Cyril Harper had little hope of ever seeing Amy Larsson again.

She had made her point quite clear the last time they had spoken. He had a suspicion that if she ever came back to New Elysium, she'd be in a dreadful state, asking him to fix her once more. This time, he swore to himself, he would not do it. Every time he fixed her, she just ended up breaking herself again. It was a futile effort to try and convince her to be more careful. The next time she broke an augment, he would remove it instead of replacing it. She was a waste of material and a waste of his time.

And yet he still found himself spending an unhealthy amount of his time on the feed from the tracker he had put into her. He let himself be mesmerized by those strange, uncharacteristic patterns of theta waves that her brain produced when she was sleeping and dreaming. He watched a glowing dot dance over the screen before him, drawing the jagged spikes of her cardiogram. He monitored the levels of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides in her brain, acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins. He read the status reports on her augments. Taken together, the monitoring algorithm told him more about her than she had ever told him herself.

He told himself that he was doing the right thing here. That a patient who was unwilling or unable to cooperate could be exempted from the rule of required consent for medical procedures. It was the same with unconscious emergency patients, or patients who were a danger to themselves. And as dangerous as Amy Larsson was to the rest of the world, her reckless behavior and insane plans made her the biggest danger to herself. Giving her the means to put herself in danger was not compatible with his conscience any longer.

With that thought in mind, he was fairly certain that the next time he would see her, she would come to him battered and beaten once again, augments fried beyond rescue, her life hanging by a thread. He looked forward to that day with equal parts dread and excited anticipation. And of course, he would fix her again – he would save her, but not replace her augments.

Consequently, his surprise was rather grand when he unexpectedly found her in the medical staff meeting room of the clinic when he went there for his weekly meeting.

He froze in the door way and stared blankly at the sight before him. She looked nothing like the state he had imagined her to be in at their next meeting. Dressed in tight black pants and a white tank top that matched her split hair, the only color about her was a soft, healthy blush to her cheeks, visible even in the dim light. There was a smile on her face, and the way she carried her body as she moved closer to him had an agility and grace that he had rarely seen about her. Probably because he usually saw her when she was badly hurt and in pain. Right now, she looked better than ever, not just in terms of her health. He found himself staring at her, his fascination drowning out his surprise completely.

"Ah, finally. I've already started without you. You can sit over there," she gestured to a chair.

That was when Cyril first took note of the other people in the room. Two pairs of organic eyes, one belonging to the boy genius Dex Drogon, and one to a strange, chimeric cat on the boy's lap, and an array of flickering face lights, belonging to two androids, were directed at him. But his attention was entirely captivated by the mismatched, half organic, half augmented gaze of Amy Larsson.

He followed her gesture to an empty seat next to one of the androids. Cyril had not issue with AIs, he actually liked Amy's mechanic, Higgs, but this was her Reaper unit, Heisenberg. Although it was unarmed now, the way it kept its face lights fixed on him was unsettling. Nonetheless, he was almost about to follow her instruction reflexively, when he remembered what he had come here for originally.

"Now wait. What are all of you doing in the medical staff meeting room?" he asked and stopped halfway between the door and the seat she had assigned him. "There's a staff meeting about to take place, you have to leave."

"Staff meeting was postponed to 10am," Amy said.

"What? How would you know? Why?"

"Their chief neuro-cyberneticist is busy otherwise," she informed him. It took Cyril a moment to realize that she was talking about him.

"Amy, this isn't funny," he grumbled. He would have to send a message around to apologize to everyone, and re-schedule the meeting. "Besides, this is a restricted area of the clinic, staff only! You need to leave!"

"Hey. I booked the place for the next two hours, fair and square," she said and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

He grumbled silently, pulling out his tablet to check his messages, wondering if she had perhaps already scared off any other staff members by her presence in the room.

"Room bookings only works for employees with access to the internal sys- What the hell, Amy."

She had indeed booked the room. How, he had no idea. He raised his gaze from his tablet and found her looking back at him with a smug and haughty expression that was very much unlike her. Without another word, she raised her hand and looked at it as if she was examining her nails, and he finally understood. Of course, she had simply hacked into the system.

"This is a security breach, Amy," he shifted on the spot uneasily.

"No, this is a business meeting," she corrected him and turned back to face the video screen on the wall.

In one big window, it displayed a complicated network of thin, white lines on a dark background. He vaguely recognized it as a schematic, of something that must have been absolutely enormous. There was another, smaller window, displaying another schematic of something more familiar. He had seen those only in text books, but it reminded him of the spider-like contraptions for the deployment biomimetic programs, back when research and development of those had still been allowed. This one looked rather like a scorpion than a spider, though.

