I sat leaning against a wall on the ground next to Aurin, waiting for Vivi to return from purging the floor above.

  “So I've been thinking about what you said upstairs,” Aurin started. I felt myself begin to wilt under her words. “I already know you built my mind from the ground up, and I’m okay with that. I’m proud to be the first person you built… but that’s who I am now, not whoever owned this body before you came along. That’s what you meant when you said ‘I didn’t have a leg to stand on’, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I replied in a quiet voice.

  “I don’t care about whoever that woman was; I don’t know her, and I know for certain I’m not her. I'm a person with my own agency, and I would appreciate it if you respected that fact. So don’t you fucking dare mix us up again.” This was the first time since I had created Aurin that she used a cold tone towards me.

  “I’m sorry, I know you’re you, and the last inhabitant of that body is dead. It’s just… I don’t know," Of course, I knew that Aurin was the only one left, I had personally scrubbed the old owner of her body away after all. Ripping her mind to pieces until all that was left was a husk for me to build from the ground up.

  The way I kept myself inside the moral boundaries I tried to maintain was by telling myself I was going to make her happy, and I succeeded. Aurin was a lot happier than the miserable woman who used to inhabit her body. Even when she surprised me, it still felt like something I had made her into.

  But I couldn’t tell Aurin any of that. Not if I was going to respect the fact that she was her own person.

  I really wish Vivi would return faster.

  “Why did you make me the way I am?” Aurin asked, and I almost let out a gasp in relief that we were changing the topic.

  “What do you mean by that? You’ve never asked before,” I asked in return.

  “Well, things were simple before. I knew you made me into someone you would get along with in your own idealized way, while also adding little quirks that you found charming,” Aurin said, turning to look directly at me. I hesitantly met her gaze. “Because I know you. There’s no way you would do anything else. But that begs the question, why would you make me care if you don't?

  “When making you, I wasn't designing a mind slave who agrees with literally everything I say and do. For one, that would be incredibly boring… and I didn't want to make another person who has to intellectually think their way into making the ‘correct’ decision.” I replied using air quotes around the word ‘correct,’ probably undercut my point a little, but I still felt it was necessary.

  “It sounds like you don't trust yourself,” Aurin said.

  That got a laugh out of me, “Au contraire, mon ami. I feel like I'm the only person I trust sometimes. Which is why I trust you. Even if you were to go so far as to betray me and everything I stand for—”

  “I would never!” she interjected before I could finish my point.

  I raised a single finger and placed it over her mouth, “Shush, even if you were to do that. I made you, I instilled the values you carry, the axioms you follow, so really that wouldn't be a betrayal. It would just be an extension of myself acting in a way I designed… unless you get hit by a cognitohazard or something and your mind breaks. That ain't on me.”

  “That didn't actually answer my question, though,” Aurin said after a few moments of contemplation. “Also, doesn't that just imply I'm a mind slave with extra steps?”

  “Nope! Because I made you my conscience to directly confront me when need be. Acting as someone who doesn’t enjoy the feeling of spilling warm blood. The angel sitting on my shoulder, because I've already got the devil covered,” I replied.

  “Oh, is that why you're still coated in blood? You enjoy it so it didn’t go away? I didn't even think you could get dirty until now,” she commented, breaking eye contact to look at the splattered blood that was now covering her, too.

  “I have no idea what you could possibly mean by that,” I blatantly lied.

  “You done being lovebirds with your mind slave?” Vivi asked, her voice coming from directly above us, causing me to flinch in surprise. I had gotten so used to ignoring the spotlight that I hadn’t noticed hers appear. I would have to change that once we were out of here.

  “Oh, I'm sorry that you've never had a close friendship and don't understand what it's like for other people. That must be really hard for you,” I automatically sniped back, before glancing upwards where her voice came from. “And we're not lovebirds.”

  I felt Aurin tense next to me. She probably just didn’t like how I was treating Vivi, so I ignored her.

