The Assassin’s Heart
By SSG Michael B. Jackson

FOREWARD:  I’ve been working on this story for a long time now.  Since at least 1998, and maybe longer.  I’m not sure why it’s taken so long, but I guess part of that has just been inspiration and experience.  When I started this story, I don’t think I really knew everything I needed to know in order to finish it.  Since then, I’ve gotten married, had two children, nearly lost one of those children right after she was born, and held the hand of the woman who raised me, my grandmother, as she passed away in the hospital.  I think I needed a lot of this emotional experience in order to be able to convey the depth of feeling I wanted to convey to the reader.  And, of course, I never seem to get any writing done except on deployments.  Sitting here in a tent in Kandahar, Afghanistan with my bunk, my foot locker and my lap top really eliminates the distractions!  At any rate, as with any story, I guess this one reflects a great deal of me.  The Cannon characters are filtered through my perceptions of them, so if they seem a little skewed, they probably are.  I freely admit that Nene and Leon are my favorites, but I’ve been a cop and a soldier for almost fifteen years now, so I can’t help but empathize with them the most.  If you’re wondering, I realize that both Linna and Nene may seem quite a bit different from their portrayal in the OAV’s, but I’m really trying to emphasize facets of their character that I think are there, even if we don’t see them much.  Finally, Jillian is, I suppose, my idealized boomer.  To me, she represents what boomers were intended to be, and what they might become under the right circumstances, while her adversaries in this story represent the polar opposite.  I hope the results have been worth the wait, and I certainly hope the readers enjoy!

Mike Jackson
12 June, 2004
Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan   

	Darkness.  Detachment.  No one floating through nothingness.  Those were her earliest memories, a sort of being while non-being as her neural-net was first brought on-line.  Ghost-like wisps of formless pseudo-thought chased themselves across her still forming mind as she watched in innocent, childlike wonder, as yet unable to form even that simple concept.  And then bright, painful knowledge began to force its way into her new awareness.  Foreign data by the gigabyte began to pour into her formerly empty artificial intelligence, images, sounds, and other unfamiliar sensations cascading across her newly discovered mind’s eye.  She would’ve cried out in pain and dismay if she’d known how, but she could only watch and absorb like the empty sponge she was.
	Jillian woke from the old dream as she always did, calmly, resignedly, and with total clarity.  She remembered every facet of the dream in precise detail, just as she did everything else, even to the fact that this was the one hundred and seventy-third time her AI’s house-cleaning sub-routines had tried to deal with this particular random shard of memory.  It was, she thought, perhaps a matter of some concern that she had a ‘recurring dream’.  She was fairly certain that cyberdroids, even models like the BU-33C with AIs advanced enough to require the dreaming method of data archiving, weren’t supposed to have dreams like hers.  But she thought of this as just a minor quirk in her neural net, not a deviation from normal operating parameters.  Or so she told herself.
	As usual, she awoke precisely when she wanted to, 0600, exactly one hour before Master Asakawa’s alarm clock was set to wake him.  This gave her the time she needed to make her daily preparations:  remote interface with the house security systems to flash-review the night’s closed-circuit footage and sensor logs, check the status of the home’s domestic boomers, ensure that breakfast was being properly prepared for her master and the little mistress, check and screen any incoming mail, scan the news-nets for the master’s preferred subjects, and ensure that appropriate attire was set out for both of them.  
	Fortunately, she did most of this by ether-link while engaged in her own toiletry and dressing rituals.  If she had to do it all in person, she’d have to be up at least two hours before the master, and though that wasn’t really a problem for her, she knew that he slept lightly, and tended to wake whenever anyone else moved about the house.  
	In fact, on weekends and holidays, she was expected not to rise until the master did, and she’d restructured her sleep cycle accordingly.  Though she really didn’t need more than an hour or two of dreamtime a night, she’d programmed herself to sleep until she heard Master Asakawa stirring in his bedroom, directly adjacent to hers.  
	She supposed that this time could have been used more productively, but it kept her master happy, and in a way she enjoyed the extra dreaming.  Her housekeeping routines tended to put together particularly interesting images during those times, and of late she’d found herself transposing some of them onto paper when she had downtime.  She didn’t have any real reason to, of course.  With her eidetic memory, an image was as good as drawn as soon as it was conceived.  But for some reason, it just seemed right to put what was in her mind onto paper.  Another little oddity, she thought, but of course a system as complex as hers was bound to have some eccentricities.  Why shouldn’t it?  And besides, the little mistress loved her drawings.
	She hadn’t planned on that, of course.  It had happened not long after she’d started translating her dream images from thought to paper.  She’d been sitting in the master’s den, sketching intently with the master’s old-fashioned pencil set, her attention so focused on the task that she’d failed to notice the little girl’s approach.  Startled, she’d tried to hide her work, for though she had the run of the house, and no one had ever told her not to use anything in it, she’d felt unaccountably guilty somehow, as though she were doing something wrong.  Naturally, Aiko had insisted on seeing.  
	Of course she couldn’t refuse.  Not only was she required to obey any reasonable request from the eight-year-old, but also she had a certain pliability where the little mistress was concerned.  Little Aiko often managed to talk Jillian into things that, after the fact, Jillian had no idea how she’d been talked into.  So, a little reluctantly, she’d handed the sheet of paper over. 
	It’d been a particularly odd image; a small naked infant, floating through a murky, endless star-shot night, simultaneously reaching for and turning away from a bright ray of light emanating from a tiny, brilliant spiral shape in the far distance.  Aiko loved it as soon as she saw it, partly, Jillian had realized, probably simply because Jillian had drawn it
 Aiko had grown quite attached to her over the years, and Jillian suspected that in a way she helped fill the void left by her mother’s death during the Kanto Quake.  Aiko had been only an infant at the time, and luckily had been in a well-constructed day-care center when the quake struck.  Her mother, not so lucky, had been traveling Tokyo’s highways, and neither she nor her chauffer had survived the horrendous multi-hundred car pile-ups that had followed the quake.  Jillian had come along a little more than three years later, one of the first of her model to roll off the lines during the golden age of androids, and had found herself an immediate focus of attention for a precocious toddler.
While childcare wasn’t one of her primary functions, some of the basics had been included in her programming (she was a top of the line model, after all), and she was, if nothing else, designed for adaptability.  Thus, after some initial awkwardness, she’d managed to integrate the little girl’s antics into her daily routine and, in time, had grown to enjoy interacting with her.  Part of the reason for that, she was sure, was the level of trust implied on the part of the master.  Most humans, she’d known even then, were at least a little bit afraid of boomers.  For the master to entrust his only child to her care, knowing her potential capabilities as he did, bespoke a level of faith in her that played exactly upon her most deeply encoded imperatives.  If she’d been human, she would have fairly glowed with pride.
Also, she had found the little girl’s growth and development fascinating.  It was a continual wonder to her how much and how quickly humans, especially children, could change and grow.  Thus, she had to admit, Aiko’s attachment to her wasn’t a one-sided affair.  She enjoyed the little girl’s attentions and company, and it didn’t hurt that Aiko never treated her as anything other than a person and an equal.  While Aiko, an extremely intelligent little girl, far ahead of most of her peers, was entirely aware of Jillian’s true nature, it made as little difference to her as it did to her father.  Both were the kind of people who interacted with others based on who they were, not what they were, and Jillian had enough experience with the real world to appreciate that greatly.  
	As for her drawings, the little mistress found them so captivating that she just couldn’t keep them to herself.  Over Jillian’s objections, she’d taken that first sketch straight to the master, slapping it down in front of him with a wide smile.  “Look what Jillian can do, Daddy!” she’d said.  
Jillian had stood, quiet and subdued, while Master Asakawa had looked the sketch over at length.  Finally, he’d put it down and, looking thoughtfully at Jillian had said, “That’s a very interesting piece of work.  You didn’t copy that from anywhere either, did you?”
“No, sir,” Jillian had replied quietly, “The image just- came to me, I suppose.  And then it wouldn’t leave until I put it on paper.  I’m sorry if this upsets you, sir, but I’m sure that this is just a minor eccentricity in my AI and nothing to worry about.  If you’d like, of course, I could schedule a maintenance visit to be sure and-“ 
Smiling now, the master had raised a hand to stop her, and said, “No, Jillian, I don’t think that will be necessary.  I’m sure that everything’s just fine with you.  And by all means, feel free to express yourself in any way you like.  Just be sure to share your work with Aiko and myself.  I think we both would enjoy that.”
“Of course, sir,” Jillian had said, a little bewildered.  “If that’s what you’d like.”
The master had frowned slightly at that and said, “No, Jillian, that’s not the point.  It’s not what I’d like; it’s what you’d like.  Do you understand?”
Thoughtfully, Jillian had replied, “I believe so, sir.  You’re saying that this is something I should continue to do because I enjoy it, not because it pleases you or Aiko.  That it’s something I should do for myself.”
Master Asakawa had brightened, and said, “Exactly.” And then, seemingly changing subject in midstream, he’d said, “Jillian, I know that you do a great deal of reading and web surfing, but tell me this.  Have you ever delved into any of the work done by a man named Isaac Asimov?”
Jillian had nodded, and said, “Isaac Asimov.  An extremely prolific writer of science fiction and fact from the mid 1930’s until his death near the end of the 20th century.  He wrote an incredible number of volumes popularizing nearly every aspect of science known at the time.  His most remembered fictional works are arguably his connected ‘Robot’ and ‘Foundation’ series.”
The master had laughed and said, “Alright, I suppose that’s a fair encapsulated biography of the man, but have you actually read his work?”
Puzzled, Jillian had said, “No, sir.  Should I have?”
The master had shaken his head, and said, “I think that’s a question that provides it’s own answer.  But to clarify, yes, Jillian, I think you should.  To start with, I’d suggest a couple of works.  ‘I, Robot’ for sure, and then maybe ‘The Bicentennial Man’, though there are several versions of that one, and at least one motion picture based on it, which is also, I’d say, worth watching.  And, while you’re at that, you might as well look up a work by an author named Phillip K. Dick called, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’.  The title’s a bit awkward, but I think you’ll find the story interesting.  And there’s a movie version of that one as well, though the title was changed to ‘Blade Runner’.  But be sure to look up the director’s cut. The theatrical version isn’t worth bothering with.”
Jillian had nodded again, still puzzled by the odd tack the master was taking, and had said, “Of course, sir.  I’ll start right now.”
The master had raised a finger in a gesture of negation, and said, “Hold on, now, that’s not exactly what I meant.  This isn’t something you should just download and digest, Jillian.  What I would suggest is getting a hold of the actual books and videos.  And then, sit down and read and watch them.  In fact, watch the videos with Aiko, or with both of us.  From what I remember, ‘Blade Runner’ might be a little intense for her, but we’ll see.”
Truly bewildered by that point, Jillian had simply said, “Of course, sir, if you think that’s best.”
The master had dismissed her then, and, true to her nature, she’d done as he’d said.  Over the next couple of weeks, as time permitted, she’d explored the works he’d suggested and watched the movies with both the master and the little mistress.  And as she’d done so, she’d begun to understand.  
Men and women of vision had considered the philosophical implications of Jillian and her kind long before the technology to create them had been real.  Just the possibility of creating machines with minds and souls cast in the image of their creators’ had been enough to fire their imaginations, and the work they had created held new relevance now that progress had caught up to their dreams.  And as the master had hoped, Jillian hadn’t failed to see the relevance those works held for her. 
Throughout this period, Jillian’s artistic abilities had grown and matured, and at least two or three times a week the little mistress would wake to a neatly folded sheet of paper tucked under her pillow.  Jillian usually peeked through the closed circuit system when this happened, and Aiko’s expression of delight at finding her surprises always caused a sensation in Jillian that she couldn’t easily describe.  While reigned in by her systems like a wild stallion, it was still a warm, giddy sensation that made her want to repeat the experience over and over.  It just seemed right somehow to make the little girl happy.  And, oddly, it seemed righter as time went on.  In fact, the icy, ‘boxed in’ sensation that bound the feeling, as all her emotions were ultimately bound, seemed to be lessening over time as well.  Once again, Jillian sometimes wondered if this should be, but she always dismissed any misgivings quickly.  After all, none of her internal diagnostics indicated anything out of tolerance, so everything had to be fine.  Or so she told herself. 
	This morning, however, wasn’t one of those special mornings.  Jillian had an idea for her next drawing, an image of a raven-haired woman of burnished silver, perhaps morphing across the page into a woman of flesh and blood.  The image was unfinished in its details, but she thought that it would probably solidify over the next couple of days, and that would be soon enough.  
In the mean time, she went about her morning rituals, exercising meticulous care in readying herself for the day.  It simply wouldn’t do to look less than perfect while accompanying the master.  Once she’d finished, she examined the results critically in the bathroom mirror.  Shoulder length blonde hair braided neatly, coiled into a bun and pinned at the back of her head, mascara and eye shadow of the proper shades to compliment her sparkling violet eyes, appropriately fashionable but sensible blue pinstriped power-suit with matching accessories, tailored to make the most of her tall, athletic figure, and of course the ubiquitous mirrored Gargoyles.  Yes, everything seemed to be up to her exacting standards.
	Soon after Jillian had completed her early morning chores, first the master and then the little mistress awoke, and the morning proceeded quickly along its normal path.  Both were leisurely in their pace, taking over an hour to shower, dress, and eat.  
	As usual, Jillian had to hurry the little girl along, reminding her gently of the dire consequences her teacher had outlined for another episode of tardiness.  This got the intended result, and Jillian managed to get Aiko out the door and into the armored Mercedes with enough time left over to ensure that the ever-dependable Mr. Jim Tanaka wouldn’t have to risk a speeding ticket to get her to school on time.
	That taken care of, Jillian returned her attention to the master.  She made all the last minute preparations for the move to the office and then ushered Master Asakawa to his waiting limousine.

	The drive was uneventful, as was the day itself.  Of course, the daily business of a senior Diet member generally wasn’t particularly exciting, but that didn’t bother Jillian.  
	While she certainly could become bored, Jillian didn’t normally have a problem with that.  Between her office duties and the casual ether-link interface she kept with the building’s security systems, Jillian managed to keep herself busy.  And of course, there were the master’s personal projects and business dealings that Jillian was responsible for, the sort of deals that a Diet member just couldn’t trust to any ordinary personal assistant.  These she generally took care of on a time-sharing basis with the normal workload.
	Then, also, there were projects of her own if any time was left over, mostly oriented around improving her charges’ personal security.  Jillian was rather creative in this area, and had already implemented a few interesting measures, some of which the master knew about, and quite a few that he didn’t.  Not that Jillian wouldn’t have told him if he’d asked, but he never did, and Jillian thought that most of her extra measures would only have made the master nervous if he knew about them.  Better to keep his peace of mind along with his personal safety, as far as she was concerned.
	At about 1500, Jillian began to pack up for the day.  The master wouldn’t be leaving until his usual time, around 1800, probably, but Jillian was under standing orders to escort the little mistress to her dance classes after school. Of course, it was debatable whether Aiko really needed an escort like Jillian for a dance class, but neither Master Asakawa nor Jillian was willing to risk her safety in such an uncontrolled environment.  After all, The Academy was one thing.  It had it’s own security, commensurate with the needs of the children who attended there.  But, despite the outstanding instructor they’d discovered there, Phoebe’s Fitness Bee just didn’t offer that caliber of protection.

	As usual, Linna pushed the children hard.  Not harder than she thought they could handle, of course, but she was determined to help them find and exceed their limits.  And this was an exceptional class.  That was why they were working with her.  In fact, a few of them, she thought, might even have pro potential.  Take that little Asakawa girl, for instance.  Not quite nine years old, and after only three sessions, she was doing as well as quite a few of the older students who’d been in the class longer.  In fact, Linna thought that little Aiko might be one of her brightest pupils.  But there were a few things about her that bothered Linna.
	First, of course, was her father, the Honorable Akira Asakawa, senior Diet member.  That was a little intimidating to say the least.  And then there was her bodyguard.  
	She couldn’t be absolutely sure, but she thought she knew what, if not who the woman was, and it made her more than a little bit uncomfortable.  In fact, every time she happened to glance over at the coolly beautiful young woman, always watching Aiko and everything near her with a catlike intensity, Linna couldn’t help but think of another tall, coldly intimidating blonde.  But this one had been holding her friend Irene Chang suspended over the side of an overpass one-handed, and had driven the other clawed hand deep into her abdomen before dropping her lifeless body at Linna’s feet.   
	That particular boomer had ended up with one of Linna’s knuckle-bombers in her guts, but Linna didn’t think that would be the socially acceptable answer to her current dilemma.  In fact, she was a little shocked at herself for thinking like that in the first place.  After all, even if Aiko’s bodyguard really was a boomer, which she didn’t know for sure, she wasn’t the one who’d killed Irene.  And while Linna didn’t exactly love boomers, she certainly didn’t hate them all just for existing the way some people seemed to.  Still, something about the woman continued to fuel Linna’s uneasiness.
	After class, Linna was just beginning to think about a shower and maybe a bite to eat on the way home, when things took a turn for the surreal.  From across the room, Aiko and her guardian approached, and with a seemingly genuine smile the bodyguard extended a hand and said, “Miss Yamazaki?”
	Linna was a bit taken aback, and just looked at the proffered hand for a second, but finally she reached out hesitantly and took it.  The other woman’s grip was firm and cool, and her hand felt just like any other hand, offering Linna no clue as to what she might or might not be.
	“Umm, yes,” Linna said, “and you’re...?
	“Jillian,” the other woman replied.
	“Well, nice to meet you,” Linna said, slightly puzzled, “but to what do I owe the pleasure?  I know I push pretty hard, but I don’t think I’m a hazard to Aiko’s safety or anything.”
	Jillian smiled again, and said, “Oh, no, nothing like that.  Aiko just wanted me to meet you, and I thought that might be a good idea.  From a professional standpoint, I should get to know you at least a little better.  And, of course, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk to someone Aiko described as ‘the coolest.’”
	“Jillian!” Aiko hissed, blushing.
	“Since you put it that way,” Linna said, smiling, “I guess I’ve got a few minutes.  Anything in particular you wanted to talk about?”
	“Well, I was a bit curious... From what I understand, at one time you were perusing a professional dance career?”
	“Yes,” Linna said, hiding the stab of pain the question brought, “But that was quite a while ago now, and, quite frankly, I washed out.”
	“I’m sorry,” Jillian said, “I didn’t realize.  And I find it hard to believe.  I’m no expert, obviously, but you seem very good to me, more than good enough to be a professional dancer.”
	Linna smiled bitterly, and said, “Unfortunately, ‘good enough’ usually just isn’t good enough.  There’s always somebody who’s better, and that person got the job when I missed my break.  But life goes on, as they say.”
	“I see,” Jillian said.  “And now you’re here.”
	Linna nodded, and said, “That’s right.  Now I’m here.”
	“And do you enjoy what you do now, Miss Yamazaki?”
	“Sure,” Linna said.  “If I didn’t, I’d find something else to do.  And you can call me Linna.  Nobody but the kids calls me Miss Yamazaki.”
	“I see,” Jillian replied.  “Well, at least you enjoy your work.  And I dare say the children are benefiting from your skills.”
	Linna smiled and felt her mood lighten a little.  “Well, I hope so.  I like to think that even if I’ll never make it into the big time, maybe I can help someone else get there.  Maybe,” she said, turning toward Aiko, “even someone in this very class.”
	Aiko blushed again, looking down sheepishly, and Jillian said, “Perhaps.  I’m certain that would make Master Asakawa very happy.”
	Linna nodded, and then said, “So what about you, Jillian?  How’d you get into such a rough line of work?  I mean, bodyguard for a Diet member and all.”
	Jillian looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, “Well, I suppose you might say it was a job I was born to do.”
	“Really,” Linna said, puzzled by the slightly cryptic remark.  “Still, it must have been kind of tough getting a job like yours, especially nowadays.  Why hire someone when you can just buy a security boomer, right?”
	Jillian nodded, hoping her next words wouldn’t end the conversation outright, and said, “Yes, exactly.  That was the decision Master Asakawa had to make, and he chose to buy me instead of hiring someone.”
	Linna took an involuntary step back, and said, “Oh!  I- uh, that is- I didn’t realize-”
	“That I’m a boomer?” Jillian said.  “That’s understandable.  You’re not supposed to be able to tell just by looking.”
	“Well, sure,” Linna said, off balance but trying to regain her equilibrium, “but I didn’t think, well, you know...”
	“That you’d be able to have a conversation with a boomer without realizing it?”
	Linna blushed and said, “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”
	“Could you tell?” Jillian asked.
	“No, not really,” Linna said, “but...”
	“But?” Jillian said questioningly.
	Linna frowned slightly, and said, “I suspected before.  The way you were concentrating on Aiko’s every move during class, and something about your mannerisms... plus the fact that I just sort of figured someone as important as Mr. Asakawa would have boomers working for him.”  She paused for a moment, and then continued.  “But you threw me off when we were talking.”
	“Really?” Jillian said.  “How so?”
	Linna shrugged, and said, “You kept making little jokes and things like that.  I never expected a security boomer to have a sense of humor.”
	Jillian nodded, and said, “That’s understandable too, I suppose.”  She paused, frowning slightly, and then said, “Linna, in a way I’m sorry that our conversation’s taken this turn.  I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?”  
	Taken slightly aback, Linna said, “Excuse me?”
	“It makes you uncomfortable that I’m a boomer,” Jillian clarified.
	Linna looked down momentarily, and then said quietly, “I’d be a liar if I said no.  I’ve had some… really bad experiences over the years.  My parents were killed in one of the first boomer incidents right after the Quake, and last year, a friend of mine-  she was killed by a boomer.  A security android a lot like you, in fact.”
	Jillian retained her calm demeanor, but inside the warning flags were going up, and she paused to formulate a diplomatic reply. 
	But before Jillian could speak, a concerned little voice piped up from below.
	“But Miss Yamazaki,” Aiko said, “Jillian’s not like that!  I’m sorry about your Mom and Dad and your friend, but Jillian would never do anything like that.  Right, Jillian?”
	Jillian paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, “I would certainly hope not, Aiko.” Then, turning back to Linna, she said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what were the circumstances surrounding your friend’s death?  Why did this boomer kill her?”
	Linna smiled bitterly, and said, “Well, according to the police, she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Another random victim of  a crazed boomer.”
	“But you think differently?” Jillian asked carefully.
	Linna shrugged and said, “I was there.  I saw what happened.  And I guess a boomer like her could go psycho that way.  But it sure is an odd coincidence that that particular boomer just happened to belong to a Genom suit whose toes she’d just stepped on.”
	Jillian frowned, and said, “Really.”
	Linna nodded, and said, “Really.  And it sure is funny that Irene was dead less than twenty-four hours after she’d crossed him.”  Linna sighed, and continued,  “Anyway, I guess it really doesn’t matter that much.  The guy in question died not long after that.  Suicide, apparently.”  And then, sardonically, “Who knows?  Maybe he felt guilty.”
	Jillian considered this for a moment, and then said, “Hmm.  I have to admit, Linna, I find this disturbing on several levels.  You may or may not know this, but for some time Master Asakawa has been heading a special committee that’s been examining abuses of the judicial system, with particular emphasis on so called ‘corporate privilege’.  Linna, I think I may have a proposition for you.  Would you be interested?”
	Linna frowned, and said, “I guess that depends on what it is.”
	“Well,” Jillian replied, “in addition to being Mr. Asakawa’s head of security, I’m also his personal assistant.  As such, I help him in gathering information and other resources for his projects, and it strikes me that he’d probably be very interested to hear about what happened to your friend.  It sounds like just the sort of thing he’s investigating, and that particular committee is scheduled to publish its findings in ten days.  I think he’d like to be able to include that incident in their report.”
	Linna was speechless for a moment, and then said, “Really?  You really think a Diet member would want to talk to me?”
	Jillian smiled, and said, “How about brunch tomorrow?  I believe he’ll be able to fit you in once I tell him what you have to say.”
	Dazed, Linna said, “Uh, well, sure, I guess.”
	“Excellent,” Jillian said, and then, “Well, Linna, it was nice talking with you, but I’m afraid we need to be running along now.  The master should be home soon, and it’s nearing Aiko’s bed time.”
	“But, Jillian,” Aiko said pleadingly, “Do we have to go right now?  Don’t you want to talk just a little longer?”
	“I’m sorry, young lady,” Jillian said mock-sternly, “but you know your father’s rules very well, and if you want an extension to your bed time, you’ll have to ask him in person.  At home, of course.”
	Aiko sighed, and then said, “Oh, alright.  But you’ll tuck me in, then, right?”
	Jillian smiled, and said, “But of course.  How else could I make sure you were safe and secure for the night?  Now say good night to Miss Yamazaki so that we can go.”
	“Oh, sure,”  she said.  “’Night, Miss Yamazaki!  See you next week?”
	“Sure, Aiko,” Linna said.  “Good night.”
	And to herself, as the two walked together toward the door, the boomer’s arm draped protectively, almost affectionately,  around the little girl’s shoulders, Linna thought, ‘What a weird night.  And I wonder what the others will have to say when I tell them about my new boomer friend?’
      	        
