Memories of Home

[Arekk]

​

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

When rain taps against your window like an eager child, it is important to remember that even the world cries—even the sky, which holds everything together, falls a part from time to time.

Arekk's return to Ethos City was a rocky one after dealing with business back 'home' at Coruscant plus some other affairs that he really didn't want to even think about out. Stressed out to just get to the penthouse, kick his shoes off and fall on that massive king sized bed was going to be the key to making it through the day.

The dreary rain outside seemed to pelt away his senses which is why he desperately wanted to find shelter in the comfort of his own place sooner or later however he had been stuck in a line for three hours to deal with a financial issue. Several charges in different shops around Ethos City to his credit card triggered a minor alert, sort of speak.

A detective friend in the Ethos City Police force had called him to speak about the matter, knowing of the fallen Jedi's reputation and how this case would preferably be handled as quiet as possible.

"I already know about the last five transactions. Can you give me something?" He said to the detective while covering his mouth instinctively in an attempt to avoid being lip-read by someone. "You'll receive the usual, plus a little more."

"All I've got is a phone number, try calling it." The crooked cop offered the slicer a piece of paper with a rather long number scribbled on it, it was worth the try. "I can't give you nothing more or the chief's gonna send me to the slaughterhouse. They're cleaning the whole place out with this new administration. We'll have to be more careful."

"This will do. Thanks."

He said, finally. A phonebooth was nearby for him to use, entering its cabin right after the meeting was over and closing it behind him for some privacy. His gaze flickered between the piece of paper and the numbers on the holoscreen while he started the call.

Beep, beep...

​

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[Athena]

Location: Ethos City [Mono Kai Villas - Unit: 101]
Tag: [member="Arekk"]

___________​

​

Athena walked through the colorful apartment with ease. It wasn’t a penthouse, nothing so extravagant, but it was in a decent neighborhood with a view of the skyline. For some reason, she liked that. Being able to see the sky. Watch the rain. No matter where she went, no matter how far, she always came back to Lithios. To Ethos City. It was what she called home.

There was a sprawling kitchen with a separate dining room. A lounge, filled with matching furniture, artwork, and a holo-vid player that kept her entertained. The entire unit was lined with smart-tech that responded to her seamlessly through a silent datastream. When she wanted to hear music? It played. When she wanted to talk to Teyla, Riggs, or Karina? It called them. When she needed complete privacy to discuss things with a client? It made her building impervious to intrusion from other slicers.

Technology had given birth to her. Now, she controlled it seamlessly.

Her designation of Athena was the only name she could remember. The memories that she held were, broken, in some places. She could sense the gaps, the small places, where data should have been. Someone had done a very good job of taking only what they wanted to. Her backups were the same, as far back as she could go, so she could only assume, there was a good reason for it. No one talked about it. Athena didn’t ask. It held no bearing on her current existence.

“Nala…”, she called out, looking around, for the small Yorshi that kept her apartment ‘safe’ while Athena went out to work. When she was on a job, though, most of her coworkers called her Integra. They didn’t realize, not usually, that she wasn’t like them. That she wasn’t organic. Most simply assumed that she’d been modified, just as they’d been, to facilitate the needs of the job. “Come out, Nala...”

The furball eventually came out from beneath the sofa and scrambled over to the replicant as fast as it’s little legs could take her. Were it not for the fact that the Yorshi slid into her ankles, likely, she would have kept sliding across the polished floor until she hit the next room. Athena smiled down at the small creature and picked it up gingerly.

Sometimes, unfortunately, she still didn’t know her own strength. She didn’t want to hurt her closest companion. A soft song escaped her lips while she let the canine sit over her shoulder. It was time for lunch and Nala hadn’t had any solid home cooking in days. The protocol droids could take care of her, certainly, but not as well as she could. “How do meatballs sound? With rice?”

She smiled beautifully when Nala yipped and buried her face in the replicants ever-changing hair color. Meatballs and rice then. The automaton made her way toward the ice-chest and pulled out a single portion of ground bantha and put it in the food warmer to defrost while she set the autochef to make a few ounces of rice. Athena could eat, if she wanted, but it was mostly wasted on her. Nala appreciated it much more.

Just when she finished out the proper pan, still holding her friend, she received an incoming call. It flashed along the wall she was looking at. Name? Unknown. Athena frowned and her eyes narrowed. No one called this number that she didn't know. “Start a trace.”