  She was sitting on the ceiling above us, hanging upside down, a bored expression on her face, sipping from a juice box.

  “Yeah, it's really hard to make friends when I can't mind-control people into being them. I have to put effort into people and shit, and who wants to do that?” Vivi said.

  “See! You get me. Aurin the eldritch being understands me, why can't you?” I said, only for Aurin to flick my forehead.

  Vivi stood up and walked down to the ground along the wall. I noticed her eyes were staring into the middle distance and flicking back and forth like she was reading something.

  “Anyways, kids, it's time to pack it up and head out. The rest of the team should finish up in—” Vivi said, then raised a hand with three fingers splayed, then counted down. When her last finger fell, there was a bang, and the floor shook like a hammer struck it from below. My ears popped for the second time in twenty minutes. “Also, I'm not an eldritch being. You wouldn't currently exist or ever have existed if I were one. Unless you're hiding a—” the word she used should not have been pronounceable with human vocal cords, “—somewhere around here without telling me.”

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  “A—what?” Aurin asked. I nudged her so as not to have Vivi repeat the inhuman screeching sound she just made.

  Vivi ignored the question anyway and walked off down the hallway. Sharing a glance, Aurin and I followed along behind her.

  “Sorry, if you're not an eldritch being or some kind of elder god wearing a child's body, then why did you call us ‘kids’ just now?” I asked.

  “Oh, right! I've never gotten to do this part! I'm so excited!” Vivi said, hopping ten feet into the air and doing a backflip. Landing facing us in a way that shouldn't have been physically possible, she then continued speaking while walking backward. “Okay, so almost every major religion—fuck this planet has so fucking many—is wrong about their version of an afterlife. What really happens when you die is your soul reincarnates—”

  She froze in place, her eyes flicking side to side, and frowned at something, then spun and picked up the pace down the hall, grumbling something about someone ruining everything. Her ahoge stopped wagging like before and shot straight up like an antenna.

  “Are you going to finish that thought or what?” I asked after her.

  “Nope, fuck off and shut up,” Vivi snarled back at me.

  “Did you run out of juice and need another juice box? It sounds like you're getting cranky,” I continued, only for Aurin to jam her elbow into my ribs. Turning to look up at her, she was glaring at me with a ‘Stop provoking the girl who saved us’ look.

  Vivi very blatantly took a long sip from the juice, crunching the box up as she did so. Then flung it backwards directly between Aurin and me, there was a crack as the box broke the sound barrier, and a thunderous boom as it collided with the far wall, as if she had just thrown a cannonball. Another one appeared in the air in front of her, she caught it and popped the straw in, only to begin drinking again.

  I decided to shut the fuck up before she improved her accuracy.

  The route we took through the facility was meandering, and every so often, Vivi would enter a room, leaving us outside, and then reappear a minute or so later. That sour look never left her face the whole time, and we didn't so much as speak a word to each other. I noticed the longer we travelled and the more rooms she went into, the more specks of blood she ended up covered in.

  I was unsure if it was human or otherwise.

  Taking a peek at her mental conceptualization, the spider had returned to the endless web I had seen last time. Impossibly, it turned to look directly at me. All I saw was madness in its many eyes.

  I looked away immediately, cutting my link with it.

  Was it really a good idea to follow the little girl who had clearly gone insane at some point over the past day?

  Well, we didn't really have any other option, and maybe this was just a thing that happened to her sometimes? Like how when I used my ability, it fucked up my mind and threw me into a fugue state. She mentioned working with a team, so obviously, she had to be stable enough to do that.

  I ignored my concerns until we arrived at what I presumed was the exit of the facility, which was a large blast door. Emphasis on ‘was,’ as all that was left of that blast door was a scattering of metal splinters on the ground. It looks like someone had just walked through it as if it didn’t exist. The door reacted poorly to being treated that way. Around the door was a scattering of bodies in various states of paste.

  In place of the blast door was one of those shield generators that I had disabled earlier, except this one was thick to the point I couldn’t actually see on the other side of it.