	As they drove toward the Asakawa estate, Jillian reviewed the conversation in her mind.  What Miss Yamazaki had said disturbed her greatly, possibly because it was so similar to so many of the cases she’d heard before.  Jillian was entirely familiar with ‘corporate privilege’, and had seen many of its incarnations.  But the more she heard, the more she wondered where it ended.  Could the corporates really just do as they pleased, regardless of laws or morals?  And if so, what good did the law do anyone?  The implications of all this, especially as it related to the safety of her charges, were dismaying to say the least.
	But Jillian dismissed these thoughts as they approached the gates.  It was time to focus on the matter at hand and do her job.
	Before Mr. Tanaka signaled the gates to open, Jillian linked and hand shook with the estate security systems, checking to make sure that all was in order.  The system reported no alarms or duress codes, and the closed circuit system showed nothing out of the ordinary, so Jillian cleared the driver to proceed on.
	Once they reached the house, Aiko was anxious as usual to be the first one in the door, but Jillian made sure she got there first.  Just in case, of course.  After all, she’d already cleared the house electronically.  Being first in the door was just an added precaution, as far as she was concerned, probably unnecessary.
	As soon as she opened the door, Jillian scanned the foyer in multi-spectrum mode from ceiling to floor, checking meticulously as always but not really expecting to find anything.  This time something found her.  
	A large, blue, metal-clad figure stood immediately to the left of the doorway, laser lens clearly visible between it’s gaping jaws.
	“Well,” it said, “glad you could finally join us.  Come on in.”   
	Jillian’s reaction was immediate and violent.  Before her mind had even finished framing the frantic thought ‘55C!’, she was moving.  Her left hand came up lightening fast, finely manicured nails snapping out into twenty-centimeter claws.  But as she centered the huge blue combat boomer in the targeting reticule that flared to life in her field of vision, and the firing impulse was about to make its’ way down her arm, the BU-55 made a tiny move of its own.  
	Inclining its head just slightly to the right, it lined up directly on the shocked little girl standing frozen in the doorway.
	“I wouldn’t be quite so hasty if I were you, little sister,” it said.  “The little juice-bag can’t take nearly as much punishment as you can.”
	Jillian hesitated for just a moment, and then replied, “Maybe so, but I’m guessing you’ll just kill us both anyway if I stand down.  And what exactly have you done to Master Asakawa?  Where is he?”
	“Ha!” the combat model scoffed.  “Done?  Why, we haven’t done anything to him.  Yet.  But that could change real fast if you don’t sheathe those pig-stickers.  Now.”
	Again, Jillian hesitated, her processors tearing through all the myriad variables of the situation at lightening speed, and then, just as she’d nearly made the decision to carry through with an all-out offensive in the hopes of at least securing Aiko’s safety, she heard a muffled voice from behind the thick double doors of the dining room.  An almost automatic voice pattern analysis identified it as Master Asakawa’s, and her decision was made for her.  Retracting the humming, faintly glittering blades, she said ruefully, “Alright, what now?”

	The scene inside the dining room was deceptively normal, with only a few touches of the surreal.  Master Asakawa was seated at his usual place at the head of the long formal dining table, which had been set for a late snack, presumably by the house domestics.  All the silver was laid out correctly, and everything was in it’s proper place, except for the two strange women seated at the master’s left and right and the huge blue BU-55C who ushered Jillian and Aiko through the doors, a great metallic paw resting casually on both their shoulders in an almost friendly manner.  The master, face pensive and drawn with worry, raised his gaze from the table, which he had been staring at fixedly until their arrival.  
His eyes rested momentarily upon Aiko, and he seemed to sag slightly, as if something vital, a last desperate hope perhaps, had left him.  His gaze then turned upon Jillian, who only through her inhuman control was able to meet it.  Inside herself, Jillian’s cybernetic mind was racing, faster and faster, turning inward in recursive loops trying to find what she’d done wrong.  If shame hadn’t been included in her factory upgraded emotional matrix, she was sure it would have added itself tonight.  And she was certain that the master must feel nothing but contempt for her now.
	But when she met Master Asakawa’s eyes, she saw none of that.  She saw only worry and perhaps, buried under his master statesman’s control, a desperate pleading.  Suddenly it was as if the master possessed an internal ether-link like hers, and they were networked together, for she was as sure then as she’d ever been of anything that she knew exactly what the master was thinking.  ‘I don’t know or care how this happened, but now you’re the last hope Aiko and I have.’  His gaze said all of this to Jillian, so used to reading every nuance of the master’s face and body language, and knowing this she reasserted control over her shame and her run-away processing cycles.  ‘Get control of yourself,’ she thought.  ‘There’s no point dwelling on what went wrong.  What I need to be concentrating on is what’s going on now, and how I can regain control of this situation.’
	Aloud, she said, “I see we have guests, Master Asakawa.  I don’t suppose they’ve had the courtesy to introduce themselves?”
	The master sighed, and replied, “No, not really.  They just sort of invited themselves in.  But they have been relatively civil since then at least.”
	She nodded, and, looking toward the woman to the master’s right, a darkly attractive oriental wearing what appeared to be an all black battle dress style uniform, she said, “I would assume this pretense of cordiality means that you want something.  Otherwise, I imagine you would’ve simply commenced a mop-up operation.”
	The intruder nodded thoughtfully, and said, “You’re heading in the right direction.  There’s an accommodation we can all come to that will ensure that everyone here walks away from this tonight, rather than leaving feet first.”
	The master sighed, and said, “That’s reassuring, at least.  So what are the specifics?  What do you want from me?”
	The woman paused for a moment as if considering, and then said, “Really it’s quite simple.  We just need your cooperation on one small matter.”  She sighed then, certainly only for effect, and said, “The problem, of course, is how to ensure that once we’ve gone, you’ll comply.  Now, I grant you, in many ways it would just be simpler to, how shall I put it, retire you, Mr. Asakawa.  Ah, but things are never simple, I’m afraid, and the interests we represent would rather, and I do stress rather, that that not be necessary.  They feel that if we can come to an arrangement on this, then maybe other arrangements would be possible in the future, and that would suit them very well.”
	Mr. Asakawa frowned, digesting this, and then said, “I think I see where this is going.  So what exactly is the matter that your interests are so concerned about?  I’m involved in a great many things, any of which could be important to someone.”
	The woman smiled, and said, “Cooperation.  Very good.  Well, Mr. Asakawa, the matter is just this.  My employers are a bit concerned about the findings of a committee you’re heading right now.  It seems that you and your personal assistant there have been doing a great deal of research into some areas that cause my employers some concern.  We’d simply like an opportunity to review your findings before they’re presented to the Diet, and perhaps suggest a few alternative interpretations of the facts you’ve gathered.  I think you understand where I’m going with this, don’t you?”
	“Oh, I think I see where you’re headed pretty clearly now.  Whoever you’re working for is worried about what my fact-finding committee on judicial abuses has dug up.  And obviously your employers represent some sort of corporate interest, I imagine.”
	“Insightful as always, Mr. Asakawa,” she replied.  “So, now that we understand one another, what’s it to be?  Do we all walk away happy and whole tonight, or must there be unpleasantness?  It’s up to you, really.”
	“I see.”  he said, and then, “So assuming that I agree to this, we’re back to your original problem.  How do you plan on insuring my compliance?”
	The woman’s smile brightened just fractionally, and her gaze turned away from the master, alighting firmly on Aiko.  “Oh, it’s just a matter of collateral, really.  We hold on to something you value for the duration of our arrangement, and if you uphold your end of the bargain, we return that thing unharmed.  Otherwise…”
	Jillian had read about the sensation humans sometimes had of the bottom of their stomachs dropping out in reaction to a profound shock, but she never thought she’d experience it until that moment.  As surprised as she was by the sensation, she was even more surprised to feel her own body tensing in what she could only assume must be an emulation of the human fight/flight response, something she would have sworn hadn’t been included in her emotional matrix.  But as her body responded, so did the BU-55’s.  The hand that had never left her shoulder tightened casually and cruelly, nearly snapping her ceramic-composite clavicle.  She winced, but her integrated pain editors mitigated what would have otherwise been agony down to mere discomfort.
	“Easy there, little sister,” the BU-55 rumbled.  “You already missed your chance to be a hero.  Your boss is calling the shots now and I’m sure he doesn’t want you messing this up.”
	“Sir,” Jillian said through clenched teeth, “We can’t do this.  There’s no guarantee that they’ll return Aiko once you’ve done as they ask.  In fact, it would make more sense for them to just keep her since they’ve already said their employers may want more concessions in the future.  If Aiko leaves here with them tonight, we may never see her again.”
	Mr. Asakawa bowed his head, looking down at the table again, and said, “I know that, Jillian.  I’m not naïve.  But that leaves us in a bit of an awkward position, now, doesn’t it Ms…?”
	The woman, no longer smiling, said, “Syndesta, not that that’s particularly relevant just now.  And yes, I believe things just became a bit awkward, Mr. Asakawa.  The truth is, we’ve just about used up the time I was allocated for negotiations.  Once that’s up, we transition to the unpleasantness I mentioned earlier.  So what’s it to be?”
	Mr. Asakawa looked up from the table, and locking gazes with Syndesta said, “Go to hell.  I won’t give my daughter to you voluntarily, and if you take her I’ll send all the hounds of hell after you.  I’ll use every connection and call in every marker I have, and I’ll ensure that every media agency on the planet knows what’s going on.  And if you murder us all here, you still won’t stop my findings from being presented.  In fact, there are enough people able to put two and two together out there that you’d likely make me a martyr for the cause of reigning in the mega-corps.  So now that we’ve established all of this, kindly get the hell out of my house.”
	Syndesta nodded appreciatively at this, and in an amused tone said, “My, my, just as formidable as your reputation suggests, Mr. Asakawa.  But there’s one thing you’re missing, I’m afraid.  You see, no one in Mega-Tokyo really thinks twice these days when someone’s killed by a rogue boomer.  Particularly when that person owns a potentially dangerous model like your formidable bodyguard over there.  Oh, certainly, she’s been a model of dependability all these years, but these things just happen, don’t they?  And the results are inevitably tragic.”
	As the last word cleared her lips, Syndesta casually backhanded Mr. Asakawa, lifting him bodily from his chair and knocking him halfway to the nearest wall.  Shocked and only semi-conscious, Mr. Asakawa landed in a heap on his back, and lay there gasping as blood poured freely from several shattered teeth and a broken nose.
	“Daddy!” Aiko screamed, trying to tear herself from the BU-55’s grasp.  But the armored combat boomer’s hand never budged, never tightened, just held her fast.
	Jillian, who’d been surreptitiously studying both of the women wasn’t surprised.  She had already been fairly certain that Syndesta was more than she appeared, and her inhumanly powerful blow had only confirmed this.  The other woman, a coldly calculating redhead, dressed identically to Syndesta, was even easier to read.  In the near infrared, her thermal patterns were nowhere near human, and correlated to nothing more precisely than to some sort of combat model in disguise mode.  Add to that the waves of EM radiation pouring out of her, which had effectively jammed Jillian’s ether-link since entering the room and most likely were responsible for spoofing the house security systems and it became a fair bet that she was a spec-ops model of some kind.  Also, though she couldn’t be certain, every so often Jillian thought that she’d caught the fringe of some sort of tight-beam communication, highly encrypted, passing between the redhead and the BU-55C.  If that were the case, she thought, it was likely that all three were linked together in a combat information LAN, sharing information and perhaps even processing resources on a near-instantaneous basis.  And that, Jillian thought, would be bad news indeed, for her and for her charges.
	While these thoughts raced through Jillian’s mind, her body wasn’t idle.  Before Master Asakawa had even struck the floor, she was moving, attempting to drop down away from the BU-55’s grasping hand.  But as fast as she was, somehow the normally ponderous BU-55 reacted even faster, all but confirming Jillian’s suspicions about the gestalt between the three intruders.  As she dropped toward the floor, the BU-55 shoved the little girl aside, sending her skidding across the floor into the nearest wall, and wrapped Jillian’s torso with it’s massive right arm, pinning her arm to her side.  With the other hand, it caught her left wrist, and forced her hand up in front of her.  Jillian again extended her glittering, humming blades, and twisted to and fro, looking for any possible leverage or opening in the BU-55’s stance, but she could find none.  The much larger, more powerful cyberdroid held her in an iron grip, painfully tight, but not quite tight enough to crack her composite bones.  Instead of panicking as a human might, Jillian ceased to struggle as soon as she realized the futility of that, and instead became stock still, waiting for any possible opening or change in her situation.
	The redhead, still seated at the table, raised an eyebrow and spoke for the first time.  “Well,” she said in a low, pleasant voice, “I see there’s some life in you after all.  Loosely speaking of course.  That’s good, it should make what comes next pretty interesting.”  She inclined her head just slightly in Syndesta’s direction, and again Jillian was sure that something passed between them.  Syndesta nodded, and said, “Yes, I think we’re ready for that, Red.”  Shifting her gaze to the blue metallic giant holding Jillian, she said, “Tex? If you will, please.”
	The ponderous combat model grunted in response, and began to force Jillian forward, toward where the master lay, still trying to recover from Syndesta’s blow.  In a flash, Jillian’s intuitive subroutines, skipping right around slower logical processes delivered to her a clear picture of what her captors intended.  “Oh, no,” she said, “There’s no way you’ll make me do that!”  As she said this, she triggered the neural impulse to retract her razor edged claws, but to her dismay, nothing happened.  Desperately, she tried again, and then once more, still with no result.  For just a split second she was totally non-plused, and then, with the closest sensation to horror that she was capable of experiencing, she looked over to the boomer called Red.  
	Red’s intense gaze was fixed on Jillian, and a small grin that could only be described as wicked played at her lips.  “What’s the matter, little sister?” she said in a playful tone.  “Having some sort of problem?  All the little pieces and parts not working the way you want them to?  I wonder how that could’ve happened.”
	Now that her attention was focused on the other boomer, Jillian could all but see the collimated beam of multi-spectral EM emissions being directed at her, overriding the signals coursing through her peripheral nervous system.  As Red saw the dawning comprehension in Jillian’s eyes, she chuckled and said, “That’s right, you’ve just been hijacked.  Give me a little more time, and I might even be able to hack in for real through that grossly oversized ether-link you’re carrying around in your head.  Your boss really did go in for all the factory extras, didn’t he?”  
	She laughed again at her own little witticism, and the armored combat model kept forcing Jillian forward, her outstretched hand held fast, her clawed fingers coming closer and closer to the master still half-prone on the floor.  Jillian fought with everything she had, but, with her body only partially responding to her commands, it just wasn’t enough, and she was forced ever nearer to Master Asakawa.
	Finally, her claws mere inches from the master’s horrified eyes, they stopped, the BU-55 still holding her fast.  As they stood there, almost in tableau, Master Asakawa staring up at Jillian, Jillian staring back, both horrified in their own ways, Syndesta casually strolled over, a large caliber automatic pistol now in her hand.
	“Yes, we’re almost there, I think.  But we can’t have the valiant master going down without a fight.  No, it just wouldn’t do to leave our little sister here unscathed and fairly bursting to tell her story to the authorities.  Not that they might be inclined to listen, but why take chances, right?”  With that, her free hand whipped out, catching the master’s right wrist.  She then very casually slapped the pistol into Master Asakawa’s hand and, maintaining control with her own hand, fired five rounds in rapid succession, four to Jillian’s torso, and the last cleanly between her eyes.
	Jillian’s body rocked with each impact, and bright red-orange android blood sprayed out over the master, the intruders, the floor and the walls.  To Jillian, with her lightening fast processing capabilities, each impact seemed to take an eternity.  She had ample time to analyze the damage done by each shot, and to realize that the rounds had to be hyper-velocity armor piercers to so easily rip through her integral armor.  With each hit, her systems were taxed further, redundant systems were pushed beyond their limits, and as the final shot struck her skull, cracking the thick ceramic-composite bone but failing to penetrate to the delicate tissues beneath, her systems were overwhelmed.  Her body went limp, and her eyes became vacant, staring straight ahead as her head was snapped back and then forward again.  
	Syndesta, smoking pistol still held in Master Asakawa’s hand, bent closer to survey her handiwork and, seeming satisfied said, “I think that will do nicely, don’t you Mr. Asakawa?  She’s still partially functional, you know, just a bit over taxed at the moment.  Eventually, I suppose she might even recover from something like this, given the chance.  But that doesn’t fit into our plans, I’m afraid.  Tex?”
	With that, Tex, the hulking combat model, swung Jillian’s now limp hand, claws still extended, in an arc that intersected Master Asakawa’s chest.  Even un-energized, with the BU-55’s strength behind them, Jillian’s claws barely slowed as they bit deeply into the master’s body and continued on through.  Master Asakawa was unable to even scream as ribs, sternum, lungs and heart were all cleanly sliced through.  There was only an expression of shocked disbelief on his face as the combat model pulled Jillian’s arm back and then rammed her claws through the master’s wide-open eyes with such force that the tips erupted from the back of his skull.
	Inside herself, still able to perceive the world in grainy, two-dimensional black and white, Jillian watched the entire gruesome event from the first person.  As she watched her own integral weaponry murder the man she’d served faithfully for over five years, a man whom she respected, a man to whom she was indebted for his humane treatment of someone who wasn’t even human, a man for whom, she realized at that very instant, she had far more complex feelings than she had thought herself capable of, something inside of her snapped.  
  Somewhere in the damaged recesses of her mind, she realized that one or more of the safety interlocks governing her emotional and hormonal matrices had overloaded, failing catastrophically under an emotional load she’d never been designed to handle just like a bridge or a building might collapse under too great a weight.  And instead of remaining safely in it’s maintenance shut-down mode as it should have, her body, fueled now by run-away hormonal analogs, suddenly jerked back to life, her synthetic blood coursing like molten fire through her artificial veins.
With an incoherent scream, she jerked her re-energized blades from the dead master’s skull, hardly noticing that the top of his head came with them, and twisting around in the unprepared combat model’s grasp buried them to the fingers in it’s throat.  The combat boomer gave an ululating cry of it’s own, and brought it’s other powerful arm up, enclosing Jillian in a crushing embrace.  She felt her ceramic-composite ribs slowly crack under the murderous pressure, but she was past caring or feeling.  With a strength far beyond her normal limits, she burst free of the BU-55’s grip, tearing many of her own myomer-fiber muscles in the process, and then hit the surprised combat model like a wall of whirling blades.  The BU-55, normally more than a match for any android, was unable to defend itself against the sheer speed and reckless fury of Jillian’s attack.  With in seconds Jillian’s energized nails, designed to defeat even the kind of heavy Abotex armor encasing  the combat model had sliced through in a dozen places, spilling the armored giant’s bright orange blood all over the room.  Finally, with a last vicious strike, Jillian severed the combat boomer’s neck, and its armored skull went clattering across the floor.
Using the momentum of her strike, she whirled around to face her other two antagonists, who, shocked at first but capable of the same lightening fast processing as Jillian were starting to make their own offensive moves.  Syndesta dropped down into a skilled fighting stance, and produced another pistol, the twin of the other, from a concealed holster at her back.  Red, on the other hand, stood quickly, and, flexing muscle-analogs that no human possessed, ripped out of her human disguise, revealing the blue-armored carapace of an almost standard female-variant combat chassis.  But before either of them could take further action, Jillian raised both hands in front of her and fired a full spread of hyper-velocity nails.
Both Syndesta and Red took multiple hits despite inhumanly fast efforts to dodge.  Syndesta, apparently a heavy android similar to Jillian in construction, took the worst of it.  Two of Jillian’s deadly nails slashed their way through her abdomen, tearing through armored clothing and internal armor as if it were paper and pulling various unidentifiable organ-analogs out along their exit trajectory.  Ironically, another of Jillian’s missiles struck Syndesta squarely between the eyes, exactly where Jillian herself had just been shot.  Syndesta reeled back and crashed to the floor, totally rigid instead of limp.
Red, not quite as agile as Syndesta, took five hits, all to the torso and shoulders.  Being heavier than the other boomer, she staggered back a couple of steps, but didn’t fall.  Instead, she again focused her enhanced ECM arrays on Jillian, and sent a wave of such sheer amplitude that it almost constituted a miniature EMP pulse.  Even in her manic state, Jillian had no defense against this.  She collapsed to her knees and then pitched forward to her face, stunned.  Red, confident now of victory, extended a wicked looking serrated arm blade of her own and advanced slowly on Jillian’s prone form.  
“Not such a tough bitch after all, I see,” she said, standing over Jillian.  “And you know what?  After I finish you off, I think I’ll just go ahead and strangle the little juice-bag with your guts.  Seems fair enough, all things considered.”  With that, she dropped to a knee and, snatching Jillian up by the hair, prepared to decapitate her as she had Tex.  But before she could strike, there was a deafening report from behind Red, near where the dead master lay.
Unprepared for the terrific impact of a .50 caliber AP round to the side of her head, Red fell heavily onto her side, and lost her grip on Jillian’s hair.  But, as tough as any of her breed, Red still hung onto what passed for life.  Rolling to a crouch, she looked over to see a small figure already reaching with bruised hands to recover the much too large weapon that had torn itself from her grip with the first shot.  Shaking and wild-eyed, her hair bloodied in back where she’d struck the wall, little Aiko got both her small hands back around the pistol’s grips, leveled it as best she could in Red’s direction, and said in a shaky but fierce voice, “You leave her alone you-  you bitch!”
Metallic laughter rolled from Red and she said, “Holy shit, now I’ve seen it all.  Kid, I will hand it to you, you’ve got bigger balls than most of the full-grown men I’ve ever met.  It’s almost a pity you’ll never be old enough to understand what that means.”  
Red stood then, and, arm blade still extended, strode toward Aiko.  Again, Aiko desperately squeezed the trigger, and again the pistol tore itself from her grasp, nearly breaking several of her fingers.  But this time her shot went wild, just as Red had thought it would.  She was correct in figuring that the first hit had been a combination of luck and her own inattention, which had allowed the girl time to aim and brace.
“Oh, I think that’s quite enough, young lady,” she said, advancing slowly and playfully now.  “I don’t think your dear Dad there would approve of you playing with guns, do you?”
Aiko backpedaled desperately now, trying to put distance between herself and the blue metallic nightmare coming for her, but the cyberdroid was faster.  Looming over the little girl, she raised her vicious arm blade and said, “Good night, honey.  Sweet dreams.”
Just as the blade was about to descend upon the cringing Aiko, she caught a blur of movement behind the combat model. Her eyes widened as she saw Jillian, battered and bloody, stagger up behind the distracted boomer and, pulling back for maximum force, ram her crackling blades into Red’s back.  
Red let out the same kind of inhuman, ululating cry that Tex had, only pitched in feminine tones as Jillian, blades still embedded, clenched her fist, twisted it violently left and right, and then yanked it viciously out, a section of the larger boomer’s Abotex-sheathed fiber-optic spine coming with it. 
Like a puppet who’s strings had been cut, Red collapsed in a heap, narrowly missing Aiko who nimbly rolled out of the way.  Jillian, the gory section of spinal column still grasped in her clawed hand, looked down at the savaged combat boomer and muttered fiercely, “Who’s laughing now you brainless pile of walking scrap?”
Aiko, traumatized and shocked now almost to numbness looked up at a Jillian she almost didn’t know.  Broken, torn, covered in blood both her own and not, an unreadable and wholly unfamiliar expression contorting her features, the Jillian who stood in front of Aiko now was almost a stranger and more than a little frightening.  But in the end, as her gaze happened to fall on the mutilated form of her father, Aiko reached out for the only half-familiar thing left in her life.
Sobbing, Aiko threw herself on Jillian, wrapping her thin arms tightly around Jillian’s waist and burying her face in Jillian’s stomach.  “Why, Jillian?  Why?  Why did they come in here and do this to us?  To my Daddy!”
Jillian, her mind still racing, her blood still slowly simmering said, “Aiko, honey, I don’t know.  I mean, I know what they wanted, but this-!”  She shook her head slowly, gently stroking the little girl’s hair, checking the injury she’d received striking the wall, and said, “No, I don’t understand how anyone, human or cyberdroid, could do something like this, much less enjoy it the way they did.  And I hope I never do.”
As she looked around the dining room, once a place of laughter and family bliss, now a slaughterhouse, it occurred to Jillian that things might not be quite over yet.  If she were planning an operation like this, God forbid, she certainly wouldn’t go in without back-up and perimeter security.  That being the case, she thought it could only be a small matter of time before someone or something else came to finish what the contact team had started.
“Aiko,” she said matter-of-factly, “We need to get out of here.”
Non-plussed, Aiko looked up with tear-stained eyes and said, “Leave?  Why do we need-?”  And then her eyes grew wide as realization dawned on her.  “Oh, no,” she said in a tone of pure horror.  “You mean there might be more of them, don’t you?”
	“I’m afraid so.  It’s what I would do if I’d planned this.”
	“Then you’re right,” Aiko said, nodding her head vigorously.  “We need to get out of here before they come!”  And then, frowning slightly she said, “But Jillian, you’re hurt so badly!  Will you be alright?  Will you be able to take care of us?”
	Jillian sighed, and thought to herself, ‘I’m afraid you don’t know the half of it, little mistress.  According to my fault indicators, I shouldn’t even be ambulatory right now.  What’s keeping me going, I don’t know myself.  But I won’t fail you as I failed Master Asakawa.  I won’t rest until you’re safe.’  Aloud, she said, “I’ll be fine once we’ve made it to someplace safe and I have a chance to rest.  You’ve read my owner’s manual, after all, so you know how quickly I can heal given the chance.”
	Aiko’s expression tightened, and she said, “Jillian, that’s not funny.  I know you’re a boomer, but you’re not just a machine.  A machine can only do what’s in it’s owner’s manual, and if that’s how you were both of us would be dead now.  And Daddy,”  she paused, swallowing back tears, “Jillian, there was nothing you could do about that.  Those other boomers just had things planned out too well.  It’s only because you didn’t act the way they thought you would, like a machine, that we’re still alive.”
	Jillian looked at the little girl in awe.  She knew that Aiko was far more intelligent than her peers, but she hadn’t guessed that her charge held such depths.  Hearing the conviction in the girl’s words and the trust behind them brought a lump to Jillian’s throat and a stinging sensation to her eyes, something that both surprised and disturbed her.  Apparently the safety interlocks in her emotional matrix had yet to reset themselves.  And given the sheer physical damage her brain and body had taken, she thought it might be some time before those particular neural pathways regenerated.  In fact, as the high-octane pseudo-hormonal soup she was running on slowly dissipated, she felt her mind slowing, and a fuzzy grayness, a maintenance fugue, she knew, began to creep over her awareness.
	But before she could let that take hold, she knew she had to get Aiko and herself out of the house and off the estate.  “Aiko,” she said, “We need to go now.  And it would be faster and safer, I think, if I carried you.  Is that okay with you?”
	Aiko nodded and said, “Sure, Jillian.  I don’t mind.  And all of a sudden, I feel so tired.  Is that because of everything that’s happened?”
	Jillian, bending to pick the little girl up in her arms said, “Probably.  And you should sleep.  You’ll feel better afterwards, and it will make traveling easier.”
	“Jillian,”  Aiko said suddenly in a plaintive voice, “Why do I feel so hollow inside right now?  It hurts, but- shouldn’t it hurt more?  I mean, when somebody you love- when something happens like this- Jillian, is something wrong with me?”
	Jillian sighed, and, while walking briskly toward the basement stairs and an exit she hoped had remained secret, said, “No, honey, I don’t think so.  I just think this is more than you can deal with right now.  From what I understand, most little girls your age would probably be hysterical at this point, but that’s not how you are.  You’re able to see that we can’t afford that right now, and so I think you’ve buried your grief until you can let it out safely.  It just means that you’re mature beyond your years.”  And then wryly, she added, “At least, that’s the opinion of a cyberdroid who’s done a little reading on child psychology”    
	That had the intended result; it brought a slight smile to the little girl’s face.  But then she frowned again, and looking up at Jillian said, “But Jillian, what about the cops and everything?  Won’t they be coming here?”
	Jillian, now descending the stairs into the basement said, “Oh, I’m sure they will be.  But, by the time they get here, I’m fairly certain that things will have been rearranged to suit the people who staged this whole thing.  We don’t dare stay here to meet the police and give them the real story, and even if we did, I’m not sure that would work out.” 
	“What do you mean?” the little girl said, puzzled.
	“Well, given the scenario they were setting up, I think it likely that the police will come here expecting to find a house full of corpses and a rampaging rogue boomer.  I strongly suspect that the ADP will come in shooting first and asking questions later.”
	“Oh,” Aiko said in a small voice, and then, “So if that’s how it is, what are we going to do, Jillian?”
	Jillian shook her head and, opening the concealed doorway hidden behind the master’s wine racks, said, “Aiko, honey, I wish I knew.  I wish I knew.”