She paused, then, signaled for her systems to pick up. “Athena speaking. Who, is this?”

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

The sweet sound of Athena's voice made Arekk's heartbeat increase rapidly while his eyes fluttered, memories of happier days flooding his sensations like a lightning strike. It had been months since he knew anything about her, keeping tabs would've been a creepy thing to do. She still sounded as sweet as before everything came down hard, mostly if everything thanks to him, but there was something different despite not saying much. Sadness?

"Athena?" The man's voice trembled momentarily before regaining his composure again, trying to come up with words to say. "It's Ar'ekk."

If his position was to be geolocated by the replicant girl, which Arekk was already expecting to happen considering how cautious he taught her to be, she'd find out that his location wasn't too far away from where she lived. Arekk did not know where Athena's new home was or had the intention to find out forcefully unless she told him personally.

"You definitely don't want to know anything about me but we need to talk about something, I'd prefer if it was in person if that's okay with you." Arekk eventually said to break the small silence that had built up after picking up. The rain falling on the phonebooth and the foginess of the windows made it difficult to see the outside world, almost as if life was telling him to finally get out of his shell. "Or you can hang up on me. I will understand."

The scars left behind continued to ache as if they were freshly given, Arekk knew that Athena would never forgive him for what he did and he had already come to terms with that yet there was a slimmer of hope that was present in the man's heart that they could amend things for a better life. Hating each other was something Arekk would never expect to happen, though she had every right to be angry at him.

​

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[Athena]

​

Location: Ethos City [Mono Kai Villas - Unit: 101]​

Tag: [member="Arekk"]​

___________​

​

The replicant frowned. She almost cut the feed at hearing an unfamiliar voice speak her name. The HRD was calibrated to recognize thousands of her contacts, no matter how briefly they’d spoken, without question or concern. The decidedly male voice on the other end of the line did not appear in any database she contained. The auburn-haired woman could feel invisible warning bells going off and immediately raised her protocols and triple checked her firewalls for a breach.

Expressive eyes flared with inner light before they narrowed. This man, this, Ar’ekk seemed to know her. He knew her name, not her pseudonym, and that was a warning in itself.

“How do you know that name? Where did you get this number?”

The trace locked on, easily enough, and fluid stilled in her artificial veins. He wasn’t far from her residence and of all things, using a payphone, versus a comm. Who actually used those anymore? They left too much of paper trail. Fingerprints. A way of tracking and then it was only a matter of time before biometrics linked the user. This contact, if it was meant to be clandestine, was messy boots.

“If I don’t want to know anything about you, why, the cryptic phone call? What project could be so important that you can’t manage basic decorum but—You want to meet face to face?”, she returned, not unkind, but clearly bothered by talking shop on an open line. One never knew who was listening. Though, truthfully, Athena did. She scanned every open port between her home and the payphone.

If anyone was listening in—It wasn’t with the traditional methods of a slicer. Low-tech. Athena, by trade, did not deal with anything retro.

Athena remained quiet for a long moment. His voice was different. Soft. Endless routines calculated the range of emotion she was able to hear and the replicant eventually came to the conclusion that this man was sad. Injured, mentally. Something had injured him that was beyond the measure of his soft organic insides. The pieces of a human that could not be healed with bacta, or rest, only time.

Maybe, time.

“…The holo café at the corner. Look up and you’ll see it. You aren’t far.”, Athena agreed, deciding, to take a calculated risk. The café was heavily populated. If this “Ar’ekk” meant to start trouble he wouldn’t be doing it in public, if, he wanted to get away with it. “Thirty minutes.”

She hung up without waiting for a reply.

The replicant sighed, softly, when she realized that lunch for Nala would need to wait. Her poor friend was reduced to eating dry kibble for the moment, but, this was a breach that needed to be handled. Not long later would find the woman walking along the wet sidewalk with a black umbrella shielding her from the deluge. Water didn’t bother her, not, in a traditional sense. But she played a game at being human. The closer she got—the easier she could fool them.

Her long hair was pulled up into two heart-shaped buns on either side of her head. The tips were pale pink, a perfect shade, that matched the baby pink of her lacquered nails. She wore a pair of light sunglasses, with white frames, and a black and rose color-block dress. It was hidden, barely, beneath her clear raincoat and held to her form as if it were a second skin. There were pieces cut out, baring her midriff and lower back, while the sleeves were long. Her feet were hidden by thigh-high boots that held the most pointed of high-heels.

