Chương 113: 7.15 No Return without Receipt or Label

2104: 04: 19: 13: 04: 58 What was in a Sam? What might a Sam be? What would a Sam do? What maketh a Sam? If two Sams walked into the same bar (or more realistically: the same supermarket), filling the same exact space and buying the same exact drink at the exact same time without anyone seeing more than one Sam at a time; does it matter whether there are one or two Sams?

Over two hours later, such questions, whether asked seriously or not, kept going through my mind as I was carried by helicopter over city, hill and forest toward that bit of the Olympic Peninsula that I first woke up in. Though if Naomi was here, I wouldn't dare call it a helicopter of course, but an 'antigrav hover carrier'; a similar vehicle to the one that we'd used for transport during the heroes' strike against the Jannacht, and the same that'd picked me up out of the forest that first fateful day.

That wasn't all that was similar. Two (or three; I wasn't sure about the pilot) of the five people here I already knew. Evelyn and Mark, the two members of the geological-ecological survey team sent out to assess the impact, source and potential damage caused by the earthquake my or Trajan Baker's reappearance had caused were here as well. Likely because they were familiar with the site, or maybe with me, or there simply weren't that many people in their field of business.

Our reunion hadn't been sweet though – bittersweet at most. They'd noticed my occupied mind and, after going over a rough version of the plan I hadn't listened to, most of the ride I spent in silence, the other passengers conversing amongst themselves. Mom wasn't with me for this part of the journey, for which I was glad. She would be going to the forest Peakstar-shaped and functioning as security in case the underground laboratory wasn't as destroyed as I'd made it out to be.

As for why I was glad she wasn't here, well… I had, at a certain point in the distant past, implicitly felt and later explicitly accepted that Mom was Mom, despite the belief I was an android sent to replace her daughter. I had lived with that knowledge, that burden for practically my entire life, and for all of it to suddenly be revealed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be fake? That I was – without me knowing it, without the memories to support it – both the past and present Samanthas?

It felt surreal, like I was lost in a fever. Not that I ever had a fever, but… Either way, I accepted – had to accept – I wasn't an android, but the real, actual, honest-to-God daughter of Kati known as Samantha Pearsson surprisingly fast. But just because I accepted it quickly didn't mean it was easy. I felt, to put it bluntly, like a complete fucking idiot for believing myself to be an android.

All the clues were there, had always been there, and if I'd ever been even the slightest bit curious about my own circumstances, I would've discovered that fact so, so long ago it wasn't even funny. I should've discovered it long ago, and I hated the fact I hadn't. At the same time, I felt less like Samantha Pearsson than I'd ever had before.

Even when I thought I was an android, I believed my identity to be just that: Samantha Pearsson, maker construct of Trajan Baker and meant for greatness, albeit a greatness stymied by poor implementation and a comparatively lackluster set of powers. That was who I was. An android making the best of a shitty situation. An artificial thing filling the hole of an absent daughter, trying to be the best hero I could be while going to school, making friends and overall becoming the best human being I could pretend to be.

Without that identity, and without access to that part of Samantha, of that me still locked away somewhere in the Achronality; who the hell was I? And that was where Mom came into the picture. The first hour after the psychic evaluation, Mom had become unbearably happy. Her relief had been so palpable, so visible, so boundlessly energetic that it bordered on the manic. Which was good for her – great even, and I meant that sincerely. But for someone whose understanding of self had just been stripped away completely?

It was more than a grating experience; it was painful. I was ashamed, confused, sad, angry at everyone and everything. At myself, my 'creator', the Machine, other-Sam, the world, even at Mom. And above all else, I felt deeply, deeply insecure. But Mom didn't see that. She looked at me and saw the whole being, the whole of Samantha Pearsson. Still divided, yes, but only one quick expedition away from being united again and becoming the continuation of her daughter lost eight years ago.

All the while, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was nothing. A thing without purpose- no, like one who had their purpose denied to them. Like I didn't exist, shouldn't exist and soon, wouldn't exist in truth. So yes, I was happy that Mom wasn't in the helicopter I was in. Not for my sake, no – the torture remained regardless of whether Mom was here or not – but for Mom's sake. She shouldn't have to see this, not so close to having the nightmare of my achronal displacement be resolved forever.

My heart raised as my headset crackled.

"Thirty seconds from LZ," a voice said through the headphone.

"All hands, start the descend." Our helicopter was part of a group of three, each carrying a mix of personnel for a total of five people including their respective pilots. Along with Mom, Needle Knight, Levy, Jauntiste, Knowinner and Darius already on site (Millie hadn't been allowed to come), the expedition was comprised of twenty-one individuals, each brought with a purpose in mind.

"Heard. Starting the descend," our pilot affirmed. I glanced outside of the window, looking at the tree-covered hills below. They looked completely unfamiliar.

"We'll be landing in a clearing some hundred meters away from the site we picked you up in," Mark told me. Turning, I saw him look at me with a soft, if strained smile on his face.

