Transcript for 5.23: Juno Steel and the Thief's Honor (Part 2)

The gun in Mr. Fentgen's hand could have been the brother of what I was seeing through the Ruby 7 on Rey of Zend. a computer console, flashing with the words, begin life upgrade, again and again and again. Both were spotless white, sleek and streamlined and small, as smooth and featureless as the executive's faces. One of them held my death, the other Haltslip Jackson's life. Soon I'd find out just how closely my life ending and slips restarting would be connected. My name's Juno Steele. I'm a private eye, but it didn't take an detective to saw South, that things were looking pretty bad for me. While the executive strapped me onto an examination table, I tried to get a clearer look at what was happening on Raves End. In the room where Slip was strapped to a very different contraption on the wall, it was hard to see through the static noise of the Ruby's feelings, though. It was scared and it was tired. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to go home and how I couldn't blame it. Right then going home was just about the only thing in the world I wanted to. Rave was frozen. Transfer fixed on slip on that computer monitors message on the culmination of a 20-year promise finally coming to a head. It was worried about me, you know, I could smell that on and by way of the ruby, but he didn't know how close to death I was. As far as he knew he had time to linger here and think in that two decades of emotion, steam all in again, again. I was so overwhelmed by that emotion that it took me a second to realize that Mr. Fension was talking to me.

So, when he comes back to life, I croak.

Naraya went still his stone then. And the emotions flying out of him. How there were too many to count. Too much of a mess of them for me or the Ruby to make sense of. The culmination of his dream. Hate for those blank-faced executives. Love for slip. Love for me, twist around in there somewhere. Oh, was that just me hoping? Connecting dots that were only there by coincidence, reading meaning into a feeling to intense to have any. Fentions fingers drummed on the monitor with slip's vital sides. Any second now, I thought. Nor have had no idea, but any second now, he'd asked those executives to bring slip back and he'd kill me in the process. Then he said something that surprised me.

That shot Narayov up real quick? I can tell he was thinking or feeling either. My own emotions were getting in the way. A deep, gut-stabbing pain that the executive's raising that question that way. Because that's what I've been dancing around for months, wasn't it? Mr. Jackson and Mr. Steal. Make your choice, man, a mine, and all I can do is watch. Then Ray of said three words, and almost killed me.

And if I hadn't caught a whiff of something odd in Ray of's feelings, I would have given up right then and there.

They approach the computer console together. Near meet, Mr. Fension drummed his fingers impatiently on the monitor. The executives clacked at the keyboard. Then one turned to the other and said, life upgrade is ready.

And in the moment before his finger hit the final button, Nareyev moved. He could have given Vespa around for a money, the speed at which he whipped forward the cold, quick motions of his burning plasma knife. They were down, gone, dead. I don't know if that's what I'd have done, but after everything he'd been through, after everything those Dokana clones were ready to do to the survivors and his trash he... I don't think I can blame him for doing what he did. It took me a minute to understand why he waited so long if he was just claiming I'm gutting him anyway. But even with the clock ticking down on the self-destruct system, he still wasn't in a rush. He was frozen. Staring at that computer console, staring at the final button that executive had nearly pushed, and I started to really sweat. The tension was sweating too. He didn't have the play by play view of what was going on in that room like I did, but clearly he'd expected to slip to be alive by now. He reached into his jacket's inner pocket and pulled out a sleek, white calms.

I could hear Fentian's muffled voice coming from one of the bodies in Rey of its plate across the floor, but he didn't make a move for it. If he walked towards that console slowly, he was sleepwalking. In a way, I guess he was. I don't know what else you're supposed to call it when you're up and moving around while the dream is climbing your eyes. his fingers rested on the keyboard. Half a muscle motion in the cards would start to fall and I'd be dead, slip alive, trading places without an array of even knowing. I did my best to beg him not to do it, but our connection was one way. All I could do was make his half of the ruby squirm in his pocket, and he was a million miles away from thinking about that. He pressed the button.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't just sit there and watch my own death open up beneath me. So it's hard as it was to watch. I poured my mind through the rubies and I let it settle where the ray of was. It wasn't any better over there.

