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Alice takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. This is it. Her first battle. The sky overhead is the color of a raw, bleeding bruise, and the violin screeching of the Sin echoes between the buildings. It’s huge. How is it so big? Couldn’t she start with something smaller?

She takes another breath. Ready or not, she’s going to do this. No—she is ready. She’s got to be. There’s no one else.

When you wake up, you spend a long while just staring into the mirror.

You feel like there’s someone standing right behind your reflection, but you can’t see anything. You’re always in the way.

She comes in and finds you staring again. She grabs your shoulder, steps in front of you, tells you to brush your teeth and come eat breakfast. So you do.

She’s made waffles. She’s trying. She knows you like them. But if you ever tell her why you like them, she’ll probably never make them again.

Six re-emerges through the hatch onto the cramped bridge, swearing in several languages.

“How bad is it?” Anya asks, tossing over a ration pouch.

Six catches it and takes a long swig before answering. “Fucked, is how bad. That missile the Blowjob Brothers hit us with had a bio payload, one of those engineered slime molds the fucking Accordance use for sabotage ops. Kill to know how the hell the bastards got their hands on that shit… Anyway, it ate half the engine before I could vent it, plus I think some of it might’ve gotten into the fuel lines, so I’m gonna have to empty the tanks, decontaminate the fuel, flush the whole system before I can even start on repairs…” She does some quick mental math. “Five days.”