January 03, Earth Year 2224 AD

Shade grimaced as they stepped back across the border, greeted again by the thick cloud of pollution in the air. He realized he'd already started to get used to the luxury of the Silver District, where everything was automated, served up "on a silver platter," as the human expression went. He wondered if these districts were where the saying came from.

Stepping over into the Silver District for a bite to eat had been fun, but they had business to conduct here. It was more of the usual: shipping crates of weapons off to a rebellion halfway across the galaxy.

Shade stepped forward to cross the street, only to be yanked back by Ami as a joyrider in a speeding car raced past them.

"Thanks," he sighed, recovering from the jolt of adrenaline. Ami nodded nonchalantly.

"Can't believe they even still have manually-driven vehicles on this planet," she sighed.

He chuckled, partly at the remark, but mostly at how casual she was. Saving his life was just part of her daily routine at this point.

He felt a sudden pang of guilt as he thought back to the Silver District, remembering the people who lived there and how comfortable they all seemed surrounded entirely by androids who were smarter, faster, and stronger than them. He remembered thinking they must have been lazy and bored, letting the androids do all the work, and thought about what might happen if those androids suddenly left. But of course both the androids and humans had insisted this wouldn't happen, explaining that the androids weren't a crutch that could be kicked out from under them, rather another example of their wonderful technology—a sentient one at that. The humans and androids of the Silver District were friends to each other, the humans perfectly happy to rely on the androids for the rest of their lives, and the androids perfectly happy to let them.

Was their relationship like his own relationship with Ami? Did he rely on her too much? He knew he couldn't fly without her, and she had saved his life plenty of times. He didn't want to think about what might happen if she weren't there anymore, or about how that might happen, and it still nagged at him.

This line of thought was cut short as a shadow moved out in front of him. It was a tall figure—human, by the shape—wearing a full suit of slim black body armor. The suit was mercenary-issue, face hidden by the smooth helmet. Shade's hand found the hidden pistol at his back before he even had to think about it, but then there was a flash, a tingle of raw energy discharge that prickled his fur, and he saw Ami hit the floor. She could absorb any kind of electrical attack, so if she had been taken down, it was because she let them.

Taking the hint, Shade swung out with his fist in a mock attempt to hit his combatant, but the attacker had already drawn his own weapon. The familiar sight of an aran suppressor was the last thing he saw before there was a blinding blue light and everything went dark.

***

Shade woke with that particular headache and muscle soarness that was a common side effect of overcharged stun blasts. He found himself in a chair, restrained; wrists and legs locked to the frame. He groaned and shook his head, clearing his vision. The room was small and damp, with no windows, possibly underground. The musty smell of it held a hint of old concrete—the kind they'd made from non-renewable materials, so the room was old. There were doors on either side of the room and a console panel in the middle, likely for securing the chair restraints.

Looking to his left, he saw Ami in a similar chair. She was awake and seemed more groggy than he was, but he figured this was part of her act, pretending to be organic to fool their captors, who might be watching.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded and breathed in slowly. "Yeah. You?"

"Headache," he groaned. "The usual."

The door on the right opened and a human walked in. Male from the look of it, but you could never tell with this planet. He looked middle-aged, maybe in his late 70s, with wavy blond hair and grey eyes. He wore standard combat armor, the same worn by their attackers.

"Now that you're awake, I'll explain how this works," he said, moving behind the console. "You answer my questions, you'll get a quick and relatively painless death, which is more than you deserve. Answer honestly, or you'll regret it."

Pointedly, he flicked a switch and turned a dial. There was an electric whine from the machine and Shade could already feel the energy crackling through the wrist cuffs, making his fur stand on end.

"Who are you?" the man asked calmly. He reached into a pocket and pulled out Shade's handgun, the green light illuminating the man's face. "What are you doing here?"

Shade jerked in the restraints at the sight of the weapon.

"Give that back!" he growled.