As she entered the café she smiled beautifully at the barista and ordered a caf, double cream, one sugar, no foam. And a copy of the holo-gazette that was sent to her comm for viewing. From there, she took a seat by the window in a booth, in the back, and waited.

If this mystery man knew her number, her name, she could only assume he knew her face. If he really had something to discuss he would find her. Until then…She would read the paper.

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

"Wa-wait!"

The phone call had become a monologue by the time Athena picked up and Arekk was unable to even reply back because he was dumbfounded and anxious at the same time while trying to come into terms with whatever was happening. What kind of questions was she asking him? Had she forgotten him after all this time or maybe it was just her playing games?

Something didn't add up with Athena, she wasn't like this before he thought immediately. Something had gone wrong, perhaps?

Arekk's attire hadn't changed much over the last few months as he continued to wear the same black leather jacket with matching slacks and heavy boots to shelter him from the unrelenting rain of Ethos City. He loved to keep the same short mohawk-like haircut due to its simplicity and because it made him look good overall, not that he cared about that specifically.

The holo café that Athena mentioned was a few steps away from the phone booth so Arekk walked in that direction while going through multiple scenarios in his head. Would she smile, curse, hate, slap, hug at him? Why did that matter? So many questions that were soon going to be answered, he simply wanted to just see and talk to Athena once and for all.

Pushing the door within and as the bell rang once doing so, the fallen Jedi looked within to find his former beloved sitting next to the window and he could feel how his heart broke in a thousand pieces once his hazel-blue pools laid on her beautiful face. She undoubtedly looked as perfect as the day she had first been put into her body frame and was given the life she always deserved.

Perfection.

"May I sit?" He said while approaching the booth with a careful step, almost expecting an outburst of sorts. A nervous smile adorned his face which showed how, albeit partially, happy he was to see her but also how heartbrokingly their current situation was. "Athena."

​

——————————————————————​

 

[Athena]

​

Location: Ethos City [Mono Kai Villas - Unit: 101]​

Tag: [member="Arekk"]​

___________​

She was perturbed. Thousands of calculations ran through her mind, time and time again, while she sipped at her caf absently. While she normally focused on flavors, breaking them down into individual components so she could evaluate each one, she ignored it, and it went down like water. The heat didn’t bother her. She didn’t feel it in the same way a human did. It hurt, but, it was fleeting.

Everything was fleeting. Life, death, the seasons. Athena had been created to remain. Eternal.

When a dark-haired man approached her, she pulled her eyes briefly from her holo-paper, and gave him a brief perusal. Handsome. For a human. He asked if he could sit and she brought her hand in the air to wave the hologram lazily away. “The seat is open.”

Again, this stranger spoke her name. Her mechanical jaw set tight. Only a few people knew to call her that as opposed to Integra. It was the name that she gave to distant acquaintances, clients, and people that she didn’t trust. It kept her safe. The galaxy was a dangerous place, mostly, because people were akin to an infection. They were disastrous, greedy, impractical and wasteful. The many projects she had taken on in the last few months had proven that without a shadow of a doubt.

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

Her question was pointed as she leaned back, pulling off her glasses, so she could set them down on the table top. She sat with pointed ease. Everything about her seemed laissez-faire, though, there was an edge to it. Her frame was built to epitomize the beauty of a particular human. That woman had been flawless, in every way, save for the fragility of organic life. There was something that lingered beneath the surface. Not only did she appear to be gorgeous, secure, and confident—she knew it.

She paused and lifted her caf. Briefly, she let the lid sit against her lips, before she took another sip.

“No one calls me that.”

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

"Because that's your name."

Something had gone completely wrong with the woman he used to love until they broke apart, perhaps part of her programming glitched out given that he wasn't around after their break up to run optimal diagnostics as he know how to do them. Or maybe she decided to wipe every memory of her past so she could forget the pain and suffering caused by Arekk?

It stung like a dagger penetrating his skin to touch the very core of his heart.

His hazel-blue pools lingered on the girl's ever-changing ones for a minute before taking the seat next to her while thinking of the next thing to say. Words were difficult to come by when memories of home, of good times and bad times come into your mind like a storm. It was impossible to deny that while Arekk had been enjoying his new life in Coruscant he still thought of Athena.

