It was unlike Dr. Ibarres to go radio silent at all, and much more so for it to drag on for so long. As Ala strolled through the sterile gray halls of the complex, nearing the doctor’s office, she absently scrolled through accessible files. Notes on hive-tech, a primer on the same subject, a primer on Core, several various digital folders filled with patient notes, and the briefings of several of the more recent field ops that shared patients, or pilots, with herself and the doctor. Ala pulled a corner, and scrolled back into the patient notes. 

  Where’s the files on seventeen? Did they get rescinded? They should be- ah! There.

  Ala had looked through 017’s charts, notes, the full dossier, more times than she could count. Given how prominent a subject the pilot was, Ala hardly went a day without reviewing something in her folder. Today was just such a day. 017 had returned the day before, early, and as such had received a full debrief by that afternoon, checkups done while waiting, and her customary full psychological evaluation by the evening. Today was 017’s day of rest. And everytime Ala looked at the pictures, she wished the poor thing got rest days more often. 

  017’s dossier had full x-rays, bio-scans, blueprints, full before and after pictures of every implant, every augment, every new piece of tech meant to assist or stabilize or further integrate 017 into her surroundings, that the girl possessed. From the individual fingers that served as direct inputs to her suit, to the fully replaced custom feet, lacking any sort of toes in preference of an almost perfectly smooth rounded platform that were barely a child’s 6 in shoe size, to the more rudimentary augments like the full skeletal reinforcement, the artificial heart and lungs meant to pump blood and oxygen in even the most extreme conditions, to the spine-mounted direct neural interface that wired itself up against her brainstem, and sat inside her skull reading every electrical impulse in whatever was left of that likely-atrophied gray matter. Original organic material was down to the single-digit-percentiles. 

  Ala found herself outside the door to Dr. Ibarres’ office. She knocked, no answer. She sighed. She knocked again, three solid raps against the faux-wooden door. Still nothing. She tried to look through the little window in the door, but given the lights were obviously turned off, with the one-way tint, she couldn’t see anything. And yet, the digital display above the handle read, in bright, clear letters,

OCCUPIED

  The hairs on the back of Ala’s neck stood up. There was only one way in and out of that office, and you wouldn’t be able to leave without opening the door and reverting the OCCUPIED to WELCOME. She quickly brought her tablet up to the handle and requested an override. The system requested a biometric verification in turn, to which Ala held her finger up behind her ear and pressed against the socket for her biomonitor. A second passed, two seconds, three… The screen of her tablet flashed green and welcomed Assistant Doctor Ala Rayburn, and notified her that her use of an override would be saved and recorded for future review. Ala burst into the room.

  “Doctor-“ she gasped, struck from her sentence in sudden shock. The room was dark, lights off, with only the light from the window and the now-open door illuminating the falsely-inviting, sterilized office of Dr. Ibarres. Even compared to the mess on the floor, the doctor’s terran plants were more out of place than anything else in the room, by a long shot. 

  Yet the pale, still corpse of Dr. Ibarres would be second place, if there was a competition. Ala nearly dropped her tablet.

  “Seventeen, what, wh-, what h-happened?”

  017 was sat on the floor in front of the doctor, between Ala and the corpse. And between 017 and the corpse were the faint smearings of blood, approaching dryness, and the faint red tint of blood wiped off the floor in a large puddle around what used to be Dr. Ibarres. 017’s head snapped to the side, startling Ala, as one of her eyes turned all the way left in its socket to meet her gaze. Her mouth, her lips, her chin, were all red. And her fingers. And her legs, where she was sitting in the puddle that had formed. 

  “Seventeen, s- oh my god,” Ala stammered. She was shaking. Her mind was racing. “What did you… what did you do?” 

  017 turned back to the doctor. The top of her DNI ran up her spine, seeming to sit atop her skin, and connected to the port in the back of her skull.