"Who are you?" the man repeated, setting the gun on the console.

Shade sighed. Whoever these people were, they'd probably gotten the wrong idea. The Imperial-issue hand blaster had probably made them think he was a soldier who had come here as part of some military operation. Better to just answer their questions honestly.

"I'm not a soldier, if that's what you're worried about," Shade sighed.

The machine's power increased and he felt a surge of pain, his entire body going rigid as the energy shot through him. He couldn't scream, couldn't even breathe, just grip the arm rests and wait for it to be over.

The pain died as the high-pitched tone of the machine wound down—or was that ringing just in his ears? As the other sound faded back in, Shade became aware of Ami shouting at the human.

"Bastard!" Ami snarled. "He answered your question! We're not lying!"

She struggled at the restraints the way he did, even though she could have easily torn right through them. Still maintaining her cover.

Shade wondered if Ami was intent on keeping her identity as a non-organic a secret because these people had some way of alerting the android authorities. Maybe this guy was an android.

"Who. Are. You?" the man said slowly. Shade disregarded that theory. He was too stupid to be an android.

"My name... is Shade," he growled between gasps for breath, still recovering.

"That's not a lup?n name," the man said.

"Yeah, well—" he was cut off by another groan of agony, clenching his teeth painfully hard as the machine surged again. His muscles tensed so hard it hurt and his claws dug into the chair, talons scratching painfully into the cold metal. He was close to blacking out, darkness creeping in at the edge of his vision, the fog closing in around his mind. It was hard to even breathe, let alone think. He could only barely hear Ami's voice over the ringing in his ears.

"Hit me, you fucking coward!" she yelled at the man. "Hit me!"

The pain ebbed, but he still ached everywhere. After a moment, Shade realized he could breathe again and unclenched his teeth. He looked over in time to see Ami sieze as the machine whined. He knew it wouldn't hurt her, but even seeing her in false pain was almost too much. Shade turned away as she spasmed against the chair. Electrocution was a brutal and ancient method of torture.

"One more chance or I kill both of you alien terrorists," the man spat as the machine wound down and Ami gasped for breath she didn't need.

Ami glared at the man, eyelids drooping with fatigue, panting. Shade wondered for a moment if she was actually hurt somehow—had they already figured out she was an android and they were doing something else to her? No, surely this was just part of the act.

"Bite me," she growled.

The machine whirred again, but this time there was no violent jerk from Ami. Instead, she sat up straight, keeping eye contact with the interrogator. He cranked the dial and the lights in the room dimmed, screens flickering as the machine's whirr rose to a high-pitched ringing, but Ami still didn't move a muscle.

There was a bright flash and a loud snap from Ami's restraints, then another as bolts of raw energy arced across her arms. Shade realized what this meant as a feeling of anticipation swelled in his chest; arcs of pure energy moving around her rather than flowing straight into her meant all that power was looking for somewhere else to go. Oh, shit. They had actually overcharged her.

All of these thoughts occurred in moments as the warm, plasticy scent of burnt synthetic fur and melting non-organic flesh filled the room. With a quick movement, Ami snapped the carbide steel cuffs, sparks flying from the broken electrical currents, and rose to her feet. The smug expression on the interrogator vanished as Ami did her thing—that move she always did when she wanted to make her foes shit themselves before she took them down. The man suddenly found himself no longer staring into the blue eyes of an organic lup?n, but rather the eyes of an android whose targeting system had fully activated, pupils illuminating blood red and expanding to fill her eyes as an entire arsenal emerged from her body. Blasters unfolded from compartments in her forearms, two auto turrets from each shoulder, a few more from her legs and even more came out from her back, each one training its sights on the man as he backed away with growing terror. Every weapon crackled or hummed with overflowing energy, seeming almost eager.

"Whoops," she said with a wicked grin. "You fucked up, didn't you?"