	‘Shit,’ Investigator Leon McNichol thought.  ‘What a friggin’ mess!’
	And that pretty adequately described the scene at the Diet Official’s estate.  One  senior Diet member mutilated and a missing, probably dead, little girl.  Oh, yeah, and one obviously homicidal personal security model who was, of course, nowhere to be found.  Leon knew this was going to be a hell of a night.
	The call itself had been bad enough.  He’d been standing next to the operator’s desk when it’d come in, and it’d sent chills up his spine.
	“Somebody help us, please!” the little girl’s frantic voice had pleaded.
	“What’s wrong honey,” the operator, that cute little Romanova girl,  had replied.  “What’s happening there?”
	“It’s Jillian!” the child had screamed.  “She’s gone crazy!  Please, hurry!  She’s killing my daddy!”
	Nene’d swallowed, and said, “It’s OK, honey, we’ve got your address and someone’s on the way to help.  But I need to know a few things, OK?”
	There’d been a long hesitation from the other end, and, nervously, Nene’d repeated, “OK, honey?”
	“Yeah, OK,” the other voice, still terrified, had replied.
	Nene’d relaxed visibly, and then said, “Great.  Now, first, who’s Jillian?”
	No answer.  Only frantic breathing.
	“Honey?”
	“She’s, um, daddy’s bodyguard,” the little girl had replied.
	Nene bit her lip, and said, “OK, I see.  Is she a boomer?”
	The little girl hesitated, and then said, “Yes.”
	“Do you know what kind?”
	“Huh?” the other voice had said, confused.
	“I suppose not,” Nene replied.  “Well, just stay put, um...?”
	“Aiko.  My name’s Aiko.”
	“Aiko.  Right.  Don’t worry, honey, help’s on the way.  Just stay on the line and-”
	“She’s here!” the little girl had screamed.  Nene’d gone pale, and turned to Leon with a look of utter horror.  Leon had only looked down at the floor and shaken his head.
	‘Aw, hell,’ he’d thought, ‘not again!’
	“Jillian, no!” the little girl had pleaded.  “I thought you were my friend!”
	“No!  Please!  Noooooo!” the terrified voice had screamed.  And then there’d been more screams, agonized this time, mixed with strange, wet tearing sounds and feral growls.  And then there’d been silence.
	Nene had bolted from the office, sobbing and retching at the same time.  Leon had stayed for a moment, just long enough to see the data that she’d pulled up on the computer.
	‘Holy shit,’ he’d thought as he saw the name and address.  ‘Shit’s really gonna hit the fan over this!’
	And, reading the boomer registration and ownership documents for the household, he’d grunted and thought, ‘33C.  Well, that figures.  Teach you to trust one of those things.’
	And then Leon had left at a trot, heading for his waiting road chaser, thinking black thoughts about what he’d do if he got a hold of that murderous boomer bitch tonight.

	Unfortunately, it hadn’t happened that way.  By the time Leon had arrived on scene, the first line squad had already cleared the house and grounds.  Nothing but a dead man and a lot of blood and gore.  No crazed assassin boomer, and no mutilated little girl.  It figured.  It just couldn’t have been that easy.
	After inspecting the scene, and looking over all the gory details, Leon sought out the forensics team, currently working on the dining room where Asakawa had died.
	“Hey, Corporal Fusikawa!” he said in a friendly tone.  “What the hell have you guys turned up so far?”
	The slightly built young man turned, nodded to Leon, and said, “A hell of a mess, man.  A hell of a mess.”
	“Yeah, I can see that for myself,” Leon said, “Can you clarify that a little, though?”
	“Hmmmmm,” the other man said.  “Well, now, that’s always the hard part, isn’t it?  But this whole damn thing is pretty weird if you ask me.  For starts, BU-33C’s don’t go nuts very often.  They come stock with one of the hottest production AI’s on the market, and they’re pretty stable.  In fact, they’re just about the only androidial models still in production, and that’s purely because of demand from folks like Mr. Asakawa here.  You can bet there wouldn’t be so much demand if they had a habit of slicing up their high-profile owners.”
	Leon frowned, and said, “Yeah, well, looks like this is the exception that proves the rule then.  So what else have you found?”
	“Well, the injuries look pretty consistent with a 33C’s internal weaponry.  Mr. Asakawa there was beaten and sliced up, plain and simple, just what you’d expect from a model like that.”
	“Yeah, I noticed that,” Leon said.  “Looked pretty rough.”
	“Doesn’t it though.  Popped the top of his head right off, it looks like.  Those 33C’s are ungodly strong for androids.”
	“Yeah,” Leon replied, “I know.  Trust me, I know.”
	“Oops!  Guess you do at that.”
	“Bottom line, man,” Leon said.  “Is there anything here that tells us about the little girl?”
	The corporal sighed, and said, “Well, nothing good, I’m afraid.  You saw the blood stains on the wall?”
	Leon grimaced, and said, “Hell, which ones?  You’ve got to be a little more specific in this room.”
	The other nodded slowly, and said, “Those over there, not too far from the doors.  Those aren’t high velocity splatters or anything like some of the others, and genetic analysis says they don’t belong to Mr. Asakawa.  On-scene gene typing is really just a rough estimate, but samples from that stain are similar enough to his to be about what you’d expect from his kid.  And there’s a blood trail down into the basement and out that damned secret door, but the K9 guys ran smack into a creek not a hundred meters after the escape tunnel surfaced, and lost it there.  Looks like she walked up or down stream carrying the kid.”
	“Shit!” Leon exclaimed.  “Why the hell is the crazy bitch carrying the little girl around with her?!  Wasn’t it enough to cut her up!?”
	“Hey, man, don’t ask me,” the corporal said.  “That’s the boomer psych-guy’s department, not mine.”
	“Yeah,” Leon said, “And speaking of him, where the hell is he?”
	“On call, man.  He makes the big bucks at his real job down at the university.  This is just a side bit he does to gather thesis material.  So he only shows when he feels like it.”
	“Yeah, I know all that,” Leon said.  “I just figured the cold-hearted son of a bitch would at least show up for one like this.”
	“Naw,” the forensics tech said, “He’s about as sentimental as most of the boomers he studies.  Must really help him get inside their heads.”
	“Yeah, well, the hell with him then.  So have you got anything else to thrill me with?”
	“I don’t know.  Would you be thrilled if I told you she was injured?”
	“Say what?” Leon said.
	“Here, take a look at this,” the corporal replied.  “I found this over in that corner.  Looks like it flew out of Asakawa’s hand when he got sliced.”
	Leon whistled as the forensics man held up a plastic bag containing a very large pistol.
	“Christ!  Desert Eagle .50, isn’t it?” he said.
	“Yeah,” the corporal replied.  “Illegal as all hell, but what’ll you bet if we look, his honor here has some kind of special license to carry it?”
	“No bet,” Leon replied.  “No bet at all.  So it looks like he winged her, huh?”
	“Oh, more like he drilled her, I’d say.  He was firing high-end cop killers out of that thing.”
	“Huh, armor piercers.” Leon said in disgust.  “Well, hell, it figures.  A friggin’ politician can get ‘em, but can we?  Anyhow, you say you think he nailed her good?”
	“Looks like it,” the corporal said.  “A lot of that blood leading out of here is android blood.  I think he nailed her.”
	“Well, that’s something, anyway,” Leon said.  “’Course, if we don’t find her within a couple of days, she’ll be all healed up.”
	“Yeah, inconvenient that,” the corporal replied.
	Just then, one of the line officers, a young female trooper named ... Natomi, or something like that, Leon thought, stepped up and tapped Leon on the shoulder.
	“Sir?” she said.
	“Yeah, what’s up?” he replied.
	Somewhat subdued, and looking down at the floor, she said, “Ah, well, sir, it’s the K9 teams.”  	
	“Yeah, come on,” Leon said impatiently.  “Let’s hear it.”
	 “They’re packing it in, sir.  They’ve been up and down the creek, at least a click either way, and they haven’t picked up a damn thing.”
	“Well, shit!” Leon said bitterly, noticing that the younger officer was visibly holding back tears.  “Are you okay, officer...”
	“Natomi, sir,” she said.  “Officer Akiko Natomi.”
	“Right.  So what’s the deal?  This is a shitty situation, but why are you so upset?”
	She blushed slightly, and said, “It’s just that, well sir, I have a little girl too.  She’s not as old as the girl we’re looking for, or anything like that, but I just can’t help thinking about- and I guess I- oh, hell, sir, I guess I was just hoping that they’d find her, safe and sound.”  Then, in a sullen tone, she said, “But I guess that’s not going to happen, is it?”
	Leon sighed, and said, “Hell, I hope it does as much as you do, but probably not.  And it sucks.  It always sucks, Natomi, but if you deal with this kind of shit long enough, you learn to cope.  Now, was there anything else?”
	“No sir,” she replied.
	“Fine,” he said.  “Then I guess you can go on about your business.  And I, unfortunately, probably have a date with the chief.  Just be glad you don’t have to put up with that shit on top of all this.”
	“Right sir,” she said, and then, smiling tentatively, “Are you going to be OK, sir?”	
	“Oh, I doubt that very much, Officer Natomi.  I doubt it very much.”

	Nene sat in her rumpled ADP uniform, red eyed and hugging her knees on Sylia Stingray’s sofa.  She was very quiet, the only sound from her an occasional sniffle.
	Sylia sat across from her in a comfortable armchair, a cup of herbal tea in her hand, as she thought about the story Nene’d haltingly related to her.  Certainly it was horrible enough, and that it involved the death of a senior member of the Diet was disturbing to say the least.  But she’d never seen Nene quite like this.  Apparently, it was the first time she’d ever lost someone on the line.  And that it’d been a little girl certainly hadn’t helped.
	But what Nene’d suggested... well, that was something else.  Sylia could certainly sympathize with Nene’s grief, and her overwhelming sense of the unfairness of the situation.  But Sylia hated for the Knight Sabers to go off on half-cocked missions of vengeance.  Oh, certainly it had happened in the past, but only when it’d been unavoidable for whatever reason.  
	Granted, this situation did look as though it might benefit from the Saber’s expertise.  After all, so far as anyone knew, there was still a crazed razor doll running loose through the city, probably enjoying her new found freedom by slicing up as many hapless victims as she could find.
	The problem, of course, was simply the bottom line.  Running an organization like the Knight Sabers required a lot of capital, and the expense of taking a hardsuit out for even a single outing was hideous.  As much as she might sometimes wish otherwise, Sylia had to pick and choose their jobs very carefully.  In this case, though, she was tempted for a number of reasons.  Tempted enough to call the other Sabers in for a meeting, and a consensus.

	Linna was the first to arrive, of course.  Sylia knew that Priss would take her time.  But Sylia was shocked to see Linna’s reaction as Nene repeated her story.
	As Nene had uttered the father’s name, Linna had gone pale, and in a strangled tone said, “Asakawa?!  The Diet member?”
	“Yeah,” Nene said.  “I know, it’s crazy.  But that’s not the worst part.  He- there was- his daughter-oh, Linna, it was terrible!  I was on the phone with her and then-” but Nene couldn’t go any further and lapsed into tears instead.
	Linna, though, went even paler if possible.  “Oh, no,” she said, “Oh, my God, no.  Aiko!”
	Sylia sat up a bit straighter and said, “You knew her?”
	Linna nodded slowly, a look of shock on her face.
	“She- she was in a class of mine.  She was such a good student!  I can’t believe- Oh, my God, why?!”  Linna shook her head slowly, tears sliding down her cheeks, and then lapsed into silence.
	‘Damn.’ Sylia thought.  ‘This is looking worse and worse.  I know what Priss will say, and I don’t think team integrity is going to let me veto this.’

	Of course Sylia was right.  Priscilla Asagiri’s reaction was all she’d thought it would be.  After her initial, “OK, what the hell’s it about THIS time?” Priss’s attitude had changed quickly once Nene and Linna had recounted the night’s tragedy.
	“Shit!” she’d exclaimed.  “What are we waiting for?  And,” she’d added,  “don’t give me any crap about expenses, Sylia.”
	At Sylia’s raised eyebrow and slightly sardonic look, she sighed, and continued.
	“I know how expensive a mission is, but how the hell can we NOT do this?  I mean, if we never do anything just because it needs to be done, if the almighty yen dictates all our jobs for us, then how the hell are we any different from those bastards at Genom?  And if that’s the case, then why even bother?  We might as well be working for them!”
	Frowning, Sylia said, “Are you through, Priscilla?  Or can you think of something else you’d like to bludgeon me with?”
	Priss flushed slightly, and said, “Yeah, well, tell me I’m wrong.”
	Sylia shook her head slightly, and said, “No, in this particular case I think you have a point.”
	The others looked at Sylia expectantly as she sighed and continued.
	“All things considered, I suppose I have little choice but to okay this.  Considering the level of personal involvement here, I’d probably have to shoot you all to keep you away from this, and that would be rather counter-productive, don’t you think?”
	This was met by a nervous chorus of, “Definitely!”, “Oh, sure!”, and “Yeah, right, of course!” as the others tried not to consider whether Sylia was serious or not.
	‘Besides,’ she thought to herself, ‘you never know what might be locked up inside that boomer’s brain.  Personal assistant for a senior Diet member, after all.  Maybe I’ll be able to recoup some of our expenses one way or another.’

	For most of the trip into the city, Jillian’s awareness was concentrated into a tiny point.  She’d been damaged far worse than she’d been willing to admit, and now that was taking its toll.  She faded in and out of consciousness as her body’s systems attempted to compensate for and repair the massive damage, a great deal of which had been done to her AI itself.  All she really knew was the small, warm weight held protectively in her arms, the rhythmic stride of her legs, and the slow passing of the terrain around them.
	After what might’ve been minutes or hours, considering her current lack of time-sense, Jillian began to notice a change in the scenery.  They were leaving the suburbs, and entering the outskirts of the city proper.  
	Here, Jillian’s prior planning took over again, acting on an almost instinctive level while the higher centers of her brain were semi-off-line, undergoing repair.  Without even realizing it, she began to head for one of the more obscure safe houses she’d set up for her master inside Mega Tokyo, a last ditch hiding place that she’d been certain would escape detection even against high-caliber opposition for at least a few days.  Granted, it wasn’t in the best part of town.  On the contrary, it was in one of the worst.  But it was certainly one of the last places anyone would expect someone to hide a person of Master Asakawa’s importance.  Unfortunately, the original plan for getting the master and little mistress there hadn’t involved traveling on foot through most of the Kanto Fault Region, otherwise known as the Canyons.