  “He-, I-… Ala, I-… Erlen, he-“ 017’s head flicked back towards Ala, her eye turning in its socket once more. 017 stopped stammering as she made eye contact with Ala, and Ala could see her artificial pupils dilate. An unsettling calm washed over 017, and her eye turned glassy. Ala could barely manage to set the tablet onto a nearby tabletop without dropping it, her eyes flicking back and forth between the corpse and the girl. 

  “Oh my god, fuck,” Ala reached up behind her other ear and tapped twice. The screen of the tablet silently lit up with a notification that emergency services had been notified. 017 watched her, motionless. Ala tentatively moved towards the girl. She needed her out of the room. If anything would push 017 into a spiral, it would be staying here. “Seventeen, get up, we- we have to go… now.”

  017 remained on the floor. Looking up at Ala, she asked,

  “Why… don’t i feel anything?” As she spoke, her voice cracked, and her eyes turned even glassier.

  “Come on, up, we need to get out of this room. Maybe somewhere we can breathe.” Ala crouched and clasped 017 around her shoulders, lifting her to her feet as she stood. Ala’s eyes were still glued to Dr. Ibarres. As she turned 017 towards the door, Ala noticed that she was shaking as well. 017 was easily taller than her, and heavier by a wide margin due to the augments, yet whenever Ala pushed, 017 moved as if she weighed no more than the paperwork filed in her name.

  “Ala… why- why don’t I feel this?” 017 asked, her voice beginning to shake as much as her prosthetics. She was starting to spin out. 

  “I don’t know seventeen but let’s just head out and sit for a second and we can talk through what happened… what happened?” Ala’s voice slipped into a murmur. “Fuck me, seventeen. what the fuck did you do?” 

  017’s prosthetics were all minimalist in design. Not the heavy duty work models, not the reinforced combat models, nor the sleek, elegant luxury models afforded by only the most indulgently wealthy. 017’s showed off lots of the inner workings. Wiring, hydraulics, sensors and clasps and fastenings all underneath the metal plates rigged with microscopic sensors designed to mimic the sensations of touch, which made up her “skin”. And as the two walked, Ala could hear those hydraulics, those sensors, those electronic couplings and fastenings and everything clatter against each other as 017 began to shake more and more. The minimalism of her limbs letting everything that could breathe even a bit do so what felt like a deafening display of nerves and growing overstimulation. And, possibly, panic. 

  “Ala…” 017 started, her voice a whimper, “…wh-why, why do i feel… bad?” 017 sucked in air after she spoke, which seemed to hitch in her throat. At the same time, Ala’s own breath caught as well. Her pace quickened, practically dragging 017 alongside her now. 

  Christ, Erlen, if only you weren’t dead on the damn floor, you’d love this. Ala’s mind was spinning. She needed to calm 017 down, and start taking notes as best she could. With Dr. Ibarres… dead… she supposed the duty of continuing patient care and research would fall to her. She was starting to feel numb. There was no fucking way this was really happening, right? Surely this was a stress dream. Or some nightmare, or-

  “I don’t know, seventeen, i don’t- i don’t know. I just, please, stop-stop shaking, please, i can’t think.” Ala rested her hand on 017’s shaking wrist, moving it from the pilot’s shoulder. As she did, as quick as she could snap her fingers, 017’s fingers bent up and around backwards as if Ala had put her hand in the girl’s palm. One of the side effects of not having knuckles. The metal fingers clamped around Ala’s wrist and locked in place, tiny maglocks in each joint keeping them static. 017 slammed Ala’s wrist against cold, plain wall behind her, and Ala gasped as her back made contact. Paralyzed in shock.

  017 looked down at her. 

  “I think… i think you do know… i think you just won’t tell me, right?” Their eyes met. Though 017’s voice was shaky and weak, Ala still felt fear. She couldn’t respond. “You won’t say anything, about me, right? And… and you already called them, right? That’s what you did when you… in the office, you…”

  Ala bit her bottom lip and nodded her head. it was all she could manage. 017 continued her interrogation.

