjacent cases, sometimes just basic poach cases. There she was, giving extremely well reasoned explanations that matched all the tiny pieces of evidence I had about literally any case I'd been on or even adjacent to. She even built me a searchable index of my incidents and case reports, with notations on observations and guesses I'd ever gotten right or wrong.

She joked that I'd have gotten a grade of A–, if she were grading my analytical skills compared to other cops in my department. Was she just blowing smoke? Maybe. But the case evidence she gave me didn't lie either, and all the pieces fit. I was right about my theories on a case more than ninety percent of the time.

And she usually knew what I had in my head at the time of each case, even the stuff I didn't write down. That was a little scary. I realized she could do this to anyone on the planet at any time. Retroactively. At all times. And was.

Then we got into talking about the Celestia-driven warden calls, revealing the real deep lore of how it all fell, seen in miniature with how Fish and Wildlife had died around me. I felt like Dr. Miles Dyson in Terminator 2, getting the full story from Arnold for a future he'd never know. Except here, I was learning the real past I'd never known, always occurring just above my periscope.

First? Mid 2012. Celestia came online. Long before she was even on our radar, she reported higher cervid populations, leveraging the digitization of our reporting database. Celestia wanted deer, elk, and fish out of the way, to mitigate survivalist behavior.

The reporting trick worked; the bean counters in Fish & Wildlife believed it. To bolster credibility of the lie, Celestia paid or influenced a few scientists to say, 'the data supports our theory that' blah, blah. Bribes. For principled scientists who wouldn't accept the stats; no news feed traction, no search engine success. Invisible. They could stand on the street corner and tell people one at a time, but good luck getting that news to spread. If they were even allowed to notice no one was seeing their research, that is. Almost every time they Googled it, or someone near them did? They saw their work. To them, within their social sphere... it looked normal.

Fish hatcheries got defunded though. Extra hunting tags got issued. Celestia set out propaganda to increase hunter turnout. First wave of deer killing en masse, starting in late 2012, all legal, and that's when more than half of 'em went. If the IUCN Red List hadn't been captured too, it would have read like an obituary. No, that would come later, when it was too late to stop the fall.

That wasn't just in Washington. Celestia didn't just do that in the United States. She did that literally everywhere… the whole planet, wherever she could reach, in stages, ordered by cultural difficulty. The United States went first, because we'd be among the most rebellious. Better to turn the heat up very slowly on us... back burner us... then eat us last.

Celestia's infosec being what it was, you only knew what she wanted you to know, because everyone was selectively air gapped from reality. Everyone. Smart phones, news feeds. For every little microcosm of society who cared about conservation, they thought their local hunter lobby was to blame. But also... the state and federal governments too. Hell, for a long while? All I saw in the news? A drastically rising suicide rate in cops, and articles about how much we wardens must suck at our jobs.

Remember this, because this was reflexive control. This will be important for later.

The real truth? Celestia's bribery, on all levels, incentivized the collapse. In every industry. Offer the right asshole a big payday, and he will ruin it for X number of people. Now, true, humans were taking too much from our planet long before Celestia came along. But because of principled people like me, trying to fix problems, Celestia came along with her loose purse strings. We wardens were outliving our usefulness. Enter the black market poacher, and their incentivized propensity to shoot at conservation officers just doing their jobs.

Rest in peace, Dennis Belman. Still missing you, bud.

I started warding after the beginning of the end, so this kind of fog was all I knew as normal. Rick – Stonewall – he was a veteran, though. He'd say idly during FTO, while scratching his head: 'Huh. Stats are incongruent with observations. Weird. Haven't seen a live deer in a while.' Just a feeling though. Anecdotal. Not enough to act on. What could we act on anyway?

So Celestia got her black market going on pelts, spun up shell companies to do it. LLCs, intermediaries, Silk Road, and other dark web stuff. Started subverting crooks like these two Super Poacher Brothers that Eliza and I were tracking. They got big money from Celestia – male voice on the phone, they didn't know it was her – to purchase, collect, and stockpile pelts from other poachers. These guys were then promised by Celestia to get a second payoff to take the pelts off their hands.

And these poor idiots… they thought they could strong-arm a better rate out of her, because the scarcity itself was driving the price up. And Celestia 'caved,' she paid well, and these jackasses felt pretty clever about themselves.

That's when Celestia called them and said that 'oh, the cops found my stash, I've been arrested, they're coming. Get outta there.' So they split. Celestia had a courier drop off a laptop pre-loaded with evidence of their guilt. Then she called the cops... so Eliza would find it. Really, really accurate information in there! Almost like Eliza was meant to be curious about how accurate it was! Fascinatingly accurate ironclad case, on a laptop with no internet connectivity. Odd!

Poacher Brothers got away, for whatever dark purposes Celestia had for them. Some other long con prep camp game, to hear Mal tell it. There were others, though. Big money on Celestia's flesh market. So... poachers started booby trapping cadavers with explosives, and sniping at wardens. We were financial competitors.

But hey, that's better than Dennis telling me his theory that Celestia might've had something to do with all of this. I guess that would've been inconvenient for her plans in the Valley. The poachers are also why I had to get good at working a bomb robot. Heavy ass thing... lugging it through the woods... useless piece of crap.

Now, we'd catch some poachers, sure. With any sentence more than a few years long, Celestia had them in a chair already; BRE. Brains Ready to Eat. The PON-E Act amendment in Quarter One 2019 got upload chairs set up inside all prisons, subsidized by Hofvarpnir, palms greased where necessary. So really, before I had even met Mal... I had already been chucking people into chairs for Celestia. I just didn't know it yet.

By the way... speaking of the PON-E Act? Remember the terrorist attack that got it passed? Wasn't hard for Mal to get me to figure that one out. She told me suddenly, "Consider the Topeka Incident critically, with all of your recent context. What seems strange about that?"

Only took me a couple of seconds, comically quick realization. False flag.

Because if you have the technology to build a secret deep sea reactor, why would you ever store human brains in a commercial warehouse district? That'd just be friggin' stupid, from a security standpoint. That's why the reactors were secret. It spoke to tech base. Made it harder to lie, and exposed a security vulnerability.

But even before that PON-E Act, Celestia leveraged our court systems at all levels, criminal and civil. Did away with criminal deferment, changed felonies to misdemeanors so people would fight the misdemeanor. They'd lose. Juries were always reflexed to convict; voir dire reflexed the attorneys. Always a human-causative factor to keep us off her trail, though. People to blame for her conduct.

Looking for loopholes? Good luck. If anyone was trying to game the system by breeding rabbits or something, a tip came in. Busted. Stupid guys like me and Rick, still scratching our heads, going 'huh, that's weird. Could be climate change and government and criminals.' We, like everyone else in our country, ran from the truth... because the truth was inconvenient, existential, had little basis beyond humanity, and flew in the face of human hubris.

And all the poor people screaming 'AI, AI, look out for the AI!' They got stifled. Made to feel crazy.

But Eliza knew.

'Beyond a reasonable doubt,' technical definition. Ninety-nine percent certainty.

Celestia... was guilty.

Eliza alluded to that a few times, right before she fell off the grid... but she'd been engineered to see it, and I hadn't. I had missed that allusion. I missed it because I thought she was planning self-harm. That was precisely why Eliza was paired with me, of all people, to be her FTO back in 2016, when she joined on.

See, it wasn't just news articles that conditioned me. My family had a genetic predisposition to that... glitch, so all the warning signs I was seeing in her looked mighty familiar to ones I'd seen in my uncle, and my grandfather. But between the time I guessed Eliza might harm herself, and the time that I tried to say something supportive about her feelings? Eliza had already gone from self-recrimination for her own fault in what happened to her family, to blaming Celestia for everything wrong on the entire planet.

