Karu’s description of being in a regenerator was pretty much spot-on. I went from blacking out on the battlefield to tiny flashes of cognizance of being in the air, strapped with my face in Karu’s chest with my arms and legs bound to her while hers hung and swung like a macabre marionette. And then I was in a bed, drugged, drowsy, a man in black scrubs wiping residual fluid from the regenerator off me with a fluffy towel.

I felt slow, and tired, but I also felt great. I touched my fingertips to each other and found them sensitive and soft, my calloused hands stripped away in an instant. I probed at my side and could not find the scar from AEGIS’ attack, before the man politely laughed and asked me to let him finish.

“First time in a regenerator?” he asked. “We see this a lot. Never gets old. Enjoy your new you.”

Suddenly the door banged open, and Karu was there, also dripping regenerator slime, standing naked in the hallway as a concerned woman with a towel attempted to preserve some of her decency and get her back into her room.

“Alphard!” she shouted, looking directly at me. I covered myself with my hands and blushed enough for both of us. “My cousin Alphard, whom I brought here after both of us were injured in the unfortunate hunting accident.” She looked at me intently. Me?

“Uh, hi?”

“Yes, hello my cousin Alphard. Have you answered any of their questions?”

“Uh, no.”

“Good. See that you do not. I take full responsibility for the incident and all questions should be directed solely to me.” She turned around and opened the door in a manner approximating a normal human and strode back into the hallway, her nurse frantically trying to cover her with a towel.

I learned that she had a very nice butt.

“Uhhh…” said my nurse. “We uh, apologize for that.”

“Oh, no problem,” I said, still beet-red. “That’s just…my cousin…uh, Karen. She’s a real firecracker.” I laughed awkwardly.

“Yeah, she’s…something.” The man was also blushing and offered me an apologetic grin as he got back to toweling me. I told him I could do the rest, but he insisted that I needed to take it easy after being put under for a couple hours, that both my judgement and motor skills would be badly impaired until I fully woke up.

After Karu’s dramatic entrance, I was not sure I could feel more awake.

Still, I was always one to listen to my doctor. After he left, I dressed and sat quietly in my bed in the small room, some kind of recovery ward, with two beds and a curtain between them, a little dark, with the lights off and a curtain blocking out most of the setting sunlight. It was nice, and compared to where I’d been recently, very soft, comfortable, and climate-controlled.

I was a little surprised when the door opened and a lumpy man in an equally lumpy grey suit strolled in. He turned on the lights as he entered, to my annoyance, and proclaimed “There, isn’t that better.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello, um…” he trailed off.

“Alphard.”

“Yes. Alphard. I’m a claims adjuster, here on behalf of…what was her name?”

“Karen.”

“Last name?”

“Irenside.”

“Yes. Her. And what is your relationship with her?”

“She’s my cousin.”

“Yes of course. But I meant how are you related to her.”

Given Karu’s urgency in busting in here, still naked and drugged up, and making sure I knew I was ‘Alphard’ and shouldn’t answer any questions, it was obvious she knew this was coming, and obvious I needed to not screw it up.

“She’s…my cousin?”

“I mean, by which family members are you two related? Like is she your Mother’s brother’s daughter? Or…?”

“Oh. I think I understand,” I said. He smiled gently. “I’m her cousin.”

He sighed. “Moving on.” He pulled out a small holo and put on a pair of tiny round glasses which sat at the end of his nose. “It says here you were both injured in a boating accident?”

“Hunting. Where is Karen?”

“She’s just next door, I’ll get to her later. So this accident–“

“Karen said she took responsibility for the accident and any questions should be directed to her. I think you should be talking to her instead of me.”

“Oh, this isn’t anything, we’re just having a little chat. Nothing official. So it says here–“

“If it’s not official or anything, I’m going to go back to sleep if that’s okay. Still all loopy from the drugs.”

“It will only be a couple of minutes, please. Just a couple quick questions.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Your cousin was in such distress when I saw her, I really would prefer not to trouble her. If you could just answer instead…”

“Distress how?” I asked.

“Oh you know. The shock of having something so horrible happen. Both of her legs, I hear, completely destroyed.”

“Arms.”

“Right. Her arms. How would such a thing happen from a hunting accident?”

“She and I were sitting in a hunter’s blind,” I began. The man leaned forward and surreptitiously touched a button on his holo. “We’d been waiting all day, you see, trying to hunt some geese, so we only had birdshot in our shotgun. We only had one shotgun between the two of us, because we believe in being economical. Karen’s parents, as you know, really important political figures, and so we always go through as many hoops as we can to preserve an image of being socially- and environmentally-conscious.”

I leaned back and mused “Except when she got into hoop-dancing, then she was using as few hoops as possible. Trying to be economical of course again. Though, to be fair–“

“Alphard, her arms?”

