He looked like a Rastafarian ninja. That was Alicia’s first impression of Bob’s new avatar. The last time, he looked like a commando smurf; the time before that, a Buddha with the head of a guppy; the madness went on. But Bob's penchant for weird avatar constructs was how she came to recognize him. She’d long since become used to it. Tolerance for eccentricity was a small price to pay for his skills. God knew she needed the money, pulling jobs through Bob was better than hooking up with loan sharks. Royalties from her album sales still kept food in her mouth, but with the breakup of the band and no new songs released in over five years, it was the money from her jobs that kept Alicia’s soul alive. And doses of circus weren’t getting any cheaper.

“Jah love, girl! Big things a’guan pon de worlds!” Bob said. He'd affected an admittedly decent Jamaican patois.

“Hey, Bob. Still perfectly normal as ever, I see?”

Bob smiled, and switched back to his normal accent. “Not if I can help it, baby. Got the newest krid for you, though. Interested?”

“Fire away.” Alicia liked Bob; his demeanor was always friendly, but with money, he was right to business.

“Well, it’s actually one thing,” Bob's avatar, with its limited range of facial expressions made a sort of blur between a smile and a frown. “Seems the guy who gave me this is an old friend of yours.”

“Really?” the tone of her voice had become that of both piqued interest and wariness.

“Before you say anything,” the avatar held up its hands innocently, “you know security on my end’s airtight; always has been. I even ran a background check on the guy. He’s not an enforcer or I-Link cop; that I know. ‘Matter of fact, if I hadn’t found out one particular thing, I wouldn’t have bothered with him.”

“Well, stuff the excuses and spit it out,” Alicia said.

“All right, then. The name, ‘Walker,’ ring a bell?”

Alicia raised an eyebrow. “Say what now?”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s supposed to be dead,” Bob said. “Hell, several worlds other than Earth know he’s dead, but honey, it’s gotta be him.”
“What makes you so sure?” Alicia said. Bob had sick hacking skills that made her look like a third rate noob, but even they couldn’t change the facts of the universe. There was no mistake. It was all over the news. She’d personally identified Walker’s remains and attended his funeral.

An e-mail notification flashed against her field of vision. Alicia answered it.

The phrase, DON’T HATE ME, SUNFLOWER, was the text. It was followed by a video feed. The image came in crystal clear and instantly recognizable. It was the inside of his apartment –namely the bedroom, the date on the lower right hand side from five years ago. The sounds from the audio feed made the origins of the clip unmistakable: those of the two figures upon the bed caught in an intimate moment –and one was definitely him. The other was herself.

Curiosity became anger as Alicia switched off the video feed. “Where did you get this?” She said, keeping her voice level despite her emotions.

“He sent it to me,” Bob answered. “Told me to give it to you.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Bob!” Alicia barked at the avatar, whose edges pixilated as she swiped her fist through the hologram. “Whose sick idea of a joke was this? Dammit, he told me…!”

“…Told you that he destroyed the only copy, that you and him got back at the hacker who broke into your on-board, stole the original and tried to blackmail you. You rewrote the security programs on his own router, and replaced them with Mind Flayer ice, putting the rat bastard in Ragnarok, with one eighth of his brain fried. Then you destroyed the copy before it could wind up on the I-Link, and gave the original to him.”

Alicia went numb. “Good God, Bob…” She felt her body slump back into the sofa as her anger was extinguished. “Only he knew that.”

“If it ain’t Walker, then he’s channeling his restless soul,” Bob said, with a tone as wistful as a blues singer. “This guy even remembered that time we met in the middle of the Mojave right before the run on Gaea’s Atrepasi mainframe. That was in a dead zone, girl: no phones, no GPS, no I-Link. No one else could have known about it!”

Walker. The name brought back a flood of memories: small points of light in her dark past. She never knew his full name when she was holed up in that compound with the other kids the sifters had scooped off of the streets for the underground sweatshops and brothels, but he was the first who talked to her. His defiance inspired her to keep her sanity and at last escape. On the outside, his hacking skills got her and a struggling rock band called Ambush the funds to become the sensation remembered by millions. As the lead singer and guitarist, she took on the stage name of Chevroness. T.J. worked the keyboard and Rax was the lead drummer.

She and Walker were lovers for a time, but their livelihoods ultimately took them apart from each other. She was devastated when he died, his charred body found on the back streets behind the old transcon bridge after a large explosion; even worse was the authorities had no idea how it had happened. This, along with the arrest of Rax on charges of aiding and abetting known hackers and dimensional pirates, and the shock of his subsequent death in prison by a shiv to his vital third heart over a pack of cigarettes, began a downward spiral into her current situation, with her jobs under Bob and daily doses of circus as all that remained of her once glamorous life.

It was impossible to hold back the flood of emotions as she considered the possibility that despite what she'd been forced to see in the morgue, and despite logic altogether, perhaps he might -just might- not be dead after all.

But if this was all a ploy, who could be after her? She’d covered her backside well enough in those bygone days, and even now. Krid, the e-mail even had his pet name for her. No one else but him knew it.

But Bob had never lied to her before.

“Are you absolutely sure it was him?” She said. It was a question and a warning.

“I’m positive.” Bob said it straightforwardly and without any trace of doubt.

“What did he want?”

Her router made a shrill chirp; the words, UPLOAD COMPLETE shone superimposed upon her field of vision.

“Everything he gave me is in the data packet I just sent you,” Bob said. “And just so you know, I robbed him blind for this little service. Thing is, he didn’t seem to care.”

“Money was never an object for him, that’s for sure,” Alicia said, more to herself than Bob. She let a hint of nostalgia slip into her voice.

“Careful there,” Bob said slyly. His avatar made a half-lidded, cartoonishly large grin. “You’ll make your girlfriend jealous.”

“Kumai isn’t my girlfriend,” Alicia said, more vehemently than she’d wanted.

“Coulda fooled me,” Bob said, on the edge of laughter. “You left the telepresence unit on last night, you know.”

“And you spied on us?” Alicia was completely livid. This, however, was quickly replaced with embarrassment. It was that same little mistake that had led to Bob’s copy of the video feed that might have ruined her career. It wouldn't have been a big deal this time around; the paparazzi had long since stopped hounding her, but even now she tended to keep up a fair level of discretion. Last night, the first time in awhile that Kumai had gone farther than allowing Alicia to sleep in her lap, was the absolute worst time to have dropped the ball. Her saving grace was that it was only Bob who had seen them.

The avatar waved its arms emphatically. “No, no! I was only gonna leave you a message about Walker last night. I saw the viewer was on; I thought you were online. I couldn’t help seeing what I saw; I’m no voyeur, baby. Gaeans don’t do krid for me anyway.”

“I swear, Bob, you tell anyone …”

“Hey, you know I’ve got more class than that,” Bob said, sounding almost hurt. “Anyways, just remember to pay me this time.”

“Just as long as you give me what’s mine,” Alicia said, and forwarded the money on her credplate to his account.

“Enjoy your reunion, baby.” He vanished as she gave him the finger.