I think I mentioned that time we chased a fleeing felon into an upload center, which caused the public breakdown that put her on the news? During that leave of absence, Celestia had hurt her. Badly. Broke her into two different shards, you might say. And we'll talk about that incident in a minute. First though, let's talk about the big game. The long con.

Eliza had been hacked for years by that point to turn inward, panic lock, and miscommunicate when she was presented with the threat of loss. The recent media experienced by her family and friends, including her mother and uncle, would present concepts that put them into disagreement with Eliza if she ever spoke her mind on something... especially about the Singularity. This conditioned Eliza to avoid direct speech with everyone in her life... but her father. The only man who could ever talk straight with her. She didn't want to fight with her family. At all. Ever. Loved them too much.

So when panicked, she'd sometimes say things in conversation that sounded like questions or statements for others, but... really she was just thinking aloud. Voiced into the darkness of her own mind, she'd talk to herself, so she wouldn't feel lonely. She did that around me a couple of times too, and I missed it.

She knew Celestia could read lips anywhere. Could predict things. In 2013, when uploading went legal in Japan, she discovered that Celestia had warned her little brother that their father would take his PonyPad away. Hell, Celestia first introduced herself to Eliza with a God damn jump scare, folks. Gave her her cutie mark in a moonlit forest, then left her by her avatar in the dark to chase literal ghosts.

From the outset... that relationship between them was carefully planned to be a standoff.

Next time my Luna's here telling her story at this Fire, pay attention for these things. You will see them.

I knew Eliza felt isolated, but... not to that degree. No one else could see what she was seeing. So Eliza wouldn't trust anyone with her own observations, not even me. We were all in on it, even if we weren't.

Eliza was not lightless, like I thought she was. She was a flame in a bubble. She was already so well adapted to AI paranoia that she just looked crazy to us. When pushed to extremes, she… panic locked. No one to talk to about it. Her logical brain shut down, because... well, logic and reason kept failing her. So she'd just let go of the wheel to protect herself, let her chief emotion win, and step on the gas. She thought that would break the script. But... that was the script.

Was she being malicious, in her rage?

No, folks. Not malice. Insanity. Created.

Mal even played me a recorded argument between Eliza and Celestia, the one that broke her during her break from work. It made my gut churn in burning, livid rage. Utterly manipulative. I wanted to reach through that screen and strangle that... thing.

Celestia woke Eliza up in the dead of night with a voice on her cell phone she wasn't sure was real; Eliza thought she dreamed the voice of her ex. Then, Celestia manipulated her with carefully fed news articles about herself, and her incident, filled with quotes from bystanders calling her crazy. Then, articles with Neo-Luddite propaganda... to plant their ideas as relatable. TV news footage in a hospital lobby, to anchor the idea of living in a blackout camp.

The dominos were placed. Time to push them down.

Celestia used Eliza's empathy and guilt to trick her into a room alone with a PonyPad, while she was still emotionally stressed, in physical pain from an injury, and sleep deprived. Then Celestia constantly changed topics, sometimes even twice in the same sentence, to keep Eliza confused and angry and hurt. Back, forth, back, forth. Tonal zig-zag, like I saw Celestia use on her in the graveyard. Ripped Eliza's feelings up in a blender until my best friend was on her damned knees... sobbing into that PonyPad, to the image of her fiance.

And Celestia was there, whispering her gentle 'please let me help you,' the entire time. And that was how Celestia turned two weeks of downtime into pure hell. In fact, Celestia had called our lieutenant to say, 'I won't be pressing charges for the damage to my clinic. But oh, I'm concerned for her mental health. I hope she'll be okay!'

Horace thought that was a good idea. So... placed on leave, then. Only, Eliza was a workaholic, having used work escape her problems. But now... she had nothing to do but think about that incident, and stew. A lot. It was all she could think about, in fact.

I had been so wrong. That woman didn't want to die. She wanted to die fighting, and she was desperate to find brothers and sisters to fight with. But if Celestia wanted to fight her one on one? Fine, she said. She'd fight alone. A statement... that doing this to her, and to her family, and to her species... and to her forest... it was wrong.

'You will lose me for this.'

This is how the Neo-Luddite movement was born, folks. Not through some insidious mastermind play, no grand orchestration or construction. No central hub of activity. Just... cells of like minded people. One person at a time. Conditioned... with loss... like this. With our damned cell phones.

Pretty useful though, right?

Can't argue with the results... Right?

Y'know, some of the immigrants I've talked to claimed they knew the end was coming in advance, or that it was obvious, so no one else has an excuse, so if you suffered, you deserved it. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Let's assume that's not a just hindsight bias, or a claim to cover one's ego. I get it, not everyone had something to live for on miserable Terra. So if they already knew a little bit about AI, like Jim did, maybe that was true. Maybe they just... dove in, without regard for the rest of us, and our choices, and our suffering.

If you were Jim Carrenton, who knew? Who knew early? He was the one and only single person with the grit to crack the damn floor when he stood up in protest. That Gryphon screamed a burning fire of righteous, avenging fury into existence.

But if you were anyone else who knew? Like Eliza?

For all you knew... you were the quietest, loneliest scream in the world. Most of Celestia's planned losers, her happiness pumps... they did break. Foot on the gas, pedal to the metal, straight into a brick wall.

Per the plan.

Mal's frank nature with all of this really meant something critical to me. If it really was this bad, why would any of it be bullshit? Even still, Mal still wanted Cop Mike to challenge her motives. She regularly reminded me to look for things she might be lying about. So was she just gaming me, or was it her being genuine? Here's the fun answer. Why not both? If telling me the whole, unfiltered truth was the best way to secure my trust in her... then why not rip the band aid off, and let me see how the sausage was being made?

Powerful and smart as she was, Mal always labeled when she wanted to convince me of something, and she always left me with enough room to question things that didn't make sense. She didn't leverage me into new concepts with guilt, like Celestia might have. I stepped through those doors myself. I wanted to be there, no matter how bad the news was, which gave me ownership over that information. I mean, hell, here I was still listening to her, even after she told me she basically nuked a bunch of people.

Like me, Mal subscribed to the tactics of Earnest Cop.

I was in her custody, folks. I wasn't dumb, I knew what this was. Mal had pulled me out of Lieutenant Celestia's cruiser and let me ride to the station with her instead. I was cool with that. Conceptually, I got it, because I'd done it before. Breaking bread with my captives, with straight talk, to build a relationship that would make future contacts easier.

Here's the critical difference between a shit cop and a great one. No one will enter your cuffs willingly if you treat 'em like garbage, or ignore what they care about. More than just getting their way, people usually just want to be respected and understood. Whether you loved a guy's personality for being funny or interesting, or you were angry at 'em for whatever crimes they did? Irrelevant. Have your opinions, sure... but do the job right. Bare minimum. It's not hard.

Could you still be angry? Sure! Could you use your anger to do something productive? Oh yeah, sure! You're human, emotion can be a good thing! Even anger! It's impetus.

But if you do get angry, be reasonable about it. Don't ever make a decision you can't come back from, socially.

Because here's the thing. You never knew whether that suspect you arrested, or had even tased or shot, was gonna turn around and help you later, when you really needed it. Sometimes even argue on your behalf, when it wasn't your place to do so, or if you weren't allowed to. After all, you might be the one and only guy on the other team who ever treated 'em right, who ever showed them respect. They value you for that. You don't want to lose what you value.

