FOUND

Will sat silently on the train, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as he counted the rivets and bolts. The whine of the engine provided a steady backdrop of white noise as his gaze traced slow circles across the ceiling.

His count had reached triple digits when the rhythmic hum abated and the train began to slow down. The compartment swayed, and Will tore his eyes away from the ceiling. Loud clanging followed, and the train doors slammed open. As soon as the train settled, the drones swarmed in and rapidly shifted boxes. Amidst the din, a sharp set of footsteps cut through the noise.

Becca staggered into the compartment and slumped right next to Will. "I heard from Lawson that you might be here."

"It was the Doctor's idea," said Will, noticing her red, puffy eyes. "I'm going to be here a while."

"How long?" Becca asked.

"Until I'm settled, I guess."

Becca leaned over and touched his forehead. "You're burning up."

"Signature sickness," Will offered with a rueful smile. "It'll pass."

Or he would, either way, he was stuck on the train. The shard was still reaching out to form a connection with the rest of the Hive, and the Doctor's elegant solution was to keep him constantly on the move. The goal was to buy time. The goods train would subject him to varying external signatures that would delay the connection from forming until Will was strong enough to fight on his own.

Only two more weeks. The clock was ticking—who would come out in the end? Only time would tell.

Will took a breath. "Enough about that. How are you?"

Becca looked as though she wanted to say something but shook her head. "I'll be fine. It's Remy I'm worried about."

"Still no news?"

"No."

Both sat in silence, the only sound being that of the train and the distant clatter of rattling boxes.

Will's fingers tapped absently on his slate—the screen filled with a list of items and possessions. The list glazed past his vision, blurred into the background of his thoughts. Seeing his vacant expression, Becca finally asked, glancing at the list, "What is that?"

Will shrugged. "Just a bunch of stuff I own. I was thinking some of it might be useful to Ellie."

"Useful?" Becca frowned.

"Yeah. What?" Will asked, disturbed by the look on her face.

She glanced at the list again. "This looks like a will."

Will's grip tightened on the slate.

"Are you giving up already?" Becca asked softly.

Will let out a shaky breath, dropping the slate onto his lap. Was he giving up? He always had plans in case of failure—a just-in-case for the worst scenarios. It was so ingrained in him that he did it automatically, and yet doubt crept in. Was he so convinced of his doom that his Plan B had become Plan A?

"I don't know," he admitted, a flash of orange eyes briefly obscuring his vision before he blinked it away. "What have I been doing all this time?"

He picked up the slate again and scrolled to the video he had been playing on loop every chance he got. Crowley's recording flickered on the screen, and Will watched Annie step out of her burning crimson mech—her eyes the color of the flames, a malevolent aura radiating from her.

The video ended, and Will thumbed the playback button, replaying the recording once more.

"Will, it isn't her," Becca said quietly, breaking his trance.

"You don't know that."

"Damian said so," Becca countered firmly.

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"Damian doesn't know what he's talking about."

"Doesn't he?" Becca pressed. "She's shorter, her eyes are the wrong shade, her signature is off—and she hasn't aged a day."

"She looks exactly as she did the day I left her," he whispered, almost to himself.

"It's not her," Becca insisted.

"No one is that alike," Will retorted. "This is no random coincidence. I know her! I know her face—"

"The Bishop has been active for years," said Becca. "If Annie was part of the Revenant, then she would be a lot older."

Will stayed silent, not trusting himself to speak.

"Will…" Becca placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do you… want it to be her?"

For a moment, Will offered a brittle smile. "I don't know." His eyes drifted back to the screen—the same haunting face, so alike it was uncanny. The old subway flashed behind his eyelids, the shrill screech of the train wheels echoing in his ears.

Will shook himself awake. Old ghosts continued to haunt him. This was not some random act of chance or twist of fate that had brought his past back to him. Things long left buried were resurfacing; the truth was coming for him, relentless like that very faithful train ride.

"Will, look at me."

Becca snapped him out of his fugue. Will put the slate down and looked at the Tower girl who had been with him through thick and thin. Dark circles rimmed her red, puffy eyes, and the stress of the last few days was still evident on her face.

