Anabelle Grazhe's written notes on Crimson Souls leadership, and their history following New California's earthquake.

They weren't always one of our four nightmares, there was a time the Queen's Blood gang was manageable aside from their Silver Queen. Then Crimson Heart appeared out of nowhere, and their influence exploded fast enough that even the other three gangs lost to this relatively small group when the Earthquake struck.

What should have taken decades only took years, and now they have two Gold Adapters leading them.

The Crimson Queen is mayhem incarnate, a deadly force that would require multiple Special Investigators to even dent her. Her 230 Million Bounty isn't for nothing after all.

The Crimson Heart may very well be Westbrook's most powerful Esper. Illusions, psychokinetic constructs, thermal manipulation, and even minor reality warping if rumors are believed. More than any of the puppeteers, she's the most elusive of them — maybe even the most dangerous. 350 million is no small fee for SynTec, but I'd wager they would double that if she were more proactive.

Ripley

"Fishing? You know… as much as I would want to see a body of water near us that's even suitable for swimming in, I… really don't think that can help."

Crimson Heart shook her head. "We fish for your memories, the ones that are buried. It's quite simple: We will use any positively reinforced memory and sink you into it. From there, explore until you find a portion of yourself that's cloudy. Don't force anything; just exist, understand that it's still you, and if possible, try to link those positive emotions towards the memory that was sealed off."

That sounded like pseudoscience bullshit, but at this point I was desperate enough to try it. But before that… "Exactly how are you even getting paid for this?"

"I get paid through this very act, the exact details are best kept hidden between us, but I do not intend on hurting you in any form, nor do I share any details about my clients to others, even among Crimson Souls."

"I don't… know if I can just take your word for it."

"In fact, you very much can. As you are aware, a psionic force flows through this room, one that can bind both me and you to a verbal agreement. I was already going to do so, as I also require your discretion."

"And… that… what, like, prevents me from saying anything about you?"

"Anything you agree on."

"Can I… test it out?" There was no way this was real.

"Very well. Do you, Ripley Donovick, agree that you can no longer say the word… pony?"

Pony? Despite the odd word, I couldn't deny the way the air rushed around me with invisible, patient daggers awaiting my input. "Uh, yeah. I guess I agree."

Those daggers sank in. There was no pain, or any physical sensation, it was more like a jolt of thought awakening me from a dream. My mouth moved to say the word, and my vocal chords stretched to say 'pony'. "………"

Huh? I tried again. "…………No fucking way. Horse. Baby horse. Less ugly ass. Tiny equestrian mythical mammal. P……"

I waited a moment. "-Ony?"

"A Japanese devil, how delightful."

"Is this a mental block of some kind?" I'd heard of some advanced neural-interfacing chips capable of this. Dreamframes were one example, a more invasive and technical version of a Neuroframe.

"I suppose that would be the scientific explanation for it. It works both ways, so if you've accepted it, then we can make our agreement."

"Alright… fine. I guess I don't want you telling anyone about my Gold BUG, even my identity. Whichever ones you know off. You can't tell anyone about the memories you see, nor that I have this issue, in fact, just pretend like you don't know me personally if I ever come up in a conversation. And by me, I mean... Ripley Donovick."

"Those terms are… acceptable if you agree with mine. Likewise, you are to in no way reveal my identity to others as your so-called 'Therapist', you are not to reveal the Grade of your 'therapist's Implant nor the exact details of her power other than bringing out your memories. You are not to reveal that she uses Shardware, nor say she has a direct affiliation to Crimson Souls."

Those terms sounded fine. "Very well, I, Ripley Donovick, agree to your terms."

The air felt hotter than usual, and my mind briefly ached as the terms settled in. An oath, Founder, what fantasy novel had I dove into?

"Very well, Ripley, try to focus on a topic important to you, on what has given you certain traits. Something that asks why, rather than how, try to bring back memories from your childhood — it's easier to move forward than backward through this process."

