"It was either this or he would let you die. He wasn't willing to accept any other trade."

"What? What did Faceless put in me?" Eden asked while taking a closer look at the mirror.

"He already knew that you were modified by your employers. He wanted to take an extra step and add his own hardware to you. You can't see it now."

"Show me!" Eden ordered him.

"I can show you but I have no idea what will happen once it gets activated." He was silently crying.

"Show me!" Eden demanded.

"I intended no harm." He said as he brought his left wrist to his temple. A device emerged from within ripping of his skin. "Faceless calls it "bridge". I have no idea what it is. I have this thing and you have an identical one, connected to your previous circuits. Everything that there was on your chip is his property know. I swear to you I have no idea at all what purpose it serves apart from the fact that he owns us both now. I gave up our freedom for your life."

Eden turned around and touched Ed's bridge.

"I know what this thing actually is. I don't have a clue how I have that knowledge but you shouldn't be afraid. Your bridge is hibernating. It's functional but for the moment isn't operational. Keep it that way."

"What about yours Eden?"

"Mine is both functional and operational."

"Can your team remove it? If there is anyone who can do it, it's them." Ed opened his closet and put on his coat. "Let's go!"

"My team can try to remove one bridge at a time. If I try to remove mine, yours will stop hibernating and it will kill you. They are connected."

"I don't care! You will still be free!" He took another coat and handed it to her.

"Your bridge will kill you. I didn't tell you what mine will do."

"What? It won't kill you with your team working on you! I know you can do crazy stuff with your previous hardware. You will survive that."

"My body will survive that. My mind won't. In my bridge there is encrypted another personality in form of a virus ready to take over my brain in case of any effort to remove it or in case you die. If we go to my team we are as good as dead."

"How do you know all that?" Ed asked her.

"I met those who knew her and recognized me as her. She killed herself in order to get away but they kept her consciousness. She's dead and at the same time she stands better chances of survival than both of us combined."

"Would she help us?" He asked while he was searching for her bridge on her temple but he couldn't locate its exact position.
"I don't know. She doesn't even know for the moment that her consciousness survived what happened. What do you believe that a mind which wants to die will do? Give it a second thought because of both of us?"

"No, she will go through us to get what she wants"

"Precisely."

"What does Faceless want from her?"

"She's a door to another dimension. When she's full operational she connects with another dimension where she can bend time and control people's thoughts"

"I have never thought before of God as a virus. I would go for brain cancer but I have to admit that Her Mighty Virus is something else. So now what? We become a Trinity or a ménage a trois?" Ed's sarcasm was back as he was bargaining his terms with this new reality of theirs.

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*  "ménage a trois" In French  stands for "household of three"  and it is a domestic arrangement in which three people having romantic and/or sexual relations with each other, occupy the same household.