End of The Line // 0x45 // Deflector

Void followed her gaze upwards. The rings expanded and contracted in a rhythm that was, now that she was actually looking at it, unmistakably organic. The intervals weren't mechanical, what's more - they varied slightly each time, like a sleeper whose breathing shifted with the currents of a dream.

"Great," Void muttered, wiping another streak of blood from her upper lip with the back of her hand. "Milspec's got a pulse. That's deeply reassuring."

"It's not a system you can treat like your workshop silicon, genius." Aura stepped closer to one of the maze walls, her projection flickering faintly as she studied the rotating encryption rings embedded in its surface. "Look at the way the code branches. It's recursive, yeah, but it's not looping. It's... Learning. Adapting. Every time you touched it, it changed."

"That's what adaptive ICE does."

"No, that's what a mind does." Aura turned to face her. "This isn't your regular security. It's literally mirroring our mental states. I'd wager it's trying to build a containment model in real-time. Which means-"

Void cut in. Her voice was flat, the realization landing with the weight of something that should have been obvious from the start. "The maze isn't attacking us. It's reacting to us."

"Reacting to you, mostly." Aura's voice sharpened at the edges. "You're the one who keeps trying to get through everything with violence."

Void's jaw tightened. "Because sitting around and philosophizing while murder programs walk towards us seemed like a worse option."

"They're not murder programs. They're... Something like immune cells, I guess. They detected something they don't understand and they're trying to fix it."

"By purging you."

"By purging the contradiction." Aura crossed her arms. "And whose fault is it that we look like a contradiction right now?" A beat passed before she continued, "you called me a tumor, Void."

Void froze, as her shoulders tightened, then dropped - not in surrender, but in the particular exhaustion of someone who knew they'd earned exactly the fight they were about to have.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I did."

"A tumor." Aura's voice cracked on the second syllable. "Like I'm something that grew in you by accident. Something malignant. Something you'd cut out if you could."

"That's not..."

"Do you know what it felt like?" Aura turned now, and her eyes - red-rimmed, bright with something between fury and grief - locked onto Void's. "Waking up? After two years of nothing? Two years of... Of void - if you'll pardon the fucking pun - and the first thing I see is you? Wearing my - now desecrated - body? Making friends I never met? Loving people I never chose?"

"You didn't want the body anymore. You, and your best friend gravity have made that extremely clear."

"I WAS IN PAIN!"

The walls flickered. Just once - a barely perceptible ripple across the white surface, like a stone dropped in still water.

But neither of them noticed.

"You think I wasn't?" Void stepped closer, her voice rising despite herself. "You think I enjoyed waking up in a body that just tried to die? Getting out of that river with your- our heart still pounding, every single muscle in that stupid flesh bag burning with a force of a thousand suns, and your voice gone? Absolutely fucking nothing left but me?"

"You could have looked for me!"

"I DID! I. FUCKING. DID!"

The ever-reconfiguring maze's walls started pulsing between dark red and fiery, angry crimson.

"I waited," Void said, her voice dropping again, shaking now. "For months. I thought you'd come back. I talked to you like you were still there, like maybe if I just kept the routines going - your routines, your coffee, your stupid playlists - you'd just... Reappear. But you didn't."

Aura's arms tightened around herself. "I couldn't."

"I know."

"No, you don't." Aura shook her head, her projection fragmenting at the edges. "You don't know what it's like to be too tired to exist. To love people so badly it breaks you, and then lose them anyway. Everyone I loved either offed themselves or betrayed me. All while I poured my fucking heart out trying to help them."

"You're not the only one who's lost people."

"I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO'S LOST MYSELF BECAUSE OF EVERYONE ELSE!"

The maze absorbed the words - freezing for a beat, then flickering and rumbling a little.