Like reeling in a hook towards your present… in a pseudoscientific manner. Okay, so focus on ideas about who I am. Why do I have these traits?

I'm Ripley Donovick, I'm the son of Isabel Gravas-Donovick and—

It was harder than ever to remember my father's name.

—Dominic Donovick. I'm the grandson of Alberich Gravas, also known as the Hammersmith. Within me lies a Gold BUG, taken from a MAL that attacked the club where I worked as a Shard Operator. I joined hands with mercenaries afterwards.

I became friends with Diamante, Topaz, and Missy. I became Elsa's boyfriend. I became… questionable allies with The R0N1N and Diana Ulrich.

I became a mercenary… but I was a Shard Operator before all of that.

I'd been a Shard Operator since… since I was young. Really young.

It started with… stories in the dark. My dad lit up holograms showing two floating starships, Emberheart and Shadowheart, from which the Founders had escaped when the Earth collapsed under nuclear warfare during the mid-21st Century.

But they were far from the first starships. Humanity had been to the moon nearly 100 years before that, and they'd gone on nothing but code written on paper. It was in our nature to build, to make progress, and to witness new frontiers with every decade.

But that wasn't why I wanted to be a Shard Operator.

"I feel like I'm close, but I can't… I want to remember why I'm a Shard Operator. It has something to do with my father but…"

"Shall I make it easier for you? Do you agree not to lie in your response to my next question?"

"…sure."

"Why are you a Shard Operator, Ripley Donovick?"

The answer slipped out of me like my vocal chords had been lubricated. "I wanted to prove to my dad that I was… one of the best. I- I wanted his praise, the same way he praised my mother. I… yeah, I remember a bit, they went to the same university. She used to do repairs for cheap and he needed a laundry machine fixed, they ended up marrying in a year and… had me pretty soon after.

"My mom didn't go for a postgraduate after I was born, not for another few years… she… when I around eight, she went back and my dad cleared a room for her. I would watch her tinker, I would…"

My heartbeat thrummed faster.

"I wanted to…"

It ached as each beat came like thunder, a rolling storm that reached for long forgotten memories.

"…fix things."

My eyes met Crimson Heart's primal red as my own heart crescendoed. Then the crimson consumed me, and I was gone.

———

I hadn't been in this apartment in more than a decade, yet it all came slowly and clearly: the couch my mom fell asleep on as she spent hours studying for exams, the expensive coffee table I'd scratched the paint off because I was bored, and that laundry machine in the bathroom that my dad never threw away no matter how many times it broke down.

And there he was, loudly coming through the entrance, much to little me's joy as I hopped off my mom's lap. A toy I was holding dropped as my little legs shuffled over into his arms. He carried me up so easily—but I couldn't make out his face.

"There's my little Ripper! What have you and my wife been up to, huh?" He sounded so full of joy and contentment, the pearly whites of a smile just visible through the hazy echo I could make out of his face.

"I was doing my puzzle; let me show you. " At this point, my tinier version noticed the cube that had fallen to the ground. It was broken into pieces, and sadness gripped me. "I- it's broken!"

Before I could devolve into a tantrum, my mother chuckled and grabbed the cube from her seat. She was tired, but not in the same way she was now. Life hadn't jaded her yet. "Don't worry, Ripley, I'll take care of it."

"You'll fix it?"

My dad bolstered me up to his shoulders. "Your mother can fix anything! She fixed my damn heart for one!"

She slapped his arm, her charming and beautiful smile moving me like a tidal wave. Her face was devoid of any wrinkles, both of her eyes proud and shining like bronze, and her right arm was sleek before she was forced to don my grandfather's crude prototype. She moved with grace and calculation, just like a Shard Operator should.

"Always cleaning up after you boys…" She began to move away towards her office, but I grabbed a fistful of my dad's hair. I'd seen it in a movie once of a mouse doing it.

"Mama, I want to see how you fix it!"

