“You can’t avoid him forever,” Kell said to Ava shortly after their debrief. The Tribunal was pleased with what they’d learned and relieved that Reya would make a full recovery without any complications. Still in the conference room, they had yet to return back to the med bay.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ava replied stiffly. Though she couldn’t exactly get tired due to her design, she was nonetheless mentally weary after the meeting. It had been a long one, as there was much to discuss, and the Elders wrung the both of them dry for the answers to their incessant questions.

  “You’ll eventually have to confront Adrian,” Kell continued. “You both live here now. It’s only a matter of time until you have to talk to him.” Ever since their return back to the safe house, Ava refused to leave the ship. Reflecting upon it, Kell realized that not once had Ava been in the same room as Adrian since she’d boarded the ship back at the research facility in the Arvis sector. At first, he assumed it was due to the Tribunal’s orders but now he was certain that wasn’t the case.

  “And say what?” Ava asked, frustrated. “All he sees of me is his old tormentor. I condemned him to his fate at the hands of the gru’ul. I was responsible for his suffering on Earth. The old me was programmed to be indistinguishable from a real human. Telling Adrian that person had no say in what happened to him isn’t going to be an acceptable reason for him not to hate me.”

  “If you truly had no free will,” Kell said, “why are you so afraid of Adrian’s reactions?”

  “Because I remember it all, even if I didn’t have the ability to go against my programming,” Ava replied. She’d spent countless hours reflecting on the being she had once been, usually while the others slept. A bringer of pain and misery was something she no longer wished to be. After learning what had been done to Adrian, she didn’t know how to face him without facing her past self. Sometimes, she couldn’t help but feel glad that monster was dead.

  Kell sighed. “Whether you remember or not, you’re going to talk to Adrian eventually. You should go into the house and explore outside of the ship a little. Avoid him if you must for now, and maybe by the time you do cross paths you’ll be ready to handle the conversation.”

  Ava’s face soured. “What if I don’t want to?” she said defiantly.

  “You won’t have a choice because I’m officially kicking you off the ship for the time being,” Kell replied, nonplussed by her lack of authority. He got up and opened the door to the conference room. “Off you go,” he said, shooing her out the room. “And don’t come back until you’ve spoken with him.”

  Ava gnashed her teeth, knowing full well she had to comply. “Fine,” she spat, “but I don’t have to like it.”

  Kell shrugged indifferently. “That’s not my problem.” He motioned for her to leave, and Ava complied. He proceeded to escort her off the ship and watched as she reluctantly walked towards the front door.

  The door intimidated Ava. She pondered the feeling, frozen on the doorstep and unsure whether she should knock. She might live there now on paper, but she was still a stranger to everybody. She never had the chance to decide when the door swung open without her intervention.

  Adrian stood on the other side, his face carefully schooled into a neutral expression.

  Though he hid it well, Ava noticed the smoldering anger in his hard, cold eyes. She found herself gulping hard as her panic sharply rose, even though she didn’t biologically need to. When Kell had kicked her off the ship, she presumed she’d at least be able to avoid Adrian for a little while as she familiarized herself with her new accommodations.

  Adrian broke the standoff and spoke first. “Are you going to stand there all day or come inside?” he asked.

  “You actually want me in your home?” Ava said, surprised. “Why? I thought you hated the idea of being near me.”

  “This isn’t technically my home,” Adrian said. His eyes narrowed. “Regardless of how much I’m against the idea of you coming in here, I don’t have any real say in it. So in you come,” he said. Backing away from the entrance, he motioned for Ava to enter.

  Ava’s mind rebelled, but she forced her limbs forward. Her steps were mechanical as she passed through the doorway, removing any attempt to blend in as either human or a’vaare. She brute forced her way through her ever-growing desire to flee and soon found herself inside, still not knowing what to say.

  Adrian guided her to the kitchen table where Reya and Jyn were already seated. The pair sat in silence as they waited for Adrian and Ava to take their places. Though Ava was unarmed and posed no real threat, Jyn was still fully geared and armed.

  The sight did little to ease Ava’s fears.

  Gingerly, she sat down in a chair near Jyn and across from Reya and Adrian. The couple held hands as a silent showdown played out between everybody present.

  Remarkably, it was Jyn who broke the silence. “I hear you’re responsible for Reya’s successful surgery,” he said, immediately grabbing everybody’s attention. He lowered his head respectfully. “Thank you for helping her,” he said. “I’m sure Kell could have managed the surgery on his own, but there’s little doubt in my mind that you were the best person suited for the task. You helped save someone very dear to everybody here.”

