Dominick, Gavin and Aimee went at their keyboards, pressing buttons before they knew which buttons to press; they knew what was going on outside and that they had to move fast. No casualties.

"Tell us when you find something," Aimee and Gavin articulated, without looking up from their screens, not even to acknowledge their unified speech.

Dominick retorted, "If you are waiting for me to get us out of this, we are doomed."

"We are all doomed if you don't focus right now!" yelled Valerie, still cooped up in the chopper with her brother, before they gave out further orders.

The soldiers and agents who had dispersed from their posts had met towards the middle floors of AIM. Levels seventeen to twenty were overflowing with men and women, firing their armaments and taking cover behind the expanses of expensive furniture – Maisons du Monde and the like. Windows and chandeliers were taken out in the process, feathers and stuffing from opulent seats and their cushions flew through the air like confetti, alongside bullets and bullet casings. The number of breathing agents was still abundant.

Meanwhile, Stefan remained caged with Abba, thinking about how much he would rather be fighting out there. He could not just sit there, useless to everyone except Abba, the last person he wanted orders from. Break up with Aimee...

"Think about it," said Abba. "I'm not trying to hurt you, Stefan; I am trying to show you the truth. What good is there in loving someone who is not in love with you? You know about Suzanne and Benjamin?"

He nodded, "Aimee told me. You knew?"

"A few days after Jane or Celeste was born, they confessed that she was theirs. I forgave my dear sister, and I forgave Benjamin, obviously, that is what married people do. You and Aimee are not married, last time I checked."

"Get to the point, Abba," he sighed.

"I think you should break up with my daughter –"

"Aimee," he strongly interjected.

She brushed off the comment, "– because she is in love with Gavin, and she will either cheat on you or come between you and your best friend. You will lose trust in both of them."

"You just say anything, don't you? That's not gonna happen. She's the most loyal human being I've ever met, and you'd know that if you'd actually played the role of her mother instead of letting her think you were dead!"

"Stefan, I'm not your enemy," she eased into her words. "I could have taken her back months ago, I would have, but I saw that she needed you. She loved you. But she doesn't anymore. You just cannot see it because you are blinded by the love you feel for her."

He choked back his tears, or tried to no success. "I don't trust you."

"You don't have to trust me," she sat up from her cerise chair and circled around the desk to his side. "Just think for yourself. And for Aimee as well, set her free."

She sat atop the desk and summoned back that monochrome screen, told it to rewind to that morning at Gavin's house, when Aimee was with him. They were alone, dancing, laughing.

"What is this?"

Abba did not reply, only nodded toward the screen so that Stefan would stay focussed on it.

Aimee stumbled, but Gavin caught her. And at that moment when she gazed at him, perplexed, faintly enchanted, Abba shook her head, pretending to be both heartbroken and disappointed in them. She crossed one leg over the other and held her chin up with her palm, her elbow on her knee, as Gavin fought the temptation to kiss Aimee. Then, Abba slid her finger across the seemingly impalpable screen, before it dematerialised.

"In the spirit of Domino Doomsday, I've been watching Aimee more frequently."

"You're too kind."

"And I thought maybe that moment with Gavin was the reason she... rejected you today. I thought it made sense; it must've been the reason. Did you see the look in her eyes, Stefan? She wanted him to kiss her. It was awful enough when Buckley made him do it, but this is all Gavin. They are keeping secrets from you, one of which is that they are in love. Or do you still think I'm just making things up, hmm?"

He just glared at her, an insubstantial, tear-smothered glare. Maybe, maybe it was the truth.

A handful of soldiers stormed into the Motherboard, armed, and Aimee and the others took cover behind the half-walls of their computer stations, waiting for the soldiers to draw nearer.

Gavin was on the balls of his feet, crouching out of sight, but keeping his eyes on the men. Where the wall ended, a sheet of glass gave it about forty centimetres of extra height. At the top of the wall were Gavin's eyes, invisible to the soldiers, as those of a lion to its prey. He envisioned him and his friends jumping the baddies and taking them all down, but then he had another thought. Before Aimee and Dominick could gripe or even blink, Gavin shot up from his position and leaped down the short steps from the computer station, charged for the first guy he could grab a hold of and unarmed him. In a matter of seconds, he had elbowed that guy, swung the butt of the gun at another's head like he was playing baseball and taken out the other five with, at most, two bullets each – they'd tried to shoot him first.

