The house was dark. The family that resided there was still away, off on some kind of business. The faint aroma of a long-extinguished scented candle clung to the walls. It was not the home of a wealthy family; perhaps just a little bit over middle-class. Signs of DIY work were scattered about - a furnishing that had been welded together rather than replaced and a light fixture that was just a tiny bit off center. In other places, there were practical signs of what little financial strength the owners could wield - a hands-free thermostat, a comfortable couch, and a drone station where an ASTA-brand personal assistant could dock. The little sphere was in rest mode, silent as everything else in the house. 

The air shimmered, and the portal opened. The drone lit up only briefly before going silent again. Sonya stepped out onto the carpeted floor and panned her head slowly. She walked past the couch and stopped next to the little drone before turning away. She could smell a hint of fresh fish layered somewhere beneath the sea-breeze artificial odor. It made her nostalgic. She walked around the couch and stopped at a fireplace. 

A line of photographs. A couple. The first was a young man in denim jeans and military fatigues, his dark hair covered by a cap that read ‘Biggest Catch’ in Russian. He had an impish smile on his face and slightly narrowed eyes that sparkled with a joke only he knew and a sharp intellect. Next to him, held in one arm, was a woman with equally dark hair to his own. She was pretty with a button nose and soft eyes that made any heart hurt a little looking at them. She was clutching a purse with her partner outside of what appeared to be some kind of fancy restaurant.

Sonya moved to the next picture. The young man was a bit older, and he was standing next to an absolutely enormous fish hanging from a meat hook; she didn’t recognize what it was. He was smiling ear-to-ear with a few of his friends, who were all pointing either at him or the fish with gobsmacked looks on their faces. Sonya’s lip twitched up into a smile, and she took another step. There he was again, but this time his smile could have lit up a room. He was standing next to the woman in the first photograph, and she was holding a small bundle in her arms.

Sonya ran her finger over the photo before moving to the next and stopped. The young man had a single gray streak on his temple and a few cuts on his arms. He was kneeling on top of a rock with a small girl next to him. The girl was petite, with a wide, toothy smile and sparkling black eyes that matched her equally jet-black hair. His hand was behind her back, and he was pointing to the fish she held from a string and hook. He was so proud.

So was she.

There was one more photograph on the mantel. Just the girl, eight or nine years old, was holding a certificate in her hands that was already framed. Her eager smile was even bigger, and her eyes were sparkling with that same hidden joke her father had. Sonya stared at the picture for a while before walking away. She left the living room and wandered down the hallway and into a meticulously kept office. The small portable vanity on one counter and the color-coded files peeking out of a binder on the desk hinted at the office being the domain of the woman of the house.

Sonya glanced at the desk and saw an ASTA-branded mug among the other artifacts of a person devoted to keeping a smooth ship sailing in her household. Sonya left the office and went further down the hall to a door that led to the garage. She opened the door and stepped the quick half-step down into a room that smelled of wood, grease, and metal. There was a small fishing boat set in the middle of the space that was still in the process of being refurbished. A pet project. She turned and wandered over to the workbench and touched all of the tools before stopping at a mounted fishing rod.

Her eyes ran up and down its length before she looked up and past it. Her eyes went wide, and then she closed them with a sigh. Newspaper clippings. Dozens of them. Photos clearly printed from some online source. In particular was a copy of a photograph taken at a particular young woman’s graduation from university. Then, at some point, the woman in the pictures changed slightly. She had the same face, but her hair and eyes were different. Stark white and neon pink.

Congress, Hero Day, Vegas, Firestorm’s Funeral - every moment of her life laid out with carefully framed pride.

She didn’t look up as she felt the presence of her sister step out of the air. “I’m not regretting my decision,” Sonya said. “But this is helping me decide how I want to approach it.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” her sister said quietly.

“I know,” Sonya said. “That never made it easy.”

“Nothing worth doing ever is.”

