"Gotta say, the news is boring without you," Darien comments, walking beside me down Abbey Wood Road. "It's all 'blah blah blah, corporations, blah blah blah, NineX, blah blah'—"

"Wait, what?"

"What what?"

"NineX?"

"Yeah?"

"I know I've really got to pay more attention to the news, but what's that?"

"Oh, I'm not really sure, I think it's some new corporation. Nothing interesting, it'll probably get eaten by AllaCorp in, like, two seconds."

"Hmm..."

"Hmm?"

"It's probably nothing, but— Oh, who knows."

"What is it?"

"Earlier today, when I was trying to trace Dr. Blayne's sponsorship funds... There were so many different money trails, and it was all pretty convoluted, a total mess, really, but somewhere in there there was a mention of a NineX. I thought it sounded familiar. I meant to look it up, but got distracted by—"

"Ooh, lemon bars!"

"Speaking of getting distracted..." Turning around, I find Darien looking into the window of a bakery.

"Sorry, sorry! I was listening, I promise. I just... also saw lemon bars."

"You are... chaotic," I say, with a chuckle. "Dammit, now you made me hungry."

And what do you know, three minutes later, we're sitting in the cute little bakery with coffee and lemon bars.

"So, you were saying, you saw NineX in the payment transfer records to Dr. Blayne?"

I nod. "There were a few different transfers between them in the BankOne records."

"That's the bank owned by Nexlo, right?"

"Yep. Well, it's owned by Nexlo Investment Consortium, technically, like a subsidiary within a subsidiary, but— Anyways, I don't think they have anything to do with this. I saw him with a Nexlo phone at one of his presentations, he probably just likes to stick to one brand. The NineX transfers, though, they don't quite add up. They did start around the time Blayne accepted the sponsorship, but they stopped only a few weeks later. Besides, if NineX is just some new, tiny corporation, how would they have the means to fund a project like his, or their own tech brand like we saw with that watch he was wearing?" As soon as the words leave my mouth, a realization pops into my head, and I snap my fingers. "That might actually answer my other question! The watch, I mean. If they want Blayne to switch over to their technology, maybe they have other internal services that they want him to use from now on — like their own banking system. Maybe the payments didn't actually stop, they just aren't coming through BankOne anymore."

"Good point," Darien says, breaking off a piece of lemon bar with his fork. "That still doesn't answer the 'how are they doing this' question, though."

"Yeah, I really don't know about that..." I sip my coffee and let my eyes flick aimlessly around the café. "Maybe... we're wrong. There's no way a mini-corp like NineX would have the resources to support Dr. Blayne's project, so, it can't be them, right?"

"But what about the payments from them, then? That's got to mean something."

"It is kind of weird... I mean, who else would be sending him money? And quite a bit, too, though I don't remember the actual number now."

"Exactly. 'Weird' must be something. Right?"

I find myself looking away from him, staring down at the synth-wood table in front of me. Does it mean something? I certainly hope so...

"Maybe... Maybe NineX is a middle man of sorts," Darien suggests. "They might not be the one's funding Blayne, but someone — the real Big Bads — are hiring them to, I don't know, be a step in the middle. Draw suspicion off themselves. And as a new, still-small corporation, it would make sense for NineX to accept. They could use all the help they can get."

I nod and look up at him again. "Yeah. Yeah, that's true." A middle man... That could explain it. "So, what do we do next?"

"We should go through the records again, first. You can show me what you found before, and we can look through it in more detail together, maybe try to match up the payment dates with specific news about Dr. Blayne. And, I'll look into NineX some more, see if they've had any issues lately that led them to seek help from another corporation."

"Good idea. We should investigate the bank angle a bit more, too, right? I'll try to find out if Blayne has another bank account, maybe with another corporation. Then we can see if the NineX payments continued through there."

Darien nods. "Right, good plan."

"This... could actually get us somewhere." I wish the words didn't sounds quite so surprised as they came out, but I couldn't help it. Two minutes ago, we had no idea what was going on. Now, we have a plan. We could be making real, actual progress.

