Episode 84

“Amy?” Connor stuttered, disbelief and shock painting his face.

“Connor.” The woman pulled off the black cap, and her red hair fell around her face.  “It’s good to see you again.”

Ben looked down at her shoes, and then up at her face.  “But—how?”

Connor brought a hand to his forehead.  “We thought you were—you were—”

“Dead?” Amy looked him full in the face, her jaw firm.  “Is this the welcoming you give your long-lost friend? That you wish I had stayed dead?  I’m not doing that again, not for you or anybody else.”

Connor shook his head, furrowed brow and frowned mouth. “No—no—I mean… What happened?”

Miah stared at him.

“I never did die.  Don’t you see?”

“But what happened?  How was it we thought you were dead?”

Amy crossed her arms, her eyes on Ben.  “When you tried to stop me from ending the whole scam with the Swiss government, I—”

“The Swiss government?” Gail gasped. “What in the world?  What do the Swiss have to do with this?”

Amy shot her a menacing look, and she shut her mouth.  “They did try to kill me, but it failed.  You left me for dead and ran back with that laptop carrying all their plans; I woke up in their laboratory.”  Her eyes shifted to Connor. “It was the same room where we’d stolen it from, only now, I knew what the machinery was for.

“They performed all of their more primitive experiments on me. They’d perfected most of their formulas and methods by the time you were experimented on,” she indicated Miah and Ben, “but before then, all was speculation, and they had no real knowledge before then.” She pulled the black glove off her hand and revealed a crude robotic reconstruction of a human hand, with mesh wires that resembled tendons and muscles.  Miah looked down at her own legs, metallic, smooth, and shock-absorbing, and realized how accustomed she had become to them.  Amy’s right hand, still gloved, moved with much more agility than the mechanic one, and Miah guessed that it had been constructed after the left.

“You think you have it bad, girl?” she scoffed.  “I could barely move for the first year after the legs they gave me turned out to be useless.  It wasn’t until they tested a new formula on you that they were able to apply the same system to me.”

“Gail, did you know about this?” Connor asked sharply, turning to her.

“I had no idea you were related—”

“Why, why did you not tell us?” Connor groaned, taking a step toward her.

Gail stepped back, horrified realization on her face.  “It wasn’t my fault she was taken!  I never had anything to with her!  She could have been there on her own accord for all I knew!”

Connor growled, “You lied.”

Miah couldn’t recall anything Gail had lied about, but she then sensed that there had been something more between the two of them: a talk in the middle of the night, conversations she’d never known about, knowledge kept from her for dark reasons… Gail turned pale and looked to Ben, who looked at Miah.  She dared not read into that knowing look that begged that she be thinking exactly what he was.  She longed for someone to speak plainly so that she could understand.  “Please, would someone please tell me what’s going on here?  I’m missing something huge.”