Once again, I have taivaan_sininen making a guest appearance in this chapter for the inner workings of the mind of Null and Lars. I've only edited a small portion for purposes of continuity. If anyone has any questions on the relationship between Null and Lars, I suggest you head over and read "Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story" to really grasp why they are the way they are. 

Also, shout out to Ashabellanar4life for all the shred work! 

Red struck the training droid down with the gun, something moving in his right caught his attention and he pulled the trigger by instinct, not thinking, letting the new augments work for him. The thud told him, he'd hit the target. 

Elation filled him, and he felt a smile tugging at his lips.  

Wham!

The droid slammed him from behind knocking him flat.

"Dis-engage!" Lars voice called from above him. 

The droids immediately froze in place. Captain Scott hit the ground with a frustrated fist, groaning as he pushed himself to his feet. 

"Captain that was an incredible display, you've gotten further than anyone else with these same augments. It's impressive."

"It's not enough," he argued back. "I will still get taken down by any AI, I'm just not thinking like one."

Lars was silent, he clasped his hands behind his body. "You let your emotions show when you have a victory, it takes seconds away from your reaction time."

Captain Scott stared at Lars for a moment, his expression thoughtful. Perhaps the only way to beat a machine was to become one. He was halfway there already. "So, don't smile."

Lars threw his arms up. "You are beating yourself against the wall Captain. You are human, you have limits."

Captain Scott shrugged. "Time to push against that wall Lars. Again." He ignored the pain in his shoulder, his augments working overtime to deaden the sensation. 

Lars had started to raise his hands, his way of expressing disagreement and then let them fall. 

"Re-engage." 

With just the two of them in the room Red's focus sharpened on the elder Dawson. He'd promised himself he would kill this man, responsible for so much death ever since he'd spotted him when they'd escaped Helion 7.

He pushed away any thoughts that would slow him down. This was not Ember's father, this was the one responsible for this entire debacle, the purge all of it.  Red let all those feelings go. None of them would serve him here. 

It needed to be him, alone, and the next move.

He stopped circling and simply waited. He didn't even bother to look at the man walking steadily towards him, his sensors ranged out picking up every movement, every shift in his body, every breath, every twitch.

He had to assume that Darius was more than capable of the same feats. Darius was more than elite Neo-Tokyan, if the reigns of power could easily be held by what they'd referred to as pure humans perhaps this would be an easy fight. But the Red glow in Darius's eyes only confirmed to Red what he'd guessed earlier.

He was a hypocrite. His craving for power pushed even his own ideals to the side.

It made Red feel sick inside, knowing he once served these people faithfully. He pushed that aside too.

"I see you care for her, and yet you do not wish to free Hannah."

"Her name is Ember, and you aren't giving her freedom, only a prison." Red inhaled. As much as he wanted to not show any emotion, any mention of her name caused him to react strongly. He shook his head.

Darius pulled out a long blade. Red understood this action too. This was personal. He'd interfered in a family affair, he was going to be made to suffer for it. 

"It's not your decision," Darius lunged forward but Red was waiting for him, he caught the outstretched hand with the blade in it, the force of the blow forcing him back against the wall. 

#########

A violent storm was tearing through their mind, lashing painfully at Lars' presence. White lightning crackled across the dark clouds in the sky above the colorful landscape, striking the ground and opening up deep and dark chasms, and shadows and colors blurred together into one messy conglomerate.

He dashed across the shattering space, all the while evading the lightning that struck the ground around him, looking for Null. He had lost his connection to the outside completely and had no idea what was happening to the body, he couldn't even feel the connection to Nova any longer and he had no idea where Null was. But he could feel that not all of what was going on was due to Angel.

Where is she? Angel screamed from somewhere out there. His high pitched voice seemed to tear at the fabric of the world around Lars and distorted it. Angel seemed to be in pain too.

I am here, Null answered, suddenly re-appearing beside Lars.

The storm continued to rage around them, and they huddled together. Her presence had a soothing effect on Lars, but he could also feel the body again now – and they were in pain.

I think we made a mistake, Lars said, casting a look around them.

No kidding, Null replied, dodging another lightning bolt, We need to calm him down.

We need to get to him somehow to do that, Lars remarked.

You! Angel suddenly screamed. This is all your fault! This is all wrong! This is too much. TOO MUCH.

What is he talking abou-

Lars thought was cut off as the wind picked up again, lashing at both of their presences painfully. The clouds above them began to churn again, lightning cracking ominously. And then, with a thundering roar, the world was torn apart completely. The last thing he heard was Null screaming, and Angel laughing. There was a bright flash of light, and then he was thrown into pitch black darkness.