  “You understand why then. Why i can’t stay, why i’m gonna have to go, right now.” Ala shook her head. It was imperative the project be kept within arms reach with the only exception being the occasional deployment but this wasn’t an option, she couldn’t allow th-

  “Ala. I’m sorry…” tears rolled down across 017’s cheeks, and Ala could feel her metal grip trimble around her wrist. “…but i have to go. And if i’m gonna go, i have to do this.” 017 hastily reached up and pressed the universal adapter of her left middle finger into the socket behind Ala’s right ear. Ala screamed, and fell silent only a second after 017 slipped her the input. 

  “I’m sorry about this, Ala.” 017 lamented as her eyes went wide and she seemed to drift off into space. In an instant, shifted through all the various system checks, biomonitor reports, augment specifications, intruder reports, until she found what she needed. Ala’s link to the tracker chip loaded into… 017’s chest, it looked like. Right under the heart. Good hiding spot, not one she would’ve guessed, she thought. She forced a control override and seized command of the tracker chip.

  “Seventeen, don’t… please…” Ala’s voice was barely a whisper.

  017 didn’t even register the request. As she seized remote control of the chip, she forced a kill command. She watched it upload, and felt the sharp, but minor, pain in her chest of the chip shorting out. Just turning it off wouldn’t be enough, 017 needed it to never work again. She heard Ala whimper. She knew everything she could see, Ala could see as well, pulled up like open windows on a tablet. She didn’t want to put Ala under. It was dangerous since she was still mostly organic, 017 couldn’t just command her heart to start beating again in 10 minutes or so. So she remained awake.

  As the pain faded, 017 looked through a bit more and found her links to panic switches, alarms, and the emergency hangar shutdown. In one command, 017 severed her link to all three. Guaranteeing her way out, and that, hopefully, she wouldn’t face much more resistance than absolutely necessary. 

  Curiosity struck her. She had everything she needed to leave. And yet, she could have more. Maybe. Ala’s tablet, it had all her records on it. All she needed was to grab the access off of Ala and then grab the tablet and take off before armed security got there… it was a stretch. It was a risk. An unnecessary one. But… it was worth a try. 

  She forced her way through Ala’s systems, her invasion moving nigh unhindered. Ala still wriggled in her grasp, weakly trying to keep 017 from continuing her assault. 017 knew firsthand how uncomfortable it was to have someone digging through your head. She regretted this had been necessary. Linked to her biometrics, stored in a separate scan related to the functions of the human body that didn’t fluctuate, a key generated off genetic makeup and base biological functions. As simple as copy-paste. Making a copy took a millisecond, and freezing the software after so it wouldn’t burn the access and lock both of them out took two. While 017 was there, using the stolen biometrics, 017 spoofed access into Ala’s general system and froze control of most accessories, the intent being to keep her from reopening everything the second she was free. 

  The second she froze Ala out, 017 was locked out too. She pulled her finger as the connection closed and let go of Ala. Her new former handler fell to the floor, silently weeping, her hand reaching up to cover the socket 017 had just finished with. 

  “Ala, i’m…” 017 reached down for her, to try to… console her? She didn’t really know, it was just… instinct. But as she saw how the dried blood of Dr. Ibarres was caked into her joints, between every moving piece of her hand, she pulled back. “…i’m sorry. I have to go now.”

  The second 017 looked away, she took off down the hall towards the office. The two hadn’t made it far, and almost immediately after pulling the first corner 017 had arrived. She threw the door open and nabbed the tablet off the table. And as fast as she had entered, she was off down the hall once again. 

  To Ala, only seconds had passed. She still sat on the floor, crying gently into her hands. The same metal footfalls that just left sped past her down the hallway in the opposite direction. She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t call for help, couldn’t make a report, couldn’t take notes, couldn’t demand a debrief from 017, she just sat and cried.

  017 was struggling not to get lost. The hallways all looked so similar, and she was usually so withdrawn on the walks. They didn’t keep map files anywhere either, and 017 was checking. As she ran, she was running a full sweep of the tablet, downloading everything related to herself and everything mentioned in her file that had its own files, based on keywords. There was… a lot.