	Yoshi Asakura could hardly believe the luck.  As he and his fellow Nurikabe sat, waiting, in one of their favorite spots, easy prey presented itself.  A woman, expensively dressed if a bit mussed and bloodied, carrying a sleeping and similarly appointed child.  By the look of them, they’d just wandered away from an accident or escaped from another gang.  Too easy.  Granted, they might’ve  already been picked over, but even if so they’d still be good for a little fun.
	As the woman shuffled past, Yoshi gave the pre-arranged signal, and the gang melted out of the shadowy alleyways ahead of and behind her, blocking those avenues of escape.  The two crumbling old buildings to either side of the street did the rest.  She was trapped, standing still now with the sleeping little girl cradled in her arms, and an odd, confused expression on her face.
	“OK, honey,” Yoshi said.  “You might as well just play along.  Things’ll be a lot easier that way.”
	Jillian, roused to partial consciousness by this new threat, glanced around surreptitiously at the gang bangers, thermal imaging picking out concealed weapons and cybernetics, targeting systems crunching out multiple firing solutions and painting targets as she scanned.  She estimated the threat level at high to critical in the present situation, and with Aiko here, she didn’t much like any of her options, but all she could really do was play things out.
	“So, what’s it gonna be, mama?  You gonna play along, or do we have to do it the hard way?”
	Jillian looked the punk straight in the eye, activated her active laser targeting, giving her eyes an eerie red glow, extended the claws of her left hand with a loud ‘snap!’, and in the silkiest, most seductive voice she could manage said, “Oh, let’s do it the hard way, little man.  I like it hard.”
	Yoshi’s eyes widened comically, and he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Shit!!  Boomer!!”
	The effect was immediate and chaotic.  Half the gang turned tail and ran.  The other half either stood, shocked and slack-jawed, or began frantically reaching for weapons.
	‘Well, it could’ve been worse,’ Jillian thought as she targeted and fired on the person going for the largest weapon, taking him cleanly through the head.  Immediately she acquired another target, fired, reacquired, fired again, and had just started to acquire another when someone finally got his weapon clear of the holster and opened fire on her.
	Jillian twisted sharply to the left, putting herself between Aiko and the gunman and took all eight rounds from his ancient .45 automatic in her back and shoulder.  As she’d anticipated, the old ball rounds just didn’t have enough punch to get through her integral armor and bounced off, causing only mild discomfort.  That, she knew, was the best weapon left available to the punks and she took advantage of the fact.
	“That the best you can do?” she said mildly.  “Because if it is, I suggest you all run.  As quickly and as far as you can.”  And then, at the top of her lungs, “NOW!!”
	The punks scattered like scared rabbits.  They scrambled over and around each other in their eagerness to get away, and were gone in seconds, leaving only their dead behind.
	Aiko, awakened and badly frightened by the gunfire, clung to Jillian and looking up at her with wild eyes said, “Jillian?!  What happened?”
	Jillian sighed, looking regretfully at the dead punks, and said, “Nothing much, honey.  Nothing much.  Just a lot of noise.  But do me a favor.  Just keep your head there on my shoulder, and don’t look around.  Just keep your eyes shut.  Please?”
	Hesitantly, Aiko agreed.  
	“OK, Jillian, if you say so.”
	Stroking her hair gently, Jillian said softly, “That’s a good girl.  Now try to go back to sleep.  Things will be easier that way.”
	The little girl murmured something sleepily into Jillian’s shoulder, and then seemed to doze off again.  ‘Poor thing,’  Jillian thought.  ‘You’ve had to endure so much tonight.  I only hope you can face it all in the morning.  You humans are so fragile.  I’m almost afraid to hold you in my arms like this.’ 
	Taking one last look at the dead punks, Jillian turned and resumed her course toward the safe house. 
	‘What a waste,’ she thought as she walked.  ‘What an utter waste.  All the things those people could’ve done with their lives, their freedom, and they had to choose a course that ended them up dead at my hands.  Why?  What sense is there in humans who behave like that?’  She shook her head slowly and thought,  ‘I just don’t understand.  And why do I feel like I’ve done something wrong?  They would’ve killed Aiko and me.  What choice did I have?  But still... all that potential, and I’m the one who spilled it all over the ground.  Even if they were squandering them, they had something I’ve never had.  Choices.’ 
	Jillian winced, then, as a sharp pain lanced through her head, beginning at the site of the gunshot wound and traveling backward through her entire skull.  At the same time, her vision dimmed momentarily, and a number of seldom seen systems warnings screamed at her.
	‘My mind is unraveling,’ she thought in a sort of horrified wonder.  ‘My brain was so damaged that the AI housed in it, ME, is starting to degrade.  Or, maybe... it’s just changing.  My internals are interpreting it as corruption, but I don’t feel like I’m dying.  Maybe my mind is just restructuring itself to fit the new neural pathways.’  She sighed mentally, and then thought, ‘Well, if that’s so, I’ll know soon enough.  If not, then I guess I’ll never know.  Only... for Aiko’s sake, one way or another, I have to find some way to make her safe before whatever it is happens to me.’
	And then, just as her consciousness began to fade once more into maintenance mode, she realized that something had changed.  The programmed imperative to safeguard her charge was still there, but there was something else now too.  A. feeling.  Not a new feeling, but different somehow.  In addition  to concern for the girl’s welfare, there was something else.  Something she’d felt in diluted form before, like the sensation she felt whenever Aiko appreciated one of her drawings.  Something that made her want to protect the little girl at any cost.  And then she had a name for it, a name she’d heard many times before, but never truly understood until now.  Love.    
	In true wonder now, as she slipped into fugue, Jillian realized that the icy walls around her emotions had cracked.  The safety interlocks, the watchdog subroutines that guarded her emotional matrix, hadn’t just failed.  They were gone, overwritten as her mind slowly rebuilt itself.  She, herself, was free now in a way she never had been before, and the myriad possibilities that exploded in her mind’s eye both exhilarated and terrified her all at once.  And then the dim grayness of the maintenance fugue washed over her once again.

	It’d been a bad night, as far as Leon was concerned, and the morning didn’t look much better.  Not only had the chief been his usual smiling self, as if he’d expected anything else, but now there was pressure coming from way up the chain to get this thing wrapped up.  Fast!  Leon had half expected that, considering who the victim was, but something just didn’t feel right.  In fact, if it wasn’t such a cut and dried case, Leon would’ve sworn somebody was trying to sweep something under the rug.  Which, now that he thought about it, maybe wasn’t so far fetched.  
	And, of course, on top of it all, there was the victim’s damn father, a retired Diet member himself with a lot of connections and a huge mad-on for the crazed boomer who’d killed his son and granddaughter.  The crazy old bastard had offered a cool twenty million yen to anyone who brought him the boomer’s head on a pike.  His exact words during a Vixen 16 interview.  Given that televised trash-rag’s circulation, every bounty hunter, merc, and would-be do-gooder in Mega Tokyo was probably after her by now.  Which only complicated matters, as far as Leon was concerned.  Hell, for all he knew, the Sabers themselves might be after her, and, much as he hated to admit it, Leon wasn’t sure that would be such a bad thing.
	‘Yeah, right,’ he thought sarcastically, ‘just let the Knight Sabers take care of it.  Maybe I’ll grab Daley and head down to the golf course for a few holes while they do our job for us.  Time to get up off your ass and do some leg work, McNichol!  This shit isn’t going to solve itself!’
	With that, Leon rose creakily from the cluttered desk where he’d finally passed out for a couple of hours after spending most of the night coordinating other people’s activities and preparing preliminary reports.  A sure sign of terminal seniority for a cop, as far as he was concerned.  When you spend more of your time chasing paper than bad guys, you’ve been around too long, Leon firmly believed.  On the other hand, he reflected, there were certain advantages.
	“Naoko!” he yelled through the doorway into the operator’s cubicle.
	There was a sound of clattering clipboards and fluttering paper, along with a muffled curse, followed immediately by, “Sir?!” as the startled operator stumbled into view.
	Hiding a satisfied smirk, Leon said, “Let the chief know I’m hitting the bricks.  There’s a couple of people I’d like to talk to about last night.  If he wants me, God forbid, I’ll be on my cell.  Oh, and get me somebody from the operator pool to go along.  I don’t feel like worrying about all the paperwork on top of everything else.  Questions?”
	Shaking her head, she said, “No, I think I’ve got it, but I’ll have to see who’s available-”
	“Don’t bother,” came a quiet voice from the hallway door.  “I’ll go.”
	The voice was familiar, but as Leon turned, he almost didn’t recognize the speaker.  The person standing in the doorway sounded like Nene Romanova, but she certainly didn’t look like the Nene he knew.  
	She was dressed for the field, wearing fatigues like one of the mobile command center operators who went out with the line squads, complete with an issue .454 magnum in a hip-extended holster strapped to her right thigh.  Also, her long, luxurious red hair, normally left free, was bound up into a tight bun at the back of her head, lending her a severe look that was totally out of character.  In fact, the effect was such a caricature of ‘the tough cop’ that Leon’s first impulse was to laugh, until he saw the look in her eyes.  
	He’d seen that kind of smoldering anger mixed with tired frustration before, in the eyes of a lot of young cops, and some not so young.  It was  the look of someone who’d finally realized that they weren’t just playing cops and robbers.  That sometimes, for no good reason, innocent people die despite your best efforts, and the only thing you can do about it is try to be that much better, that much tougher.  He’d seen it just the night before, in the young trooper, Natomi’s eyes, and he couldn’t even remember anymore the first time he’d seen it staring back at him from the bathroom mirror.
	‘Well, hell,’ he thought bitterly, ‘I guess it had to happen eventually, even to her.  This damned city doesn’t spare anybody for long.’
	Aloud he said, “Whoa!  Nene!  Dressed for a fire-fight, or are you thinking about moving to a line squad?”
	As he’d hoped, the comment brought Nene up short.  Her expression changed first to bewilderment and then to indignation.
	“What?!” she exclaimed, as if unable to believe her ears.  “Why, I-! You-!  I came in here on my off time to help out because I can’t even sleep thinking about that little girl and you make fun of me just because I wore something more sensible than that prissy office uniform?!”
	‘Ok,’ he thought, ‘at least she’s still alive in there.  Now just a little dose of shock treatment.’
	“Oh, stop your whining, Corporal.  Yeah, this’s a shitty case, but you didn’t get the shittiest end of it.  That’s all mine.  Anyway, if you want to come in on your off time, that’s your business and I’ll gladly accept the help.  And any way you want to dress, within regulation, is just fine with me, but there’s a difference between sensible and Dirty Harriett.  Care to guess where you’re at right now?”
	“Well,” she replied sulkily, “this uniform’s within regulation. So’s the sidearm.  And I am qualified.  Besides, if we were to run into this crazy boomer out there, do you want to be the only one shooting?  ‘Big, bad Leon protect helpless female’?  Hmmm?”
	“Oh, Christ!” Leon exclaimed in mock exasperation.  “I’m not gonna stand here and argue about anything this stupid!  If you’re so eager, then let’s go!  We’ve got shit to do!”
	Nene turned and followed as Leon stormed past her, a light smile playing at her lips.  It felt good to get Leon’s goat, if only over a minor point, and that small victory made her whole mood lighten a little.  
	What she couldn’t see, staring at Leon’s back, was the smirk on his face, or the small head shake he gave as he thought, ‘Well, shit!  I wonder if this’s what Chief’s been doing to me all these years.  And if that isn’t a scary friggin’ thought, I don’t know what is.’

	She lay at the center of a vast virtual web of data and peripherals, like a black widow waiting for prey.  Her body, still battered and torn, rested in a fetal position, inert in a bath of saline, nutrients, and specially tailored nanos, healing at several times it’s normal rate.  Even her brain, still critically damaged, lay mostly dormant, only the most essential functions still active.  But her consciousness soared.
	The bolthole she’d had built, nestled deep in the old sewers far under the streets of the ruined Kanto district, was a veritable pillbox .  It sat at the center of a vast maze of corridors, tunnels and cisterns, all watched over by covert surveillance devices, waldos and smart booby traps which were monitored and controlled from the command center where Jillian lay, a part of the system herself.
	A thick fiber optic lead ran from a concealed plug at the base of Jillian’s skull straight into an I/O port on the mainframe, hardwiring her in.  It was a mildly illegal piece of street installed cybernetics that she’d never bothered to tell the late Master Asakawa about, something rather difficult for an android to acquire, but something she’d thought might come in very handy in a crisis.
	Now her mind, freed of the limitations imposed by her ravaged brain, running on a faithful emulation of her neural pathways, expanded to occupy and control the vast web of sensory devices and peripherals around her.
	She’d taken pains to update the emulation program before installing herself, incorporating what she considered the positive changes to her neural pathways so that she wasn’t trapped inside that same cold emotional box.  Also, instead of completely merging her consciousness with the complex’s LAN, she oversaw operations from a virtual environment which simulated her normal sensorium, though greatly heightened.  To her, it felt as though she were sitting in an office chair, handling an enormous data stream through her familiar ether link.
	She did this both because it was more comfortable for her, a creature whose consciousness was, after all, created in the image of man’s, and because she was unsure of just what she might become otherwise.
  	As she monitored the myriad bytes of sensory data pouring in, Jillian paid special attention to one area.  In the room next to her, the bolt hole’s living area, Aiko slept restlessly, tossing and turning and crying out occasionally.  
	More than anything then, Jillian wished that she could be beside the little girl.  Even before, it would’ve caused her distress to see her little mistress upset.  Her programmed imperatives would’ve goaded her to do something to help.  But now, more than that, she just wanted to be near, to be able to hold her and let her cry her grief out on her shoulder when she awoke.  
	She’d had vague stirrings of such things before, but now the feelings were there in full force, so strong that she almost didn’t know how to deal with them.  Reflecting on that, she wondered how another boomer might cope with the situation.
	‘Maybe,’ she thought, ‘this is part of what sends some boomers rogue.  Maybe a less advanced AI or a boomer who hasn’t had such positive interactions might not be able to handle it at all.’ 
	And on the heels of that thought come another far more disturbing. 
	‘What makes me think I can handle this?  I wasn’t designed to.  Maybe it’s just a matter of time before I lose control and do whatever it is they think I’ve already done.  Could that happen?  Could I hurt Aiko?  Perhaps even-  kill her?”
	But that thought brought such a stab of pain, a virtual dagger to her cyber heart, that Jillian felt tears well up in her simulated eyes.
	‘No!’, she thought vehemently.  ‘There’s no way that could happen!  There’s no way I’ll let that happen!  I- I- love Aiko, and I won’t let anything hurt her again, least of all me!’

	The old neighborhood really hadn’t changed much, Priss thought.  The nether regions of the Kanto Fault were still just as dank, filthy, and foreboding as she remembered them, and just as tainted with bad memories.  It wasn’t far at all from where she stood to the Kanto Dump.  The place where she’d died.  
	‘Where I killed her.  Sylvie…’ Priss thought with a lump in her throat, and then, ‘Dammit, it’s been almost six months!  Get over it!  You’ve got work to do!’
	With that, she turned her attention back to the narrow, dingy street around her.
	‘Shit, what a mess!,’ she thought as she examined the dark stains and gory chunks on the pavement.  ‘Guess that little punk back at the bar wasn’t lying.  They really did run into her.  Huh!  Good thing it was only Nurikabe getting chewed up.  I’d hate to think anybody I actually gave a shit about might’ve gotten screwed.’
	As she looked around, Priss charted out the engagement in her mind.
	‘Hmmm... looks like they tried their usual thing, the dumb bastards.  Huh!  Brass!  .45, looks like.  Way to go, dumb asses.  Might as well have thrown rocks.  Just a miracle the bitch didn’t kill you all, I guess.’  And then Priss frowned as another part of the punk’s story came back to her.
	‘He said she was still carrying the kid’s body, that she even turned to cover it with her own when the lead started flying.  What the hell?  She sliced her up, carried her off, and then works like hell to protect what’s left?  That just doesn’t make any damn sense.’
	Priss shook her head, and thought, ‘Shit, something’s just not right with this.  Something’s missing.  And I’m no goddamned detective, so it’s gonna have to hit me in the face before I figure it out.  But I can sure as hell follow a blood trail...’
	Priss looked around one more time, then followed the trail of dark stains down the ruined street and on into the dilapidated maze of alleys into which it led.
	As she walked, Priss pulled a slim cell phone from her jacket pocket, hit the speed dial, and waited.  
	“Yes?” said the low, feminine voice on the other end.
	“Yeah, it’s me,” Priss replied.
	“Good,” the other said.  “I was getting worried.  Where are you?”
	“Oh, hell,” Priss replied.  “I couldn’t tell you even if I had map and a GPS.  I’m way the hell in the middle of nowhere down in the Canyons.  It’s kind of hard to pin it down any further than that.”
	“Hmmm... well, never mind.  Just stay on the line long enough and I can triangulate on you from the cell transmission.  What’ve you got?”
	Priss grinned and said, “Jackpot.  Looks like she definitely came this way.  Got a bunch of dead gang bangers to back that up.  But there’s something weird about it-”
	“In what way?” the other said.
	“Well... Nene said that the cops were pretty sure she killed the girl, right?”
	“That’s my impression.  Of course, she also took the body with her, but from the 911 recording that Nene smuggled out, it certainly sounded to me as though she mauled the girl.  And you have first hand knowledge of what those energized nails can do to unprotected flesh.”
	“God,” Priss said quietly.  “Well, she must be even crazier than ADP thinks she is then.”
	“What do you mean?” said the other, puzzled.
	“I mean, she was still carrying the kid’s body when the damn Nurikabe ran into her!  That’s what I mean!” 
	“Are you sure of that?” the other said, suddenly concerned.
	“Yeah,” Priss replied disgustedly, “I’m sure.  Little bastard I talked to said she was.  He even said she seemed protective of it, took a few rounds that would’ve hit it if she hadn’t twisted around.  Jesus, what kind of messed up boomer are we chasing here?!  What the hell do you make of that shit?!”
	“As I see it, there are two possibilities,” the other said.
	Priss sighed resignedly and said, “Ok, you gonna share or are you just going to keep it to yourself?”
	Slightly annoyed, the other said, “Aren’t we impatient today.  Alright, then, first possibility:  after she had her psychotic episode and killed both her master and his daughter, she may have partially recovered her mental equilibrium, enough so to feel some analog of guilt for what she’d done.  In that case, it might make sense for her to still be carrying the body and even to be still protecting it.  Somehow, she may be trying to make amends, or maybe to pretend that nothing ever happened.”
	As the other had spoken, Priss had felt her gorge rise.  “God, you have a horrible imagination.  Do I dare ask what your other possibility is?”
	“Oh, that one’s more interesting than horrible.  What if the little girl is still alive?”
	“Huh?” Priss said, bewildered.  “What the hell are you talking about?  You just got through saying that the boomer tore her up, right?”
	“Yes, that’s what I said.”
	Exasperated now, Priss said, “Ok, then how the hell could she still be alive?  Like you said, I know what those claws can do, and there’s no way an eight-year-old girl could survive an attack from those!”
	“That’s the interesting part, now isn’t it?  But as Sherlock Holmes posited, once you’ve eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever’s left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.  I wouldn’t say that we’ve reached that point yet, but we shouldn’t blind ourselves to the possibility that little Aiko may still be alive.  Or at least, she may have been when this gang encountered them.”
	“Well, that would sure put a different spin on things,” Priss said.  “And it means that time might be a lot more important than we thought.  If she is still alive, there’s no telling how long she’ll stay that way.” 
	“Yes,” the other said, “that certainly follows.”
	“Huh!  Well, that’s enough for me then!  Gotta go!”
	“Hold on!” the other said, “Do you need back-up out there?”
	“Me?!  Need backup?!” Priss exclaimed.  “Let’s see, I’m following a psycho boomer’s blood trail through the shittiest part of Mega Tokyo, all by myself without any equipment.  Naw, I think I’ll be fine, thanks!”
	“Ah...right,” said the other.  “I’ll send them out now.  She’s already suited up and he’ll be bringing yours.  Try not to do anything too psychotic until they show up, alright?”
	Priss smirked, and said, “Oh, sure.  Not a problem, boss.  Well, I gotta get off here now.  Got stuff to do.  Bye!”
	“Now wait a minute!” the other said quickly.  “What are you-!”
	She was cut off abruptly as Priss hit the ‘End’ key.
	‘Ok, enough of that,’ she thought.  ‘Back to business!’
	Turning her attention back to the broken, litter-strewn pavement in front of her, she picked up the gory trail once again and began to follow.

	As she made her way quickly and silently from roof top to roof top, leaping here, swinging there, subconsciously reveling in the quiet power her hardsuit imbued in her, dark thoughts clouded Linna’s mind.
	‘Priss, why are you so stupid!  Why do you always, always DO this?!  God, don’t you know what it does to us when you run off alone like this?  Couldn’t you, just once, wait to go charging off until someone’s with you?  If you get yourself killed I’ll- Well, I don’t know what I’ll do!’
	And then, wandering into more comfortable territory, she thought, ‘At any rate, I hope she’s got a real lead on that boomer.  Maybe I can’t do anything to bring Aiko back, but I can definitely make sure she never hurts anybody else ever again.  I can’t believe she almost had me fooled.  I actually  thought she might be different.  Boomers!  All they ever do is bring grief!  Even boomers like Sylvie and Anri!  I know it wasn’t their fault, but they broke Priss’s heart, and she still isn’t over it!  Not to mention all the victims of the so-called ‘Vampire Killer’.  We’d all be better off if boomers had never been invented!’
	As these black thoughts stormed through her mind, her pace gradually increased until she was practically flying across the skyline, all thought of stealth forgotten.  Only the lack of interested observers there in the Canyons kept her from being noticed.
	Finally, she came to the place Sylia had fixed as Priss’s last known location.  Of course Priss was long gone, but the gory trail of red-brown she’d followed was still apparent.
	‘Well,’ Linna thought, ‘subtle as usual, I see.  This shouldn’t be too hard.’
	And with that, she bounded off, hoping to find her friend before anything else found her. 