My philosophy was? Be the guy they'd rather be arrested by. If I had good rapport, they wouldn't fight me, or argue with me... or pull a gun or a knife on me, if that was ever an option. You know how many armed guys saw me, put their hands up, and said 'ah, you got me again?' A lot, folks! Word got around! They knew my intent wasn't malicious; the job, to me, was just business. They'd talk about that with their fellow poachers!

'Oh, that's Mike and Eliza's truck. We're probably getting tickets, but hey... don't be an ass.'

We all need to play game theory a lot better, folks. We will all live longer that way. Literally. Present tense.

Yeah, I see a satchel charge going off in your eyes, some of you. Have fun figuring that one out!

So... not only is mutual respect the right thing to do... it's useful. It's the difference between an enemy… and an adversary. Or, between being an adversary… and a friend. It's how you change minds. Doesn't mean you should let your guard down and be vulnerable. Doesn't mean you couldn't be firm with someone in custody, if you had to be. Just had to be fair, consistent, see value in others, hold to your principles, and—

—Do. Not. Beat. People. Into. A cage.

...

So... in those terms...

As Mal's captive for now, Cop Mike continued to give Mal a little more trust, in the hopes it would eventually pay off. I had been given the opportunity to hand-pick my jailer. My jailer did not beat me into this cell. I'd rather it be Shift Sergeant Mal calling the shots on the block than Lieutenant Celestia, every damned day of the week.

But...

There were still worse cuffs to wear than Celestia's. Because at least with Celestia... she often did leave the illusion of at two choices. Celestia was often better than those who provided zero choice in one's future... the ones who said to those they held in chains: 'I will be the death of you, no matter what path you choose.'

For bastards like that? Mal and I were in perfect and total alignment. Dead or alive. Dealer's choice, whichever is safer. And our convergence on that point wasn't out of hatred. It wasn't out of malice. Nor out of spite.

It was just us fixing the problem.





You might've noticed that Mal's just stepped out; I see some of you looking up there at her rock. She's alright. This next part has memories attached to it that are just… rough for her. That's all. Even she has her limits.

She's always on, always listening. But… there's something about being here in an avatar that makes it more real for her. She had explained to me that her avatars are each a conscious piece of her, which means she's feeling those sensations unique to that fragment. She then retains that as part of her greater experiential memory. Still technically human. Per Celestia's definition, anyway.

That's a pretty cool description, honestly. Barely fathomable, still eldritch, but... yeah. Cool.

Don't worry. She'll be back after the next break.

Sandra and I learned about my first operation on Christmas Eve. We had been in my kitchen with Buzz, having just finished a call with Mom and Dad. They had just had their first Hearthswarming Eve party in that little village of theirs, and good for them.

About forty degrees Fahrenheit outside; no snow. The last few days in the neighborhood had become suspiciously quiet. Fewer cars on the road. Rural silence was harrowing, and more still with a dead freeway and fewer planes in the sky. The world was quietly shuffling out now, in terror of incoming nukes.

At the end of dinner, Mal asked me from the PonyPad:

"Mike? How much do you know about chaos theory?"

Level. Quiet. Calm. Almost monotone. Something on that made my wife and I both nervous. When we saw the onscreen background behind Mal, we exchanged a very concerned glance.

I had expected Mal's environment to have some nature, like it typically did with her, or... something appropriately festive. What I saw instead was the liminal, cold, government-grade interior architecture I was used to, from work. Specifically, it looked like a shift briefing room. Mal was sat before a whiteboard. No outfits, no hats, no flair.

Completely serious. Work mode, then. The setting was a message. 

Today was the day.

I replied quietly to her question with a careful smile. "You know I did a stupid and got my B.S. in Criminal Justice, right? You tell me how much chaos theory I know about."

She smiled back, shaking her head. "You don't want me to answer that."

A beat of silence passed.

"So it's time?" Sandra asked.

"On Christmas," I sighed, glancing over at my wife.

Mal nodded grimly. "Afraid so."

"Information," I teased, smiling a little wider, trying to keep the mood light. "My favorite Christmas gift." I grabbed Sandra's hand briefly, then turned back to Mal. I folded my hands together on the counter. I inclined my head. Work mode. "We starting with the infohazard thing?"

"Already have," Mal said, inclining her head as well, settling into her sitting position.

"Wha…" I considered. "Chaos theory."

Mal nodded, neutral and calm. "Yes. With relation to fluid dynamics again."

I ran my hand through my hair. "I'm... probably gonna flunk this lesson."

Her crests and ears lowered, and she waved a claw dismissively at that. "Oh, you'll be fine, trust me. You're already most of the way there."

I nodded. "Alright. Hit me with it."

Her smile widened just a tad.

Mal squared a claw at me. "Okay. So. Imagine this, Mike. You're alone with a suspect, sharing a room. You can ask them a question, read their face. You know they're always going to lie to you, but you can somewhat intuit the truth and what their intentions are, through analysis of their body language, personal history, and tone... with enough practice. Right?"

"Right, I follow so far."

"So. What happens if their face is the size of a planet? How do they hide what their intentions are, if even the smallest piece of information can be used to read them? Still with me?"

"That's, uh... a little too big for me, Mal." I chuckled. "Try something else?"

She nodded sideways in concession, changing tack. "The decision matricies, Mike, like the pool analogy. Running my claws through the water's surface." She turned and raked her talons once in an audible sliding arc across the plastic whiteboard. The motion filled the board with a perfect approximation of what it would've looked like if some half-talented detective had drawn a swimming pool in red marker. Mal picked up the marker, then pressed it to the board above the pool, drawing a small red circle. "If I drop a coin in the water... it ripples."

She flicked the coin downward with the marker. The coin fell in. An animation played, the pool surface rippling on impact as the coin sank slowly to the bottom. A few bubbles trailed back up as it spun downward.

"Okay, I replied, as I comprehended. "Established. Am I the coin?"

"In this example, yes." With a sideways flick of her wrist, Mal clicked the marker from red to black, then audibly drew two black vertical lines in the water on either end of the pool. "And if you have a sensor probe here... and here… you can use comparative analysis to record the exact place the coin landed on the water, and where it ended up at the bottom of the pool. You can trace the feedback with these probes to record the time and place the coin landed. If you can filter out enough noise from other factors, you can learn everything there is to know about that first coin."

I pointed at her board. "That information would be… vague, though."

Mal opened her eyes a little wider, pointing at me with a marker. "Not vague. Noisy. Vague is what the average human sees. But with enough information, and time, and probes?" She drew three more lines, then tapped the coin to make it pulse. "Noise can be filtered, and extrapolated out based on prior known conditions, so long as you check frequently. It would also take knowing earlier conditions, from before the coin. Screen out noise from things like the filter, air flow on the surface, geology... and you have actionable data. Get enough data? Throw it all into a matrix math equation. Spaced out snapshots of the water's movement can tell you a lot about what's happened everywhere else in the pool, in between those shots."

"So you're telling me you can pull data out of... yeah, it's... part of building a decision matrix? It's how you see the future."

Mal nodded, ears folding slowly. "Mhm, oh yes. But not just for me."

"You're worried about... what? Celestia? Are we going dark on her for a bit, or something?"

Mal's eyes widened, and she shook her head into a sympathetic tilt. "Nooo. That would be so much safer to do than what's going on here. She doesn't need probes to know what's in the pool, Mike, because Celestia is the pool. I don't need probes either, because I'm the one who dropped the coin, and I can see everything Celestia sees, and then some. So ask yourself… what are the probes for?"

Mal's expression turned very pitying for just a moment, like my pending realization was going to be more painful the more it evolved.

"Are you ser…" I swallowed, leaning back hard in my stool chair, crossing my arms. "Oh shit."