“Yes. So we were in a blind waiting all day with one shotgun full of birdshot waiting for geese. Did I say that already? It’s very important.”

“Yes. Continue.”

“Well eventually, we remembered that there were no geese. It was winter, and they’d all moved north. Or south? I was never sure which was which, except that apparently the geese never got it wrong. Could you imagine if they flew north for the summer, and then accidentally flew north again for the winter? There would be an embarrassed flock visiting the north pole.”

“Alphard, please try to focus. Explain her arms.”

“I already talked about her arms. We only had the one shotgun–“

“No, her physical arms. Attached to her elbows?”

“Oh right. I was just getting to that but you interrupted me.” I waited for a few moments while his impatient incredulous glare grew more impatient and incredulous.

“Well? Continue!”

“Oh, all right. I was waiting to see if you were done. So there were no geese so we thought, what was the point of being in the blind at all? So we got down, it was in a tree by the way, actually let me start over, that’s a very important fact. So we were in a blind in a tree–“

“Just continue from climbing down if you please.”

“If you say so, but you’re not getting the whole story.” He didn’t bite. “Fair enough. So we got down and then we realized why we were up in that tree. See, there’s a lot of wildlife on the ground, and in the winter it gets awfully riled up.”

“A wild animal did that to her?”

“Yep. As soon as we touched the ground, a wild rhinoceros comes out of nowhere.”

“A rhinoceros. In the Canadian boreal woodlands.”

“Came right out of nowhere and charged right at us. Well, Karen, she wasn’t going to stand for any of that, and just punched in right in its charging face, both hands. Stopped the rhino cold, but broke her arms. Such a tragedy.”

“And how does this possibly relate to the shrapnel injuries you sustained?” he asked dryly.

“Oh. Yeah that doesn’t make any sense does it?” I forced a little laugh as he turned redder and redder. “Oh well, I am a little loopy from the drugs. Can I sleep now?”

He slowly turned red and deliberately pressed the button on his holo again. “Now you listen to me, you little time-wasting pile of–“

For the second time today, the door banged open. This time, unfortunately dressed in her under-armor clothes, Karu strolled in, right on time.

“What is the meaning of this interrogation?” she shouted.

“Miss Irenside, there is no interrogation here, I was just talking to your cousin–“

“He was asking me all sorts of confusing questions, and I’m not sure I was able to answer any of them because of how loopy I still am from the drugs.”

She gave me a small smile and turned back to him. “This man is in convalescence. How dare you attempt to take advantage of his compromised state to suit your own selfish desires. You are a despicable man.” She looked at him darkly, and I was certain if she were in her armor, her weapons would be ominously thrumming to life.

“It is essential that the insurance company–“

“Spare me your lies. I have been injured and regenerated dozens of times without this charade. You are here under false pretenses to do investigative work for the association. You may tell them I will not be filing a report as this was an engagement made as a private citizen.”

“You are walking on thin ice, Karu. If our investigation turns up that you were out there to collaborate with the Exhuman…”

“I was not. I was hunting in the area with my cousin and that is all. Now be gone and bother us no longer.”

He fixed us both with a steely glare which clashed with his porky face, and then strode from the room.

“How do they not know who I am?” I whispered to Karu as she sat on the end of my bed.

“I have…updated records of your profile to be less accurate. XPCA records are still unchanged, but so long as the association suspects nothing, they have no reason to pull your file again. Our task is to ensure they suspect nothing.”

“And Alphard?”

“He is a pompous twit, but is very nearly as stubborn as you. The agency will invariably misstep in treating him with the respect he believes he is due and he will become obstinate. Or…so I hope. He would not willingly contribute to my deception.”

“What if they just call him now?”

“Then we are likely sunk, unless God or good fortune should see fit to intervene.” She looked at me seriously. “Bereft of my equipment, I am not certain I would be able to contribute properly, but it would be a great honor to die beside you should it come to that.”

“I don’t think it will. Can we just get your stuff and go now?”

“There is little point. If they discover our deception, whether we are present or not, they will hunt the both of us down. Better to remain here and reduce suspicion such that we do not raise an alarm in the first place.”

“I guess.” I flopped back down on the bed and hated how soft and comfortable it was.

“My apologies for embroiling you in this all. I was unaware of Luminary’s capacity for greed and vengeance. I should never have involved you.”

“You didn’t involve me, he did, by using me as bait to get to you. Besides, you just saved my life, and put me through some very expensive therapy for free. I owe you big time.”

“Who claimed it was free?” She raised an eyebrow at me, her green eyes glittering dangerously.

“Uh. Let me just get my credit chit…oh, seem to have misplaced it.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of an engagement.” She looked at the expression on my face and then frowned. “A combat engagement, what else were you…oh.” She blushed and laughed.

