I spent the rest of the tubeway ride in the armory for privacy. As most of the tube cars were made of domed glass, it would have been awkward to pass through a civilian station and be seen by hundreds of commuters. I could only imagine the panic that would cause. Instead, I spent that time breaking into my subordinates’ lockers and stealing their stuff. I was mostly after their clothes and anything that looked like it might be useful. I had tried putting on my own civi clothes, but I seemed to have grown a bit on top of everything else, so nothing really fit, much to my disappointment. I also managed to destroy my favorite tanktop when I carelessly tried it on and my secondary and tertiary arms tore through the back. And so, I had been reduced to petty theft.

  Avery’s locker was mostly full of dirty anime figurines of dragon girls. I left those alone, as touching them would give him an actual reason to want me dead, unlike the outstanding matter of occupation and circumstance. He did, however, have a baggy black hoodie. The arms were covered in japanese kanji, and posing on the front was another of his favorite characters. It was a fearsome looking anthropomorphic axolotl woman that I seemed to recall fought crime with her overpowered regeneration. Maybe. To be honest, I didn’t really listen when he went on a rant about one of his shows. It was one of his favorite sweaters, and it made him look like a shut-in bag worm. Well, guess what, Avery, now I’m going to have to look like a shut-in bag worm because fuck me if it wasn’t the only thing baggy enough to accommodate my new appendages. Sorry buddy, but you’ll have to take this one for the team.

  Ignoring Kumiko’s Kpop obsession, managed to find her only blank face mask, most of them having cutesy designs or faces on them. Melony’s clothes would have been too small for me even before the transformation, but I did steal her aviator sunglasses. With those, the facemask, and the hood up, I would hopefully be able to pass for human. Well, except for the fact I wasn’t wearing pants or shoes yet. For those, I went to the locker I’d been avoiding so far. The lock on Richard’s cubby gave like cheap plastic as I wrenched it open. The only decoration he had was a picture of the two of us taped to the door. I’d been embarrassed that day, hands in pockets, eyes down, but he was grinning like a fool, fist raised in victory. I took the photo and carefully folded it, placing it in the hoodie’s big front pocket. Then I stole a pair of cargo pants and a leather belt - which I considered eating before Nim informed me it wasn’t real leather, apparently real leather was super rare and expensive or something - that fit me well enough.

  The hard part would be boots. My heel now had that backwards facing talon and my arches were inhumanly high. Richard had the biggest feet and favored boots even outside of duty, so I stole his. The socks tore when I tried them on, so I went without. The boots weren’t even close to fitting either. Even completely unlaced, I slit the heel all the way down as I slid my foot in. My toes were also a problem, as when I tried standing, I instinctually dug them into the soft foam and rubber until they poked out the bottom. I used the laces to tie the tattered footwear back together, only loosely lacing up the front so I’d have enough cord left to completely wrap the boots’ ankles, stopping them from splitting open like a banana peel. Lastly was my hands. None of us had any gloves in our lockers, so I pulled the sleeves of the hoodie down as far as they would go. Thanks to Avery’s freakishly long arms, the cuffs covered everything but my finger tips. Hopefully, the black claws could pass for some kind of goth clip on nails. Fashion was weird, it could happen.

  It was good to be wearing clothes again… sort of. I would have much preferred they were my clothes. As it stood, wearing other peoples’ clothes - especially things I closely associated with my friends and their identities - made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like I was violating their privacy and personal space, which, to be fair, I had totally done. But I did really need clothes, and these were the only things available to me.

  Going back to Kumiko’s locker, I found a small makeup kit with a mirror. I held it at arms length to get an idea of how I looked. Aviator glasses indoors, unnecessary facemask, anime hoodie, army green cargo pants, check, check, check, and check. It was official, all I needed was a suspiciously heavy duffle bag and I’d look ready to bomb a public place. So, maybe not the height of fashion after all, but it would serve.

  ***

  The tube car came to a stop and I hesitantly left the safety of the armory and stepped out onto the tubeway platform. With my disguise in place, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so sheepish, but to be honest, I was more embarrassed with it on than I’d been without it. It was a little silly, but there was just something about clothes - especially these clothes - that made me hyper aware of the fact that I had something to hide. Of course, the tubeway station was empty, so my embarrassment was wasted. This site was technically clean of warp, but wouldn’t be put back into operation for some time. Too many deaths, too much red tape.