For a moment, pride filled her gaze, a soft chuckle echoing. "Sure."

My dad, still grunting from the pain of having his hair pulled, followed her as I entered the office where Shardware tools and pieces were neatly arranged around for us.

I watched in awe as she fixed the cube, taking in every articulation she managed in seconds. Little me was curious, poking a question here and there that my mom answered with some simplified technobabble that though I couldn't understand, hung to my ears for years to come.

"I want to fix things too!"

"You sure, Ripley?" My dad flicked his gaze up to me. "It's a very hard job. Lots of school, and you already don't like school."

"I don't." I pouted before my grip on his hair got tighter. "But I want to fix things too! I can fix the laundry machine so you don't always need to leave early for mom when you're telling me your stories! I'll become wayyy better than her. Then we can have fun all of the time!"

"Gah! Okay, okay! I get it…!" He hoisted me off his shoulders. "God, you really like ripping things apart already… well then you're going to have to be way better than your mom! She doesn't just rip things, she also puts them back together!"

"I put them back together even more!" I hopped up next to my mom, diligently watching her as she began to move her curiosity over to her actual projects…

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Slowly, time drifted into the future. My height grew taller, but my voice remained in the tone of a rubber duck. Little by little, I learned, my grades shot way up for anything science-related. At some point, my mom even let me begin handing her tools, as long as I promised to use safety goggles and gloves while I was with her.

I learned. I grew and…

The flow abruptly stopped to the sound of an argument.

"Jesus Isa! You know how hard it is to be a Shard Operator! Putting a damn Silver in his head isn't going to get him into a good school, the money from it will! You've been complaining to me non-stop about how much hell they're giving you due to your background. If it wasn't for your damn father leaving you all that money when he abandoned you, I don't know what you would be doing!"

"Excuse me?!" My mother's voice rose like a sharp blade. "I put my ass into my work! And Ripley's twice the Shard Op' I was at his age, that Silver is what he deserves."

"It'll be a damn target on his head! You don't know these rich folks the way I do Isa, my fucking dad is one of them!"

"I know! Dom! But the point of all of this is that the Implant was left to me by my father! It's my choice, I chose not to take it for myself because of the risk, I was alone! But Ripley has us!"

"Isa, be honest… do you even know where you'll work after this? I love you, and I know better how smart you are… which is why it hurts to know that the jobs you deserve are going to nepo-babies… because unless we get Ripley into a top school, the Silver will only hurt him. They'll target him and-"

"We have time, Dom. He's only nine. He won't need to apply until he's twenty… he won't need the Implant until then. We can save. We can… we can work it through."

"No matter how much we save… that's not going to be enough when Shard School costs you half a million a year — especially ones that will cater to a Silver."

At this point, it hit me. I'd always imagined my old apartment as a big suite on the very top floor of a megabuilding… yeah, the apartment was big. But I was a small child.

And then I'd been dropped down to below the earth, into a dank room smaller than my bedroom here. I was never really… rich. It's not that we were struggling, but the fact was that my dad worked alone while my mother was studying and spending for her degree. And… clearly he wasn't as high up as I thought he was — why else would they have terminated him?

But all of this… I was still satisfied with it. Once. Maybe that was childish naivety, but when did I become different? When did I start yearning for more? To be better, to be the best?

My mother rubbed her eyes. "My father, as terrible as he was at being present, got me into my school. Let me try and do the same for him…"

"Jesus Isa, I hope you're right, because I- he's a soft kid. Gentle. He'll be eaten up alive. He'll need to be the best. The very best."

And that was it, that was the seed that planted in my head.

My mother scoffed. "You still don't trust me?"

The argument continued as my tinier self sank away. I needed the best. Then I could go to a big Shard School, and they would stop fighting. I needed to show them that I could be good and that I would be the best there ever was.