Let me tell you, he didn't look all right. He looked like bones wrapped in tight, cleaning skin. He arrived there on the wall, kicked weekly with what muscles he had left, twisting like an ant with its legs plugged off.

Flashing on the screen below. Tier 2 worker online. The words, activate BrainLink Audio Visual Communication System. Nureye of Hit the Button. After all my talks with Mr. Fension, I knew it was coming. I didn't know what Nureye of expected, but it definitely isn't what he got.

And there was something about the way that Smug Executive tried to sue me on this murder coil that finally mercifully pissed me the hell off. Because I didn't want the pain to end. Not the pain of my blood getting sucked through a high-tech straw, not the heartbreak of watching the ray of its slip together again. Not the horror of seeing and feeling slipped agony and used all the part-wishing half-life. It's a bum deal life, but it's the only deal in town, and I swore I was going to grab onto it and never let go until a reaper grabbed me by the throat and made me. I was going to ran life for every second had. I take a good, and I take the lumps, and I'd see the beauty in it all, with or without an rave. Life belongs to the living, and I hadn't given up my sharing it yet, God damn it, and some cocky corporate cog was not going to take it away from me.

My vision was blurring. I couldn't feel my fingers on my feet. I had fire in me. It was something I focused on, something that steer me by. So I got it together and I did what any good troublemaker would. I looked for my angle. I hated to admit it, but the executive was right. I wasn't budging those restraints, so what else did I have on me? The Ruby, but it wasn't any condition to help. The only one who could save me was the Raff. And he didn't know I was dying. For me, I could tell him. If only this connection wasn't one way, if I could reach into his mind with the Ruby, could reach into mine. If he had some of his Martian gunkin' in like I did, if only if only a man who realized Narayah didn't have the leftover to my mind where you can come to his blood. But someone else in that room did. So I sent a message as loud and clear and desperate as my fading mind would allow. In words, take ages, but thoughts and feelings, well, those are quick as the lightning passes between your synapses. So I told him everything I could as fast as I could. I told him who I was. I told him that him coming back and me dying for connected. I told him I was sorry for what happened to him. I told him I had too much to live for to die here. And I told him that he was talking to the only person who had a shot at saving me. I told him I was in love. And I even got the courage to tell him who I was in love with. I told him everything and I begged him to help me. However, he could manage. And from the silence on the rails end of the call, I could tell that slip Jackson had hurt me.

And what happened after he said that? Well, I couldn't tell you. I was holding on as hard as I could, but eventually no matter how willing the mind, the flesh gives out.

All shadows. No substance. A shape that could have been the executive lying in a smear of color that could have been blood. Blaring alarms. Everything crumbling. Crumbling while the world fell apart. And all I cared about was the familiar warmth of Peter and Arrayev at my side. And that smell of his. That clown. I got so used to it in our year together that it had just sort of disappeared, faded into the background. But I promise myself that if I made it out this time, I'd never take it for granted again. The present came back to me in pieces. I had a lot of questions.

You, you, me, and Ruby. Where's the Ruby seven? I can't feel it.

With my mind, I can't feel it in my mind.

Do you know? But consciousness had gone slippery. Someone had oiled it up on me and whenever I reached out for it, it slid out through my grasping hands and plunged me back down into the dark. I only saw what came next in pieces. The garage where I'd seen melee and the Vavaplan set up. With no melee or verphopalins inside, no transport either. Apparently they've gone away. Darkness next. Consciousness flickering like a lighter in the midnight wind. I woke up propped up against a wall, watching Nureye have go down the line of one man escape on. Without much luck.

Gone again. Falling into nowhere. Somewhere distantly, the feeling of strong arms dragging me across the floor. A door sliding open, belts dragging across me and clasps, snapping into place. Like I had been strapped to that table, like slip had been strapped to that wall. That thought was a hard enough poker to wake me up for a minute. I didn't know if I was dead or alive or alive again, but I knew something was wrong. When I just became more sure of it, when I saw the look on the raves faces, he buckled means of the seat. But one of those one man, the skatepods.

There he is. There he is what's happening.

This is one of the escape parts. So you found two of them left. There he is.

It's not true. Hey, I saw you looking for him, and that's not true.

Don't have time. Don't have time for what?

There I have. No, you can't do this. Noray have.

