The first thing I registered was softness.
Which was wrong. Softness was not something the pocket dimension had opinions about. The pocket dimension had rock and void and beetles and the specific cruelty of a place that had decided comfort was for other people.
So the softness was suspicious.
I opened my eyes.
Ceiling. White. Clean. The specific white of a place that got cleaned regularly by someone whose job it was to clean things regularly.
I sat up slowly.
Bed. Clean sheets. The smell of lavender which was either real or my brain had finally given up and started generating pleasant hallucinations. Both were possible at this point.
I looked at my hands.
Smooth. No damage. No marks from the portal or the trees or the thirty four fractures that had apparently decided to sort themselves out while I was unconscious.
I pulled aside the collar of the silk pajamas I was apparently wearing now.
Skin. Just skin. Everything gone.
I stood up and walked to the window. Mountains. Forest. A lake in the morning light. A mansion wrapped around me in every direction.
"Good morning," a voice said pleasantly. "I am Alexa, your personal assistant. How are you feeling today?"
I spun around.
Searched the room. Under the bed. Behind the wardrobe. Every corner. Nothing.
Then the door opened.
And Winston walked in.
I stared at him for approximately one second.
Then I crossed the room and hugged him. Properly. Both arms. The specific hug of someone who has been alone for seventeen years and has just encountered the first familiar face and their body has made a unilateral decision about what happens next before their brain can weigh in.
"Winston," I said into his shoulder. "You're here."
Winston stood very still in the way of someone who had not been expecting this and was processing it with great dignity.
"Indeed I am, Mister K," he said.
I stepped back and looked at him. Same Winston. Older. But the same precise jacket. The same expression that communicated everything while appearing to communicate nothing.
"You're my Alfred," I said. "You know that right. My Alfred to my Batman."
Winston looked at me for a moment.
"With respect, Mister K," he said, "I don't believe you meet the criteria for Batman. The comparison I would draw is somewhat closer to Robin."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and the tears came before I could stop them which was embarrassing but also seventeen years so I'm calling it justified and moving on.
"The bugs, Winston," I said. My voice was doing something undignified. "You don't understand. You cannot understand. They were everywhere. Every single cycle. Coming through the barrier. Learning. Adapting."
Winston said nothing. Giving me the space.
"One of them watched me fight," I said. "It stood in the dark and watched me handle the others and it took notes. Mental notes. And then the next time it came back it used my own techniques against me. My own techniques, Winston. I taught a beetle to fight and then the beetle used what I taught it to try to kill me. Do you understand how deeply that betrayal cuts."
Winston's expression remained composed. "That does sound quite distressing, sir."
"I tried to reason with them first," I said. "I want that on record. I sat down and I said look, I understand you're just doing what you were built to do, I respect the process, but this isn't working for either of us, I am open to negotiation, let's find a system. And do you know what they did, Winston."
"They did not negotiate," Winston said.
"They did not negotiate." My voice cracked slightly. "They did not negotiate and so I ate them. I ate them and I will not apologize for it because survival is survival but I want you to know that every single meal was a philosophical crisis and I never fully recovered from any of them."
Winston nodded with great patience.
"And the water," I said. My voice dropped to something smaller. "Winston. The water situation."
"Mister K—"
"I tried everything else first. I want to be very clear about that. I looked for alternatives. I was methodical. I was thorough. I exhausted every other option before I arrived at the solution I arrived at."
"Sir, you really don't need to—"
"I drank my own—"
"I understood the implication before you started the sentence," Winston said with extraordinary calm. "And the sentence before that. And frankly the general direction of the conversation from the moment water was mentioned. We do not need to complete that particular thought out loud."
I stared at him.
"It was a difficult time," I said with as much dignity as I could locate.
"It clearly was," Winston said. "And it is over now."
He set a tray down on the table beside me.
I looked at it.
My favorites. All of them. Arranged exactly the way I liked them arranged which was a detail so specific and so unnecessary and so completely Winston that my throat did the thing again and this time I genuinely could not stop it.
"You don't have to worry anymore," Winston said quietly. "You're home."
I looked at the food.
Then I picked up the fork and started eating and didn't say anything for a while because some things you can't put words to and trying just makes them smaller than they are.
Winston showed me to the bathroom after.
Full bathroom. Actual running water. Mirror. Towels. The shower was warm.
It stayed warm.
Consistently. Like that was a thing that just happened. Like warmth was available on request without negotiation or compromise or beetles.
I stood under it for twenty five minutes doing nothing except letting it be warm.
When I came out Winston had laid out clothes. Real clothes. My size. My preferences. Right down to the specific collar I liked which was a detail I had never once mentioned out loud to anyone.
Winston simply knew.
This is why he is Alfred. Robin comments notwithstanding.
I got dressed and looked in the mirror.
