The sun gently shone down on her pale skin, dozens of bottles of alcohol laying down around her bed, an ashtray filled with ashes and old leftover cigarettes. Lan opened her eyes lazily; they looked red, not from the drinks or cigs, those were from last week, but from tears.

  Since her husband's death… things hadn’t been the same. She could still remember the moment she learned, like it was yesterday. It hadn’t been more than a few days anyway.

  ***

  Lan and her children were being attended by doctors, including one who looked like he was about to do something very unpleasant from his face whenever he looked into her eyes. Finally, after the nurses all agreed that the Bradkans were completely unharmed and free to go, the doctor approached.

  He stared at the Coma Machines, which could feed a patient's body so well while simulating physical exercises in short electric bursts straight into the muscles, allowing coma patients to wake up without any problems to walk or lose any of their muscle mass.

  “Doctor James? Thanks a lot for watching over our family… but… these machines… we don’t have the money to pay for them! Was it my family…?”

  “No, Miss Bradkans. I... it wasn’t your side of the family, your husband was the one to pay for everything throughout your two years of coma.”

  Lan squeezed her hand so tight she was starting to draw blood; she seemed to feel no pain, and when she stopped herself from exploding in anger and tears at David’s sacrifice of two years to keep them in such a high-end unit… she stopped squeezing, the small wounds made by her nails mysteriously closing a few seconds later.

  “David… W..I must see him! Have you told him we woke up?”

  For once, her face became filled with a beautiful smile, one that made even James and a few remaining nurses feel like they were looking at the most beautiful woman on Earth. And yet… the absolute silence that followed, the awkward and sad eyes left no room for interpretation.

  “No…”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bradkans. I need you to stay very calm, and please do not interrupt me. Everyone, leave the room right now, and make sure the children are fine.”

  “Should we bring the children?”

  “No… don’t bring them yet. What happened… where is my husband?”

  ***

  James explained everything… the error, the jump. He, however, did refuse to give the autopsy records. She looked at the folder inside her hands, considering her set of skills, sneaking into a hospital and stealing some records was pretty easy.

  She got in trouble with her hierarchy, but she was their best before the coma. And even after, she still was. She knew what she had signed up for when she joined the agency, but the fact that they didn’t even help her husband one bit had made her snap at some of her superiors.

  “I suppose finding the intern for me was the most they would do.”

  She stared at the blood covering her hand, leftovers from last night when the agency finally agreed to bring her the intern who had caused her husband’s death. She knew it was a mistake, but she didn’t care.

  She beat him so hard he was most likely gonna be the new patient in her previous coma bed. She finally stood up and went toward her dressing room, which had been cleaned recently, like her children's room. David had cleaned their rooms every day in case they woke up.

  She stared at herself in the mirror, the cybernetic lines going down her skin, showing her identity as a modified human. Enhanced by some of the most advanced cybernetic technologies. Those same lines soon faded out, becoming so small they couldn’t be seen by a normal human.

  “I wish I had told you the truth, David...”

  Seeing that made her wonder how a measly car crash had even been able to knock her out. Her children she could understand, but her? Her body was able to withstand a bullet of most calibers and could easily survive a car crash.

  Yet… the memories of that day were blurry. She remembered the crash itself perfectly, but barely had she successfully protected her two children that… she saw… it. Something massive, of an impossible amount of power, towering above Earth. It was an instant, so fast she could have believed it was a dream…

  A loud slam in her mind put her to sleep forcefully, all her cybernetic walls and mental locks shattered, forcing her to sleep for those next years. She wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t normal. The agency obviously knew more than she did. And she intended to find out.

  ***

  After making sure her children were safely home, she drove toward Vermillion’s newly built HQ. The building wasn’t finished. This was the place where her husband died. Staring at the dried blood on the sand pile at the bottom of the building, she could almost see her husband. She closed her eyes… unable to stop a few tears from falling before finally moving inside the unfinished building.

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  Going to the empty elevator shaft, she saw two members of the agency waiting for her.

  “We know why you’re here, Miss Lan.”

  “James and Jamy… if you have any will to live, step aside. I have answers I need to obtain from the Quadrant.”

  The silence was so heavy that anyone would have believed a fight was about to break out. The cybernetic lines on Lan’s body started to glow brighter and brighter, her hands becoming superheated, so much so in fact that the air itself was sizzling around her hands. Her pupils, which once looked fully human, suddenly stretched, the middle part showing the clear robotic nature of her eyes.

  The two agents in front of her felt some sweat slide down their skin. Unlike Lan, they were simply normal security. Not enhanced cyborgs like her. Even if there were a hundred of them, they would be slaughtered.

  “Let her in.”

  That voice, which they usually feared, sounded like a gift from god himself, and they released a sigh and stepped aside, for once, their boss, the Quadrant, had made them feel relief instead of the usual dread of being in front of the most secretive and dangerous man in America.

