"That's… that's insane…" Jon said, for once properly awestruck as he stared almost blankly at the coffee table.

Once we were back in our apartment with the Dead Zone activated, I went through the rest of my conversation with Christopher to Jon, explaining to him just what had been told to me about the nebulous Administration Key.

"Trust me, I know… apparently, had you not done whatever you did that let me use my powers in the Dead Zones, they wouldn't have even mentioned it, since it would just be safer to leave it hidden without us aware of it," I said, fidgeting slightly as I looked up at the ceiling.

"See that kind of logic I can follow. What I don't get is that if The First hid this thing with you… wherever it is that he actually put it… why wasn't Axio able to mess around with it when I did use it? Ugh this would be so much easier if I could just remember your rewinds," Jon groaned.

"That's… a good question that I didn't think to ask…" I admitted, feeling my brow furrow in frustration. "Maybe it's… because I rewound right after you used it?… but that wouldn't explain why Angie also seems to be in the dark about it either… They told me that the P.A.I.s won't look at their internal folders unless they are specifically told to look there, which is why he had told me it was a safe place for it to be hidden… and also why he told us that we shouldn't go looking for it."

"No, I get that logic… As much as I'd love to figure out if we could use it to give me powers, the fact that The First told you there were specific requirements for someone to be Augmented means it wouldn't work if we don't know what those requirements are," Jon said, thankfully not eager to try and go against Christopher's request.

"You, uh… you know you can just call him Christopher… right?"

"Yeah I don't know, that just doesn't feel right to me," he said with a laugh.

"Eh, your choice I guess," I said with a shrug.

"So… what now then? I mean… we can't use the Key to fix anything… not that we'd exactly know what we were trying to fix… It's still weird to hear that Axio might have used to be somewhat sane," Jon muttered, steering us back on track.

"For now? I'm not too sure… I think… I think we finally need to do something about Hydramental… As much as I wish I could talk some sense into him… it never seems to go well… It's like, no matter what I say, he refuses to listen, which then makes me poke the bear and things just get worse…" I muttered, looking down at the device in my hands. "Maybe… maybe there's a way I could use this to neutralize his powers and trap him… Though, given how many ways he can split his body now, we need to know for sure if he's able to keep a portion of him active if some of him gets hit by the device too…"

"And the moment you use it, the moment he knows you have one," Jon pointed out, reaching up to rub his chin. "I want to say there's gotta be a way you can best use it… maybe have you pick up the tokens and see if that draws him out so that you guys can lay a trap?"

"That still only works if we know for a fact that we have all of his clones… He's got at least six that I know of, but something tells me he has more than that. Maybe it's just a hunch, but the more I think about it, if he can keep a clone away from things, it's like, the ultimate safety mechanism because he always has a form he can escape back to," I said, explaining the theory that had been kicking around in my head since I had come to the realization that he had more forms than we had realized.

"And… look I know this is a hell of a leap to make, but as much of a grudge as Hydramental has always held against me, for the most part he at least seemed relatively sane. It wasn't until… well the warehouse where Tyrant trapped us in Dead Zones that he really seemed to lose it. If he can keep a clone outside of the dead zone and it is still "active," what if that's what made him finally snap? Like, what if disconnecting from a part of his brain completely, or however his cloning works, actually broke something and made him snap?"

"That's… huh… that's actually not a bad theory," Jon said, nodding his head. "Still though… I think that if you're right and this actually broke him… you might be doing him a mercy if you… well…"

"Yeah, I know," I said, my gut wrenching at the idea. It was stupid how often I kept coming back to this dilemma, but one way or another I was going to have to get past it. Sal had said it himself after apparently hearing Hydramental and me get into an argument about my squeamish desire not to kill. At the end of the day, there had to be a line.

I had read it on the wall of The Common Ground more than once at this point, and while I had taken much of it to heart, I wasn't taking it as seriously as whoever had been responsible for putting it there. By giving into my squeamishness over and over again, I was failing to live up to the very first line of the code.

"We will do our best to never allow a Sapient NPC to be put in harm's way," I muttered, light enough that Jon looked over at me confused as I just shook my head. "Sorry, just… I guess I'm just coming to a realization…"

"Care to fill me in?"

"It's just… I've been feeling so guilty about how everything happened with Sal and Hydramental that I kept trying to find a way to fix or help him… but that was selfish and it's honestly because of me that things have gotten as bad as they have. Hell, we might have already had all of the droids handled and New York put into a relatively safe space had I just talked to Hydramental after I killed Sal," I explained, feeling my resolve slowly start to settle my twisting gut. "It's the very first line of the Code. Hydramental stopped treating this as a game a long time ago, and he has put people in danger over and over and over again… By not being willing to kill him, I'm failing to do what's necessary to keep people safe. There has to be a line, and Hydramental has gone sprinting past it."