The face looking back was mine but wrong. Older than I remembered in ways I couldn't fully quantify. Shaped by seventeen years I hadn't been present for. I looked at it for exactly long enough to understand what I was seeing and then decided that was enough of that for now.
I went to find Winston in the hallway.
We walked together through the corridor the way we used to. Winston slightly ahead, me slightly behind, the particular rhythm of two people who had done this enough times that it didn't require coordination.
"Winston," I said.
"Sir."
"When I called from the hospital room." I looked at the ceiling as we walked. "I knew you'd answer. But the helicopter came so fast. Like you already knew exactly where we were."
Winston glanced at me.
"Of course we knew," he said. "We have been tracking you, Mister K."
I looked at him.
"Since 2008," he said. "The signal was faint. Intermittent. Difficult to locate with any precision. But it was there." A pause. "We never stopped looking."
I walked beside him for a moment.
"Right," I said eventually.
We kept walking.
The voices reached us before we got to the stairs.
One calm. One not.
"You can't just take him from government custody like that."
"I simply parked my helicopter on the emergency helipad. I ran out of fuel."
"Don't play those games with me. Where is my brother."
I stopped at the top of the stairs.
Came down slowly.
Stood in the doorway.
The room went quiet.
The younger man turned.
He was older than I remembered. Lines around his eyes. Silver threading through his hair. Broader in the shoulders in the way people get broader when seventeen years of being the strongest person in any room does things to your posture. A wedding ring on his hand that I was going to think about later when I had the capacity for it.
But the eyes were the same.
Chang-Ho.
He crossed the room and reached out and pressed his palm against my cheek. Hard. Testing if I was real.
I slapped his hand away. "Ow. Stop that. And why are you wearing your suit."
He looked down at himself.
"I came straight here," he said.
"From where."
"Space."
I stared at him.
"It's a long story," he said.
"I have time," I said. "Apparently I have seventeen years worth of time that nobody was using."
Chang-Ho looked at me for a long moment. His jaw was doing the thing where he was processing something too large to process quickly and his face was trying to find somewhere to put it.
Then he reached out and pulled me forward by the back of the neck and held on and I let him because some things don't need words and this was one of them.
Then he stepped back.
"I'll send my home address to Winston," he said. "He'll bring you when you're ready." He looked at me steadily. "Stay as long as you need."
"I'll stay a while," I said. "I have some questions for the old man sitting like he owns the place."
Chang-Ho glanced at the armchair across the room where Soo-min was sitting with the patience of someone who had all day.
Then he looked at me once more. Filing something away. Then he walked out.
I sat down across from the old man.
We looked at each other.
"You were in the helicopter," I said.
"I was," he said.
"You're not Lizzy's butler."
"No." He leaned forward slightly. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Soo-min. Current Chairman of AXILE Corporation." He folded his hands. "AXILE exists to assist citizens after agents save the day. The part nobody sees. The property damage. The consequences. The people left standing in the wreckage of someone else's battle."
I looked at him.
"Soo," I said. "Why do I care."
"Because Lizzy founded it," he said. "Her vision. Help both agents and citizens. Build something that fills the gap."
I sat with that for a moment.
Then I said: "Everything you just said screams one thing."
He waited.
"Lizzy is dead," I said. "Isn't she."
Something moved through his expression. Brief. Controlled. But there.
"I'm surprised you found that so quickly," he said. "Based on the way I spoke about her."
"I'm used to people telling me about deaths," I said. "You learn to hear the voice before the words."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Why did you run from the hospital," Soo-min said.
"Because I'm the enemy of the government," I said. "Support Agent A3003. Listed deceased since 2008. Coming back tends to make that complicated."
He nodded slowly.
Then the door opened and Winston came in carrying a cake.
A proper one. Candles. Everything. He set it on the table between us with the solemn ceremony of someone who had been planning this for a very long time and was not going to let geopolitics interfere with its execution.
"Happy eighteenth birthday, Mister K," he said.
I looked at the cake.
Then at Winston.
Then at Soo-min who was watching me with the patience of a man who understood that this moment needed to be what it was before anything else could happen.
I smiled.
Not the controlled one. The actual one.
"Eighteenth," I said.
"Technically," Winston said. "Biologically."
"Right," I said.
I blew out the candles.
On the television in the corner the news was running on low volume.
Today marks seventeen years since the Gadgets stopped the new human invasion. The pocket dimension used against them in what analysts still call the most unconventional tactical decision in agent history. Lord Ki, leader of the new humans, remains captured in a secured government facility.
Spectrum still offworld. No confirmed return date.
I watched the screen for a moment.
Then I looked at Soo-min.
"My twin brother," I said. "Chang-Ho. He's part of the Gadgets. He's the leader." I paused. "Goldsmith handles defense. Spectrum is the jack of all trades." I looked at the cake. "Flux." I cleared my throat. "Far distance fighter. Better than me at range." Another pause. "Also known as Ari."