  Seeing them step aside, Lan just walked past them, her speed fast enough that they barely even registered her moving between them, jumping down the empty elevator shaft and slamming down heavily into the ground a few hundred meters below the surface.

  The impact of the land forced her legs to work full-time to cushion her fall, creating a small shockwave to dissipate the strength of the impact. Around her, she could already see six cyborgs waiting for her. Like her, they looked no different from a normal human except for the cybernetic lines on their skin.

  “Hello, Lan. Please follow us, the boss is waiting for you.”

  Lan said nothing; those people were her colleagues, her friends for some in fact. All looked at her, both happy to see her back, yet clearly worried they would have to fight. She walked inside the complex, seeing scientists of all origins working on some extremely strange technology.

  They called it Prothean Technology, the origin of Vermillion’s sudden increase in vr-technologies. Vermillion corp being just a cover for the agency. Lan reached, at the deepest room of the complex, a massive reinforced door. Most agents weren’t allowed to go past it. Including her. Yet, today, that door was slightly opened, and she squeezed her hand hard, calming her fear.

  Even she was terrified of the boss. Or the Quadrant, as he liked to call himself. She stepped through. The door closed immediately as she looked forward… seeing an enormous sphere of pure silver in a liquid state. Just in front of a simple wooden desk with hundreds of papers stacked on top, and next to the desk.

  And there was her boss. A small man, even for a tall woman like her, barely reaching below her chest. Yet, she knew then and there that this man could slaughter her, and she would be defenseless.

  He wore a rather old-timey moustache on his face; other than this moustache, he was completely hairless and simply kept a monocle on his left eye. Writing using a feather and an ink pot. This would have made anyone surprised that anyone would write on paper, much less with a real feather, in 2045.

  He lifted his eyes from the paper, allowing her to see strange slitted eyes. She knew that some people liked to modify their pupils into reptiles or felines, something easy in today’s age. But for some reason, she doubted those were modified.

  “Greetings, Lan. I’m glad to see my greatest agent back on the field.”

  “Quadrant.”

  She nodded, hearing his casual tone of voice. She gritted her teeth, wanting to attack right away, but suddenly, the small old man appeared right before her eyes. He didn’t walk or was so fast she only saw a blur, no. He just appeared right in front of her.

  “I believe you have a question for me, right? Like, why did we not support your husband financially? Why didn't we act in any way despite our monitoring of your family’s phones?”

  “Yes…”

  “I’m deeply surprised at your self-control. I’d have believed you’d have attacked me by now. No matter. I shall answer. We couldn’t.”

  “What?!”

  “You heard me right. It’s a simple answer, but a truthful one. Many times, we tried to intervene. And every time we were blocked by someone. Or something. We believe you already know who that could be.”

  “Or what it could be.”

  Lan’s memory brought forward this immense shape above Earth, a robotic being of silver that had watched over the crash. That had forced her to sleep.

  “What… what was that thing?”

  “We believe it is some sort of alien life. A robotic one, obviously, but it’s most likely related to the Protheans. It must be a Cygilite. One of their most powerful, obviously. To think such great power existed amongst their race even after the forgotten war...”

  He let out a sigh, one that made him suddenly sound like he had been far, far older than Lan could even conceive.

  “It’s also not interested in destroying Earth, at least, considering its size, it could have done so at any time. Other than that… we know nothing else. It’s even possible it might be the reincarnated soul of your husband. Such a shame you won’t remember any of this conversation.”

  “What...?”

  Lan’s eyes widened, her cybernetically enhanced brain started working overtime, she understood the information given, but it made no sense! Reincarnated soul of her husband? Forgotten War? Cygilites and Protheans... wait...danger.

  The Quadrant sighed, thinking that his father would owe him one to demand that he help unlock his best agent’s alternate life’s memories. The lord Aspect of the End had put his family into a soul-dissociating coma that sent their soul to experience another life.

  Now his job was to make sure those memories were unlocked and that his agent would forget about the agency. Not just her, in fact, with the System’s plan being almost fully ready. It was time for a cleansing. The agency could disappear.

  He had made sure that no humans would obtain the Prothean tech unsupervised. Now… the System had successfully infiltrated the Earth’s cache. Soon enough, this world’s economy and culture would be based on their level and skill in Project Rebirth.

  Lan’s super-heated fist, reaching for his face, was about to slam into him, but he just smiled and laughed gently.

  “As expected of my best agent. You felt the danger. Not that it matters.”

  A snap of his fingers was all it took for Lan’s mind to be put to sleep forcefully, an array of a dozen spells slamming into her brain, reinforcing it, reshaping her body from a modified cyborg back into a normal human, her memory of the agency erased even those of this very conversation, especially those in fact, her memories of her life during the coma being awakened.