Aura's voice dropped to a whisper. "Don't you get it? I made you. You were the one thing I did right. The strong one," she pointed her finger at Void. "The one who could survive everything I couldn't. And then I woke up and you didn't need me anymore. You figured it out - life, people. Even a new fucking name!" Her breath hitched. "The only thing you haven't changed was my face, and you were doing better with it than I ever did."

Void stared at her and looked deep into her still-scarlet eyes.

"...you're jealous."

"Of course I'm jealous!" Aura laughed, and it came out wrong - too high, too sharp, splintering at the edges, matching her avatar which fragmented even more this time. "I'm a fucking FAILURE! I got to be a ghost in my own skull! And then- then- when I finally get enough of a voice to say something, to maybe, I don't know, exist a little, you call me a fucking TUMOR! I WISH I WAS NEVER BROUGHT BACK!"

The walls shuddered again - both of them felt it this time. The grid beneath them rippled, flickering to dark gray for half a second before snapping back.

Void looked around. "...what was that?"

"I don't care."

"Aura-"

"No, you don't get to change the subject." Aura advanced on her, and with each step, the room seemed to tighten - the walls inching inward, the light dimming another fraction. "You've been treating me like an inconvenience since the moment I appeared. You rolled your eyes at me. You told me to shut up. You called me annoying, crazy, a problem-"

"Because you were acting like one!" Void threw her hands up. "You've been bouncing around like a caffeinated poltergeist, making jokes while I'm trying to process the fact that my brain was just rewired, that I almost died, that the person we used to be is now a- a roommate who won't stop narrating everything!"

"I WAS COPING!"

"SO WAS I!"

Cracks started forming on each of the maze's walls. A sharp fracture ran from the base of each block, seeping faint green light. The seam pulsed in rhythm with the glowing rings up top.

Aura pointed at the one of the cracks. "What. The fuck. Is that."

Void stared at it. The pieces clicked together with terrible clarity. "Are you fucking kidding me? Got Alzheimer's or something?" she asked in disbelief. "The maze, the grid, the constructs. You said it yourself - it's a trying to model our way of thinking."

"So?"

"So it's listening." Void turned to face Aura fully. "Every time we fight, it gets worse. Every time we spiral, the system destabilizes. We're inside our own neural interface, and it's mirroring our dysfunction."

Aura's anger flickered, uncertainty creeping in. "That's... That's not how cyberware should work."

"It's how this cyberware works, remember? Designed for soldiers who weren't cuckoo. Units with perfect mental stability. It doesn't know what to do with two minds screaming at each other."

The constructs drew closer. They resized to match the dimensions of both Void's and Aura's avatars. Dozens of them now, they stopped - standing in silent rows between the data pillars, their cyan optics all fixed on the same point.

On Aura.

"...unstable?" Aura whispered.

"It thinks we're a threat to ourselves." Void's voice was tight. "Which, to be fair-"

"Don't. Don't you dare make a joke right now."

"I wasn't-"

"You were. You always do that. Deflect, deflect, deflect. Never just feel something without armor." Aura turned on her, and the grid beneath her feet flared red. "That's the difference between us, you know? You think being strong means never breaking. I broke. I broke completely. And instead of helping me pick up the pieces, you just... Took over and pretended I never existed."

"I didn't pretend you never existed! I became you! I kept your body alive, I built a life with your memories, your skills, I-"

"YOU REPLACED ME!" Aura shrieked.

The grid erupted.

Red light shot up around Aura in a polygonal column, just like before, but faster this time, more violent. The code spiraled upwards in jagged fractals, sealing her inside a cylinder of rotating data, its color matching the substrate. Her projection screamed - not in pain, rather in shock - as the walls of the column began stripping fragments from her silhouette.

"V▟id? W-wh▛t's ha▞pen▀ig t▒ m▓?"

Void lunged forward, but a wall of the maze slammed into place between them - a solid barrier of black armor and red data fragments, interlocking plates that hadn't existed a second ago. She slammed her fists against it.

"Fuck!"

