It was after dark when Damien pulled into the city outside of Chicago, his hand aching. Nerves smarted in his arm where tech met with the sensors implanted in his body to allow the prosthetic to function as smoothly as the real deal.

He circled through dead streets until he found one where the street lamps were broken, and parked his car in an empty parking lot. Hopefully nobody would call the cops on him.

Placing a cover over the front windshield, Damien settled back into his seat and turned his attention to the arm. In the dim light, he disconnected the prosthetic from the stump of his arm, wincing as the nerve sensors clicked off. Losing the sensation in his hand was always unnerving, an empty space where he knew his hand should be. Even looking at it was disconcerting, seeing the stump where his arm had been severed during a hero fight, healed over and smooth, save for a slight red rash from chafing.

Perhaps it would have been better if the prosthetic didn't look so lifelike, where at some Damien could forget he'd ever lost his hand to begin with. Then he activated one of the built in tools or gadgets he'd added, and he remembered again, dissidence forming between himself and the limb.

He placed the artificial limb in the middle console, fingers curled inward slightly. The artificial flesh matched almost perfectly to his olive skin tone, the nails even more lifelike, black nail polish chipped on their surface. He sighed, feeling an empty space in his mind in the absence of it, and leaned back against the seat to rest. There were still hundreds of miles left to drive, and he needed to get some sleep before taking off again, preferably before someone noticed him and decided he shouldn't be there.

Damien barely noticed the scraping outside his car before someone grabbed onto the passenger side door and somehow unlocked it from the outside.

He scrambled, grabbing for his arm while at the same time reaching into his core, only to realize he didn't have that power without the arm connected. He switched gears, reaching for his tech power. All his good tools were in the back, but he could do something—

"Stop it," the woman said, sitting heavily in his front seat. Her face came into view from the overhead light and he relaxed, though his heart didn't get the memo, continuing to beat too fast in his chest.

"You could have warned me," he snapped.

She turned to him, and continued protests died on his lips under the weight of her gaze. One human eye stared at him, iris as black as her pupil, the light seeming to vanish into it. On the other side of her face, bisected by a scar running from her eyebrow to her cheekbone, a prosthetic eye gleamed, iris unnaturally blue, eyeball clearly artificial. One of Vora's earlier works.

The woman before her appeared nearly half artificial, and his technopathy allowed him a better idea of what was underneath the surface, ticking away inside the fleshy cage of her body. To his power, she was beautiful, an intricate work of biology and mechanics, though not as graceful as some of the other work Damien had seen.

But that was her own fault, not Vora's.

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If she had allowed Vora to continue working on her, the inadequacies of her tech wouldn't be so glaring.

"Hey, Nessa," he said, slapping on a grin. "Been a long time. Tried to find you after everything went down."

"I didn't want to be found," she said, her voice a gravely, rasping mess. In a way, she did look better than the last time Damien had seen her, when they'd worked together on a job. She'd changed, chopping her hair off and dying it a bright blue, which seemed counterintuitive to him, if she didn't want to be noticed. But, it wasn't his hair, so what did he care?

"Well, what brings you to my humble abode?" he asked, motioning at the car. He'd pushed the front seat all the way back, and as he spoke, relined the back of the chair, allowing him to lay almost flat.

Her expression didn't twitch as he moved, steely gaze tracking his every movement. Was she really not even going to smile?

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"How did you find me?" He shot the question right back, pushing himself upright again. Laying back in the chair while trying to talk to her was uncomfortable.

"I have my sources," Nessa said. "They told me you'd left Los Angeles."

"Yeah, well, what's really left for me there?" Damien shrugged. It wasn't exactly a lie. With Vora being locked up, and having been caught by the heroes down there, it wouldn't have been wise to stay. Not if he'd wanted to keep doing what he had been doing. "Just following in your footsteps. What have you been up to, by the way?"

"Where are you going?" she asked, ignoring his question. Queen of deflection, this one. Always uncooperative.

"New York. Good pizza there, they say. Figured I'd go try it."

"Damien." At the warning in her voice, he stopped smiling. Was she really going to demand answers?

"It really doesn't matter," he said, shifting in his seat. "I'm forging my own path. Taking the unbeaten road. Walking the road less traveled." While he wracked his brain for more road related cliches, her eyes narrowed.

"You're still working for my mother, aren't you?"

"How would I be doing that?" he laughed, the air in the car growing tense. She wouldn't attack him for that, would she? He'd caught wind of what happened at the Industries' lab, with her destroying so much of it. "She's in prison. No one can talk to her."

"I don't believe you."

"Well, believe what you want," Damien said, breaking eye contact with her. He leaned back against the seat again, crossing his arms over his chest and shutting his eyes. If she wanted to kill him, she could, but it would be awfully messy. "Last I checked, you still couldn't read minds."

"Working with her will destroy you," Nessa said, breath hot as she leaned over him, hissing the words with a snake's venom. "You could tear yourself into pieces and replace every part of you, and she still will not love you."

He opened one eye, peering up at her. Her body had been torn apart and replaced piece by piece. When they'd first met, he'd only just lost his arm, and Vora had found him, offering to replace it. Nessa warned him not to, that he'd be better off without it. At the time, all she'd possessed was a prosthetic arm of her own. It wasn't the same as the one she wore now.

He was not the same as her. She'd failed. She'd turned on Vora, just like her other daughter. Vivainne was the traitor, but Vanessa was worse, because she'd walked away when they could have helped. If Vanessa had helped him, they could have freed Vora before any of this happened. She hadn't had the gall to help.

He was all Vora had left. She understood that. "I'm really not worried."

"Suit yourself." She climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut and vanishing into the night, leaving him alone in the darkness.

Damien let his eyes close. He may not be related to Vora, but he'd stuck closer than any of her daughters had, and he wouldn't let her rot.

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