***

Alicia looked as though she hadn’t slept in hours; it was true. Her bodiless shoulder-length black hair was frazzled, her thrift store black jeans and white tank top looked as if they had been picked out of an unfolded pile, and there were bags under her pale eyes as she rattled off the news to Kumai, talking as if someone had filled her veins with pure sugar. Kumai, a polar opposite to Alicia, with her immaculate eggshell business robes and luxurious falls of crystal white hair, sipped at her cup of jeeva all the while, She appeared to be listening, but with her liquid black eyes it was hard to tell.

“…And so he wants me to do this dramatic jailbreak thing… and outta Ragnarok, of all places!” Alicia continued, allowing her unrestrained excitement to run her words into a whole sentence. “He sent me everything I’d need: schematics, programs, codes, kitchen sink… everything I'd need to hit the mainframe. I was thinking he'd lost it at first, but when I saw all the krid he got me, I thought, 'Man, he's fuggin' serious!' I mean, at first I thought Bob was jerking me, but after I saw all this, I thought, no way, man; this has gotta be Walker! No one would do something this suicidal! It’s just... beautiful!”

“One might say that your I-Link games are suicidal as well,” Kumai said, her high, soft voice, lilting, betraying a hint of concern in her placid exterior. She tilted her head to the side, resting her jeeva cup on its saucer. “As a matter of fact, Kumai thinks that they are most every time.”

“Yeah, but this is Walker we’re talking about, Ku!” Alicia said, ranting on. “He’s done stuff that’d turn you white as your hair! When he busted me and those kids outta that compound, he went back and broke into the Renfros’ mainframe and turned every dirty secret of that place over to the feds. Took the bastards years to clean up from the kridstorm. And he almost single-handedly took out the Atrepasi after they screwed him over. They were the biggest organized crime syndicate in the worlds, and they were nothing to him! He was like the online Superman, or something!”

“What did Kumai tell you about taking circus in the morning?” Kumai said. Her eyebrows knotted and she shook her head slowly, this time giving no mystery to her feelings. “You know it makes you hyperactive.”

“Hyper-nothing,” Alicia said, although Kumai had been right. She couldn’t wait to get started on the mission, and in her excitement, had jumped the gun on her next circus dosage. Though technically a hallucinogen, it also had stimulant qualities that made ADHD look like narcolepsy.

“Kumai worries about you, tir-Alicia,” Kumai always used the pet name whenever she was most concerned.

“Kumai worries too damn much,” Alicia said with a grimace. “Besides, Walker’s the A-1 best. Nobody’s better, period. If the League's I-Link cops have something that can stop him, then we’ll deserve a free all expenses paid vacation to the pearly gates.”

She laid her fingers upon the top of Kumai’s hand, suddenly much calmer, as if the worst of the circus had worn off. “By the way, Ku, I’ve been meaning to ask you… once this job’s over, I’ve been thinking about taking another whack at getting the band back together. I got a good feeling about this time, too. And if things work out, how about I make you my new manager?

“Kumai… is not sure.” Her voice was distant and small. “Kumai is comfortable here.”

“But with you being a business girl and all, this job would be the perfect fit,” Alicia said. She never gave up easily when faced with the Gaean’s evasiveness. “I know you've got the skills for it. Give it some thought for me, please?” She fixed Kumai with the sad puppy-eyed look. It was not so much effective in getting what she wanted, but it did bring a cute reddish hue to Kumai’s blue skin that made her laugh. And her own laugh made Kumai laugh. In the end, she half-heartedly conceded.

***

The circus wore off at last, and Alicia slept for most of the day. Kumai was gone when she woke.

Kumai owned an apartment of her own on Gaea, but stayed around Alicia so much that her place became like a second home. Alicia’s income paid for Kumai’s gateway passes, and so she had racked up an insane amount of frequent transfer points over the months they had known each other. Alicia never pried much into her private affairs; their relationship, born in a bar at the bottom level of Gaea’s capital of Mezedia, came about through a lonely desire for company rather than personal interests, combined with the natural tendency of the Gaean third gender to “cling” to people they liked, and for the person she liked to like her in return. This was why despite the fact that Alicia was generally a lone wolf, and knew next to nothing of Kumai’s personal life, they got along strangely well. Gaeans, more specifically, the first two-thirds of their race, were an aloof lot, but Kumai, like the others of her sex, female in immediate appearance, but not in anatomy, was much more flexible in her demeanor and affection. She dressed as fancily as any of her kind, as if they all had a terminal case of expensive tastes, but her heart was far more “human.”

Kumai really was a worrywart, Alicia thought. Circus wasn’t a problem. It sharpened her skills online, kept her edge. She had used it for years, since her glory days in Ambush. Nowadays, she only used it on runs, overindulging every now and again. But she had it all together; everything was under control.

She slipped out of bed, not bothering to get dressed, brought her router down to the living room, and pressed the power stud on the little black rectangle, just larger than a paperback novel. She threw herself into the couch across from the coffee table and sent a mental command from her on-board, configuring the router for direct access. She then extended the jack from the INplant at her right temple. Its nanofibers found the port on her router and pulled it in with a tiny click.

She removed the circus from its container. The vial was less than an inch in length, and the width of an ink cartridge, both for its potency and ease for smuggling inside ballpoint pen casings. They were airtight as to evade chemical sniffers in the mail: so much fuss for so little effort spent on controlling the trade. The League tended to not get involved in petty things like illegal drug trafficking; with their eyes set on profit, it mattered little what came across dimensional barriers as long as it was nothing that posed an immediate threat to Earth, and that the client could pay the transfer fees. Circus, therefore, was something left to the New York Megalopolis local authorities, who were somewhat less than adept at controlling it. It was kind of pathetic, really, the fact that independent law enforcement in the Giant Apple was practically helpless without the aid of the corporation that had lorded over all since the war.

“Hit me, baby,” she said, and broke the vial into her eyes.

A wash of pain and pleasure lashed her nervous system as the router accepted her password and shunted her into the I-Link.

***

Two hours later, she awoke to Kumai wiping the blood from her nose and the side of her eyes. Her router was belching out black smoke.

Alicia blinked once, and then coughed. “Holy krid, Ku, do I have a story to tell you!” She whispered.

“Tir-Alicia!” Kumai folded her into a near-choking embrace. “Kumai thought you were dead, but was too afraid to call an ambulance!”

“Nah, just taking a nap,” Alicia said. She took the towel from the still-terrified Gaean, and finished wiping. “God, I still feel hella wasted!”

“Kumai wants you to stop using circus,” the Gaean pleaded. “It is so, so bad for you, tir-Alicia.”

“And Alicia wants you to stop referring to yourself in the third person.” She was becoming annoyed with Kumai’s constant concern about a problem that wasn’t there. She then grinned wickedly and pinched Kumai’s right cheek, stretching the tiny tear-shaped mole below her left eye in a strange way. Kumai winced.

“You’re so cute when you’re scared,” she said with a naughty grin. “You know that?”

“You pick strange times to tell Kumai such things,” Kumai said, rubbing her abused cheek after Alicia had let go. Alicia laughed. With their blue skin, seeing a Gaean blush was a funny sight.

“We’re gonna have guests, Ku,” she said. “A communion with the dead, you might say.”