* * *

With a sigh, I wave off the holoprojector and toss it on the coffee table beside me, then lean back on the sofa in Darien's living room. So much for progress.

"This is useless. The only bank account of Dr. Blayne's I can find is with Nexlo, and there have been no NineX transfers to it for months. Either he's got a new account on their own system I've never heard of and definitely can't hack, or we were wrong about NineX's involvement entirely."

Burying my face in my hands, I try to think of something I missed, some other angle I could come at this from, but the only thought that rises to the surface of my consciousness is a tired musing about how I used to adamantly refuse to ever hack a corporation, and now I'm just casually trying to hack two.

"Are there any other records from around the time he accepted sponsorship that might be suspicious?"

"Nope. Not in the slightest. I've gone through every recorded payment on his account from those few weeks, and they're all normal and boring, except for NineX... It must be them, then... Right? It can't be anyone else."

"Not necessarily," he points out. "If we're assuming NineX started transferring Blayne money through some other, secret system, then by that logic, some entirely unrelated organization could have been doing the same thing all along, never bothering with payments through BankOne in the first place."

"So, in other words, NineX could be absolutely nothing and we still have absolutely nothing to go on."

"Sorry, Kals," Darien says, shifting his position in the armchair. He waves off his own holoprojector and places it on the table as well. "I wish I had some other idea, but... I really don't know where to go from here."

A heavy silence sits in the room for a drawn-out moment, before he adds,

"We'll figure something out. We'll solve this eventually, I know we will. And until then... at least you're safe here."

"Yeah, I guess that's true. As long as I keep my identity hidden, I'll be alright. I can keep... living my life, sort of."

He nods. "We may not be able to stop Dr. Blayne yet, but he won't find you as Elizabeth."

There's another, shorter pause, then he asks me an interesting question.

"Do you have any plans for this identity? I mean, things you want to do, or ideas about the future, things like that. I know leaving your old life must've created quite the shift in how you thought the next few years would play out."

"That, it definitely has..." My eyes drift toward the far wall as I consider what he's asked. "I still have just over a year of high school left, I should really finish that at some point... After the Blayne and UNBI situations have cooled down at least a little, though, and I have more time. I could take online classes under a different fake name, since the Elizabeth persona would have graduated by now, and just forge the records as necessary to apply to some universities. It'd definitely be nice to get a computer science degree like I'd planned, and an actual career-type job. Not that I have anything against Cache Crash, but I didn't exactly dream of being a minimum wage IT desk girl my whole life."

With that thought, a memory surfaces in my mind.

As we sat on the benches outside the school, I couldn't help but feel a mix of excitement and apprehension, hearing Roxy and Cayden talk about the assembly we'd just come from, where the guidance counsellor had been talking about post-secondary options and all that future stuff. Thinking about all the possibilities was fun, but I always felt a little worried during these conversations, too. Everything would change so much.

"So, what are you guys planning on doing after graduation?" Cayden asked.

"I'm not really sure about my career yet, but I know there are a lot of things I want to study at university," Roxy answered. "I definitely want to take lots of art classes, and psychology, too. And maybe literature or film."

Cayden smiled. "Good to know I'm not the only indecisive one. I have no idea what I want to do. Guess I'll figure it out as I go along." He turned to me. "What about you, Kal?"

"Computer science, definitely," I said. "I've been looking into programs at a few different universities, and they all look interesting in their own way. I'm not sure specifically what I want to do, though. Maybe software development. Or cybersecurity."

No, the irony was not lost on me.

"That's pretty cool," Roxy said, and Cayden told me he knew I'd be good at it.

"It's great that you know what you want to do already, too," he added.

A touch of comfort and just the tiniest bit of pride washed over me at his words. It wasn't that I thought any less of Roxy and Cayden for being undecided, of course not. We were only 15, for one thing, it's not like there wasn't plenty of time to figure it out, and they're both smart enough to do whatever they wanted and be awesome at it. It just felt good to have a clear idea of where my future was headed. I felt prepared, ready to take on the world.

"That sounds like a good idea."