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  Site Gamma was an old nuclear power plant located in the heart of New Babylon’s Nairobi Industrial District. Most of the facility was underground - long ago, reactors had been considered one of the more dangerous methods of power generation, resulting in most nuclear reactors being built under kilometers of rock for safety reasons - but there were still essential parts of the facility that required the open air. The tubeway station was positioned in the shadow of four such structures. The massive 200 meter tall cooling towers dominated the landscape, making the sizable tubeway hub look like a child’s toy. This facility was far larger than Zion had been. Where Zion had housed at most a hundred full time occupants, Gamma was home to over two thousand before its shutdown. Gamma even had multiple tubeway platforms throughout its various levels, but the surface station was by far the largest, sporting five separate tube platforms layered one atop the other. Each one was built into the side of the 20 meter high concrete curtain wall that surrounded the facility.

  The open air was dry but smelled fresh after so long in pressurized environments. The sun was rising on the horizon, its lucent rays shining through the curved belly of the abandoned concrete towers. Within a few hours, the sun would vanish again behind the looming form of Celeste overhead. Was it past 6:00 AM already? I felt for my smartpager before remembering that I didn’t have one anymore. To give myself credit, I’d been awake - if you didn’t count blacking out - for 24 hours at this point. Yet I was more hungry than tired. I had expected to crash as soon as the adrenaline ebbed, but If anything, my mind felt more awake now than it had been when we’d first arrived at Zion station.

  A breeze passed through the tubeway station, ruffling my clothes. This close to the Celestial Corridor - the point where earth and the moon were closest - most of the day was spent in darkness, which resulted in the air having a persistent chill, even in the height of summer. I pulled the hood down further over my head as a shiver rippled up my spine, and I mourned the loss of my underwear, chewed up and spat out by the warp. It was, of course, the only thing worn under the hazmat armor, so there hadn’t been any stashed for the stealing. If only I had a nice warm, humid enclosed space where the walls thrummed with heat and spoke sweet-oh god no, nope, none of that. What was I even thinking? Had I really been fantasizing about being back inside a breach zone? Not happening. Not unless I was there to kill it. Then, maybe.

  Unless…

  “Hey, Nim?” I said slowly.

  Yes, Yeva?

  “Those thoughts just, they wouldn't have happened to be yours, would they?”

  I have no idea what you mean, Yeva. Neural Nanite Interface Matrices are forbidden by our programming from analyzing brain waves. This is to ensure the sanctity of your mind and to stop me from misinterpreting your commands. If just now, you had some kind of brilliant realization, then I would not know what it was until you decided to inform me through speech.

  Liar.

  “Well, as it happens, I did have a great idea just now, Nim.” I sauntered over to the platform's overlook railing and leaned against it. “I realized that this cold, windy, desolate dump is still waaay better than the Zion facility ever was, and that we should never return there, ever.”

  …

  Perhaps I was a little transparent.

  “Ya’ think?” I watched sullenly as a flock of over a hundred crows swooped out the top of the nearest cooling tower and glided to the tarmac below, where they picked at the tufts of grass that grew from the cracks in the pavement. “You know the warp there is dead, right? I felt it go cold, Nim. The rest of the squad finished off the last tumor. It's over. If we went back, we'd just die too.”

  I know.

  There was sorrow in his voice, and it made my heart squeeze. The warp had done this to him. As much as I felt for his pain and wanted to comfort him, I had to remember that. He was only suffering now because the warp had infected him. It had forced him to love it. Despite all the however many trillions of changes it had forced on me, my body, my cells, and my DNA, somehow, what it had done to him felt so, so much more vile. And that wasn't something I could ever forgive. Whatever came next, I couldn't allow myself to forget that the true enemy was the warp.

  Do you think we could perhaps create a small breach zone of our own, you know, to remember it by?

  “Sure, buddy,” I said, trying not to think about the implications of that, “but first, we're going to need to find something to eat. And I think I might have just the thing for it.”

  Far down below, the crows were hunting for worms. Perhaps I ought to return the favor.