“So Walker is alive?”

“Alive and kicking,” Alicia said, tapping the coffee table with her foot. “Oh yeah, rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated! And now that this job’s done, we’ve got some big plans, he and I. He’s got some formalities to take care of, but after that, we’re getting the band back together!”

Alicia broke into a peal of carefree, raucous laughter, tossing the soiled towel into the air. “This calls for a celebration!”

Kumai grabbed her arm while it was still raised; the towel fell limply to the ground. “No, tir-Alicia; no more circus!” A pool of tears started to form at the edges of her onyx eyes. “Please, do this for Kumai!”

“Oh, all right,” Alicia said, deflated. “No circus, then, okay?”

“Kumai is satisfied.” Though she showed no true look of satisfaction, Kumai released her grip.

“Well, then, now that that’s settled,” Alicia said, massaging her slightly bruised wrist, “we need to make some plans. Rax’ll need some time to lay low.”

“You told Kumai that Rax was dead.”

Alicia made a guffaw. “Yeah, you heard that too, huh? Seems like we got people coming back from the dead right and left; you’d think God’s on vacation, or something.”

“Walker told you that he was not dead? That is who you tried to break out of jail?”

“‘Tried,’ nothing, blueberry!” Alicia drawled. “What do you think I was doing on the I-Link for so long? My laundry? Walker showed him to me while riding a security node. Dunno what he was doing rotting out in Ragnarok; bastards in the League told me he was killed in a prison riot in Obsidian. Walker didn’t find the whole truth, but he did say that Rax was meant to be the fall guy for the riots. They tucked him away nice and neat… or so they thought. We got him out, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting ‘em get away with what they did to him.”

“So what will you do?” Kumai said.

“Right now,” Alicia said, and then made a very audible yawn, “I’m gonna go take a nap. “I’ll need Bob’s help for the next phase.”

“Kumai is sleepy as well.” Kumai made a long, deep yawn of her own, reclining on the side of her couch and kicking off her shoes, which were as white as her robes. Without another word, she retired to the bedroom, with Alicia watching her leave, feeling a twinge of annoyance at the Gaean's passive-aggressive ways. Kumai was usually her pillow when she chose to stay the night, but it looked as though tonight, her only pillows –soft as they were, would be the old, worn cloth ones on the couch, with the music files in her on-board as her only companion.

***

Ambush broke up soon after Rax was arrested. After the news of his death, Alicia lost hope for getting the band back together. Aside from I-Link runs for Bob’s varied illicit businesses, her life took on a rhythm of eating, sleeping, and spending her evenings with Kumai. She hardly ever left home; Kumai was only there at night.

Tonight, Kumai was especially busy, holed up in the Tisvard food corporation’s financial offices in Gaea doing paperwork. Tonight would be especially lonely, but the upside was that it gave Alicia time to repair her router and get what she needed from Bob.

The problem was that Bob wasn’t answering her calls.

This never happened.

“Where the hell are you, man?” Alicia shouted into his voicemail after her fifth attempt. She fumed, wanting –and yet thankful that common sense prevented her– to throw the router to the ground. He’s never not there, she thought with growing concern. He was a bigger recluse than me, did all his business on the I-Link. Something’s not right.

The e-mail she received a moment later answered her question.

BOB IS DEAD, was its message, followed by a strange line of code that loaded itself into her router.

Momentarily stunned, but determined, Alicia scanned the contents of the new data packet. “VIPER.EXE” shone in her field of vision.

Alicia understood, and in that dawning of comprehension, confusion gave over to a deep, seething anger. She'd never met Bob in person, but they had worked closely over the years through the I-Link to the point where he'd become just as much a friend as he was a business colleague. It seemed so unreal that he was dead.

But why a Viper, and why her, Alicia wondered. Vipers were a rare and lethal virus type, completely un-erasable. Then she figured it out, and anger gave way to determination. Bob trusted her the most out of all his contacts, and had probably planned the message to be sent in the event of an untimely death. And the message was simple. He wanted revenge.

But revenge against whom? She wondered. Was it the League? No, it couldn't be them. Bob was too small-time to be worth-

The phone rang, making her start. After she settled down, Alicia sent the command, and the tank in the center of the den came on with a faint static hum.

“Walker!” Alicia propped herself on her hands and knees at the couch’s edge, in front of the soft features of the man in the hologram, partially obscured by hair darker than her own, that was dyed with a stripe of white. He’d added more tribal tattoos to his face and had several more earrings in his ears since the days before his “death.” Though they hadn’t been an item in years, she could not help the blush that came to her cheeks. His green eyes still held that charming mischievous twinkle, so similar to her own.

He flipped the fall of his hair away from his right eye as he spoke. “I’m taking a big risk calling you, sunflower, so listen up. It might be awhile before we can talk again.”

“Fire away, honey,” Alicia said, tossing aside the wiry tangle of repair equipment from her router as she stood. “I’m all ears.”

***

She didn’t like the explanation Walker had given, as amazed by it as she was. She asked him how he knew it; he said he’d been keeping an eye on her for quite some time, but exactly how he did it was beyond her. But none of it was surprising. She could try sweeping her apartment for bugs, but she knew that she wouldn’t find any; it wasn’t his style.

It was the League who’d had Bob iced, she learned, so, odd as it seemed, it confirmed her first suspicion. This was a hacker’s quintessential worst-case scenario, and Walker admitted that he'd goofed. He should have contacted her himself, and not have gone through a middle man, but there had been too much at stake. But despite all his precautions, someone had outsmarted him. He’d been out of practice and allowed some League sifter in their I-Link police corps to tag him. They'd become aware of most of his connections but not her, not yet. He’d made sure of that, once he became aware of the tag and fixed his router and on-board to remove it, but for Bob, it was too late. Enforcers had him tracked down and terminated. He and Rax were in a safe place for now, an agricultural dimension occupied mostly by automated facilities. It was off the beaten path and away from prying eyes, but they needed to distract the League in a big way, in order to gate out and hide somewhere with better amenities.

Alicia wasn’t angry about his mistake; Walker seemed surprised about that, considering how good a friend Bob had been to her. But he didn’t know about her feelings concerning his plan: a plan that required doing something she considered despicable. Fortunately, Kumai hadn’t heard a word of it. And the nuisance of a conscience was easily remedied with circus.

On the night of the planned run, Kumai was understandably upset when she learned that Alicia had reneged on her promise to stop the circus. It took a generous dose of charm, and, subsequently, an even larger amount of stamina, but Alicia made it up to her that night. She then slipped away as Kumai slept, peaceful and oblivious.

***

It was after she passed through the gateway to Gaea that Alicia realized she’d forgotten her on-board's module for Glossiu, the language of Gaea. Her knowledge of it was limited to some choice expletives, and –thanks to Kumai– a few phrases that were not exactly appropriate to be used in public. She could download a modular upgrade at a kiosk in the transfer station; it would give her instant knowledge of the language, but purchases in her name would be too easy to trace, and she didn’t want to risk using her fake IDs and credplates for fear that they’d already been tagged. Besides, her on-board had self-evolving language drivers. It would just be a pain having to read from it, word for word, to decipher signs or order meals.