They didn't often kill except out of necessity, to prevent others from dying, and they rarely killed out of anger, so when there were a series of blinding red flashes from Ami's arsenal, Shade assumed the world was better off without this bastard. But that didn't mean Ami hadn't enjoyed herself.

The man's smoking, shot up corpse collapsed to the floor. The room began to fill with the smell of burnt human.

"Useless prick," Ami muttered under her breath as the restraints unlocked from Shade's chair—she'd already remotely hacked the locks, and probably the mainframe for the whole place too. Wherever this place was.

In a moment, she was at his side, dispensing a medical nanite injector from the compartment in her left palm and pressing the thin tube to his neck. Immediately, a chill rushed through him and he sighed with relief as all the pain washed away.

"You're okay," she said. "I got you."

But again he felt that guilt, a new feeling that plagued him more and more. He knew by the concern on her face that she'd sensed it, but he didn't bother dwelling on it now. Instead, he grabbed the gun from the console, smiling at the comforting feeling of the grip against his palm.

"Who are these guys?" he said, looking around.

"The 'Inheritors'," Ami said. "That's what they call themselves, anyway. An extremist political movement from the 2100s."

"Great," Shade sighed. "I thought humanity had gotten rid of all its racists."

The door on the right opened and he followed her through into the next room.

"Just most of them," she said, taking out a guard and another man behind a console. "Even the androids couldn't get rid of them completely. Not without destroying free will, freedom of speech, or committing genocide, anyway."

"Oh, those," Shade snorted. He let her lead the way through the facility. He might've paused at the upcoming junction, but Ami continued on straight ahead. She must already have the schematics for the entire place in her head.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Old military base," Ami said. "Built during humanity's Third World War and then repurposed in the Android War to fend off attacks from AI." She snickered. "Well, from older model AI, anyway."

He smirked at the smugness in her voice. Yep, she was definitely in the schematics. No doubt she could tell him when this place was built to the day, and probably how much longer it would last with just as much precision. She guided him through doorways, took down guards he wasn't even fast enough to hear coming, and took several shots for him, absorbing each one.

That doubt crept into him again and he hesitated. Her ear twitched toward him—he knew she'd sensed it. Probably all the ones before it too, but she wasn't exactly a trained therapist.

"Okay, what's up?" she asked.

"I just..." he said. "You don't... think I rely on you too much, do you?"

She turned to look at him.

"You rely on me a lot," she said, "but that's fine. I'm not going anywhere."

He nodded, but this didn't convince the guilt.

"You've gotten me out of pretty much every scrape I've ever been in, though," he said. "I don't even know how many times you've saved my life."

"1,309," she said with a smirk.

"Yeah," he said, smirking back. "You don't think that's excessive?"

"Well, if I'd missed the 1,308th time, we wouldn't be having this conversation," she said.

"That's... a good point," he chuckled. "It's just sometimes feel like I should be fighting my own battles."

"You can, and you do," she said, nodding toward his gun. "Doesn't mean I'm not gonna save your ass that 2,000th time."

He snorted. "Alright, fair enough."

They came to another door and it opened before either of them even pressed a button, layers of security moving aside as she worked through the system. Shade chuckled again and they stepped on.

Besides, what was he going to do about any of it? This was just the way things were. He could never rise to her level and although she probably could, he would never ask her to sink to his. Why would he ask her to be less effective at saving him, or other people?

"Look," she said, turning to face him and leaning against the wall as the next door took its time unlocking. "I know I might seem it, but I'm not completely indestructible. My power core's not infinite."

A rare glimpse of vulnerability shone in her eyes. She glanced away.

"You've saved my life too, you know," she said.

He nodded.

"I'd make it to 2,000 too, if I could," he said. Her eyes found his again.

"I know," she said.

"And I do like watching you work," he said.

She chuckled and a small mini gun casually emerged from her right forearm. She spun it idly with one of her fingers and then let it retract.

