My boots hit the cracked pavement as I quickly navigated my way home through the depressing neon streets.

  Even if the nanites healed my wounds, they didn’t ease the sheer exhaustion weighing on me. My body wanted nothing more than to collapse into my bed and sleep off the last few days.

  But I still had more to do, so I pressed on.

  Eventually, the unimpressive building of our apartment came into view. The sight of it brought me back to when Valerie and I had first seen it.

  It had been over a month now, and as much as I loathed this city, it was already starting to feel like home. In a weird, twisted sort of way.

  I walked up to the sliding door and let myself in, the noise of the city quieting slightly as they hissed closed behind me. Soon I stood in front of our apartment with my hand on the handle.

  After a brief moment of hesitation, I pushed it open—only to let out a grunt of surprise as Valerie slammed into me.

  She must have been waiting at the door.

  She didn’t say anything, just wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a hug.

  The stress I’d felt moments ago was washed away as I finally let myself relax a bit after what I’d been through.

  She broke off a moment later and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind her with a soft click.

  “Hey, Val.” I gave a small, apologetic smile as my sister’s baggy eyes wandered over my torn armor.

  She must not have gotten much sleep recently.

  “I’m glad you’re safe.” She stepped closer, looking into my eyes as she reached out to touch my arm. “Your are okay, right?”

  “Yeah, physically at least.” I half joked as I walked to the couch, sinking into it and scooting over so she could sit down beside me.

  She let out an annoyed huff and wrapped her arm around my shoulder—before ambushing me with a surprise head-lock. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

  “Alright! Alright!” I laughed, half-heartedly fighting off her attack as she ground her knuckles into my head.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “You really had me worried, you know.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked after a moment of silence.

  “Yeah.” I answered and proceeded to recount the events of the last few days.

  The meeting with the team, the sewer monster, the lab, and how I got separated and had to navigate the endless darkness on my own.

  Valerie turned and raised an eyebrow as I mentioned the rift creature that somehow saw me through a recording.

  “You sure you weren’t just hallucinating? Your mind might have been playing tricks on you.”

  I shook my head. “No. It was real. It… grinned when it noticed me. And my nanites went haywire trying to gauge its threat level.”

  “Well, that’s terrifying. But, it’s not really our problem.”

  “How so?” I raised an eyebrow of my own. “We’re Ordon too, or were anyway. Doesn’t that make this our problem?”

  “No. Even if Ordon was at fault—”

  “Is at fault.” I corrected her. I wasn’t about to let anyone just brush off what they did down there.

  “—is at fault,” she acknowledged with a faint grin tugging at the corner of her mouth, “we had nothing to do with it. So in the eyes of the Agency, we are innocent.”

  “Really? How do you know they won’t go full scorched earth on this? Whatever that thing was, it’s still out there. And with Ordon casually creating new rifts like the one outside of Kitty Corner, who’s to say it doesn’t just eventually decide to come through one of them?”

  Valerie frowned, starting to understand my concern. But I wasn’t done.

  “And that’s not even including the fact that I have Agency tech inside me.”

  “We still don’t know that the nanites are theirs—”

  “No, I do know.” I stopped her before she finished. “I almost ran into one of the Agency’s squads on my way back. My nanites recognized them as friendlies, or whatever network they were using, at least.”

  “That’s… I won’t say that’s good news. But it’s probably better than the alternative.”

  “…Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I breathed out, leaning further into my seat. “At least I don’t have to worry about some glitch killing me in my sleep because of bad programming. But still, it seems like the world is out to get us.”

  “Hey, we’re both still alive.” Valerie squeezed my shoulder with her golden arm. “We could have died back on those tunnels. I have a decent job, a place to stay, and enough money for food and fun. If we were unlucky, I would have lost more than an arm, had to borrow from loan sharks and work in much worse conditions. I’m still counting my blessings that I’m working at a place that actually values its people. Places like that don’t just grow on trees.”

  She was right, I realized. I shouldn’t just focus on the bad, even if it was a bit overwhelming right now. Even if the nanites were a curse of sorts, they were also a blessing. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it this far.

  “I also found some names in the lab that I wanted to run by you,” I said, shifting the conversation back to what I found. “Dr. Vance Fallon?”

  She shook her head, but I expected that.

  “Madam Elanza, and a Mr. Nargon?”

  “I don’t know of anyone named Elanza, but I knew someone at our school with the Nargon last name.”

  “Okay, something to look into later.” I nodded and wrote that down in my shard. “Let’s see… the last name was the head of the rift research, Dr. Theodor Ordon.”

  “What? Are you sure?” Valerie froze in place as soon as I said his name.

  “Do you know him?” I asked, a flicker of excitement creeping into my voice. If she knew how to find him, I might finally get some answers.

  “Nyxia,” she swallowed uncomfortably, “Theodor Ordon’s our dad.”