The fact that Gaea was Kumai's homeworld was the first of three things that made this job so despicable. Second was that it was so technologically backward, with computer systems and I-Link nodes had few to no defenses against hackers. And the third thing was Walker’s choice of system to invade. Not only was Tisvard the entire planet’s main food distribution and management center, it was also Kumai's workplace. But Walker had been right in saying that hitting a central axis plane of the League in the breadbasket would catch their attention. And it was specifically because Walker was calling the shots, that despite her better judgment, Alicia went along with his plan.

She set up shop in the cheapest hotel she could find. Fortunately, the rooms were quite livable; there were no such thing as ‘roach motels’ in Gaea. She found that she needed a lot more circus than usual to go through with the mission, and by the time she’d boosted herself up with enough confidence by way of the drug, she felt like she was already online. She could barely feel her own fingers, let alone clearly speak her password, but eventually she managed to log on, and shunt herself into the I-Link.

***

The run was too easy. The entire system was like something out of the twentieth century, and the viral databomb she’d cast from her program arsenal practically ate it alive. Afterwards, she set the viper within the trap, and waited in a nearby accounting construct maze, its subroutines degraded from the databomb, but still fit for concealing her presence.

The prey came soon enough: first, a Gaean I-Link cop and then an enforcer. Usually the sight of the elite police/military of the League was enough to fill even the most overconfident criminal with terror, but Alicia simply laughed, the presence of circus erasing all rational fear. As a matter of fact, this was what she had been hoping for. The League worked quickly. She was hoping for an investigator or a higher ranking I-Link cop than the Gaean, but this was much better.

Cloaked within Walker’s shield program, Anticipation wrenched her as the virus traps awakened and attacked. They herded the two into the proper place, and then vanished, confusing them as expected. The Gaean was the first to jack out, and Bob’s Viper struck. Alicia had stifle an excited whoop. She’d hoped that the enforcer would have been the first to be hit, but it didn’t really matter. Vipers jumped from one host to another, usually to whomever tried to remove them, and death was very slow and painful. There was no way to erase it; someone would die. It was simply a matter of whom. Death took hours to days, though, and this would certainly catch the attention of more I-Link cops and enforcers. Even if not, Alicia doubted that the circus would give her enough patience to watch the entire show. Consumed with the thrill of a run and lust for revenge, she’d already forgotten the job’s true purpose.

Bob-1, League-0, she murmured aloud. May he rest in peace.

Suddenly, every hair on the back of her neck rose. Something was wrong. Though she’d never developed a sixth sense in the I-Link like Walker, a feeling of impending doom nevertheless sprang from out of nowhere and engulfed her like an ambush net. It weighed down upon her from all sides, robbing her of the edge that circus gave.

A man suddenly appeared beside the fallen I-Link cop. Not the monochrome of an avatar, but living, breathing, impossible color –Real. He was too far away to see clearly; the most prominent feature she could make out was the silver cloak that shrouded his body. As he gestured, she caught a glimpse of a hand, confirming that he was perhaps human, though without any certainty. Caught between alarm and fascination, Alicia watched as he removed the defensive programs from the enforcer who had returned, just as helpless as ever, and then, as if it were nothing, purged the virus from the dying I-Link cop, again performing the impossible. He then spoke briefly with the enforcer with words to low for her to hear, and then rippled away as if he’d just gated out.

The I-Link cop and enforcer, just as bewildered as she was, jacked out, their avatars vanishing in a shower of code, and leaving her alone.

Holy krid… Alicia blurted. What the hell just-

In the middle of her thought, inexplicable pressure squeezed her on all sides. A sense utter panic consumed her, pressing upon her like the cold, agonizing embrace of an iron maiden. She felt sick. She needed to jack out, get back home… spend some time with Kumai.

Kumai. Why did her thoughts have to return to her? Perhaps she had been right, Alicia thought. Perhaps she’d been overdoing it on the circus after all. Maybe this was divine retribution for what she’d just done to her friend’s homeworld and livelihood. If it was, God knew she deserved it. If she died here, then how would she know? Alicia gritted her teeth nearly to breaking. Fool that she was; she didn’t leave a note or anything. But what would she say? “Sorry I had to leave your bed cold, Kumai, but I'm off to destroy your job and screw up your world's food supply; see you in the morning”?

Panic led to panic when she tried to jack out, but was met with resistance as her systems were locked, turning already present fear into terror. Alicia was almost certain her body was hyperventilating.

Then abruptly, everything froze: the pulsing of I-Link data, the flow of code in the system’s scant constructs. All went monochrome and cold, including herself.

Alicia screamed –and discovered, to her relief, that she could still do it. It echoed briefly into the silence and then, like someone quickly turning down the volume dial on a stereo system, faded away.

“I’ve invested too much time in this to let you get away before we’ve had a little chat, Ms. Barnes,” a voice said, slightly distorted through the gateway’s event horizon. It was a man’s voice. In front of her, like someone gating in from the real world, a form rippled into existence.

The person who appeared was the same one she’d seen just a moment ago. He’d been too far away for her to get a good look at him before, but even up close, his features were obscured by a strange silver cloak. Of his face, all she could see were concealing dark shades and a thin stubble line from his lip to his chin. Nothing about him was familiar, yet he seemed to smile as if he knew her well.

What the hell do you want? Alicia said. There was a numbness in her body that wiped away all previous fear. Hell was transformed temporarily into purgatory. Who are you? Do you know what you just did?
Saying nothing, he extended his right hand. Was he trying to help her? But as his forearm, thick,bare, and sinewy, and encircled by three large metallic bracelets, emerged from the cloak’s diaphanous ripples, what happened next quickly shattered this hypothesis.

The series of bracelets melted and joined together like smart quicksilver. The oddly flowing river of liquid metal then pooled into his palm and then extended solidly in either direction, taking the form of a long, cylindrical pole. The rear extension stopped at a length of a meter and a half, while the front grew forward and then outward, extending into a flat vane, poised at an odd curve.

Alicia’s blood turned to cold mercury in its vessels when she recognized the shape.
The man lifted the device into the air, swinging upwards.
Wait! What are you- She managed before the silver scythe came down upon her right shoulder.
In a jolt of static and pixels, and the scent and taste of blood, reality intruded in full color. Her body jerked upwards, but was held fast by a pair of strong hands. Alicia’s chest involuntarily heaved and she retched, smattering someone’s white medical frock with projectile vomit. Several alarms from unseen machinery were going off while voices barked orders in Glossiu.

A dull, sharp coldness hit her carotid artery, and she blacked out.

***

There were brief, fleeting periods of consciousness afterwards. The first was to the sight of shielded fluorescent lights shining in her eyes. The taste of blood was replaced with plastic and the sensation of an irritating dryness in her mouth. More background voices spoke in Glossiu, but more subdued than before. Alicia tried to move her tongue, only to discover that a series of tubes prevented it. They ran down her throat, making it impossible to talk. She turned her head in the direction of the arm that the I-Link stranger had hit with the scythe.

It was no longer there. There was now little more than a bandaged stump.