"Alright, whatever, just keep standing there, I really don't care," Amy's voice ripped Cyril out of his thoughts again. She turned back to face the other people in the room. Left speechless and confused, he only watched her wordlessly as she continued her presentation.

"So. That's the plan, simple and easy. Where one might fail, we just need many. But we're on a tight schedule here and I want you to be honest with me. Dex has already built a working prototype, but we need more than that. Much, much more."

"According to my estimate, there's enough material for about three thousand units," the boy chimed in, scratching the cat behind its ears as he spoke. "The question is not whether it's possible, but how quickly we can get it done. So, Higgs, you up for it? Do you think you can do this?"

"Can I do it?" Higgs exclaimed with a high-pitched tone of offense to his electronic voice. "Can I do it?! You are seriously asking me if I can build three thousand of these units in twenty-four hours?"

He waved all six of his arms around frantically as he spoke.

"So...?" Amy asked, looking at him expectantly.

"Captain," Higgs said, managing to make his electronic voice sound half smug, half offended, as he lowered his arms and placed the two humanoid ones on the equivalent of his hips. "I'll do it in eight."

A wide and borderline terrifying grin washed over Amy Larsson's face. "Fantastic. Now all that's left is one little detail..."

She turned to face Cyril, who was still standing frozen in the doorway, completely baffled and not comprehending anything of what was going on.

"Doctor," she addressed him, "I will need an upgrade."

~ ~ ~

You are aware that this plan is pretty insane, even for our standards, right? Lars asked at the back of their mind.

They were sitting on the table in the examination room, waiting for Cyril. She was staring down at their feet, dangling from the table, and humming quietly. He couldn't recall ever having seen her so content and carefree. It was almost as if she hadn't just pitched the most audacious idea in the history of space piracy to their friends.

Yep, Null answered his rhetorical question, sounding proud.

Lars heaved an inaudible sigh. When she had talked about a promise made to him, he had not understood. He had though she had meant their visit to Satherna, but she had kept thinking about something behind the veil even after that. Only when they had landed on New Elysium, with a cargo hold full of loot, and she had instructed Higgs and Heisenberg to bring most of the hardware straight to Dex, she had revealed her plan to him.

Back when she had first come up with this idea, a year and a half ago, he had though it was a joke. A fantasy, something she thought about to keep him entertained. Lars had played along with that little game, at some point he had even added his own ideas to it: a grand revolution, sparked by a heist so audacious that it seemed unrealistic even in a dream. But she had enjoyed to entertain the idea of being more than just a terrorist - to become a rebel.

When she had seen a Leviathan class ship with her own eyes for the first time, on that day on Hestia station some months ago, he had for the first time realized that it was more than just a game for her. She had seriously considered stealing a ship of that size, and only when she had seen it, it had dawned on her just how ludicrous that idea actually was. So he had tried to convince her that what mattered was the thought, the idea of Amy Larsson becoming somebody who might be capable of it. Somebody to instill fear in the hearts of the hypocrites and elites in Neo-Tokyo. He had dismissed the idea after that, because what they had achieved since then had honestly been insane and impressive enough.

And now here she was, still hell-bent on stealing that ship.

Because I promised it to you, she thought, knowing exactly what he was mulling over. I keep my promises. Even if it sometimes takes a bit longer than expected...

You don't need to do this for me, Null. I am happy the way things are, he thought.

I'll be honest with you, Lars. At this point, I want to do this for myself just as much as I want to do it for you, she explained, But I won't do it if you really don't want to. If this is strange for you, going against the military like that, since you used to be with them yourself once-

Oh no, that's not it, he cut her off, smiling an intangible, wistful smile.

Sometimes these days, he found himself so wrapped up in his current life that he almost forgot about what he used to be in the past. But it was very much like Null to worry about such things.

I'm not with the military any longer, I'm not fighting for Neo-Tokyo. I am on the other side of these battles today, and I do not owe them anything, least of all my loyalty. My only allegiance now is to you, Null. This is your body, he reminded her softly, So we follow your plan.

Our body, she corrected him. And we follow our plan.

A smile washed over her face as she unfolded it in their mind once again, like an enormous diorama, too grand for either of them to take it all in completely at any one time. Memories were attached to the plan, connected through silvery silken threads, spanning almost the entirety of the colorful space inside. At the center of it all, she had woven organic and inorganic thoughts together, colorful clouds and jagged ones and zeroes, interlaced in such a complex fashion that they seemed almost indistinguishable in some places.