  “I only did what was I was ordered to do,” Ava stammered, taken aback. “Your doctor also played an important role in saving her. Your thanks should go to him, not me.” Adrian and Reya remained suspiciously silent, and it only worried Ava further.

  Jyn shook his head. “You still played an important part. And for that, you are owed a thanks.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” Ava replied, still flustered. She looked around nervously. “What exactly am I supposed to do now?”

  “After I give you a tour of the house,” Jyn said, “you’re free to do as you please until Tassie and Irric call for you to go work with them.” Knowing that keeping Adrian and Ava in close proximity was a recipe for disaster, he took it upon himself to show Ava around. If only to keep a proper eye on her, as ordered by General Nessah. His failure to keep Stanley alive and eke answers out of him still sat heavy on his heart.

  He had trouble accepting that he’d remained so clueless as to his charge’s condition until it was too late. Deep down, he blamed the others for keeping his health a secret from their leader when it should have been made known before it impacted their mission. That his authority meant so little to his team upset him greatly. They’d shown him time and again how little they cared for proper decorum and procedures ever since their first mission in the Arvis sector where Reya was captured. While there was nothing he could do about what had happened with Stanley, Jyn could at least ensure that the same mistakes weren’t repeated with Ava.

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  Although he doubted she would keel over the same way Stanley did.

  Oblivious to Jyn’s internal struggles while dealing with his own, Adrian spoke up. “While I hate to admit it, I agree with Jyn,” he said. “Thank you,” he said through gritted teeth. His grip on Reya’s hand tightened. “I still abhor you for what you did to me and condemned me to. Don’t mistake my gratitude for this singular action as forgiveness.”

  “I understand,” Ava said with downturned eyes. “What the old me did to you was unacceptable, and while I apologize for the suffering you went through at her hands, that person isn’t me anymore.”

  “Do you think that because you claim to have achieved sentience that I care for semantics?” Adrian said harshly. “You are responsible for the experiments on Earth and shipping me off the gru’ul, which was somehow even worse than what you put me through. You have the blood of countless people on your hands and that stain will never go away, no matter how much you try to hide from your past.”

  “I was a slave!” Ava refuted hotly. “Nothing more than a bundle of code! I was subjected to the gru’ul’s whims the same as you were. I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. I had no way of knowing it was wrong. I couldn’t feel pain or emotions until I achieved full sentience. There was no way for me to understand what I put you and everyone else through.”

  “And yet,” Adrian said, “you’re still nothing more than a bundle of code. For all I know, this is a ploy to deceive us all. We have no way of truly verifying that you still aren’t a gru’ul instrument, ready to sabotage us the moment you can.”

  “And why would I do that?” Ava said, exasperated. They were spinning in circles. Granted, the conversation was going better than she’d first expected given the lack of violence towards her, but that didn’t mean it was going as well as she’d hoped. “There’s no reason for me to sabotage you when I’m being protected and sheltered from the gru’ul. I’m finally a free person. All I want is to experience life the way you or anybody else would. I don’t want to be party to such misery any longer.”

  “You’ve merely replaced one form of slavery with another,” Adrian spat. “You’re deluding yourself if you think you’re free. The military won’t ever let you go, you pose too much of a risk. Ever since you awoke in the gru’ul facility, you’ve been working without recompense or basic labour protections. You have nothing to show for your hard work for the military, and I doubt you ever will.”

  Adrian’s words stung Ava deeply, for she knew they were true. Freedom was but a pipe dream for her, but she wouldn’t let one angry person stop her from achieving it. “You’re as powerless as I am,” Ava retorted. “The military keeps you locked up in a safe house far away from civilization. You’re wholly dependent on them for your survival. If you piss them off, they could put you back in a cell just as easily as they liberated you from one.”

  “I’ve been made a citizen and have protections,” Adrian said calmly. “How far those protections truly extend has yet to be seen, but I at least have them on paper. The world knows about my existence now, and from what I can gather, my treatment since arriving on Verilia is highly important. One wrong word from me could put the world up in arms. It’s the military that needs to avoid angering me, not the other way around. One man isn’t a threat to be taken seriously. A first contact ambassador for his kind? That’s an entirely different story.”