~ ~ ~

Nova gasped and faltered in his steps. The pain that Lars and Null were feeling bled over across their connection, searing hot and white. He had only once before gotten a glimpse of their feelings at such an intensity. He knew that what he felt was just a fragment of what they were going through, and yet it was near unbearable already.

A skull-splitting headache crept up inside his own head, amplified by their agonized screams that reverberated through his head as loud and clear as they were coming from right next to him. But in the world outside, the body of Amy Larsson remained silent as Ember continued to shock them.

The body convulsed, and after a few seconds went limp. Ember tentatively dropped the wrist she'd grabbed, a burn mark wrapped all the way around it. Amy, sank to her knees, still shaking. But it wasn't over yet. One of the three voices in Nova's head had gone from screaming in pain to laughing manically, soon mixing eerily with the sound of forced laughter coming from Amy's throat.

She looked up at Ember with feverish eyes. Ember recognized insanity when she saw it.

"That was fun. Do it again!" Amy said with a wide grin.

"Oh you don't have to ask twice--" 

Ember reached out to grab her again, white light dancing across her hands.

"Don't!" Nova called out to stop her. "It's enough – any more and you're gonna fry them completely!"

Perhaps that was not entirely true, but he knew that he couldn't take another shock like that himself. Ember hesitated, her eyebrows lifting as she took in Nova's words.

She knew about them, he realized. He wasn't even sure why it mattered at this point but for some reason it did.

"Please... let them handle it from here." Nova begged her, his voice strained from the pain.

"You can hear them?" Ember backed a step back as Amy stood, with Angel in full control of the body. 

Nova nodded. "Not everything, mostly sensations, shocking them upended something inside

He looked back at Amy, and her gaze met his for a moment. A flurry of emotions washed over her face and her whole body began to tremble violently. Then her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she collapsed.

#####

Ember stared down at Amy as she lay on the floor. Heisenberg looked to his Captain and back to Nova. 

"Heisenberg, can you work on getting that door open? Red may need us." Ember watched as Nova knelt down next to Amy's body. If she hadn't been so concerned for Red she might have had a laugh over the fact that clearly Null and Lars had an admirer. Her heart ached as she watched Nova squeeze her hand, a grimace on his face. Clearly, he was feeling more than he'd let on. 

She turned back to the door. Heisenberg was examining the controls carefully, his blank face moving back and forth. 

The thuds emanating from inside told her that both of them were still alive at the very least. 

#################

As the light dissipated around her, Null found herself lying face down in the sand. She scrambled to her feet and took a look around. Thick fog concealed her immediate surroundings, but she realized immediately that she was back at the beach – the impossible space inside their mind where she and Lars had a corporeal appearance. They usually didn't get to go to this place unless they were unconscious or dreaming, and being here now she got the feeling that it was probably the first.

"Lars?" she called out to him, "Where are you?"

There was no answer. Feeling despair creep up inside of her, she began to walk. She knew that she had to find him fast, so they could return to the other space in their mind before Angel tore it apart.

Up ahead, through the dense fog, she suddenly spotted a figure sitting in the sand, small and fair-haired, with his back to her. Her heart skipped a beat when she spotted him and she sped up her pace. Lars had appeared in this place as a child once before when he had been in terrible pain.

"Lars? Are you alright?" she asked him as she approached him.

But when the boy turned his head around to look at her, she stopped dead in her tracks. His eyes were black as coal and just as dead. And from up close she could see now that his hair was yellow, not white, like Lars'.

"Angel, what are you doing here?" she asked, frowning. She didn't like the idea of having him here. This place was not like the colorful landscape, it was special and important to her – and to Lars.

"Oh, it's you! I've been waiting!" he said with a beaming smile.

Baffled, she stared at him as he ran up to her and threw his arms around her. A shiver went down her spine at his touch. His skin was ice cold, and as he pressed his small body against hers, she realized that he had no heartbeat. Everything felt real in this place, and Lars' human body was warm and had a heartbeat, so why didn't this child have one too? She didn't like the implications of that realization.

"Evelyn..." he whispered. "I like this place."

"Don't call me that, Angel. I'm Null."

Evelyn was the name of the woman she had been once, and whose appearance she had in this place. Angel seemed to have peered into her memories more than she had realized, and she liked that even less.

"This is nice," Angel said, hugging her so tightly now that it hurt. "Almost as good as the real thing."

"Angel, where is Lars?" she asked.