Looking at it now, he realized that she was right. This was not just her own plan. As he looked over the memories, he was once again troubled by the thought that his presence in her mind alone had turned to this kind of life.

No, Lars, she thought. To his irritation, she had again caught on about what he was thinking even though he had tried to keep it at the back of his mind. She was getting really good at that, while simultaneously getting better a hiding her own thoughts and ideas from him for extended periods of time. Even if they were as complicated and humongous as her plan to steal the Aphelion.

I don't want to sound smug, she went on, sounding smug nonetheless, but you wouldn't have been able to come up with all of this without me either.

She was right, again. This was the culmination of everything that had happened over the past months – to both of them.

Riga, who had paid to bring her back to life. Blake, who had done it. Dixon who had killed her, and whom they had killed during the battle on Six. The Butcher, Enigma, Lazarus. Xenia and Neris. And even Atlas. It was all connected, through silver threads spanning their mind like a giant spider web.

It was as if all of it had been nothing but steps along the way, leading them right to this point. As if an invisible force had guided them there. They had crossed the darkest depths of despair, suffered pain that he had thought unimaginable before, uncovered more answers than he had ever had dreamed of asking for, and somehow, all of it had led back to this promise she had made, on that day, right after their escape from Riga.

This is not me or you, she said. This is us. Remember that saying? The whole is more...

... than the sum of its parts, he finished.

And this time, there will be many parts. An entire Legion of parts, she added with a grin.

"Amy?" Cyril's voice coming from the door ripped them out of their internal conversation.

"I've been waiting," she informed him. "We're kinda in a hurry here. Do you have what you need?"

He sighed as he closed the door behind him and moved over to the table.

"You're always in a hurry, Amy. But these things take time. I'm an NC, not a butcher."

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth at his words.

"No," she said, "That you're most certainly not."

"Alright..." Cyril glanced over some data on his tablet. "Now explain to me again what exactly you want this plug in augment for?"

"Cyril, didn't you pay any attention at the mission briefing?"

"No," he admitted, "All I gathered was that you want to infiltrate some ship. It sounded insane and dangerous, and involved some untested tech that Dex invented for you."

She heaved a heavy sigh.

"Okay, here's the short version: We- I mean, I-" she corrected herself quickly, "-will plug into the Aphelion to hack her, while the Legion takes control of the ship's functions and acts as the crew."

Cyril lowered his tablet and stared at her.

"You're kidding," he said, and it was not even a question.

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" she asked and pointed at her own face.

"The Aphelion? The flagship of the Neo-Tokyan navy?"

"The very same," she nodded.

"And you want to- what? Control two thousand-"

"Three thousand," she cut him off, throwing him a scornful look. "Were you listening at all?"

"Three thousand units?" he cried out, "Are you completely insane?"

"Have you paid attention to anything I ever said or did, that you seriously need to ask that question?" she asked back and cracked a grin.

He groaned and buried his face in his palm for a moment. Then he pinched the back of his nose with two fingers while he seemed to ponder what she had just proposed.

"This will never work. You don't have the mental capacity to do this – no offense. But the moment you try to tap into that many units, you will simply faint, in the best case. In the worst case, you'll drop dead."

"That's why I need a plug in implant," she explained. "I need to stay connected to the ship, even if I'm unconscious."

"That doesn't make any sense," he shook his head. "You can't hack while you're unconscious."

"And who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?" she crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him.

He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again, shaking his head instead. He looked over something on his tablet.

"At any rate, you cannot expect to control AIs like that, let alone that many. In the military they would have designated, fully-autonomous AIs specialized to control other units."

"I am familiar with the concept," Lars took control to chime in.

"Those could control up to hundreds of other units, depending on the complexity of the task. But you're human, Amy. It won't work."

"Augurs can do it," Null remarked.

"Bur you're no Augur. You don't have the implants, and you don't have the program."

"The what?" Null and Lars asked simultaneously.

"Augur implants are special neural chips that come with a primitive kind of AI. It's like an algorithm that helps them filter the thoughts of the units they control. It's essentially a small-"

"A CPU," Null cut him off, her eyes widening in surprise.

So that's how he did it, she thought, that's how Blue was able to give us so much time, on the beach...

Just like you, when you control the timeless space, Lars remarked, And that blue entity that helped us against Blake's biomimetic program, that must have been some residual code that was left behind in my CPU when he died.

And just like that, another piece of the puzzle fell into place, and she wove another silver thread in their mind, connecting a memory to their plan.

"Anyway, you don't have that kind of hardware. Besides, even the most talented Augurs could only direct squads of five to ten, max. No three thousand."