Panic returned, but then it drowned in overwhelming grief, the combination hitting her like a right hook to the chest as she realized that it was her playing arm. It was a nightmare; it had to be! Vision blurred and her eyes ran over with tears as her breaths came, shallow and rapid. Unable to let out even an anguished groan, her breathing increased twofold. Monitors began to ring their shrill cadence of alarms. She jerked her body, trying to sit up, but strong hands again held her down. More alarms sounded, and the voices chattered more excitedly. She saw a blue-skinned hand sheathed in white latex press a button on a machine below an IV of fluids, and her body became a lead weight. Sounds became garbled and distant as she fell into unconsciousness once again, devoid of sensation, and blessedly, emotion.

She awoke the next two times to the same location: a large tank of a strange thick, blue fluid that she found herself actually able to breathe, as if it were air. Her breaths came labored, the fluid inducing a feeling that was more like drinking rather than breathing. Each time, however, someone sedated her. Nothing touched her; she simply became sleepy, as if something had been added to the fluid, and she passed out. Through both periods, however, Alicia recalled the stump that was her arm, and refused to look in that direction.

She did recall visitors during those two waking periods. The first one was Kumai. Her image was distorted by the combination of fluid and glass in whatever tank that held her, but she recognized her pressed up against its surface. So she’d found her after all. God only knew how long it had taken her to discover where she was. It was obvious from the heavy pall of grief in her liquid black eyes that she knew something of what had happened. The tears on her face were so profuse, she could even see them through the distortion. She was sympathetic, but due to the fluid, found herself unable to cry at this.

The second visitor, however, surprised her, and left her later wondering if she’d really seen what she thought she saw. She first recognized the black and gray nanomaterial enforcer uniform, which struck her with new fear and questions, the chief of which being whether or not she’d been found out, and would be arrested because of it. Then she saw the face, and instantly believed she truly was still asleep and dreaming. Her features were less rounded and more mature than she remembered, but it had, after all, been fifteen years. Still, she recognized her sister: the long, luxurious hair, the nose, closer to her mouth and smaller than her own, and the slightly elongated face lacking the star tattoo that had been applied to her own cheek.

Painful memories came back to her in that waking moment, buried ever since Walker had “died.” Her parents were both Cybersoft techies, and both obsessed with their work and climbing the corporate ladder to the point where neither had much time for her or Kate in their childhood days. Still, they had high aspirations for both of them, perhaps too high, Alicia believed. Kate was the “good” sister: always got the best grades and followed in their parents’ footsteps; Alicia was the black sheep: always in trouble, and more interested in her own musical aspirations than her parents’ wishes. Kate was obviously the choice sibling. They were close to each other as children, but drifted apart as their parents’ duplicity became more obvious. In the end, she decided that if they liked Kate better, then they could have her. After that came memories of the kidnapping, the compound, and then Walker.

There were tears running down her face when she awoke -the first sign that she had been removed from the tank. All was silent, except the rhythmic bleeps from the heart monitor in the hospital room. She turned towards the outside window to see the pyramid-shaped buildings and two moons that confirmed she was both still in Gaea and Mezedia, but alone, as far as she could tell, in an insipid hospital room.

An unnatural breeze began to blow, moving from a blank wall on the opposite side of the room, towards the window –which was shut tight– instead of away from it. The wind was cold, and blew through the bed’s flimsy blanket. Still weak from her series of ordeals and memories, Alicia struggled to turn her head in the opposite direction to see what was going on. She was too tired to feel fear, too spent to be worried, but curiosity managed to find strength enough to manifest itself.

A brief, Now, what? Flitted through her head as the silence of the room was shattered. The sound was like a heretofore unnoticed siren undergoing the Doppler Effect –only at a much lower series of pitches. The wall began to ripple and take shape as out of the distortion, a person came into view. It was a man, judging by the shape of the distortions on the event horizon, and a chillingly familiar one at that. She recognized the silvery cloak instantly as he stepped forward and appeared, scythe first, the distorted event horizon of the now-obvious dimensional gateway reverberating and vanishing as he inserted his presence into this plane of reality, a silver-clad grim reaper.

“I know you,” Alicia whispered, aware of, but strangely apathetic at her lack of fear. “Came to finish what you started with my arm?”

“Your arm was lost to begin with.” His voice, outside of the I-Link was deeper than she expected, even though she still couldn’t completely make out his face. “You’re far from a fool.”

“Oh,” was all she could say; she had no rebuttal for this. Even before she started using circus, Alicia had heard that overdoses did nasty things to your nervous system in weird places. He was wrong. She’d been a fool, an ignorant, suicidal fool. She never once thought it could happen to her, or more specifically, her playing arm, but here she was, Alicia Barnes, A.K.A. Chevroness: one-time rock star-turned-drug statistic.

“Your brain was so addled with circus that you didn’t know your front from your back,” the man said. “I purged it from your system, but it was too late. It was all I could to do call an ambulance. If not for me, then you’d be dead.”

For the first time since her second waking moment, she gathered the courage to shift her eyes towards the stump that was her right arm –her playing arm. It was heavily bandaged and fiber optic cables ran from it to a strange device on a white rolling cart. It looked like a desktop router set, but with a lattice of psychedelic lights where the switches would be. A noise that reminded her of a low-volume electronic whalesong emanated from it as streams of color and light went along through hair-thin cable lines set at the right side of her bed.

“What is all this?” She said, at last finding her usual salt. “What do you want from me? Who the hell are you?”

“It’s not what I want from you,” the man said, placing the base of his scythe on the ground and twirling the handle in his hand. The silvery blade made a sharp hissing noise as it spun around and flashed strange colors in the moons’ light. “It’s more a question of what we want from you.”

Alicia made a disparaging cough. “Nice James Bond villain act, there, kiddo; but your creepy Merlin-with-no-beard routine needs a little work.”

“Tell me, Miss Barnes,” the man said, as if deaf to her snide remark, “what do you know of the MAGI?”

“So you’re a terrorist?”

A wry grin cracked upon the side of the man’s face. “Well, then, if you want to use that kind of logic, then one might say that you’re a terrorist as well. And Kumai is your accomplice.”

“You leave her out of this!” Alicia snapped. Even though she raised her voice only slightly, a slight wave of dizziness overcame her. “Ugh,” she moaned, bringing her remaining hand to cover her eyes as she rode out the wave of nausea. “Please, look, she had nothing to do with anything I did.”

“I like your attitude,” the man observed with some hint of bemusement. “You’ll need it in your new life.”

“In jail?”

“Why would you think that?” His surprise was genuine, and this was a great relief. So he wasn’t an enforcer.

That was a surprise. Alicia half-expected when she woke up, to find her one arm in a brace and magna-locked to the bed’s railing, along with a figure in the infamous black bodysuit sitting right across from her, waiting to drag her off to the League station holding cells, away from Kumai, away from Rax, away from Walker. Also, enforcers were known to have a flair for the dramatic only when they were chasing you, and this guy was hamming it up like nothing she’d seen before. “So you’re not here to arrest me?”

“No. That comes later. Or to be more exact, it may come later. But that’s definitely not up to me.”