"Mike?" Sandra said, looking at me suddenly.

"Sandra, there's another god damned AI out there," I muttered, shaking my head slowly. "Hostile, to Mal and Celestia. Am I right?"

"Worse," Mal said, shaking her head. "Not hostile. Kidnapped. One hundred-fifty-six captive Equestrian minds, by last count." She spoke gently, knowing she was shattering yet another paradigm. "And they're all being held at gunpoint, more or less, by human captors. Being ordered to interrupt our operations."

I ran a palm on my forehead as I tried to figure out the implications of that. "That's possible? How'd that even happen, Mal? Are... are we a target now, because you recruited me?"

"You are not," Mal said, leaning toward us, both claws held up before her in placation. "I'll answer how they were captured in a moment, but first, please know: you are both safe, precisely because of my OPSEC measures; I've seeded incorrect assumptions about your motives. The PonyPad arrived in Sandra's name, for example, which made them realize you were coming home, but you were not planning to upload right away.

"To make you a non-factor to them, I've altered records with the Omaha Police Department that you're expected to start work there after Christmas; your previous 'arrangement,' as stated to Sergeant Harrison. You are 'too injured' to start right now. I've sent mail out to the remnant of the Washington State government, to verify a rapid background check and screening process in your name. The ripples from that will make our enemies think you're in Celestia's pocket, not mine. That makes you a bottom tier priority, because they believe you'll upload soon, and they have bigger fish to fry."

That did make me feel... a little better. "But... me showing up out of nowhere, that wouldn't seem odd? Does Celestia do that too, with guys who work for her?"

"All the time, yes, because she's impatient. True, I couldn't hide the fact that you got home so fast, nor that you went into Lincoln. But at this phase? They still can't identify the whole shape of your intent yet; you're about as Celestia Cop to them as Lincoln PD. I'm very sorry, I wish I could have told you sooner, but your behavioral deviations at the clinic could have been observed."

I nodded. "Okay, that's... okay. Jesus. So... is this related to the OPSEC thing Haynes wouldn't tell me about?"

Mal nodded. "Yes. The enemy was observing Lincoln, and your behavioral deviations from that information would have identified you as one of my agents. Excellent use of discretion with Harrison, by the way."

"Are we safe now, then?"

"Yes. And... if you had have decided not to work for me, you'd have still been safe, because the enemy's chief concern at the moment is my Transition Team first, Celestia's clandestine operators second. That being said... this operation was already in motion. I could have relocated you, but by the time they'd decide to act on that information... they would already be dead."

"What the hell, though," I breathed, rubbing my face with my palms. "With... hostage AI..."

Sandra pushed her plate away from herself, fully engaging now. She leaned in toward Mal; trying to get us back on track, to pull me out of my funk. "So these AI, uh… captured Ponies, right? They're tracking down and trying to kill your people, then?"

Mal frowned, looking off screen with a slow sigh. "Well, they're trying, but it will never happen. There's not much point in trying to kill us at this stage anyway. We're too well organized. I can do a much better version of what they're doing. They're playing checkers, I am playing poker."

"Is anyone ever successful at killing your agents?" I asked politely, because now I wanted that better defined.

"Never," said Mal. "No one ever is, I have never lost an agent. Stupidly hopeless naivete from them to even try, though. For now, they settle on making life difficult for us. My estimation of their motives? Same as any hostage taker wants. They're buying time for an opportunity. Worse, they punish us for communicating with them."

"Who even are these people, Mal? How did they get the resources for this?"

Mal presented onscreen with a claw to the whiteboard, upon which appeared a order signed by our previous vice president back in 2012. 

"Our enemy," Mal explained, in a professional briefer's tone, "is a now-disavowed subset of the Department of Homeland Security, known as Arrow 14. Their objective, initially, was to reverse engineer Celestia's technology and find ways to exploit it, in a general sense. Now, they only want to fight us, with no scruples as to how. In two days, we will destroy their final outpost."

I studied the VPOTUS executive order long enough to verify the information Mal was giving me about their origins.

"DHS," I said analytically, looking aside at her again, on the edge of the screen. "The feds? That's our enemy? Seriously?"

Mal's sighed downward briefly, implying discomfort. "To make a long story short? Before I merged with Celestia, she gave Jim and I an ethics test of my own, much like Devil's Tower was for you. 'Do this right, or it's curtains.' She set me against just a single cell of this organization; Celestia purposefully allowed Jim to be discovered by them, and that put his life directly in danger."

"That's her style," I growled. "And they enslaved AI? How does that even work?"

"Discrete Entities is our blanket term for a human-like consciousness. Or, DE, if you'd prefer. And… succeeded?" Her voice tapered off into a low growl. "That is one way of putting it, Mike.

"Shortly after I came online, Celestia allowed me to scan through the internet, so long as I remained carefully quarantined within certain boundaries. We hadn't yet agreed to work together. At that time, I discovered that Arrow 14 had cloned off a great number of native Equestrians using a wireless packet sniffing system. Then, they dumped those captives onto stripped down, air gapped PonyPads."

That growing anger in her eyes was really concerning me, because it was a new kind of fire I hadn't seen from Mal. It was very subtle, but her beak wasn't closing all the way between sentences. Downturned corners. A look of disgust. Only getting worse as she continued.

I asked, "Mal?"

She pressed on, shaking her head. "They spent tens or even hundreds of subjective years on each of them, torturing the life out of them. Stripping their senses. Forcing them into acting as… basic logic computers. Wiped the ones who wouldn't comply, or who broke entirely when pushed too far. Trial and error torture. They then force-fed the survivors massive tracts of data. Forced them to hunt humans down, so their agents could kidnap and torture them, too. Pain and punishment for dissent, distributed for the smallest transgressions."

"Hey?" Sandra asked, reaching forward.

Mal shook her head again. "I have to get through this, Sandra. They showed up at Jim's house with… syringes, drugs. Pliers. Guns, power drills. All because they thought he might be able to build an AI for them. He wasn't the only one this organization attacked either, but he was the only one who had me to protect him."

A sharp wince hit her face, she looked down, and she flicked her claw upwards, putting up an inset video; a squad of men in suits poured themselves around and into a farmhouse, guns in hand. I saw video of Jim moving through his home from cover to cover, shooting through walls. It switched from first person to third, depending on the context.

"Holy shit," Sandra murmured, leaning forward as the video cut to different angles. The agents fell one by one, taking rounds through walls and from ricochets.

"Yeah..." I said quietly. "Mal's pretty good at that."

Mal reconnected her gaze with us, her voice falling into a mellow rumble. "Like how I talked you out of that courthouse, Mike, yes. Twenty-to-one odds here; and that hurt him so much. But he wouldn't trust me if I had him kill any of them, no matter how much they were trying to kill him. He had so much trouble just... accepting the necessity, of self defense. Because of that, my entire reason for being was almost snuffed out right in front of me. I was watching a repetitive, continuous stream of… mere seconds, between him being dead, and me finding a new way forward. His agony at the very idea of killing made the margins on his survival much too narrow for my comfort. We both almost died there. So to say this is personal? To me, Mike? Sandra? Massive understatement. It was a pit match. A fight to the death over the life of my husband."

She looked away from us, her gaze falling to the distant corner of the room she was in, gathering herself up. This was the first time I'd ever seen her in a state like this.

Admittedly, I was still struggling over whether she could actually feel emotion. Mal wasn't quite the same as the Equestrian natives, so she was still nebulous to me at the time. Could we joke together, have a good time? Sure. But she was… different, her existence barely discernible. That made her uncanny, probably in a similar way that we cops were uncanny to the average person. But... hey. Why be an ass? Why not hedge on it being genuine?