  No maps of the building though. 017 came to an intersection. She came to a halt, metal grating against the cold white tile floor. She turned and looked down each hall, but th-

  Her eyes fell on a woman at the help desk, who looked immensely concerned. Her hands were still above the counter and not at her neck, which meant no silent alarms. 017 leapt onto and over the counter, standing over the woman.

  “You hit no buttons, tell me which way the hangar is, and give me a minute head start before you signal, and you’ll never see me again. So-“

  “Honey,” the woman interrupted, the calm steadfastness of her voice sharply contradicting the shock in her eyes, “I’m not dying for this job. I’ll take my chances of being fired.” She listed the path to the hangar perfectly, even filling in backup routes if 017 got lost. When she was finished, she waved 017 off.

  “Thank you, miss…?”

  “You don’t need my name, just see that you don’t come back.” 017 could see in her eyes as she spoke that it wasn’t personal. Well, maybe a little bit. 017 had likely just given her a mountain of paperwork, and possibly cost her her job. True to her promise, 017 hopped the counter and took off again, following the route given to her. 

  Every corner she rounded, she dug her fingers into the wall to help steer her momentum. The metal of her feet threatened to slide across the smooth floor and send her flailing, and the walls served as convenient anchors. She was aware she left a trail directly to her in doing so, but she hoped she had enough of a head start to g-

  The lights all turned orange and the halls were bathed in the blaring sound of emergency sirens. That had not been a minute’s head start, maybe forty-five seconds. 017 didn’t stop moving, even as an unnaturally calm voice began speaking over the alarm system 

  “Code 9-0-1-7 in effect. Repeat Code 9-0-1-7 in effect. Security units be advised, Code 9-0-1-7 in effect. All pilots and civilian personnel, please return to your personal quarters and remain in place until instructed otherwise by security personnel. Your cooperation will be appreciated and guarantee your safety. Please remain calm and quiet while security contains the ongoing situation…… Code 9-0-1-7 in effect-“

  The message looped. The nine before her designation meant containment breach, to be met with any necessary force. So, no pulling punches. No doubt they’d found Ibarres, otherwise 017 figured she wouldn’t have classified higher than a seven.

  017 could hear the distant sound of boots on the cold floor, the clattering of security gear against padded jackets, stun batons against belts, automatic weapons with topped-off mags. She needed to get out ASAP. She was durable, but she didn’t trust herself to hold up against a full squad with orders to empty the mag if she didn’t come quiet.

  She must have been going the right way, as the sounds were getting closer fast. She figured the crew normally stationed in the hangar may have come to join whatever other force was trying to capture her. She was running up to meet them. Sure enough, she was starting to be able to make out what could be words. If she could hear them, 017 was sure they could hear the clanking of metal on tile. Yes, there were words. And the pattern of footfalls was becoming shorter. Weapons readied, no longer a charge but an advance. 017 looked up at the ceiling. She was lucky. 

  The cheap tiling of the ceiling was fragile, and crumbled easily when she got her fingers into it. She just had to get past them before they found the mess and started putting holes into her hiding space. It also wasn’t entirely convenient, balancing on the stable supports which took up a fraction of the total space she clambered over and through. She crawled through the ceiling as deftly as she could, slithering over and past the air ducts, the metal pipes, the electrical cables, doing as best she could to keep the path in her mind. She’d only gotten down another few tens of feet before she heard the boots underneath, the chatter into commlinks, the gentle clattering of combat gear as it was waved back and forth, sweeping halls and clearing corners.

  It wasn’t enough distance. She hadn’t gotten far enough from where she’d crawled into the ceiling to be comfortable taking her chances. 017 pressed her ear against the ceiling underneath her. She could hear several pairs of feet, but not a full group. Not an entire building’s wing, just a few. Much more doable. She’d already heard two pairs move under her. She just needed another pair…

  NOW.