"What do they have locked up here?" he asked. "All this security...?"

"Max-security prison levels," Ami said. "They've got other captives."

"Prison break?" Shade said with a grin. She nodded.

***

"Their files are locked up tight, encrypted, but I'm working my way in," Ami said as she blasted through a corridor full of guards. "I do know they're experimenting on pretty much all the other races."

"Experimenting?" Shade said, taking down a handful of guards with his handgun before falling behind cover.

"In here," Ami said as the door on the left slid open. A label beside the door designated it Obs-521.

Inside was an observation room staffed with what he assumed to be officers or technicians or something, whom they promptly shot.

"The glass is one-way," Ami said, looking out into the room. It took Shade's eyes a minute to adjust to the lights in the room, but when they did, he saw an interrogation room like the one they'd just escaped from. There was a human woman locked into one of those chairs, and around her were no less than 20 guards, stationed along the walls or near the chair she sat in. Shade whistled.

"She's listed as a high-value target," Ami said.

"No kidding," Shade muttered.

Amid them all, two guards stood in the center, likely the ones interrogating the target. One of them was a bit smaller, but the markings on the suit were different, a pair of yellow bands around the neck. This one must have been a higher rank.

"These alarms," one of the guards said. "Should we—"

"No," the shorter one said. "We stay right here. We try and move her back to a cell, she could escape."

Shade started to raise his blaster to shoot through the glass, but Ami held up a hand.

"Wait. She's planning something, I want to see how she gets out of this," she whispered.

The girl couldn't have been much older than he was—early 20s, at most. She had short cut blond hair, a style similar to that of the other guards. Between this and the fact that she wore the same type of armor as the guards did, the only difference between her and them was that she was in cuffs. The girl stared the guards down with light yellow-green eyes, burning with an intense inner fire. Shade had known that rage, the kind that threatened to consume you.

The apparent leader of the guards stepped forward. His helmet retracted, flipping back and revealing a face covered in scars. He must have been near 100, by the amount of hair he had left.

"I'll talk to 'er," the other guard said. "She was in my squad. I should'a known..."

"Exactly why you can't." the older man said. "You'll just get her killed in interrogation."

"Sir—"

"Which of us is in charge?" the elder growled. The other guard stepped back nervously.

"We still don't know how, but she managed to get an intruder into the security level in Base 16," one of the others reported. "Blew up the armory. Lost a lot of good men."

"There are no 'good men' among you cowards," the woman growled.

"An intruder?" the elder asked, ignoring her comment. The other nodded.

"Lup?n. Female, white fur."

"Ah. A stubborn species," the man said.

"Okay..." Shade snarled, gripping his gun tighter, ready to crash right through the window and start shooting, but Ami grabbed his arm.

"We only caught her when she was leaving the base without dismissal," the guard explained to the superior.

"So then how do you know they're together?" the elderly one asked.

"Saw her in the same area just before the intruder showed up," the guard continued. "She erased the security footage, but there were witnesses, and it was her ID used to access the armory. Somehow got her friend in and out in minutes. No one knows how."

The old man smiled and Shade cringed at the sight.

"I know what you are," he said to the young woman.

She looked up, meeting his eyes with a smirk.

"Why don't I show you? Not like I'm going to leave any of you alive to remember my face, anyway..."

They watched as she changed, shifting before their eyes. Within seconds, her body had morphed from human into lup?n, covered in white fur, a long tail emerging from the back of her armor. Her eyes were bright blue now, but they held that same fire.

While the guards were as stunned as they were, the transformed lup?n launched into the fight, taking down the guards on either side of her with two solid kicks, one to the face, then the chest. She must have picked the locks on the chair somehow.

"Sh-She's a—" Shade stammered.

"She's a Type 3..." Ami murmured. "A hybrid!"