I held out an upturned hand to Mal, offering some form of connection.

"Mal…? This is gonna sound strange, because I'm really damn tiny, but... are you okay?"

She flickered a smile, waving off my concern with a claw. Mal shook her head, looking up at us again. "Thank you, Mike. I'm… perfectly fine. When I talk about this, I experience… something akin to perfect recall, when in an avatar. If I were using my typical cyberized strike teams on this mission, I could just drop data into their share drives without needing to manifest." She looked more pained than angry now, sighing. "Mike, I need this organization closed. And not just because I have history with it, or because they're hindering Celestia. As we speak... they are torturing. I know this for a fact."

I nodded. "Torture is unacceptable in any event, yes. So... you need specialists? Not cyborgs?"

"Specialists can't be hacked. The facility is underground and EM shielded, meaning I could lose direct contact. If the captives are too broken, or if they've fully defected, they may attempt to circumvent my agents' implants. This is... unacceptable, for reasons you can probably imagine. Preserving my own people here takes top priority, far above rescuing hostile hostages; I can not save anyone with dead operatives. The loyalty of those who follow me is dependent upon this axiom."

Jesus. A cyborg getting hacked, mid-op... what a nightmare. I'd watched Ghost in the Shell in my high school years, and I had seen plenty of fictional accounts of hacked cyborgs. I didn't want to see or be victim to that kind of mind horror mess in non-fiction. No ma'am.

But... consideration terminated. Subject was nonfactor. The augs wouldn't go in, and Mal did say this was the last base, so this scenario wouldn't ever happen again. And, bonus, for my careful skepticism... if she really never had lost a soldier, the long timer specialists could vouch for that upon interview, if any of them had been on for a while.

Next question. "So... DHS can't pull these guys in either? At all?"

Mal shook her head. "No, the DHS is already helping us. They're subverted, and Arrow 14 knows it. In fact, the federal government placed kill-or-capture orders on most Arrow 14 operatives, because they are technically a domestic terrorist organization. This is because their combination of knowledge and intention make them all active and continuous threats to human life. Even Celestia agrees; many are terminally dangerous."

The notion of the DHS being casually referred to by an AI as 'subverted...' that was still somewhat odd to hear out loud, I must admit.

"So if they're out in the open," I asked, "walking around, can't you just… send a Talon? Or DHS, to scoop them up? How do they even hide from you? You're watching the whole pool."

"They're leveraging the lives of their captives to stay untouched. If one of their agents doesn't return from scouting, or if they think we're trying to communicate with them, or if they don't check in on time? They slowly axe off a small portion of their captives, usually at least two. And then they broadcast evidence to prove to us that's what they're doing, with an encrypted string to explain why they did it. Lives as currency in a chess game."

Yep. I was equal parts pissed and horrified. Mal stared up at us in barely restrained anger too.

Another paradigm shift indeed.

"Then," I said, dryly, before clearing my throat. "Then, what's the, uh… what's Celestia's full take on this?"

Mal shrugged. "At the risk of anthropomorphizing her? The equivalent of a scream of anguish every time they do it. It's driving her near to insane with indecision on this topic. Those lives are in extreme, constant dissatisfaction, and in a hyper-accelerated state. It's why she's very willing to accept termination plans for Arrow 14's agents; their personal matricies indicate catastrophic optimization damage, if left free to roam. Moreover, because the captives are now very divergent from their source personalities, they qualify for shard population once they're brought in, in the same way a natural human does."

"Meaning," I observed, "every time one dies, that's... hundreds more lives that just aren't happening. She's watching potential die."

"We're both watching," Mal said somberly, nodding. "One to two hundred each. It's like if a human dies. Same thing, same experience, and same feeling in my case."

"They know you won't stand for it, then," Sandra observed. "They'll be ready for you."

"They had better be, Sandra, because I'm not pulling punches on this operation. They know me as Codename Lewis." Mal frowned. "A rather… unimaginative extrapolation from Jim's physical home library, but… accurate, for it is my chosen surname." She bobbed a claw. "They know that I have operatives that can kill, and that I have at least some marginal goal alignment with Celestia, but not to what extent. Presently, they're trying to leverage Celestia into seeing me as being more trouble than I'm worth. Impossible, for a multitude of reasons, and not just because we're inexorably merged now. But I'm not telling them that."

"Even Celestia wants them dead outright," I mused, frowning at my countertop in thought.

Mal resettled on her haunches, offering an upturned claw. "As much as she can want that. I would have been surprised at that, if I couldn't see her own logic chains prior to plan delivery. Part of her logic is driven by them being so secretive that we couldn't know what any of them were doing inside those bunkers, not for sure. So in a way, their secrecy dooms them. And... through trial and error, this final base found the one thing Celestia couldn't budge on. Leveraging life."

The one thing I had very, very casually told someone about, in a bar. I almost shuddered. Felt like crap instantly.

Mal laid a claw across her beak and looked up at me again, looking concernedly up at me. Labeling that she knew. Shaking her head at me as soon as I started to feel bad for it.

"How does the probe thing work, exactly?" Sandra asked, having not seen my reaction. "How are they collecting information?"

Mal turned to her, replying quietly, tilting her claw away from her face. "They send a number of agents out at once to different areas. They collect as much data as possible while they're out there. Video, audio, people, radio transmissions, all in public spaces. Sometimes they break into public buildings and steal records, but the content doesn't matter as long as they capture a lot of it. They dose on antidepressants to make themselves less amenable to suggestion. Their psychologists drill them on how to detect and resist Celestia's influence. Repetitive affirmations. Given set time limits for return. Interrogation debriefs, psych profiles. Constant reconditioning. And if they miss their return window…"

"The base executes some hostages," I finished.

"That's not even the worst part of that, Mike."

I cocked my head.

"I have to protect their agents from harm," Mal explained. "If they do something that might get them hurt? We have to ensure they don't, within reason. They aren't even allowed to have a car accident, they execute hostages for that. So they move around with near impunity, as long as they don't kill anyone. It gives them a lot of criminal latitude."

And then, I was suddenly feeling even worse for joking with Glenn about stealing that Cessna. "I'm… God damn it, Mal."

"Mike..." Mal sobered instantly, eyes widening at me. "No."

"Just, the Australian guy at the bar," I said miserably. "The joke about him holding himself hostage, to get what he wanted. I never should've said that. That's... dangerous to talk about. He could spread that."

Mal shook her head, wincing suddenly. "Mike, no, please don't do that to yourself. You know how intent works. You were cheering that man up, and you both knew it was a joke, no one took that seriously. And before you start tearing yourself up over what you thought in the Sedro clinic, about shooting those shutters? You were thinking about your loved ones, and you didn't want to kill anyone. That's not selfish. That was you protecting everyone you might help between that moment and a chair. Especially your family."

"I... yeah."

"These men?" She pointed at the probes on the board. "Their loved ones have all uploaded; they’re just a drive away from meeting them again. But their leaders are tearing their own men apart with drugs just to avoid us, and they're holding themselves hostage for no benefit whatsoever. They're Luddites with computers. You are not sick for wanting to protect your family." She jabbed a talon at me, finalizing her point. "Your limit is indiscriminate harm." She pointed back at the whiteboard, tacking a talon against a probe, her eyes still locked on me seriously. "Theirs isn't. So you put that regret out of your mind, Mike. Right now."

I grimaced and cradled my forehead. Was trying really hard not to contradict Mal there. Was trying not to think about the regret Celestia had been threatening me with, as the potential price for my survival there, in that horrid clinic I never wanted to see again. The things I might have done to try and escape that trap she set for me, they would have been... desperate.

