Are you sure you want to do this?

Very.

Piper let her cheeks puff out as she exhaled, letting her eyes wander over the dead wraith. She circled it with slow steps, one hand out, hovering over its battered surface. With her implants she tried to sense if the thing really was alive in there somewhere. Her fingers hovered a few millimetres from the battered surface.

So far she couldn't feel anything. Couldn't hear anything.

She tried not to thing about the others watching, but it was difficult when all of their implants were pouring a different cocktail of conflicting emotions out into the room. Arrow, still crackling with hostility in Ferra's presence, but unable to hide their curiosity. Odiye, worried; protective. Ferra, her implants still bucking and writhing, as though an internal battle still raged inside her.

Even Toran couldn't hide his unease, one elbow cupped in the opposite hand, rubbing his chin as he watched her every move. His implants were coiled to spring, ready to react to any sudden danger.

Piper wondered if the control she'd exerted over a codewraith could be reversed somehow? She didn't really know. Couldn't know. The one whose mind she'd entered had been devoid of any real intelligence, just a brute algorithm, its mind stripped back to its core.

Only one way to find out for sure.

Bracing herself, feeling her chest tighten and implants heat with anticipation, she placed her palm flat against the codewraith's skull.

The metal was icy cold, enough to make her breath in sharply. She closed her eyes for a moment, searching, searching. Her fingers pressed a little harder against the metal. At first the machine remained inert; empty. Piper could feel its structure, her mind able to trace paths through every circuit inside.

She marvelled at its intricacy. Thousands of micro-nerve bundles followed the contours of its limbs like rivers, giving it a control and grace that no normal robot could match. It was thin, a coiled metal skeleton with bladed limbs that could carve up a human being in a stroke. Even body armour would have parted like butter in the face of those weapons.

But where there should have been a beating metal heart, she found a ruin, and a deep, gut-wrenching sadness hit her so hard that she choked.

"Piper?" Arrow's voice.

"I'm okay." She rolled her jaw, and shuddered, shaking the feeling away. "It's just a little ... weird."

"If you need to stop-," Odiye began.

"I said I'm okay. What I need is for you all to shut up. I need to concentrate." She felt ripples of hurt from both of them, but right now she didn't care. She couldn't delve into the mind of a codewraith and have a damned conversation at the same time.

Quiet reasserted itself, and with an effort, Piper pushed on through the hollowing sensation of the wraith's emptiness, moving through its body and looking for any flicker of line within its battered body.

She moved up from the dead heart, into it neck area, where clusters of sensors infested the surface, dragging data to the brain. More hunting around didn't provide any further signs of life, but she kept looking.

Piper found something just above the spine, where a human brain stem ought to have been. It was so small she almost missed it, but when she looked closer she found a tiny tremor of current, like the faintest human heartbeat.

Her consciousness lit up with excitement.

It's alive. Almost.

Piper nodded slowly, her fingers moving gently against the cold surface of the codewraith's skull as she hunted down the elusive sliver of life. Up she went, through the conductive bundles that carried the wraith's thoughts through the rest of its body, animating the machine into an imitation of true life. She moved carefully, tiptoeing up pathways that no human being had traversed before.

The spark hung in front of her – a lantern in the dark.

Her consciousness reached the brain a few seconds later. Through the eyes of her implants Piper stared out into an abyss of dark, tangled threads, and couldn't conceal her awe at the complexity of the codewraith's mind. She was so deeply connected to the thing now she could see just what it could have been capable of.

A mind, just as complex as her own, if not more so. But the corporations that had built this model had severed most of those tendrils, leaving a ruin. It was like someone had carved up a carefully threaded artwork.

You feel sorry for it.

Yes. She surprised herself with the blunt answer. The codewraiths had been enemies; killers since she'd tumbled into AmpCore, but seeing what they could have been, she did feel a sympathy for them.

Follow the spark.

She nodded; at least she thought she did. Being so deeply tangled up with the codewraith's existance, she wasn't totally sure if the motion happened physically.

