The first thing she noticed when they awoke was the faint beeping of machines.

The second thing she noticed was that once again, the movement of their left arm was restrained somehow. Null opened their eyes and realized that they were still in the hospital. It was nighttime by now and the lights were dimmed. She looked down, but to her surprise she did not find their arm bound to one of those life support sleeves. Instead she found that the reason for their immobility was Cyril, who had fallen asleep holding their hand. His head rested on his crossed arms on the edge of the hospital bed that she was lying in.

What is he doing here? she asked, baffled.

Looks like he fell asleep watching over us, Lars noted. How cute.

Cute? Seriously?

It wasn't the word that had come to her mind.

Too close, that was what she thought as she stared down at him, and a little bit... creepy.

And yet she found herself unable to pull back their hand from underneath his. She watched him closely as he shifted in his sleep, still without letting go. In the dim light of the room, his hair looked darker than usual. Between the disheveled strands, she noticed a thin, silver line that ran across his temple, cutting through his eye brow.

I thought he never had any augments... How come I never noticed that? she thought at the sight of the scar.

It's because you're usually too busy staring at his eyes, Lars remarked.

Oh, shut up, she growled internally, while Lars seemed to giggle.

Cyril moved again, and his eyes fluttered open. He lifted his head and seemed confused and disoriented for a second. Then he turned to look at them. Null cocked their head to the side, meeting his gaze with a raised eyebrow. The sight startled him so much that he almost cried out in surprise as he jolted back and let go of their hand as if it was a hot piece of coal.

"Oh, I'm... I'm sorry... I was just-" he stuttered, running a hand through his messed up hair. Even under the dim light, she could clearly see that he was blushing underneath his freckles.

"Why didn't you go home to catch some sleep?" Null asked, her sight still fixed on his scar as he combed his hair over it in a gesture that looked like an old habit.

So that's why I never noticed, she thought.

"Uh... I was... worried for you," he mumbled. He cleared his throat. "The anesthesia should have worn off hours ago. We gave you the antagonist, but you just didn't wake up..."

"I guess you were right. I just really needed some rest," she said with a shrug.

He looked at her with a dismayed expression. "I thought I had accidentally drugged you into a coma."

"I'm just a heavy sleeper," she said with a crooked smile. "Besides... it would take a bit more to weed out the likes of me. Believe me."

Now that he had let go of their hand, she brought it closer to their face to get a look at his work. As usual, Cyril had done an excellent job at hiding the wires and fused the tissue diligently without leaving any traces of cuts. She could still see where the old wires had burned through, the skin was red and raw in those places, but of the surgery itself there was no visible trace. As she carefully ran a finger along the back of their hand, she could feel that the new wires had been placed slightly differently this time.

"I had to avoid the inflamed regions," he explained, as if he had been reading her thoughts, "Ideally, I should have taken out the old ones and waited for at least a week before putting in the new ones, but-"

"Thanks," she cut him off. She tentatively clenched the hand into a fist.

"Any pain?" he asked. She shook their head.

"It's perfect. Thanks a lot, Cyril."

She looked up from their hand and found him staring back. In this light, his eyes looked dark, just like the shadows underneath them. She had no idea how much time had passed since she had come into his practice, but he had probably not gotten much sleep. Yet he did not seem to have any intent of leaving. Was he waiting for something? Was she supposed to say something?

"Cyril, where did you get that scar?" she asked, thinking of the first thing that crossed her mind.

"Wha- oh, you mean this?" he brushed his hair to the side and touched his temple. He hesitated a moment, then he averted his eyes and a wry smile appeared on his face.

"That... was a close encounter with a very young, very upset patient who was not happy about having his augments removed, back in the early days of the purge," he said in a low voice.

"What happened?" she asked.

He pressed his lips together, and for a moment she thought he would not answer. Then he leaned back in his chair and began to speak while staring off into the distance.

"It was... bad. It was on a remote colony in an outer sector. A desolate place. I had been working for days in a makeshift clinic. We were in a hurry because we had some intel that the hunters were coming. We had already run out of general anesthetics when they brought in that boy, and..."

Cyril rubbed a hand over his face.

"We thought... well, I thought, I could save him, and it was better to have him suffer through the stripping than what the hunters might have in store for him. I tried to explain, but... he was too young. Way too young to understand any of it. His augments were small, life support, but not as crucial as yours, so we could have removed them safely. But they were embedded deep into the tissue... and the local anesthesia wasn't enough... it was horrific."

His voice had grown more and more silent as he spoke, until it was barely a whisper. As he sat there now with his shoulders drooping and his face buried in his hands, she regretted having asked. Hesitantly, she inched a bit closer and put a hand on his shoulder.

"You were just trying to help," she said.

"I cut him open, Amy. While he was awake and screaming for me to stop," he whispered. "It took two grown men to hold him down, and still... he broke free and lashed out, managed to somehow grab a scalpel, and that's how..."

"I understand," she said. "What happened to him, in the end?"