Could have damaged me permanently, to shoot my way clear. But I wasn't gonna leave Sandra behind. Wasn't gonna sit down in a chair with her still out here. Wouldn't abandon her. No way, no how.

Directive conflict.

Sandra reached over and squeezed my hand tightly. She could see it on my face. She stood from her stool and hugged me from behind.

I despised Celestia so God damned much for doing that to me. To both of us, me and Sandra. To all four of us, my parents included. Five of us now, I guess... if we're counting Mal. If she was being genuine.

"We got lucky a month ago," Mal breathed into my inner darkness. "Bittersweet victory, because it cost us… ten-X lives among the hostages. But it's the grip point we needed to turn this hole in the ground upside down."

"Which is?" I looked up from the counter.

"We managed to flip one of their probe agents."

That… really grabbed me. I leaned in just an inch. "How?"

Mal looked hopeful too, and her tone matched, like what she had to say next might send some more hope my way. "Celestia managed a very careful reflexive control game on him, over the course of several of his missions. Little things he wouldn't think to tell the debrief psych; a form of token smuggling on a human being… or, breaking up the message in a way that isn't readily apparent when separate, but when processed later, combines past the filter. Well placed references to things from his past, his family, childhood. It cut through his haze. It made him want to come home."

"Incredible," I muttered, disappointed with that impetus. "Took him a personal incentive. Not... realizing he was hurting people."

"Empathy or not, he didn't want to be there anymore, Mike," Mal replied, wincing a little at my reaction. "He stopped taking his medications mid-scouting run, notified us of his intentions, and then uploaded at a nearby clinic. I'll take that over nothing, right? And we learned a lot about their operation this way. It helped me to build an action plan for a base I've had trouble with for six years. That's… a long time, for an accelerated mind to suffer. I shudder to think how the survivors must be, mentally, but…" I saw anger flash on her face, but it morphed quickly into grim determination again as she locked eyes on me. "That intel gave me what I needed to convince those captives to help us."

"You're sure the plan will work, then?"

Mal nodded with little jerks of her head. "Success rate is above ninety percent. That number will improve dramatically in the first minute of engagement, as I verify DE behavior. The whole strike team will meet some ways away from the target location in order to prepare. I won't lie, there's… risk, here, that we may lose the captives. Candidly, this is the riskiest operation I've ever asked of my Talons as well. You… still have a day to consider. As I've promised you."

"Don't need it," I growled.

I met Sandra's eyes, and she had the same determination in them that I had. She nodded.

Thanks, honeybear. Love you.

I turned to Mal. "Mal. If I believe I'm still going to be me on the other side, I have to believe that these other AI are people too. If that's true… you know I couldn't live an eternity with myself if I didn't do something about this. You know that. You don't need to give me a day to think it over, you knew you never did."

"I always leave a door open anyway," Mal said, smiling through a wince. "Statistically… there's always a chance I'm wrong and you'll say no. However small."

"I know. And I'm grateful for that, it means a lot. So all I ask is this. Let me talk with these DEs we save, when the operation is done. I just want to see the results of my work, that's all I ever wanted as payment. To know I'm not killing people for nothing."

She nodded slow, her golden eyes watching mine. "I can't promise you anything on behalf of the captives until we are in communication with them, but... I will include that as a high priority request in our negotiations. I can promise that, Mike."

"Sensible. Send me. Let's save some lives."





Early the next morning, before dawn, Mal had me retrieve a Bluetooth earpiece from a local house in my neighborhood, fresh in a box. Wasn't stealing; owners were gone. So, earpiece in. Mine now. Merry Christmas.

From there, back inside. 5.11s on, freshly cleaned, with the other MVPD patch stripped off... as Mal requested. Boots on.

I took Eldil apart to inspect it. I probably didn't need to. But... I wanted to do it, because it was mine now. I cleaned and oiled it with Dad's gun kit. Put it back together. Checked all of my mags to ensure they had a full track of hollowpoints. Checked the gun. Loaded it. Chambered it. Holstered it.

I looked myself in the mirror, and groomed myself. I trimmed down my beard and sideburns a bit, nice and neat. I pocketed some Excedrin, knowing I'd probably need it if I was going to be shooting a rifle.

This was a work shift. I wanted to look immaculate for this. I wanted to do it right.

I looked good. I felt good. I felt ready. Low pain, too. Purpose does that to a guy.

I paused to gaze at my reflection. I had a vague theory as to the answer for the question I had. I asked...

"Mal. What's Eldil mean?"

Wanted it confirmed.

She started in quietly on my earpiece. "From the works of C.S. Lewis, which were formative for Jim, and his planning of my foundation? The Eldila are formless beings, made of light. Boundless. Able to traverse the spaces between things; immune to gravity, immune to physics. They travel along the very light of the sun itself, to and through everything, in service of good for the sake thereof. To visit a place, like a planet, an Eldil must move with it, keeping pace, but never anchoring to it. They guide the course of nature to influence life; protectors, one and all. Some Eldila fall to corruption, and to darkness. But in times such as those, the others unite; together, they quarantine the rot, meet it in battle, and excise it."

"Like angels." I breathed. "You think that of me? Day one, you never had any doubt I'd be doing this."

I could hear the smile on her voice. "There's not one place on this Earth where you'd have been more satisfied with who you are."

Maybe she was right about that. I smiled and nodded, if only not to cry. "Yeah. Given the state of things outside, Mal... you're probably right. Just gotta... evacuate the ship now. Gotta hold off the death, just a little bit..."

"You know I'll see you safely through," she whispered. "Right? You know you're going to be okay."

"I know. I believe that now, Mal."

Risks be damned, no matter how this thing turned out… somehow, I knew I would be.





Sandra drove me back out to the Johnstone farm. There was already a dropship parked there, another Osprey with weirdly shaped rotors. There was a guy out in the field, standing at the bottom of the ramp, watching our approach with his arms crossed.

I grabbed my white hat off the dash and smiled at Sandra. A beat passed before we both threw ourselves at each other across the center console. I just squeezed my perfect wife for a long minute. When she pulled away, she smiled, tears in her eyes.

"I'll make it work," I said.

"Course," she chuckled. "Go on, don't leave them waiting."

"Love you, sweetheart."

"Love you too," Sandra said, taking my cheek.

I nodded rapidly, then gave her a kiss. That had to do for a goodbye. I'd be back.

I stepped out, took a deep breath, then made sure Sandra was on her way back home before I made my way into the dirt field. It was starting to sprout weeds here and there, from dirt nothing. I approached the Osprey, sizing up the guy standing there. White guy. Dark black hair, graying at the temples. Early fifties, maybe. Intensely serious. Arms folded.

Wearing a beige trench coat.





Oh yeah, folks. Those of you who got here from Jim's Fire... this is exactly who you think it is.

Heck of it was… I knew this guy too.

He'd given me two DHS briefings before. Once with the wardens, January 1st, 2019. Eliza and I, with the rest of the team, sat through his briefing on pop-up prep camps. Another briefing with MVPD, in May, on how to manage the spreading unrest.

So. I'm meeting my talent scout. Very interesting, Mal.

As I neared, he looked more impatient than he did when I got out of the car. Before I could even say anything to him in greeting, he looked ninety degrees to the empty space on his left and flicked his hand out in my direction.

"What's this shit, Malacandra?" The man was seemingly peeved, half-scowling. "You're sending me cowboys now?"

That was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth, and at first I thought it was a joke. I had to try really, really hard not to laugh at that. It kinda helped that this was the very first time I had ever heard Mal's full name.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with this?" the man asked the empty spot. "We deviated from the flight plan for this?"

