So this is it. The cycle is finally broken. The killing has stopped. Koji is dead. Harashima’s legacy stays untainted. For now, at least. And at the end of it all, I still end up in prison. Probably for the rest of my natural life. Was it worth it? Did justice ultimately prevail? Did I play smart by striking a deal with the police? Did I redeem myself?

A lot was running through Nyx’s mind. She hadn’t had a lot of time to ponder the consequences of her actions while she was still caught up in the whirlwind, and now that it was quiet, the uncertainty ate at her conscience. Much of what she had done ultimately amounted to playing along with Koji, but the price she’d end up paying by having done so was still being cal-culated. She wished she had definitive answers to the questions she was asking herself. But she knew they would likely be left unanswered.

They drove into the garage of the Office of Legal and Military Operations. What is truth?

They exited the vehicle. What is justice?

They started walking towards an elevator, keeping a hand per officer on each of Nyx’s shoulders. What is morality?

They started ascending. Who gets to define them?

They guided her into an interrogation room and sat her down. Who gets to decide what happens when truths collide?

“Please state your name for the record,” echoed the voice of Officer Heynes. Nyx lifted her gaze, snapping back to reality. This was it.

“Nyx Hatara.” A fake name. A ghost. A zombie. A re-construction of her old self under a new identity. There would be a match for her DNA, but the name they would find was…

“Nichiho Amano.” But that wasn’t her anymore. “An-nounced legally dead two years ago.” Yet a part of her is still physically here. He looked her over. “Some impressive cyber-netics you’re sporting. Who gave you all that?”

“A private cybersurgeon. Anonymous, deceased. Con-tracted by one of your own, Koji Hodo.”

The officers tensed up. Koji’s threads ran deep. He had connections to a lot of underground operators – some legal, most not. But the interrogation had to continue. “And what was your relationship to Koji?”

“He was my boss. Ran an underground crime operation while masquerading as a police officer.”

“And what was your role in said operation?”

“I carried out the murders.”

“How many?”

“Five. Two of them connected to your case. Names of the victims are Yoshiro Busujima and Yosuke Harashima. More were supposed to follow, but I defected.”

“Why?”

“Koji gave me the impression the hits he ordered would be strictly political. And yet, it only took until the sixth one for a discrepancy to appear. It became clear to me right away that his strategy had shifted from political culling to silencing wit-nesses.”

“Why did he want Busujima and Harashima dead?”

“I won’t pretend to know exactly. He never gave me the details. I just had to follow his orders.”

“And yet you decided not to when he gave you the name of the sixth target.”

“Exactly.”

“Who was it supposed to be?”

Nyx shuddered and looked down. Doing her best to keep her voice steady, she croaked: “Enez Harady.” As soon as Koji had given her the name, she knew she couldn’t carry out the murder. That was when Nyx hit the fast-forward button on her own plans. Koji was too dangerous at that point.

“You say her name like you were close.”

Nyx hesitated to answer. But she forced one out. “We were. In a previous life.” In a very literal sense.

“And that was when you decided to defect?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know Koji’s current status?”

Of course she did. “Dead. Killed by me.”

Officer Heynes grabbed a portable apparatus of some kind and swung it in front of Nyx. A lie detector, if she had to guess. The machine pondered for a second, two, three, then it chirped and produced a faint, green light. The officers nodded and exchanged a quick glance. Did that mean they had enough? Nyx hoped so. The weight on her shoulders wasn’t getting any lighter. Not until Officer Heynes spoke again. “Thank you, Miss Amano.”

“Hatara,” she corrected instinctively.

He nodded apologetically. “Thank you, Miss Hatara. We’ll call it here.” Then he tapped the Record button on his wrist comm to stop recording. The interrogation was over.

A deafening silence permeated the space for a moment. Officer Walters broke it by asking Heynes: “You gonna send this to Takeshi?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “He deserves to know what his son was doing behind our backs. Too bad Koji won’t be there to suf-fer the consequences.”

“What about me?” Nyx asked half-sarcastically, direct-ing their attention back to herself.

“The repentance team will decide your fate. But prison for life is looking pretty likely.”

Two weeks had passed since Nyx’s sentence had been decided upon. Since she had been locked up in prison. For life, as Of-ficer Heynes had predicted. As she herself had predicted. In lack of anything better to do, she had settled into pondering the questions that had been running through her mind when she was being taken in, still looking for answers to them but not coming up with any. But a new one had also presented itself since then: What am I?

What was she? Where did she land morally? Could she justify what she had done? In some ways, yes – in others, no. Whichever the answer was on a case-by-case basis, the one thing she could convince herself she’d done right was killing Koji. Even if she was now rotting in prison for having done so. Among other things. What is morality? Who gets to define it? Do I have the agency to decide for myself which side I’m on?

“Miss Hatara,” echoed the voice of a guard in Japanese. She lifted her gaze from the floor. “You have a visitor,” the guard continued, stepping aside and allowing another figure to emerge from behind the corner.

It was Enez. No worse for the wear two weeks later, save for a bandage wrapped around her previously bullet-wounded leg. “Hi,” she greeted Nyx in a cheerful half-whisper.

“Long time no see,” Nyx replied with a hint of humor in her tone.

Enez’s smile widened for a second. She let out a chu-ckle. Then her expression got more serious. “Sorry you had to end up in there.”

“Don’t be. I knew the price I’d be paying.”

Enez nodded, the motion accompanied by a heavy sigh. “I just wish things could’ve turned out different. Wished they could have three years ago. That I’d done what I could to stop what happened to you from happening.”

“What happened to me wasn’t your fault, Enez. It was Harashima’s.”

“I know. But still, I—”

“Hush.” Nyx brought a finger up and placed it in front of her lips. Then she stood up and walked up to Enez, slipping a hand through the bars and taking Enez’s. “I survived, didn’t I? That’s ultimately what matters. And I’m glad you did too.”

“Had you appeared a second later, I’m not so sure I would have.” Nyx could sense the fear Enez had felt in the mo-ment. Was still feeling in some way. Her breathing was shaky. And yet, she smiled, thankful that Nyx had come to her rescue.

Something else was on Enez’s mind. Nyx could tell. But she stayed quiet. She didn’t want to push Enez into saying any-thing she didn’t feel comfortable saying. Though maybe Enez sensed as much, as she went on after a moment of silence: “The case is still open. They want me to bring in the evidence.”

“The cops?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to?”

Enez sighed again. “Still debating. There’s a lot on the line even without stacking it on top. I do feel like they should know the truth, but at the same time…” She paused, pondering the consequences. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Don’t ask me for my opinion. Do what feels right.”

“I don’t know what feels right, though. That’s the pro-blem.”

“Listen to your heart. The answer will come to you. Might take some time, but just trust yourself.”

Enez smiled subtly. That told Nyx enough. She trusted that whatever Enez decided to do with the evidence she had about Harashima’s secret activities, she’d do it because it felt like the right choice. Even if it meant collapsing an industry or two. Enez stared into Nyx’s eyes a little more intensely, as if she was trying to look directly into her soul, and said: “Thanks. Twice over.”

“Anytime, darling,” Nyx replied, brushing the back of Enez’s palm with her cybernetic thumb and then releasing her grip. Their arms fell in an almost synchronized motion.

“Now go,” Nyx commanded Enez playfully. “Do what must be done.”

“Yes, mum,” Enez replied sarcastically and walked away, leaving an invisible trail of guilt in her wake.