"From there, we've been told by the Guardians they'll be able to find a way back from where you arrived." Untrue. Knowinner might be able to figure it out – his was an augur ability concerning itself with 'trails', more often than not used for tracking financial or digital ones – but I'd be the one guiding them in truth. Even with the changing of the seasons and the different weather, I was sure I'd be able to find my way back through overlapping the current reality with what memcordings held.

Something which the other heroes have been informed on, even if not exactly with a reason as to why. Technically, nobody except Mom knew I was a powered, let alone a masked, but with the information we'd given them – the Machine, other-Sam in the Achronality, Trajan Baker, etcetera – it'd be stupid to believe the fiction they didn't know I was powered. They might even know I'm Jester, especially if they knew Peakstar was Kati Pearsson.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Nobody else had been told nothing about me possibly possessing any powers – nor about the Machine, other-Sam, or anything else. Only about the fact that they were to look for an underground laboratory. I was surprised that none of the others here had asked why I'd been brought along at all, but perhaps they were told they shouldn't ask questions. Or they simply had the tact not to ask, either or.

The hovercraft landed, gently lowering itself to the ground with barely a sound. The doors opened and I saw a grass clearing ringed by trees reveal itself, and people moving towards us, Mom at the front. I removed the headphones and sat it down beside me, but remained unmoving.

"Nervous?" Evelyn asked, remaining seated for a moment as the others stood and made their way out of the vehicle one by one. I nodded shakily.

"Extremely." My heartbeat felt loud, each one noticeable and sending pangs of not-quite pain with every pulse.

"Hm," she hm-ed.

"Understandable. But don't worry: we'll find out all there is to know about how you came to be here, and who was responsible for it in the first place. With five heroes here and a whole team of experts, the best of the best, I promise you that nothing can nor will go wrong." The sentiment was kind, but the comfort felt hollow. Even so, I did my best to smile politely.

"Thanks," I said. From the look in her eyes, Evelyn didn't believe me. She smiled pityingly.

"Don't worry about it kid. Just worry about yourself." With that, she too rose and joined the rest outside. I followed three heartbeats later. It felt like all eyes were on me as I took central place among the ones I'd travelled with, our group coming face to face with Knowinner.

"Welcome, Sam," the Guardian greeted, his costume resembling that of a king – the chess piece that is, specifically the black one – with four of the Guardian's golden aegis for a crown.

"All of us here have been told what you've been through, and I want to say we admire the bravery it must've taken for you to come back here." I felt condescended to, but quickly set the burning indignation aside. It was clearly a me problem rather than Knowinner's. Ultimately, I simply nodded in thanks to the hero. Mom, standing beside him, smiled painfully wide at me, her teeth bright to the point I knew she was already partially-shifted into her light state.

He gestured vaguely to his companions and introduced them one by one, afterwards explaining the plan. We would split into groups with me being escorted by Needle Knight, Levy and Knowinner to find Trajan Baker's homemade tomb by my guidance, though he naturally didn't say the latter part. The geological survey team would go and explore the field, scanning the ground more thoroughly than they had after the earthquake and with more specialized devices meant for finding man-made structures sunken underneath the earth.

Mom would keep overwatch on everyone from above. Jauntiste, the forensics team and the emergency medical personnel were on standby until called for, and Darius would be preparing a field lab to ready his maker-tech for whenever we needed something excavated. Once that was said and done, we set off. Under the guidance of Knowinner – through use of a map and old data, not powers – we made our way to the place where Mark and Evelyn had picked me up. Once there, "Can you figure things out from here?" Knowinner asked.

I nodded, prepared to rewind my memcordings all the way back to the start, only to get interrupted by something strange. My Heroi- the Machine, which had been quiet since the Motorgang ambush so long ago, suddenly made itself known. I instinctively wanted to swat it away, but I noticed it wasn't trying to take over – or indeed, do much of anything. All it did was offer a simple, if vague sense of guidance. It was one eerily reminiscent of how it was in the beginning, before the days of Nth-Sight.

Back then it helped inform me on moral quandaries, and I would explain to it in turn on why I should or shouldn't do something. They were the days where we, at least experientially, were at our most cooperative. And now the Machine was trying to invoke that same feeling. Except instead of moral quandaries, it sent something else. Directions. I let its guidance flood into me, although not without keeping an eye out, just in case it was something more sinister than it pretended to be.

Yet there was nothing sinister about it. Merely the vague knowledge of a route, one sending me deeper into the forest, and a sense of hot-and-cold for when I would be closing in on the destination. It was also, as far as I could gather from my memcordings, in an altogether different direction than where I'd first woken up in. Now there might be a good reason for it.

I hadn't exactly walked in a straight line, and following my memcordings necessitated the exact replication of the path I'd taken then, which might not be as easy as it looked. The Machine might simply wish to cut the journey short, though for what reason I didn't know. But those were a lot of 'might's, and none came close the feeling I got from the Machine. Instead, it felt like it was leading me to someplace else entirely. The underground facility, yes, but not to the lab I knew. I told as much to the rest.

"The Machine is sending information on where to go, but… probably not the direction where I first woke up in." Knowinner, crossing his arms and one hand rubbing his chin, thought for a moment.