Her sister vanished and slipped back into the corners of her mind. She walked to the steps leading up into the house and sensed a car approaching. She shut off the lights behind her and the door as well, wandering down the hall and back towards that comfortable couch in the living room. She sat down and waited, legs crossed and hands in her lap. Augment Reality kicked in, and her hair turned black. She turned down the glow of her eyes until it was muted entirely, leaving only two black sensors behind. Her illusions hid her makeup and glitter, leaving behind just a young woman in a suit.

She could hear a distant laugh. Her senses picked up on words that she could have amplified or subtitled. She just let them do their thing, coming in through the garage as they spoke loudly about one simple thing or another.

The door opened, and the presence at the front paused. He murmured something, and she heard the rustling of paper bags. A grocery run. She felt his heartbeat ramp up. She felt the other heart pitter-patter as well. She didn’t move as he marched down the hall. She didn’t react when she heard the gun cock, only to click again as his breath caught in his throat. She waited for him to walk slowly around the couch and stare at her with wide eyes. He had more gray than she remembered; the creases around his eyes were more pronounced, but there was still that sharp mind there.

Yury Chernovna, Unawakened

“Rybka?”

“Hi,” she said quietly.

“I-”

“I think she should be here too, don’t you think?”

He pressed his lips together and cleared his throat. She tried not to notice how red his eyes had become in just an instant. “Dosha, come in here.”

Steps carried down the hall, and then the sound of paper hitting the floor followed by a gasp. Sonya heard a jar break. “I’ll replace that,” she said quietly.

Irina Chernovna, Unawakened

“Sonya!” the woman gasped.

Sonya closed her eyes and rose to her feet. She stepped towards the fireplace and turned to face the two of them. Her mother moved to stand next to her father, both of them seeming so close yet so far away. A distance of eons between them and her despite the proximity. Her father cleared his throat, and she shook her head. “You don’t need to explain to me why you did what you did. It was that or becoming a tool for someone else’s use. A gifted program indeed.”

His eyes still fell when she spoke. His wife gripped his shirt and buried her face in his neck. Sonya let out a sigh. “Are you living well?” she asked.

“Yes,” he croaked. “I hear you’re doing well for yourself.”

“I saw your shrine,” Sonya said with a short smile.

He returned her wicked grin with one of his own, a mirror. “Did you? The little fish is still a little sneak.”

“You have no idea,” she said with a laugh.

“I’d like to know more,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. I can’t allow that.”

Her mother looked up in shock. “Wh-why?”

Sonya opened her mouth and choked. For the first time in a while, her first instinct was to lie and not just batter around the truth. She cleared her throat and exhaled through her nostrils. “Because where I’m going, you can’t follow me. I won’t let you. When we’re done here, you’ll go back to your lives and forget me. That shrine of yours will be gone, these photos, all of it.”

“We can’t do that!” he barked. “We’ve been in hiding for years, not able to-”

“I know,” Sonya said. “And it’ll stay that way.”

Her mother took a step forward, but her father’s jaw clenched, and he grabbed her, pulling her back and holding her to his chest. He held her gaze for a long time, that twinkle in his eyes getting a bit brighter with each heartbeat. He closed his eyes and nodded. “I understand.”

Calculate the karmic debt. Convert it into currency. Include the intended action and results in the calculation. Break even.

Calculating…

“How bad?” he asked her, and she looked up at him, a little surprised. “This person you’re fighting, is it a group?”

“One man leading the worst of the worst,” Sonya said. “Monsters wearing the faces of people. He wants nothing but to make the world hurt, to make anyone he hates suffer. I can win.”

“He who-”

She smirked. “I became a monster a long time ago. You always did like quoting philosophy.”

“I’ve heard your speeches.”

She chuckled. “I get it from you.”

“How long have you been fighting?” her mother finally asked.

Sonya felt weary; it had been a while since she’d felt physically tired. The weight of her actions wasn’t something she could just push away. She’d accepted them after suffering at Titania’s hands. She was strong enough to carry the weight now, but that didn’t mean the weight wasn’t there. She took a deep breath and looked at her tiny hands. “Longer than you could imagine. Hundreds of years, in a way.”