"It's the right thing to do… though how you'll do it is still the question if he is able to keep a part of him hidden like a backup drive," Jon said, scratching his head as he got back up from the seat. "Honestly… this is kind of where I'm still pissed off at Brain… even if he's not a mole, I'm not so sure Miss Mist was either and between his suspicion and how we've handled Hydramental, we've kind of lost a hell of an ally…"

"Yeah… it would be nice if there was a way we could confirm her Acceptance Matrix hasn't been compromised or that she was for sure not working for TechWarden. Cause I agree, I wasn't ever really suspicious that she was up to something but I don't know how we convince Brain of that either."

"Do we need to?" Jon asked and I shot him a confused look before he quickly continued. "I mean, look, if Miss Mist knows you're willing to put Hydramental down, maybe she'd change her mind. I don't really think we should be worrying about alleviating Brain's suspicions if she is willing to help. She had been doing a very thorough search of the city, she had started from the top of the city and was going neighborhood by neighborhood, building by building. It's pretty much all she was doing after she got done going through the list of forges we had."

"Shit, really?"

"Pretty much yeah," Jon nodded as he walked over to the kitchen. "It was another one of those initial things that made me get suspicious of Brain when he made his accusation to you. I probably should have just told him what she had been doing but since that had made me start getting paranoid, well mistakes were made…"

"It is what it is… I think paranoia is just a side effect of living in all of this," I sighed. "I guess if we do want to say we trust Brain, I could ask him for his Matrix scanner and run it on Mist again… Or… I wonder if Calypso knows of a way to check them, or hell, if they have a list of people that they know are working for him… hmm maybe I'll shoot her a message really quick."

"It's worth a shot… I'm trying to be open minded with Brain, and that device he made for us is a big show of trust… but if he's as smart as he claims to be, he'd also know all those tactics," Jon said, his face scrunching. "But… I know that the paranoia isn't getting us anywhere and we need to try to move forward, with everyone. If we were able to smooth things over with Miss Mist, she could help us nail down where Hydramental's main base is at and if he is keeping a clone behind… well she'd be able to step in."

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Yeah… don't get me wrong, there are still a few things that don't quite make sense… I'm still not sure how Mr. Factory and Hydramental just happened to release a Clockwork Chicken when I was separated from everyone… but we have to take baby steps if we want to run through the answer," I said, feeling a bit of confidence in my decision. "Okay, now let me see if Calypso… oh duh…"

I had gone to open up my Friend's List and failed, realizing that the Dead Zone was still active. I finally deactivated it and pulled it back into my B.E.L.T. as I let out an awkward laugh. Before I could explain to a confused looking Jon, another voice chirped into existence.

"Oh my god fiiiiiinally!" Angie complained, a clear bit of stress in her tone. "Can you guys maybe not do that again? I really did not like being completely isolated that way."

"Huh? Weren't you able to communicate with the others in the Command Room?" Jon asked.

"Nope, we can only commune in there when you're there to act as the bridge, I thought you knew that," she explained in a huff. "What was so important the two of you had to go hiding in that weird field anyway?"

"Don't worry about it Angie, just testing out some stuff with this thing so we're prepared," I said, pulling my Friend's List open and finding Calypso on the list.

<Loophole: Hey, bit of a random question, but is there any chance you guys know who all is working with TechWarden? Or if there's a way to check if someone's Acceptance Matrix has been altered?>

I wasn't expecting an immediate response, which was why I practically jumped as a chat window opened back up the moment I swiped it to the side. Slightly to my surprise, though I'm not sure why since again, I had just sent the message, it wasn't from Calypso.

<Swansong: Hey, was watching the chat for when you were available to message again. Freak got a hold of me since you and Codex were unavailable and let me know the timer just expired on waiting out the token that he scooped up in Midtown East so he's heading back to base… Do you uh… do you mind if I pop out of the base and head over to your place so I can come back in through your Safe House entrance? I'd rather not bump into my parents again tonight and I… well… I thought maybe we could spend some time together?>

"What are you smiling about?" Jon asked, a brow raised as he pulled a Dr. Pepper out of the fridge.

"His girlfriend is trying to come over," Angie teased.

"Not now, Angie," I shot at her, rolling my eyes. "But yeah… Swan was asking if she could pop out and into the base through here."

"Ahhh, yeah that would do it," Jon said with an approving nod before a thought seemed to occur to him. "You two… you guys do call each other by your normal names when it's just you two… right?"

"Really? Of course we do…" I said with a small laugh that Jon returned.

"Okay good, just making sure since I haven't actually heard you refer to her by her actual name… you know you can just tell her my name too? I mean, I'm not an Augment, so it's not like you need to keep my identity a secret, especially if she's going to be sleeping over," he said, waggling his eyebrows at me as he said the last bit.

