June 23, 2045 - 2:00 PM

MEMORY RETRIEVAL COMPLETE. CAREFULLY REMOVE DEVICE WHEN YOU'RE READY. PLEASE COME BACK IF YOU EXPERIENCE NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS, SUCH AS MIGRAINES, TEMPORARY BLINDNESS, OR HALLUCINATIONS OF ANY FORM.

Margo wasn't ready. She dove into the ocean from a high place and failed to assume the proper form, shattering every bone in her body. Crashing through the icy surface, she sank into the murky waters, bleeding from every orifice, counting down every passing second until everything went dark for good.

But she couldn't go out yet. Not after everything from her past came rushing back like the water she'd imagined herself breaking through. She gazed into the charcoal-colored visor shielding her eyes, wondering which memory to interpret first, which one bared the true face of her father.

Everything was far too clear. Margo felt lightheaded, her throat ripped to shreds by her screams. She knew if she opened her mouth, all anyone would hear was a grating rasp like rusted metal. Another reason to turn away from her, she thought. Another reason to look down on her, another pathetic Psychwatch newbie.

I'm still not sure if I even know who I really am.

Beyond the plastic barrier between her ears and the room that harbored the tools to her self-destruction, Margo heard fists beating against the doors, feet shuffling about, hands rustling through bags and holsters. A horde of Psychwatch officers shouted her name. Some fueled by rage, some laced with concern, others howling just to avoid looking out of place, not knowing who the name Margo Sandoval belonged to. Knowing the history behind it all.

No, Margo thought. They knew it all along.

She rose from the floor as the doors slid open, and Carl and a dozen other officers raced toward her. The visor blurred them like faint silhouettes, and Margo felt as if sinister apparitions took the likenesses of her coworkers. Somehow, they were actually less frightening that way. Could've all been her imagination, pure and unfiltered, no schizophrenia adding or taking away from it.

A hand tugged at her shoulder, yet she wasn't afraid. She felt nothing. Every emotion, all at once, reduced to ash by friction. Nothing left to feel.

"Margo!" Carl said, still clutching her shoulder. "Are you okay? How does your head feel?"

She said nothing. Half because she needed to breathe. Half because she knew the sound of her voice would pierce the eardrums of her colleagues like arrowheads.

"Margo?"

She stuck her hand out, gesturing, Give me a moment.

"Yeah, of course," Carl said, and he let go of her shoulder as he and the rest of the officers crowding the room stepped back. All of them except for Mason.

"Sandoval!" she barked. "Remove the helmet immediately."

Margo stumbled back into the wall, the helmet feeling a hundred pounds heavier. Twist the wrong way, and the weight of the helmet could've shattered every bone in her neck, she thought. Twist a different way, and she could've tumbled to the floor and smashed the helmet open, burying shrapnel in her brain.

"Sandoval."

"Maybe we should give her another few minutes, Commissioner," said Royce, and the officers turned to study their colleague out of uniform.

"What the hell are you doing here, Royce?" Mason said. "Did you bring her down here?"

Margo and Royce met eyes, ultimately an exchange between two porcelain dolls. She knew he couldn't see her eyes behind the visor, but they'd made perfect contact. Glassy, frigid, vulnerable. Who was going to break the news first, mold the narrative into a one-sided argument that saves one individual and leaves the other at the mercy of Psychwatch?

"Someone speak," Mason said, her hand descending toward her gun holster.

"I followed her down here, Commissioner," Royce said. "I warned her not to go, but Slater tricked her."

Mason glared back at Margo, and the look in her eyes sent the young doctor-cop stumbling back into the wall once again.

"What were you doing talking to Slater? You're supposed to be in your session with Kusanagi."

"Commissioner," Royce said, "if I recall correctly, Andrade and Atkinson were overlooking the surveillance for Slater and Holloway's cells. Maybe they left the door open and Sandoval entered by mistake?"

Mason's Fatemaker departed her holster with a swift whoosh, training on Royce. Margo watched the other officers jump back with a series of gasps.

"Commissioner?" Royce asked, his hands elevating toward his head.

"You seem to have an explanation for everything," she said.

"Isn't that what we want the public to expect of us? To have answers to everything?"

"I'd always thought that," Margo rasped. "I'd still say you guys do."

"Margo?" Carl said, overtaken by disquietude, fingers stiff.

"You killed my dad. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to eventually, but...I didn't know how to say it. I didn't want to lose your trust."

Margo smacked both of her hands against the side of her helmet, startling the officers.

"How do you..." she trailed off, preventing herself from screaming, her voice cracking with such attempts, "How do you think...I feel now, Carl?"

"You only brought this on yourself, Sandoval," Mason said. "This is forbidden technology. You never should've been down here. Now, let's go."

Margo's eyes burned. She knew the next time she'd catch her reflection, bloodshot eyes would fire right back at her. Her fingers still clawing into the helmet, she slid the device off and dropped it to the floor with a resounding crash, and the officers met her with the barrels of their Fatemakers.

"For fuck's sake," Mason muttered.

Margo's head throbbed. She felt as if the hemispheres of her brain were being pried apart like two halves of a fruit. With every new inch that the hemispheres moved away, the corpus callosum wearing away like a rope stretched beyond its limits, something new would make its way inside her head, a foreign contaminant.