"Why do you care, Evelyn?" he replied.

"Where is he?" she demanded again.

"He's gone."

"Gone where?"

Her tone had turned icy, and she could feel her patience run out. She wasn't exactly great with children, to begin with, and this one was starting to annoy her. She had wanted to help him, like Adam, and bring him back to the Blackstar, but in contrast to the former Vesper, this AI was a more than an unruly passenger. They had offered him an inch, and he had taken a mile. 

"It doesn't matter," the boy answered, his voice sounding dark now. "You belong to me now."

"Are you fucking kidding me," she snapped, staring down at the child in disbelief. She tried to pry his hands away from her body, but he clung to her tightly like a leech. 

"Let go of me, Angel!"

"Never..." he mumbled.

She could feel something now - an energy that radiated from him like a cold and dark aura. Through it, she realized that he was still connected to the outside, tearing through their mind and memories. He had taken over control completely, even though the body was unconscious.

"Where is Lars?" she yelled at him. "What did you do to him?"

Finally, she was able to free herself from his arms and pushed him away. Angel turned his black eyes up and looked at her with a faint smile.

"He is back where he belongs," he said with a shrug. "In the darkness."

Her breath caught when she realized what Angel was talking about.

She had locked Lars in there once, thinking she could protect him like that, but she regretted it to this day. In the darkest corner of their mind, there were no colors, no sounds, no sensation at all. There wasn't even any passage of time. It was a space of utter stagnation, a lifeless place – because it was completely inorganic. It was the place where Lars had existed before he had learned to cross the boundary between the inorganic and organic part of her brain. It was a part of his former CPU, and it was his hell.

Every second spent here on the beach was perhaps less than a nanosecond in the real world, but it was an eternity in the CPU. She had to get Lars out of there.

"You put him there?" she asked, feeling anger flare up within her, an emotion just as real and consuming as in the outside world.

"Yes. Now it's only you and me. Isn't that fantastic?"

The boy flashed her a grin that seemed too wide for his face and she clenched her hands into fists. This being before her, she realized, it only had the appearance of a child, but it wasn't innocent. And when she looked at his eyes, she understood now what was so fundamentally wrong with him, and why his presence in this place felt so utterly disturbing. He had no soul.

Angel turned to look out across the sea, where the dense fog hid the distant horizon.

"I wonder what else is out there. I want to feel everything. I love it. I love all of it. Even the pain! It feels great, Evelyn."

She didn't answer. She rolled back her shoulders and cracked her knuckles.

"So you like pain, huh?" 

~ ~ ~

There was no passage of time in the darkness. Every present moment felt like it was dragging out forever, the future felt like it was infinitely out of reach, and yet when Lars looked back, the past seemed to have barely gone by.

He had been alone like this before, he had spent two eternities here. The first time, he had found his own way out to keep Null from doing something very, very stupid. The second time, he had been able to escape because she had pushed him in here but forgotten to close the door behind her. This time, it was different. Angel had thrown him in here and taken control over everything outside. He had shut Lars in completely.

But Lars was not afraid. A way would open up eventually. Because what Angel didn't know was that he wasn't in control of everything. He couldn't control this dark and timeless space, because Null did.

~ ~ ~

"What are you doing, Evelyn?" Angel asked and took a step back.

At her feet, her own shadow had turned black and begun to grow and expand, until it emerged from the ground. It danced around her legs like black smoke.

"You wanted to feel, Angel. I'm only gonna give you what you asked for," she growled.

The boy's black eyes went wide and he backed away further as the shadows began to creep toward him.

"....What is this? No... no, this is different. I don't want it!"

"Tough luck," she replied. "You don't get to pick and choose."

The shadows expanded further and became almost corporeal now. The dark figures lunged at him, and he screamed. The shadows tore into his form, enveloping him, lashing out at him, and his physical appearance began to shift and flicker as he squirmed.

"What is this? What are you doing to me?" he cried out.

"This is my pain, Angel," she explained, looking down at the shadows. "My loss. My suffering. My hatred."

"Stop doing this to me!"

"This is what you wanted," she responded. "You wanted to know what it's like to be alive, didn't you?"

"Not like this!" the boy shrieked. "Stop it!"

"Then bring him back!" she yelled back at him. "Bring back Lars!"

"No! I won't let him out ever again!" he screamed. As he struggled, his body began to glow underneath the twisting and tumbling shadows

"You will never see him again, do you hear me? You're mine now! MINE!"