"He died," Cyril said meekly, "After he broke free of his restraints, he just... bled out... It was-"

"It's okay. I'm sorry," she cut him off. "I didn't mean to - well, you don't have to tell me these things if you don't want to."

He shook his head slowly. "No, it's alright. In fact... I feel like I have to remind myself of what happened back then from time to time. Just to make sure that I will never again make such a mistake."

"It's not your fault," she said. "You were worried for the boy's life. You wanted to protect him from the hunters-"

"But the hunters might have just taken him to one of the prisons," Cyril argued. "They might have stripped him safely somewhere, in some facility, with proper medical care. They might have-"

"Or they might have killed him. Or they might have put him in a prison where he might have died anyway. You made a bad choice, but what happened was not your fault," she insisted, and noticed that she sounded angrier than she felt. "You just tried to help... the Purge made everyone desperate. Orion's Reach, Neo Tokyo, and all those other stuck up bastards that play along with them – they should feel guilty. Not you."

He looked at her with a surprised expression on his face, then he sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring off into the distance again. He didn't refute her argument, but somehow, she felt that he was still unconvinced.

He never showed us this side of himself before, Lars remarked.

I shouldn't have pried, Null realized.

Well, it was his choice to share that with you, Lars said, and she noted how he had oddly said 'you' instead of 'us'. She also realized now that Lars had been very quiet at the back of their mind the whole time since they had woken up. Perhaps it was an after effect of the anesthesia.

After a few moments of silence, Cyril looked up and met her gaze again.

"So what about you?" he asked. "You never told me what happened to you before you came to New Elysium... your old life support augs were put in post-Purge, that much I can tell, but.... I don't know any NCs who still operated after augs were forbidden. At least... none that put them in."

Great. There he goes with his questions again, Null noted with an internal groan.

Can you blame him? He just poured out his heart to us. I think it's only fair we share something in return.

Faced with her silent glare, he began to shift uncomfortably in his chair.

"I just thought... maybe we could find them and get them to come here," Cyril said. "I could certainly use the help."

"It's a long story," she just said.

"You don't wanna talk about it," he concluded. "I get it. Sorry..."

She sighed and averted her eyes.

"The little 'project' that turned me into what I am now was termed 'Lazarus'. That should give you a hint."

"Lazarus?" he asked, his eyes widened. "Like the guy who..."

"Yes."

"Oh... wow," he said flatly. "I realized that you had a lot of tech that kept you... alive, but I had always assumed that it was probably put in one after the other, perhaps organ failure due to some disease or something. But you mean to say that..."

"No disease. Injury. Fatal injury," Null said in a low voice. "Yet someone decided to keep me alive past my time."

Speaking it out loud and discussing this with anybody else than Lars felt odd. Nobody knew about this. Nobody who was still alive, anyway.

"Well, what did you think the titanium plate in my skull was for, anyway?" she asked with a wry smile.

"So it's titanium? Well..." He scratched his head. "Well I just thought... I guess I never really questioned it. Or, to put it differently, I questioned it, but it was just one of the many things about you..."

He turned to look at her again, and his eyes shifted to dark green.

"Your brain is an enigma, you know that? I tried scanning it, but it's like there's something blocking that... I thought it was the plate, but titanium alone shouldn't be able to do that. But I couldn't find any traces of central nervous system augments, all your hardware was connected at the periphery, so I never really worried... but I was often wondering... just what exactly is going on in there."

As he spoke, she gradually tensed up, until she was clenching the bed sheets so tightly that their knuckles were turning white.

Do you think he knows...? Null asked.

I think he has no clue whatsoever, Lars remarked. But it's interesting to know that the plate seems to block scanners from detecting the CPU.

"S-sorry," he said, as he noticed the way she was scowling at him. "I didn't mean to-"

Null sighed and gestured dismissively, then she leaned back on the bed. Admittedly, they still felt tired. Not just their body, but also mentally. Perhaps getting a couple more hours of sleep were not such a bad idea. But Cyril still didn't seem to have any intent of leaving. He watched them with a curious expression and she regretting every word she had told him. She turned their head and stared out of the window. The room seemed to grow smaller and smaller around her the longer they had to spend here with him.

"I... I knew a guy during my studies who always talked about this idea of bringing someone back like that," Cyril said. "He even wrote some theoretical papers about it, proposed some solutions to counteract organ and brain damage... it was all a bit sci-fi if you ask me. I never thought it was possible, but... if what you say is true and all of your life support was put in at once, I can only imagine what must have happened-"

"It's not right," she cut him off.

"What?"

"It's not right to do this. To bring somebody back like that," she elaborated, without looking away from the window. "This is not how life is supposed to be. It feels... wrong."

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. "It is too much," she whispered.

"Is that really how you feel?" he asked her in a low voice. "About yourself?"

She didn't answer. She didn't even know why she was telling him all that, on one hand it felt like she was telling him too much, on the other, it felt like a weight was being lifted off her chest. And she realized that she had never even talked to Lars about what she had just confessed to Cyril. Then again, Lars was in her head. He already knew she felt that way.