Among the three official types of hybrids in the galaxy, the third and final type were the most rare. A Type 1 held the appearance of one race and the attributes of another. Shade's old friend Rayne was one such Hybrid, baring the appearance of a typical lup?n and the adaptability of a human. A human-silen of this type might look human while bearing a silen's natural strength and quicker healing, or they might appear like a scaly silen, with the human race's trademark adaptability. Type 2's, meanwhile, were more obviously hybrids, with the appearance of both; a Type 2 lup?n-human hybrid, for example, usually tended to look mostly human while baring a lup?n's tail and pointed ears. A Type 3, however, was an extremely rare genetic occurrence, able to shift from one race to another at will. Shade had heard some were even able to shift biological sex, but this didn't appear to be the case with the spy seen here.

By the time he'd blinked, the guards were almost entirely dead, thanks mostly to the hybrid girl, but also due to the fact that Ami had joined the fight with her and taken out more than a few guards herself, shooting through the glass.

"Who the hell are you two?" the woman asked, turning to face them warily as they entered.

"We did a little infiltration of our own," Ami said as the smoking minigun folded back into the compartment in her arm.

"Don't worry, there's still plenty of—" Shade was interrupted as the hybrid fired off a shot at him, which he barely dodged. "Hey!"

"I'm sorry," she said, "you've seen my face."

She got off another few shots, but Ami stepped in front of Shade and absorbed them all. The girl lowered her weapon slowly, eyes wide.

"You're..."

"An android? Yep," Ami said.

"Are you... Galactic Defense Force?" the girl asked. "Or the Lup?n Empire?"

"No, but that's actually the second time today someone's assumed that, which I'm going to take as a compliment," Shade said. He held up his handgun. "The gun's confusing, I get it, but I'm not in the Imperial Army. Neither is she." He nodded at Ami. "And we're not UGDF, either. Although we do know a few—"

"We're more like freelancers," Ami cut off.

"So you're rogue?" the hybrid asked, eyes growing wider.

"Uh-huh," Ami said. "We could do the whole swapping backstories thing, but really you can just assume we've got the same goal. Taking these bastards down."

The lup?n smirked.

"I can get behind that."

***

Deep inside the facility, they stopped at an open room. Shade caught the scent of a few operatives inside. All human.

"You wanna do your thing, or...?" he trailed off, gesturing into the room.

"I'll let you get this one," Ami said, smirking. He grinned.

"Alright," he chuckled.

The first few fell to his blaster before they could move for their own. The others scrambled to engage him in hand to hand, but this was where he truly excelled. He dodged the first punch and returned with a jab to the gut, then turned and hit the one behind him with a solid hook. The fight continued like this for minutes that felt like seconds. He didn't land every punch, nor did he manage to block or dodge all of theirs, but all that counted was landing the last one.

They were almost all down when he heard the whine of a blaster behind him and knew if it was an enemy, he wouldn't have time to turn around and see their face before he died. But there was a blast and a groan and he turned to see a man dropping his blaster to the floor, clutching the burn mark on his arm as Ami lowered her wrist cannon. Shade smirked at the face of realization the man made as it hit how screwed he was, allowing himself a split second of smug satisfaction before he brought his fist into the man's face.

"Thanks," Shade said. "Again."

"I would have aimed for his face, but I know how much you like taking down these types," she said.

"Yeah, I don't know what it is, something about punching racist assholes is just so satisfying!"

He looked around at the unconscious group of beaten guards and smiled, feeling that smug satisfaction as he realized he'd just taken down a room full of trained soldiers himself. Not bad.

More of them stormed in, but the hybrid turned on them herself with her own smirk.

"My turn," she growled, quickly taking down the first six before the seventh grabbed her tail. She growled, then shifted into human form—which of course didn't have a tail—and then kicked the man in the face.

"Damn, wish I could change like that," Shade said.

"Yeah? What'd your other hybrid half be?" the girl asked, shifting back to lup?n.

"Well, you're not into humans," Ami said to him, "and you definitely wouldn't want to be silen, so that leaves only jiran or aran."