His form was nothing but a blurring, yellow light now. He broke free and behind him, the shadows coalesced and disappeared. Null's eyes went wide with surprise as he dashed toward her in a flash of yellow. She was too slow to dodge with this body, and Angel's presence hit her with full force. She recoiled with an inexplicable, indescribable revulsion and pain, and he pushed her down into the sand.

"I don't want to hurt you, Evelyn, why are you hurting me?" Angel asked angrily, towering over her.

"What's the matter, Angel? I thought you liked pain?" she put forth between clenched teeth. "I'm not going to let you lock Lars away."

Angel's presence came closer now and began to wrap himself around her. She knew that the pain she felt in this place was not real, but it certainly felt real as he began to choke her.

"He cannot come out, he is in the way. His presence messes with everything!" Angel screamed. "I don't like what you feel when you think about him, and his memories of you are even worse! I hate it! So I put him back where he belongs!"

Angel seemed to constrict further around her, and his voice became a low growl as he continued.

"You have put the things you don't like into that place too, you did it before. I saw it. All those memories you didn't want to keep. He can have those, for all I care! But you? You are mine now!"

"I... am not... your fucking... property!" she snapped at him between shallow breaths.

She could feel tears well up in her eyes and she wondered for a moment if he choked her to death here in this space, what would that mean for her mind? But that didn't really matter. All that mattered was Lars. She had to get him out, it didn't matter if the body suffered or if she suffered. Even if she died in here, or in the world outside. All that mattered was that this little brat wouldn't stay in control over this space and the body and that Lars could get out of his prison again. She wasn't afraid of dying. She had had plenty of opportunities to practice.

"You don't need him," Angel screamed at her as if he had read her thoughts. "You have me now! He is back where he belongs. In the darkness."

"You're wrong, Angel," she croaked.

She struggled against the entity's grasp, but Angel wrapped himself around her so tightly that she could barely move. Anger and desperation took hold of her as she thought about Lars, trapped and alone, and tears started streaming down her cheeks.

#############

She would do anything to save Lars. Anything. Understanding dawned on her then. Of all people, she thought of Red. Red, who she couldn't understand because he was so intense, he reminded her so much of the one who'd brought her back... She let that trail off. Red would do anything to save Ember, in fact, he was doing it right now. He'd thrown himself in front of an EMP blast to save Lars before...

She's my better half, he'd told Null earlier. Without her, I am the butcher of New Caledonia. 

She understood him better now, her eyes snapped open with realization. She would do anything to save Lars, she loved him deeply, he was the better part of her. No, the best part of her. 

################

"You don't understand... I am nothing without him! He is my light..." she whispered.

The realization came to her as soon as she spoke those words.

And I... I am the darkness in this place.

~ ~ ~

One endless moment, he consisted of nothing, and everything around him was without substance.

The next, Lars was ripped from the darkness and thrown face first into the sand. He coughed as he got up on all fours, and it took him a moment to adapt to the sudden change in his form and his surroundings.

"You did it, Null!" he said as he got up to his feet, feeling breathless as if he had run for hours to get here. "I knew you would-"

As he raised his head and caught sight of her, he gasped.

The entity he saw before him caused the surrounding landscape to ripple as if her mere presence tore at the integrity of this space. Null had only once before taken this shape, and Lars had thought it was the most awe-inspiring and frightening thing he had ever perceived. But that had been in the colorful space outside. In here, she had substance.

She stood between him and Angel, a figure so dark that she seemed to suck in all surrounding light. She caused the air around her to flitter, and the ocean to boil, and where she stepped, the sand turned into glass. It was terrifying.

Angel seemed to think so too, as she moved forward and approached him. The other AI had taken the shape of a boy and sat in the sand, staring up at her with eyes wide with horror.

You want me? Come and get me, Null's voice resounded through the fog threateningly. You don't even have the faintest idea yet of what it means to be in pain. I will show you the pain I feel because you took him from me!

"Null!" Lars called out to her. "I'm here, it's all right!"

She didn't seem to hear him, but Angel's gaze darted past Null. As he spotted him, his childlike face became distorted with fury.

"You! You can't be here!" he screeched. "Alright, enough, I will simply end you!"

In a heartbeat, Angel turned into a yellow flash and dashed toward Lars. Null whirled around, her dark presence shredding through the air around her as if it was paper. She spotted Lars, and their gazes met for a moment. She still had her organic eyes in this form, as inexplicable as that was – they were grey like storm clouds and filled with immeasurable pain. They went wide with shock now as she saw Angel approach Lars.

Lars braced himself for an impact, but it never came to that.