“Who are you?” Alicia gave her words a long, warning cadence as she made a show of her hand moving for the nurse’s button.

“You needed to ask, sunflower?” The cloaked figure said. The voice was still the same octave, but the quality had transformed into something very familiar.

“No…” Alicia whispered.

The man passed his hand over the cloak that partially obscured his head. He then turned to the side, masking his face from her sight. But when he spoke again, the voice -now sage and mellow where it was once high and youthful- was a dead giveaway.

“You know who I am.”

“Walker…”

“Tell me, do you love the League so much that you’ll begrudge my saving your life at the expense of your arm?” He said, turning her way. His face was still hard to make out in the obscuring darkness, but then Alicia saw the telltale stripe of white, and large, toothy smile, “the same League that threw your band mate in prison on trumped-up charges? The same League that lied about his death to keep quiet about my own disappearance? The same League that killed your friend Bob?”

He removed the cloak from his face, bringing to light a smile that was not his usual jovial grin, but an expression that was more sinister, more obsessed. But he did not face her fully with this look, as if he dared not show this side of himself to her. It vanished like a cartoon irising out as he turned to face her. His expression was as grave and somber as that of the visage he wore when he gated into her room, but his voice was kinder and gentler than his face let on. “Sweetie, you’ll forgive me for being out of your life, won’t you?”

“I… Of course I will,” Alicia said, her mind swimming and her heart awash with conflicting emotions. “Walker, what’s going on? Are you for real? Are the MAGI for real? Are you really working for them? What do you mean the League killed Bob?”

“One question at a time,” Walker warned, and then cast his face into an unreadable expression. “Short answers first. Yes, we’re real, yes, I’m working for the MAGI, and yes, you’ve been had. The League killed Bob, and sent you to this world on that little job. You’ve been made into a pawn.” He paused to sigh deeply. It was a sound heavy with regret. “And it’s all my fault.”

“How could it have been your fault?” Alicia said. “You’re the best at what you do! I never-”

Walker placed his hand gently over her mouth. It was sheathed in white leather, and suffused with the spicy smell of his cologne. It reminded her of their more innocent days, and she began to wonder why she ever broke up with him in the first place.

“Your words are flattering,” Walker said, on the edge of laughter, “but I’m only human. I was monitoring the words the fake ‘me’ said to you on the tank; at least part of them were true. I did screw up. I underestimated the I-Link cops; with hackers like me, those bastards have the patience of Job. I guess some of them never really thought I was dead.”

He paused long enough to give a rueful grin. “The second they got a taste of my style, they were hot on my backside, like green on grass. I thought I had anonymity on my side, but I was wrong. That’s what led the operative to you.” It was nothing to make you think I’d coaxed you here. The second I learned about it, I tried to get there before you could do some major damage and attract every enforcer in ten worlds, but I was too late. But the League’s actions betrayed either their ignorance or arrogance; I’m not sure which one. Either the operation was hush-hush from the higher-ups, or they only thought that one enforcer was enough. And then there was the fact that the enforcer didn’t know what was in store. She walked right into that trap you set; I couldn’t believe it myself. In addition, knowing who the enforcer was, scored two more points for our team, as it was none other than your sister.”

Alicia said nothing to this, but the way she averted her eyes was obviously enough for Walker to draw a conclusion. “You two still aren’t on speaking terms, I gather?”

“Try fifteen years,” Alicia said.

“Didn’t I tell you to talk to her?” Walker said reproachfully. “She was at least working for Cybersoft a couple of years ago. Now that she’s an enforcer, who knows how much the League has brainwashed her to their ideals? She may well arrest you without a moment’s thought.”

“What’s it to you?” Alicia said, his words flaring a dormant anger within her, along with another deluge of emotions. But these were more sobering, more humbling than before. What was she saying? Goody-two-shoes or not, Kate was still her sister. Hell, she hadn’t even gone to her parents’ funeral after she’d learned of the lab accident that took their lives. What kind of a callous excuse for a human being had she become? “She’s my sister; let me deal with her as I want.”

“You might not have a choice in the matter,” Walker said. “She found you out, after all.”

“Oh god…” Alicia quavered. The waking moment in the fluid tank came back to mind: the person standing there, whose features, though elongated and slightly distorted by the glass, were both familiar, and undeniable. Realizing that she hadn’t been seeing things after all caused the full gravity of everything –what she nearly did in the I-Link, and who the enforcer was– to imbue her with new fear. “I nearly killed my own sister! And if what you said is true, then…”

“I always say that it’s best not to assume,” Walker said, being as comforting as pragmatism would allow. “Most likely, the bonds of blood are stronger than conditioning by the system. Who knows?”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re doing a piss-poor job,” Alicia said, letting her resentment flow from every word. “And you still haven’t told me what you want with me.”

“I want you to play in your band, of course.” Walker replied. At once, the scythe melted in his hand and the quicksilver enlarged and re-formed, ultimately solidifying into a silver flying “v” electric guitar, complete with strings and frets. Its smooth, reflective surface shimmered hauntingly in the light of the moons, highlighting the word, Sunflower, engraved upon its surface.

“Play in my band, eh?” Alicia asked with no attempt to hide her scorn. “That’s a frickin’ laugh. That was my playing arm that got chopped off, there, genius. And I don’t get enough royalties to afford a prosthetic.”

Walker placed the guitar beside her bed, and then gestured towards her arm and the mysterious machine. “Who do you think funded this? Your arm is being injected with nanomachines in preparation for a prosthetic, one of the best ever made. “But,” he added with a peculiar emphasis, “I have been told that there will be a price to be paid on your end.”

“A price?” Alicia mulled over it in her head. She was never one to believe in urban legends, but tales of groups such as the MAGI were the stuff of actual legends. They opposed the worlds-spanning monopoly that was the League, and like djinns, they granted favors to whom they pleased, but required a sacrifice on the part of the recipient. God only knew why they’d tapped her, but that paled in comparison to her dream. More than anything, she wanted to be in the limelight once again. She wanted a life that she –and Kumai– could be proud of.

“Nothing good is ever free?” Alicia said. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Something like that.” Walker made a slow, careful nod. “But our prices are neither exorbitant, nor unreasonable. Still, because you’ve caused such a need for fire control on our end, your price is twofold.”

“Name it.”

“First, you will get off the circus. Cold turkey; do not pass ‘Go.’”

Alicia swallowed hard. Circus withdrawal was nothing pleasant to see, even worse to experience. But this was really a small price to pay to have her arm back. “Agreed,” she said. “What’s the second?”

“You work for us, now.” Walker was completely serious.

“Doing what?”

“Whatever we need. You wanted revenge for Bob, right? Revenge for me and Rax? This time, you’ll be doing it right.”

“And that’s it?” Alicia said. “It’s just that easy?”

“It’s never easy, sweetheart.” Walker shook his head grimly. “I learned that long ago. But it’s rewarding.”

“That what you meant by my new life?”

Walker nodded.

“No other way?”

“Not unless you want to be the second amputee in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. Alicia sighed, finding that it was all that she could do. “Okay. Agreed.”

