Maybe lying in the dusty and otherwise abandoned janitor's closet was not preferable, maybe having extra-centurial microchips fated for evil wasn't either, but Stefan tried not to be bothered by these things. He was with Aimee, his reality lay tucked in his arm, her head and hand on his chest.

Stefan thought about their conversation in the car about how the microchips made him feel – no matter how hard he tried, he could not pluck the thought from his mind any better than he could pluck a tick from a Maltese poodle. Maybe, he thought, they made him feel invincible. But it was all an illusion; the microchips could be removed. Eventually, Aimee reminded Stefan of that.

"We have to take them out," she broke the silence, sitting up so that he could stand, and then he helped her to her feet.

They made their way to the halls, which seemed longer somehow, winding. It was as though Janet's lab had moved, and reshaped and reformed everything in its wake. But when Stefan finally found it, finally touched its brass handle, he wished it had been harder to find. Stefan opened the door quietly, like a kid about to confess to wrongdoing. Janet glided from one side of her lab to the other, presumably analysing and charting some or other attribute of the microchips.

In time, she noticed them at the door. "Is that the one he got you?" she nodded at Stefan.

He tugged at his sweater, that year's birthday present from Buckley, "Oh. Yeah, it is."

Stefan hanged onto the fabric a little longer, before returning his thoughts to Janet. She hadn't stopped moving. He neared her and she was ceaseless, which surprised him; he thought she would at least try to hide what she was doing.

"So, you were after the microchips all along."

Now, she stopped. "What? Honey, they're a danger to humanity."

Aimee interjected, "Uhm, we came to get our microchips removed." She guessed that Janet already knew about the chip in Stefan, and she did, she could tell just by looking at him.

There was a short cessation of speech before Janet agreed to take the chips out. Stefan sat where Sylvain had been and Aimee sat down next to him. She was surprised to see how quickly Janet had cleaned up the mess of beakers and test tubes and liquids; it was as if nothing was ever there.

As Janet grabbed one of those laser guns, Aimee and Stefan were calm and stagnant. The procedure was as Luna had performed it: after waving the X-ray over Stefan's body, Janet incised his seamless skin with her scalpel, used the laser. He flinched, but barely. Aimee watched the microchip disintegrate until it seemed as if it, too, was never there. She noticed that his calf bled just enough so that two ruby-red droplets stained his chair. There was so much more blood on the recliners downstairs in the jails. Did that mean something? Had the human ewers of that blood received the same meticulous care Stefan was receiving? Had they been at the end of a laser, or were their microchips gleaned from them? These questions spiralled in her mind as Janet cleaned and bandaged Stefan's cut.

Then, it was her turn.

Stefan got up from his seat and walked toward the containers of AIMs. It was surreal, seeing them in such quantities – there were tens of thousands of them. He held one in his hand, and it felt as dangerous to him as holding a shard of glass. Stefan's entire body tensed; the microchips were to be destroyed, not tampered with, so why would Janet have them?

"I know about Buckley's plans," he said as Janet finished bandaging Aimee's arm. "I never thought you would entertain his ambitions. Is this your way of honouring his death, by finishing what he started? Aimee's family was torn apart because of him, because of these chips. So was ours. There was nothing honourable about that man, and there certainly wasn't anything honourable about his death."

"Stefan," she whispered, and she touched his shoulder delicately, but he quickly pulled away.

"Buckley died like a coward!" he shouted, and the tears in his eyes were just as loud. "He could've done something, but he didn't. He just stood there, he just let himself die! He deserved to die!"

Janet wrapped her arms around him tightly but not without comfort, and she ran a hand through his hair.

"He deserved it. Didn't he?"

Her eyes shut as she breathed a sigh, "I am not going to use them to make military soldiers. People are people, not artilleries. That's something I understand that your father did not. The microchips can help people."

It took what was left of Stefan's vigour to wriggle out of his mother's grip.

"Get rid of them," he said harshly, eyeing the containers as though to say every last one.

Stefan was sure she had her side to the story, but that didn't matter to him now. It was bad enough that his father had lied to him for years – not her, too. He needed to cut himself out of their web.

When the elevator doors spread, Stefan hurried to the control panel, where he would make his most influential announcement yet. By the time the intercom boomed, Aimee had made her way to the medic room, where Celeste and the others had gathered.

"Agents of GINM, my friends in the Ranked Division, I have something important to say."

Before long, everyone stopped – everyone – and listened to the voice in the walls.

