Pain.

Most of what Max remembers anymore is pain. It helps her keep track of the time, even if she has no clue how many days have passed. Wake up, pain, lunch, pain, nap, pain, bed. Mom always said it was important to keep a schedule.

Today was different though. A new pain. The pain of pushing her body to new limits. The pain of striking a human, sending him flying back into a wall. The pain of running, dodging, ducking, weaving. The pain of tearing the metal grating off the wall. The pain of a stink so intense as you slide down a sewage pipe.

Follow the pipe to the sewer. Follow the sewer to the dump zone. The dump zone is in the outer ring. All roads lead in to the second ring. And from there, finding Chloe is easy. You just have to find The Great God Pan.

Apparently, the word for it was 'corporatocracy'. But that was annoying and hard to spell. The point was that Arcadia had been a dying town just a few decades ago, and now it was a thriving metropolis. All thanks to Zephyr. They were an up and coming manufacturer of all things robotic. Supporting the town was their way of gambling what little they had. And it payed off massively. Arcadia had gone from a nowhere burg to a nexus of android and augmentation tech. Arcadia and Zephyr were essentially considered one and the same. Although, like any good business, not everyone got to benefit from this symbiosis.

Arcadia was a city built out across concentric rings, different strata clearly defined by wealth. Zephyr's headquarters were located in the middle of everything, surrounded by Obsidian Springs, the first ring, the only place given the honor of a title. It was also the smallest of the sectors. The second ring was far larger, with the most housing and the majority of workaday businesses. The third ring was where the lowest of the low lived, surrounded on all sides by industry, especially all of Zephyr's factories.

Chloe had spent her whole life here in the second ring. Her mother ran a greasy diner, while her father was in charge of a factory out in the third. He died when she was still young in a major accident. Her mom passed when she was in her early twenties, leaving the diner to her only daughter. More fond of alcohol than food, she chose to turn the place into a bar – The Great God Pan, in honor of the city's name.

It turned out she wasn't the only one that was a fan of drinking. The bar became quite popular, to the point that she actually had to hire her step-father David and old friend Alyssa to help keep order. David eventually got tired of what he called 'work meant for young folk' and left town for greener pastures. Unlike her days as an angry teen, she and David parted on good terms, leaving her and Alyssa as the major mainstays of the bar.

"Look, I don't care what you say. You look insane, you smell like shit, and I'm not even on the clock right now. Come back in a few hours when-"

Alyssa's voice from outside didn't manage to get any further than that before she suddenly came flying in through the front door. Alyssa didn't generally go flying anywhere. The girl was fucking built – there was a reason she could act as a one-woman bouncer/security team. Dudes who were six-foot-twelve and shaped like brick shithouses couldn't step to her. Which meant whoever was outside spelled trouble. She grabbed Bluebeard, her favorite sawed off shotgun, from under the bar, before vaulting over it. "Hey asshole, you have ten seconds before I load you full of good old fashioned buckshot."

The figure coming through the open door was lit behind by the sun and hard to make out in the adrenaline-fueled moment. They were small, like super tiny, and their silhouette was kinda weird. But it came with a voice that she would have recognized in a second. "...Chloe...?"

"...M-Max?"

Staring into the mirror, Max couldn't quite process what it was she saw looking back at her. Half her head was shaved, revealing a large metallic plate in place of skin and skull – not grafted on, literally replaced. The eye beneath was probably just as fake, since it was a brilliant shiny silver instead of the proper shade of blue. She gave a sad sigh and continued wiping away what grim and detritus she could. She really didn't want to look into the mirror anymore and see the lies there. That wasn't her. But even when she wasn't seeing herself, she was still becoming aware of all the little inconsistencies. It felt like there was some kind of port on the back of her neck, and the muscles across her body felt... weird. Probably why she was able to knock back those guards and even Alyssa like they were made of straw.

Thinking was still pretty difficult, and ultimately she decided to just go on autopilot for a while. She finished washing herself in Chloe's bathroom before awkwardly climbing into the clothes she'd loaned to her. They weren't hers, they fit too well. A girlfriend maybe? Ugh, just another thought she wasn't ready to linger on yet.

Walking down the stairs from the second floor apartment and back into the bar, she saw Chloe checking up on Alyssa, icing a bruise on the bar. She smiled bashfully at her and reached up to fiddle with her hair before remembering that only one side of her head had any hair to mess with. "Alyssa, I can't tell you how sorry I am. There's... I... Things are weird right now. I don't even know how many months it's been..."

Alyssa looked suddenly shocked, and Chloe quickly reached for a nearby drink, draining it in a hurry. "Months...? Max, it's been five years." She slammed the glass down and took a second to steady herself. "Well, at least now I know why you ghosted like that. Gonna take me a second to get used to being not mad at you... But where the hell were you even?"