"You don't know who I am, do you?" The question was sounded and felt sad, somber, dark. It was hurtful to even inquire such thing to the person he created to resemble a past love and that turned into something greater. She forgot all about them, completely. "I was the first to call you that."

With a brief gesture, Arekk signalled the server to bring him a cup of stimcaf to join Athena while they conversated. He kept his cool while attempting to quietly accept their current situation, that she no longer remembered anything. How could this happen?

"Do you remember me at all?"

​

——————————————————————​

 

[Athena]

​

Location: Ethos City [Mono Kai Villas - Unit: 101]​

Tag: [member="Arekk"]​

___________​

“It is. Allow me to rephrase. How do you know it?”

Sadness. She could see it in him as easily as she knew that he was augmented. He was less human than his emotions bade her to think. Why did he look so tortured, when he looked at her, and why did he seem as if he knew her? She had no recollection of this man and her memory was eidetic.

Ar’ekk asked if she knew who he was. She shook her head slowly, stilling, when he claimed to be the first one to name her. Cherry glossed lips formed a frown that emphasized all of the confusion she felt. It didn’t compute. She had been named Athena upon leaving the production line of Aegis Systems. He placed an order and her eyes grew distant, flickering, while he did. She ran through her memories. Searching, tracking, and weaving through each byte.

He was not there. Perhaps, he belonged to the pieces that had been removed. She could feel the loss of data in some areas. Blank spaces. Athena had assumed that her friend had either cleared her databanks, or, that she had been damaged in some way. Karina, as she had come to know her first, had assured her that it was for her own good. Athena trusted her. “I..”

She couldn’t speak. Not yet, anyway. She was searching desperately. First—Through her memory. Then through images stored on her Holo-Drive. Perhaps, somewhere, on a cloud. She could analyze and process information with an accuracy and speed that put most computer systems to shame. Briefly, she saw something that gave her reason to pause. An image. It only had a partial resolution. She could see her own face, reflected, in rain-spattered glass. Behind her stood a man.

Her eyes snapped back to Ar’ekk. The man in the picture…She couldn’t see his face. He was holding her. Close. In the way organics did in a Holo-Drama. Why? Was he this man? “I do not know you. If we met—I do not remember.”

She paused. The image was geo-tagged. It led to a series of expensive penthouses across town. Her eyes flared, and she blinked, to banish the data that Ar’ekk would not be able to see.

“My name was given to me when I came out of standby in Aegis Systems. I do not use that name on assignments, or with anything, but my friends.”

“…Who are you?”

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

"I... It's..."

Broken.

That same feeling that Athena felt when Arekk revealed the hurtful truth was affecting him now, complete dark pain invading every part of his body and mind. She didn't know him, nothing but a strange face among the rest that roamed this city and even the galaxy. All the memories of them were completely wiped out, so he thought, every word and every moment cherished just gone.

Arekk stirred his stimcaf cup with a small plastic spoon but didn't even seem to sip from it, playing with the beverage just to keep his hands busy. Heavening a sigh, the man looked between the blurry window with falling droplets and the woman that rebuilt his broken pieces in his darkest times. It was like a nightmare except you couldn't wake up from this one at all.

"You do know me but you don't remember." The will to reveal the "truth" lingered in his tongue but also did the "let her be happy and not remember" thinking, making it more difficult to even come up with something to say. "You've carried that name long before Aegis Systems, Athena. Years."

Very smalll glimpses of the past were revealed by Arekk as to not overwhelm Athena with the new information coming her way, perhaps in the spirit of instead stimulating her databanks so she's able to find fragments of their memories and put them together to find out what he was really talking about. Little bits of data and memories just enough to bring back anything worth inspecting.

"When you look at my face... Who do you see? When you hear my voice? Or when you saw me coming inside the café, what's the first thing you thought?"

​

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[Athena]

​

Location: Ethos City [Mono Kai Villas - Unit: 101]​

Tag: [member="Arekk"]​

___________​

Athena watched the symmetrically pleasing, augmented human, as he seemed to spiral further into the depths of grief. His facial expressions seemed to indicate extreme sorrow, as if, he had recently lost someone. Perhaps he had. She remained silent while he worked through his thoughts, and played with his stimcaf, though, refrained from drinking it. “…I think you must have me confused for someone else.”