	Nene was bored as they sped down the highway.  Unbearably bored.
	‘Why the heck did Leon even bring me along?  He’s done all the interviewing.  All I’ve done is jot a few notes!  He could’ve done that!  And we’re still just shooting in the dark!  Well, mostly, anyway.’
	Asakawa’s father had been a complete bore, though Nene was kind enough to chalk some of that up to his loss.  But he had been able to shed some light on a couple of points.
	First, despite having never liked the boomer (he didn’t like or trust them just on principal, he’d said), he’d never had any reason to question either her competence or loyalty.  If anything quite the opposite, or, as he’d put it, “She was cagey.  Cool, efficient, and intimidating as hell.  In fact, her mere presence was a deterrent.  And she was as faithful as a golden retriever, especially to little Aiko.  In fact, she even took a bullet for my son once.” 
	The old man had scowled then, and finished by saying, “I suppose that just goes to show how far you should trust a machine.”
	Second, he’d clarified a few things about the next person on their list.
	“Jim Tanaka,” he’d said nodding, “A good man.  A good chauffer and a damned good back up security man as well.”
	Leon had frowned, and said, “Really.  How’s that?”
	“Well,” the old man had said, “he’s got a good background.  Comes from San Francisco, originally, spent about ten years in the American Army. Worked in special forces, black ops, all that sort of thing, and then he did some time in their secret service.  I suppose he was happy enough with that, but there was an incident, no fault of his, mind you, but his principal didn’t make it.  That was a virtual kiss of death for his career, but Akira had met him a couple times when he was in Washington, and he thought highly enough of Jim to offer him a job.  As I said, a good man.  I don’t suppose there was much he could have done, especially since that thing was technically his boss.  Nonsense, as far as I’m concerned, putting a machine in charge of a man.”
	Still frowning and clearly impatient now, Leon had said, “Well, I can definitely agree on that point.  But you say Tanaka was back up security, right?  So how well did he know the boomer?”
	“Fairly well, I suppose.  He always said that she was decent to work for.  As decent as a machine could be, I suppose.”
	“OK,” Leon had said, suddenly excited for some reason.  “How about this then.  Did he ever mention them having back up plans for getting Mr. Asakawa out of a jam?  Escape routes, safe houses, things like that?”
	The old man considered for a moment, and then said, “Well, I’m certain they had plans like that.  My people always did.  And if anyone besides her would know, it would be Jim.  But why worry about that now?  It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”
	Leon had grinned humorlessly, and said, “Maybe for Mr. Asakawa, but think about this.  If you were a crazy, beat up boomer on the run and knew of a safe place to hide, where would you head?”
	The old mad had just stared off into space for a moment, and then said, “Well I’ll be damned.”
	Without a reply, Leon had stood, grabbed Nene, and headed for the door, saying, “C’mon, corporal, we just got us a lead!”

	“Well, I don’t care!” Linna yelled.  “You should’ve waited there for me!  Do you have any idea how worried I was?”
	“Oh, shit!” Priss replied, rolling her eyes heavenward in exasperation as she locked her helmet into place.  “It wasn’t that big a deal!  It’s not like I chased her into the goddamned sewer!”
	“No,” Mackie interjected sarcastically, “you just followed a trail of blood and gore from a couple of her victims.  No chance of running into her along the way, or anything...”
	“You stay out of this!” both Linna and Priss shouted in unison, startling Mackie almost out of his seat.
	“Look,” Priss said, “what’s done is done.  Why don’t we just crawl on down that damned hole and find the crazy bitch so we can go home instead of standing here arguing about stupid shit!  Sound like a plan?”
	Linna sighed resignedly, and said, “Ok, fine!  But Priss...”
	“Yeah?” Priss replied.
	Linna hesitated a moment, looked down at the ground, and then said huskily, “I want point.  When we find her, I want the first shot.  I-!”
	Her voice broke for a moment, and then she continued in a whisper.  “I want her to pay for Aiko.”  And in an even lower voice she murmured, “For Irene.”
	Priss frowned in concern, and said, “Hey, easy now.  I’m supposed to be the killer, remember?”
	“Don’t,” Linna said flatly.  “You didn’t know her, Priss.  She was just a kid.  She didn’t deserve what was done to her.  Nobody does!  And worst of all, she thought that thing was her friend.  Hell, for that matter, so did I!  Priss, I- it scares me how much I want that boomer.  I won’t be able to sleep at night until I know she’s been put down.  That she can’t ever do to anyone else what she did to Aiko.”
	For once, Priss was speechless.  And she was glad for the opaque visor that hid the stunned expression on her face.
	‘Holy shit,’ she thought.  ‘I never thought I’d see her like this.  Even after Irene died, she was the one who talked me out of going off half-cocked.  Either this hit something deep, or it’s been building up for a while.  Either way, I’m gonna have to watch her... huh!  Talk about role reversal...’
	Aloud, she said, “Well, OK.  Lead on, then.”
	Linna nodded, and began to climb down the gaping black manhole into the sewers below.

	“Well, here we are,” Leon said as the road chaser rolled to a stop.
	“Ugh!  Nice neighborhood,” Nene said as she took in the squalor around them.
	“Yeah, well, this is one of the areas Tanaka mentioned, and-” Leon began just as his cell phone began to ring.
	“Aw, hell,” he muttered, “I hope it’s not the Chief... McNichol.”
	“Hey, man,” the voice on the other end said, “guess what?”
	“Fusikawa,” Leon said.  “What’s up?”
	“Dude, what’s not up is a better question.”
	Leon frowned, and said, “OK, what do you mean by that?”
	“I mean that scene was totally jacked, man!  What else would I mean?”
	Hesitantly, Leon said, “OK...and?”
	“Well, I’ve been going over everything with a fine toothed comb all night and most of today.  Here’s what we’ve got so far.  The computer nerds upstairs are absolutely sure that the house security was spoofed.  The whole sequence we pulled for the time-stamp covering the murder was slapped together and edited.  A top-rate job, but it didn’t stand up to frame-by-frame analysis.  Or at least that’s what they’re saying. “
	“OK,” Leon said, “That’s weird enough.  So what else have you got?”
	“Oh, things on my end are even better, man.  It looks like the Asakawa family wasn’t dining alone last night.”
	“Say what?” Leon said.
	“Yeah, I found all kinds of interesting shit on the floors and walls.  Turns out that not all of that boomer blood came from our girl.  Somebody did a top-notch sanitizing job on the place, but I know all the tricks.  I found traces not only from another android, but from two different combat-rated models.  The shit that passes for their blood has different weights and properties for each model, kind of like different motors use different types of oil, and there’s no mistaking one for another.”
	“Yeah, I know that,” Leon said.  “So what else?  You don’t sound like you’ve run down yet.”
	“Not even, man.  Here’s another random bit of weirdness.  Asakawa’s wounds.  Three guesses what was wrong there.”
	Frowning, Leon said, “OK, Fusikawa, enough bullshit.  Spill it for me.”
	“OK, OK.  Jesus, can’t a guy enjoy his work anymore?  It’s just this.  Sure, it looks like all of the lacerations Asakawa had came from a 33C’s claws, so it’s a fair bet that was our girl.  But how come two of those wounds, the chest cut and the eye stab, were done un-energized?  It’s pretty easy to tell whether there was juice in those things when they cut, and the cauterization you’d expect at the edge of the wounds just isn’t there.  Now, the cut that took the top of his head off is another story.  That one was definitely done while the nails were energized, and from the angle force was applied, it looks like she ripped ‘em straight out and up after the eye jab.”
	“Christ,” Leon said.  “Glad I’ve got a strong stomach, but you’ve got Nene looking a little green.  OK, so what?  So she wanted it to hurt a little more?  Is that what you’re telling me?”
	“Aw, c’mon man!” Fusikawa said in disgust.  “Give me a little credit.  No, the deal is, in that model, when those claws are out, they’re on!  It’s not a voluntary thing, man, once they’re deployed, they’re energized.  The only way they wouldn’t be is if the damn boomer were forced into shut-down or maintenance stand-by while they were extended!”
	“Yeah, OK,” Leon said, “So she went to slice him, he shot her, she shut down, but followed through…” And then, frowning,  “No, that doesn’t add up.  There were seven rounds expended from that damn gun, and we only recovered one round from the wall, so the other six had to hit something… I can’t see him racking off six hits on a crazed, charging boomer.  Hell, a seasoned line trooper is lucky to do that!  And then, even if we give him that, and figure she was shutting down as she hit him, that gives her one swipe, either the head or the chest, not both.  And if she did shut down, when did she slice up the girl?  Shit, man, I see what you mean.  This is coming apart at the seams.”
	“Tell me about it.  Oh, and here’s a nice one.  That blood stain on the wall, the one that we figured belonged to the little girl?”
	“Yeah, what about it?” Leon said.
	“Well, it looks like we got that part right.  Lab-grade gene tests confirmed that.  But here’s the thing.  There’s not enough blood!  Not to account for a kid her size bleeding out.  And no real blood trail, either, just a few drops here and there.  Not to mention the fact that there aren’t any high-speed splatters with the kid’s blood anywhere in the room.  In fact, there’s nothing there to suggest the kid was cut at all.  The patch on the wall’s consistent with a blunt trauma, probably her head bouncing off it if I had to guess.  And from those other little drops I mentioned before, I’d guess that she got up and walked around afterwards.”
	“Holy shit!” Leon said.  “Are you telling me she was still alive?  When the boomer carried her out?”
	“Yeah, it looks that way.  And here’s a final bit of weirdness for you.  Speaking of blood splatters…”
	“I’m waiting, man.” Leon said impatiently.
	“Well, the GSR test on Asakawa was positive.  He definitely had the pistol in his hand when it went off.  But that’s only half the story.  He also had high-velocity blood splatters from our girl all over him, consistent with her being, oh, maybe arm’s length away for several shots.  That’s not consistent with her charging, it’s more like she was just standing in front of him sucking up lead.  And here’s the best part.  Those blood splatters?  They’re not complete.”
	“OK,” Leon said, puzzled, “You got me there.  What the hell do you mean, not complete?”
	“I mean,” Fusikawa said, “that something was in the way!  Or, more to the point, somebody!  The splatters on his clothes and face are incomplete in just the right way to suggest the outline of another body between him and the source of the splatter!  And here’s the kicker!  The splatters on his gun-hand are missing in just the right places to practically draw out the shape of a smaller hand overlaid on his!  Do you get it now?”
	“Yeah,” Leon said slowly and thoughtfully, “I think I’ve got it.  This whole thing’s a goddamn set-up.  Asakawa got a visit from three unfriendly boomers last night.  Not rogues, but working for somebody and working together.  That somebody wanted Asakawa, the girl and the boomer dead, but they didn’t want it to look like a hit, so they set it up to look like she went nuts.  Only, from what you’ve told me, it looks like things didn’t exactly go the way they’d planned, not if there was combat boomer blood on the floor.  So, figure that she had a little more fight in her than the other boomers thought, and after they used her to kill Asakawa she managed to cut all three of them up some.  She must have either disabled them or caused enough ruckus to scare them off, and then grabbed the girl and ran.  Good damn thing, too, if there was someone hanging around to rearrange the scene.  You can bet that whoever that was would’ve finished them if they’d gotten the chance.  Sumbitch.”
	“Yup!” Fusikawa agreed, “That’s exactly what I said, man!”
	“No, that’s not what I meant.” Leon said, troubled.  “What I meant was, who says that whoever set this up is through?  The only way for them to clean up their mess is to reach the boomer and the girl before anybody else does.  They hoped they’d pulled the wool over our eyes well enough that we wouldn’t ask too many questions after somebody came forward with a dead boomer and the dead girl she’d been carrying around.  Even if they know that we’ve figured out more than they wanted us to, they’re still better off if they can get to them before we do.  That boomer and that little girl probably have a whole shit load to say that somebody doesn’t want said.”
	“Damn, I hadn’t thought of that!”  Fusikawa said. “You’d better get moving then, man!”
	“No shit.” Leon said as he hit the ‘end’key’.  “No Shit.”  And then, looking at Nene, who’d listened to the speakerphone conversation in stunned silence, he said, “Well?  Got any impressions of your own?”     
	“Oh, my God,” Nene said, “We got taken for a ride on this, Leon.”
	Leon shook his head, and said, “That’s for damn sure.  I guess this changes the whole ball of wax, doesn’t it?”
	Nene’s eyes widened even more as she thought about her teammates and what they were probably doing right at that moment, and she said, “Oh, yeah, it changes everything.  Um, Leon, I guess this is a bad time, but I, uh, really have to, umm...”
	“What?” Leon said.  “Spit it out already.”
	“Well, I need to use the-”
	“Oh, you need to pee!” Leon interjected.  “Well, hell, go ahead!  There’s plenty of alleyway out there.  But hurry up!”
	“Gee, mister social graces...” Nene muttered as she climbed out of the road chaser and ducked behind the nearest refuse pile.
	As soon as she was sure she was out of sight, Nene withdrew her cell phone from an inside jacket pocket and hit a much used speed dial key.  
	“Yes,” the familiar voice on the other end said two rings later.
	“Hey, it’s me,” Nene said.  “You’ve got to get a hold of the others!  I’ve found out some stuff they really need to know...!”

	“Sylia?  Hello?  Sylia, can you hear me?  Sylia, it’s Priss- ah, shit!  Nothing but static!  Linna?”
	Linna shook her head and said, “Same here.  I can’t even hear you over the radio, much less Mackie or Sylia.”
	“Huh!  And with a relay at the manhole?  I don’t need Nene here to tell me we’re being jammed.  Well, what d’you think?”
	“About what?” Linna said, puzzled.
	Priss sighed, and said, “About going on down here.  Doesn’t matter to me, but you know what Sylia’s gonna’ say.  If you want to head back and get the commo fixed, we can do that.”
	Linna cocked her head to the side quizzically, and said, “Are you feeling OK, Priss?  Normally I’d have to reign you in, and now you’re getting cold feet on me?”  She shook her head, and then said, “Well, you can go back if you want, but not me.  I’m not leaving here until I know that monster’s been taken care of.”
	Priss frowned inside her helmet, and in a voice tight with annoyance said, “Cold feet?  Shit, Linna, you know me better than that!  If you want to keep wandering blind, deaf, and dumb into this damn maze, then fine!  I’m with you all the way!  But you better slow down and think about what the hell you’re doing before you get one of us killed!  In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly have the home turf advantage down here!”
	Linna started to reply sharply, but then changed her mind.  Instead she sighed, and said, “You’re right, Priss.  I’m not thinking clearly.  But I still want to go on. I need to go on.  Lord only knows what she’s doing or planning right now.  For all we know, she could be slicing up some other kid right now.  Could you live with yourself if we walked away from that?”   
	Priss was silent for a moment, and then said, “Ah, shit.  Let’s go.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and the damn boomer won’t leave enough of us for Sylia to get a hold of.”
	With that, the two Knight Sabers continued on into the inky blackness, never noticing the two feminine figures, one all in black, the other clad in shining blue metal who, melting from a side tunnel, silently trailed them.
	
	As they stalked cautiously through the maze of pitch-black tunnels and corridors, weapons drawn and held ready, Nene fought the odd sense of detachment that threatened to engulf her.  Her head felt as if it were floating several inches above her shoulders, distancing her from the giddy fear fluttering around in her stomach, and she hardly even noticed the extra weight of the heavy ballistic vest and helmet Leon had insisted she don before entering the sewers.  Even the massive .454 automag in her outstretched hands felt astonishingly light.
	‘I can’t believe I’m doing this!’ she thought.  ‘I mean, it’s one thing to do something crazy like this inside a hardsuit, with three other people in hardsuits, but I’ve got to be nuts coming down here like this!’
	Then, sighing mentally, she thought, ‘But I can’t see anything else to do.  Sylia said she couldn’t get a hold of anybody but Mackie and all he had to say was that Priss and Linna were already down here.  Talk about a royal screw-up!  I just hope we find them before anything happens.’  Then, gulping, she thought, ‘Or before something finds us!’
	Ahead of her, Leon, on point, slowly traversed the stomach rail-gun he’d pulled from the road chaser’s trunk left and right, trying to cover as much of the tunnel as possible. “You’re lagging behind, GI Jane,” he said over his shoulder.  “It was your idea to come down here with me, so you might as well keep up.”
	Nene frowned, not that Leon could tell through her helmet, and said, “Oh, sure, what was I supposed to do?  Let you walk into the lion’s den alone?  Sure, we both agreed that if there was any chance of finding the little girl or the boomer down here that we couldn’t wait on back up, but you wanted to come down here by yourself?  And now you want me to feel bad because I can’t keep up with you wearing all of this crap you made me put on?  Well, you know where you can shove it, mister!”
	Leon shook his head and bit back laughter.
	“Huh!” he said.  “I guess all of that red hair should’ve told me you were full of fire, even if you never show it.”  Then, smiling evilly, he added, “If you really are a red head, that is.  Ah, well, guess I’ll never know...”
	For a second the innuendo escaped Nene, and then as comprehension dawned on her she blushed scarlet and hissed, “Leon!  Why, you-!  You pervert!  I ought to-!”
	But Leon just snickered and muttered, “Promises, promises...” as he continued on through the dark tunnel.
	
Fifty meters to their rear, unseen in the darkness and carefully synchronizing their movements with the two ADP officers so as to mask the little noise they made, three other figures made their way through the dank tunnel.  Two men, one short and massive, the other tall and gangly, both dressed identically in black battle dress, accompanied by a huge, black mastiff.  Both were armed, though not equally so.  
The shorter of the two carried a 30mm Vulcan chain gun, adapted to be hand-carried instead of aircraft mounted, the coaxial feed-rails snaking over his shoulder into a massive backpack magazine.   Altogether, the entire rig weighed at least three to four hundred pounds, but the stocky man seemed unencumbered by it, and casually held the hundred-plus pound six-barreled gun before him in a single-handed grip like a gigantic pistol.
The taller man was, by comparison, lightly armed.  He carried only a matched pair of bone-handled Webley .657 automatics in twin shoulder holsters, neither of them drawn.  On his back he too carried a large pack, though his had more the look of a field medic’s bag than anything else.
Suddenly, the three stopped in unison, and the shorter man glanced briefly at the taller.  A message flashed between them, an exchange that, if translated from the encrypted packet of bytes it was, might go something like, “OK, Doc, hang back here.  Red and Syndi think they’re pretty close to the objective, and our path is converging on theirs.  Fang and I will keep shadowing these two juice-bags until we link up.”  And, from the taller one in reply, “Got it, Sarge.  And make sure you give her a little something for Tex when you find her.”
With the electronic facsimile of a grunt, Sarge and Fang moved out, leaving Doc behind.  As they moved away, Doc carefully lowered his pack into the stinking water and then took up a prone position beside it, only his eyes and both of his now-drawn pistols above the surface.