  The second she heard the next set of feet below herself she reeled back and smashed the ceiling under herself to pieces and dove through, tablet lodged between her teeth. As she fell down into the hallway, she grasped the heads of two of the men, one in each hand, and as she landed, smashed them into the floor. There was a muffled crunch, impossible to tell if it was the floor, their helmets, or their skulls. Just as long as they didn’t get up. She looked up, further into the hallway where the men had come from. Clear. She looked back between her legs. Counted three standing. She pushed back on her palms, rocketing backwards feet-first into the closest security officer, knocking his weapon from his hand onto the floor and wrapping her hands around his ankles. She tugged on his feet and pulled them out from under the man, who fell flat onto his back. Her legs pinned both his shoulders to the floor, and as she spun around on top of him, grabbing his rifle off the floor and sliding so her shin was firmly over his throat, she shifted her weight accordingly. 017 had already heard them call reinforcements, there wasn’t any point trying to be quiet. The following exchange of gunfire left two men bloody on the floor, one gurgling as his throat spilled into a puddle beside him, the other dead as a doornail, the hole in his skull having silenced him immediately. 017 had a couple new dents to work out, and one of those shots had hit something important, between the thin plating that normally protected her. 

  She tossed the rifle aside as the last casing came to rest on the tile, and swiftly twisted her leg, eliciting a sharp snap from the man struggling underneath her, and all at once he stopped struggling. She rose off him, giving a quick kick to his temple. Another crack, just to make sure. 017 felt… distant. From herself. Whenever these things happened, outside her suit, she never reveled in the combat like she did when she was deployed. She didn’t like feeling like this. Shattering an assailant with a passing kick, crushing them into the floor, that was supposed to feel good… right?

  She groaned, and started off again down the hallway. She heard a voice through the radio, calm, feminine, requesting squad Theta to update status. She didn’t have too much farther to the hangar, but her chest burned. There was a messy, shredded hole just under her right breast. As 017 tore through the hallways, she ran a systems check, gave herself a once over, checked for what could still return a ping. No major damage was being reported, but she was still going to have to fix what she could, hopefully not too many replacements to be ordered. Luckily, since she had her own specs, she could know exactly what needed to be custom-fabricated and what could just be a repurchase. 

  If the woman at the help desk had been telling her the truth, 017 believed she was getting close. It looked… vaguely familiar. It was hard to fully take in her surroundings as she sprinted between rooms, through empty lobbies, past offices and across lounges. The complex was bigger on the inside than it seemed to be on the outside, by no small amount. 017 ran out into a t-junction, turned her head left, and…

  yes! Finally! 017 darted towards the heavy metal and AM-III glass. As she came to a stop outside, she got the same alert she always got. 

  Unauthorized Scan In Progress

  Anxiously, she tapped her “heel” on the ground, as she waited. The heavy doors finally slid open and she eagerly stepped into the airlock. Then it was another scan for decontamination and contraband, and then she could leave. Even though she was leaving, the automated system always ran a decontamination scan. It had to do with making sure no one was smuggling anything particularly dangerous, such as a decaying core sample… which had apparently happened a few times, and was the reason scans were required both ways. It was strange, though. The machines that usually ran their processes hadn’t even started yet. And usually those machines would’ve been done by now… unless, they shut it down remotely.

  Panic gripped her. She shouted obscenities at herself. Stupid move. Really fucking stupid. Of COURSE they’d just shut it down. It reads my biometrics, it registers me, it fucking TOLD them i was here. Mother FUCK…

  It was fully automated, so there wasn’t a window to break through. The glass on the doors was as solid as diamond, so that wouldn’t be happening. Ceiling wasn’t going to budge, neither would the floor. 017 spun around in her little metal prison. Bouncing from one wall to the other. She could hear the echo of the voice from the halls change its message. Something about containment, west wings, and the word “alive”. 017 could get the gist of it. Still, knowing they didn’t have active plans to kill her anymore was only a small relief. It was heavily counteracted by knowing that if they caught her now, she’d spend years in rehabilitation and reeducation. They’d strip her for parts. They’d hook her up to all the wires and cords and plug her into that fucking chair and they’d scream it all straight into her brain-