"Let me start with how I know that losing Buckley is still an open wound. He meant a lot to many of us. What I'm about to tell you may not change that, but it has to be said. We've been fighting for the wrong side. My father has been after the AIM for years, blackmailing and threatening its creators, taking their daughter away from them."

"Daughter?" The agents started murmuring amongst one another, "Isn't that his girlfriend?"

Now, there were agents who listened more intensely, and others who stopped listening altogether, who thought his pity for his girlfriend was clouding his judgement, but he continued.

"My father wanted to use these microchips to make us into those very same invincible soldiers we fought today, and we so blindly gathered them for him. He was going to turn us into weapons and sell us off to the military. I won't let that happen. So, if any of you conspired with him, please leave this building. I'll only ask once. If you are in possession of any microchips, I order you to have them destroyed right now!"

Stefan's finger depressed the button on the control panel when an ice-cold sensation met his ear.

"How about 'bring the microchips to Central for my friend before he shoots me in the head?' Now that's an order!"

Throughout GINM, Buckley's co-conspirators turned on the other agents, friends became double-crossers, and Kimiko and Luna were among them. They drew their guns and pointed, had everyone except for Gavin and Dominick put up their hands – them being hooked up to transparent tubes and all – but Kimiko made sure she could see each finger on their hands. Meanwhile, Adams was clutching to his pistol, pressing it to Stefan's head like a branding iron.

"Wait," Stefan allowed a lengthy, dramatic pause to ensue. "When did we become friends?"

Adams groaned, "In the head, Summers!"

"Go ahead, shoot me," Stefan backed away with widespread arms and a grin that was not so much a grin as it was an effort to hide his vexation.

Adams flinched, shocked by Stefan's puerile bravery. He shook his shoulders loose and his fingers aimed the gun, quick to pull the trigger. Stefan evaded the bullet, and then a second bullet grazed his hand. Adams's eyes went wide as he stood, perplexed by his shoddy precision, and Stefan took the opportunity to punch him in the jaw. As Adams's gun fell to the floor with a clang, a brawl broke out. The two of them were ferocious, indefatigable machines – each hit connected like threads of a spider web – and it was not long before Stefan realised that Adams had an AIM of his own. It distracted him for just a second, the thought that there were already GINMA with the microchip inside of them, and then he was fighting again.

A few of the nurses in the medic room had found a place to hide – the ones who had not were told to continue caring for their patients, nothing else. There were four or five others alongside Kimiko and Luna. Erin was one of them, and then there was this tall and brawny figure whose outlandish muscles seemed to be the cause of his slightly slouched spine. Finn was comparing him to Kimiko and to Luna, who stood with visible reluctance between the two. Her caramel-toned hands began to tremble as Finn glanced into her eyes. They were filled with remorse.

The intercom surged again, sounds of shuffling and grunting and crashing, a distant tumult heard throughout the building. Someone must have turned it on by accident. The sounds kept Aimee's focus, and she anxiously called Kimiko's name until she and her taller consort told Aimee to keep her mouth shut. Of course, Aimee didn't do that – she couldn't.

"Let me go," she demanded, her desperation hidden in an undertone. "Stefan's in that room."

Kimiko made it clear that she planned on ignoring her, readjusting her stance and her rifle and looking ahead at her band of friends.

"You can't tell me that there isn't a part of you that wants to help him," she whispered to Kimiko and Luna both. "You may have gotten yourselves caught up in something you can't abandon, but I know you don't want to hurt anyone." Aimee believed that.

Kimiko winced meagrely at the still prominent echoes of Stefan and Adams's discord. "He'll be fine; he has a microchip!" she retorted under her breath.

"No, he doesn't," Aimee said simply, and her eyes stayed until Kimiko's met them.

There was something there, she was going to crack, until another arm of their gang called her over to where he stood, formidably guarding the door into the room. The lot of them seemed indestructible – they were, with those microchips forging their DNA. Desperate for some gesture of reassurance, Aimee glanced at Gavin, Dominick, and the twins, but there was nothing. Then, she locked her gaze on Celeste and thought of what she had told her at the park; that they had each other. That they were strength on their own, personified.

Aimee's eyes roamed around her, drawing lines and calculating, when her finger began to tap against the metal frame of Gavin's bed, summoning his attention with one of the handier things she had learned at GINM. It had taken her years to finally get an A in Spanish, but she'd picked up the basics of Morse code in a matter of months.

Still have some fight left?

She looked over her shoulder at Gavin, who nodded comprehensively, and Dom watched her fingers move.

Can you get loose?

Aimee eyed the tubes pumping fluids through their veins.

One by one, their constraints fell free.