Copious sheets of glass were shattered in the making of this action sequence.

Aimee had come out from her post, seen everything from the elbowing. Gavin casually flung the gun onto his shoulder as Aimee's phone started buzzing. The caller ID read Stefan, and she picked up instantly, not even worried that his voice might not have been the one to answer. But it was him, in the trembling, broken voice he only had when he was crying.

"Stefan?" she beamed, until the sound of his sobbing seeped through the speaker. "Are you okay?"

His erratic breathing ensued, "I've been talking to your mom. She really opened my eyes; I've just been lying to myself. But not anymore, Aimee, I know how you feel about Gavin."

"What are you talking about? You've been talking to Abba; my mom is not a psychopath with a desire to commit a continent-wide genocide! Where are you?" she yelled even when she tried not to.

"Does it matter? You're with Gavin, right? He's all you need," he almost choked.

"Gavin's not with me," she muttered after a while.

Stefan laughed, but his laugh had lost its natural allure. "I'm with Abba; I can see you... like you're right in front of me."

He waved his hand in front of the blue hologram of Aimee's face.

She closed her eyes and exhaled lightly, "Stefan –"

"No, you're in love with him! I know what you really did this morning; you were all over each other. You didn't even stop him!"

"It was your idea to leave me with him!" she respired. "That's not even the point –"

"He just shot people in front of you, people he used to work with and still you're attracted to him."

He said that like it was a sin. In that moment, Aimee lost all sympathy for him. Her face was boiling with rage – he hadn't saddened her, just disappointed and infuriated her – because he was being more selfish than she had ever thought he could be! It was not about her.

"You can't talk about Gavin like that. He's your best friend, practically your brother! You really have such little faith in him?"

She looked at Gavin as he rested that stupid rifle on the ground, with a crushed, faintly humiliated gradualness. He didn't want to look back at anyone.

Aimee knew, believed, that Gavin deserved Stefan's trust more than she did. He always stopped, always put his feelings aside, and he was Stefan's friend before anything else. And she trusted him more than she trusted herself; he was the first to remember about Stefan the moments they were alone together. She hated herself for being so weak or so nice or whatever, it was like she couldn't stand up for herself because she knew how Gavin felt and she could not keep breaking his heart. She left it up to him – whether they would kiss or dance – because she knew that he was loyal, the most loyal person she had ever known.

So, it was not about her, Stefan did not have to trust her, but it was different when it came to Gavin.

"Fine, I'm attracted to him! Is that better?" she hissed.

A long, dramatic, painful pause developed. But it was a pain preferable to the word that followed thereafter.

Stefan uttered, in a drawn, harrowing voice, "Much."

He hung up.

At that moment, there was a twinge in Aimee's chest so surreal, so impossible, that it seemed as if she was being torn apart from inside. In the Cerebral Simulator, that mimic of Stefan had said to her: You think Gavin is so much better than me. You love him more than me! It was bad then, but now it was real and so was the pain. She could picture his face, the Stefan in the Simulator, and then she realised that the real Stefan could not be compared to him. She had heard it in his voice: he was not angry, he was heartbroken – the opus in the Simulator was fuelled only with hatred. When she realised that, she couldn't hate him, couldn't even try, because he was hurting and so was she, and the reason she had been keeping things from him was to make sure he didn't get hurt. She feared what Abba might have told him. How much of it was bona fide, how much did he and Abba know?

Gavin and Dominick glanced at her sympathetically, cognisant of her abysmal heartache. She stared into nothingness; Stefan had hung up on her a while ago, yet the muted click of their connection as it broke refused to dissipate.

Gavin delicately called Aimee's name, and more accursed tears ran down her cheeks. She flew down her station's steps, into his arms and cried into the shoulder of his jacket. It was his jacket, the grey one he always wore over his uniform, and it was surprisingly soft. She cherished the pillow-like comfort.

She whispered, "He's not himself; he didn't mean that. He's sorry."

She sort of just said it. It was obvious that the words were not only intended for Gavin; she was convincing herself. Still, Gavin stroked her russet hair and answered, "I know."