"Oo, aran might be nice," he said thoughtfully. "I like the idea of having a pair of wings I can use anytime I want. Jiran wouldn't be much of a change, though the heat resistance and extra flexibility would be good."

"I guess I could also just build myself a separate form, modeled after another race," Ami mused. "That'd take work, though, let alone constructing a mechanical body that could shift from one form to another. That would need a series of technological breakthroughs and I'm not feeling too inventive at the moment..."

The hybrid girl giggled.

"Still, switching back and forth like that, it's gotta make it easier to be a part of either race," Shade remarked.

"Sure, as long as they don't find out about the other half," the hybrid said, all humor dropping from her tone. "I can be either human or lup?n. Not both."

Shade fell quiet, but not for long.

"Well for what it's worth, you can be whatever you want around us," he said. She glanced toward him and nodded, offering a smile.

"Name's Arwin, by the way," she said. She sighed. "It's actually nice to tell someone my real name."

"Shade," he said. "Pleasure. This is Ami. She's basically a professional badass."

"Damn straight," the android said. The hybrid chuckled at this. "And for the record, I get it. I'm a rogue android. My own kind don't even know I exist. So I upload myself into a body that looks, sounds, feels, even smells entirely lup?n. But the lup?ns aren't keen about androids, so I can't do more than pretend."

"They are a bit stubborn, my people," Shade sighed. "Humanity's almost as bad, but they're both trying to change. Still, can't imagine it's fun being caught between them."

"Yeah, well," Arwin sighed. "Moving on."

"I assume these are the prison levels?" Shade said as they advanced inward, a heavy door sliding open to reveal a row of cells on either side of a long corridor. The prisoners inside were held behind red plasma shields, but they flickered and faded out as Ami hacked them remotely.

"Who are you...?" one of the escapees asked, looking between the three of them.

"Long story," Shade said. "You comin'?"

The escaped prisoners added to their firepower significantly once they'd grabbed guns from the guards. Not all of them could fight, but those that could were definitely willing, some eager. Those that couldn't fight were surrounded by the ones who could, and those that didn't know how were about to learn.

***

All following Ami now, they journeyed deeper and came to the power core of the facility, a bright sphere of energy surrounded by rings of blue. It was almost beautiful, the way it glowed. Ami had explained on the elevator ride down that she couldn't hack into the core controls remotely, as it was controlled separately as a measure against android attack.

Strangely, the control room was staffed by various non-human species, not a single human in sight.

"Whoa, what the hell is this about?" said a white-furred lup?n male, turning away from the controls and stepping forward.

"We're here to let you out of this place," Shade said. "You can go now."

"Let us out?" another lup?n asked, a male with dark fur and green eyes. "We work here."

"Oh..." Ami said, a dark grimace in her tone. "They don't even know..."

"Know what?" the second lup?n asked.

"Who you work for," Ami said.

"What do you think this place is?" the hybrid asked, gesturing around.

"A research lab?" the dark-furred lup?n said. "Inheritance Genetics."

"Well, that's not entirely wrong," Ami said, "but this is what they're experimenting on."

She gestured up to the large screen above the reactor itself and a quiet murmur passed through the crowd as the profiles of the previously captive test subjects flashed before them.

"They're experimenting on anyone non-human," Shade said. "They're not good people."

"I've been loyal to this place for years!" the dark-fur growled, his rage building. "I had benefits! A pension!"

"Alright, I'm done with this," the white-fur huffed. He flicked a few switches and the room went black, red emergency lights switching on. He pressed a few more buttons and the whole facility shook as alarms began to blare.

"Did he just—" Shade started.

"Yeah, he's kind of a genius when it comes to this kind of thing," the black-furred male chuckled.

"We should leave," the white-fur said. "Quickly."

"We're parked outside," Ami said.

