Piper still couldn't fully wrap her head around the fact that she'd found Holly out here. After the long months, she'd given up any chance of finding the traitor again. She thought her former class-mate had fled for good, or been killed by displeased employers.

She would've been, probably, had she not gone to ground. But why stay in Hadrian? If the roles were reversed, Piper would have been on the first train, truck or boat out of the city and never looked back. Then again, she didn't have any love nor ties to the corporations here. Holly Lockley was a corporate purist, through and through. She believed – for some reason – in the overlordship of the city being entrusted to the fucking spivs, despite the calamity of Hadrian South, and everything that had followed.

Her eyes shifted to the creature.

We sure it's dead?

I believe so, Cassie answered. I cannot feel the ... emptiness anymore. Can you?

Nope. She pursed her lips thoughtfully. Anything we can use, do you think? Like a trace?

I don't think so. It's more man than machine. Organic functions, so it cannot be hacked or overriden.

You're joking.

Look for yourself.

Piper did. Carefully, she reached out and gave the thing's body an experimental prod, like poking an animal with a boot. Nothing stirred. She felt nothing inside the killing machine; not even the tiniest perserve spark of life tucked away behind last ditch firewalls. There was no hidden vault, no secret memory core. It was just dead. As she felt a little closer, she realised Cassie was right. Despite its bone-chilling, unnatural appearance, there was a surprising amount of actual 'human' jammed away amongst all those limbs and circuits.

Well. Shit.

We'll have other chances. Besides, given where it came from and what it is designed for, I wouldn't recommend trying to poke around inside it anyway.

So, we're staying 'no' to hacking the crazy hybrid killing machine?

Correct. And I wouldn't suggest staying here much longer.

Piper smiled faintly. The edges of stiff formality seemed to be gradually getting sanded off of Cassie's diction, contractions sliding into the normally robotic speech patterns.

"What's so funny?" Holly said, yanked Piper back to the here and now.

"Nothing." She fixed the other girl with a suspicious glower. "Let's walk. I'd rather not run into any more of those... things out here." Pointing her amplifier at Holly's chest, she jerked her head down the street. "Move."

Holly's face twisted with irritation, but she wasn't in a position to refuse. Shoulders hunched she trudged off in the direction Piper had indicated. Together, they walked through the narrow street and out into the broader roads around the transformer plant. Only when they'd reached something a little more like civilisation did Piper lower her amplifier, though she still kept it held tight, tucked up her sleeve in case Holly tried to make a run for it.

"Well, you know why I'm here," Holly said, breaking their silence. "How come you're out all by yourself? I heard you stuck around at AmpCore with Odiye."

"I didn't stay with Odiye," Piper replied sharply. "I stayed because I thought I might be able to get some answers about... me, and maybe help change things a little, from the inside."

"Ah. So, I'm guessing that didn't pan out?"

"You know corps better than me, Holly. How do you think it went?"

She shrugged. "Last I heard, Mattise was running the academy. The old board got booted out after... everything."

"Mattise is dead."

Holly froze mid-step. "What?"

"Yeah."

"I... I didn't know."

"Clearly."

Piper glanced around. The back street was deserted for now, and she couldn't sense any unwelcome interlopers in the local datastreams. Breathing deep, she summoned up the memories of her Logistics lessons with Arrow, weaving a small bubble of barrier coding around them to keep their conversation fully insulated from prying eyes and ears.

"Alright," she said once she was finished. "Let's talk."

"What happened to Mattise?" Holly asked, her voice filled with genuine disbelief. "I... I thought he'd taken over to keep the peace."

"Oh, he tried. Then some of your old friends decided to have a little coup. Mattise wouldn't back down, so they killed him." Piper gave her a withering look. "On top of that, they also tried to kill Toran."

"They what? Why?"

Wearily, Piper gave an abridged version of the fallout between Vinder and Toran, and where it had led them to now. Holly listened, looking more and more surprised, though Piper didn't really understand why. This kind of corporate infighting was nothing new. Maybe AmpCore was supposed to have been the exception.