“Karu, I’m not going to fight you.”

“But you said yourself that you feel as though you owe me.”

“Well, do I?”

She paused, and frowned. “No, you owe me nothing. I saved you because I desired to do so.”

“So there you go. Now, on the other hand, I do feel like I owe you, so I would like to do something for you…no, not a fight,” I said, as her face grew excited. “But something. I don’t know what though, you’re kind of the definition of the girl who has everything. Money, power, influence, a sweet set of grenade launchers.”

“What I lack,” she said, putting her hand on mine, making my heart skip a beat. “Is companionship. You already give me plenty by merit of your being. Now, that said, the majority of your being’s value is in your ability to challenge me in a combat–“

I pulled my hand away as her eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Look, Karu, I–” there was a noise in the hallway. Both of us froze, staring at the door. “Maybe we should talk about this later.” I said. She nodded.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, not having much to talk about except conversations we didn’t want overheard. I kept running my hand over my side where my scar had been and feeling nothing but smooth skin. It was a little unnerving, having just started getting used to feeling it there and now having it disappear.

“Ash–er, Alphard,” Karu said, seeming to speak her way out of her own reverie. “You have, erm, been at the cabin for much of your time as of late. How does it feel to be back?”

“Comfortable. Soft. Everything has a smell, disinfectant, fabric softener, hand soap, cologne. It’s weird.”

“Would you…wish to stay? Were you able.”

“Yeah.” I stopped to think a second and found a lot of enthusiasm for civilized life I’d pushed deep down. “I mean, I’ve had a decent time…at the cabin…but I feel like everything good that happened there was incidental. I learned a lot, but I never felt like that was something I wanted, just needed.”

“Even so,” I continued, closing my eyes. “I can’t. Aside from the obvious, my friends are there. And my sister…uh…”

Karu nodded. “Your sister Ellebrecht.”

“Alphard and Ellebrecht. My parents have no idea how to name a child.”

“I never found your names unusual, though I admit my childhood was a sheltered one. Many of the political elite give their children unique names so as to help them stand out, or so father says. A name to remember on election day, he would say.”

“Karen isn’t a very unique name.”

“That is because I am an Irenside, and that was good enough for father. I am another product on the same brand,” she said pursing her lips.

“Back to your first question, I haven’t given it any thought, try not to give it any thought, because I can’t. No use spending my time thinking about things which can’t happen, you know?”

“I do. And I apologize for bringing it up if it discomforts you. It is just…you are here now. If you had an opportunity to reintegrate, this would be it. There is little keeping you from walking out that door and disappearing into a bus heading for the city.”

Her words started to hit me. She was right. In accepting my life in exile, I’d given up on thinking of ever returning, and that mindset made it impossible for me to consider even trying.

“Maybe someday. Maybe after I get Saga and AEGIS out of there, and of course I can’t leave…Ellebrecht behind. And even then, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with violating my terms. Like, of course I miss living here among people…I just don’t think people miss me, or that I miss people. I don’t know.”

“I admire your commitment to your terms of exile. While I may believe personally that you are a righteous individual, that does not mean you are not a dangerous individual, and it is certainly safer to leave you estranged, however uncomfortable a life you would live. Whichever your decision would be, I support you in it, and were you to attempt to re-integrate, I am certain you could use much of my assistance.”

“It’s a nice offer. I’ll consider it.” She beamed at me.

I saw something grey hover near the door through the frosted window and move past. Was it the round insurance/association inspector? I stared at the window, wondering how much he’d heard, or if he was coming back.

“Just a sec. Thought I saw something,” I said and slid myself off the bed. Karu looked at me curiously but did not follow. I cracked the door and peeked out into the empty hall.

It was certainly a clinic and not a hospital. The hall was only wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side at a time, it looked like there were only six or eight rooms instead of a whole wing, and the walls were painted in muted tones instead of sterile white. The floors were alternating white and pale green marbley tile and everything was very bright and smelled like disinfectant, so that was pretty much the same.

There was no sign of the inspector, but I did hear voices around the corner. I crept down the hall, rolling my steps from heel to toe to keep my beat-up shoes from slapping against the floor.

“–did it before has she? I didn’t think Karen even had family, the way she talks.”

“Yeah, if that kid is actually her cousin, I’ll eat a hypo. The two of them don’t even look anything alike. Like, hello? She’s blonde, her parents are on the holos all the time, they’re blonde. He’s got brown hair and brown eyes.”

“Maybe he’s adopted?”

“Like anyone in that family would ever want impure outsider blood.”

Two women’s voices, employees here I had to guess. I guess Karu was a frequent-enough visitor that she was good gossip material.

“Shouldn’t we do something though? Like, this is probably fraud. Can’t we get fired for not reporting it?”

