Wave snatched the foil out of his hand and stuck it on. Whirring and gurgling reached her ear, sounds, and nuances that had not been there before. They came from the tanks.

“Aki?”

No answer. Instead, a thousand other little sounds rang out that seemed to fill the whole lab with life. How ironic, since death actually reigned here. But the pounding on the door drowned all that out in an ominous way.

“How long will the door hold?” Wave asked, without directing that question to anyone in particular.

It was the professor who answered. “If they have to cut through, a few minutes.”

“Brontoshit!” she cursed, “Hammer? Can you ...”

He already started moving without waiting for her command.

“... line yourself up next to the door?”

She looked at Mother. “Can you put any obstacles in their way?”

“We’re defending the door controls,” Fearless explained. “We could knock out their lights, but that won’t really stop them. The door is so big, they won’t miss it even in the dark.”

“Not Funny.” Then she looked at the professor again. “Okay, old man, where’s Aki?”

“Chamber three.”

Wave pushed him against the railing of the platform and looked him in the eye. “If your men come in here, any chance they’ll talk to us?”

He shook his head.

“If we surrender?”

He shook his head again.

Wave took a breath, collected herself, and put her thoughts in order. “Okay, you heard it. If they come in and we want to stay alive, we have to fight. I’m sorry it has come to this. Thank you for staying with me until the end.”

Whether or how they should fight, Wave didn’t know. Hammer, who usually had the picture in such situations, was silent. The others also remained silent. Because they didn’t know what to say, or because the seriousness of the situation weighed on them as well. Did it really? Or did the responsibility for what happened now lie with her alone? Would the consequences also fall on her alone? Hammer was safe at his workplace, Fearless outside in the café. If Mother was a robot, did she feel fear? How did fear even feel to Ngi, whom she knew possessed emotions? She would ask him ... if they survived. As detached as she looked at her situation now, Wave wondered if she was actually afraid herself.

No ... that wasn’t what worried her. Rather, the realization gnawed at her that it would all be over in a moment and that, as the professor had said, it had indeed been pointless to invade here. She could not save Aki, nor the robots, and in the end, she had indeed not changed anything for the city.

But she would not give in to despair now, not yet. There was time, even if it was not much, and she would use it.

Wave looked at the numbering above the tanks. They were in front of 14 and 15, so Aki was further to the left. Her eyes wandered in that direction and her heart sank. She already knew that the first numbers belonged to the cooling chambers. She left the professor and hurried past the floating bodies in the tanks, toward number 3.

The chamber was an unsightly steel-blue box, with clunky hinges and latches. A viewing slit was supposed to provide her with a glimpse at the face of whoever lay inside, but it was fogged up. Wave wiped it with her forearm, but it was no use. It was fogged from the other side.

Connected to the cooling chamber by a pivoting arm was a control panel that consisted of a large display and some analog switches. Wave tapped the display and it came to life. A man’s face gazed back at her. It was lean and pale, hidden in large part behind black curls. His nose was narrow and part of the skin covering it on the left side looked strange, scorched. Yes on that side of his face she could see even more marks of the misfortune that had happened to him as a child. So it was really Aki. He didn’t look unsightly, despite the burn.

“Outside the city, you wouldn’t have had to hide behind your voice,” she murmured. “There, it’s normal for people to be scarred by life .... by staying alive. Just like I am.”

She remembered the image she had of him when she first heard his voice. The strong guy who roamed the outside world by her side. She could still picture that. Yes, especially now that she had seen his true face.

Wave tapped the small icon on the edge of the display that showed a person with arms outstretched. Aki’s face disappeared and a three-dimensional representation of his body appeared.

Something inside her tightened. The stomach ... or the heart? Both for sure. Straining, she sucked in the air and forced herself not to lose her composure, to face the facts. Some parts were red. That meant injured. Dark red for badly injured. Things that could be healed somehow.

But most of it was black. Just black. Destroyed. Unsalvageable.

“We tried to transfer him to a special system, meaning his mind, so that ...”