"So, you can add that to your bill as well, Holly," she continued coldly. "You killed Ferra and disappeared off the face of the Earth. There was no-one else for them to blame, so Vinder and his pals went after Toran."

"Fuck you, Piper," Holly snarled, fists clenched by her sides. "You're not putting all of this on me. I just did what I was told."

Piper snorted, though in the back of her mind, she knew it was a little extreme to try and pin every piece of bad in the city on Holly alone. There just wasn't anyone else in front of her right now.

"Maybe." Piper shrugged. "Bottom line is, they didn't manage to kill Toran, and you know what he's like when you get him mad. So, AmpCore's busy ripping itself to pieces with another fucking spiv pissing match, and I decided I didn't want anything to do with it. There are more important things going on out here."

Holly's expression softened slightly. "You're right about that."

"You said you could help, so let's hear it. What was that thing chasing you? What did you find out here, exactly?"

"The thing you killed – I don't know what it was, not exactly." Holly's brow furrowed, as though trying to recall some long lost fragment of memory. "I... there are sealed records from before the Schism, places they were working on kind of hybrid blacktech. Maybe it was something like that? I mean, we both knew that something came over from Hadrian South, right?"

"Yeah."

"That thing's not what you should be worried about though."

Piper cocked an eyebrow. "It's not? It looked like it was about to rip you to pieces."

"It didn't just come out of nowhere. Somebody sent that fucking thing after me like an attack dog."

"Somebody?" Piper echoed, her mind immediately flashing to the words of the presence.

AN ERRANT PROGRAM. IT NO LONGER LISTENS TO ME.

THIS INDIVIDUAL IS CRAZED, BUT IT IS THINKING.

"Like nothing I've seen before," Holly continued. "When I got there, there were cyborgs everywhere – hybrids, wraiths, machines – all of it. But they've got a leader, and he flat out told me that he came across the River."

"You actually saw him?!"

"I... well, yeah, I think he was interested. He let me get close, so we could talk."

Piper nodded slowly, her interest fully locked in. "And what did he tell you?"

"Not a lot." Holly clicked her tongue in annoyance. "He seemed mainly interested in how I tracked him down. They're trying to keep a low profile right now."

"What about a name?"

"Sorry, no. But, Piper, there's more. I thought he was the one who killed my friend through the datastream, but now I'm not so sure."

"Why?"

"He said it wasn't him; seemed genuinely surprised when I told him what happened, like he had no idea." Holly edged closer, lowering her voice. "There's something else out there, Piper, in the datastreams. Something big. I felt it. It came after me."

The enormity of Holly's words sank in, syllable by syllable. Piper narrowed her eyes, trying to discern any lie in the traitor's words. Could Holly have somehow, inadvertently, blundered across the thing that had sent her out here in the first place?

"How can you be sure?" Piper asked carefully.

"It's hard to describe. I ... I found a damaged cyborg, and I remembered how you were able to trace a codewraith, back through its memory. I tried to do the same and... there was something waiting at the other end. I don't know where, or how, exactly, but it nearly killed me." Holly paused for a moment, hunting for the right words. "I think... I think maybe it's what killed my friend, not the person I met tonight."

"But he tried to kill you as well," Piper pointed out. "Can't catch a break, can you?"

"Apparently not."

"So you want to find... whatever this thing is out there?"

"I... I don't know. But the leader here seemed to know all about it."

The errant program indeed. Piper nodded slowly, digesting the information. Her skin itched with impatience. She needed to find this person now, to get all the answers she could before blasting them into oblivion. Could Holly help? More importantly, could she be trusted?

"Do you think you could find him again?" Piper asked.

"I'm not sure. Doing it our way is what almost got my brain ripped to pieces. That's why I needed Pardua – my friend."

"Did he say anything else? Anything that might help track his next move?"