Null reached out for Angel and simply crushed him. The yellow light was swallowed by darkness, and the boy's high-pitched scream was drowned out by the hissing sound of the boiling ocean and the cracking of the glass that the ground underneath her had turned into.

"Null!" Lars called out her name. "You have to stop this! You're tearing this place apart!"

She didn't hear him. Her presence was boiling too now, a raging black mass tearing at the invader. Lars moved closer, and he momentarily cursed the fact that this place made everything feel so real, including the searing heat that radiated outward from her.

"Null, please. Stop!"

He stretched his hand out toward her and clenched his teeth as the heat began to singe his flesh. She distorted everything in this place, and he felt as if he moved slower and slower the closer he came. He pushed himself to reach further, and when he finally touched her, a ripple went through the dark mass as if she was trembling. And then she shattered like glass.

~ ~ ~

######

Red drew a leg up and kicked into Darius's midsection. The older man shifted, the blow catching his side, but it was enough to separate them. They'd been trading blows for a few minutes, neither getting the upper hand, until Ember had tried reaching Red through his internal comm. He cursed his lapse in judgment for not turning the comms off sooner. He needed to be able to kill this man and he could not do that with her voice in his head.

"Do you even know what you are fighting?" Darius mocked.

"A hypocrite," Red snapped, keeping his distance. "But go ahead and give me the self-righteous speel. So I can tell you to fuck off."

"I'm not a hypocrite, Captain. Sacri--"

"Sacrifices must be made, I get it," Red said coldly. "Fuck you."

Darius took a step towards Red, a feral grin warping his features, his blade swinging in low, Red backed away just out of reach. Darius moved fast, swinging as Red moved to thwart each hit with his bare hands, every step moved them closer to his weapons, two guns he'd dropped to pull Ember out of the coffin. They were playing a dangerous cat and mouse game.

"You don't even know who the real evil here is, do you?" Darius grinned. He swiped forward and this time Red caught his arm and drove it up knocking the blade out of his hand.

Darius's eyes narrowed as he jumped nimbly away from Red. Red used the distraction to dive towards his guns, grabbing one in each hand and rolling up onto his knees. He turned and fired, hitting Darius in the leg and then the guns were both empty.

"Damn." Red dropped them. "Guess I do this the old-fashioned way." Barehanded.

Darius dropped back against the wall. "You want to know who really started all of this?" He backed away from Red as much as he could, his face contorted in pain as he grabbed his leg where he'd been shot. Then he visibly relaxed, his nanites hiding away the pain the body was feeling as they repaired him.

Red snorted as he moved closer, he was breathing hard and covered in bruises, injuries he knew his augments were deadening the pain for. "Why don't you tell me, old man?"

He leaned in closer, the only way to kill this man would be to take his head off. It was heart or head, just like a zombie from an old action flick. He was way past revenge, not that he didn't want it, but he felt there would be no safe place for Ember in the universe while this man lived. No one else was going to follow them out into the unknown out of some sense of family honor.

Red snatched Darius up and hauled him to his feet. Darius flashed a wolfish grin, before leaning forward and whispering a name into Red's ear.

Red let his guard down, almost dropping Darius in astonishment.

It couldn't be.

In his shock, he didn't notice the blade in Darius's hand until it was plunged into his side.

He staggered back a step, staring down at the blade sticking out of him. His augments working to keep him moving deadened the pain immediately, even so, he sucked in his breath as it seared through his abdomen. Darius maintained a grip on it and pushed it in further, laughing.

A blade to the gut, that was all the rage for the Neo-Tokyan nobles. They wanted you to suffer and know why you were suffering. Fuck that. Red grabbed his wrist to prevent Darius from doing any more immediate damage.

The door opened behind them and he heard Ember shriek, "Red!"

It was now or never.

He yanked the blade out ignoring the blood that came with it, and letting go of Darius with his free hand he yanked back on the man's hair, tilting his chin back and shoved it straight up into Darius's head through his lower jaw. He titled Darius's face down making sure the old man was staring him in the face as the blade slid home, plunging through the soft flesh in the chin.

"We'll go together you bastard, it will be fun."

Red twisted it, pushing it up with all his might until it connected with the back of Darius's skull.

Blood dribbled out of Darius's mouth and he coughed, spraying Red's face with bloody spittle. His eyes locked onto Red's, futile hatred burning like fire in them. Red made sure to meet that stare with one of his own as he lowered Darius to the floor. You'll never hurt her again.

His strength gave out and he staggered back, dropping the body and hoping that Ember didn't hate him for killing her father.