She continued, her tone tentative but sincere, "I don't know if the Bishop is your sister or not," she said, her voice uncertain before growing firmer again. "But I promise you, I won't be a burden. I won't hold you back like I did in Derbent."

Will remembered that violent day—the panicked procession, the deafening clamor of cyborgs' indiscriminate firing, and Becca, traumatized and unable to return fire—flashing through his mind.

"You weren't in the wrong," Will said softly, blinking away the vision. "If you had missed…"

"Yeah," she echoed. "But it doesn't change the fact that I choked. Even if there was a chance to bring down that Revenant, I was too overwhelmed to seize it."

She took a deep breath, looking at Will with clear eyes. "Next time, I will make that shot. I promise."

For a long, hushed moment, the only sound was the train's steady rhythm and the soft rustle of their shared silence. Finally, Will broke into a lopsided grin.

Becca pursed her lips. "Well, say something! I poured my heart out, and you just sat there grinning!"

"Thank you," said Will, still smiling.

"You're most welcome… idiot."

The two stayed like that for a long while, listening to the train chug along, the occasional rattle of boxes punctuating their quiet. Finally, Becca broke the silence.

"So, what's the plan?" she nudged Will. "You always have a plan."

Will exhaled slowly, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "I've got a few ideas… It's more a matter of hope and prayer than anything concrete right now."

He reached into his bag and produced a set of frayed data chips.

"Is that…" Becca's eyes widened.

"Yes. All of Crowley's data," said Will, slotting the chips into a protective casing before plugging them into his slate. "There's good news and bad news. While we did manage to get all the chips—"

A garbled array of symbols filled the screen.

"—there's a bit of corruption."

"Darn, were they left exposed to the elements for too long?" Becca asked, peering into the shifting data.

Will shrugged. "They weren't properly secured in our rush back. It's not that bad. I've already parsed through the sequence and run it through a correction algorithm. The data is still salvageable."

"Alright," Becca nodded and let out a breath. "Let's see what we can do."

Will cracked his knuckles and dove right in. Together, they spent the next part of the hour nudging the program toward more likely patterns in the recurring data stream, and slowly the screen became more readable.

"That looks promising," muttered Becca.

"It's a shipping manifest of some kind," said Will, scanning through the itemized data. The goods, however, were still masked by a sequence of letters and numbers.

"That's not ideal," muttered Will.

"Let it be," Becca yawned as she stretched her arms over her head. "We have decoded enough for the program to handle the rest of the files. It's best if we move on to a different chip."

Will nodded and accessed the next chip in the series; he was greeted with a pleasant surprise. "Look at this! There's a lot less corruption. The data is all here!"

Becca scanned the screen with bleary eyes. "Which one is this again?"

"It's the one with the data from the Bishop's Web-walker," said Will.

The slate displayed a treasure trove of data on the mech's specifications, and Will went through file after file.

"Organized by date," Will muttered, clicking a random MOS file. His fingers flew over the external keyboard, and his screen filled with a flood of sensor data—humidity, temperature, and field psionographs, a host of environmental data were listed, all meticulously time-stamped.

Will's eyebrows rose with each reading. All the files were the same. The Bishop was recording environmental data every day, all day, non-stop. The list went on and on, the dizzying array of files flying across the screen.

"What the hell am I looking at? Why keep recording?" Will muttered. "Did she just turn it on and forget?"

"Are there any gaps in the recording?" asked Becca, peering over his shoulder.

"No!" Will shook his head. "It's on 24/7!"

Becca's eyes were wide as saucers. "The Bishop never takes off the suit! He's always in it!" She turned to Will. "I did tell you about all the assassination attempts made against him. He never takes off the armor."

"Never takes off the armor," Will repeated. "The perfect excuse."

"Who can see inside a suit?" Becca finished, looking alarmed.

"Sometime... Somehow, the switch was made," said Will, tapping the screen.

"Is it really her?" Becca whispered.

Will's heart hammered in his chest as he stared at the screen. Shadows danced at the edge of his vision—a long, spindly leg disappearing from view. Countless other half-formed visions flared behind his eyelids, all clamoring for his attention.

His mind was a mess. What was real? What was false? A slow dread crept through his veins.

"What the hell is going on?" Will muttered.

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