“Shut up!” Wave shouted at the professor. “Don’t you dare feign sympathy!” A lump formed in her throat, taking away her strength to scream, so she just growled at him, “I don’t give a shit how you tried to save his mind when you let his body die!”

She punched angrily against the housing of the cooling chamber and tears came to her eyes. Yes, they had known that things were bad for Aki! Yes, he had fallen out of a damn skyscraper! But still ... still there had been this little spark of hope that something could be done after all. That it wasn’t in vain to search for his body. That their adventure would have a happy ending.

She opened her fist and her hand now gently ran over the shell. Then she leaned her forehead against the viewing slit and let the tears run free.

“Just a little while ago,” she pressed out, sobbing. “Just a little while ago, I could still talk to him.”

“Patients’ brains are still active for a while before the freezing process sets in or before they are fully thawed,” the professor explained in a cold voice. “When people are brought back from the pre-ice age, you use that activity to help them understand where they are and ...”

Wave tuned out the professor’s monotone talk. She no longer wanted to hear what he was saying. She also could no longer muster the strength to simply shoot him down.

Aki was gone. His body was dying or would be on ice for ages. No one would remember him in two weeks because Kanter had just erased him. For some insane plan, just to outdo the competition.

She alone would remember him for longer. No ... neither would she, because she too would die in a few minutes when the reinforcements broke through the door.

“Aki,” she brought out through tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

Aki remained silent and the professor babbled something about talking being pointless.

“Aki, I love you,” she murmured.

In the ancient romances, she had always watched together with Ember, snuggled up on her sofa, the hero who had been thought dead would now come back to life. Saved by the power of love.

But Aki did not come back.

The only power Wave really had was that of destruction. But even to become furious, and drag all the others with her to their deaths, she lacked the power. She sank to her knees and let her arms hang on the floor. Just leaned her head against the ice-cold door of the chamber.

Now the past hours, the flight and the fights finally took their toll. The sadness that gripped her did the rest. Wave sobbed, and each sob was followed by a wave of pain that rippled through her body. She wouldn’t even be able to pick herself up to stand up to Kanter one last time before following Aki.

There was something poetic about that. Following him so they could be united in the afterlife. If there were powers like hers that few people could ever imagine, and if even robots believed they possessed a soul, then there had to be more to come when you died. Didn’t it?

A hand rested on Wave’s shoulder. The professor? Surely not.

“Whenever we lost a comrade on one of our adventures, we remembered his deeds and sang a song so his soul wouldn’t be so lonely on its way to the afterlife.”

That was Ngi’s voice and his hand. He was serious now, no longer joking. Maybe he was right. Aki, who had loved and lived his music, would be happy to go with a song.

With their song.

She obliquely intoned the first note, her voice failing her as she heard herself. Ngi squeezed her shoulder as if to encourage her not to stop, no matter how it sounded.

She tried a second time and it sounded awful. A sob replaced the next note, then she had to pause to catch her breath.

“Can you help me up, Ngi?”

She reached an arm up in the air and Ngi grabbed it, pulling her to him and straightening her. She disentangled herself from his hands, leaned against the cooling chamber, and looked into the lab. Hammer was standing next to the door. Ready to attack anyone who dared to enter the room at first. Mother stood next to the door, her hands buried in the wall. She seemed to be steadily changing the arrangement of the door pieces.

Wave took a breath and brushed the tears from her face. Now that she was no longer cowering in front of the chamber, but standing upright, her breath was enough for more than just two notes, and she tried again.

The first notes were carried softly through the room, then she got a feeling for the song and put more power into it. The professor, who had still been talking, fell silent. It still sounded off-key, but now at least she recognized for herself what she was singing, even without lyrics. The sad melody that had guided her through her loneliness, which was now guiding Aki into the afterlife and would soon herald her final battle. The rhythmic pounding on the door provided the beat.

When the door blew open, forming a bubble into the interior of the room and bursting into fibrous strips of liquid metal, she was ready for the final battle. Ready to follow Aki, if it was meant to be.