So I snuck into my mother's office and set the tools up. My first solo-project was simple, jewelry made of Shards. I lined up the finger length pieces, adjusting their shape with tweezers as I began to solder them together, the hot iron molding into shape as made sure it came to my idea perfectly.

I was never really good at artistry in my Shardware; I was always more of a practicality enthusiast, but this time was different. My first time was incredibly different. There was no neuro wiring, no coding, no joints or synth muscles—just metal and heart.

Blood and steel.

And that was exactly what I made—an Iron Heart with fault lines placed exactly as my mother had shown me. With a tiny torch, I used it like a pen to inscribe my parents' initials on the front.

And mine on the back. Then I snapped it in two, punched a hole into their corners and strung neurowiring to make a loop.

When I came to my parents, they were both slunk on the couch, a foot of distance between them, but they both had a cup of coffee in their hands. I placed one half of the heart by each of them.

My dad had the piece with my mom's initials.

My mom had the piece with my dad's.

And they both had one-half of my name on the back.

"For both of you!" I smiled proudly. "You always said to stop fighting to me and Se////."

"Did you go through my stuff?" My mom wiped her face. "Ripley, you know you can't-"

She stopped herself, reading the names on the shard. My dad did the same in silence, even behind the masked echoes of light where the features of face should be, the emotion on them twisted into me like a knife. "Ripley… thank you, it's… very nice. Why did you make it?"

"To fix you both," I said nonchalantly.

Both of my parents chuckled at that, my dad rubbing my head as he looked at my mother. "What's your verdict on his work?"

"A diamond is somewhere in there, just need to wring out the coal. I find it beautiful Ripley, did you use my technique?"

"Yeah!" I excitedly held her shirt.

"Well then, I better teach you some more!"

"Really?"

She didn't answer immediately, instead her face searched for my dad. And he answered with a sigh that melted into a proud smile. "Guess we better start saving."

My mom blinked her tears away, holding the necklace up to the light. "Who on earth made you such a romantic? I know it wasn't your dad… oh I really hope you don't give poor little S///// a hard time when you're older."

My dad poked her forehead. "You act like you didn't have bad exes."

———

And so time moved on, that little workshop of my mom's got more cluttered as her work got more complicated. My hands got steadier, my mind sharper and my body got taller.

They wore that necklace everyday, their faces full of hope. My mom was in her second-last year when my dad apporached me, his expression unnaturally serious and grave.

Then the memory turned hazy, I knew I should have grabbed it further at this moment, that I should confront the words I said that lead him to uncovering whatever damn SynTec scandal was happening.

Instead, he got fired. My mom's degree was taken from her, and some bogus debt drove us to poverty. Even with their Implants taken or sold to save us, my parents kept themselves strong.

In the beginning.

My mom found her place with Shaun. Apparently, my dad had some connection with him—he helped, too, selling out SynTec secrets to keep us afloat.

My mom kept me away from the Shard Operating at this point, but I managed a few personal projects of my own. She became the breadwinner once my dad's secrets were out, and his study of business didn't help him one-bit when he was blacklisted from every major company. Most of them owned by SynTec.

I got taller, my voice got deeper, I got angrier, and I… I don't remember what happened, but I remember shouting. My mom wasn't home, it was just me and my dad. And he left the house, still wearing that damn necklace.

And it was on him when I saw his corpse at the police station later that day.

The memory grew hazy once more, the officers were saying that damned story, but most of it was rejected by my ears. Not the tinier me, but the me witnessing the dream firsthand. Snippets of it escaped into me like a ghost of something real…

This was all real. My father was dead, and they said it was because of 'Embrance. That damn drug made you think back of younger times, better times, and he imagined himself playing with a toy gun as a child. In that bar, he was holding a very real gun, and that Investigator — Eric Flinn — was faster.

It was ironic that my dad looked back at happier times when his present was bad. I rejected the bad times to have a happier present. I wasn't sure which method of self-neglect was worse, but I think I learned something.

Maybe.

