Following the exact order of events was confusing, but Anderson felt like he finally untied the knot.

  The instance of corruption towards the lowest part of Elen’s brain. What had been added second in the list, had, for lack of a better phrase? Opened fire upon the first and third. It was certainly a grand way to describe the situation. Though there was little explanation as to how or why. Well, sensible ones.

  Little dots of light were represented on the scan of Elen’s brain, crossing through the NIMPH and doing something to the targeted area. Now how it was doing it, or even what the impact of this was? Just as much of a mystery as what caused this emergent new behavior.

  “Do you know what is going on after impact?” Most scientists were freaking out. Understandably so. He was certainly concerned about this development. Even less so now. Anderson was not a firm believer of miracles.

  “No, we don't. The leading idea is that it's, destroying its rival, if you would. But why is it only starting now?” The man before him shrugged. “The only thing we have is a spike in neurological activity that saw an increase of ninety percent in the lead up to the event.”

  Anderson didn't ask anything else. The answer was going to be the same. They didn't know. Most of them were flying by the seat of their pants. Even on a good day, Humanities' understanding of Corruption was limited.

  “Do you have anything else to compare the baseline level to?” It was a longshot question, but it was more useful than asking something else.

  “Maxwell sent over some data before the rest of Matis was put into deep stasis. Brain activity was included inside. The results are interesting, and possibly illuminating something,” the man said, moving his way to grab a tablet, pulling up scans. “If we consider Drake as the baseline, as her neurological activity is the lowest of the three, then Elen’s brain activity rate is close to adding an additional seventy-five percent.”

  “So Elen is the highest?” She was actually able to communicate, based on the reports.

  “One would think that. But Laplace's peaks are close to triple Drake's. But we don't know if hers were higher when she partially broke control,” the man continued, flipping through different pages. “That being said, we can't compare Elen’s conscious levels to Laplace's. It's simply data we don't have. But I do have some thoughts.”

  Anderson could see where this was going. Even temporally, being able to muscle past corruption like Laplace had was a feat. Elen, at least based on the reports, seemed to have better motor skills, and talked with a bit more control. “You think her NIMPH is genuinely preventing Corruption from having the impact that it normally would.”

  “That is a safe hypothesis. Comparing their NIMPH makes it abundantly clear that any of those should have Corrupted Elen completely months ago. It can't spread, it can't take over the rest of her brain. It can't take over the rest of her brain?” The man nodded his head. “It can't control her. Not like it can with any other Nikke.”

  That was at least a measure of a blessing. But it still at best rendered Elen incapable of doing much. If the first two remained the only parts of her brain corrupted, then there likely wouldn't be an impact. Nobody would know.

  In some ways, it may have been better. Elen wouldn't be out of commission like she was. That being said? He was entirely aware why Elen took the blow for Marian. Contrary to how Missilis no doubt saw Elen, she was surprisingly straightforward. If one didn't give her a reason to hold onto her spite, she was a fairly reasonable person.

  There was no doubt some measure of spite played a role in her actions. Chatterbox's last actions were of something seeing its desires being denied, lashing out accordingly. Elen would have seen denying Chatterbox as an even greater act of spite.

  How Marian destroyed it was a baffling mystery on its own. Not a single hint of scrap metal remained after Marian destroyed the Rapture. There was nothing left to study. Some complained, but as far as he was concerned? Its destruction was good riddance. Chatterbox left enough damage as is. It deserved something far more painful in his eyes, but Anderson would take what he could.

  “Sir, transfer is increasing at a steady rate!” Anderson looked at the screen, more and more small flashes streaking through the NIMPH.

  Just what was going on?

  x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

  At first it was something. Something new. It didn't matter too much, in the longer run. At least, she thought that. Humanity was eventually going to try something. Until more came out like it, she was sure it was, at least for the time being, a one off.

  Useful if more came from the project that birthed it. As a test bed against future measures of course. Chatterbox may have been displeased, but that was hardly a major issue. She hadn't been particularly important. While a vanguard for her desires would have been to her benefit, there were also in ways it wasn't.

  A strong Queen was needed for her goals. While it was wise for that Queen to have protectors, a Queen that relied on them would not suit her aims. Outside of that, and being used to help snag more targets, there was little else needed.

  She already had her eyes set on an ideal target. Even if the Queen Gene had manifested, they were too wild to serve her whims. So her plans didn't change. Parts of her were annoyed. Checking the corruption to find no advance was troublesome, but she found no other encounters with the phenomenon.

  Dismissing the phenomenon and the Nikke that showed it was a local choice. She had many plans, and even for one such as herself, there was only so much time.

  Well, less true. If she had run into this problem decades ago, it would have been solved already. But she only had months, not years. Time being a straight line had played to her disadvantage. Especially with her finally able to make a major step forward in her plans. There were many reasons for the choices she made. All of them were rational. Even with the benefit of hindsight, those choices were the rational ones to make.