With her companion following in her wake, she traced the spike of energy through ruins, until they reached the codewraith's central processing core. Barely a centimetre across in physical terms, it was intact, tightly tangled into the web of connections in the rest of the brain.

This was where she would find her answers.

Piper reached her ethereal fingers into the core and clutched at the spark of life, just as she'd done when she took control of the wraith in Cutter Jennings' lair. Except this time, instead of running roughshod of the thing, she just touched it, pressing herself to the window of the wraith's experience and looking in.

The first thing she saw was a boiling snarl of sparks, like a welding torch. She flinched from the brightness; felt heat against her joints where metal fused. Voices she couldn't hear eddied around her in a blurry sea.

Visions flickered. Piper winced; her head twitched. With an effort, she kept herself pressed against the shell of the codewraith's memory.

"C'mon," she whispered. "Show me where you came from. Show me home."

The images began to coalesce again. She saw the docks – saw the acrid water of the Hadrian River, boats and lights. Corporate logos flickered in front of her eyes. Then she was moving through narrow alleys between houses, racing at a fearsome speed. The images jumped and jerked, like she was watching a half corrupted playback.

Maybe she was. She tried to concentrate and force order into the codewraith's misfiring vestiges. Then suddenly Piper realised she knew where she was. She was seeing her neighbourhood, the ramshackle clumps of housing units that had once been home.

The codewraith's vision stopped; swung around suddenly.

Piper felt her heart lurch when she caught an image of Kirk and Arden standing right in front of her, clear as day. Then Arden lifted one hand, holding a gun. And she fired.

Piper let out an involuntary yelp when the bullet struck. It didn't hit her, but she was so tangled up with the codewraith now that she couldn't help but react. A clanging impact echoed through the memory, and a codescream tore through the night.

"Too far, too far," she said through gritted teeth. "Back. Back to where you started."

Images swam and she felt a twist of nausea before they settled. She had no real sense of time, of when any of this was happening, but she was no longer in the slums at the docks. Huge buildings surrounded her, massive factories and warehouses. The wraith loped along and she saw signs flickering in its vision. Immense corporate logos were stamped on the walls.

She passed one – Goliath Freight Industrial – with a logo of a great black hammer striking a nail. Ahead of her she could see a sprawling plant of some kind, with pylons crackling above a series of huge, bulbous transformers. The wraith moved towards it; gates and guards stood in her path and a moment she thought the machine was getting ready to attack them.

Piper felt something. A signal, a low frequency, coded burst. It coiled around her consciousness, connecting with something deep within the wraith's architecture. The wraith spoke back, matching the signal with a handshake.

Then a hatch opened suddenly in front of the main gate. The codewraith plunged into it and she was in darkness for an instant, before red lattice lines from the machine's optics painted a narrow tunnel ahead. It raced forward and Piper's heart started racing when she realised this plan was actually working.

The codewraith sprinted through the tunnel, before emerging into a low-ceilinged chamber of darkness. Piper pressed her skin harder against the cold metal as she concentrated on exactly what she was looking at.

Bays. Lots of cylindrical bays lining both walls. Globes of white light built into the ceiling. Dark figures moving back and forth. No corp stamps here, just black coats.

She looked closer at the bays as the codewraith walked forward. A masked technician approached, typing something into a holographic interface wrapped around his wrist, but Piper ignored him.

She had to.

Because the bays were full of codewraiths. Dozens of them, in an array of shapes and sizes, most stood dormant, light displays twinkling faintly on their head sections. A handful of the bays were empty; other wraiths out in the city. Maybe homes for the two that had tried and failed to kill her.

We're here. Well done.

Doubted me?

I didn't say that.

Piper let out a shrill laugh of relief.

She almost couldn't believe she'd done it, but there it was. The home of the wraiths – home of a veritable army, just tucked away in the north of the city where prying eyes wouldn't follow. Easing her hold on the wraith's fading memories, Piper relaxed, and let herself feel a brief instant of satisfaction.

And in that instant something else made its presence known.