"I met one who directed fifteen people and kept a jamming signal on two scandroids all the while," Null said with a grin.

"This is no joke," he said sternly. "You could fry your brain if you try this. And that would be something I can't fix."

"But they're not humans, they're not even fully self-aware," she said, shifting impatiently under his gaze, "The Legion is constructed from scraps. Dex and Higgs said the AIs won't be more than... echoes. Trust me, Cyril, I'll be fine."

"And if you're not? Amy, I can't let you-"

"Doctor Harper," she cut him off, her voice dropping to a low growl and her face taking on a deadly serious expression. "You will put that goddamn implant into my arm now. This is not a request. This is an order."

For a moment, a hint of fear flickered across his face and he widened his eyes in surprise, but then he narrowed them at her. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and stretched to his full height, staring right back at her eyes.

"I thought you're no longer with the New Elysian fleet, Commander," he retorted.

She cringed at the mention of the title.

"What fleet? That scrap collection that Jack thinks can defend New Elysium if Neo-Tokyo ever finds this place? Please," she sneered, "I'm about to bring him a fucking flag ship to build a real fleet around. And you will give me the implant I need."

Cyril didn't bat an eye lash. He continued to stare back at her, unmoving, his lips pressed together in a thin line.

What has gotten into him? Null asked with a mixture of fascination, amusement and irritation. He is quite bold today.

Please don't hurt him, Null, Lars pleaded, sensing some very dark thoughts behind the veil as she clenched her hands into tight fists.

"Talking about Jack. Does he know that you intend to waste two tons of perfectly good hardware on that insane plan of yours?" Cyril asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

"Does Leah know that you put a tracker in my body without my permission?" she asked back.

That did the trick. Immediately, Cyril's shoulders slumped and his confidence visibly deflated. The stern look in his hazel-colored eyes decayed into one rather reminiscent of a sad, and very terrified puppy.

"Please don't tell her," he whispered. "She'd kill me if she knew-"

"You're more afraid of her than me?" Null asked, raising an eye brow. "I'm offended, Cyril."

"No! That's not what I meant!" He raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "Well, I meant-"

He was interrupted when the door was thrown open, and Dex barged into the room.

"Amy!" he exclaimed happily. "I thought I'd find you here. I need to-"

"Is she really here?" a small voice resounded from behind the lanky teenager, cutting him off.

Null raised their head at the sound. Lars and Null had never heard her speak, but they had heard her screams. They both immediately knew who it belonged to, and Lars could feel Null freeze up completely.

"Yeah, Juni, she's here," Dex said in a soft tone.

The girl kept herself half-hidden behind him, but she surveyed the room with her single grey, augmented eye until she met Null's gaze. Her other eye socket was covered with the eye patch they had left for her.

"What are you doing here?" Cyril asked with audible irritation in his voice.

"Juni here had a special request for a certain piece of custom hardware, and I needed to get a good look at the original to meet the specs," Dex explained with a grin.

"The original?" Null asked sheepishly.

The eye, Lars explained.

But he could just match it to the one she already has? Null asked in serious confusion.

Not our organic eye, Lars chuckled. The other one.

Oh!

Indeed, Dex stepped closer and began to scrutinize the right side of her face, typing something on a tablet without looking at it. Null's gaze swept over to Cyril who had moved back a bit and just shrugged, an equally confused look on his face. Meanwhile, the little girl had moved into the room, but had stayed close to the door, and stared at Amy with unbridled fascination.

"So, Dex," Null finally said to break the silence, "How's our little project coming along?"

"Splendidly," he commented, scanning her face with a handheld device. "Higgs actually kicked me out of my workshop. He said I'm only getting in his way. He told me to work on Calliope instead."

"What's Calliope?" Cyril asked from the side.

"Not what, who," Dex corrected him. "Amy brought her. An old autonomous AI. Higgs fixed her body, but she won't wake up. I tried to see if there was something wrong with her, but I can't find any problems. She's still asleep in my work shop right now, I think all we can do is wait. Sorry."

"Hey, no worries," Null said with a smile. "Thanks for looking after her in the meantime."

"Of course," Dex grinned back at her. He finished his investigation of Amy's eye and took a step back. "Anyway, that's why I thought I'd use this chance to get to work on the little project that Juni suggested."

Null glanced over at Juni, who blushed and averted her gaze to the floor, fiddling with her eye patch.

"Wouldn't you rather have an eye that matches?" Null asked the girl.

"No," she answered timidly, "I want one like yours."

"Why? Don't you think it's weird?"