  Just because they were rational, didn't mean they weren't wrong.

  Part of it, she was willing to admit, came from a lack of knowledge. She shouldn't have been willing to grandstand as much as she should have. Preparing for the Vapaus bullet had been easy. Even if she didn't have at least the echoes, so faint that she was likely the only one to truly notice in network, the move was far too telegraphed in advance.

  For one of the Nikke’s to not have NIMPH for Indivilia to devour? That was something she couldn't have foreseen. The human commander having Vapaus blood? Even less so. It was a far less devastating dose of the substance than had destroyed the mass produced Heretic so long ago, but that left a gaping hole in her plans.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Far be it the first time she had suffered a setback. Liberalio had inflicted more than a few of those. But it was the first time she had suffered a setback from someone that was a human in even longer.

  She tried to slaughter them before her control snapped, NIMPH being destroyed. It would have crushed her Queen's will, yes, but it would give Chatterbox enough time. But still, they had more tricks up their sleeves. That transformation bought the time that was needed for her control to slip completely.

  A Heretic breaking their chains would be useful as something to study. But not this one. Too much time had been invested. Too many resources. She was flying under Liberalio's radar. It would have taken more time, but she had what she was looking for.

  Chatterbox was easy to manipulate. It was dying. It would die. Not permanently, but it would be a setback. But a dying pawn was a dying pawn, and it was better to get use out of it than not.

  It was a desperate gamble. There was no other word for it. She had lost hard. But she could still recover the assets, in a sense. It would cost her time, but there was only a single option left. A mind wipe. It would set her back, but if her Queen remembered what she was, and what she experienced?

  She would not be able to reapply the leash. Cinderella had shown that much. Corruption couldn't work without NIMPH. She could argue that she was gambling, but she doubted the human commander would let her die. He was just as invested in the subject as she was. If not more so. It was better for her to have a blank slate than something that remembered.

  Even in its damaged state, Chatterbox still had the mass to carry out his task. She had been focused on what she needed, taking her eye off a piece on the board.

  By then, the events had come too late to stop. Even as she tried to. Tried to get the corruption to do as it should and expand. But it did nothing.

  A single shove. If she had been what she once had been, she would have mused on the irony. Decades of effort to find a replacement for the cowardly Queen, a Queen that would follow her aims.

  Undone by something so, primitive.

  And now here she was. All her carefully laid plans, now trailing smoke. She was on a timer now, no matter how one looked at it. Chatterbox had been a much needed middleman. Now he is dead. If there were other Nikke’s that had the Queen Gene, she would not be able to access them, much less find them. Raising up a new Queen both quickly enough to challenge her escaped one and the one in orbit, while also hiding them from Liberalio?

  Difficult at best. Her saving grace at the minute was that the Ark would not understand what they had. That the subject wouldn't understand what they were. And would be fearful when they did. Both of them. Though she couldn't deny all the problems such a revelation would cause.

  It was infuriating just how little she could do right now. And her present subject was proving difficult. Stubborn.

  Her memories were difficult to play against her. She remembered her family and friends, yes. But she knew she would never see them again, period. She couldn't harm them. Thus, giving her visions of them bleeding to death at her hand? Dismissed. Have her torturing Counters? Didn't happen, they had shot her with suppressor rounds.

  Playing on her affections? That has always been easy. But she was such a nauseating mess of confusion, attraction, and blushing that it was hard to tell how to twist the knife in a way that would get the desired response. The new Queen had been much easier in that regard.

  Promising her revenge? Useful if she hadn't found herself up towards the top of the list she wanted revenge upon. She still hadn't figured it out, either.

  Just causing her pain? That worked in practice. Sometimes all you needed was to beat someone with a stick until they submitted. Before they bent their knees. No need for something as fancy as a carrot.

  She didn't have control over, what lack of a better term she had, conscious. But the brain was part of the body, and she could use that just as much as any other. That wasn't as easy. Brains were difficult to understand. Only decades of figuring out how they ticked got her the results, and even that was down to no small bit of luck at best. It was one of the better ways, long term. Making it so a Heretic didn't need to be puppeted, but would follow instructions willingly? Messing with the brain was the best way to do that.

  That was when a brain was completely corrupted though. She would fully admit, at this point? Working through her frustrations was the only thing she could do. A mixture of stubbornness and the fact she just simply couldn't establish full control.

  But it was starting to get dangerous. She never showed herself to the Queen candidate. The best type of puppet was the one that largely had no idea who or what was pulling their strings.

  But this one, despite the pain. Was piecing things together. She didn't know if the subject had seen her. Or if it was simply a matter of her spiteful nature realizing the spine. But in the end? They weren't breaking.

  Maybe it would be best to leave them in the dark. Let them stew there while more Vapaus is found. It wouldn't be long. At this point, she was gaining nothing. It was time to stop throwing good money after bad, and cut her losses.

  “Contact.”

