The alarm hit Willow like a lorry.

Sleep-drunk and bleary-eyed, she rolled in her bed and stopped the shrill keening cry of her phone with all the grace of a hippopotamus. She sighed, bitterly, and sat up, running a hand across her head in a vain attempt to untangle the knots that her hair had managed to gain in the night.

It wasn't as though she wasn't a morning person, usually. But lately, she'd not had much success at sleep: too much of her brain was taken up by different threads of thought and suspicion, careening across her mental landscape like flies buzzing around a lamp at night. Why wasn't Iris talking to her? What else was Klein keeping back? How did people turn into Aberrants, and why was Willow, of all people, the one to deal with it when they did?

Willow sighed again, and got out of bed.

Her room was tidy, of course: she made a point of it. The floor was clear. The desk by her bed had a pile of books upon it, mostly novels, stacked neatly at the corner. Her diary lay in the centre of the desk, the pens and pencils used to write in it laid out to its side like soldiers in a row. Her phone was set carefully on her suitcase next to the bed.

Getting dressed never took very long. The wardrobe — not standard-issue, but she'd insisted — was neatly laid out, dresses, blouses and skirts carefully organised by colour and length and hung so that they wouldn't wrinkle. She selected a light green blouse and matching skirt and pulled them briskly onto her body; moments later, she was walking out of the door and on her way to the "kitchen".

She used that word under protest, of course.

Breakfast for Willow that day was the same as usual: two slices of toast, buttered, with jam, and a mug of black coffee with the tiniest speck of sugar. She prepared it all in blissful silence. There weren't many opportunities for calm in the base, but today, Amanita was presumably still asleep, and Iris was off visiting her father in hospital. Willow took advantage of the isolation and sat down at the kitchen table for her meal.

It was just like Iris to disappear like that, of course. Sure, she had a decent enough reason, but it was a little too convenient that she should disappear now, when Willow had been trying to have a proper conversation with her for days. Especially after they'd had that frankly bizarre interaction in Amanita's room.

Where did Iris get off calling her "stupid", anyway?

Willow tidied up the remnants of her breakfast and went back to her room. There was still an hour or so before she was due on the operations floor of the base, so she picked up one of the books on her desk — a fantasy novel, all swords and sorcery and big ideas — and got to reading.

She'd only managed to clear a few pages when her phone buzzed. The notification said: "Mood diary!"

Ugh.

She put the novel back on her pile, making sure to line it up with the others, and opened her diary, flipping to the latest page. It hadn't been her idea to keep a diary, of course. Doctor Randell, the pompous git who'd seen her at Norfolk Plaza, had suggested it — practically insisted, really — when it'd become clear to him that she was going to be leaving his care whether he liked it or not. At first, she'd kept it pretty religiously, but lately it'd fallen a bit by the wayside. After all, it wasn't as though anyone was checking.

Willow held her pen over the space for the next entry, thinking. But instead of writing in the book, she put the pen down, tore out a section of paper and closed the book. She scribbled a note to herself on the paper and folded it in half, stood up, carefully lifted her mattress up and placed it underneath to join all of the other notes she'd been leaving to herself.

You couldn't be too careful, after all.

Willow arrived at the ops floor at 1033 hours. She wasn't expected until 1100, of course, but she made a point to be early whenever possible, and it wasn't as though she had much else to do. She found her way to the waiting room with book in hand, and sat down to read some more in the time she had.

It wasn't long before she was interrupted.

Amanita came into the waiting room carrying a cup of ramen, dressed in her usual baggy pastel hoodie and pale blue jeans. Her hair was unbrushed, and her eyes were ringed with dark circles. She shuffled to a seat close to Willow and sat down; the wet, greasy smell of ramen followed suit soon after.

"Morning," she said.

Willow grimaced. "Good morning." She sighed, and closed her book again. "Just us today, then?"

Amanita shrugged. "Just us," she echoed. "Iris is busy."

Right.

"What's going on with her, anyway?" Willow wondered aloud.

Amanita looked at her quizzically, noodles in mid-slurp. "Wha—" she began; mercifully, she stopped to finish her mouthful before continuing. "What do you mean?"

"She's been… odd, lately. Evasive. Reserved." Willow rolled her eyes. "Honestly, less of a bitch."

Amanita ate some more of her noodles. "She's not… a bitch," she said, eventually. She sounded almost offended. Was that… defensiveness?

Willow added Amanita to her mental list of "people keeping things from me". It was getting kind of long.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, and Harry Searl came in all blonde hair, blue eyes and Adonis features. He was a sight for sore eyes, and Willow felt herself soften immediately.

But Harry wasn't there to make her feel better. Probably far from it.

"The Colonel wants you both," he said. "Briefing room three."

"Nice to see you too, Harry," Willow responded, without much venom. She stood up from her seat and followed him out of the room with Amanita behind her.

"What's happening today?" she asked him.