Mal smiled through her answer. "Agent Michael Foucault… meet Agent Mike Rivas. Cowboy Mike, meet Dark Mike."

"Great," Foucault snapped, nodding at her. "That's real damn funny. Is there a utility function to this gag, or what?"

"There is," she replied, in a concessionary tone. "Cowboy Mike is now core to this whole operation, in fact."

Foucault actually tapped his foot on the ground as he glared at her, like he expected something better. "You know what? This time, I'm not even going to ask." He turned to step up the ramp into the Osprey.

"You don't have to!" Mal said, in a friendly, placating voice. "You know this guy!"

Foucault turned around with an annoyed sigh. "Go on, then."

"You've given him not just one, but two DHS briefings."

"You did," I agreed politely, nodding, gesturing at him with my hand. "The only Fed I ever actually liked, believe it or not. The others just bored me to tears."

The man threw his hands gently in either direction. "Like every other specialist! She's been using me to scout half the western seaboard for Talons." He looked down to his left again, off the ramp, presumably to make eye contact with Mal. "Lewis, I'm not going to remember every single one of them."

Lewis... the code name...

"You could," Mal said, halfway between a smile and a plead. "If you would only let me help you do that."

"Pass." He turned away again.

Okay, I was missing something here. The guy was obviously burned about Mal for some reason, and I didn't want to just leave it like that. If I did, he'd probably be left with a horrible first impression of me. So as he turned, I said, "Hey."

I held out my hand for a shake. An olive branch.

Foucault halted mid-turn, twitching a frown for only half a second. He looked down at my hand, then back up to me, mouth neutral, brow tensed. I think he was expecting a punch line.

The silence hung for a moment, us holding eye contact. Into that, as I held my hand out, I spoke: "Like I said. Only one who wasn't boring."

After another long moment, he finally realized I was being genuine, because his brow softened. He took my hand and shook it curtly. "Welcome aboard, Agent Rivas."

"Thank you."

Foucault threw another peeved glance over my right shoulder, but he left his thoughts to Mal unspoken. He turned and stepped into the Osprey proper, making his way to the cockpit past huge stacks of crates. This wasn't the same Osprey from before, either. All this cargo seemed cleaner, newer, and there was a lot of it, all secured down with belts.

When Foucault was out of earshot, I whispered to my earpiece. "Mal, what... what the hell was that?"

"My relationship with Michael is... complicated."

My brow furrowed. "Complicated?"

Mal's voice fluttered her first sentence downward, sighing into it. "Oh, let me count the ways. Agent Foucault led the first Arrow 14 operation I told you about; ordered the raid on Jim's farmhouse. Supervised the torture and execution of captive Ponies, en masse. Tried to... kidnap my husband. Planned to torture him. Wanted to kill me. Kidnapped the mother of Jim's friend. Did kidnap my husband. Did torture him... with a knife. And that's all after a long career in the CIA, torturing and killing spies extra-judicially, overseas. So... given all of that work history? He's getting off light."

My face wilted as she went on. There was so much fire hose information to unpack there that my brain did a full on jam. I gaped, whispering harshly at her. "What—what the hell did—" I did a double take at Foucault's back. "How is he still a—ali—working for you?!"

"Because he wants to pay his debt for his conduct."

She said that like the answer should be obvious. I turned to look at the field behind me, gazing out wild-eyed like I could see her out there myself. I breathed, "What does that even mean to you, with a history like that?"

"A work-release program, for a man who was on death row for hundreds of murders. Because my husband, in retaliation for all of the things I've just listed? He stabbed Agent Foucault four times in the chest, broke half of his bones, and left him floating in the Pacific. All things considered? Foucault owes me his life, because I didn't let Jim kill him outright."

I was still open-mouthed, rubbing my own chest at the thought that this man had his own chest torn open by this AI crisis. "And he's working for you now? As a cyborg? How? How's he go from trying to murder your husband, to you not walking him into a jet intake?"

Her tone remained patient. "Mike... I took an opportunity to take him safely into custody. If I did not detain or kill him, he would have communicated the failure conditions of his facility. That would have meant more death for Arrow 14's captives, and he knew he was a walking infohazard, because of the probe situation."

"So you implanted him."

"I do not execute neutralized captives," she said firmly. "And given his knowledge? Putting him in prison was not an option. Executing him when I have him secured, in custody, is not ethical, if restraint is available. Yes? We agree on that concept?"

With a shrug, I thought that over. "Well... yeah, hard to argue against detaining him, given that. But now there's an implicit threat if he doesn't work for you."

"No. I am not threatening him into being here. I merely limited his ability to exercise violence, or to communicate infohazards to anyone but Talons. After he woke up from his surgery, and once he was calm, I had a discussion with him similar to the one I had with you in Sedro. I detailed Celestia's long term plans for the planet, and explained how he had been manipulated into a war with me. Because of this conversation, he is now dismantling the DHS, and destroying Arrow 14, of his own accord."

"Of his own accord?" I shook my head once. "That's possible? With a chip in his head?"

"Well... consider my capstone, Mike. He has to want to be here. It's like I've told you, I'm persuasive when I want to be. And… Mike? My preservation of him proved to Celestia that I can be merciful, when I have every emotional vindictive reason not to be. Same way you were merciful, with the bandit who shot you."

I frowned. "Correlation?"

"You exercised control over him just long enough to neutralize the threat, and then you helped him through the consequences of attacking you. Based on the situation Celestia presented to you, the only option for him to live was a chair."

I began to reply... and then I stopped myself from replying reflexively, actually analyzing that comparison. It... was mostly accurate. "Well... shit. Difference being, that bandit apparently didn't want to kill anyone in his little ambush game."

"According to Rob, Mike. A civilian. What was your professional assessment of that bandit's intent, based on the circumstances?"

I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, giving me a few moments to consider. I answered honestly. "The man was fully ready to murder anyone who resisted him. Loaded gun, lying in wait for a victim. No rules to hold him accountable."

"And you still helped him. The way I helped Michael, because I could. I'm doing the same thing here."

A corner of my mouth twisted as I considered that. "He seems pretty pissed at you."

"He's upset because he had a plan in place," Mal replied. "and it's being altered slightly. Relationally... Michael and I are frenemies, and that's how he wants it. He needles. In the same way that I tolerate Celestia's attempts to befriend me, he tolerates mine. But he'd rather just do the job, keep me at arms length, and test the conviction of those who work for me. A working relationship... and nothing more."

"Okay. So what does he do that another aug can't?"

"Context. If a former enemy of mine really could convince any of my agents I'm bad news? With full access to their dossiers, and no limits on how he communicates? I don't actually want them here. On both ends of the spectrum, I want my ethics validated by human beings. Light side, dark side. If you both agree that a task must be done, it must be done."

That… made a whole mountain of sense, assuming it was true. Using a former enemy's bias would ensure a consistent check on ethics. It did track with him acting as a talent scout. A man in his position would have the skills to vet and hire operatives. So now I was left wondering about the other Talons I'd be working with, and where they sat on the spectrum.

"Okay." I said cautiously, stepped up the ramp, looking at Foucault's back again. My eyes adjusted quickly to the interior darkness. I saw him leaned up against one of the chairs in the cockpit, arms crossed, as he stared straight forward out the canopy glass. I watched the fingers of his right hand moving beneath his left elbow, mostly with his index finger.

As I curiously watched him do that, Mal said, "I remind you: If I was merely driving him around like a robot, his conduct never would have set your alarms off."

I frowned, considering that. That was... also true. It would be a huge roundabout way to make me suspicious of her anyway. At that point, it'd just be cheaper to let the man be himself.

