Wave repeated her trick with the handcuffs, threw them into one corner of the elevator, and dropped herself into the opposite one. She tightened her legs, buried her head in her hands, and ran them through her hair. It hung tangled around her head, very accurately reflecting her thoughts, the hair tie had loosened during her struggle. She removed it completely and let her black hair fall over her shoulders. Then she stared at a point in the emptiness of the elevator cabin, which she now descended with alone.

"Wow," Aki said. No, she wasn’t alone, of course. "What was that?"

"Did you see it too, Aki?"

"That Sergeant Lambert was inflicting violence on you in one moment and then stumbled out of the elevator in a panic just seconds later?"

"That ... that wasn’t all."

"What do you mean?"

"I had a ... vision of me completely wrecking the floor and killing Lambert, with a shock wave emanating from my body. I think Lambert saw it, too."

"If you can send people running just by your thoughts, maybe you should consider a career as a superhero." Aki paused for a moment before adding, "I’d like that."

Comforting warmth spread through her belly and Wave smiled. "But first, I’ll save you." Then the memory of the explosion came back. "Was it really by my mind? Hmm ... I don’t know. It felt so real like it had actually happened, as if I had triggered that wave myself. Or had been close to triggering it and saw what would have happened."

"You know what your parents were capable of and others who were with them in the early years of the Citadel's gate opening?"

"No, they never talked about it. I only know what they did afterward. Things that no human should be able to do, especially not me, because they’re not my biological parents. You say there were more like them?"

"Not many, but yes. Everyone knew them back then. The media channels reported on them and some of them even filmed their operations themselves."

"But today, no one knows anything about them." Wave let that thought sink in and it led her away from her parents to another question. How could anyone have forgotten? Who had the power to make everyone forget? She connected those dots to the events that were just upon them. Maybe it was someone who also had the power to erase Aki from the town’s memory? "Could it be that someone wanted no one to remember them, just like someone is trying to make you disappear now?"

"Hmm...", was all Aki replied.

"Akimoto Robotics, who are after my hearing aid, perhaps? Or the Kanter Corporation whose compound you’re on? It seems like it could be anyone, and the Security Corps is just watching."

Wave clenched her fist and pounded it on the floor of the elevator car.

"Hey, Wave," Aki was now grumbling again. "We can do this, right? No matter who we have to face?"

The sound of his voice was very close to the one in her memory again. Had the meeting with his assistant given him new strength, or was it the knowledge that he was still alive, that his body was somewhere and had not yet been disintegrated and returned to the city’s resource circulation?

"Yes," she said, her voice firm. "We can." Yet, at the moment, she wasn’t so sure. Lambert was on the opposing side now. No, that’s where he’d been standing all along. And her friends ... could she even ask them for help anymore? With such powerful people being her enemies, and the Security Corps coming after her on top of that? Wave loosened her fist and held her splayed fingers up to the elevator lights. About who could help her, she would worry when she knew exactly where Aki was.

"Map," commanded Wave, and an overview of Citadel City appeared on her lenses. "Mark Kanter Corporation properties." Areas turned green. Lots of areas. "Brontoshit, do they own half the city?" She should have asked Lambert exactly which area it was before kicking him.

"Maybe you can limit it to properties that have medical equipment to keep me alive. I mean, after falling so deep ..."

Yeah, he didn’t need to spell it out. It had been a car from the Hypothermia Department that had picked Aki up, so they had to have cooling chambers or regeneration tanks. There had been exactly one settlement in the outside world where such had been set up. Discarded models from the city, kept running with duct tape and kicks. Could there be many more of them here?

Wave added the attribute "medical" and about two-thirds of the displayed areas disappeared. "Shoot, that’s still too many. Do you have any more ideas?"

"No. But ... couldn’t you ask Hammer? I thought he had contacts."

"Kanter might be out of his league, plus he works for the competition. Right now, he’s probably still sitting at the department." Wave sighed. She’d like to call him. Him or Ember. But the situation she’d gotten herself into hovered like a giant force field between her and the idea of ever being able to contact them again. "Oh, that hacker meeting was such a dumb idea."

"It wasn’t that stupid. After all, we ended up here."

Aki had a point. It had been a fortunate conjunction of events that had led them here. On the other hand, sooner or later they might have thought of looking for new memories at Aki’s dying place themselves. If the Security Corps hadn’t shown up, would the hacker have been able to tell them that Aki was still alive and where he was? A thought occurred to her about how things could go on after all. "Maybe the meeting wasn’t such a bad idea after all."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe we should meet with him again." A plan was forming in Wave’s mind. There was always a solution, you just had to find it. "I’m just saying, if this Fearless guy knew that Akimoto staff was looking for something and where they showed up, maybe he can find you too."

"Hmm ... why not. After all, you can hardly make it any worse, can you?"

"Very funny!" She wanted to punch Aki. Now he was already starting to sound like Ember or Hammer. For punching him, though, she would have to find his body first.