I glance up to see Darien looking at me over the armrest of his chair and remember the conversation we were having. I've really got to get this zoning out thing under control.

"And you're right," he continues, standing up and collecting the two empty mugs sitting on the coffee table. "Things will calm down with the UNBI eventually. Of course, they won't stop looking for you, but once any clues they have get older and trails don't lead them anywhere, you'll become a sort of a cold case. You could probably start applying to universities in a few years."

I nod along, but that last sentence seems to tug at my mind a bit, a stowaway hanging onto the back of my train of thought. My gaze drifts away from Darien and wanders toward the ceiling, then down to the floor, as the simple, innocent words start to echo through my mind.

"In a few years..." I repeat.

"Sorry?"

"A few..."

After sitting the mugs back down, he gently places a hand on my shoulder. "Are you OK?"

"Years..." I look back up and find him watching me, his previously cool and casual demeanour replaced with a certain softness, concern. "I'm going to be here for years," I continue, by way of an answer. "I— I might be here forever, I might be living as Elizabeth Nightingale forever. I didn't really think about it before, but— but how am I supposed to accept that?"

He shifts his position and carefully pulls his hand back. "I— I don't know," he admits, "but... Well, you're still you, even if you're using a fake name."

"Am I? I mean, it's not just a name, it's everything, a whole fake person. The few people I know here who I can almost call friends know me as someone I'm not. Someone I made up. Everything about me is a lie, down to the most basic details. Like— Like Melia, she's supposed to be my friend, right, probably my closest friend other than you, and the simplest things she thinks she knows about me are wrong. She's my closest friend and she doesn't even know my real name, age, birthday, even what I look like, to an extent. She's friends with someone who doesn't exist."

"How can you say that? Kalix, you're the same person. It's your personality that matters, who you are, not—"

"Who I am?" I cut him off. "Who I frickin' am?"

"I— I'm sorry, did I—"

"Who I am is Kalix Raven. Everything I am is tied to her, don't you get it? Who I am is the disaster child of a once perfect, now broken family. Elizabeth's family, they're just more— more fictional characters I made up. Who I am is a messed up teenager who dragged herself through two years of with a dysfunctional parent by becoming something exceptional, even if wildly illegal. Elizabeth is a normal, safe and secure adult, a functioning member of society. I'm constantly scared of being found out, she can never talk about things like that because she's not supposed to have anything to hide. I have friends, people who I care about back in Tokyo. She's not allowed to contact them. I have a sister, a perfect sister who sometimes, despite nothing but good intentions, makes me feel like the trainwreck sibling I am, but I love her anyway, more than anything, because she's my sister. Elizabeth's not allowed to know her. If you go through everything that makes me me, and take away everything tied to my old life, everything I have to hide..." I want to look at him, but the floor seems to pull my eyes toward it. "There's nothing left."

He's silent for a few seconds — the first time I've ever seen him not knowing what to say. Finally, he tries to tell me,

"Maybe Elizabeth can still, sort of, become you, a version of you, any—"

"She's not real, Darien!" The words fly from my mouth, louder, faster than I meant, but I can't— I can't contain it now. He just doesn't understand. "She's not real, which— which means I'm not real!"

"Kalix, of course you're real," he tries to tell me, tries to reassure me, but I shake my head vigorously.

"No. No, I'm not, not really. I'm two different people now — Codebreaker, the cybercriminal the UNBI is searching for, and Elizabeth Nightingale, the ordinary little IT girl in Soho, but—" I take a breath. "I'm two different people, and neither of them are Kalix Raven. She's just... gone. My whole life, my identity, it's gone, and I'll probably never get it back."

He doesn't argue, just looks at me with wordless worry, and my eyes once again find themselves avoiding his and staring a downward.

"Kalix Raven is dead..." I whisper.

"No," he says, softly, reaching for my hand. "Not to me."

A/N: Hey, publishing a chapter on Thursday night at 11:28 p.m. is still technically publishing it on Thursday... I'm keeping my promise :)

Anyway, let me know what you think of the story so far! Any theories? Hopes? Opinions? I'd love to hear it.

See you next week,

- Tressa