Max moved over, popping up to sit next to them on the bar. "Five..." she started to mutter to herself. The scary thing was how much sense it made. Her assumption of a shorter timeline had always been really rough. Even now, in her freedom, she found it hard to think or keep her concentration. "Give you one guess. I don't have any proof, but really, it's not hard. All this tech jammed into my skeleton? Who else but Zephyr has the resources?"

"Well there's the 'who' but that still leaves a 'why', a 'how', and about fifteen 'what the fuck's to figure out." Chloe growled and quickly poured out another drink for herself before downing that as well. "They sell augs to people every day. What's the point of kidnapping someone and forcing a bunch of shit on them? It's fucked up!"

"I don't know... I really don't know... Part of me wants to run far away and never think about it. But another part of me desperately needs answers. I just have no clue how I could go about doing it."

Chloe, despite the drinking, suddenly grew steely. "I might have a few ideas."

Before Max could see where her train of thought was steaming off to, someone came through the door. Alyssa hopped down from the bar and stalked up to her, injuries seemingly forgotten. "I'm not in the mood, whoever you are. We're closed, so get the hell out."

The woman was tall but not particularly buff. Her pixie cut didn't really help to make her seem all that intimidating. She wore a jacket that almost anyone would recognize, signifying her status as Zephyr security. She drew a pair of plasma knives that were almost definitely not standard issue. "I leave when I have the girl. Simple as that."

"You can have her over my dead body," Chloe reached once again for her shotgun and hopped down as well.

"That can be arranged." The blonde woman readied her blades, and everyone seemed to be gearing up for a fight.

Then Max remembered the fact that she could escape capture on her own and had knocked down Alyssa despite their huge size disparity. She could handle a waif with some laser cutlery. "Both of you, get back..." She pushed off the bar and went into a sprint, tackling into the officer and crashing with her in the streets outside. Not exactly used to combat, all Max could really do was throw her fists and hope for the best.

That was when she discovered several things. First, when fighting, someone who seems weaker may still have the upper hand because they have the appropriate training. Second, whatever had been done to her had basically made her a superhero – as the woman fought back and slashed at her, Max felt almost nothing, and instantly her skin began to repair itself. Third, she could not only knock down a beast like Alyssa, but she could punch concrete hard enough to make it crack.

These facts together didn't really amount to a great deal. The only thing Max could be certain of was that she would definitely survive this fight, but it was going to be a bitch. They went back and forth for a while, Max throwing attacks, her adversary dodging and slashing. But the important thing was that she could draw her attention. The Great God Pan was a treasured location and she wouldn't let any further destruction happen to it.

The only other edge Max had in this fight was that her friends were terrible listeners. As she took another series of slashes to her forearms while blocking, she could see Alyssa stalking behind the blonde, grabbing her from behind and putting her into a painful-looking hold. In a flash, Chloe was there next to her, holding the shotgun to her head as the knives dropped harmlessly to the ground. "Gonna be hard for you to go back home with your head blown off." She paused momentarily, then lowered the barrel down toward her belly. "But I'm afraid we need you alive." She fired without another warning, and the woman instantly crumpled to the ground. "Polyweave armor won't do shit to stop the wave of nausea you get from a shot to the gut. Alyssa, I'm guessing you're still familiar with ropes? We're gonna need her secured. I'm gonna go put out the word that we're closed for the night."

Alyssa sighed sadly and hauled their captive inside. "Stella can't keep a single goddamn secret. I'm guessing you have a plan?"

"I need Angel. She's got more experience with some of this crap than any of us."

Angel. Max realized she was probably going to find out whose clothes she was wearing.

Victoria came to slowly with an aching stomach and a swimming head. She was aware of several people around her talking, but they were doing so quietly, and most of it was coming through garbled until she had more time to properly find her consciousness.

"-ooks better on you than me, hones-"

"-ive years?"

"-cking crazy, it took all three of us!"

"-ur brilliant plan was to essentially take this woman in and hold her hostage? This is not good."

"Angel, c'mon, you know I'm totally useless without you. And you're super smart and shit. And... y'know... you know how to deal with these kinda things?"

As Victoria's eyes fluttered open, they started to shush one another and stared at her intently. "Excuse me..." she began, voice rough and scratchy. "It's rude to talk about someone like they're not in the room." She was quite securely tied to a bar chair – furniture not exactly known for its comfort.

A woman she didn't recognize from earlier approached wearing a white clerical cassock. She removed it and draped it over a chair before Victoria could see what crazy religion she worked for. With a surprisingly warm smile, she sat down across from her. "Hello there Victoria. It's Victoria, right? I'm afraid they insisted on going through your things while waiting for you to wake up."

An interrogation. Well, she could withstand any technique this woman threw at her. Torture, abuse, anything.

But instead she just continued to smile pleasantly as she adjusted her posture. "My name is Kate. And I'm your new best friend." Victoria wasn't sure she knew how to handle that.