  It was then she felt something hit her back. She couldn't feel pain anymore. Not in a manner that would translate to human senses. But it felt like an impact, and in the mindscape, her concentration snapped, the force sending her crashing to the ground.

  It wasn't more than fractions of a second, but it was enough for the one they had been torturing to rise.

  But she wasn't the attacker. She was safe to ignore. Even inside her own head, there was little that she could do in retaliation. No, it was the one that struck her that had her attention.

  A grin almost grew upon her face. She had always known about the second shard. It was a curiosity. Clearly one of her earlier works. So primitive in comparison. She hadn't been aware of just how primitive it actually was.

  “You. You're the one that did this to me? Red Shoes?”

  Mirror felt a grin grow on her face.

  Oh, this would be fun.

  x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

  The pain stopped the moment a loud crash reached my ears. Already, I was pushing myself up to my feet as a leggy blonde with red boots didn't even seem particularly perturbed by their crash landing. She looked, passingly familiar with her short hair.

  “You. You're the one that did this to me? Red Shoes?” The voice came from above. Past the red eyes, anyone would be hard pressed to describe the woman floating above as beautiful. Long flowing silver twintails hung in the air.

  Her outfit was revealing, like most Nikke’s, a white-silver leotard was the best way to describe it. If it didn't feel the need to almost look like it had a v in it that went down to her belly button. The parts covering her arms left her armpits exposed, though it was better than the stocking, which only covered the outside of her legs. It was a miracle they stayed in place at all. Four things floated around her in sets of two.

  Forward facing shields, as far as I could tell, with a blue upside down cross on each face with a pattern of blue cells beneath.

  I didn't like the look on the blonde's face. It looked far too unhinged. The other woman had called her Red Shoe's. That was the name someone would give a Nikke.

  Snow White was the first. Then, Ingrid's warning of Cinderella, the first Heretic. The description she gave matched the woman hanging above. Something I was going to have to deal with later. And now, Red Shoes. That was a fairy tale, if I recall correctly. Not one I was familiar with but one that I'd at least heard of.

  Cinderella knew Red Shoes. Possibly teammates, if I had to guess. But her words. Corruption didn't come from nowhere. Blonde and red. Blonde and red.

  Coincidences did in fact exist. Looking at history and its various freak accidents that shaped humanity's past was proof enough of that. But what were the odds that this person with blonde hair and red outfit were not tied to the snippets of blonde and red I had seen skulking about in my head?

  The answer? Very unlikely. And if this Red Shoes had something to do with her condition. And this was my mind?

  Fuck. There were not enough expletives in all human tongues to describe that situation.

  “Strange. That should have been something you figured out a while ago,” Red Shoes turned her head to the side, as if she were looking at an interesting bug through a microscope. “I still remember how you tore off my head for that one. Everyone was convinced you'd gone traitor again.”

  Until now, I didn't know it was possible to look like you wanted to slug someone straight in the face, but flinch at the same time. But Cinderella did that. My fists were already clenched. Red Shoes wasn't denying it. Instead, she was focused on being offensive.

  “I,” the initial announcement wasn't particularly forceful, and it was already losing steam.

  “I wonder what you remember. How many you killed? All those lives lost trying to stop you? Or how you personally prevented the Goddess Squad from killing the Rapture Queen?” Well, fuck me. Alright, that shit alone was fucked. Cinderella seemed to wenge all the more. That's, a hell of a thing to have on your conscience. There was just one problem with that.

  “Something that's on your head, not hers!” My fist connected with Red Shoes check. I had no idea if I was doing any real damage with that blow. But it felt good. “If you're the treasonous taint licker that made Corruption what it is, then it's your fault!”

  The blow caused her to stagger. My second connected right on her nose, nearly causing her to topple. I had some martial arts training, rusty as it was. And in my anger, any lessons I could have remembered were long gone.

  “You were the one to do those things! All of it is your fault!” Laplace had barely been able to hold it off, and it took time for her to even do so partially. If she did this, then anything that happened was on her!

  The reason humanity has degenerated this much? Why has humanity been forced into a dictatorial underground vault? All the problems in my life right now? All could be traced back to one person. One root cause. And now that I had my hands on her?

  I treated her as such. My blows came down like lightning. I had her back to the ground, plumbing her face like I was playing a drum.

  “How naive,” if it had been in the physical world, the blow to my chest would have caved in my ribs. “If you think they could have won, then you are very foolish. Humanity has one path to survival, and that is.”

  “They could have killed it!” What Red Shoes was about to say had been swallowed up by Cinderella's shout. There was a look of unpleasant surprise on her face. “They could have killed the Queen! I let them put me down like the monster I was!”

  “Ah, so you only remember that much?” There was a smirk on her face. Already, I hated that damn smirk. It was the smuggest thing I wanted to beat into a fine paste. “It's almost like you're a.”

  Whatever she had been about to say, it was cut off by a massive beam of light and sound.

  Why did I get the feeling the look of sudden fear on her face wasn't from the fact she just ate a giant laser?