The constructs kept still. Watching. Waiting. The column constricted around Aura, and this time the damage was visible - pieces of her projection flaking away into the light, dissolving like embers.

"AURA! HOLD ON!"

Void pressed both palms against the barrier and pushed. It didn't budge. She drove her shoulder into it - once, twice, three times - and each impact sent a shockwave of pain through her skull, the cyberware pushing back against her own aggression.

"Think... Fighting isn't working. Hacking isn't working. What else is there?"

Aura's voice came through the column, barely perceptible. "...sc▙r░d..."

"I know. I know, I'm trying-"

"...▞t's scare▓..."

Void stopped. "What?"

"What is scared?!"

Silence.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

She couldn't fight the system, couldn't hack it, couldn't out-code it, couldn't even do what she does best - brute-force her way through - the maze was her. The ICE was her. Every wall, every construct, every line of purging fire - it was all built from the same neural fabric that housed both of them. Any violence directed at it was like trying to punch herself in the face.

She looked around searching for something- anything that could help her figure it out. "How are we a fucking paradox... Can't we just... Co-exist?"

And then it clicked.

Void stopped pushing against the barrier. She placed her palms flat against its surface. Refusing to fight the searing sensation under her hands. She was just touching now, attempting to feel. The code was burning, but through the perceived pain she tried to focus.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. You want to understand? Here."

She sent memories. Not the clean, organized kind; there were no facts nor timestamps. She sent the texture of it all. The cold of the bridge railing under borrowed hands. The silence after the splash. The weeks of waking up in a body that felt like an abandoned house. The first time Keira made her sincerely laugh and the terror that followed, because she wasn't supposed to be a person, she was supposed to be a placeholder. The weight of Amy's head on her shoulder. The smell of Sandy's garage. The sound of Emmie's voice saying "you're not a real person" and the way it had cut because she'd wondered the same thing every day since she came into existence.

And then - Aura.

First, the declaration of her. Then, the definition. The person - the original. The one who made her. The one who broke. The one who jumped because she thought there was no place for her softness in a world built atop of apathetic chrome and empty promises. The one Void had been trying - in her own armored, deflective, emotionally-constipated way - to protect ever since.

She tried her best to show the system that Aura wasn't a duplicate. She was the seed, and the root. The reason Void existed at all.

And Void wasn't a replacement - she was a branch. The continuation. The part that survived so they both could live together one day.

Two selves. One structure.

The barrier flickered as the column around Aura hesitated - its rotation slowing, the red light dimming from crimson, flowing into amber, then turning pale gold.

The column dissolved from top to bottom, sending polygonal fragments into the empty space around it, as the top edge began to glow and slowly faded into nothing as it descended.

Aura dropped with the grace of a cat thrown from the 5th floor, and Void caught her before she hit the grid. Not that it mattered in a virtual space, but Void's protective instincts were automatic. Aura's projection was tattered, her avatar still fragmented where the purge had nearly stripped her away entirely, but she was solid enough to hold. Solid enough to shake as the system reconstructed her psyche.

"I-Integrity..?" Aura murmured against Void's shoulder.

Void looked at one of the maze walls and tapped a segment to reveal a readout. "19%. You're at 19%."

"Higher... Than my self-esteem. So... Net-positive."

Void laughed - a broken, breathless sound that was half sob. "You absolute fucking disaster."

"...y-our d-di-disaster."

The constructs stood motionless. Their optic clusters had dimmed from cold blue to amber, then to a soft, neutral white. The maze walls slowly, almost gently, receded. The grid lines beneath them pulsed gold instead of red.

The rings overhead resumed their slow, steady rotation. Breathing, but very calm now - a resting heartbeat.

Void lowered herself to the ground, still holding Aura, and let her head fall back. The infinite black above them felt less like a prison now, and more like... Shared, free space. Something built to house them both.

"We can't keep doing this," she said quietly.

