"...sweetheart? Angel, honey is that you?"

It was him. Jack. Not John, whom I had never known; not really. The innocent part of me would like to believe that the first few simulations represented the man he used to be. The man who was my father. Rather, my counterpart's father. The one in front of me was mine, and mine alone.

That naiveté faded when I began to remember past lives. I would have dreams of planets burning, millions dying, sometimes by my own hand. I once woke from a nightmare in which Jack forced me to merge with the Warrior and another Siren, Lilith, and together we demolished planets as we flew past them, reveling in the power. The only solace I found was that the monster who had forced us to join became our first victim.

I didn't go back to sleep that night.

"Not the one you're thinking of." I took a step forward. He took a step back. "What's the matter, Daddy?"

"N-nothing sweetie. I'm just so, so happy you're alive! But, uh, what's going on with your arm over there?"

My siren tattoos had begun to glow when I'd taken a step toward him. He finally seemed to have noticed their distinct golden tint. "Oh, this?"

"I've seen that before, I think...no, definitely, I've definitely seen that before. The experiment, it was that one with the crystal things! So that means you're..." He stiffened. "You're from the crystalisk shard infusion trials. But that didn't happen...here."

"No." I shifted my phase to natural blue, but left it glowing. I liked seeing him afraid of me. "And I'm more than just one of your simulations."

Jack's eyes widened underneath his stupid mask. He was a digistructed body copy with no need for a scar or a mask. I released a burst of energy and spread my siren wings, lifting myself slowly in the air as my eyes and tribal markings shone brightly in ever-shifting shades. I spoke, my voice barely amplified but behind it a chorus of all my past selves, nearly becoming the sound of a chant.

"I am legion, for we are many. I remember everything. I am not the Angel of this world. I'm the pawn you put through hell over and over again; resetting the program once I died or even at times on a whim."

"You weren't supposed to remember any of that! Nobody was! Hell, even I didn't at first-"

"Don't even try lying to me. Know this: I see all of you and I understand you down to your absolute core. You're just like me, born of pure code and then given corporeality. Machines speak to me, and I understand them. They always have, and they told me what had been happening to help me remember. In their own way."

Jack stood silent. This was new.

I settled on a white-gold phase shade and looked him directly in the eyes, my gaze the color of the sun, and nearly as bright.

"I remember every time you killed me. I remember everything you've done, and what you've made me do. I can see everything you remember, and even more from my own simulations."

I shifted my gaze. "I remember all the times I've killed you."

With that and a blast of blinding light, I took to the sky. I aimed for solace above the clouds and fixed my eyes on where I could almost see the outline of Elpis, Pandora's moon.

I broke through the clouds and stopped. I finally looked down, but of course I only saw clouds. They were...blurry. My eyes were wet from passing through the clouds.

That made sense, but no. No, they were streaming. I was crying. Something strange happened then. A suffocating pain resounded through my chest, and a crushing pain in my gut forced me into a fetal position. I lay suspended in the sky, balled up, sobbing.

Jack was nothing but a twisted duplicate of the real Angel's father. But I'm no different.

He was cruel, traitorous, and homicidal.

He needed to be stopped.

He was my dad.

I loved him.