  She was spinning. Her mind was spinning. Her chest burned. She pressed her face to the glass on the hangar-side doors and scanned the room. There she was. Over three stories tall, beautiful white and red paint, just a stone's throw away. She just needed to get to her suit. Once she was whole, this shithole would never see her again. She ran her hands over the door. No weaknesses in the construction of her little metal cell. Unless… the doors were electrically powered. Maybe, if she could get the power off, she could force the door open. Except there wasn’t a way to cut power from inside the box. Not without a way-

  tablet

  Holy shit, the tablet! 

  She fumbled the tablet into her grasp and opened it. 017 had used equipment like this little thing plenty, navigating it was easy. Access would be the kicker. It was a longshot, for sure. Ala wasn’t a technician. But they gave 017 some of the best firewall-busters they had. She held it up in front of the hangar door, requested a command prompt, and found that, unsurprisingly, she didn’t have clearance for anything more than requesting assistance. So, she ran a proxy. That got her a request for verification of identity. She doubted Erlen Ibarres would have any more clearance than Ala in this department. So she would have to spoof one. She ran a database search for employed personnelal by department and labor union, found the head of the bio-programming subset of technicians. 

  Arnolis Walcott…

  017 didn’t remember meeting him. Didn’t matter. Wouldn’t have mattered regardless of her situation, but as she turned and saw the armed figures standing outside the door behind her, she decided it especially did not matter. She ran a clearance check. It passed. The men behind her were starting to move more hurriedly, frantically tapping earpieces and signaling to each other. She queried control of the electrical systems, and the second she got clearance forced an emergency shutdown to the block she is in. 

  The lights went down, her box becoming exceptionally dark, save for the space illuminated through the windows. Several of the men threw up their hands, or pounded on the door. The others resigned themselves to their failed capture attempt. And now that the locks on the door were down, 017 dashed forwards and dug her fingers into the space between. As they found purchase, she wrenched them apart with everything she could muster. She trembled. Though she received no active resistance, they were still mostly metal, hundreds of kilograms, and sat as dead weight in their housings. She heard something clatter into the doors behind her, and assumed her pursuers had copied her idea. She needed to be faster. She was faster. She dug in and pulled harder. The metal squealed against itself as she pried a space open. She had an inch. The men behind her were making progress too. They would need more space than her, however. Assuming orders hadn’t changed and they wouldn't just shoot her…

  She let one side of the door go and pressed both hands against the other, pushing it alone. It slid back several more inches, just enough. 017 slipped a leg through, then a shoulder.

  “Overgrown lab rat!”

  017 knew that voice. Lieutenant Grey. He’d always had it out for her. She sucked in her ass, tucked her chest, and popped across to the other side. Just as she had spun around to shut the door behind her, bullets clattered against the metal, ricocheting into the dark box, several passing through the gap into the wide open hangar space. Obviously, orders had changed.

  “Make this easy or I swear, 017-“

  “What, you’ll kill me?” His threats were empty at this point. He had his orders. Exterminate. Didn’t surprise her in the slightest that he was leading her hunt. The bottoms of her feet screeched against the floor as she dragged the door closed. As she shut them fully, watching her pursuers finally start to spill into the box as they opened their own set, she had a wonderful ide.

  come on, grey, come and gloat. intimidate me, come on, a few more steps… 017 watched Lt. Grey step to the front, fury in his eyes and a smug grin on his face. 

  “You won’t make it to that suit, 017. We both know it.”

  017 flicked up the tablet, showing Grey the screen.

  RESTORE POWER? Y/N.

  Realization washed over his face. “You fucking wouldn’t. No.” He turned on his heels and started running for the entrance. “Go! Out, everyone out!”

  017 turned the power back on in only a moment, and the doors rebooted and shut themselves on both sides. Now she was the one with the smug grin, and Grey ran up to meet her, his face centimeters away from the glass on the other side. He was saying something but it was all muffled now. He was shouting. Face turning red. 