  At the sight of the exit, Vivi let out a sigh, and her ahoge sagged, “Sorry, we all have our costs. Mine can be somewhat unpleasant to deal with. You’re gonna want to get in this.”

  Extending a hand, a full-body hazmat suit with a rebreather attached appeared from thin air and fell to the ground next to her. It had an oxygen tank hanging from a belt that was connected to the rebreather system.

  “Just the one?” I asked. “Who’s it for then?”

  “You, I certainly don’t need one,” she responded, leaning herself against the blue shield that started humming on contact.

  “Aurin will be fine without one?”

  For the first time since I had met her, Vivi turned her attention to Aurin. There was a sadness in her eyes that I couldn’t… Ah, wait, she mentioned reincarnation, didn’t she?

  “I understand what your point is, but I’m not ready to take that step yet. Maybe later, I don’t know, I’ll have to see the terms,” I said, and squeezed Aurin’s hand.

  Vivi just nodded and rubbed the back of her head, a grimace on her face. Another suit appeared, “As long as you understand what's at stake. I’m sure Makesi will give you the talk anyway, I’ve heard this is a common problem with Whisperers.”

  “Does it ever get easier?” I asked and grabbed one of the suits to give to Aurin before slipping mine on. There was an instruction booklet on how to assemble it in the hood

  “Eh,” Vivi said with a shrug and a hand waggle, “It depends. This world, for example, is fucking awful. The level of atomization is just… the worst I’ve ever experienced, which makes leaving it behind incredibly easy. Others, usually the more communal or tribal worlds, are a lot harder. I’m not really the one to ask, though. This is only my fifth rodeo.”

  “What are you two talking about? You’re being incredibly vague, and I feel like it’s on purpose,” Aurin asked as she pulled the mask over her face.

  Vivi just looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “I’ll share the memory with you later,” I told Aurin, before hooking my rebreather to the mouthpiece.

  Something about what I said had Vivi raise both her eyebrows in surprise, which she quickly suppressed.

  “Alright, are your suits fully airtight? There will be a test because I will not accept you dying,” Vivi asked, her voice coming through speakers within the suit. Then she muttered something about not wanting to lose her bonus, which I didn't quite catch.

  Both Aurin and I nodded in response. Vivi tossed a ball at me that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. I reflexively caught it, only for it to pop and begin letting out a cloud of smoke that coated me and Aurin.

  Nothing happened, which Vivi seemed pleased by.

  With one hand, she reached out and pushed through the shield. As she did so, it let out an increasingly angry-sounding humming noise until it popped. Then she turned and walked outside into the city I used to call home.

  It was a little different from the last time I was here. Without the lights, the people, and a lot more ash and melted glass all over the ground than I remembered. A heat haze rippled into the air from the ground, which was now glowing a deep red.

  I couldn't feel the heat at all, which was probably the point of the suits. Or at least part of the point.

  I glanced over at Aurin, who was entranced by the sights, or maybe horrified by the destruction, I couldn't tell. This was the first time she had ever been on the surface. It was a shame it had to be like this.

  Vivi led us to the nearest vantage point, spun once, then stared up at the sky. A few minutes later, an aircraft appeared, which looked like a box with stubby wings and a matte black hull that made no sound I could hear through the suit. It drifted overhead, stopped dead, then backed up until it was right above us before beginning its descent.

  Neither Vivi nor Aurin were looking at it until it was twenty or so feet off the ground above us. Aurin flinched in surprise at that moment, and Vivi finally turned to look at the vehicle.

  I had a feeling I knew what was going on here, and checking for mental models, I was correct. The aircraft was very shy and seemed to be hiding, quite literally in plain sight.

  As it landed on the ground, the side of the vehicle opened, and Vivi motioned for us to enter. I climbed onto the silent hovercraft and was immediately met by someone spraying us down with a hose. Vivi received the harshest hosing; her ahoge was vibrating as she screeched.

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