“You’ve always been a good liar, Sonya,” her father said. “Cheeky little thing when you were little.”

She smirked. “Would you believe that my real ability’s drawback is that I can’t lie anymore?”

He snorted and threw his head back in a small laugh. “Of course it is. If you could lie, you’d already be done with whatever you were up to, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah. I would have won a long time ago, and a lot fewer people would have had to die.”

His expression went grave. “How will it end?”

She shrugged and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll win and get away with it. The world might hate me by the time it’s over, but it won’t be able to touch me.”

Her mother finally laughed. “You sound like your father. Cocky to the end and without an ounce of hesitation.”

Sonya met her father’s eyes, and they exchanged a look that said so much. Both of them were full of doubts and fears and worries, but they were the best in the world at covering it all up with bravado and charisma. She grinned at him, and he shook his head before letting out a sigh. “So what are you going to do now? Is what you came here to do done with?”

Calculation complete.

Sonya read the number presented, and with a blue flicker of light, the check appeared in her hand. She looked down at the sheet of paper in her grip and swallowed hard. “Yes,” she said. “I am severing our karma here. He won’t be able to find you after this.”

Her father frowned. “Shouldn’t we be doing something for you, if this is karma?”

She raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “Like I said, I understand why you did what you did. I wouldn’t be the woman I am today if it weren’t for your decision. I wouldn’t have done the things I did before and now if it weren’t for how I grew up. Met the right people. All of it. Honestly…” she chuckled. “The amount seems kinda small to me. It’s a little upsetting.”

“You can’t put a price on family, Sonya,” her mother said after a long pause. “Whatever you used to come up with that number did the best it could.”

Sonya rubbed the check with her thumb. Is that why it’s so low? How funny that Broker finally decides to be poetic for once. She shook her head and placed the check on the mantle before turning back to them. “It will disappear and appear in your account when we’re done.”

Her father nodded. “What next?”

She strode towards them and extended a hand.

He looked at it and then up at her. “I want to see you without this disguise.”

Sonya’s hand twitched, and she pulled it back an inch. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” her mother chimed in. “Please.”

Sonya let out a breath and dismissed Augment Reality, turning her eyes back up to their general illumination. She heard her mother gasp as her white hair fluttered about behind her, and she looked up, raising her sparkling chin high. “This is me now.”

Her father’s eyes crinkled. “The disguise felt so indifferent, like there was a layer on top of you. This feels right.”

“You’re beautiful, Sonya.”

Sonya looked down at her feet and felt her shoulders shake. It hit different with them saying it. She felt a tear run down her cheek and tried, really tried, to hold it back, but it just came down. She didn’t have a bad childhood before leaving Russia. They loved her, and she knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier to get swept away. She’d resented them for a while, but only because she refused to accept why they made their choice. Suffering beneath Titania had made her more aware of her faults than she would admit to anyone in the world. She should have done this sooner.

“Rybka. It’s okay. I know why you’re doing this.”

“I hate him,” Sonya bit out. “I’ll destroy him and everything he’s built for making me do this. I’ll burn it all down. His world, his allies, his achievements, his dreams. I will be the greatest terror in his life, and I swear right now that, one day, when it’s all over, I will sit with you again, and we’ll really talk. I promise.”

A pair of hands took hers.

“Do what you have to.”

Sonya squeezed her eyes shut.

Analyze.

You have received the Product: Place of Learning

You have received the Product: The Pale

“Let’s-” she swallowed. “Let’s make a deal.”

–

Sonya stood outside the house as a couple she had no relation to laughed and talked over dinner. She watched them for a little while before pulling up her HUD. Check the Karmic Value between me and the observed party.

Value: Nil

She closed her eyes and turned away before pulling out her phone. “I’m beginning my merger when I get back. Get everyone together. The final phase starts tomorrow.”