"That's…" I started to say but stopped, not sure why I was feeling like an embarrassed teenager. "We're taking things slow…" I said, refusing to go further than that. Even if I didn't have to be embarrassed, I also wasn't a braggart by any means either. "I'll tell her it's fine. Apparently Freak is on the way back from Midtown East with the Token, probably a good idea to check in on Pinky too."

I pulled the chat window back to the forefront of my vision as I thought about how to respond before settling on my decision. I wouldn't put it in as… childish of terms, but sometimes a classic offer was the best offer.

<Loophole: Yeah, I'd like that actually. There were some things we talked about, but I don't think it's anything we need to deal with tonight. Maybe we could watch a movie or something?>

<Swansong: Hmmm.. let me sneak back into my house really quick for something comfortable. I'll bring the popcorn, see you soon.>

"Must have been another quiet hour. Would have been a damn nightmare if droids showed up to destroy Grand Central… Station…" Jon said, hesitating and then trailing off as he said the last word. His brow scrunched together as a thousand yard stare took over him. "She had been going from North to South… maybe…"

"Umm… you okay man?" I asked, looking at him slightly confused.

"I… I just had a thought… you remember where you had to go when you were hunting down Snake- er… Sal, right?"

"Yeah… we had to go up the S-Line at Grand Central… why do you- wait… you don't think that he's hiding there, do you? Is that even possible? Shouldn't that base have been dismantled when I took Sal down?" I asked, scratching the side of my head as I wandered across the room.

"I mean… maybe? Angie do you know? I'm not at my console," Jon said, looking up at the ceiling.

"Bases can be overtaken by others and repurposed for use, you typically have to be inside of the base when the old claim on it expires to claim it as your own. I believe you humans call this, 'Squatter's Rights'," Angie explained and Jon looked back over at me, his eyes wide.

"I need to get back to my console and double check everywhere Miss Mist reported that she checked to me and you need to message Miss Mist. We need to see if we can set up a meeting and get her back on our side. If I'm right about this, with her infiltration abilities, she could get in there without him ever knowing and then, if he was split up… well we'd have a way to prevent him from escaping. "

"I'd really like it more if-" I was cut off as another chat window flickered back into existence with a wall of text.

<Calypso: We have a general knowledge of his employees, but can't account for all of them. As far as we know though, other than just a few, most of the original ones that were Augmented with us during the First Wave are no longer around and for what it's worth, between the secrecy rules and the changes made to prevent him from being able to choose who is Augmented, he has very few employees that are also Augmented already and the number that are Sapients is probably zero, though I can't make an absolute guarantee. Most of his "apprentices" were people he misled, like SnakeBite, because he really saw all of the rest of the Augments as people who had to listen to him. There was no part of him that was a real team player. The only other First Wave Augments that are still alive and might have been aligned with him, Mr. Factory and Colorful, both had falling outs with him shortly after the Augmentation Array went up. As for the Acceptance Matrix… Neither myself or our mutual friend (let's just call him C for ease) were responsible for the design of that specific feature, but because he was needed to implement any new code and also saw the possibility for code to be modified, he added a new application into everyone's "core" augmentation package. It provides a rather… silly way to verify if the enabled matrix was "baseline" as you call it. Just ask them… "How would you describe the sound a dog makes?" If they bark or make any description like that, it's fine. But if they meow, it's because their Matrix is outside of baseline. Again, this only works if their matrix is enabled. C believed it was an innocent enough question but also one that wouldn't be asked so often that it could be triggered on accident either.>

"Nate?" Jon asked, looking at me slightly worried but I shook my head before explaining the message to him, which, of course, caused him to laugh. It wasn't exactly a perfect guarantee that people who had unaltered matrixes were safe to trust, at least in the context of being aligned with TechWarden, but it was a pretty good reassurance too, especially if we didn't have to rely on BrainCraft's device to test them. "It makes them meow? Holy crap I almost want to see that now…"

"I don't know why I expected the developers of all this to be a bit more… I don't know… serious? Christopher himself was a bit of surprise since I guess I expected The First to be a lot more grand than he ended up being... Anyway, I guess we could test the meowing thing on Barracuda tomorrow," I said, shooting a quick thank you back to Calypso, before looking back at my Friend's List again.

"Sounds like a plan to me... and... what about Miss Mist?" Jon prompted, pulling us back on topic as I eyed her name on my Friend's List.

"I guess... well I guess I'll do the whole, tuck my tail between my legs and ask Miss Mist if she wants to meet up, thing… But it's really only been a few hours since we were basically screaming at each other and she might need a bit more time to cool down first, so I'm scheduling that for tomorrow too," I said, closing the list for the moment as I thought about the different things we still needed to do. "We can make a day of handling shit because we've had more than enough of it going on already today. I'd rather not get Miss Mist whirled up for some big fight when that's pretty much all we've been doing today. And besides, I did just tell Swan she could come over."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.