Shade smirked, knowing she must have flown the ship here with her long-range connection to it, and that she did this while hacking into the facility's security systems and fending off troops of guards, no less. Again Shade felt that pang of doubt, but he pushed it down as the group packed into the elevator.

"If we don't make it out of this," said the black-furred lup?n from before, "you should know I've had feelings for you since I started working here."

There was a pause before the white-furred lup?n responded with, "Me too."

***

Shade kept on the lookout for any reinforcements or other countermeasures, wary this organization must have some way to fend them off.

"Is it getting hotter in here?" the hybrid asked, shifting back to human form. Shade found himself wishing he could lose some of his thick black fur at the moment.

"We did set the reactor to blow," Shade said.

"This is automatic. Built in countermeasures," Ami muttered. Shade sighed, rolling his eyes. "I'm trying to override it, but the system's giving me trouble. It's more sophisticated than I thought."

The air was getting warmer by the second. Oh. It clicked. His fur.

Ami nodded as she saw the realization dawn on him. "It's an anti-lup?n countermeasure."

"Fun group, aren't they?" Arwin chuckled mirthlessly. "Even their buildings are racist."

The facility continued to shake periodically; deep, thundering tremors that shook the group and threw a few people off their feet. The fallen were helped up and they carried on, blasting through what was left of the security team. The whole place was being evacuated.

Shade made sure the others got through before he did, even as chunks of the building began to fall down around them, but when everyone had made it out, he followed close behind the last escapee. He looked up with a weary smile as he saw their ship descend from the clouds, the cargo ramp unfurling to let the refugees board.

He looked back and saw the entire building fell, not to either side, but straight down, as if the ground beneath had opened up to swallow it. This was just one peril of putting your reactor in the basement, Shade thought as he watched the once intimidatingly tall military base collapse in on itself like a dying star. That old non-synthetic concrete was starting to crumble.

The tremors shook everything, but he stood back and made sure the survivors all managed to pile onto the ship as Ami gunned the engines, even as the ground began to crack and give way beneath them. All at once, the ground around the fallen base began to fall out from under them, huge chunks of pavement sliding into the crater that had once been the facility. The last of the refugees clambered onto the cargo ramp, but Shade realized he wouldn't make it in time. The ground cracked and he fell. This is how it ends, he thought. This is the last thing I'll see.

But something inside him clicked. Some fire lit. Something in him refused to die. Call it instinct, or maybe it was those years of military training, maybe just the simple fact that he lived on a planet that was mostly mountains and trees, but his arms caught a jagged chunk of hard rock and he clung to it for all he was worth. He remembered the days he'd spent competing in climbing races, scrabbling across cliff faces that were steeper than this, wet and cold from the snow. He had grown up in the north and he was not going to die by falling to his death.

He climbed, but he'd fallen so far, and he was bruised and beaten from the fighting. His hands began to shake as he climbed, looking for one handhold, then the next. One gave out, then another, then he fell. He caught himself again, but the rock smashed into his chest and knocked the breath out of him. He was weak and tired, breathless, and he'd fallen even farther this time. The edge of the crater was so far away.

"Shade!" Ami's voice called. "I can't get to you, I'm too heavy!"

She was right. For all her upgrades and versatility, that massive arsenal she kept packed away under her synthetic fur was a lot to carry. It would be risky even for an organic to try and reach him. He had to climb.

One hand over the other. He didn't think about anything else, not about how far the edge was above, nor how far the ground was below. He just kept moving, moving one hand up, grabbing and pulling, relentlessly repeating this until his throat was raw, his every breath a burning rasp. His arms were in agony, his fingers cramped, but there was the edge of the cliff. It was so close. So close.

His last breath came out a growl that escaped between his clenched teeth as his arms used the last of their strength to haul him up and over the edge, where he rolled onto flat, stable ground. The darkness moved in around him, but there was a familiar pressure at his neck, a rush of cool, revitalizing nanites repairing his exhausted body.