But, what were the odds of that?

For him to call her number, know her name, and claim to be part of a past that she didn’t have?

Calculations. More, passing of numbers, and algorithms to detail the possibility. It wasn’t unthinkable, however, highly unlikely. Athena was not a common name in Ethos City. Or, on Lithios, as a whole. She reached out an picked up her sunglasses, tempted, to get up and leave. She didn’t know this man. He seemed to know her, but if he really did, he was part of something that her memories had been butchered for so that she could forget. Part of her, almost, felt afraid.

Between the obvious warning, there was definitely something more. Something she recognized to be apprehension, crossed, with familiar fear. Was she scared of this Ar’ekk?

Athena remained uncertain. Years? She’d held this name for years before Aegis Systems? How could she have existed without a frame? It felt very complicated. That and she remained quite skeptical. “When I look at you, I wonder who sent you. The competition?”

She wondered if this was just some kind of sordid joke. The only thing that kept her seated were the micro-expressions and autonomic responses he made that told her, clearly, that he wasn’t lying. Or at least he thought he wasn’t lying. “Your voice…I cannot place it. When you arrived…”

The auburn-haired woman with pink tips paused, and her eyes closed, searching the blackness it left behind. He felt familiar, but, just when she thought she remembered something, anything, it slid away like water turning down a drain.

[SIZE=11pt]“You remind me of a song.” [/SIZE]

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

"You are totally mistaken."

Every single word coming out of his mouth was honest and Athena could read and calculate all she wanted, nothing of that could change the fact that Arekk was telling the truth from the bottom of his heart. His attention diverted to the stimcaf before finally taking a small sip from it to only burn his mouth to which he reacted with an audible 'ow!' like he always did out of habit.

It was difficult to forget the very person who you shared an entire world with, intimate moments and secrets that would forever remain in her core despite any attempt to erase that data. Somewhere in her fragmented/erased memory had to be one single databank capable of bringing each moment spent together back to her main processing core, he just had to keep "digging" further by triggering things with words or even gestures.

"Nobody sent me, Athena. It's only me." Bright eyes settled on the replicant girl's for a second, appreciating her beautiful frame again like he always loved to do. She was there somewhere, her old self. The real Athena. "Baby sweet, you know who I am."

There was a moment of clarity in her voice and face that seemed to made her light up like a Life Day tree but unfortunately it disappeared before either of them could keep stimulating that further. A look of sadness and disappointment adorned his face despite his best attempt to hide it behind the cup of stimcaf, his gaze looking out the window to the rainy street.

"A song. Can you remember which one? Tell me about that song."

​

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[Athena]

​

Location: Ethos City [Cafe]​

Tag: [member="Arekk"]​

___________​

“That is still hot. Steam, indicates heat.”

Her comment came easily. There was a sense of familiarity about it, as if she had advised it plenty of times before, though, that was incorrect. She lived alone and most contact she had with the outside world involved taking care of her clients. Athena preferred ‘legitimate’ business versus skimming from the tops of a variety of banking clans, but, she did what she needed to do to maintain the life she enjoyed. Truthfully, all she needed was a safe place to charge, but her programming enforced human conditions and wants.

She was as close to human as a replicant could be, without, retaining a soul. This man told her that she was wrong, and green eyes shot toward him, briefly, unhappy. Athena was never wrong. She only made miscalculations when provided incorrect details. Clients, occasionally, were not entirely truthful.

Athena shifted in her seated position as the man spoke so informally to her. He really seemed to think that he knew her. He called her an endearment and her jaw tightened. Something about it bothered her, triggered her, and left a burning sensation in the middle of her metallic chest cavity. It felt like an old malfunction that she had never had repaired. An old, dull, ache. “…I do not know who you are.”

“—And don’t call me that. You don’t know me.”

He asked her to tell him about the song that played in her head and she sighed heavily. Why was he so insistent? Was this some sort of prank? If it was, truly, it wasn’t funny. Everything that she could find on the Darknet about this man seemed to collaborate what he had said. There wasn’t much to go on, but enough, for her to figure out that he wasn’t working a typical nine to five.

Athena remained quiet for a long moment before shaking her head. “I do not know the name.”, she admitted slowly, rather annoyed with herself, that she hadn’t simply gathered her things and left.