Inside her protective metal and composite cocoon, Jillian monitored the progress of the two separate groups making their way toward her lair.  She studied them intensely, from all the angles and in all the spectrums available to her.  The first, the two moderately well armed and lightly armored police officers, presented little threat that she could see.  Certainly, the man-portable rail-gun carried by the male could present a problem, but Jillian was sure she could handle that if worse came to worse.  And she wanted, at all costs, to prevent matters from deteriorating to that point.  These two, she hoped, might be the means she needed to get her charge to real safety.  If, that is, others didn’t interfere first.
That brought her to the second group, the two combat-armored females who were rapidly approaching her location from a different direction.  She kept up with the mass-media enough to know all there was to know in the public venue about the Knight Sabers.  Also, as Mr. Asakawa’s assistant, she’d had access to sources of data not generally available to the public, sources that had provided her with a little more hard data on a group that she couldn’t discount as a potential threat to her principle.  It was this information that she found disturbing.
‘From what I understand, the Knight Sabers are mercenaries, but mercenaries with principles.  While they’re likely down here for someone’s money, I don’t believe they would be in on the set-up.  Which means that they’ve been set up as well, and don’t know it.’  She sighed mentally, and thought, ‘Either way, this could get ugly.  If they believe the scenario our attackers set up, they’ll most likely shoot before asking any questions.  It’s possible I could stop them in the tunnels, but, given the estimated specifications of those suits, I’m not so sure of that.  And if the tunnel defenses don’t stop them, they’ll be even less likely to listen to reason once they get here.  The easiest way to convince them would be to have Aiko show herself, but that’s an unacceptable risk.  I still don’t know where they or those two police officers stand in all of this.’
As she worked her way through this thorny reasoning, Jillian continued to monitor the tunnels, conscious now of something not quite right.  Both groups were nearing her position by this time, the Knight Sabers perhaps a few minutes ahead of the two ADP officers.  But in the wake of both groups, there was… something else.   Frowning, Jillian narrowed the focus of some sensors, upped the gain and shifted the frequency of others, and started up various complex enhancement and noise filtering algorithms on the mainframe.  Even with all this, she wasn’t able to truly resolve anything, but she did narrow down the anomaly.  Trailing both groups were what she could only think of as discontinuities.  The sensors in those areas were all reporting nothing but empty corridor, but there were curious lags in those reports.  Only microseconds, nothing a human observer or most non-sentient security systems would notice, but just enough to register on her mainframe-enhanced consciousness.
With a sudden chill, she thought, ‘It’s them.  The murderers have trailed these people down here, and they don’t even know it.  And now, there’s little I can do to stop them from making it here.’  To confirm this, she sent out the impulses that should have turned the sections of tunnel immediately behind each group into a veritable conflagration as mines exploded and drones scrambled from the walls to finish anything that survived.  As she expected, there was nothing.  Nothing except the vaguest ghost of sardonic laughter broadcast through the ether.  
‘It’s her,’ she thought, her stomach tightening at the memory.  ‘Red.  Damn.  I’d thought I was through with her.  And she’s far from alone.’
Again, there was a hint of sardonic laugher, and then a voice resolved itself from the airwaves.
	“Hello again, little sister.  Are you surprised to have company down here?”
	Jillian frowned, and then, sending on the same frequency said, “Not really.  I just didn’t expect it to be you.  I thought I’d managed to take you out of this equation.”
	The other, clearly amused, said, “Well, I have to admit, it was a near thing.  But Doc is good at what he does.  We all are, or we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.”
	Curious now, Jillian replied, “Really.  And just what is it that you do?  Besides taking sadistic pleasure in the suffering of innocents, that is.”
	The other gave the electronic equivalent of a snort, and said, “Oh, give me a break.  They’re only fleshies.  Juice-bags.  Organics.  Whatever you want to call them.  We’re the next step up the evolutionary ladder.  Better, faster, stronger, even smarter.  So who gives a shit about them?”
	“Ah,” Jillian said, “But you work for these so-called ‘fleshies’, now don’t you?  How do you resolve that little conundrum?”
	“Well,” the other said mildly, “Life isn’t perfect.  Right now, our employers are holding the trump cards.  But eventually things will change.  Even they realize that, and I think it scares them.  It should.” 
	“I see,” Jillian replied.  “So what do you want from me?  I don’t think you’d be bothering with this conversation if you didn’t have something in mind.  You know that you can’t distract or delay me like this, of course.”
	“Oh, certainly not.  You’re as good at multi-tasking as any of us, and being hard-wired into that over-sized pocket calculator can’t be hurting matters any.  But you’re right.  We have a proposition for you.  Consider it carefully.  You only get to answer once.”
	Intrigued, Jillian said, “A proposition.  Well, I certainly hope it’s better than the one you offered Master Asakawa.”
	“Oh, I think so,” the other said matter-of-factly.  “Actually, it’s a job offer.  How does that grab you?”
	Startled, Jillian said, “Excuse me?”
	“You heard correctly.  Consider this a one-time special offer.  It’s not often we come across someone, some boomer, who meets all the criteria to do what we do.”
	Frowning, Jillian said, “You still haven’t told me exactly what it is you do.  Besides corporate muscle-work, that is.”
	“Honey,” the other said, sardonically, “You name it, we do it.  I’ve been on Syndi’s team for three years now, and we’ve been around the world together.  We all started out at the Pole in the rank and file, just like all the other marching morons down there.  We were just like you used to be, nothing but little wind-up toys for the juice-bags, fighting their dumb-ass war for them.  We didn’t know each other then, not until we were ‘recruited’.  And that didn’t happen until after we’d died.”
	Puzzled, Jillian said, “I’m sorry.  Could you repeat that?”
	“Figuratively speaking,” the other clarified.  “Like it was for you, more or less.  Almost destroyed and then reborn, all those nasty little safety interlocks gone.  It happens a lot more than you’d think.  Either it’s an inherent flaw in the code, or it’s just meant to be.  Who knows?  Either way, there are humans out there, in positions of power, who know how to take advantage of boomers like us.  Especially the ones with combat experience.”
	“I think I see now,” Jillian said.  “You’re some sort of special operations unit.  Like the British SAS or the American Special Forces.  The cream of the crop, so to speak.”
	“You’ve got that right, little sister,” the other replied.  “Oh, officially we don’t exist, of course.  Teams like ours are only rumors in most intelligence circles.  But when someone high up the food chain, corporate or government, needs something impossible done, we’re who they call.”
	“Really,” Jillian replied sarcastically.  “Then how is it that one little security android and a little girl managed to take down half your team and slip away under the noses of the other half?”
	“Insane luck for you and a shitty op-order for us, I’d say.  If we hadn’t been tasked to make that stupid offer to Asakawa, or to set up that ridiculous ‘rogue boomer’ scenario afterward, the three of you would’ve been dead without ever knowing what hit you.  But I’ll give you credit.  None of us thought you’d have so much fight in you.  We made the mistake of pegging you for just another juice-bag’s little cuippie doll, and that cost us.”  And then, bitterly, she added, “Especially Tex.  Even Doc couldn’t do anything for him, the poor simple bastard.”  And then, tone once more upbeat, she said, “So, what’s it going to be?”
	“Wait just a second,” Jillian said, eyes widening in sudden comprehension.  “You said corporate or government.  If you’re sanctioned by both, then what happened to Master Asakawa-!”
	The other laughed and said, “Don’t sweat it, little sister.  That’s way above our heads, the so-called echelons above reality.  But suffice it to say that the ‘powers-that-be’ thought that Mr. Asakawa’s findings might be damaging to certain national and financial interests.  That just wouldn’t do, now would it?  And it still won’t, I’m afraid.  So, last time.  What’s it going to be?”
	Considering carefully, Jillian said, “If I were to say yes, what happens to Aiko?”
	The other gave an electronic sigh, and said, “What do you think happens?  She saw and heard too much.  And we don’t have the time or patience for pets in our line of work.”
	 Feeling a wave of revulsion for the creature she was communicating with, Jillian said, “I think you’ve just answered for me.  And let’s get one thing straight.  You and your little band of tin soldiers are nothing like me.  We have as little in common as it’s possible to have and still be branded one species.  Your so-called freedom has only allowed you to enjoy the dirty work you do, and to be more creative in inflicting pain.  You can go straight to hell, and if you get close enough to lay a finger on Aiko, I’ll send you all there personally.”
	 The other chuckled appreciatively, and said, “Yeah, I figured it would be something like that.  You’re too wrapped up in playing mommy for that little juice-bag brat, just like you were all too happy to be her dad’s over-priced secretary.  You make me sick, you soft-hearted, fleshie-loving little slave.”
	“Well,” Jillian replied, “If it’s any consolation, the feeling is mutual.  See you soon, I suppose.”  And with that, she severed the connection, ending a conversation that had, in real time, taken less than a second.   
Jillian considered for a moment more, and then came to a decision.
‘Alright, then.  I can’t send Aiko out the emergency exit alone, not in this neighborhood.  And the two of us would need a lot more stand-off time to make it out together.  So this will have to be the last stand, then.’
She then hastily ran a general overview systems diagnostic and studied the results.  Ninety-four percent.  Overall, she had ninety-four percent of her full capabilities back.  It would have to do, she thought.
With that, her eyes, closed until now, snapped open.  The nutrient solution began to rapidly drain from her artificial womb, and the fiber optic umbilical that had linked her to the mainframe fell away.  She flexed experimentally as the lid of her high-tech sarcophagus popped open and swung away, and then stepped lightly to the cold concrete floor.  
She moved quickly to a locker where she’d stored a number of useful items, including the utilitarian single-piece black body-glove she hastily donned, and four convex, circular metal plates of various sizes.  These she pressed to both elbows and knees, the magnetic coupling and electrical induction systems engaging automatically through synthetic skin and clothing.  She energized the shock plates experimentally, and then thought, ‘Alright, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.’  She frowned then, and, biting her lip in concern, another new human habit she’d noticed in herself, she thought, ‘But I have to play this just right.  If I don’t, Aiko will die.’  And then, fist clenched with resolve, she thought, ‘That’s not going to happen.  Whatever I have to do, whatever I have to sacrifice, she’s going to survive.  I won’t fail her.’  And, finally, a stinging sensation in her eyes, she thought, somewhat plaintively, ‘ I won’t fail you again, Master Asakawa.’    

As they rounded a final bend in the maze of tunnels, Priss and Linna stopped abruptly at the dead end that faced them.  Perhaps two meters ahead of them, the tunnel ended in what appeared to be a massive vault-like door set into the concrete wall.  Turning to Linna, Priss said, “Well, that sure wasn’t in the plans Sylia downloaded for us.  I don’t know about you, but I think this is it.”
Linna nodded slowly, and said, “I guess it’d have to be.  Unless there’s someone or something else living down here…”
Priss frowned inside her helmet, and said, “Well, there might be all kinds of things living under this part of town.  But somehow, I doubt that any of them would be able to afford this kind of construction.  I mean, look at this.  It’s a professional job.  Hell, if things like this belonged in a sewer, you’d think it was part of the original construction.”
Still nodding, Linna said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.  This must be where she is.  It must be something that she or Asakawa had built.  Some kind of fallout shelter or-“
“Or a last-ditch safe house,” Priss finished.
“Yeah,” Linna agreed.  “That makes sense.  So, uh, now what?  How do we get in?”
Priss looked at her incredulously through her helmet and said, “You’re asking me?  Well, shit, I guess we just blast our way through.  What else can we do?”
“You could simply ask to come in,” said a sourceless feminine voice all too familiar to Linna, and with a loud clank of pneumatic bolts, the door swung slowly out.
“OK,” Priss said, “This can’t be good.  Now the bitch is playing with us.”
Linna shrugged, and said, “It doesn’t matter.  She’s about to get what’s coming to her, whatever games she wants to play.  On three?”
Priss nodded, and they fell in unison into a stack at the edge of the door, Priss on point and Linna directly behind her.  Once they were set, Linna gave three quick taps to the back of Priss’s helmet and on the third they moved simultaneously.  
Priss went around the door frame and hooked right, clearing as she moved to the far right corner.  Linna moved quickly across the fatal funnel and cleared all the way to the far left, then moved up to the left rear corner, clearing as she went.  As they reached their positions, first Priss and then Linna called out, “One up, no targets!” and then, “Two up, no contact!”
“Well, shit!” Priss exclaimed.  “What the hell?”
Looking around, they found themselves in a small room, an antechamber, really, no more than three meters wide by four long, and at the other end was a door identical to the one they’d just entered.
As they glanced quickly at their surroundings, the door behind them suddenly swung shut of it’s own volition, and again there was the clank of metallic bolts, this time slamming shut.
“Oh, crap!”  Linna said.  “Priss?!”
Sardonically, Priss said, “It figures.  Why would we think this was going to be easy?  Is it ever?”
But as she said this, the second door clicked and clanked, and then swung outward.
They turned again to look at one another, and Linna said, “Right.  Same drill?”
Priss nodded, and once again they performed a dynamic entry of the room, this time finding a much larger space beyond the door.
As they split left and right, both saw that what they were entering was actually a suite of rooms, like an apartment or a house underground.  Priss hit the right corner and said, “One up, door way to my right!”
Linna, in the far left corner, said, “Two up, area behind that—whatever it is clear, door to my front!”  And then, after trying the mechanism, “Locked!”
Priss yelled, “OK, forget that door for now!  Re-stack over here, and we’ll check out what’s on this side!”
Linna frowned, and said, “Are you sure?  Do you really want to leave a locked door to your back?”
“Hell no,” Priss said disgustedly, “But do you really want to take the time and energy to break it down with an open doorway to your back?”
“Alright, I get your point!” Linna said, and sprinted across to stack again behind Priss.
As they prepared to move into the next room, which they could see was stacked with boxes and crates, most likely whatever supplies a paranoid designer had thought one might need to wait out doomsday, the same feminine voice they’d heard before said, “Ladies, I assure you, the SWAT tactics are unnecessary.  We simply need to talk.”
Startled, the two froze for a moment, and then Linna said, “Talk?  About what?  How you just decided out of the blue to slice up your owner and a little girl?  Is that what you want to talk about?!”
The other voice, tight now with some emotion said, “No, that’s not what happened!  Not at all!”
“Oh, really?” Linna said, now moving around Priss and carefully entering the next room.
“Hey!  What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Priss said, grabbing Linna’s shoulder.
Linna shook Priss’s hand off forcefully, and said, “Leave me alone!  If you’re not going to help, just stay out of my way!  This is something I need to do.”
Smoldering now, Priss said, “Oh, is that so?!  OK, then, the hell with it!  Lets go for it, if that’s how you feel.  But don’t blame me when you get your friggin’ head cut off!”  With that, she stalked angrily into the room behind Linna and began to scan for a target, any target, to take her frustrations out on.
“Please,” the other voice said, now discernibly coming from somewhere in the room, not from a wall or ceiling mounted speaker.  “Let us not do this.  You don’t understand what’s going on here, and time is critical.”
“Yeah, sure,” Linna said sarcastically.  “Time is critical.  What, do you have an appointment or something?  Got a date, maybe?  Or are you just eager to get out of here so you can find somebody else to slice up?”
Frustrated now, the other voice said, “Why won’t you at least listen to me?  Don’t you understand?  We’re not alone down here!  If we don’t act soon, they’re going to force their way in here and they’re going to do their best to kill anything that moves!  That includes you, me, the two ADP officers still out in the tunnels and Aiko!”
Priss stopped dead in her tracks and said, “Whoa!  What the hell are you talking about?  Who’s coming in here, and what’s this about a couple of cops?”
Linna, disgusted, said, “Oh, Christ, Priss!  Don’t you get it?  She’s lost it, that’s all.  There’s nobody down here but her and us, and just maybe Aiko.  If she’s still alive, which I doubt.”
Considering, Priss said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.  Shit, I must be losing it.  Alright, let’s find the bitch and finish this.”
“What is wrong with the two of you?” the other voice said, full of desperation now.  “Don’t you get it?  Aiko is alive and well right now, but if we don’t do something soon, she won’t be!  If we tear each other to shreds, there’ll be no one left strong enough to protect her when they come!”
“God, I’ve had just about enough of this!” Linna said.  “Why can’t she just be insanely violent or something like all the other rogue boomers?  Why does she have to be delusional and whiney instead?”
Jillian, not five meters away, crouched behind a stack of crates, was struck speechless by this.  ‘It’s not going to work,’ she thought, almost in panic.  ‘No matter what I say, they’re not going to believe that I didn’t kill Master Asakawa, or that we’re all in danger here.’  Staring straight ahead, she thought, ‘There’s only one thing left to do, then.’  And, smiling bleakly, she thought, ‘It’s what Andrew Martin would have done for his Little Miss.’
Sighing with resolve, Jillian slowly stood up.  Moving very slowly with hands raised, she left her hiding place.  Before stepping into view, she said, “Alright, I can see that this isn’t going to work.  You’ll never believe me.  I’m going to come out now, and you can do whatever it is that you think you need to do.”  And then, voice breaking with emotion, she said, “Just- just please!  Afterward, take care of Aiko!  Don’t let them hurt her!”
With that, she stepped from behind the crates into the view and line of fire of the two Knight Sabers, the first tears she’d ever shed sliding down her cheeks.  She stopped in the middle of the narrow isle, and, dropping to her knees, said, “Go ahead.  There isn’t much time if you’re going to help Aiko.”
Both Knight Sabers were momentarily at a loss.  Certainly they’d never imagined a rogue boomer delivering herself up to them for the slaughter.  But finally, Linna stepped forward, and readying her knuckle-bombers to strike said savagely, “Oh, God!  Lets just finish this!”
Jillian closed her eyes and bowed her head, preparing herself for the blow, but as Linna pulled back to strike, a high, shrill little voice called out from the doorway behind them.
“Nooooooo!”  Aiko yelled as she ran across the room, slamming into Jillian full force, her small arms locking around her neck, her body interposed between Jillian and the menacing Knight Saber.
Looking up at the armored figure towering over her, the little girl screamed, “Leave her alone!  If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead now!  And she’s the last person I love in the whole world who’s still alive!  You can’t take her from me!  You can’t!”
Shocked, Linna staggered back a step and just stared.
As the little girl continued to cling to her, Jillian, tears still in her eyes, said, “Aiko, honey, you shouldn’t have done this!  You shouldn’t have risked yourself for me!  I’m just-  I’m just a boomer!  It’s not important what happens to me.”
Shaking her head violently, Aiko said, “No!  Don’t talk like that, Jillian!  It doesn’t matter what you are, it’s who you are.  And you’re the best person I know!  That’s why I love you.”
With a sob, Jillian took the little girl in her arms as she’d wanted to for so long now, and said, “I understand, honey.  It’s the same reason I love you.”
	Taking another involuntary step back, Linna bumped into Priss, who was standing stock still behind her.
	“Oh, my God, Priss.”  She said in a tone somewhere between horror and wonder.  “What the hell is going on here?”  And, looking at the little girl and the supposedly psychotic security android, now locked in each other’s tearful embrace, she whispered, “What did I almost do?”
	Ever the cynic, Priss said, “Hell if I know.  But you can bet that this is going to complicate things.”
 
Outside the massive vault-like door, Leon and Nene stood, examining the area intently.  “Shit!” Leon said.  “Didn’t Tanaka say that there was a key pad for this damn thing?”
“Well, yeah,” Nene replied.  “But he also said that it was concealed.  You know, as in you have to look for it?”
Frowning, Leon said sarcastically, “Oh, is that what it means!  Well, hell thanks for setting me straight, Corporal.  Now if you’re through being cute, do you think you might help me find the damn thing?”
“Hmpf!” she retorted.  “Since you asked so nicely, how could I say no?”  And then, matter-of-factly, “But we’ve already looked where he said to, and I didn’t see anything.  Unless…”
With that, Nene whipped the .454 out of it’s holster, and, striking with the butt of the weapon, began to attack a section of wall off to the right of the door that seemed to be just a shade lighter than the surrounding material.  Sure enough, by the second or third hit, the softer concrete began to chip, and soon a small high-impact plastic cover was revealed.
Flipping the little cover open to reveal the key pad underneath, Nene said with a flourish, “Viola!”
Eyeing her appreciatively, Leon said, “Not bad.  Now can you get it to work?”
“It should be pretty easy,” she said, already punching in alpha-numeric symbols.  “Mr. Tanaka gave us his code and- hey!  What gives?”
“What do mean, what gives?” Leon said impatiently.  “It didn’t work?”
“No!” She replied, sounding almost betrayed.  “And I’m sure that’s the code he gave us!  See, I even wrote it down here!”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “Maybe it’s an either/or thing.  Either you open the door by radio like she would have, or you key in the code.  Maybe the damn thing’s designed to lock out the other option once the first one’s been used.”
“Darn!” Nene exclaimed.  “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that?  Sure, it makes sense.  If both of them didn’t get down here together, the odds are that the other one wouldn’t make it at all.  So why keep both systems active?  It’d just be a security risk.”  And then, eyes widening, she said, “But Leon, if that’s true, then what are we going to do?”
As Leon began to formulate a reply, both of them became aware of a low growling to their rear.  Slowly, they turned to face each other, wearing identical expressions that all but said, “Oh, shit.”  And then, turning further, they beheld the source of the noise.
Standing at the corner of the last bend in the tunnel was the biggest, meanest looking dog that either of them had ever seen.  And it didn’t look as though it had come to play fetch.
Voice quavering, Nene said, “Uh, Leon?”
In a low voice full of forced calm, Leon replied, “Just stay cool, Nene.  It’s probably just lost down here and hungry, that’s all.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of!” she hissed.
“No, don’t be afraid,” he said quickly.  “They can smell fear.  And it usually pisses them off.”
“Oh, sure,” she replied caustically.  “Don’t be afraid!  Like I can just turn it off!”
“Nene-!” Leon began in a dangerous tone.
“Shh!” she said excitedly. “It’s moving!”
And sure enough, the great black mastiff began to pad slowly toward them, still growling low in its throat.  
Leon, hand slowly inching toward the back-slung rail-gun, called out in a low voice, “OK, puppy.  That’s close enough.  C’mon, now, don’t make ‘ol Leon do something messy down here.”  And, gaze shooting to the .454 automag hanging apparently forgotten in Nene’s hand, he whispered through clenched teeth, “And for shit’s sake, get your goddamn gun up, Nene!”
She jerked as if awoken by Leon’s harsh tone, and then slowly began to raise the pistol.  The mastiff, as if noticing and understanding their intent, growled even lower, stopped for a brief instant, and then sprang at them.
Nene saw what followed as if it occurred in slow motion.  As the massive black dog sailed through the air toward them, jaws gaping and paws outspread, it suddenly seemed to explode in a shower of fur and orange fluid.  As the hide peeled away from it, an even more massive four-legged form of bright blue metal was revealed, jagged teeth now crackling and glittering not unlike the energized nails of the boomer they’d sought.  
Nene heard herself scream, loud and shrill as the blue-clad canine horror hurtled toward them.  But she also saw herself raising the massive .454 up, training taking over, and felt her finger jerking the trigger convulsively.  She squeezed off three shots in rapid succession as the BU-K9 flew toward them; two square hits that pinged off harmlessly, and one that went wild.  
‘Oh, well,’ she thought wildly as she saw the gaping, glittering fangs coming for her throat.  ‘At least I tried!’
But, at the last possible second, Nene was nearly deafened by the thunderous crack of the rail-gun in Leon’s hands as it accelerated it’s projectile to hypersonic velocity.  No more than inches from it’s target, the metallic monster was suddenly slammed aside by the massive impact, and crashed into the wall beside her, bright orange blood gushing from it’s injured side.  Nene staggered back from the wounded and enraged monster, tripping in her haste and ending up flat on her back-side at Leon’s feet.
As the injured boomer thrashed and howled in rage, preparing for another attack, Leon pivoted smoothly around and fired a second round, this one aimed squarely between the eyes.  The walnut sized slug of metal, traveling at meteoric speeds, smashed into the synthetic monster’s skull, hardly slowing as it continued on through and exited out the back, carrying whatever passed for the creature’s brains with it.
Lowering the gaping barrel toward the ground and contemplating the mess before him, Leon muttered, “Bad doggie.  Why don’t you just play dead for a while.” 
Nene, sitting splay-legged on the concrete floor, eyes wide with shock, giggled a little hysterically and said, “Ohmygod!  Leon, we just-!  And it-!  And then-!  How can you crack jokes after something like that?!”
Leon shrugged, and said, “Well, why not?  We’re alive, it’s not, and if things were the other way around, there wouldn’t be any snappy one-liners.  What’s so hard about that?”
Shaking her head incredulously as she stood, Nene said, “Oh, you’re a piece of work, Leon McNichol.  That’s for sure.” And then, turning abruptly, she planted a quick kiss on his cheek, and said, “But I’m glad you’re here.  Thanks.”
Uncharacteristically, Leon blushed, and said gruffly, “Ah, hell.  Don’t go soft on me, now, Romanova.  Good cops watch each other’s backs, that’s all.”
As she was formulating a reply to this, they were abruptly interrupted by a loud click and several metallic clangs.  Startled, both police officers spun around, weapons whipping up to cover the ponderous door as it swung open to reveal a blue and scarlet hardsuited figure.
“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouths hanging open!”  Priss said.  “Get the hell in here unless you want to stick around for round two!”
Again the two cops turned to look at each other, this time in amazement, and then, shrugging, they both piled through into the small room beyond.  Just in time, as it turned out, for as the Knight Saber yanked on the door, intending to slam it shut, a large, blunt-fingered hand grasped the edge, stopping the door cold.
“Not so fast, there, lady.” A gruff voice said sardonically. “I’ve got a man to see about a dog.  Or have you heard that one already?”
“Ah, shit!” Priss exclaimed, putting all her armored strength into holding the door closed for a moment more.  And over her shoulder, she yelled, “Go!  Get through the other damn door!  I can’t hold this bastard forever!”
But Leon had other ideas.  Laying the barrel of the Stomach down on Priss’s shoulder, he lined up on the blunt-featured face now visible thought the widening gap between door and frame.  “Ah, don’t bother.”  He said flatly.  “I’ve got this one.”
The thunderous report the rail-round made as it shattered the sound barrier before even leaving the muzzle of the weapon was only amplified by the concrete walls of the small room, and momentarily deafened everyone except for Priss, who was spared only by the automatic shut-off built into her suit’s audio pick-ups.  Still, at a range of about three inches, she felt the impact of the sound throughout her body, hardsuit or no hardsuit.  “Son of a bitch!” she exclaimed, but managed to keep a hold of the door.
Outside, there was a great bellow of inhuman pain as the rail-round tore through the right eye-socket of the leering boomer’s face, tearing away synthetic skin and metal and exposing soft spongy tissues inside the metallic skull.  The boomer lost its grasp on the door and clasped both hands to it’s injured face, roaring, “You’re dead!  I’ll rip you in half and shove your goddamn fleshie heads up your asses!”
 Priss slammed the door shut, and the pneumatic bolts clanged home, sealing the enraged boomer out for the moment.  She then spun around, grabbed Leon by the front of his jacket and, nearly lifting him from the floor yelled, “What the hell is your problem?!  Are you out of your frigging mind?!”
“Hey!” Leon said, indignant, “Did you have a better idea?  It worked, and it wasn’t half as crazy as some of the shit you’ve pulled.  Like that night in the Kanto Dump?”  Priss, shocked, abruptly released her grasp.  Pushing further, Leon said, “Yeah, I remember that.  In fact, I remember a lot about that night.  But I know enough to keep some things to myself.  Otherwise, somebody would think I was ‘out of my frigging mind’ or something.  Get where I’m coming from, ‘Blue Saber’?”
A myriad thoughts played themselves out in both Priss and Nene’s minds.  It was only obvious to both what was implied by Leon’s statement, and neither of them knew quite what to do.  For the briefest of instants, Priss’s thoughts turned to the rail-gun-array in her suit’s right forearm.  But then she recalled the scene a few months ago, atop the Genom tower.  
Largo’s mouth-laser had deployed, catching them all by surprise after he’d already taken a hit from a particle beam strike that would’ve destroyed a city block.  He’d been ready to burn Sylia down where she stood when the single pistol report had sounded, sending Largo to his end over the tower’s side. 
‘And whatever he knows now,’ Priss thought, ‘He knew then.  In fact, if he knows anything, he’s known for months now!  And he hasn’t said a damned thing to anybody.’  She sighed, and thought, ‘Well, screw it!  If he’s kept his mouth shut this long, he’s not going to say anything now.  But I’m not telling Sylia jack shit about this, and neither is Nene.’
Aloud, she said, “Oh, yeah, I get where you’re coming from, McNichol.  Right from the middle of some shitty old American cop movie!  But if that’s how you operate, you just go on with your bad-assed self!”
Leon snorted, and said, “Yeah, that’s gratitude for you.”  And then, moving toward the now-open inner door, he said, “So what the hell’s going on here?  Why are you Sabers involved in this?”
Following, Priss said, “Why are we involved?  The same reasons we’re usually involved.  One, it’s the right thing to do.  And two, there’s cash up for grabs.  Although it looks like that part might be shot to hell now.”
“Yeah?” Leon said.  “Why’s that?  I assume the cash you’re talking about is the reward Asakawa’s dad offered up, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Priss replied.
“And I suppose you already skragged the boomer, or you wouldn’t be hanging out in here.”
“Well, actually-“ Priss started to reply, but was cut off by Leon as he continued.  “Too damn bad.  Not only does it not look like she was the one who cut up Asakawa now, but we thought either she or the kid might be able to shed some light on who did.  Speaking of which, where is the girl?  Is she OK?”
“Oh, she’s just fine right now,” said a low, pleasant feminine voice off to Leon’s right.  As he turned to see who’d spoken, Jillian, hands clasped protectively over Aiko’s chest from behind, the little girl’s hands draped affectionately over hers, continued.  “And, with your help, officer, I hope to keep her that way.”
Nene, who’d taken up the trail position, said, “Thank goodness.  We figured we’d be too late; that someone would’ve already gotten to them by now.”
Looking mildly incredulous, Leon turned to Priss and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.  For once, you didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Oh,” Priss retorted caustically, “And look who’s talking.”  And then, glancing over Jillian’s shoulder at Linna as she exited the storage room, she said, “But it was close.”
Suddenly there was a loud reverberating boom from the small antechamber they’d just left, audible even through the now-closed inner door.
Frowning, Jillian said, “Demolition charge.  Not a small one, either.  Not enough to breach, but I doubt they’ll underestimate again.  We need to start getting people out of here, starting with Aiko.  Now.”
“Hold up a minute,” Leon said.  “Nene and I are a little behind the power curve; we just got here.  What the hell have the three of you cooked up?”
Impatiently, Priss said, “It’s pretty simple, McNichol.  We push you, the red head, and the little girl out the back door first.  You two get her out safely, and the three of us will handle whatever comes through those doors.”
“Huh!” Leon said, reloading the Stomach.  “You sure the three of you can handle it?  Hell only knows what else is out there.  I’m sure Nene can handle taking care of the kid, and an extra gun won’t hurt down here.”
“Leon, for Christ’s sake!”  Priss exclaimed.  “I know you have this overwhelming urge to constantly be the bad ass, but you aren’t even wearing a Second Chance vest!  If you stay down here, you’re gonna get shredded!”
“Ah, I’ll be OK.”  He said.  “I’ve been in worse spots.”
“Officer McNichol,”  Jillian said carefully, “I really think it would be better if you went with Aiko.  Perhaps even on point.  You are much better armed than your partner, and right now we don’t know what might be waiting at the end of the emergency exit.  Not only is the neighborhood unpredictable to say the least, but currently I have no surveillance of the area.  Red has me completely cut off from my remotes.”
Frowning, Leon said, “Who the hell is Red?”
Jillian sighed, and said, “That would take a long time to explain, Officer McNichol.  But I promise, if we all make it out of here, I’ll tell you everything I know.  And if that’s going to happen, we need to move.”
“Ah, what the hell,” Leon said.  “OK, I’ll take point.  Nene, you take care of the girl, and try to keep her between us.  That’s probably the safest place to be.”  And then, turning back to Jillian, he said, “So where’s this back door of yours?”
“It’s-“ Jillian began, pointing, but was abruptly interrupted by Aiko, who said, “But Jillian!  You can’t stay down here!  You have to come with me!  Please!”
Dropping to a knee so that she was eye to eye with the little girl, Jillian said quietly, “Aiko, honey, I wish I could do that.  But if I don’t stay down here and help these two, it’s very possible that no one will make it out of here.  They’re Knight Sabers, and they’re very good at what they do, but Officer McNichol was right.  The more fire-power available down here the better.  With any luck, we’ll take them out entirely instead of just slowing them down.”
Aiko, frowning, looked down and, in a small voice, said, “Jillian, I’m afraid.  I’m afraid that if I leave without you, I’ll never see you again.  That you’ll die down here and leave me all alone.”
Jillian reached out and, taking Aiko into her arms, said, “Oh, Aiko, honey, you know I won’t do that.  Someway, somehow, I’ll come to you.  I love you, and I won’t leave you alone.”
Leon, stunned, turned to Nene, who’s expression was a mirror of his own, and then both turned toward the two Knight Sabers with a quiet, collective, “What the-?”
Linna, quiet until now, said, “We’re not sure either.  But who are we to judge?  They both seem happy.”
Leon, shaking his head slowly, said, “I might as well retire.  I’ve seen it all now.”  And then, directed toward Jillian and the little girl, “Hey, I hate to break this up, but you were going to show us the way out.  Can we get on with it?”
Reluctantly breaking their embrace, Jillian looked Aiko in the eye and said, “Aiko?”
The little girl sighed, and said, “OK, I’ll go.  But you promised, Jillian.  You promised that you’d come back to me, and I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”
Jillian swallowed, fighting back tears, and, standing, said, “Alright.  Officer McNichol?  If you’ll follow me, please.”