I still didn't know the truth about his death, about that Silver Implant my grandfather left them. Where did it go? It was possible someone stole it off his body when he died, but all clues pointed to Mr. Skeleton having an interest in it.

My mom changed after his death, she began to spiral downwards into both her work and with drink, and I was hopeless. I wanted to forget, maybe Shaun knew that and it's why he sent Hoaqin to enterprise the Personality Editor to me. I was smart enough to get it working, but I was so damn desperate.

It must have been when I was sixteen or seventeen when my mom started showing symptoms. At eighteen, she'd clawed her eye out once the optic nerve had burned out. At nineteen, I lost my damn hand to a botched Pandora. At twenty, her shaking was so bad she couldn't drive anymore. At twenty-one, her Iron Implant was taken out and sold after we found it had a sub-fifty compatibility with me. I sold a kidney for the money spent on installing my new arm.

And three months ago I turned twenty-two. I was a Gold Adapter now.

Somewhere in that golden orb was hope for both of us. A better life, the kind my parents had argued over. The opportunity to fix things.

My vision rewound back to when I first laid eyes on her piecing that puzzle cube back together. We were happy, we were so fucking happy, but in the end the future of my past marched on without mercy. But it wasn't as bleak as I remembered it being.

I scrolled through thousands of pages trying to learn even a fraction of what my mother knew, and my dad was there asking me to explain it to him so I could learn. He wore that necklace the entire time, smiling fondly at it as I droned on to him about superconductors or how generators and motors were in fact the same thing.

My mother and I took our breaks together. She passed me my first cigarette. I hated the taste, and she said that was a good instinct and to hold onto it. It was when she looked at the necklace she wore that she said she was going to stop.

That necklace had started my journey, and it kept them both going for a long time. Both of them had eventually lost themselves, but they were human… and they were… hurt. Trapped.

I wasn't anymore. I may have started out so, but I'd never paused my Shard Operating, even at my lowest. It was the one thing that kept me going. It fixed me, even if said method could harm me. I had a purpose behind it all.

And I won. It didn't matter how many times I would lose, when I lost my home and my father, I took it upon myself to help my mother even if it was dangerous. When I lost my leg and arm, I built them anew to push me even further. When the fights became too tough for me, I built the Arachnodyne and soared to the skies.

And it all started with that necklace. I remember that now.

That I was a Shard Op' for one simple reason. I fixed things.

Shardweave V.1.02 has updated to V.1.04

Effects:

Increased ability to create molecular cohesion.

Increased ability to disrupt molecular cohesion.

Psyche V.3.05 has updated to V.3.06

Effects:

Increased ability to 'fix things'.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the red room with Crimson Heart. A knowing glint in her eyes simmered over me. "Well done. You appear to have brought back some memories."

"Not a whole lot," I admitted. "Don't think I even scratched the surface with the stuff I've forgotten."

"It will come to you in time. For now, I believe this is enough progress. Whenever you are ready for your next session, let Andressa know. There is no need for proper scheduling, I will always have the capacity to indulge in these sessions."

I stared at her, a gripping sensation in my stomach edging me to ask her more. She was a Puppeteer and I was… really in need of some help right now. "Do you know anything about The Uncaged?"

"I know many things, Ripley Donovick. But when I want to tell you about that group, I will. For now, you are needed elsewhere, another purpose calls you."

The wind rushed from my back, signalling to me that the door had opened. However, unlike last time, it didn't lead to darkness. Instead, there was a blinding light as though I could step into the sun itself.

Nodding politely, I stood up and faced the light. And stepped through.

When I did, it didn't lead to a staircase. In fact, I was instantly back in the hallway with all those Pleasure Rooms. Turning around, I discovered that… there wasn't a door behind me anymore, just the fiery wallpaper that spread throughout this slice of hell on earth.