She picked up her sunglasses and slid them back on. From there, her arms crossed, and she focused on the cup of caf before her. Eventually she began to hum. It was a slow, steady waltz, that she no longer had a full memory of. She couldn’t remember where it came from or even when she’d heard it.

Nothing at all. Just the scent of rain. And, his face.

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

"I know, thank you."

Their interaction came off as it used to be months ago: effortless and spontaneous like things were as usual. Deep inside, Ar'ekk felt that any attempt to recover Athena's memories would be hard to pull off unless she decidedly wanted to dig into her databanks and rebuild all the data loss that could've gone missing during whatever she must have had done to erase painful echoes of their past.

Leaning slightly backwards, the fallen Jedi turned slicer looked at Athena in disbelief as she did not remember his face, name or being at all. Fragments came and go to her mind but it wasn't enough to make her see who he was, even if she remembered that Arekk broke her heart would've helped but instead the man was met with complete blankness. It ached as much as it ached her back then.

"That's where you're wrong. You'll dig deep in your databanks and you will recover the broken pieces and only then you will remember." He said while sipping from his cup of stimcaf, attempting to convince Athena some way or the other even if it was futile. "Remember the dancing under the rain, by the rooftop?"

And just like that the waltz surfaced in the form of a muffled, silent hum sung by the replicant girl. She was still there albeit faintly and that gave him some hope that she'd be able to go back to "normal" but another part of him wanted to part ways so she could be happy.

Decisions, decisions.

"To a slow waltz."

​

——————————————————————​

 

[Athena]

​

Location: Ethos City [Cafe]​

Tag: [member="Arekk"]​

___________​

He knew?

Athena paused. Why did it seem as if she ought to warn him about his beverage so that he did not endure needless self-harm? He was an adult, by her calculations. He had survived without her input for this long, this stranger, certainly did not need it now. The replicant remained quite still in the booth while the conversation progressed. Unnaturally, so. “I am never wrong.”

“There are only errors in data. From that—I am far from culpable. The information is wrong. Not me.”

Recover broken pieces? Fragments? Hazel eyes flickered and reflected a perfect glowing emerald from behind her shades before she glanced down at the table. There were leftover pieces of something. Code that had been corrupted, her friend called it, and Athena believed them. She scanned through her data-banks mostly out of a need to tell this individual, assuredly, that they were incorrect. But, also to settle her suspicions. Calculations led her to conclude the following. This human slicer was either telling her the truth, or, he was lying.

Someone was lying.

He mentioned something about dancing in the rain and her face scrunched up in disbelief. “I’ve never—”

Only, she had. She could see it. Briefly. Flashes of rainfall and laughter that rang in her audio-receptors. She couldn’t make out the faces. She couldn’t see what was happening, but somehow, she knew. It held that same song. “A slow…Waltz?”

Her expression, for the first time, seemed to emulate confusion. And a sprinkle of fear. She gathered up her purse, her umbrella, and held them close to her chest while she stared at the man. This person. Ar’ekk. She was compromised. Her work was compromised. She needed to return home so that she could flash all of her drives and figure out where these fragments came from. Leftover byproduct from a virus?

Had someone infected her?

“I…I need to leave.”

 

[Arekk]

The Financial District, Ethos City, Lithios​

"Love itself will save you... not condemn you."
——————————————————————​

[member="Athena"] ​

​

"Hold on! - I... You know where to find me."

Her reaction was expected considering the overwhelming amount of data that was streaming into her core and all the mismatches presenting themselves all of the sudden, Arekk did not want to push the boundaries any further than that for Athena's own sake. She'd have to make the 'discovery' and dig deeper, if she wanted, at a slow pace to not burn her circuits sort of speak.

There were no tricks or lies on his words at all and she'd be able to figure that out by simply reading his gestures and body language, Athena was more then capable of telling who was telling the truth or lying in mere nanoseconds. Corrupted code and fragmented memory banks were the probable causes that the replicant girl had suffered, which explained why she couldn't remember Arekk. It was nothing but a theory right now, though.

Arekk sipped from his coffee mug as he watched Athena prepare to depart his presence, not putting up any kind of resistance to the idea of her storming out of the coffee place into the angry rain of Ethos City.

They'd meet again. He was sure of that.

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