Lia the Complete

I’d spent my life dedicated to the physical, to the material. Any thoughts about my mental state or weariness were based around psychology toward training. Not so much emotions, or mental emptiness.

Escaping the digital underworld and returning to my own body left me with a near-insurmountable frailty. Glass-boned. Drained. That’s how I felt. My body had not been affected, not by the underworld or K-Type gas. And yet I arose on weak limbs. Valeria didn’t move. Leaving the digital underworld should’ve resulted in a synchronised “waking up” to reality, but those killed had been lost to the Rat King. I didn’t know what happened to the bodies and didn’t want to find out, so I stumbled to the door, feet dragging, unlocked it, and walked out.

Aki, I thought. I needed to find Aki. He couldn’t be far, if he’d also been caught in the underworld. We communicated via earpieces and met outside the compound. Any chaos from the alarm had been subdued. Almost nobody knew what had transpired in the small room. Our lethargic behaviour lent itself to the idea we were bored, not perpetrators of the chaos.

Aki and I left the compound without issue. That makes it sound like we escaped without issue, but in a literal sense we walked out of the compound and collapsed on the front lawn. Automatic sprinklers doused us. We tried to drag ourselves along the ground, but the muddy surface left little to grasp.

Hands seized our wrists. Here’s how it ends, I thought. But it wasn’t the guards. The person, singular, holding our wrists smelled sharply of nicotine. ‘What happened?’ asked Serizawa, dragging us off the lawn, before sitting us upright against a tree. Aki and I gave mismatched accounts, but together we provided enough. Serizawa listened patiently. After a few minutes we regained our strength and descended the slope, back to the cars.

#

Without the usual fluff surrounding the transference of a Venator licence, it took me a few days to grow accustomed to the newfound power. The jump from 94% cybernetic person to Venator proved especially difficult. Sure, there numbered a few Venators above the 49% mark, but they went over it after getting licences.

One of my first big expenditures was new skin, hair, and other aesthetic fixes. Unmatched quality, easily paid for with my licence. I looked in the mirror and saw the Aurelia Sorranus of my past. Down to the exact shade of greenish-hazel for my eyes, everything perfectly remade.

Next, a flight to Russia, for a journey to the dyed lands and the town of exiles. I wanted to tell Mum the good news about Horace’s death.

As we neared the town, transport options dwindled. I ended up riding on the back of a cart pulled by one of those mass-cloned donkeys. Rolling along, I observed the dyed lands. Colour stretched to the horizon. I imagined Mum’s face, when she heard the news.

Reaching the town, I asked around about Zorica, which led me to a hovel on the end of the main street. I knocked on the door. ‘Mum, it’s me.’

Candlelight peeked through gaps in the door and frame. Movement inside. The door swung open, and a little girl, about the age of ten, stared up at me. Another figure approached: Mum. Her sallow skin sagged. Dark spots had formed on her arms. Her eyes looked bloodshot and cloudy. She scooped up the girl and stared at me. ‘Aurelia,’ she said. Her voice, too, had changed, gotten more gravelly. ‘Would you care to come in?’ she said without emotion.

A lump formed in my throat, but I kept my face impassive and stepped inside.

‘I have news,’ I said, once seated. The girl sat on Mum’s lap, getting her hair braided.

‘I’m aware.’ She peered at me, head still inclined to the girl. ‘Even here, we receive news about Aquinor.’

‘Oh.’ Well, that made sense. Horace’s death was a big event.

‘Never stagnate.’

‘Exactly,’ I replied, joys blooming in my heart.

‘Then, why are you here?’

‘…Pardon?’

‘You are 94% and thought you could hide it from me?’ Right, I'd never told her about the incident months ago. She ground her teeth and tied the braids with ferocity. The girl winced. ‘All I gave you – gone. You think this’—she twirled a finger at me—‘makes up for it? You threw away the body I made you.’

‘You…made me.’ Not a question. I knew my sister and I had been grown, but the phrasing hurt me. Months ago, I wouldn’t have dared, but now I asked: ‘Why?’

Mum scowled. ‘What a stupid question.’

‘Why, Mum?’