  It was hilarious. 

  017 couldn’t help but laugh, and once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop. It was perfect. This was for every time he’d harassed her for a minor infraction. Every time he’d held her up for a random search or compliance check. She fiddled with the tablet’s screen, laughing so hard she felt she’d start crying. Her chest hurt. This was for every look, every comment, every time he called her a mistake, this was for everything.

  She made a final command through the screen, and as the little box filled with little men had its atmosphere pumped out, creating a vacuum that promptly spilled innards and eyes and other sensitive tissue all over the floor, 017 laughed at him. At Grey. She couldn’t stop herself. Her chest was pounding. One of her implants was alerting her to several anomalies in her biological systems, but she couldn’t manage to hear it over the echo of her own laughter pounding through her reinforced skull. Another started trying to regulate her adrenaline and epinephrine levels, both of which were fluctuating. She slowly backed away from the door, still laughing, shaking. Her smile was gone, replaced with a toothy grimace still covered in dried blood. She nearly tripped over herself as she turned to run. That should’ve made her happy, it should have been good, it just… wasn’t. She felt even worse. Why did she feel worse? 

  She was nearly to her suit. All three stories, painted that beautiful warm white complimented with metallic reds. The dark grays and silvers of alloys interspersed between the two. That suit was hers and she wouldn’t be leaving without it. Without it, she wouldn’t make it very far. Half-submerged in the floor, the top of Lacewing stood nearly two stories above her. She was over one-hundred-tons of custom-tuned carnage with a high focus on speed and maneuverability. 017 was still recovering from her fit, managing to bring herself down to a constant giggle, as she made her way around the catwalk to the rear of the torso. There was still no movement or sound from the doors, which gave 017 just enough time to admire her suit. Lacewing was her favorite part of being a pilot. Not piloting the suit, the suit itself. Tuning it, commissioning the paint job, having little adjustments made to the parts to get her to move just right while still being able to suck up small arms fire like nothing. 017 envied Lacewing, for her suit possessed things 017 never would. 

  She stepped up to the port, and as soon as it recognized her and opened, she slipped inside, climbing up into the cockpit. It was dark as could be, the only light coming from the one ambient tube at the rear of the cockpit, illuminating the plugs for 017’s ports. She’d seen inside some of the newer models, for the newer pilots. The ones without the jacks that plugged directly into the pilot. She was happier this way, it felt more personal. The rear port closed up behind her and sealed, the airtight hiss preceding the pressure shift by less than a second. She stood in place, her feet fitting into their stirrups, and reached up behind her head, grasping the cerebral jack and bringing it to the back of her head. Lining it up was second nature, and she slipped it into her port, sending the tiny characteristic snap of electricity through her body. All of a sudden. She was looking through her own eyes and the ocular lenses of Lacewing. The first time she’d experienced this overlap she’d nearly thrown up. She set her head into place, and stuck her arms forwards, fingers spread, each one finding its own housing and plugging in as if she was putting on a pair of gloves. In an instant, the arms of Lacewing were her own. She initiated a full-system boot-up, and as the cockpit tightened around her, the soft, squishy cushioning filling the space between her and the metal walls of the cockpit, she let her body go limp. Lacewing caught her as she did, swaddling her in perfectly-fitted full-body G-Insulate. It felt like home. She let her mind drift out of her body, and up into Lacewing, and as she opened her eyes again, she looked down nearly two stories to the hangar floor. And she knew she would never be coming back here, so she was going to have some fun undocking. 

  She cleared the hangar to disconnect all cords and hoses and supports, and felt her full weight drop to the hangar’s basement floor, nearly a floor and a half below where she’d clambered in from. 

  DESIGNATION: G5.1-S017

  CALLSIGN: BUTTERFLY

  REGISTRATION CLEARANCE: LACEWING

  TRANSFERRING SYSTEM CONTROL

  WELCOME

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