"A trap?"

"Not the feeling I'm getting, but…" I shrugged.

"It hasn't blocked my access to my memcordings," which we now knew it could do, "so we can still find the place I first woke up in." And where Trajan Baker had died.

"We'll do that first," Knowinner decided.

"We'll place a tag there for Jauntiste to bring Darius and start excavating. While he's busy doing that, we check out where the Machine is guiding you, place a tag there, and then hopefully Darius will be finished at the first location and enter the compound from there. Agreed?" Everyone nodded in agreement. X And so it went.

By the time we returned to Darius, his excavation through the use of his signature maker missiles was already done, Trajan Baker's picked-clean corpse, and a forensics team already inside taking pictures. It was strange, seeing the place of my (re-)birth. More caved in than I remembered to be sure, although with substantially less dirt thanks to Darius' dirt-clearing missiles (did he really have missiles for everything?).

In part thanks to that, I could still see the recognizable, if crushed, metal slab I'd woken up on, along with the machinery Trajan Baker had used to operate me.

"Well, at least that confirms things," Levy, the hero dressed in green and brown peasant's garbs, said. I blinked.

"You didn't believe me?" I asked.

"Less a matter of disbelief," Knowinner cut in before Levy could put foot to mouth further, "and more a matter of verification. Your RAT clearly indicated something was going on, but considering the nature of the Machine's access into your mindscape, there was the possibility its… influence had constructed a fiction to misguide you – and through you, us." I grumbled, but what he said wasn't without merit.

"So, what now?" Levy asked.

"Go to one of the other locations and see if something happens there?" The survey teams had discovered over a dozen hidden chambers – some larger, some very small – buried deep into the earth. Deeper than was feasible or practical, and far too disconnected to make sense. It could still be the achronal displacement earthquakes swapping the lands, as had been the theory in the beginning, but it was more and more looking like something else was going on.

The extreme level of bad luck it would take for the laboratory to be this scrambled while the rest of the land remained mostly whole went far past the border of statistical likelihood to wind up deep into the fields of implausibility.

"We'd be digging for days, possibly weeks before we find something useful," Knowinner said.

"Better to follow the directions of the Machine itself. That way, at least Sam's – and likely ours as well – presence won't be required for the rest of the team to do their work." In other words: get to the Machine, attempt dialogue, see what it has to say (if it has anything to say at all), and then ascertain whether it is a threat or not. If it turned out to be one: get Needle Knight to block any powers and break the Machine – if it doesn't get immediately destroyed through the anti-power effect itself, that is.

I hoped for the former. The latter would mean I'd have to go home and likely wait weeks, if not months before I finally got answers and options on what to do with the part still locked in the Achronality. I'd barely lasted a day; I had my doubts of whether I'd last much longer before going insane – no Mad Android Syndrome required.

"Everyone agree?" Knowinner asked. The other heroes did and as I opened my mouth to do the same, only to get caught in a renewed influx of the Machine's attentions. And with its attentions, new directions.

"It's changed the route," I said. I looked at the room and found the collapsed doorway the Machine was pointing it. It was packed dense with dirt and clearly required excavation, but I pointed at it nevertheless.

"That way."

"Hm. Saves us a trip," Levy said.

"But why the sudden change?" Knowinner said, then shook his head.

"Better to go to the other side. Darius should've already finished excavating it, and we don't have the supplies to make infinite missiles."

"But what's to say we won't have to dig there as well?" Needle Knight, the golden-threaded armored seamstress, asked. Knowinner shrugged.

"Then we'd have to resupply and return another day." The prospect of waiting so long twisted my stomach, so, "I… might have a solution," I said. The heroes all looked at me, and I had to repress the urge to fidget in place. Lowering my voice as to not be overheard by the non-masked crew, I asked Knowinner, "Do we still have some of Darius' missiles here?" He lowered his voice too.

"Not currently, but we could get him to come here," he said.

"Why? Does the Machine-""I'm a shifter," I half-whispered, the heroes tensing at the sudden information.

"I can copy things – both animals and objects – and have had… mixed success with copying maker-tech and allowing it to function." With that, they would surely have figured out who I was while masked, but I didn't care anymore. Let other Sam deal with whatever came of that; it's the least she could do in exchange for me potentially offing myself. The heroes remained silent for a second, stunned, before all turning to Knowinner for directions.

"I… suppose we can try it," he said, voice also quiet as to prevent the forensics team from overhearing.

"You can copy multiple of them?"

"Multiple types, but only one copy per one thing, and only one functional copy of a maker-tech device. But if that one gets used up, I can copy the same one again as many times as needed." Probably. Amber and I had tested it with bricks and other objects before, but we'd never had the idea to do the same with maker machines. The drones and Motor Spirit's bikes had all individually been unique, and the only other maker device I had was our generator, which we hadn't tested it out on.

"The only question is whether I can get the missile to function at all." Knowinner didn't take long to think it over.

"Alright, we'll do it. It's better than waiting for who-knows how long it'll be before we can schedule a similar excursion."