‘A vision. Satisfied? Your sister and yourself appeared in a vision. Not a dream; I’m not superstitious. It was a clear vision of the future, and I believed you two would become the saviours of Aquinor. When your sister failed to show promise, I didn’t lose faith.’

She trailed off, with the unspoken words: ‘Until now.’

In seconds, my energy drained away, replaced with apathy. Aki had told me about the Rat King’s methods. The styles of indoctrination used. A vision? Since when did Mum believe in things like that? I had to confront the likely fact Mum made Priscilla and I because…the Rat King convinced her.

‘Who’s she?’ I murmured, gesturing to the girl with my chin.

Mum shifted the girl’s long-sleeved clothes, revealing a prosthetic arm and leg. Not cybernetic. I mean old fashion plastic, steel, and fibreglass. ‘Cordelia. I’ve adopted her.’ She smiled at the girl on her lap. ‘Show us what you can do, Cordelia, just like we practiced.’

The girl, Cordelia, sighed, hopped off Mum’s lap, and stood in the middle of the room. She performed a kata. At least, I assumed she did. Prosthetics or not, she moved poorly, slow and imprecise. I’d never moved like that, not at age ten, not at age seven. If I had, Mum would’ve scolded and corrected my form. Instead, as the kata ended, Mum clapped and scooped Cordelia into her arms.

I started toward the door. ‘I need to go, Mum.’

‘That might be best,’ she replied, eyes on Cordelia.

I left the town of exiles without a backward glance and sent a message to an outpost in Florida, North America.

#

Valeria got blamed for the incident at the compound, along with the assassination of Horace. The handful who knew the truth, like Corvus Corinthian, didn’t care. Of course he didn’t care; he got promoted to underboss.

Before Corvus got inundated with new work, I arranged a meeting to discuss the end of Mum’s exile. Regardless of how she felt about me, I didn’t want her dying there.

I’m uncertain if it’s possible to recount the meeting fully without bursting a blood vessel, so I’d better offer an abridged version:

I sat on a steel stool. Corvus sat opposite, on a high-backed leather chair.

‘Zorica Sorranus should be taken out of exile,’ I told Corvus, hinting that he only had his role of underboss because of me.

‘I understand,’ Corvus replied. ‘But, as underboss, I have to think about Aquinor as a whole. I have already discussed the matter with associates, and we feel that—how do I put this? We feel that Aquinor are moving in a new direction, and assets like the Viper are antiquated legends from a more brutal time.’

Official records state I left the office shortly after, so I suppose I should be grateful that Corvus didn’t punish me for wrecking his new office.

#

Aimless, I returned to Valeria’s shipping container.

Using her tools, I ran a diagnostic on my body. Detecting my licence, the four experimental cybernetics installed four “switches” internally. But with Valeria gone, I didn’t know much about the technology, let alone if I should activate them. I’d unknowingly activated the adrenaline implant to save Aki, but it unduly contributed to my exhaustion.

Valeria’s berakite chest loomed in the corner. I felt no hesitation, not after everything else. Using the code I saw on Valeria in the underworld, I unlocked the chest. Neat stacks of documents and journals filled it. The documents outlined in detail how Mum, Zorica Sorranus, Viper of Aquinor, had committed crimes against Montim Aquinor that warranted exile. The journals outlined a decade-long friendship between Valeria and Zorica. One of them felt things; the other didn’t reciprocate.

I slammed the chest shut.

I scoured my thoughts for anything. What did I have left? Lose myself to pleasures in the world? Possible, given my Venator funding. I’d never tried unbridled hedonism. No. It didn’t suit me.

Who did I have left?

Priscilla. Aemilia.

The message I’d sent to Florida, North America, had been relayed to Priscilla. She reiterated that I could, and should, come and help with the clean-up effort. Aemilia concurred. I didn’t tell Priscilla about Mum. I thought about the Rat King’s massive influence, his army comprised of androids and pseudo-human-android hybrids. I couldn’t be with Priscilla and Aemilia. Not yet.

Who did I have left?

Aki.

I loathed the idea of doing what Horace wanted, but he’d told me to find and stop the Rat King, and with the current state of my life, that didn’t sound like a bad objective. Aki helped me, and I wanted to help him. I knew his objective. Why not? I thought. We could finally live our childhood dream of being Venators.