Anya watched Ryan play with the memory cube he pulled out of the suit mainboard after decontamination. He waited for his father to call and yell insults at him with rancid disappointment. The last time he went memory echo hunting, he made him visit the psychologist when he returned home. His father believed that Ryan's quest to find the cure for the Black Virus was fueled by a sick desire to relive the lives of the deceased or unhealthy curiosity about what was happening on Earth during the last days of the Pandemic. For his father, Megan was already dead, and he moved on from her a long time ago. Soon after, a giant image of a bat appeared on the screen. Ryan accepted the call.

  "Welcome home, son," the Bat image spoke. His father chose not to turn on the camera. That usually meant Ryan's mother was also in the room listening in on the call.

  "I heard your run was a bust. The factory collapsed, as your mission report said. I want you to know that I knew you were lying to my face, but I still chose to trust you've changed." Ryan's father's voice quieted near the end as some muffled voice from the background tried to calm him down. Like Ryan guessed, his mom was there too, but she was too far from the microphone for Ryan to make out of anything she said. After some awkward pause, the Old Bat continued, "I'm confining you to the residential station, revoking all of your administrator privileges. If you continue to indulge in this madness, I will deactivate your AI gal over there, so don't push me, son. " he finished.

  "I understand. I'm sorry." Ryan decided not to argue. He just wanted to get over the conversation and start his work on converting Maya's memory echo into the AI mind. The lack of her behavioral data would be a problem, but he met her briefly while diving inside Nicolas' echo, so the few things he knew about her had to be enough.

  "I honestly hope you do, Ryan. For all our sakes." Ryan's father said and dropped the call. The Big Bat disappeared from the screen, and with illumination from the screen gone, the room was dark again. Ryan looked over the room. He stopped after seeing Anya's eyes glowing in the dark.

  "Let's go," he said decisively.

  ***

  The android body they managed to procure for Maya was one of the older models, but still hard to distinguish from actual humans. Anya replaced the android's eyes beforehand with a model that didn't glow. It meant no integrated augmented reality lens, but the goal was to trick Maya into thinking she was still human, not to help her read through newspapers more conveniently.

  Ryan placed the memory cube on the android's sternum where a highspeed wireless antenna was exposed under the synthetic skin. Blue LED came to life as it paired with the antenna, and the prompt on the lab's computer screen asked: Begin the memory echo conversion. Ryan looked over at Anya, asking for her approval. She reluctantly nodded in agreement.

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  "Now we wait," Ryan said and focused on the loading bar on the screen.

  ***

  "Doctor, wake up. She's up," Ryan heard Anya's voice and felt her shaking him gently. They agreed to play the roles of medical personnel in a medical facility where, as the story went, Maya was in a coma for more than ten years. Ryan bolted up on his feet and swiftly slipped right into his role.

  "Miss Takahashi, I'm Ryan Helvig, and this is Anya Rosales. We're your doctors. You've been in a coma for almost ten years. Can you tell us what's the last thing you remember?" Ryan finished his introductions, and Anya was impressed by how good an actor he was. If the movie industry still existed Ryan would have been their top dog.

  "I was going to meet someone, and...I think a car hit me. I remember nothing after that." Maya said, then frowned and massaged her throat. Ryan quickly intervened.

  "It's the side effect of being intubated for such a long time, Miss Takahashi. Your voice box is bruised. It'll take some time for your voice to return to its original state." Ryan smiled one of his fakest smiles. He hoped it worked.

  "My family?" Maya asked and sat up in her bed.

  "Miss Takahashi, this will come to you as a shock, but humanity is close to losing the war against the Black Virus. A lot of people died. Your parents included." Ryan finished and gently put his hand on Maya's shoulder. Maya looked at Ryan, her eyes widened, and her face stiffened. She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it hard, almost breaking it in the process. Her new android body had some decent power behind those muscle micro-motors. Ryan shook his head at Anya, who was getting ready to break Maya's arm. Maya calmed down and then spoke.

  "So it's true? The Black Virus has no cure. I remember now who I was going to meet that day. He was my friend in the JSDF. The whistleblower from the US Government approached them and asked for protection. He smuggled the strand of the Black virus they called the RV-69, the final strand."

  "Dear lord, the Black Virus was man-made," Ryan interrupted her. He looked at Anya. She was still looking at Maya in disbelief. Ryan's brain kicked into overdrive. He had to think up a way to salvage this situation. He still didn't want to give up on curing Megan. Maya's voice snapped him back to reality.

  "I think they tried to kill everyone that knew about the strand. I don't think they wanted to wipe out the whole human race, but viruses are impossible to control. Especially the kind as dangerous as the Black Virus. It wasn't even the US Government that was behind it all. They only covered it up for that bioengineering company. I can't remember their name, Future something."

  "Future Solutions," Ryan interrupted her. He looked at their logo printed on the medical cabinet in the lab. They were the ones that pushed for the construction of the orbital stations, even before the Black Virus had been upgraded from epidemic into pandemic. They were behind it all. But Ryan refused to give up. He had Maya now and he was about to use her to fix this thing.

  "Miss Takahashi, please rest now. We'll talk more later," he said to Maya and hurried out of the lab with Anya following behind him. When he was far away from the lab, he stopped, slouched down, and hung his head low. He felt Anya's hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and said.

  "We'll cure this plague, but we first need to clean up our backyard," and Anya just nodded in agreement.