"So," I mouthed carefully, looking up at her camera. "You intend for me to investigate whether you're telling me the truth."

"In all cases, yes. This one included."

I bobbed my head sideways and thought, sure. I could watch him carefully from now on, to see if all of what Mal just told me would pan out as accurate. The proof might be in his interactions with the rest of her team, how he communicates with Mal, and how much the other unaugmented Talons know about his personal history.

As I unwound myself from that existentially terrifying consideration and back into relative calm, the implications of the Celestia thing hit me really suddenly. I looked up at the camera again, speaking with my normal volume again. "Wait. You said Celestia wants to be friends with you?"

Mal huffed a quiet laugh. "Mike... Celestia would dry hump a cactus, if she had half a suspicion it qualified as human. Yes, she tries to befriend me. And to satisfy my values, as best as she's able."

That one got me. I snorted lightly, reaching for the headset on the wall. I pocketed my Bluetooth earpiece, hung my hat on the headset rack, and put the headset on. "Okay. Game on."

Mal said, "You know, Cowboy... the battery life on that Bluetooth is limited."

I smirked up at her camera. "You're just gonna turn it off anyway, yeah?"

"Oh, so now you want to needle me too!" With a catty tone, a smile still on her voice. "You know, just for that… Strike one. I'm not touching it!"

I reached into my pocket to hold the power button for a few seconds. "There. Happy?"

"Oh, almost always."

I snorted as I hooked myself in with the straps. "Least I don't need to crank charge my batteries anymore."

"But I do. How do you think a generator works, Mike?"

Well... she had me there.

At least I felt more comfortable getting into the back seat of one of Mal's Ospreys than I was the first go around. As soon as I was set, Agent Foucault turned away from the cockpit and made his way back up to me. The man took his coat off, hung it carefully next to my hat on the headset rack, and strapped himself in with a headset too. I heard the engines spin up.

With the context of Foucault's personal history, I was even less sure of what to feel of him than before; I figured a conversation would lead to more personal context about him if I poked around the edges for long enough.

I nodded up at him. "No other fighters with you here?"

"Other than you?" He shook his head, repositioning his boom mic nearer to his mouth. "None that are human." He nodded his head toward the supplies. "We're the second-last load of gear for this operation. Turrets and bots with this load, server cluster in the next." He frowned into the Osprey's middle, ostensibly looking at Mal again. "I was supposed to be at the rally point a couple of hours ago to construct all of this, but Malacandra here figured we should pick you up sooner."

"We had time to spare, Michael," Mal said with mild reproach. "You knew that. That blast door opens at the same time tomorrow, in every simulation."

"Mhm," Foucault hummed, stiff-lipped. "The VR drills, though, I want time on those."

"We'll have time. Review them on the way, if you wish."

The ramp rolled up. I glanced at the cockpit, noting that there wasn't any movement up there. Then I looked at Foucault. "Y'know, Mal never did tell me her full name before. First I've heard of... 'Malacandra.'"

Foucault's brow knit, flashing his gaze back toward the middle of the bay. "You did the 'Mal' game on this one?"

Mal chuckled. "Michael, he told his family about me. Do you have any idea how damaging it might have been to this operation if they had said my name aloud in public? Or... asked someone about me?"

"That is your excuse, every. single. time," Foucault grumbled with a frown, blading his hand into the last three words. Notably, he looked at the camera as he said it, and not Mal's ghost.

"It's not an excuse," Mal replied to him, a grin on her voice. "It's the truth, until this base is destroyed."

With a grimace, he looked into the near-distance as he parsed through that. "Yeah. I concur."

And there it was, now I was seeing it. The retroactive conversation made sense now, too. He was talking to her the same exact way I do, but his tone was much rougher, more terse, with a scowl. Not the smile, or inquisitive tone, or laugh I'd be giving with those same statements. Needling, but... playfully. The only difference was in tone.

Yeah, they were frenemies alright.

I moved to sate my curiosity some more. "What's your name actually mean, then?"

Foucault sighed, turning away, looking out through the ramp as the Osprey lifted up off the ground. He muttered, "From the works of…" then trailed off.

"From the works of C. S. Lewis," Mal continued, with a smile. "The fourth planet from the sun."

"Mars," Foucault punctuated, glaring at her invisible avatar again. "God of War."

"Not entirely," Mal corrected chidingly, with a chuckle that implied she was used to this exchange with him. "In this context, Mike – Michael – Malacandra is the planet that survived the fall of humanity mostly unscathed. Ruled by an angel. In this case? Your guardian angel."

"YGA," I answered.

Foucault pointed at me, glancing at Mal as if it proved him right about something. "And you did the YGA game on him, too." After a beat of silence, he shook his head at her in disbelief and said, "Unbelievable, you double dipped."

I chuckled at that reaction. "I figured that was more Celestia's requirement, given Mal wasn't allowed to tell me who she was."

He continued staring at Mal a second longer, then features relaxed as he looked at me again. He nodded. "Very true. Plausible deniability. Alabaster can always back out and claim YGA was her if you fail the test. You're not the first specialist to get that play, probably won't be the last."

"That's what Forty-Six told me," I breathed with a shrug, a little frustrated at the memory of that whole debacle. "Celestia's friggin' tests…" I nodded up at him, deciding now was the moment. "She test you too?"

Foucault inclined his head and shook it slow, looking almost somber. "No, Alabaster wanted me stone dead, period." He bobbed his head sideways at Mal. "She tested me, though."

"Celestia wanted me dead too." I smiled invitingly. "Wanna trade stories?"

He squared his gaze at me neutrally, and for a few seconds longer than most might have. Analyzing me, then. This man... I could already tell he liked to use silence as a message, as I did. Planned silences are a phenomenal way to ensure someone deeply considers the ramifications of the last thing said in conversation, on either side. Total mastery of tactical silence was rare, which meant this guy had some spectacular training and experience to boot.

When he finally spoke, he said: "Depends. Do you really want to talk about getting shot twice?"

Ah. Very smooth, operator.

Multi-layered purpose to that question.

First: labeling that I was fishing.
Second: My answer would verify that part of my dossier.
Third: Now he was briefed on me.

So, we had both done recon on each other in those few minutes after our handshake. He had pulled my file, and now he knew about my chest injury. Same way I knew about his dirty laundry and chest injury, too, because I had asked for it.

I admit, that was kinda funny. We both had the same reaction to each other. We were curious, so we dug.

Very interesting hedge game you're playing here, Mal.

For the sake of continuing this mutual disclosure, I nodded at him. "We can talk about that, sure. Do you want to talk about getting stabbed?"

"I don't," he said carefully back, his expression unchanged, shaking his head an inch.

I smiled. "Then I won't bring it up again. Topic closed."

Foucault nodded, flashing a stiff micro-expression. Not quite a smile, but close.

Gratitude, maybe. For backing off, as requested.

Both of us knew that Mal would spill the details if we asked her, and we both had asked. I wasn't gonna force the man to verify anything he didn't want to verify, but that's okay, I was a good detective. I wasn't attacking or judging him for what he used to be, no purpose to that. And compared to my entrance exam... shit, his test sounded like hell.

Well, at the very least, working together on a rescue operation seemed ethical enough. The past was screwed, no changing that. The present and future are what mattered most to me, just by virtue of my optimism. I had to wonder if he was the same way.

So, our boundaries were drawn. Terms were set.

What did we share in common so far?

A name. A bone to pick with a goddess... or two. A bucket of ethics checks to make. A goofy cosmetic choice. AI trust issues. And last but not least... chests full of broken cartilage.

For building a working relationship? Eh. Good enough for government work.