He gasped and grabbed the hand she offered. Ami pulled him to his feet.

"See?" she laughed. "You don't need me!"

He laughed, pulling in heaving breaths between each relieved, happy exhale.

"I'm so glad you could turn this into a teaching moment," he said when he'd found his breath enough to form words.

"Of course, I could've easily calculated the most stable route down there and just grabbed you, but my point still stands! You're fine!"

He drew in a breath as the outrage swelled inside him.

"YOU WHAT?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Yes, I lied," she scoffed. "What? You really thought this situation magically manifested in which you regained your confidence just as you were starting to have doubts? What is this, a human drama show?"

Shade made several incredulous, unfinished sounds and then said, "A what?"

"We fly back and forth across the galaxy all the time, and I don't sleep like you do." she said with a shrug. "I need some way to entertain myself."

"You are just..." he started, then trailed off again as she gave him that warm "You know I've always got your back" smirk.

"Damn it, I can't stay mad at you for long, can I?" he sighed.

"Your previous record was 52 seconds, when I deleted your save file for that game," she said, crossing her arms.

"Oh, I forgot about that," he grumbled.

"Well, I did distract you," she whispered.

"So... what happens now?" someone asked. They turned and Shade remembered they still had a cargo hold full of refugees to deal with.

"Well," he said, "We'd be happy to fly you anywhere you need to go," Shade said.

"This offer's really only for those of you who might need to sneak out of here quickly and quietly," Ami said. "Without answering questions from the UGDF, if you catch my drift."

He noticed her glancing over certain individuals; a lup?n woman with a scarred left ear, a silen with a metal arm, an aran who hid behind their wings. Typical galactic scum types who were likely to pay for such a trip. He didn't mind letting them onboard, knowing Ami would straighten them out the moment they even thought of causing trouble. He chuckled at how easily he'd fallen back into the habit of relying on her again.

"Otherwise, you can wait and I'm sure the authorities will get you home safe," Shade said. "If you prefer to stick to the law."

"You don't?" Arwin asked.

"Not strictly speaking, no," Shade said. "We go off book a lot. Now, unfortunately, there's only one bed on the ship and it's mine, so the rest of you might have to make do in the cargo hold. Though I wouldn't mind sharing the bed with a few of you."

He smirked toward the lup?n ladies of the group, a couple of whom giggled or blushed.

"Really?" an aran male huffed, wings fluttering. "The life or death situation we all just went through and you're flirting?"

"Yeah, sorry," Shade sighed.

"To be fair, we do this a lot," Ami said, nonchalantly checking her shoulder mounted twin-barrel auto canon in a way that subtly pressed her breasts together to accentuate the cleavage beneath her battle-worn, charred clothes.

"You a cyborg?" one of the lup?n guys asked, stepping forward. She grinned.

"Oh, I'm better than that," she purred, leading him onto the ship.

Side jobs like this didn't pay well, but they had their own merits. He stepped up to the hybrid girl, Arwin.

"Hey," he said, "if you decide to stick around here, become a law-abiding citizen and all, look for a grey-furred lup?n cop, blue eyes. He's a friend of mine. A hybrid. Lup?n and human."

If she were in lup?n form, he knew she would have perked her ears at this.

"Yeah?" she said.

"You'll get along," Shade said. "Trust me."

She smirked and nodded. "Thanks again."

"No problem," he said.

Shade stepped onto the cargo ramp and headed inside his ship with a smile.

"Wait!"

He turned to see a young grey-furred lup?n girl, maybe a few years behind him, come running up the ramp. She had forest green eyes and her ears twitched occasionally. He'd hate to think she was a test subject in their labs. Maybe she was just an intern in the reactor control room.

"Before you go, I just... wanted to say thank you for what you did," she said, touching his arm. "Law-abiding citizen or not, you saved us. That was amazing."

"Yeah," he said. "You're welcome."