"I suppose I can see your point, but still... I for one am happy I got to meet you," Cyril mumbled.

She just sighed, annoyed with something she couldn't quite pinpoint. Perhaps with Cyril, perhaps with herself, perhaps both.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her and she turned to look at him again.

"So... this idea was not very popular I take it? What this guy proposed back in the day?"

"Not really.... most people didn't believe it was possible," he said. "Me included."

"That guy. What happened to him?"

"I believe when the Purge started, he stripped himself and switched to medicine, and ended up founding a company or something."

What are you thinking about? Lars asked, trying to peer behind the veil, where she was shuffling around ideas at high speed.

"Do you remember his name? Or do you know the name of his company?" she asked, sitting up on the bed again and leaning forward. Cyril blinked at her in surprise and confusion at her sudden interest.

"His name was Martin Blake. He was an assistant professor at the time I studied... as for the company, let me check."

He picked up a tablet from the nightstand. She wanted to tell him that he didn't need to, she could have used her augments to tap into the network – but the interface in their eye augment informed her that all but her life-support had been placed under a forced shutdown protocol that would last another twenty-four hours. She grumbled, knowing very well that he had done that to keep her from leaving too soon.

Meanwhile, Cyril was browsing through something on the tablet. Suddenly, he froze mid-swipe and just stared at it, the faint glow of the screen bathing his pale face in a blueish glow that made him look like he was a ghost that had just seen a ghost.

"What?" she asked, leaning closer to get a peek of what he saw.

"That company he founded. It's a pharma company," he looked up to meet her gaze. "And it's called Lazarus Ltd."

A furrow formed on her brow. "Really now..."

"Is that a coincidence?" he asked her. "Or-?"

"When was it founded?" she asked, ignoring his question. The interface in the eye augment informed them that their heart rate was accelerating.

"Uhm... let me see. About six years ago."

Six years... could it be...? she thought.

Inside their mind, Lars shuffled around quietly, as she could feel some painful memories well up that she really wasn't prepared or willing to see now. Lars kept them in check for her, and she thanked him wordlessly.

"Why do you ask?"

"I think I may know where he got his starting funds from..." she mumbled. "Is there a photo? I need to see his face to be sure."

She grabbed the tablet from his hands and began to browse through the information as fast as the eye augment could keep track of the information scrolling by.

Stop- Lars called out. There!

"That's... it's him..." she whispered.

The image of the man she saw matched the image of the man that Lars had conjured up in her mind – a tall, grey-haired man standing next to her bed in Riga's mansion and looking down at her.

Are you certain? she asked him. Is this memory really accurate?

It's exactly as I recall you recalling it in your nightmares, he whispered, and his presence seemed to shiver lightly.

She scrolled a bit further, glancing over useless information related to Lazarus Ltd. until she came across another picture and froze.

"Fuck... I can't believe it..."

Two men were in it, shaking hands and smiling into the camera. One was Blake. The other was a bald man with pale skin. Despite his stout stature, he looked shifty, and he wore a smile on his disgusting lips that made a shiver run down their spine.

"What's wrong?"

She didn't answer. Their hands, clenching the tablet tightly, began to tremble. Cyril leaned over to look at the picture and read the attached article.

"Orson Philips, co-founder of Lazarus Ltd," Cyril read the caption. "Another NC? That's certainly a bit strange. Pharma is not exactly our specialty. But..."

He continued reading. "Apparently, business is booming nonetheless. But it's only Blake leading the company now, Philips disappeared after a couple of years... Do you know this man too?"

"Yeah," she said in a flat voice. "I killed him."

Cyril's eyes widened as he looked up at her.

"But only because he kissed me..." she mumbled, still staring down at the picture on the tablet.

"What?" Cyril asked, completely puzzled.

"This is the Butcher, Cyril. This is the man who I got the hardware from that I brought back. He-"

She was interrupted by a loud beeping noise that made both of them jerk in surprise. Cyril fumbled to pull a portable communicator out of his pocket and stop the alarm.

"What's wrong?" Null asked.

A frown appeared on his face and deepened more and more as his eyes darted across the screen.

"It's Leah... another refugee shuttle came in. They have an emergency aboard. I have to go," he said and rose to his feet.

"Wait," she said. "You barely had any sleep. How do you intend to work in your shape?"

"It's not exactly like I got a choice," he said as he took his white coat from the back of the chair and put it on again. "You may have noticed it before that there aren't many NCs around any longer who could take over for me."

In an instant, he seemed to have transformed into a completely different person. He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. Then he looked down at her with a stern expression, his eyes shifting to a dark shade of bronze.

"You. Stay in bed. Rest," he ordered her. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Then he turned around and left the room. She stared after him in disbelief. She had never seen him so composed and focused, and he had never talked to them like that.

What the hell was that just now? she asked.

That's another interesting side of him, Lars said, and I bet if he knew the effect it has on you, he'd talk to you like that more often.