End of The Line // 0x41 // Tertiary

Reyes finished adjusting one of the monitors, the pale glow of the screen reflecting faintly off the brass rings of his telescopic glasses. The machines hummed with quiet satisfaction, like a workshop after a successful repair. He glanced over Void's vitals one last time and gave a small, approving nod. "Vitals stable..." he said calmly while peeling off his gloves, the latex snapping softly. "Motor response intact." His eyes moved between Void and Sandy before he added politely, "I shall leave you for a moment. Please avoid provoking a stress response from the patient."

Sandy gave him a lazy two-finger salute from the chair beside the bed and muttered something about no promises, which earned the faintest hint of a smile from the doctor before he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

The room grew quieter immediately after Reyes left. Void stared up at the ceiling for a moment, letting the reality of being conscious again settle in, then slowly lifted a hand and ran her fingers through the hair on the right side of her head. She searched carefully, expecting to feel a seam, a ridge, anything that suggested someone had opened her skull like a maintenance hatch.

She sighed in relief, the scar was exactly along the line Reyes promised would be.

"How long?" she finally asked.

Sandy had been leaning back in the chair beside her bed with his arms folded, clearly giving signs of not sleeping properly in a while. "Two days," he replied without ceremony.

Void turned her head slowly on the pillow. "...two?"

"Forty-eight plus," he said with a shrug.

The words landed heavier than she expected. "Fuck," she muttered under her breath, rubbing her face. She started frantically looking for her phone. "I need to call Keira..."

Before she could find it, a system notification appeared in front of her HUD.

Void recoiled. "Holy shit. This thing just... Found and... Replaced my phone..?"

"Yeah. Welcome to the future, girl, Sandy chuckled. "We call it 'holo' in here."

Void stared at the faint holographic interface hovering at the edge of her vision. It wasn't really there in the physical sense, but it felt like it occupied space anyway, a translucent layer of soft blue glyphs and menus drifting across her awareness like a second HUD over reality.

She blinked once, and the interface blinked with her.

"Okay," she muttered, half impressed and half unsettled. "That's creepy efficient."

Sandy, visibly amused now, reiterated from the chair beside the bed. "Told you. Future."

Void thought of Keira's name, and the floating contact list scrolled to right to her entry. Her eyebrows lifted slightly. "Alright," she murmured. "I can work with this."

For a split-second the interface pulsed. The call connected instantly. There was half a second of silence.

Then... Keira exploded.

"VOID?!"

Void flinched and tried to cover her ears out of the habit. When she realized how stupid it was, she nonchalantly responded "Hey."

"HEY?! YOU DISAPPEAR FOR TWO FUCKING DAYS AND YOUR FIRST WORD IS 'HEY'?!"

Void rubbed her temple. "In my defense I was unconscious for most of it."

"Yeah, no shit!" Keira snapped. "It was supposed to be quick!"

Void opened her mouth to respond but Keira barreled straight over her. "Amy cried the entire night yesterday," she continued angrily. "She thought you fucking died!"

The words hit harder than the shouting. Void's shoulders sank slightly against the pillow.

"What?"

"Yeah," Keira said, her voice still sharp but carrying a thread of worry beneath it. "Spent hours sitting in the kitchen staring at her phone like it was gonna magically ring."

Void closed her eyes briefly.

Across the room, Aura was sitting on the counter watching the conversation with bright curiosity, swinging her legs like someone attending a very dramatic play.

Void flipped her off. Sandy looked the way middle finger was directed at and sighed, frowning. "Seeing ghosts?"

"Noooo, I'm not a fucking ghost, you gunhead! I owned that dump of a body!" Aura yelled, annoyed.

"I'm okay," she said gently, trying to ignore that. "The installation just ran longer than expected."

"Define 'longer'," Keira demanded.

"Turns out fitting experimental military hardware in someone who has zero cybernetic infrastructure takes time," Void replied dryly. "Reyes had to install half a skeleton worth of support implants before the augmentations would even talk to my nervous system."

There was a pause on the line, then Keira huffed. "That actually sounds believable," she admitted reluctantly.

Void glanced toward Sandy, who gave her a small thumbs-up.

"So?" Keira continued. "Did it work?"

