"Well, that it?" Mak bitterly demanded, his eyes downcast and glowering. "Have you got everything you wanted out of me? Do I get to hear if my sister's even alive now?"

I stared at him, unsure of the answer myself. Then I realized that I did, in fact, have two more questions to ask.

"Almost. Tell me… you said Garren still had his cybernetics, right? And that yours weren't up to military standards? How did you win, then? You looked like some kind of android while you were fighting him."

"Oh, that." Once more, I was briefly and darkly amused that he still had the bravery to scoff at me. "A loaner from the doc, actually. I told him I wouldn't commit suicide by Garren, and he had that power armor shipped out to me, with strict orders to return it afterwards. It gave me a significant boost, though it wasn't easy to use. It places enough strain on the user that you need at least middling quality cybernetics to use it properly."

That did explain what I had seen back then. It was also oddly gratifying that Mak couldn't just march into the Kittens' HQ and slaughter everyone there. He'd needed to plan and prep ahead of time.

That did leave me with my final question, though. A question I'd admittedly been avoiding.

"What do you know about Essence?"

For a moment, Mak froze, utterly and completely. I even thought I saw pure panic flicker behind his eyes before he marginally relaxed.

"Ah. Right. Guess you're running around with the doc's brat. Figures you'd know. Essence… We had a mandatory class on it during basic training. You had to hit a certain threshold with it to get accepted into the army at all. Just ten units for entry, but to get promoted? To really be someone? You needed a lot more than that. I never made it that high, obviously. Ran off too fast. I don't think they'd have let me go if I had more Essence."

I leaned forward like a bloodhound finally catching a whiff of the scent I was meant to hunt down. "You say they needed 'a lot more' than ten units of Essence. How'd they get that? The exercises aren't easy, and increasing your Essence pool is even harder."

"Tell me about it. Why'd you think I never bothered to keep up with that training? I didn't need much Essence to stave off problems with my number of cybernetics, either. Ten units worked fine. Just enough to take the edge off if you've got your limbs replaced."

"That still doesn't answer my question."

"I was getting to it! Fuck, you're an anxious one. There were… aids. Pills. Supplements. You'd take them and go through the exercises, and your Essence would shoot up. Mind you, it was expensive stuff. Expensive as fuck."

"Pills and supplements?" I repeated, mind spinning.

"Yep. No clue what they were made of. We poor schmucks only got enough in basic to bring us up to the baseline. If you wanted more, you needed to prove yourself, have tons of money and connections, or find a way to steal some from those who had the resources. Couldn't pull off any of those things, so I was stuck. I do know there were some truly heinous clauses in all our contracts to warn us away from ever sharing info about Essence with the wider public."

That didn't surprise me. In fact, that was the least surprising thing he'd told me during the whole ass conversation. I was much more surprised that he was still alive at all after his defection from the military. Somehow, the good doctor really must have convinced the army that Mak was dead.

Still a bit lost in my thoughts, I stood up and headed straight for the door.

"Oi. I answered all your questions. What about my sister? What happened to her? Is she alright? Hurt? Alive? DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE TO —!"

The door closed behind me, cutting off his screaming.

He was going to be very, very pissed off when I saw him next. Might even refuse to cooperate with me at all. And you know what? I really, really didn't give one shit about that. I had what I wanted from him. If he didn't want to be treated like crap, then he shouldn't have lived his life the way he did.

Sure, he'd been dealt a rough hand, but so was I. You didn't see me agreeing to traffic and assassinate people on some corpo's orders. And even if it wasn't for that lovely part of his personality, the fact that he'd basically kidnapped Mela and kept her in captivity rubbed me the exact wrong sort of way to make me particularly petty.

Most importantly, though, I had other stuff to think about. What he'd shared about the 'pills and supplements' available for increasing one's Essence pool had sent both alarm and a thrill coursing through me.

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On the one hand, I was excited about the possibility of acquiring some of those supplements for ourselves. I didn't technically need them, not with my alternative method for achieving the same effects, but that method was gross.

On the other, it didn't escape me that 'pills and supplements' were both things you had to ingest for them to take effect. What were the chances, then, that they weren't made of some seriously questionable stuff? Like, say, ground-down bits of eldritch creatures?

It was entirely possible that the way normal people grew their Essence quickly was identical to the way I did it. They just had slightly more refined and probably safer ways of ingesting their 'supplements.'

That did, of course, leave me in quite the dilemma. A dilemma that rooted me right in the middle of the hallway, preventing me from either going to Amelia or stomping my way to the nearest drone.