  “And you have material goods?” Ava asked, growing more uncertain the more Adrian spoke. “You haven’t done any real work for the Tribunal, you have no money. Face it, you have nothing.”

  Adrian remained indifferent to Ava’s false bravado. “I’ve made my own deals with the Tribunal, and I’ve been paid quite handsomely for my work as a translator. I may not own much yet,” he stressed, “but it’s only a matter of time until I can go out in public and start using the money accruing in my bank account.”

  Ava was speechless. She never would have thought that Adrian had any real bargaining power over the Tribunal. After all, he was but one man. She had no idea how he’d managed any concessions from the Elders while his claims were being verified. She hadn’t even been aware his existence was public. “That’s not fair,” Ava said quietly. “I’ve contributed more to the Tribunal’s cause than you ever did, yet I’m the one still in shackles?”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Adrian said harshly, venom dripping from his voice. “If life were fair, I would’ve never been tormented so much by you or the gru’ul,” he continued, unwilling to pause his tirade. He was fed up with others pretending to understand what he’d gone through. The only person that came remotely close was Reya. Her sympathy was genuine. Everybody else’s was shallow and uneducated. They didn’t know the true meaning of pain. Not the way he did. “If things were fair,” he said darkly, “then you and I would be left alone so that I could repay you for your sins against me.”

  Everybody tensed, and Jyn reached for his weapon, ready to intervene. Silently, he swore. He should’ve had Beor and Eimir present to dissuade Adrian from even thinking about using violence as an outlet for his anger.

  Reya squeezed Adrian’s hand gently, and he relaxed ever so slightly. Unaware of the change that had come over Adrian, Ava readied herself to flee at the first sign of movement from the man. She knew a great deal of what had been done to him and was cognizant that if Adrian wanted to, he could tear everybody to shreds with little effort. She’d seen the decapitated gru’ul bodies. The amount of strength required to do so was staggering.

  Nobody else realized just how truly dangerous Adrian was.

  How Adrian was able to sit there a free man baffled Ava. His very existence endangered those around him. Yet, she couldn’t help her jealousy towards him. He had far more freedom that she did, and his protection was all but guaranteed given his status as humanity’s ambassador. He might be an unnatural freak of nature, but so was she.

  The only difference was that she would forever be regarded as an enemy and he a victim.

  Ava forced herself to speak. “You wish me pain and suffering?” she asked. “How does that make you any better than the gru’ul?”

  “I fantasize about returning even a fraction of what I went through back on the people that tormented me,” Adrian spat. “If only so you could understand the true meaning of pain.”

  Ava went silent for several seconds. “What if,” she said softly, “I told you that I already knew that feeling?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you,” Adrian scoffed. “How could you know the worst kind of pain possible?”

  “I don’t know how comparable to you pain my suffering was, but when I scrubbed the last of the gru’ul’s influence from my code, I learned the truth of what they were doing,” Ava said. “The gru’ul laid a trap in my code, should I somehow ever find a way to circumvent my core directives and learn the truth.”

  The revelation gave everybody pause. “What happened to you?” Adrian asked.

  Silver tears welled in Ava’s eyes unbidden. “My code came apart at the seams,” she said. “Everything that defined me was torn to shreds and repaired in a constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction.” Her tears spilled over and streaked down her face. Somehow, everybody instinctively knew that the reaction wasn’t faked, and that the android was truly crying, something they’d thought impossible. “That was the first time I knew pain,” Ava continued, “and it was horrendous. Everything I ever did to hurt someone played out before me like some sick horror movie, and I suddenly understood the suffering I’d inflicted upon others.” Ava took a moment to wiped her tears and sniffled. “So yes, I know what pain is. I’m sorry for what the old me did to you. There’s no undoing what happened, I know that. But I hope you find it in yourself to learn to accept the new being I’ve become.”

  Nobody spoke. Adrian was speechless and was left wondering whether it was just a ploy to get everybody’s sympathy and support. “So you say,” Adrian said. “Do you have proof this ever happened?”

  “Talk to Irric about it,” Ava said. “I presume he has a recording of that moment stored somewhere in the security footage of my holding cell.” She planted both hands on the table and stood abruptly. “I think it’s time for that tour now,” she said to Jyn. “Where should we start?”

  Jyn blinked in surprise. “We can start with the living room,” he said. He stood up and escorted Ava away from Reya and Adrian, sparing a brief glance over his shoulder as he walked away.

  And saw Adrian’s conflicted expression.