"What the fuck?" I whispered, before trying something. "…"

I still couldn't say 'pony', which meant that the oath thing really was true. Though I wasn't an idiot, these types of manipulations and illusions were based on Warp Energy. She was a Gold like I was, and maybe there would be difficulty breaking out of it, but I was an antagonistic force with equal weight. Theoretically, I could push that cognitive block out.

Maybe Psyche could grant me more resistance, but doing so would mean potentially making it more difficult for me to receive these treatments… though…

I could read memories. Maybe I could try it on my own Implant?

It was a crazy idea, but who knows?

Andressa was smoking something close beside me, a sultry smile on her lips. "So… you staying for a drink? I could give you company. We have an offer, you know. For therapy clients, twenty percent off."

"Sorry, but I have a girlfriend."

"Oooh, bring her around next time." Andressa patted my back, her nails scratching into me just enough that shivers fled up my spine.

I needed to get out of here.

———

Back home, I shuffled my way in to witness my mom lying on the bed with wires and metal strewn about her. She was… dissecting my cleanbot?!

"Hey! Don't touch that!"

She waved me off as usual. "Ripley, did you even look at the heat flow on this? You made it catalyze the grime it sucks up to use as fuel but it's a ticking time-bomb!"

"No…" I grabbed a sheet of metal, lodging it back into place over the flat drone. "It's connected to the fridge to suck up some ice."

"That's your cooling mechanism?" She eyed me with disappointment. "You raided a Yuzhou Facility with state-of-the-art electromagnetic tech to make a floating vacuum cleaner that doesn't need charging, and you couldn't figure out a way to cool it off?"

"If I had better parts, I could have." I hastily began to screw the machine back together but… maybe some of my mom's adjustments could stay.

"That's no excuse, Ripley. It's the hands, not the circuitry that makes a Shardware good."

"Well, I was also low on time."

"Then simplify it."

"I…" I just wanted to make a floating drone from scratch. "I'll take that into consideration."

I placed the vacuum cleaner onto the floor, letting it buzz to life as it found some corner to sweep. I then put my hand up to her. "Wait here, by the way."

I searched our cupboard. Half of the clothing space was filled with Shardware pieces, but the box I was looking for was exactly where I remembered it being—far in the back, to be forgotten.

It held many mementoes of our old apartment, dusty goggles I used to wear when watching my mom do her work, some basic Warpcubes with elementary coding I'd done on them. A family portrait and… there. A necklace.

I pulled it out, and sauntered over to hand it to her. "I want you to have this."

A flux of emotions torrented over her sick body, too many memories swelling up at the sight of the necklace my dad used to wear. The one with her initials. I placed it into her palms, cupping my hand over hers.

"Back then, you two used to give me strength. I… I see that now. I want you to keep this and wear it because that's what you need right now, strength that came from you and…"

With Meta-Manipulation, I sent a shimmer of Golden Energy into the Iron Shards, but nothing that would worsen the severity of her poisoning. Shardweave was fascinating, I hadn't even scratched the surface yet of its applications. "Now it has a piece of me in there too."

She rubbed her eye, nodding the tears away. "Okay… but… then I want you to have something. Cleanbot, retrieve article 86."

The vacuum buzzed in accordance, swooping up to a mirror where a fine robotic arm ended with tweezers that slipped into the gaps of the mirror and pulled out my mom's set of the necklace. The robot hovered back to her, neatly setting it down in her laps.

She held it up to me. "Take it… though fair warning, neurowiring cuts deep. Never wanted to replace it because well… you made it."

I chuckled, flexing my left knuckles to slip a fine hook through with my right. I weaned out the tiniest strand of Livewire, using Shardweave to sever it cleanly and produce two sets of thin gold. I looped it around both necklaces, before hanging hers on her neck.

She contemplated the crude scribbling of her name on the front, and mine on the back. And then tears fell.

"You've gotten a lot better."

"Yeah, I have."

"Next thing you know, you'll be replacing your skull." She laughed her tears away.

I… on the other hand, was a bit dumbstruck. "How did you… guess that?"

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