Memories from her old life. Awful memories.

"Maslow," Mason said, "scan her."

"I think we should give her some space, Commissioner," Carl whispered.

"I said scan her. Now."

Margo crashed against the wall again, and she squeezed her hair with one hand, a part of her pondering if she had the strength to yank it off her scalp. The memories were still coming back, a sensation like cement pouring onto her head and shoulders, getting in her eyes, pinning her down to the floor.

"Margo!" Carl exclaimed, and he jogged over to her. Margo blinked seven times, gazing at the bright blue light on his ring.

"Maslow," Mason growled, "I gave you an ord—"

"Just wait one goddamn minute, Commissioner! Please!"

Another silence fell on the officers like snow, and much to their commissioner's chagrin, their Fatemakers descended back to the floor, hovering by their sides. The question was who would holster their gun first.

Margo wanted to be proud of Carl, but her mind wouldn't let her. Even with the visor and the holographic lens of her ThoughtControl piece out of the way, she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge her physical surroundings. The retrieved memories were too loud, too bright.

December 24, 2036. Margo was fourteen. Worst blizzard she'd ever seen. The power went out in their apartment complex, aggravating her father. He doused their entire carpet in lighter fluid, doused the couch and the bed and the furniture. As she and her mom ran for the doors once he lit a match, her father hollered about taking the whole place with him, how'd they'd never feel cold again, as they'd all be ash in the end, be equal in death. Margo and her mother spent their evening and the following day—Christmas—in a motel room, frantically doing their best to shower off the lighter fluid.

"Margo, talk to me," Carl said. "How do you feel? Lightheaded? Hurt?"

As the lens of his ThoughtControl flashed into existence, Margo reminisced again, the front of her skull aching.

December 12, 2035. She was thirteen, standing by the entrance to her middle school, waiting for her ride home after the winter dance. Other kids had rides, said goodbye to each other. Some huddled together with their dates for warmth. None paid any attention to her, shivering in a beautiful blue dress, sent to the dance without a jacket. She took a taxi home, learning later that night at nearly three in the morning that her father was in the hospital, having sliced his arm open by punching through a window amid another outburst.

"Margo?"

March 10, 2034. She was twelve. It was 1:45 in the morning. A self-driving, two-story Greyhound bus stretched across the parking lot of her middle school, the kids loading up into the bus, carrying blankets and backpacks. She bolted out of her mom's car with a backpack and blanket of her own, wincing as the strap of her bag grazed against a fresh welt on her shoulder. She nearly broke down crying as she took the first step into the bus, looking back at her mother, hoping she'd still be there when her class returned at sunset.

"Margo."

January 6, 2032. The day before her tenth birthday. She ate breakfast with her mom and dad, and all was quiet but the scraping of utensils against the plate. There was one more piece of hash brown left on her plate, one that evaded the prongs of her fork. More scraping. Her father grabbed the plate and smashed it against the wall, screeching profanities, a stray shard of ceramic cutting his hand. Margo realized he'd hardly opened his mouth before that day, his voice a mystery to her all that time.

"Margo!"

July 31, 2030. She was eight years old. They had loaded the last box into their new apartment. Cramped. Disheveled. No functioning air-conditioning, or at least not yet. But the cheapest option her mother and father could afford at the moment. As her mom closed the door, she heard her father whisper in her ear, "This is all your fault, you little shit."

"Margo! Say something. Anything!"

"That's enough, Maslow," Mason said. "Step aside."

Margo blinked her eyes. There she was, down in the depths of the organization that simultaneously prolonged and derailed the course of her life. Carl's hand was back on her shoulder, the fingertips clenching her as if she were a plush prize in a claw machine, and she looked down at the Fatemaker holstered by his side. If she recalled correctly, an electric shock from the holster's defense system would render any individual who wasn't Psychwatch personnel unconscious if they attempted to reach for the gun.

One masked officer unveiled a set of handcuffs, the cuffs emanating a sky blue glow. Margo saw that the officer's name tag read J. KUSANAGI.

"You shouldn't feel like a prisoner, Sandoval," Mason said. "This is for your own good."

Margo's eyes darted back and forth between the cuffs and Carl's holstered Fatemaker.

"These cuffs are supposed to soothe their wearer," Mason said. "That way you don't feel threatened."

But I do, Margo thought. I've never felt more endangered in my entire life.

"Just hold your arms out. We'll put these on, and everything can proceed calmly and professionally. We'll get you the treatments you need."

I wonder how much it hurts getting stunned.

She felt Carl's hand slip away. "Maybe it's for the best, kid," he whispered, his voice shaking. "I'll make sure they treat—"

I hope I'm happier when I wake up, wherever I wake up.

Margo jolted towards Carl, grabbing his Fatemaker. A piercing wail filled the air, and every nerve in her body tingled like loose wires. Blue light engulfed her arm, sweeping across her skin until it reached her head, and her limbs went limp, as if completely disintegrated. Her eyes were wide open, but her sight was gone. In her remaining seconds of consciousness, she felt herself descend into an endless void. The impact of her cheek and shoulder against the floor did nothing to keep her from slipping away.

Nor did the sound of Carl screaming her name to the heavens above.