“Done, then.” Walker then turned and glanced briefly at the door. There was noise on the other side, voices speaking not in Glossiu, but English. “This is where I leave you, sunflower,” he said, and leaned over her.

Alicia felt his lips upon hers, but it wasn’t like the kisses they shared their halcyon days. This was a simple goodbye, giving little more more of a sweet memory of their past. It was brief, but left her with a dazed smile as she watched Walker merge into the wall and ripple away. His words, “I’ll see you around,” echoed through the gateway, distorted, and then vanished.

She barely had time to absorb all that had just happened when the door opened. In spite of her confusion and uncertainty over all that had transpired, Alicia could not stop the tears from flowing when she saw her sister appear, still clothed for work, and with Kumai close behind. She came in with an initial expression of busy annoyance, which melted instantly as their eyes met –both steel gray, and with the epicanthic fold of their Asian heritage–, paused, and then begin to cry herself.

“I didn’t believe it,” she whispered between tears, her soft voice shaky with barely gated emotion. “I… I thought it was a lie. Oh, Aly… is it really you?”

“Yeah.” Alicia couldn’t help but smile through her own torrent of tears. “Hi there, Katie. It’s your screw-up sister.”

Kate practically fell to her knees beside the bed, and gently took Alicia's head in her arms. The bodysuit she wore smelled more like motor oil than the leather that its texture reminded her of. “Aly…” She heard Kate sniffle wetly. “Mom and dad thought… I thought you were dead! Why the hell didn’t you let me know?”

“Geez, Katie? You don’t watch the tank?” Alicia rolled her eyes. “I was only on it about fifty million times.”

Kate stopped, and then gazed at her, genuinely confused at first. Her eyes narrowed in thought as she inspected her face.

“Chervroness?” Alicia said, amazed, and yet determined to jog her sister's memory, “from Ambush; that ring a bell? I thought you loved rock music.”
“Things change after fifteen years,” Kate said. “I don’t go man-hunting to the clubs every night like I used to –not that it did me much good.” She let go of the embrace, wiping the tears from her cheeks with one hand, while the other brushed back Alicia’s noticeably shorter, purple-highlighted hair. “Look at you; you look like krid.”

“I’m getting better.”

Kate tried to suppress a laugh, but failed. Alicia followed, and soon, the two shared the first conniption fit they’d had in fifteen years.

***

Kate said that she had to leave in a hurry before her lateness attracted unwanted attention from the League brass, but promised to see her again. Alicia smiled. She knew now that Kate knew what had happened on the I-Link, and was taking a big risk hiding her from prying eyes. She regretted that it took fifteen years for a reunion. She only hoped that next time they met, she would have a second arm to embrace her with.

Kumai, who had been in the room, silent, while she and Kate shared their reunion, came forward, moved a chair from the wall beside the window, and sat by the head of her bed. Her black eyes, ever unreadable, seemed to partly gaze down at her, partly stare into nothingness as she took hold of Alicia’s remaining hand. Perhaps choosing her words carefully, as Gaeans were wont to do, she was silent for a long while before at last deciding to speak.

“Despite the disarray of the company, Kumai has been given time off while you recover. Kumai is glad to see that you have survived, tir-Alicia.”

“I’m sure you’re pissed that I didn’t keep my promise,” Alicia said. “Don’t hold back on my account.”

A tear flowed down her pale blue cheek from her solid black iris. “It matters no more, tir-Alicia. Your situation has paid your price. But Kumai hopes that you have learned a lesson.”

Alicia swallowed. God, her throat felt dry. “Oh, I have; believe me, Ku. I ain’t touching the stuff again. Getting off of it for good.”

Like her sister had done, Kumai pulled her into an embrace of her own, only tighter. She heard her give an elated sigh. “Oh, tir-Alicia! Kumai is so happy! And Kumai will be with you all the way.”

“Yeah… thanks.” Alicia’s voice was choked to a rasp by the Gaean’s surprisingly strong grip. “Now could you let go? Even humans have to breathe, you know.”

Kumai gasped and broke away, covering her mouth gingerly with her hands. “You are not well yet!” She wailed, her lips and nose shielded by her slender fingers. “Kumai is sorry!”

Weakly, Alicia lifted her arm and brought it to Kumai’s cheek, watching as her wide eyes softened and her blue skin once again turned crimson. Alicia smiled, managing her same mischievous sparkle in her eyes, despite her sudden onset of exhaustion.

“You really are cute when you’re scared; you know that?”

***

Detox was hell –not that Alicia didn’t expect it to be. The doctors told her that circus withdrawal was the worst, but she hadn’t quite believed them, not until the onset of the D.T.s, and then she experienced it in its full, hellish fury. Her memories were hazy, but she knew that Kumai kept by her side through the intense pain in her eyes, throbbing headaches, muscle spasms, and false I-Link hallucinations. Such was the devotion of Gaeans: something she was truly thankful for, because she was certain she’d thrown up on her at least three times in the process. Still, it was all necessary; the doctors wouldn’t dare fit her new arm unless all the drugs were out of her system. And once the surgery was done, and all her nerves were connected to the prosthetic’s nanofibers, it was as if she’d never lost her arm at all. She breezed through physical therapy in less than a month, amazing every doctor who worked with her, and a month later, she was back to playing her guitar in no time.

But rebuilding a band took more time than she first expected. Several months passed before she could gather the courage to bring Rax out of hiding. Kumai did the rest, working with a few esoteric doctors on Gaea who specialized in the physiology of the few nonhuman off-planers who trafficked in their world in order to alter him enough to pass for human. Rax was slightly indignant at losing his facial horns, but grew accustomed to it in time; it was far preferable to rotting in prison again. As far as the public was concerned, Rax was dead, and would have to remain that way –for now. Ambush had merely picked up a new drummer and was starting from scratch.

. For a time, hers was a full apartment once she’d taken Rax –now “Rick” in the public eye– off of Walker’s hands. Kumai had taken to staying at her own home in Gaea more often, in order to give herself some breathing space, but the plus side was that whenever she did choose to crash on Earth, she had no excuse for not sleeping in her bedroom, even when Alicia’s more “charming” personality traits came to the surface. But despite the rocky start, she and Rax –with Kumai’s help– managed to get hold of T.J. -also gone into seclusion, and more than happy to re-start the band-, pull strings with their agent and label, and get the wheels in motion for a reunion tour.

It was a success beyond their wildest dreams. Ambush was put back on the map.

***

Kate visited for their tour’s final stop on Earth.

“You know, once I had the chance to look it up, I realized that I did listen to your group after all,” she said as she removed the beer from the dispenser in the dressing room, “a lot, as a matter of fact. I was a real big fan for a time, back when I was working at Cybersoft. I just never knew it was you.”

“You're serious?” Alicia said in dismay. You didn't know? I knew I wore a lot of makeup, but I didn't think that my own sister wouldn't recognize me.”

“Well, remember, the last time I saw you, you were shorter, and your hair was longer,” Kate reminded her, somewhat amused. “But then again, I guess maybe that was why I liked your group so much. Maybe deep down inside, a part of me knew that you were my sister. You just didn’t look like the one I remembered.” She glanced over Alicia with a scrutinizing eye, and cast her a lopsided grin. “You still don’t, come to think of it.”