“They won’t fire us for that, but maybe you’re right. Then again, I heard Karen is always coming in here with those crazy wounds because she’s a pro bounty hunter who only takes contracts on dangerous Exhumans. Is that someone you’d want to be on the bad side of?”

“Wow, I always thought she was just…I dunno, really bad at bondage or something.”

“Bondage?” the woman laughed.

“Well how else can you get hurt so much so often in so many different ways?”

“I don’t know what you do in the bedroom and I don’t want to.”

“Hey! I’m serious though. There was that insurance inspector sniffing around earlier, we should probably tell him.”

I crept back towards my room and let myself in, releasing the handle gently so it wouldn’t click in the empty hallway.

“You look pale,” Karu said, her brow furrowed. “What is the matter?”

“Heard some women talking out there about reporting us to the guy.” Karu also went a little pale. “I don’t know if they will, but it sounded like it.”

She stared at me, a look of wild-eyed concern growing on her face. “If you are investigated, my deception will not hold. You will easily be discovered to be not Alphard…at which point they will want to know who you are. I will be determined complicit and have my license revoked–and worse–and we will have the option of fleeing as refugees…unable to return even to your home in the wilderness, where they would expect you…or fighting.”

“We can’t run. If we run, they’ll find AEGIS and my sister. We can’t warn them without going in person.” My mind raced. “Shit, Karu, I really screwed up your whole life.”

“It was not your fault. I made these decisions and I will face the repercussions as best as I am able. Still, we should move to reduce the repercussions as we can. My equipment is stowed in a locker in the admittance ward. If we are swift, we may be able to flee before word gets out and can alert the others of the coming peril.”

“That leaves all of us as a bunch of wandering nomads in the middle of winter. Can’t just drop in on civilization for food, I can’t hunt well enough to feed all of us, and we’d have to abandon Saga. With the XPCA on our heels the whole way.”

“Still, it is preferable to being taken without a fight.”

“What if we don’t run and just hope the women don’t tell the inspector?”

She bit her lip. “How certain would you say it was that they would report us?”

“I don’t know. They sounded like they were definitely going to. But maybe they won’t?”

“If there is yet time, perhaps we can simply convince them. This is a far superior plan.” She stood up and headed for the door. “Let us go with all haste. Which direction were these gossip-mongers?”

The two of us strode down the hall to the front desk as quickly as we could without suspicion. There, we found the two women, one a nurse and one apparently a secretary…and the grey-suited man, who looked at us with a smug grin.

“The cousins Irenside, just whom we were discussing,” he said, the sleaze in his voice putrescent. “These two ladies were just sharing some interesting opinions on you two. Opinions I happen to agree with. Would you be so kind as to repeat to Miss Irenside here what you just told me?”

The secretary shifted uncomfortably and the nurse stood and started slinking out of the room before the man clamped a hand on her shoulder.

“We just thought…it was weird we’ve never seen your cousin in here before. We weren’t sure if your plan even covered relatives that distant…so we were…pulling up his record.”

“Apparently his record will have his photo on it. I am excited to see if it is a match.”

“This is a violation of Alphard’s medical rights!” Karu bellowed, slamming a hand down on the counter and making the two women jump.

“I am an insurance inspector and I have reasonable suspicion that insurance fraud is occurring before my very eyes. I think you will find the law provides allowances specifically for this case to allow me to do my job. Now, if you would be so kind as to pull up that record…or I can do it myself…”

The secretary shook her head, her little brown curls flailing. She looked like she was on the verge of tears and kept looking to the nurse and Karu for help.

“If you share my medical history with that man, I will sue this clinic into the dirt,” I said, trying to inject as much menace into my voice as possible.

“If you do not share his medical history, I will have you arrested for impeding an active investigation.” He reached into a pocket and slapped down a badge identifying him as an federal association agent. So much for being an insurance inspector. “Now, about that record?”

The secretary looked back at us, but we had no such shiny props to match the badge. Wordlessly she began to type, despite our continued protests, and Agent Pugface’s grin grew a thousandfold.

And just as all hope seemed lost and Karu and I had a silent conversation with our eyes about dealing with him now and sorting out the body later, the very best and very worst possible thing happened.

The wailing of sirens filled the air, and the holo flashed a zone-wide alert, stopping the secretary in her tracks. She froze, her eyes wide, her face pale. For a few moments, none of us could act or think, until the nurse grabbed her friend and yelled for the rest of us to follow her. The inspector immediately jumped in line behind the two stumbling to flee the room, but stopped when Karu and I didn’t.

“Exhuman event,” he whispered, his eyes bulging.

“I am aware,” said Karu, already heading for the other door.

“Where are you going? The emergency shelter is out this way!”

“I need to pick up my equipment,” she said, her voice level as she disappeared into the admittance ward. “I’ve got an Exhuman to destroy.”