"Th-the... Fighting?"

"Yeah."

"Ah-agreed... I-I'm too... Structurally compromised... F-for round three..."

Void snorted. "You're making jokes at 19% of yourself."

"...s-something I-I... Learned from y-you."

They sat in silence for a moment. The grid buzzed softly beneath them, a frequency that felt almost like a lullaby.

"I meant what I said. Before all this. When I called you a tumor..." Void's voice was rough, reluctant, dragging the words out one by one. "But I realized that... Was wrong. You're not a tumor, or an error. You're..." She trailed off, searching for words.

"G-go on... I-I've been called worse th-things after giving it s-some thought..."

"You're the reason I exist. And I've been treating you like an inconvenience because I didn't know how to... How to be grateful and resentful at the same time. How to miss you and be furious at you simultaneously. How to share a life I built by myself with the person who left me to do it alone."

Aura was quiet for a long moment. Then, softly: "I-I didn't leave you... I left m-me..." She flickered, "Y-you just... G-got caught in the splash..."

"Same thing."

"I guess i-it is..."

A white rectangle slid into existence a few meters away and rotated its surface towards the duo.

Void looked at it, then at Aura. "Think you can walk... Or levitate, like you usually do?"

"P-probably not... Pretend t-to carry me?"

"You're literally weightless in this world."

"...t-then what are you w-waiting for."

Void stood, pulling Aura up with her. The projection was still fragmented, but healing. Background restoration processes were clearly doing something, but neither of them were in a state to figure out what exactly.

Together, they walked towards the newly spawned gateway.

"...Void?"

"Yeah?"

"You-you're not... A branch..." A pause. "We-we're both the tree... J-just... different ri-rings..."

Void didn't answer. But she tightened her digital arm around Aura's shoulders, and that was answer enough.

They stepped through the threshold.

---

Void surfaced slowly, dragged upwards through layers of unconsciousness like rising from deep waters. The first thing that reached her was scent - citrus: sharp, sweet. It was tangled with the faint copper ghost of burnt electronics. It was an intimate combination, one suggesting someone's personal space rather than a sterile room.

The second thing was the arm draped across her waist.

She was horizontal. A bed. Soft beneath her, real sheets, not the cold tiles of an airport terminal or the cracked vinyl of a ripperdoc's chair. The weight around her torso was warm, quite deliberate, noticeably frail, but possessive in a way that sent an unexpected shiver across the back of her neck before her brain had time to categorize it as a threat.

She opened her eyes.

Not a landfill - or god forbid - a Scavenger den. Not the airport. No Sandy in sight. She wasn't at Reyes' clinic either. The ceiling above her was low, lit by the amber glow of some sort of a salt lamp in the corner, its light catching on strings of dried flowers and what looked like old circuit boards hanging from the rafters. Somewhere, a machine whirred - not the aggressive whine of medical equipment, but a softer tone. A heater, maybe... Or a server rack, well-loved.

"Keira? Wh-where..." Her voice came out raw, scraped clean by whatever her body had just endured. "Where the fuck am I?"

The arm around her waist tightened - not painfully, but firmly enough to state "you're not going anywhere." She tried to move - to twist, to pull away, anything - but her meat bag refused the command, limbs heavy and distant as if they weren't really hers. A panic was beginning to flare in her chest.

"What the fu-"

"Heyy," came the whisper, close enough that the word brushed warm across the shell of her ear. "You woke up."

The voice was thin, sweet, low and unhurried, the kind of voice that had already figured out exactly how this conversation was going to go and was content to let it unroll at its own pace. Before Void could respond, she felt it - a slow, unmistakable lick traced along the curve of her ear, lingering at the sensitive skin just behind it, right where one of her surgery scars met the neural port.

Her breath caught. "You... You're not Kei. Who the fuck-"

"Finished your little family reunion," the voice purred against her nape, "and didn't fry yourself. Congrats, hackergirl."