“That was a lifetime ago, Katie,” Alicia said absently, all the while fumbling with her silver guitar: her only proof thus far that what had happened in the hospital on Gaea hadn’t been a dream. The instrument sure played like one; that was a certifiable fact. It was as if the guitar and her new arm were made for each other. She ran her fingers over the engraved sunflower upon its surface and smiled. A brief warm feeling came to her chest as she zipped the satchel closed.

“Well, you seem to be doing well for yourself,” Kate said as they came out of the dressing room. “A dream come true, just like you told me.”

“Yeah, well, I need to survive this tour first,” she said, lugging the satchel onto her back. “It’s already kicking my ass, and though Kumai isn’t saying anything, she’s feeling the burn too. And we got three worlds left on this thing; we’re gonna be so spanked by the time we get back to Earth.”

“Well, I know I’m just family, but if you want my opinion, I think you rocked the house five times over tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised if doctors tomorrow have a surplus of patients from the audience, with laryngitis and busted eardrums.”

“Well, that’s encouragement if I’ve ever heard it,” Alicia said with a laugh. “Ah, but what about you?” She eyed her sister with hurried concern, but there was no way to be tactful about it. She hadn’t seen Kate in months. “About that night, I mean. Your head was on the chopping block on my account?”

“Not really,” Kate said –much to her sister’s relief. “There was some ruckus at HQ, but it got bogged down in red tape before long. Just make sure that krid you pulled was a one-time-only thing, and they won’t get suspicious again.”

“Oh, trust me, Katie, you won’t have to worry about that,” Alicia said. They reached the fork in the pathway outside the stadium. One led to Alicia’s ride –out of the way of the groupies gathered at the main exit, and the other led to the nearly empty parking lot, where Kate’s motorcycle waited. She turned and gave her sister a final hug goodbye. “You sure you gotta leave so soon? There’s room for one more roadie, you know.” Her eyes sparkled with the mischief that Kate had so well remembered from their childhood. “We got a lot of catching up to do, you and I.”

Kate’s smile faded. “That’s true,” she said, and then sighed resignedly, “but for now, we live on two different worlds, Aly. Our paths will have to cross whenever fate gives us a chance. I got a job to do, and you have yours.”

“True,” Aly said. “So very true. Well, Katie, I guess it’s goodbye for now. Don’t be a stranger, you hear?”

“I’ll keep in touch,” Kate said and started off down her path. “Break a leg, sis.”

Alicia waved goodbye, watching until her sister rounded the far end of the stadium, out of sight.

“Does she know?” Walker said, appearing behind her. She didn’t start; it had become commonplace since he’d first made contact.

“You weren’t listening in?” Alicia said, not looking behind her.

“I just like to be thorough.” The odd fabric of Walker's cloak shimmered ethereally in the light as it gently billowed in the wind.

“I thought she had something to do with your plans.”

“All in good time. You come first. And you’ve done a good job.”

“Haven’t I, though? Y’know, sometimes I surprise myself,” Enjoying her bravado, Alicia touched the small groove in the wrist of her artificial arm. She could feel the nanofibers inside the compartment –a special addition by the MAGI, undetectable by conventional medical scanners–, coiled and ready to subsume more systems like she had been doing for the last few months, as per Walker’s instructions. It all seemed so random, however: an I-Link terminal here, a traffic box there, and sometimes even an e-menu or two at fast food chains. Of course, they were all League-owned, used on Earth and on a hundred different worlds, but there was no pattern. What did it add up to? “So, you care to tell me what the grand scheme is thus far?”

“You’re doing well, thus far, sunflower. To bring down a behemoth, one does not attack full-on, but little by little, chipping away at foundations. You play a part in a larger scheme. And both anonymity and ignorance are your protection. After all, though there are plans for your sister, she’s not yet a part of this. And being that she’s an enforcer, she is not one that either you, or I, want to make an enemy of.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Alicia said, her words coaxing a smile from Walker’s tattooed face, the first she had seen in a long time.

As he’d done so many times before, Walker pressed the disk into the palm of her artificial hand, and instantly, the nanofibers wrapped around it and dragged it, half-melting, inside her arm. The sensation was indescribable, but something she’d become accustomed to. She didn’t fight it as she first had, with notably painful results; rather, she let it come, and integrate itself into her mind, flowing piece by piece into her long-term memory, as if she’d learned a vocal text to recite. She was now the bearer of a set of instructions and code that made as little sense to her as her other assignments.

“Your next assignment,” Walker said. “Do you understand it?”

“Yes, and no,” Alicia said.

“Good answer,” Walker nodded cordially. “See you around, sweetie.”

This was going to be an interesting tour.

He vanished just as Kumai’s voice began to call her name. She hurried down the path and arrived at the waiting magcar. The words, AMBUSH REUNION TOUR: THE ATTACK IS BACK! were painted in stylized red and white letters on its black stainless steel chassis.

“We have to go, tir-Alicia,” Kumai said, taking the guitar satchel and stuffing it into the luggage compartment of the magcar. “The tour must remain on schedule.”

A burning pain sliced through her artificial arm as she grabbed the railing on the magcar’s entrance hatch. Alicia froze, and sucked in a breath of air through her teeth. Not again. This was the fifth time this week that it started hurting. She at first had been afraid that it was the nanofibers or the downloads, but it had come during times long after or long before her rendezvous with Walker, meaning it was just a mundane glitch. But it had become annoying, and this was the last straw. She didn’t care what the medtechs said; something was funky with the connections on this thing. Next stop, she was hitting a hospital before the concert. Screw the notoriety; it was hurting like hell.

“Your arm still hurts?” Kumai said, both concerned for her and eager for the magcar to get underway. Though fuel was a non issue for this type of vehicle, the League was downright anal when it came to times for gateway transfers, and this one had to be made in orbit to get to the world which was the band’s next stop. Timing would be especially of the essence.

“I’ll live,” Alicia said. “I can still play the guitar, and that’s good enough for me.”

“You play just as well as Kumai remembers,” Kumai said. “You must be happy, now that your band’s music has made the charts.”

“Yeah, but it’s messed up that I had to lose an arm to see the big picture,” Alicia said.

“At least you no longer do circus,” Kumai said. “Kumai is happy about that.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Kumai is sorry.”

“Forget it,” Alicia said. “I’m not sensitive about it, or anything.”

She never did tell Kumai all that had happened; perhaps she knew that she was hiding something, but some things were better left unsaid, and she never asked. Still, Alicia needed her; she hoped they needed each other. And Kumai was a very capable manager. T.J. was back, along with Rax, plastic surgery and gene therapy safely obscuring his identity, and Ambush was now on the road to a comeback.

“Back on the road again,” she said to no one but herself. “You know, Ku, I can’t tell you how much I missed this life.” Alicia collapsed into the sofa bed in the back cabin and shut her eyes. The pain in her arm was gone. Kumai sat beside her, and leaned onto her shoulder, falling almost instantly into a light slumber, equally exhausted. Alicia made a tiny hum at the sight of her. She was cute even when she wasn’t scared.