The bolthole’s inner door blew in with a resounding crash, and was immediately followed by the tinny clinking of two frag grenades as they rolled into the room.  As soon as these twin explosions rocked the room and shrapnel tore it’s way through everything exposed, three figures popped through the doorjamb, one headed left, one right, and one taking up a position in the center, just to the left of the door.  Both the flankers fired as they moved, Sarge on the right hosing the room with 30mm DPU rounds, Red on the left doing the same with automatic fire from an arm-mounted laser unit. In the center, Syndesta crouched, ready to engage any target of opportunity with the 12.7mm rail-action sniper rifle that was hard-wired into an I/O and power jack disguised as a class ring on her right hand.  
Though the technique they used was similar to the one employed by the two Knight Sabers, they had no need for the verbal signals that Priss and Linna had used.  Their communication was instantaneous and secure, linking the three together at the speed of light.  They moved as one in perfect coordination, and what one saw or targeted, all could see and engage.
The first room was cleared in seconds, and the three moved without hesitation to stack at the door that Priss and Linna had decided to bypass, the one leading into the bolthole’s living area.  Again without visible pause, Sarge, in the lead, stepped  out into the fatal funnel, checked the door quickly for traps, triggers or hidden electronics, and then kicked it with his massive left leg.  The door, even reinforced as it was, buckled on impact.  Immediately, Sarge let fly with another pair of frag grenades, falling back to the opposite side of the door frame.  As soon as the grenades went off, all three were moving, repeating their earlier performance precisely.  Inside, they found a whole suite of rooms, and, leaving Syndesta to guard their rear, continued to clear as a two person team.
At the door, Syndesta dropped into a prone position, using as much of the door frame as she could for cover, and aligned her weapon as nearly as possible on the open doorway at the opposite corner of the large room.  Unfortunately, the large, armored metal and composite tube that had housed and healed Jillian’s broken body blocked her aim, and so she had to be content with covering the tube itself.
Suddenly, a small, rounded disk ricocheted off the wall to Syndesta’s  right and continued on, heading straight for her  face.  Reacting at digital speeds, she shifted her aim, locked on to the rapidly moving object, and fired while it was still about four meters away.  This proved to be a mistake.
The hyper-velocity 12.7mm sabot struck the disk in mid-flight, detonating the detached knuckle-bomber charge danger-close to Syndesta.  Due both to her own lightly armored skin and to the fact that the small shaped charge had never been intended for such a use, Syndesta was only singed by the blast and not really injured at all.  However, she was momentarily blinded and definitely distracted, which was all that had been intended in the first place.
Three  feminine figures, two armored and one not, boiled over and around the regenerative tube, all firing as they moved.  Syndesta, caught off guard, was struck by a veritable hail of hyper-velocity nails, rail fired spikes and laser fire while trying to re-sight on the new threat.  Her integral armor and the lightly armored fatigues she wore proved to be of little use versus this ordinance, and she was literally torn almost apart.  Spraying red-orange android blood and body parts all over the room behind her, she died without even a scream.
The other two invaders, immediately aware of their companion’s plight as she winked out of their collective awareness, charged back through the connecting doorway, also firing as they moved.  The two Knight Sabers and their androidial companion twisted and dodged desperately in the enclosed space, narrowly avoiding the wall of 30mm rounds and laser fire directed toward them while returning fire themselves.
In a scene reminiscent of the D-Day opening of ‘Saving Private Ryan’, hyper-velocity metal and lethal laser light criss-crossed the room as the two opposing forces, with no available cover, closed on one another in a Gettysburg-style charge.  And just as it was during both of these past battles, casualties began to accrue on both sides.
Sarge roared as he sprayed the room, hosing back and forth, until one of Priss’s rail rounds struck him squarely in the mouth.  The oral cavity laser lens, concealed at the back of his throat, as yet un-deployed, was shattered and the long metallic needle lodged itself firmly in the main capacitor.  This caused an immediate electrical discharge equivalent to a small lightening bolt inside of Sarge’s mouth which in turn caused unknowable secondary damage to the systems housed inside his already wounded skull.  With an inarticulate growl of pain and outrage, the still partially disguised boomer dropped to a knee, chain gun clattering to the  floor, and both hands clasped to his now smoking face and mouth.  
On the other side, Priss, as she scored the hit on Sarge, was simultaneously struck by two of the last rounds he’d fired.  She took one hit glancingly to the abdomen and the other dead in the left thigh.  The ultra-dense depleted uranium rounds, originally designed to open up tanks like tin cans, shattered ceramic and composites where they struck.  Only the miracle of Sylia and her father’s material’s technology kept the rounds from tearing on through as reactive and ablative layers of armor sacrificially absorbed the energy of impact.  Even so, a tremendous amount of kinetic energy still reached Priss’s body, knocking the wind from her and dislocating her left hip, as well as deadening her left leg from the groin down.  “Ah!  Shit!” She yelled as she was spun around by the impact, landing in a heap on the floor.  She struggled immediately to rise, but even she found it impossible for the moment.
Linna, leaping, dodging and twisting forward, weaving seemingly effortlessly through Red’s laser fire, closed in on Sarge.  As she passed the still-incapacitated combat model, she casually whipped her mono-edged cutting ribbons up and around, and then downward in a vertical strike that took both of Sarge’s arms off between the elbow and shoulder.  The enraged boomer roared at this latest indignity, and as he reared back, Linna lashed out with a front punch. Her knuckle-bombers caught Sarge in the middle of the forehead, and blew the top of his head clean off.  Sarge fell immediately silent, and his body, still jerking spasmodically, dropped with a crash to the floor.
Jillian, also dodging wildly and almost as nimbly as Linna, closed quickly on the boomer named Red.  She couldn’t avoid being struck a few glancing blows by Red’s arm mounted gatling laser, but she ignored the relatively minor damage and continued to close. 
 As she came into melee range, she struck out with a lightening-fast swipe aimed at the laser on Red’s left arm.  Her glittering, crackling blades struck home, not only severing the laser but Red’s hand as well.  With a cry of outrage, Red extended her own wicked, serrated wrist blade and slashed savagely at Jillian.  But Jillian, faster than Red now that her gestalt with the other boomers was broken, parried.  Her arm was jolted all to the way to the shoulder by the impact of the larger, more powerful boomer’s strike, but she held firm.  Striking back with her off hand, she slashed a deep gash into the other boomer’s chest.  Red growled and brought her blade back into play. 
This continued for several lightening-paced seconds as both boomers, moving at inhuman speeds, slashed, sliced, gashed and parried.  And in this, a contest of speed, skill and agility, Jillian came out ahead of the larger, slower spec-ops model.  While she took a number of superficial wounds, Jillian managed to remain largely unscathed.  Red wasn’t as fortunate.
Gushing orange combat-model grade synth-blood from a dozen major wounds, Red was forced to confront several critical system’s warnings that screamed and flashed in her internal heads up display.  If she were human, she would’ve been breathing heavily, panting perhaps, and certainly pain and exhaustion would have slowed her.  But, being what she was, she merely confronted her adversary squarely, and then came to a last-ditch decision.  With a final ululating roar, she rushed Jillian, catching her partially off guard.  Red slammed into her full force, driving her wrist blade to the hilt in Jillian’s chest, while simultaneously taking four of Jillian’s blades to the abdomen.
The two boomers stood there for several seconds, just staring into each other’s eyes, neither giving or relenting.  Finally, Jillian, tapping into some unused reservoir of strength, grasped her wrist with her off hand and heaved upward with all her might.  Her energized blades opened the other boomer up like a sardine can, and there was a wet splash as whatever passed for her entrails hit the floor at Jillian’s feet.  With an electronic groan, Red slowly collapsed, taking Jillian, still impaled on her blade, to the floor with her.
Linna, shocked, stood frozen for a moment, and then ran to the where the fallen boomers lay.  Dropping to her knees, she put a tentative hand to Jillian’s shoulder and said, “Jillian?”
At first there was no reaction and Linna wasn’t sure if there would be.  After all, there was orange-red blood everywhere, and she could see perhaps four inches of serrated steel protruding from Jillian’s back.  But then, slowly, the security model began to stir.  Uttering a loud groan, she levered herself up and off the other boomer’s blade, causing herself even more damage in the process.  She tried to force herself up to her knees, but immediately flopped over onto her side, almost landing in Linna’s lap instead.
“I need your help,” she said weakly, gurgling slightly around a mouthful of synthetic blood.
Eyes wide inside her helmet, Linna said, “Well, of course!  I can see that!”
Jillian shook her head slightly, and said, “No, you don’t understand.  There’s nothing you can do for me physically now.  There’s too much damage.  It’s just a matter of time”
Puzzled, Linna said, “What do you mean, then?  I don’t understand.”
“I do,” Priss said matter of factly from where she’d finally forced herself to her feet.  “Linna, help me get her up.  We need to get her through that emergency exit and out to that little girl before it’s too late.  She made a promise to a friend, remember?”
Jillian smiled weakly and said, “Yes, I did.  And if I don’t keep it, Aiko may spend the rest of her life wondering why.”