Wave closed her eyes and heard Aki’s voice one last time.

“Hey Wave.”

That sounded like he was really talking to her.

“Wave, what are you doing here?”

She widened her eyes in confusion. “Aki, is that you?”

“Yes, Wave. You’re in Kanter’s lab? You’re really here. This is crazy!”

“You idiot,” Wave breathed, and her eyes moistened again. “Why are you only answering now?” She saw a figure in blue battle armor storm into the room. Gear like the Siks had worn when defending against the robot protests. Hammer’s blow brought him to his knees. But that’s all it did. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m still here, Wave. Kind of.”

“It’s too late now. I think it will be me who won’t be here soon.”

“Wave ...”

“Will you sing your song with me one last time? Our song?”

The guard in the battle suit jumped up, ramming his shoulder into Hammer’s massive chest in the process, and pushed the robot through one of the shelves, which shattered under the impact. Mother fled for cover before the first guard was followed by two more passing through the opening.

Aki’s voice rang in her ear. Their melody. It sounded more desperate, sadder. Appropriate. After all, this was the end. She felt peace and tranquility fill her. She had come to terms with it.

A guard pointed up at her and even now she remained quiet. Should she run or fight? She pointed the NPK83b at the guard. Maybe that would help a little? That was all she could do anyway.

“Bronto shit!” she cursed. No, she couldn’t just go in peace! Now she had brought Aki back to life and Kanter would be able to use him for their plans after all.

Wait a minute!

Aki was back and now he could help them once more. They had taken the speaker from her, so only Wave could hear him. She and ...

“Fearless?” she said.

“Yeah?” it crackled from the lens “Any last words?”

“You’re the worst!”

“Impressive,” Fearless countered dryly.

Wave stifled another comment and got down to business. “Can you redirect Aki’s voice to the lab’s speakers? Quickly?”

“Wait ... Sorry, no speakers.”

“Damn!”

“But ...” Clacks and beeps sounded from the lens, then a crackle. “I have access to the lab’s ComNet. Shall I?”

“Hell, yes!”

The guard who had been pointing was now charging down the hallway, toward the steps that led to this elevated area. Some kind of firearm was mounted on the arm of the suit, but it did not fire. Of course, the intent was to do as little damage to the lab as possible. Wave squinted over at Hammer 1.0. Dents covered its hull and Wave was sure that one blow from this guard would break her bones.

She leveled her weapon and fired. Crackling, the shot touched the surface of the armor and sank into it, being greedily sucked in. Unimpressed, the guard continued on his way, getting closer and faster. Setting off at a sprint, he took a wide swing with his fist.

Ngi moved in front of Wave and went to meet the guard, who simply shoved him out of the way with his other arm. Wave gritted her teeth and dropped the weapon. She raised her fists and took the basic stance as if she was going to have a boxing match. With just a thought the brass knuckles appeared on her fingers. More massive than in the storeroom. Maybe it did some good.

Three steps and the guard had reached her. Wave took her guard up, but decided at the last moment, as his fist sped forward, that dodging would be the better choice after all. She spun out of the way, but not fast enough.

His fist grazed her shoulder and Wave groaned. The force jerked her to the side and Wave was slammed against the cooling chamber.

The guard ran past her. A few more steps then stopped and got down on his knees. Leaning his upper body back a bit, he casually let his arms hang.

Wave looked at the guard who had been handling Hammer. He dropped his fists, too, and didn’t react even when Hammer gave him a tentative shove.

“It’s working!” That wasn’t Fearless shouting it with a mixture of joy and madness, but the professor.

Yes! Aki had saved her. With a song that seemed more powerful than all the weapons in Citadel City.

“Thank you, Aki,” Wave whispered, sliding into a crouch by the cooling chamber. She fought the black spots that danced before her eyes and the new pain that joined the one she already had.

They had won after all.

“Wave,” Aki’s voice sounded in her ear. His song had fallen silent.

“Yes, Aki?”

“Turn me off.”