Soo-min watched me with the specific patience of someone who already knew all of this.
"She's good," I said.
"She is," he said.
I ate some cake.
"The only reason AXILE wants you here," Soo-min said after a moment, "is because of what you are."
I looked at him.
"You're a new human, Kicks."
I put the fork down.
"You were the one who stopped the new human portals during the invasion," he said. "You understood their technology. Instinctively. In ways nobody else could." He paused. "The government thinks you're a spy. A mole. One of them, sent ahead of the invasion."
I sat with that.
"Then why haven't they taken Chang-Ho," I said. "If they think I'm new human."
"Because only new humans can use materials that match your katanas," he said. "Chang-Ho can't. Which is the one thing keeping him out of their reach." He looked at me steadily. "However your brother has not been quite the same since they took him for questioning some years ago. The things he remembered about you. About what you did during the invasion. They became less clear over time." He paused. "I believe they interfered with what he remembered."
I put the fork down properly this time.
Chang-Ho forgetting. Not losing the memory naturally. Having it taken. Sitting in a room somewhere while someone decided what he was allowed to remember about his own brother.
I sat with that for considerably longer than I sat with anything else.
"So," I said eventually. "The reason you spent billions of dollars pulling me out of a pocket dimension."
"My wife asked me to," he said.
I looked at him.
"Your wife," I said slowly.
"Yes."
The word sat there between us.
"Lizzy," I said. "Lizzy is your wife."
"Was," he said quietly.
I looked at the cake.
"She just wanted me back," I said. "That's it. Her student. She spent all of this to bring back her student."
Soo-min looked at me for a long moment.
"Yes," he said. "That's it."
I didn't say anything.
"Your katanas are with the government," he said. "They took them after the farmland incident. And you currently owe AXILE twelve point three billion dollars. We are essentially bankrupt after what we just did."
I stared at him.
"Twelve point three billion."
"The satellite alone," he said.
I looked at the ceiling.
"When you're ready," Soo-min said, "you can visit Lizzy's grave. And then you can tell me everything about the new humans. Everything you know. Everything you saw." He paused. "That's all I'm asking."
I looked at the candles. Already cooling. The wax starting to set.
Eighteen years old. Biologically. Technically.
Seventeen years gone. Twelve point three billion dollars in debt. No weapons. Government thinks I'm a spy. My master is dead. My brother had his memories taken from him. The girl I was going to take to a rooftop restaurant in Itaewon married someone and I was not ready to know who yet.
"Fine," I said.
I picked up the fork.
"But I'm finishing the cake first."
Winston refilled my juice without being asked.
Some things hadn't changed.
Across the city Chang-Ho sat in his car in the school car park and stared at the steering wheel.
Quick note for anyone keeping track. Claytron and Chang-Ho are the same person. The number one hero. One thousand two hundred and fifty four confirmed saves. Currently sitting in an ordinary car outside an ordinary school in ordinary clothes trying to locate his ordinary face before his children saw him.
Same person. Different names depending on whether the cameras were on.
He had been in space manually correcting the satellite's orbit when the alert came through. He had known on some level what the satellite was actually for. He just hadn't let himself know it consciously because knowing it consciously meant believing it was possible and believing it was possible meant wanting it and wanting it for seventeen years with no guarantee of anything was not a weight he could carry and still function.
So he hadn't known. Until he did.
He changed out of the suit in the back seat. Civilian clothes. School pickup clothes. The suit folded precisely into the compartment under the seat that had been built specifically for this purpose because this was his life.
He got out of the car.
Yuri came through the school gates first and stopped when she saw him. Looked at him the way she always looked at things that didn't add up. His daughter had always been able to tell when something was wrong before he had decided what face to put on about it. He had never figured out how she did this and he had stopped trying to figure it out.
Then Ace came through talking about the new Spectrum action figure and whether the limited edition came with the alternate suit and Do-Hyun came behind him with his bag dragging on the floor as it always did because Do-Hyun had never once in his life carried a bag at the correct height and showed no signs of developing an opinion about this.
Yuri hadn't stopped looking at him.
"What's wrong," she said.
"Nothing," he said. He smiled. The controlled one. "Everything's fine."
He opened the car doors.
"Your cousin is coming to stay for a while," he said. "For my birthday. He'll be with us for a bit."
Three confused faces looked at him.
"We don't have a cousin," Ace said.
"From my side," Chang-Ho said. "You haven't met him. It's complicated."
Yuri looked at him for one more moment with the specific expression of someone filing something under unresolved for later review.
Then she got in the car.
Chang-Ho drove home.
The news was on low the whole way. Seventeen year anniversary. Pocket dimension. Lord Ki still captured. Spectrum still gone.
He turned it off.
Some things you couldn't explain through a car window.