Eventually, however, I gritted my teeth and went looking. It didn't take me very long to find a group of drones just milling around, stuck doing nothing while their owner was off tending to Mela. It was a good thing, then, that I had received the right to order them around as well.

"You. Gather up every available mercenary capable of functioning properly. You have ten minutes to do so. Find me when you've done it."

I snapped off the orders, then found the nearest seat. My knee kept bouncing erratically while I waited for the drones' return. I felt like I was plugged into a live wire, or perhaps hopped up on one of those dangerous caffeine drinks that were all too affordable in the slums.

At long last, my awaited drones arrived. They filed into the small room and filled it up quickly, until they looked decidedly uncomfortable pressed together. I couldn't tell for sure, and I didn't feel like leaning on my eyes for something so trivial, but I was pretty sure there were forty to forty-five drones there with me. A couple were missing an arm, but 'functional' apparently meant that they had at least one limb to use in a fight and the ability to get around without a wheelchair.

They would do.

"Listen up. It's high time you lot actually do something mercenary-like instead of just bullying civilians and, apparently, under-armed gangers. This means getting rid of rapists, human traffickers, gangers, and scav rippers."

I blazed ahead with my plan, dimly aware that my knee was still bouncing.

"First, I want you to investigate our residential area and eliminate all negative influences here. Once you've done that, you are to head out to the slums and do the same there. Every time you locate a criminal as defined by the tags I listed, I want you to bag them, tag them, and bring them back to me. Alive! Make sure it's not obvious you are smuggling criminals for me, okay? Now…. Hmmm… you, you, and you!"

I pointed at three particularly put-together drones, prompting them to step forward until they were at the very front.

"You can revert to your previous personalities, with the understanding that you obey Amelia and me without question, and that you are not permitted to harm or betray us in any way."

The trio stiffened. Then their eyes fluttered and went wide. They looked around woodenly, terror apparent on their faces.

Amelia had been able to order her drones to 'fit in' back when we'd first converted some of the mercs, and we'd experimented with that a little. Unfortunately, this was… extremely unpleasant. After all, ordering someone to become aware of the fact that they'd been reduced to a puppet was not very nice for the person in question, whether they'd been horrible people beforehand or not.

"W-What is happening?" one of them stammered. "Why —"

"Shut up," I spat.

The drone did, paling instantly.

"I'm not doing this to make you feel better," I ground on. "You fucked up. All of you. The things you were willing to do to innocent people are horrid. Well, you can now turn your talents on other monsters in human skin. Do you remember what your mission is? Repeat it for me, all three of you."

They did so, in eerie sync which I could tell was freaking them out something fierce. Again, I failed to drudge up sympathy.

Thoughts of Amelia briefly wound through my head, but I dismissed them with relative ease. I was planning to tell her about my little session of ordering her drones about, anyway. I was pretty sure she would approve.

"Good. The three of you are in charge of the others. They're a bit too dumb like this to follow orders properly, so you'll fine-tune their approach when needed. Do the rest of you understand that? Listen to these three if they give you clarifying orders to follow!"

My eyes swept the room before returning to the trio in the front. "Now, back to you three. As I said earlier, no betrayal, no shenanigans, no pursuing whatever disgusting desires your current personality templates might have had. You are simply to catch idiots that fit the description I gave you and bring them to me. Stealthily!"

They chorused that they understood, still looking like they were grappling with several different kinds of existential dread. But, again, who cared?

I nodded my head and dismissed them before finally venturing over to the clinic. I could have done a better job of not being blatant about it, but I will admit I half-assed things in my desire to get to Amelia quickly.

No matter how much I justified things in my head and used my anger to drive myself forward, doubt and worry still raked their claws through my chest. I felt a burning need both to check on Mela and to confess what I'd done.

Amelia always used the same room when working at the clinic, so I knew where I ought to go, but I actually found her before I reached my destination. She was slumped over in a seat in our little waiting area.

As soon as I spotted her, I rushed over in a flutter.

"Amelia? Are you okay? Is Mela? What's happening?" I was on my knees next to her before she had a chance to explain, hands reaching out for her face ever so gently.

"Hrm?" She winced a little, blinked at me, then flushed. "S-Sorry, was just a little tired… ahem, yes, both Mela and I are fine. Would you like to visit her now? She's not awake yet, but I do need to wake her up just to check everything went okay. Which I'm sure it did!"

I relaxed, letting out a long, stressed breath. Then tension came flooding back as I remembered the other thing I'd come here to do.

"Before that… I need to tell you about a couple of things."

She narrowed her eyes at me, instantly suspicious about my sheepish tone of voice.

Which… was definitely warranted.

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