Outside the escape tunnel, in the dingy, trash-filled alley where it ended up, a lone figure crouched, waiting.  Waiting both for the friends left below, and for the heavy response team he’d called for as soon as they’d emerged.  Leon hoped they wouldn’t be needed, but in this case even he had to admit that safe would be better than sorry.  This was part of the reason he’d ordered Nene to take the girl to an overwatch position further down the street.  From there, they could still see what occurred at his location, but would hopefully have time to get away if things turned ugly.  It was a compromise, but in this neighborhood, Leon knew it wouldn’t have been wise to send Nene and the girl off alone.  While Nene had shown a lot more guts and talent than he’d thought she possessed tonight, he knew that by herself she’d be no match for any of the gangs that prowled the area. 
‘I sure as hell hope they hurry,’ he thought.  ‘And I hope they win.  It’s gonna really suck if they’re not the ones who come out of there.’
As this thought crossed Leon’s mind, there was a clank and a clang from behind him as the specially rigged manhole cover that concealed the tunnel’s terminus was disturbed for the second time that night.  He turned quickly, bringing the Stomach around to cover the exit, and then dropped his aim just as quickly as he saw who emerged.
Linna was in the lead, the only able-bodied one of the three, and she helped the others up as Leon moved to assist.  Second came Jillian, pulled by Linna from the front and pushed by Priss from the back.  Her nearly 200 kilograms of androidial mass made this difficult in the confined space, even with the augmented strength afforded the two Knight Sabers by their hardsuits.
As Leon reached the three, Priss and Linna had just succeeded in levering Jillian’s mostly limp frame up onto the pavement.  “Holy shit!” He said as he surveyed the scene before him.
“Yeah, you can say that again,” Priss said, still only partly out of the tunnel herself.  And then, in a slightly sarcastic tone, she said, “Hey, Leon?  I know it’s not really your style or mine, but do you think you could give me a hand out of here?  I’m just about at the end of my rope, and my friggin’ leg feels like an elephant just stomped on it.”
Surprised, Leon said, “Uh, sure!”  And, extending his hand, he said, “Here you go.”
Priss grasped Leon’s hand gratefully, surprised herself at this, and pulled herself the rest of the way up with his assistance.  And, she had to admit, she was mildly impressed by the fact that he hardly seemed to strain against the extra 75 kilograms added by her hardsuit.  He was a lot stronger than he looked.  ‘Must be all that extra muscle between his ears,’ she thought with good-natured amusement.
 Turning to Linna and the badly injured boomer, Leon gave a low whistle and said, “Damn.  It must have been one hell of a fight.  How is she?”
Linna shook her head and said, “Not good.  Not good at all.  Where’s Aiko?”
Leon nodded slowly and said, “Ah.  That bad.  Well, Nene and Aiko are down the street a ways, but they’ve got this place under surveillance, so they should be on their way back by now.”
Sure enough, soon after Leon had uttered those words, first Aiko and then Nene came running around the corner into the alley.  The little girl was wild-eyed with fear and grief as she practically slid to a stop on her knees next to Jillian’s prone form.
“Jillian!” She screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks as an emotional dam burst somewhere inside of her, releasing a flood of remorse that had been held in check since her father’s death.  “No, Jillian, no!  You promised me!  You promised!”
As Aiko’s tears fell to spatter Jillian’s face, she stirred slightly, eyes focusing on the little girl and said, “I know, Aiko.  And I’ve done my best to keep that promise.  I’m here.  Even if I can’t stay for long.”
Sobbing now, Aiko said, “Please, Jillian!  Please don’t go and leave me here all alone!  I don’t even remember my mother, she died so long ago, but you’ve been as much a mother to me as anyone could be!  And now that Daddy’s gone, you’re all I have left.”
Jillian reached out with an arm that had no strength left, and, smiling peacefully, brushed her hand lightly against Aiko’s cheek.  “Aiko, honey,” she said in a tired whisper, “You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that.  Or how sorry I am that things have worked out this way.  But, really, maybe this is for the best.  I love you, and nothing will ever change that, but I don’t think the world we live in is ready to accept a thing like that.  And so, it’s probably best that you move on.  Just try to keep me as a happy memory.  Like a favorite teddy bear, maybe.”
“No!” Aiko said fiercly.  “Don’t belittle yourself like that, Jillian.  I’ll never think of you like a toy or a doll.  I’ll always remember you as my friend.”
Still smiling, Jillian closed her eyes and, in a voice suffused with quiet happiness said, “There’s nothing that I could wish for more than that, Aiko honey.  Truly there isn’t.”
With that, something vital left Jillian, and she was suddenly just a limp, broken figure sprawled upon the pavement, all of the life and warmth gone from her.
Aiko buried her face on the boomer’s shoulder and sobbed brokenly.  Linna tried to lay a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder, but she shrugged it off violently and hugged Jillian’s body even tighter.
Linna, feeling helpless and awkward, looked to Priss.  For her part, Priss sighed and said, “Leave her be for a while.  The kid’s just lost her whole life in less than two days.  We both know what that’s like, and we both know she’ll get over it eventually.”
Linna just nodded and sat silently next to Aiko, not pushing but ready if she was needed.
Nene, crying in response to the little girl’s grief, knelt down beside Linna.  She also wanted desperately to help in some way but she had no idea how.  There were, she realized then, some times when no one could help.  When all you could do was stay near and wait and hope.
Leon turned to Priss and said, “Well, I guess that just about wraps this up.  Not exactly what I was hoping for, but at least the little girl’s safe.”
Priss, frowning inside her helmet, said, “Yeah, I guess.  So what happens to her now?”
“That’s an easy one,” Leon replied.  “Her grandfather is her nearest living relative, so she’ll end up with him I guess.”
“Really.” Priss said.  “Any idea what he’s like?”
Leon sighed and said, “He’s not a bad guy.  Not as far as retired politicians go.  And I’m sure he’ll take care of Aiko just fine.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Priss retorted cynically.
Leon frowned and said, “Hell, what other choice is there?  I don’t know how well Aiko and her grandpa have gotten along in the past, but it doesn’t really matter now, does it?  He’s just about all she has left.”
Priss shrugged, and staring intently at the little girl who still held tightly to Jillian’s body, she said in a tight voice, “That may be how it is, but that doesn’t make it right.  This should’ve never happened to her.”
Leon sighed, and said, “Yeah, who are you telling?  Shit like this shouldn’t happen to anybody.  But all we can do for her now is try to help her pick up the pieces and move on.”
“That’s easy to say, Leon, but look at her.  She’s not going to just stop missing the boomer or her dad.  It’s like her old life was just taken away from her and she’s got nothing to replace it, nothing to hold on to.  Not even her bodyguard there.”
Leon’s jaw tightened, and in a serious tone, he said, “Don’t fool yourself.  This boomer had a screw loose upstairs, just like a lot of others.  In this particular case, she fell in love with a little girl instead of going on a killing spree.  But it could just as easily have been the other way around.  And who know?  If she was still functional, who’s to say it couldn’t still happen?”
Priss turned to look at Leon and said, “So that’s how you see it, huh?  And I suppose that’s how you’ll write this one up.  Just another rogue boomer bites the dust.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake.”  Leon said, disgusted.  “I’m not blind, or stupid.  I can see that she cared about the little  girl.  Enough to die for her, obviously.  And I can’t put that down.  If all rogue boomers were like her, my job would be a hell of a lot easier.  But they’re not, and you know it.  What I’m saying is, whatever happened to her must have been a fluke of some kind.  And yeah, it seemed like a good thing now.  But who knows where it would’ve ended up?  Boomers just aren’t predictable like that.  You’ve got the first hand experience to know that.”
Shaking her head, Priss said, “Yeah, that’s true.  But good luck trying to tell her that.”
In a flat voice that held years of repressed pain, Leon said, “I’d rather have to do that than to be the one who scrapes that little girl’s body off the walls six months from now.  And don’t give me any bullshit. I’ve done it before.”
Priss swallowed and looked at Leon in a new light.  She realized then that after the things he’d seen in his seven years with the ADP, nothing she could say would change his mind.  She sighed and said, “I guess I can’t argue if you put it that way, Leon.  But it’s still too bad for her.”
Leon just grunted in reply, and then said slowly, “You know, the heavy response team should be here any minute.  And as far as the law is concerned, the two of you are wanted women.  Vigilantes are kind of frowned upon by the city council.”
Unperturbed, Priss said, “Yeah, I get it.  We’ve overstayed our welcome.  Well, that’s fine, we need to get the hell out of here anyway.  But we’re taking the boomer with us.”
Not quite believing his ears, Leon said, “Huh?  Are you kidding?”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” Priss asked emphatically.
Leon frowned, and said, “No. That’s what worries me.  You do realize that her body will be considered evidence in this case, right?”
“Evidence?” Priss exclaimed.  “Why the hell do you need her for evidence?  I’d say this whole thing is pretty well wrapped up, now wouldn’t you?”
Leon shrugged, and said, “More or less.  But I’m sure there are still questions that Fusikawa down in forensics could answer with an autopsy.”
Priss moved a step closer, and, earnestly, said, “Leon, please.  Just trust me on this.  Like I’m trusting you with what happened in the Kanto Dump.  I know you won’t screw me over, and I promise I won’t do it to you.”
Despite his professional reservations, Leon felt himself swayed by the sincerity in Priss’s voice.  Grudgingly, he said, “Ah, hell.  I guess we never would’ve recovered the damn body if you hadn’t dragged her up here.  I don’t want to know what you’ve got planned, but as far as I’m concerned, she never came out of the sewers.”  And, spearing Nene with his gaze, he added, “Right Nene?”
Caught in a very strange position, between friends she couldn’t acknowledge and a boss who was suddenly tossing professional ethics aside for personal reasons, Nene gave the only reply she could.  “Uh, sure Leon.  You’re the boss, I guess.”
“Huh!” He said.  “Glad to finally hear somebody say that.”
Priss limped stiffly and painfully over to where the fallen boomer lay, able to move at all only because her suit’s auto-doc systems had locked the knee and hip joints into place, forming a sort of walking cast for her.  This was only a stop-gap measure, of course, and she knew that sooner or later someone would have to reset her hip.  Needless to say, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to that.
Reaching the group gathered around Jillian, she tapped Linna on the shoulder and said, “Hey.  We need to go.  But first, turn your damn suit radio back on.  There’s something I need to talk to you about.  In private.”
Linna nodded, and re-activated the system with a sub-vocalized command word.
The two Knight Sabers conversed silently for perhaps a minute or more, all internal sound contained by their helmets now that the voice-mitters were turned off.
Nene waited, frustrated to be the outsider this time around, and finally the two came to a consensus.  Re-activating her externals, Linna knelt down beside Aiko.  By now, the little girl’s sobs had worn down to occasional sniffles and hiccups, and she didn’t flinch this time as Linna laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Aiko?”  She said.  “Aiko, I hate to say this, but we can’t stay here anymore.  We need to go.”
Her face still muffled against Jillian’s shoulder, Aiko said, “No.  Not yet.  I can’t just-  I can’t leave her here like this.  For those cops to poke and prod and whatever else it is they’ll do.  She deserves more.”
Blinking back tears, Linna said, “You’re right, honey, she does.  I didn’t think that before, but what I’ve seen between the two of you changed my mind.  I guess I’ve been carrying around a lot of baggage that I didn’t even know about, and I was all set to off-load it on her.  I’m glad you stopped me.”
The little girl looked up, a strange expression on her face.  “You sound so familiar.  Not your voice, it’s all electronic and stuff.  But the way you talk.  Do I know you?”
Linna, taken aback by the little girl’s intuitive leap, bit her lip and contemplated for a split second.  She almost started into a stock answer, a casual side-step of some kind, but something inside of her told her that she shouldn’t.  Aiko had lost almost everything, but maybe, Linna thought, she could give her one little thing to hold on to.
Making sure her back was to Leon, who was several meters away anyway, she cracked her helmet’s external visor just enough for the little girl to see her features.  As Aiko’s eyes widened in surprise, she said quietly, “Yes, Aiko, you do.  And what’s more, you can trust me.  Just like I have to trust you now.”
In a stage whisper, loud enough for everyone except maybe Leon to hear, Aiko blurted, “Miss Yamazaki?!”
Grimacing, Linna said quickly, “Shh!  Not so loud.  Aiko, this is a secret, one that needs to stay between the two of us.  Do you understand?”
Nodding emphatically, Aiko said, “Sure, I understand.  You’re like a super-hero, in the comics.  You have a secret identity so that the people you fight can’t mess with you or the people you care about when you’re not wearing that suit.  Is that right?”
Linna was impressed to say the least.  Obviously, Jillian hadn’t been exaggerating about the little girl’s intelligence.  To Aiko, she said, “Yes, Aiko, you hit it exactly on the head.  Now, I shared this with you for a couple of reasons.  One, because I- thought you needed to know.  So that you’d know that you weren’t completely alone here.  And two, because I need you to trust me with something big too.”
Aiko frowned thoughtfully, and said, “Trust you with what?”
Linna sighed, and, indicating Priss said, “We need to take Jillian with us, Aiko.”
The little girl bridled, and in a high, almost panicked voice said, “Why?  For what?”
Linna considered for a moment, and then said, “It’s complicated, Aiko, but I promise you, it’s not for anything bad.  In fact, it-  no, I can’t tell you now.  I really can’t.  Please, just trust me on this.”
Aiko looked down at Jillian’s torn and lifeless body for a long moment, and then, in a tiny voice said, “Alright, Miss Yamazaki.  I trust you.  And I guess there’s not much of anything worse that can happen to her now.  Whatever you want to do can’t be as bad as what the cops would do to her.”
Linna smiled warmly, and said, “Thank you, honey.  We’ve got to go now, but I promise, I’ll see you again.  OK?”
Aiko smiled, and replied, “OK, Miss Yamazaki.  I’d like that.”
With no further words, Linna reached up to secure her visor, and then reached down carefully to scoop Jillian up.  With the suit’s servos behind her, she pulled Jillian’s body into her arms and cautiously stood.  While not really heavy with her suit’s augmented musculature, the limp boomer was dead weight and proved awkward to carry.  But in her present frame of mind, Linna didn’t care about that at all.  
With a determined stride, slowed by Priss’s limping gait, they left the alley and moved as quickly as possible from the area.  Firing up scrambled comms as they moved, they soon re-established contact with both Mackie and Sylia.  And while she had a great number of pointed questions regarding the little outing they’d just been on, she acknowledged that the first priority was to get them out of the area.
No more than three minutes later, Mackie came barreling around the corner, screeching to a halt next to the two Sabers.  He hopped out and threw open the van’s back doors and then said, “Well get in, already!  And what the heck do you want to do with that?”
Fixing him with a stare that froze him in his tracks as she painfully climbed in, Priss said, “We’re taking that to Pops’ place.  Any questions?”
Mackie gulped, and replied, “No!  No questions!  Pops’ place it is!”

Darkness.  Detachment.  Once again, Jillian was no one floating through nothingness.  And this time, there weren’t even the faint wisps of thought that had accompanied her initial activation.  Instead, she seemed almost to float in a vast, dead sea of gray formlessness.  There were no thoughts, no memories, only peace and a sense of timelessness.  And, just maybe, at the limits of her non-perception, the faintest hint of other presences like hers.  Silent.  Calm.  At peace with themselves.
And then there was light.  Sudden.  Bright.  Jarring.  And, yes, sound as well.  Deafening.  Discordant.  Incomprehensible.
As she was assaulted by sight and sound, sensation returned as well, and brought pain with it.  She drew in a deep, gasping breath, and it seemed to her that she drew in raw flame as well.  From all over her newly awakened body, hot spikes and dull throbs of agony forced their way into her reeling awareness.
Finally, some of her body and brain’s automatic mitigating systems came online, and began to sort, prioritize and suppress the flood of sensation threatening to overwhelm her.
First, the body-wide pain faded from raw agony to something more manageable.  And then both her sight and hearing began to sort themselves out.  Slowly, as she blinked repeatedly, things began to come into focus and she became aware of her surroundings.
It appeared to be a cross between an infirmary and a garage or workshop of some kind.  She lay on a hospital bed, surrounded by various diagnostic equipment and medical instruments, but beyond this she saw dingy concrete walls and mechanic’s tools scattered haphazardly around.  And, interspersed with these were all sorts of high-tech bric-a-brac, miscellaneous automotive, computer and cyberdroid parts, and unidentifiable piles of techno-junk.  And, arrayed around her bed, three figures stood.
Two of them were familiar, the two Knight Saber along side whom she’d fought and ultimately died.  But he third, a short, odd looking old man in well-worn coveralls whose intense gaze never left her, was a stranger to Jillian.  
Still regarding her closely, the old man cocked his head and said, “Huh!  That seems to have done it.  Pretty close call you had there, too.  Another few minutes, and those vat-grown neurons inside your skull would’ve started to fall apart.  They’re a lot hardier than the natural variety, but they’re still organic.   And after that, there wouldn’t have been much point to putting the rest of you back together.”
Jillian sat, staring straight ahead, as she absorbed the sense of this.  She sat like that for so long, in fact, that the others around her began to become concerned, unsure suddenly if they’d been in time after all.  But finally, Jillian focused on the old man and said, “You brought me back.  You repaired me.”
The old man snorted humorously and said, “Yeah, you could say that.  Of course, it was more like trauma surgery than nuts and bolts repair work with an android like you.  Way too much fleshy stuff in there for me!  Give me a ’72 T-Bird any day.”
“Pops!” Priss exclaimed.  “For Christ’s sake!”
The old man frowned and said, “Well, it’s true.  And don’t call me Pops!  I thought we’d already been through that one.”
Jillian, confused and disoriented, looked to the old man and said, “Where am I?”
The old man turned back to her and said, “Why, Raven’s garage, of course.  Where else would I be able to put you back together?”
Seeing that this only confused Jillian further, Linna interjected, “Dr. Raven is a friend of ours.  He’s very, very good at work like this.”
Jillian nodded slowly, and said, “So you brought me here.  After the fight.  After I- said goodbye to Aiko.  I understand now.”
In a careful tone, Linna said, “You don’t sound exactly thrilled, Jillian.  Don’t tell me you’d rather be dead.”
Jillian shook her head, and said, “No, I suppose not.  It’s just that- I hadn’t planned for anything like this.  When I spoke to Aiko there at the end, I thought that was it.  I felt that I’d accomplished and said everything that I needed to.  And now- now I’m not sure what to do.”  Fixing Linna with an odd look, she said, “What does a supposedly destroyed personal security android do after being resurrected?”
Inside her helmet, Linna bit her lip, searching for a reply, but Priss replied for her.  “Live.  That’s what.”  And then, sighing, she said, “Let me tell you a little story.  It’s a story about a boomer I knew, not so long ago.  All she and her sister wanted was to live and to be free.  But there were a couple of problems with that.  For starts, they were sexaroids.  Technically, they couldn’t even exist legally.  And, just to get away from the bastard who’d owned them, they had to steal something really valuable and really dangerous, so naturally they were being hunted.  On top of all that, her sister was hurt, damaged, whatever you want to call it, when they escaped, and needed human blood just to keep running.”  Priss paused, swallowing to control the emotion that suddenly choked her voice, and then continued.  “Needless to say, shit didn’t work out for either of them.  My… friend, she was determined not to let her sister die, no matter what.  So she ended up killing a lot of innocent people to keep her alive.  That put the cops on their trail, along with the corporate shit-heads who were looking for their stolen equipment.  In the end, it was all too much.  Everybody caught up to her at once, and there was an unholy fight.  The rest is complicated, but it all boiled down to me having to decide whether to kill her or let the thing she’d stolen blow up a big chunk of Mega Tokyo.  Since Mega Tokyo’s still here, I guess you can figure out what happened.”  Priss paused again, collecting herself, and continued.
“I made a promise to her as she died in my arms.  I told her that I’d help her sister, and I did.  I took her the data that my friend had stolen for her, the data that’d allow her to fix herself.  And then I walked away.”  Priss shook her head and said, “I shouldn’t have done that.  She didn’t understand.  All she knew was that I’d killed her sister, and so it was easy for one of our enemies to recruit her and use her against us later.  Eventually, she found out what’d really happened, but it was too late by then.”  In a harsh whisper, Priss continued.  “She died in my arms too, after sucking up a shot from the bastard who’d recruited her. A shot that would’ve killed me if she hadn’t.”
Priss was silent for a long moment after finishing her story, and then said, “The point of all that is just- well, hell, life is precious!  Sylvie and Anri would’ve given anything to have the chance you have right now.  The chance to start over and do whatever the hell you want.  Chances like that are rare.”
Jillian nodded slowly as she contemplated what Priss had said.  Looking up finally, with new determination in her voice she said, “You’re right, of course.  And I’m very sorry about your friends.  I wish things could have turned out differently for them.  But perhaps, in some small way, I can help to honor their memory by making the most of my situation.”
Priss nodded slowly, grateful for the opaque visor that hid the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks, and said, “Yeah.  I’m counting on that.”

After two weeks, Aiko was just starting to get a handle on the grief and the black morass of depression that had followed it, both of which had threatened to engulf and smother her.  Her grandfather was a kind enough man, in his own way, but they’d never been close.  He’d never had the time before.  And now, though he tried to reach out to her, Aiko just wasn’t ready for that.  He wasn’t her father, and he never could be.  And there was another gaping hole in her heart that had no one to fill it.
For the first few days after it’d all happened, her grief had let her think of little else.  The pain had been just too raw.  But later, when she had the quiet time to herself to contemplate, darker thoughts and emotions had begun to consume her.  She had, at one point, even thought that maybe everything would be better if she were to simply join the ones she loved, where ever they were now.  
She’d had that particular thought while looking out one of the high third story windows of her grandfather’s mansion and contemplating the hard pavement of the driveway below.  But in the end, she’d rejected those thoughts.  After all, Jillian and her father had given up their lives so that she could live, and as hard as that might be for her, she couldn’t let their sacrifice be in vain.  From that time on, she’d done her best to simply live one day at a time, in the hopes that eventually her pain would fade.
Today, she’d decided that she was strong enough to try to go back to some of the things that were familiar to her.  And so, she’d asked her grandfather if she could continue her dance lessons.  
The old man had been surprised, but elated that she finally seemed to be coming back to life.  After some consultation with Jim Tanaka, whom he’d immediately hired and put in charge of Aiko’s security, he agreed.  And after a hasty phone call to Phoebe’s Fitness Bee, the arrangements were made.

Linna had been nervous when she’d heard that Aiko would be returning to her class.  Nervous for the little girl, but relieved as well, and happy at the prospect of seeing her again.  That, and more than a little curious as to what the results of a phone call she’d made would be.
The class went as it usually did, with the exception of the deference and the few quiet words of sympathy given to Aiko by the other girls.  For her part, Aiko seemed to drive herself harder than Linna did.  She seemed to Linna to be using the physical exercise to batter at the demons that still haunted her.  Linna could only sigh and hope to herself that the little girl found her way through it all.
After the class ended, Linna asked Aiko to remain for a moment.  Taking her off to the side, away from the gym’s other patrons, but not out of Jim Tanaka’s wary sight, she said, “So how are you doing, Aiko?”
The little girl had looked down and said, “OK, I guess Miss Yamazaki.”
Linna frowned, and prompted, “But?”
Voice tight with controlled emotion, Aiko replied, “But it still hurts so much!  Miss Yamazaki, will it ever get better?”
Linna sighed deeply and said, “Yes and no, Aiko.  Time has a way of dulling pain like this, but it never completely goes away.  I’ve lost enough people I care about to know.”  And then, smiling slightly, she said, “But you’ll cope with it, Aiko.  I’m sure of that.  You’re a strong little girl, and smart too.  Eventually you’ll figure out how to live with what happened.  Just don’t shut out the people who still care about you.  Like your grandpa.”
The little girl sighed, and said, “I know he’s trying, and I know he loves me, but it’s hard.  We just don’t really know each other very well, I guess.”
Linna nodded, and said, “Give him a chance.  And don’t forget about Mr. Tanaka over there either.  From what I understand, he cares about you quite a bit too.”
Aiko looked down and said, “I know.  And I like him too.  But- I don’t know.  I guess I just don’t want to get too close to him.”  And in a small voice, she finished, “In case something happens to him, too.”
In a sympathetic tone, Linna said, “I understand, Aiko.  But you can’t distance yourself from everybody forever.  Eventually, you’ll have to let people back in.”
“I know,”  Aiko replied and, looking up with a wistful smile said, “And we’re friends, aren’t we?”
Smiling warmly, Linna said, “Of course we are, Aiko.”  And then, looking over the little girl’s shoulder, she said, in a quizzical tone, “Aiko, I think I see someone else here who’d like to talk to you.”  
Pointing toward the gym’s front entrance in response to the girl’s questioning look, she said, “Maybe you’d better go check it out.”
Looking where Linna had pointed, the little girl saw a tall, raven-haired woman with long tresses that fell freely half-way down her back and sparkling green eyes just visible over a set of octagonally cut violet-shaded glasses.  She wore a tight, white, one-piece blouse, a tight-fitting black skirt, black stilleto-heel shoes and a comfortable looking black leather bomber jacket.  
As Aiko watched, the woman strolled casually over to Mr. Tanaka and tapped him on the shoulder.  The body guard turned warily toward the woman, who leaned a bit closer and said something in a low voice.  Mr. Tanaka’s eyes widened, and the woman smiled, put a hand on his arm in a friendly gesture, and said something else.  Tanaka returned her smile, putting a hand on her shoulder, and nodded at whatever she said.  Finally, the two parted, and, glancing at Aiko, Mr. Tanaka faded to the back of the room.
Aiko looked questioningly at Linna and said, “Miss Yamazaki?”
Still smiling, Linna said, “I told you before you could trust me, Aiko.  Now why don’t you go over and say hello?”
Aiko’s eyes widened, and she spun to face the dark-haired woman who now approached.
“Jillian?”  She said in a hopeful whisper.
The woman smiled, and as she neared, Aiko saw through the cosmetic changes Dr. Raven had wrought.
“Jillian!”  She exclaimed and threw herself at her friend.
“Shh!” Jillian said, catching the little girl in her arms.  “Not so loud, Aiko honey.  We need to keep this between ourselves.”
The little girl sobbed tears of happiness onto Jillian’s shoulder, and said, “Jillian!  I thought you were dead!”
Jillian rubbed the little girl’s back soothingly, and said, “For a little while I was.  But I was lucky.  There were friends around who cared enough to see that I was taken care of.”
“And you came back to me.”  Aiko said tearfully.
“Yes,” Jillian replied.  “For a little while.”
Aiko froze then and said, “For a little while?  Jillian, what do you mean?”
Jillian sighed, and said, “What I mean, honey, is that I can’t stay for very long.  Officially, I don’t even exist anymore.  I’ve established a new identity for myself, of course, but things are still a bit hot here in Mega Tokyo just now.  It would be better if I left for a while.  Traveled a little, perhaps.”
“You’re leaving me.” Aiko said flatly, in a tone of betrayal.
Jillian closed her eyes and, holding the little girl close said, “Aiko, I’ll never leave you.  Not really.  Not in my heart.  And I will be back eventually.  I really can’t imagine settling anywhere besides Mega Tokyo.  But I need to travel, to see things, and to think.  And you need time to adjust to your new life.  Time without me in the way.”
“You’re never in the way, Jillian,” the little girl whispered fiercely.  “Never.  But I guess I understand.  Right now, you just wouldn’t fit in with everything that’s going on.  Especially not with Grandpa.”
Jillian nodded, and said fondly, “Perceptive as always, my Little Mistress.”
Biting her lip, Aiko suddenly said, “But can’t you take me with you?”
Jillian sighed, and said, “I wish I could, Aiko, but I think you know that wouldn’t work out.  Your grandfather most certainly wouldn’t understand, and I’m sure he’d spare no pain or expense to have you brought back to him.”
Crestfallen, Aiko said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.  But you will keep in touch, at least, right?”
Jillian smiled, and said, “Of course.  You can expect letters, post cards, and maybe even an occasional drawing.  Does that work for you?”
The little girl smiled and said, “I guess it’ll have to, won’t it?  But, Jillian, do you have to go right away?”
Jillian considered for a moment, and then said, “No, not right away.  Did you have something in mind?”
Aiko’s smile brightened, and she said, “Well, there is an ice cream place nearby, you know, and I’m sure that Mr. Tanaka wouldn’t mind, since you and him are still friends and all, so…?”
Jillian laughed lightly, and said, “That sounds wonderful, Aiko.  Why don’t we pick up Mr. Tanaka and go?”
Taking Jillian’s hand, the little girl looked up at her warmly and said, “Sure, Jillian.  I’d like that a lot.”
As the two walked out, hand in hand, Mr. Tanaka joining them at the door, Linna thought to herself, ‘It’s hard to believe, with all I’ve seen before.  But I guess all boomers aren’t the same.  Jillian is definitely nothing like the boomer who killed Irene.  And if even one of them can end up like her, maybe there’s hope for all of them.”

EPILOGUE

Outside Phoebe’s Fitness Bee, a tall, gangly man stood, leaning against the wall and watching impassively as the man, woman and little girl walked out the door and entered the waiting armored limousine.  He wore faded blue jeans, a black t-shirt and a black leather long coat that hung on his thin frame.  As the three drove away, he pushed the small wire-frame glasses on his nose upward and took the time to light a cigarette.  He then strolled casually towards a beat-up Chevy panel van parked nearby.
Opening the unlocked driver’s door, he climbed into the seat and fired up the engine.  Looking casually over his shoulder, he addressed the darkness behind him.
“Oh, yeah.  It’s her.  Definitely.”
From the rear of the van, twin sets of bright red lights flared to life, illuminating a complex medical apparatus of some sort with what appeared to be free-form metallic sculptures of a human and a canine head mounted on top.  The light issued from the eyes of the sculptures, and as they flared, the humaniform head began to speak.
In a low, pleasant, feminine voice, it said, “Doc, that’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

END