"How are you going to make contact with him. You wouldn’t want Hammer to do that again, would you?"

"No, he’s already in enough trouble over this. But I think I have the right idea. After all, this guy is after stories he can use to spread conspiracy theories. We’ll give him one."

Aki grumbled in agreement.

Conspiracy theories or things that were made to look like conspiracy theories? That wasn’t completely off the mark. Akimoto was after her hearing aid, Kanter had kidnapped Aki and the Security Corps ran away when the name Kanter came up. So was it not Akimoto and the Secs who were in cahoots, as the hacker had claimed in his news report, but Kanter and the Secs? Or all of them together?

Somehow Wave hated herself for even having to think about such a thing. Ember definitely would have made fun of her. Until yesterday, Wave herself would have never believed that there could even be such a thing as a conspiracy in the city, either. Everything that went wrong could easily be blamed on human error and bureaucracy, without the need for a sinister mastermind.

Wave wrote a message and uploaded it to her accounts on the network:

"@F34RLESS INV3STIG4TR: Do you remember our favorite radio host? Even if the rest of the Citadel has forgotten about him, he’s still alive. Our mutual friend in a coat and hat knows where, but won’t tell me. Do you know where he might be?"

She had just finished her message when the elevator reached the first floor. Wave poked her head out the door and peered toward the stairs. No, there was no way Lambert could have reached the bottom faster than the elevator. Unless he had jumped. Wave wasn’t even sure he’d gotten back up at all, having just witnessed his own death. In any case, the lobby was empty and the front door was still ajar.

A cool breeze brushed her face as she stepped outside, tangling her hair. She looked at herself in the window of the building. She looked fierce. The tight-fitting synth suit and disheveled hair blowing in the wind. She looked almost like a heroine from those old documentaries, just off a battlefield and already ready to kick the next bad guy’s butt.

Then she tied her hair back up. She wasn’t that kind of heroine. If there was more to the vision she had, or if she herself was capable of things that could cost other people their lives, she had to back off, had to choose a way to find and free Aki that didn’t involve pointless violence.

Of course, she was just pissing on the rules of the city, and very likely she would never be able to return to the life she had grown accustomed to here, but she didn’t really want that anyway, did she? Wave hoped there was some way she could at least not lose Ember and Hammer in the process.

Lambert’s XLARTN was still on the street, silently blinking as it filled the night with red and blue. White lettering appeared on its tinted windshield. 'Hey, you ...'

Wave frowned. "Do you see that too, Aki?"

"Maybe Lambert is trying to tell us we’re screwed?"

Wave thought about it. Although she didn’t know much about him yet, she couldn’t imagine it.

'Come here,' it now read on Lambert’s hover car.

Wave pointed a thumb at herself. "Are you talking to me?"

'Yes, come over now!'

With hesitant steps, she approached the hover car and the windshield now showed an impatient man drumming his fingers on a table.

When she reached the vehicle, the doors opened.

"Where can I take you, Sergeant Lambert?" the onboard computer asked. Involuntarily, Wave had to turn around just to make sure he wasn’t standing right behind her. Did this greeting always played, or did the onboard computer think she was Lambert for real?

"Where can I take you..." The purring female voice of the onboard computer was interrupted by a crackle in the speaker, just for a moment, then she continued speaking, tinny and scratchy. "... Wave?"

A shudder ran through her, "Who is this?"

"You contacted me, Wave. That was an interesting message. What exactly do you want from me?"

The hacker?

"Can I trust you?" asked Wave.

"I’m a hacker, what a question." Yes, she recognized the voice. Fearless, as she would call him from now on, chuckled, and every laugh hurt Wave’s ears. She had assumed that with the robot he had sent, it was simply because of the bad speakers. She’d been wrong, it had to be some kind of trademark. Bad writing, bad sound quality.

"Then I’d better not tell you what I want?"

"Oh, I don’t think you have much of a choice if you’re already contacting me in public like this."

Wave raised her eyebrows. "I’m not commenting on that."

"Did you know you’re on the Security Corps hit list now?" said Fearless in a humorous tone. Huh? Had Lambert ... "Welcome to the club!"

"Do I have to pay dues somewhere?" Wave quirked a corner of her mouth.

"You’ll see what this life will cost you." The hacker chuckled. "All right, we’ll have to call it a night in a minute so the Secs can’t track me. What do you want?"

"I need to find Aki."

"Got it. You need to find Aki, and you need to get rid of the Sec's patrol that’s already on its way to you."

"Brontoshit!"

"And that’s putting it politely! I can help you with both. What do I get out of it?"

"An exclusive conspiracy story featuring the Kanter Corporation, Akimoto Robotics, and the Security Corps."

"That sounds tempting. Wait a minute."

The hover car’s display lit up and the navigation program calculated a route.

"This is where Aki is?" asked Wave, puzzled.

"Huh?" Fearless laughed. "Well, I’m fast, but I’m not that fast. No, this is the place you should go to so they won’t find you."