"Not exactly, but whoever he is," Holly continued, "he's here to kill the corps. He wants to tear Hadrian apart."

Piper let out a bleak chuckle. "Can't exactly blame him for that."

"Don't be an idiot." Holly's anger sizzled through her implants. "He's not some fluffy-bunny champion for the working class, Piper. He's going to slaughter anyone and anything that gets in his way. It's revenge that he wants – that's all – and I'm pretty sure he's just getting started. He killed Grennick Lanson, Piper. I saw the body. They tore him to pieces to see what makes us tick."

Piper winced. "Alright, Holly, I get the picture."

"You don't. You didn't see him."

"Well, I definitely plan to. How did your friend manage to find this lunatic in the first place? How the hell did you even end up here, Holly?"

"Pardua, he's... was a tech at Gammaton." Holly's voice trailed off. "I was looking for something else, at first, something that might get me back in with them; something to get me off these fucking streets." A sob hitched her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

Pipe couldn't stop herself. "Missing those silk sheets, eh?"

"I want my god-damn life back!" she growled back. "I lost everything! So yeah, I was trying to find a way back in. I saw what happened at that ferry terminal; I knew there was something from the south out here. I thought if I could find it and bring it back, they might overlook the fact that I failed. But now... now I just... I want to know more. I need to. The codewraith programme, the AI core – all if it was justified because we knew that Hadrian South wouldn't stay dead forever."

She looked at Piper earnestly. "Please. If we work together we can track this bastard down. I know you hate the corps, and I know you hate me. I would too if I was in your shoes, but this is bigger than us, Piper. You know that."

"Yeah, I know that." Piper's lips twisted tightly together as she weighed the odds, holding Holly's gaze.

Maybe it would make sense to work together. Two exiles on the run from the corps, hunting down a rogue creature in Hadrian's slums – it could have come straight from a bad old-age movie. Despite the bad history, she knew first-hand how skilled Holly was as an AmpCore practitioner. Certainly not a bad person to have on your side in a fight.

But would she really be on Piper's side? Looking into the girl's eyes she could see that longing, the yearning to get back to her life in the Heart, back to the safe, comforting mundane of the tech corps' monopoly. Ferra Thibault's last moments echoed in her mind; the blast of energy, the hole in her stomach, her glassy eyes before she pitched forward, dead before she hit the ground. Hell, she and Ferra had hated each other, but when the time came, it had been Ferra that had her back.

And Holly had murdered the Queen of the Sharks in cold blood.

In the end, Piper simply couldn't do it. She just couldn't shake hands, let bygones by bygones, and forget about the part Holly had played in very nearly getting her killed.

"No," she said.

Holly looked stunned. The other girl's mouth flapped soundlessly in disbelief for a moment. "I... Piper, c'mon!"

"No, Holly."

"You're just going to walk away?!"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do, and you can thank me for it."

"Piper-"

"I don't trust you, Holly," she hissed, her eyes literally flaring as her implants surged. "I can't. I'm not going to bring you along for the ride, just so you can find something to buy your way back under some spiv's skirt again. That might be the life you want, but it sure as shit isn't mine."

"This isn't about that, Piper!" Holly shouted, risking another step forward. She pointed towards the dark across the water. "This is about knowing, about understanding what's out there, and how you fit into it."

"I'll find my own answers, without having to look over my shoulder the whole time."

And with that, she turned away and started walking.

"Piper?!"

The anguished scream echoed through the street, and she could feel the desperation and panic rushing out of the other AmpCore student. After a few paces, Piper closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Reaching into her coat pocket, she slid Holly's wand free. She turned back, just long enough to toss the amplifier across the space between them. Holly lurched forward, snatching it out of the air, staring at it for a moment as though she'd just discovered a lost artefact. Then, once it sunk in, her disbelieving gaze returned to Piper once more.

"Stay out of this, Holly," Piper advised her. "Go on holiday. And maybe don't come back."

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