I don't care. You can't just give up.

So damn. That's self-aggrandizing bull in the way I am, and you're better than it. So start acting like this.

What else do you call a self-sacrifice in nobody asked for, huh? You got me in this mess? I am a goddamn adult and I got me in this mess because I wanted to help you. It's your responsibility. It's a broken executives for stringing you and melee and everyone else along for years and you don't get any points for picking up the bill they skipped out on. You have to learn to goddamn thing, have you? Don't bother answering that because if you think you're just gonna blast me out into space while you die a hero's death, it's true. And no pretty words are gonna change that. Saying everything's your fault is just a power trip because if everything is your fault, then you control everything. Blowing yourself up to a tone for something you didn't even do doesn't help anyone. It's the cowards way out and you know it. What am I supposed to do? Leave. Damn it. Leave when it's easy and live what it's hard. Live with the consequences of your actions and trust me to live with the consequences of mine.

Then we'll figure something out, or die maybe, but whatever the hell happens, we'll do it together. You think that I hold up in some extra planetary dust bunny and I'd have my blood backing down for my health? I did it because I'd love you. You more on. And whether we're together or apart, I'll love you. Whether we're in one piece or a million, I'll love you and I'm not gonna tolerate a world worth the only way I get to live is if you die. So, stop wasting our time and get me out of this thing so we can figure this out together. Maybe my bad beliefs could do is let me lie in the goddamn thing. Nor have.

They don't talk about it, do it. My arms are still wet, spaghetti.

The executives said they had a transport in a single location for slept in the... They did, but...

One minute. Seems like this might be the end of the line, or I have. I think you can find that transport in 60 seconds.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want my last words to be really, really stupid.

No, I have. But if you don't have time to say anything, just say to think the matters. I think we both mean. Hold me. Of course. So we held each other while the world ended around us. And I thought, damn, I really wanted to live. Holding him at the end of the world, it was a pretty close second. Through the souls of my feet, I felt the first reverberating blast from the other side of the trash right. I felt them as they grew closer in the closer. In closer by I felt something else too. Something strange. A wriggling feeling in my pocket. A wriggling feeling in a ray of spoket too. It surprised me when I looked down and saw the Ruby 7 reaching one quivering liquid tendril out from my pocket, because I hadn't felt it think anything since that machine had its way with my blood. But there it was. Reaching, straining, and it's other half in Raya's pocket was doing the same. I caught them, and the incident before those two have touched. They wouldn't have made it, if Narev and I weren't holding each other so tightly, and when they touched, everything changed.

No, but trust it. If you can't trust family, real, family, but how do you make out of people who earn it? Without their trust? And it wasn't like the last time Ruby swallowed me up to launch me through space. The Gondor actor W had my number. Ruby 7 had gotten stronger. It had borrowed a piece from everyone that had ever been close to. Everyone had thought of us its family and it had used those pieces to build itself into something bigger. Stronger. Better. And now it's two halves reunited, swirling the thoughts of jet and festifying body and Rita and Narayev and me. And even melee and puck and Mick in a way, it was unstoppable. It's way of hearing thought and smelling feelings. It was so big, it leaked down into us. Blurred the lines between me and Narayev and the Ruby, and I could barely tell who was thinking what? Who was feeling what? I felt the sharp cold twists of the Ruby's home sickness, the spreading cracks in his, our my heart from slips lost, the heavy weight of years of yearning, disappointed, gone forever. I felt everything narrated, had ever felt for slip, and everything he felt for me. Question marks and all, and strangely, I felt relief. The explosions were nearly on top of us now. Suddenly, all I felt was speed. Screaming speed through the blue dark void of space and through the movie seven's non-high as I could see the stars. Too many of them to count. Too many of them for me to ever see, but they were out there. And they were waiting. And I had a whole future to see as many of them as I felt like. Or maybe just enough future to get to know one of them really, really well. I didn't know yet. I didn't even know if that's what I wanted. We're with Narei of Warneter, with the Ruby 7 Warnet, and the combined thoughts that we'd become.

A galaxy full of beauty, and someone beside you to see it with. A spreading future ahead in the past blown to pieces behind you. I don't think anybody could ask for any more than that.