Void shifted slightly on the bed and flexed her fingers experimentally while the faint ghost of her new interface hovered at the edge of her sight.

"Yeah," she said after a moment. "It's all online. I'm calling you from my... Head. I think," she said, still not quite letting it sink in.

"Holy shit," Keira muttered.

"Pretty much," Void agreed.

Aura appeared directly on Void, grinning. "Tell her about the part where your brain looks like a Christmas tree on the diagnostic screens."

Void kept her face neutral.

"Any... Side effects?" Keira asked immediately.

Void hesitated for half a second.

Aura traced her finger across Void's cheek, "Come oooooon, tell her it's gonna be a threesome in bed now! I consent!"

"Nothing catastrophic so far," she said.

Sandy raised an eyebrow but didn't comment.

"That is the least reassuring phrasing you could've used," Keira replied flatly.

"Relax, gearhead," Void said. "Reyes said everything looks stable."

"And you're trusting a random ripper provided to you by an equally random fixer," Keira said in disbelief.

"He's good. Better than I expected." Void replied.

Sandy turned his head to rather obviously express his disagreement. Another short silence followed before Keira spoke again, this time more quietly.

"...Amy's here," she said.

Void sat up a little straighter. "She okay?"

There was a faint rustle of movement on the other end of the call, like someone shifting closer to the phone.

Amy's voice came through softly. "Hi... Void."

Void felt something in her chest loosen instantly. "Hey, kid."

Aura tilted her head slightly, studying the tone of that greeting.

"You're really okay?" Amy asked gently.

"Yeah," Void said. "Still breathing, still stuck with my own bad decisions."

Amy let out a tiny relieved laugh. "Good... I miss you."

Keira's voice returned immediately after.

"If you ever pull a disappearing act like that again I'm going to start the next three corporate wars on my own."

Void smirked faintly. "You'd get lost halfway to the nearest ammo dump."

"I'd punch my way through," Keira scoffed.

"Seeee? Told you she's WAAAY too aggressive," Aura interjected, "like... Who hurt you, girl?"

Void leaned back into the pillow again, trying to ignore the ghost roaming around the bed, watching everything with manic fascination.

"Listen," she said softly into the call, "I'm okay, the system's online, and the doc says recovery looks clean. I'll be back before you know it."

Amy exhaled audibly. "That's good," she whispered.

Keira muttered something about experimental idiots under her breath.

Void smiled faintly.

"Still not gonna introduce me? Ruuuude," Aura broke the silence in frustration.

She glitched away and wandered over to one of the diagnostic displays, peering at the floating lines of neural telemetry with open fascination, tilting her head like someone reading a language she half remembered. "That's actually REEEEALLY impressive," she commented casually to Void while gesturing at the scrolling data. "I can only see what you see, but my mind is filling the blanks in with stuff from my head!"

Void ignored her. "Listen Kei, I gotta go. Need to figure some shit out with Sandy. Flight home and stuff."

"Alright dumbass. Get back quickly. Love you, talk soon, yeah?"

"Yeah. Soon. Love y'all." She thought about ending the call, and the cyberware acted accordingly. Then, she turned her head to Sandy.

"Two days, huh?" Void asked, "and you stayed here the entire time?"

"Mostly." Sandy stretched his neck until it popped and scratched the back of his head. "Been driving back and forth between here and the house like some kind of delivery service with anxiety issues," he admitted. "Spent more time here than in my workshop honestly."

Void blinked at him.

"Emmie kept the place running," he added after a moment.

Aura had drifted closer by then and was now standing beside Sandy's chair, examining him with curious interest. "He's adorable," she whispered to Void, nodding at the tired lines under Sandy's eyes.

Void kept her expression neutral.

"Emmie also filled me in on something," Sandy continued slowly, his tone shifting just enough to make Void pay attention. "She had... Concerns."

Void groaned quietly. "What else is new?"

"Yeah," he said. "Turns out she's got theories."

"That woman collects those like you collect guns," Void muttered.

Sandy hesitated before continuing, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. "She said the way you talk about yourself sometimes... Doesn't line up." He paused briefly before finishing the thought. "Said she sensed something was off about you from the start," he carried on, "guessed you might not actually be who you say you were... Whatever that means."

Void went very still, as Aura perked up immediately. "Oh wow, she nailed it."