WELL, WELL. LOOKS LIKE WE'VE GOT A NEW PLAYER IN THE GAME.

A bolt of pure terror screamed through every inch of her body. She felt her companion go scurrying back into the recesses of her mind, like a rabbit in the face of a predator. Piper's head swam from the force of the thing, a grasping, wrenching, grinding presence that warped the data streams she'd been following.

The images of the codewraiths and technicians evaporated. Her eyes squeezed shut and she felt a searing wave of pain wash up her arm, as though someone had just doused her in boiling water.

She took two deep breaths, and pressed her teeth together until her jaw ached.

I HAVE TO ADMIT, PIPER, I WASN'T SURE YOU HAD IT IN YOU.

"And just what the fuck are you?" she whispered harshly.

"Piper, what is it?"

A voice. Outside. Elsewhere. She ignored it. Her body tensed and she battled down the fear, re-exerting her will on the shadowy threads of space and time.

I asked you a question.

YOU'LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH.

She tried to find where this new voice was coming from. Somewhere outside – somewhere very far away from where she stood. That was all she could say for certain. She tried to reach out further, to find the thing.

She was violently rebuffed. A sizzle of pain shot through her skull and hissed in surprise.

TSK, TSK. IT IS RUDE TO TRY AND VISIT UNINVITED. She could feel the newcomer smirking. CAREFUL, PIPER. THERE ARE MORE DANGEROUS THINGS IN THE DATA STREAM THAN HADRIAN'S PET CODEWRAITHS.

Piper felt her mouth go dry.

What do you know about the codewraiths?

EVERYTHING. I'VE BEEN KEEPING AN EYE ON THEM FROM TIME TO TIME. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE FOUND SOMEONE ELSE DOING THE SAME.

She began to drag herself away from the thing in the dark. Its presence settled; she felt amusement ring out through the void.

You work for the corps?

ONCE UPON A TIME, WHEN I WAS MORE LIKE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS. THEN I FOUND A BETTER PLACE.

What do you want from me?

DON'T WORRY, PIPER. I'M NOT GOING TO HURT YOU. BUT I'LL BE WATCHING. THERE'S MORE DOWN IN THAT PLACE THAN A FEW MAD MACHINES.

What's down there?

SOMETHING YOU NEED TO SEE FOR YOURSELF. IF YOU SURVIVE, MAYBE WE'LL SPEAK AGAIN.

Piper let a growl reverberated through the space between them. Who are you?

THAT'S AN ANSWER YOU'LL HAVE TO EARN. BE CAREFUL, PIPER. YOU STILL HAVE A LOT TO LEARN.

Then, as suddenly as it arrived, it was gone. A surge of frustration made her implants flex with pent up energy. The last thing on Earth that she needed was another curve ball. She tried reaching out again, but the thing had vanished, leaving behind a gaping void in the data streams. Something nearby let out a screeching metallic groan.

"PIPER!"

Her eyes snapped open, and she found herself looking into the eyes of the codewraith. It was sitting up on the table now, face to face with her, its frame twitching violently. It took a second for her to realise just what was happening.

Then a hair of strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her backwards. Her palm was peeled from the metal skull and the codewraith let out a gurgling codescream, its ruined chest sparking.

A bolt of boiling orange hit it in the torso and blew the dying machine head over heels backwards into the wall of the room. It slammed into the concrete in a spray of broken parts before it fell, a half-molten heap of dead circuits.

Piper looked back and found Ferra standing there, amplifier outstretched and a wild look in her eyes.

"Piper – Piper!" The hands shook her and spun her around. Odiye's face was painted with worry. "Are you alright?"

"I ... I think so."

"How did you do that?" Arrow breathed. "It was dead. Dead as dead can be and you... brought it back."

"Not now, Arrow," Toran interjected. He walked forward and gently took hold of Ferra's wrist, lowering her amplifier for her. She didn't look at him, but she didn't stop him either.

"Piper," Odiye said, softer now. "What did you see in there?"

"I know," Piper answered shakily. "I know where they are. And I know how to get in."

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