"I... I think it looks very pretty," the girl said in a quiet voice, casting her a timid glance.

Null blinked at her in surprise, unable to find the right words to react to that.

That kid has a messed up sense of aesthetic, she thought, and Lars chuckled, because he found himself agreeing with Juni.

"Other people might think you look scary," Null warned Juni.

Juni raised her head fully and met her gaze with her single eye. The look on her face was hard and serious, and for a moment she appeared much older than she was. It reminded Lars of the fact that she had been through something that no twelve-year old child should have to suffer.

"Good," Juni just said. "Then they'll think twice about hurting me or my friends."

For a moment, Lars could feel a sense of guilt well up inside of them, seeping over from Null's side of the veil.

You gave her the eye, Null. There's nothing to blame yourself for. You're probably a hero to her. It's only natural for her to want to be more like you, he said.

I'm not a hero. I'm a pirate, she remarked. She wouldn't want to be anything like me if she understood what it means.

Before Lars could answer and reassure her, Dex' voice interrupted her train of thoughts as he addressed her again.

"There was something else I wanted to ask you."

His face had taken on a serious expression, as he looked at her. "Those crates you brought, the ones made from titanium-thallium alloy. When you're done with them, can I have one or two?"

"Of course," she said, "You can have all of them, for all I care. I plan to bring them back along with the ship. What do you need them for?"

Dex cracked his usual, wide grin, but there was something different about his expression. They boy was always dedicated and motivated when it came to his work, but whatever he was thinking about now filled his eyes with a veritable fire of determination.

"I need the material to shield something from scanner signals," he explained vaguely. "If it all works out, you'll know soon enough."

"Oho, sounds mysterious," Null said, cracking a grin. "I like it."

"So, did you get your new hardware yet?" Dex asked.

"Well, Doctor Harper here has expressed some concerns for my safety," Null replied, casting the man another sideward glance, "But I managed to convince him that I will be fine."

Cyril's eyes widened "You have not-"

"On a related note, I think your mother will be thrilled to hear that my problems with my life support augments are a thing of the past, Dex. My liver is an excellent condition. So are my other inner organs. And Doctor Harper can attest to that, can't he?" Null chirped innocently, but the look she threw the NC caused all color to vanish from his face.

Suddenly, the door was thrown open again, and Heisenberg barged into the room. Juni jumped to the side in surprise as he entered.

"Milord! Higgs wanted me to inform you that he will be finished in three hours!" the Reaper unit declared.

"Three hours?" Dex exclaimed in surprise, "Did he attach some of Rutherford's extra arms or how is he doing it?"

Heisenberg did not reply. He had taken note of Juniper, who stared up at the over six feet tall android with wide eyes. He looked down at her, and his face lights seemed to blink in surprise.

"Hello there, small human," he chirped at her. "What are you?"

"I'm Juniper," she said, "Are you a Reaper?"

"Indeed, I am a Reaper MK-V unit, designated to-"

"That's enough information, Heisenberg," Null cut him off, before he could go into details as to what exactly his primary functions entailed.

Following behind on Heisenberg's heels, Ensign Darwin now entered the room, and Juniper squealed in delight at the sight of the cat.

"Am I dreaming, or are there a six feet tall killing machine and a cat in my examination room?" Cyril muttered in disbelief.

"Don't forget the boy genius, the girl with the eye patch and the space pirate," Lars took control to chime in.

"Alright, now that's enough," Cyril finally snapped out of his surprised state and shouted out loud to interrupt the chatter. "Everybody out who is not a neuro-cyberneticist, or about to get a transdermal plug-in implant!"

"So you're gonna do it?" Null asked, sounding more surprised than relieved.

Cyril sighed as he watched after the little crowd leaving the room.

"It's not like I have much of a choice, right?" he muttered, and began to prepare his tools.

"You're a smart man, Cyril, Null remarked, and watched him move around the room.

See, he always comes around and helps us, Lars remarked.

You mean he always cracks under pressure, sooner or later.

"Don't forget to remove the tracker while you're at it," she added in a serious tone.

Cyril raised his gaze and met hers for a moment. His eyes looked more gold than green under the lights on the ceiling today. Almost like amber. He stared at them for a moment with a blank expression on his face, before he looked back down at his tools.

"Of course..." he remarked with a sigh. "Anything, for you."

___
A.N.
I'm not 100% happy with this chapter, but after my move, I finally wanted to update again, even if it's not perfect.
I will probably come back and re-write this, tighten it up or perhaps change POVs.... but anyways, here we are. Right on track to finally answer the question how they managed to steal the Aphelion!!