"And," Sandy added, watching Void closely now, "she worried this procedure might, and I quote, 'Bring the dead back from their graves'."

Aura snapped and started pacing around Sandy, trying to yell into his ears, "And I didn't even ask for this, you dumb gunhead! LET ME DIE IN PEACE!"

Void exhaled slowly through her nose. "Well," she said at last, "she wasn't wrong."

Sandy blinked.

Void pushed herself a little higher against the bed, wincing as her muscles complained about two days of inactivity. "Okay. This is going to sound insane," she warned.

Sandy snorted quietly. "Lady, you're a netrunner with experimental military hardware in your skull who just got operated on in a shady back-alley clinic. The bar for insane is already pretty high."

"Fair," Void admitted tiredly.

Aura leaned against the wall nearby, arms crossed, clearly enjoying the show.

"Before we met," Void began slowly, choosing each word carefully, "there was someone else in here." She tapped the side of her head.

Sandy frowned. "Someone else... How?"

Void made a vague circling motion near her temple, clearly struggling to explain something that wasn't meant to be explained out loud. "She... Made me."

Sandy blinked.

Aura smiled faintly. "He might be adorable, but girl. He's so dense he'd make for good radiation shielding."

"Alright, different approach," Void muttered before trying again. "You know imaginary friends?"

Sandy's eyebrows climbed halfway up his forehead.

"You're joking."

Void rubbed her temples again. "Nnnope. Deathly serious."

"She created me when things got too heavy," she explained, her voice quieter now. "A second perspective. Someone to argue with so she wouldn't spiral."

Aura nodded slowly.

"At first I was just a voice," Void continued. "Advice. Sanity checks."

"And then?" Sandy asked cautiously.

Void looked away.

"Then..." Void massaged the back of her neck as if it could help the discomfort "...she offed herself." She swallowed once before continuing. "She let go," she said quietly. "And I didn't."

Sandy stared at her for a long time.

"So the imaginary friend took over," he said slowly.

Void nodded.

Another long silence followed while Sandy processed that statement. Eventually, he rubbed his beard and sighed. "Alright."

Void blinked at him. "That's it?"

"I've met weirder," Sandy said honestly. "Besides, doesn't make you any less real," he continued, "The jobs we did, adventures we've had. Was all us after all."

"Cuuuuute as fuck!" Aura laughed softly. "Wish I had friends like that back in the day," she added begrudgingly.

Void shook her head and continued. "Anyway. While I was under..."

Sandy leaned forward again.

"I saw her," Void said. "White room. Locked door. No windows."

Aura raised her hand cheerfully. "Hewwo!"

"We argued," Void continued.

"Understatement," Aura added.

"Apparently, she remembers everything," she said.

"Everything?"

"The last two years, all the shit before that too," Void confirmed quietly.

Aura's expression softened a little.

"She hugged me," Void added after a moment. "Then the room started falling apart."

"Literally?" Sandy asked.

"Geometric shapes, grid," Void said tiredly. "Reality breaking into pieces."

Aura made a small exploding gesture with her fingers.

"And you woke up," Sandy guessed.

Void nodded slowly. For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then Sandy scratched his head. "So," he said cautiously, "where is she now?"

Void hesitated, as Aura jumped enthusiastically from beside the bed, waving at Sandy now.

"Still here," Void admitted.

Sandy frowned. "You mean... In your head?"

Void opened her mouth to answer, but Aura leaned close to her ear and stage-whispered, "Tell him I'm haunting you. WoOOoOOooo!"

Void clenched her jaw.

Aura continued helpfully. "Also ask if he can see me. Do it for the plot!" She kept going. "And you should mention the exploding door because that was really dramatic-"

"Shut..." Void snapped under her breath.

Sandy blinked.

Aura kept talking.

"-and the triangles were definitely symbolic-"

"THE FUCK. UP!" Void suddenly yelled.

The room fell silent. Sandy stared at her.

"Uh... Was that directed at me?" he asked carefully.

Void buried her face in her hands while Aura doubled over laughing beside the bed.

"No," Void muttered through her fingers.

Sandy leaned back cautiously in his chair and studied her for a moment before scratching his beard again.

"Huh," he said after a pause, eyeing her with mild curiosity, "she talks a lot, doesn't she?"