Without breaking stride, Harry responded. "Some kind of a new weapon they want testing, apparently. I don't really know much of the details."

It was strange of them to be testing with their star player out of the picture, Willow thought. Though perhaps that was the point: Iris was too important for them to risk. Clearly, Willow and Amanita were more expendable.

"Another of Klein's experiments?" she asked archly. She didn't get a reply.

They'd reached the entrance to the briefing room; Harry turned to face her with an apologetic smile, but said nothing. He opened the door, and all three of them went into the room.

Briefing room three was smaller than the other briefing rooms; rather than the standard theatre setup, it was more of a meeting room, a circular table with a half-dozen seats around it. An electronic whiteboard took up one of the walls, but it was inactive, and wore a thin layer of dust. Doctor Klein and Colonel Adler sat together on one side of the table. In front of them, they had a pile of file folders along with a Faraday laptop bag. None of them were open.

They looked up as Harry, Willow and Amanita came into the room.

"Ah, Reynolds, Gill, Searl," the Colonel said. "Thank you for joining us."

The words were only a formality, of course; it wasn't as though he'd given them any choice. Perhaps he'd been told to soften his usual military attitude. But still, the insincerity of his words shone through.

Pleasantries were a waste of time, anyway.

"What is it?" Willow asked. "Harry said there's some kind of weapon to test?"

"That's correct," Klein replied. "A new weapon, based on new principles, that should hopefully be much more effective against the Aberrants than anything we currently have in our arsenal."

Willow scoffed. "Sounds like a magic bullet."

Klein glared back at her. "'Any sufficiently advanced technology'…"

Was she quoting Clarke? My God, she was full of bullshit.

"Anyway," Klein continued, "that's neither here nor there. The point is, the weapon exists, and needs testing."

"And we're the ones to do it," Willow said flatly. There wasn't any point in faking enthusiasm.

"If you know of any other Thanatos pilots," Klein intoned, "please introduce us. Until then, yes, you are the ones to do it."

Adler gave them both a meaningful look. "Are you two finished?"

Clearly Willow wasn't the only one tired of Klein's attitude. At least the Colonel was able to cut through it.

"The weapon," he prompted.

"Right," Klein said, shuffling the files around. "We call it the Cutting Ray; it's a new energy weapon, specifically designed to attack Aberration on a molecular level. It operates on reductive principles, breaking the target down to its component parts rather than attacking them as a whole."

She opened one of the files in front of her, flipping to a page with a schematic on it. The Cutting Ray looked a bit like the pulse rifles they usually used, but bigger and somehow sleeker, without so many of the extraneous appendages and ammunition holsters.

"It doesn't have a sight," Amanita stated. Willow looked closer at the schematic; she was right.

Klein smiled thinly. "That's just it: the weapon is its own sight."

Well, what the hell was that supposed to mean?

The sparring platform was windswept and bright, the sun beating down on it like the hot lamp of an incubator. Amanita and Willow stood in the centre, each inside her own shell, the Cutting Ray mounted on Amanita's back. In the distance, some miles away, were a series of targets standing straight up in the crashing waves of the North Sea, each one a gleaming white adorned with inhuman appendages of all sorts, shapes and sizes. The eyes of Willow's Thanatos unit locked onto each one in turn.

In the haze of midday, they looked almost alive.

"So what," she said. "We just shoot them?"

"That's the idea," Klein's voice replied over the radio. "The first few shots will be for calibration. Then, once we've got that sorted, we'll try it against a moving target."

"Understood." Amanita's thought-voice was serious as she hoisted the weapon off of her back and trained it on the first of the targets.

The radio crackled again. "Connecting you to the sights… now."

Suddenly, an explosion of colour filled the air, as though every atmospheric particle had been daubed with the vibrancy of an oil painting. The colours, at first everywhere and overwhelming, gradually found their focus, assembling themselves into a beam starting at the barrel of the Cutting Ray and shooting off into the distance. Willow's eyes followed it all the way to the first of the targets, where it glanced off what she assumed was meant to be a shoulder.

Wow. That was… not what she was expecting.

"Just as I thought," Klein said. "Give me a moment and I'll send some adjustments."

"Hand the weapon to Willow," Adler added. "You both need experience with this."

Amanita nodded and passed the Cutting Ray to Willow. Willow took it, gazing intently at its sleek, smooth surface, at the gorgeous detail of its design and construction. As her hand found the trigger mechanism, she felt her senses lurch as her unit synced up with its sights, like a third eye had been opened at the end of the barrel.

Trippy.

"New firmware should be loaded," Klein said. "Willow, when you're ready…"

Willow nodded, wryly smiling to herself — though she was sure her unit had no way of displaying it — and aimed at the target.

"Understood."

Through the eye of the Cutting Ray, she could see the target in far more detail than before: how it was constructed from a combination of wood and metal and tied together with wires and pipes like some inanimate Frankenstein's monster; how its arms were flapping ever so slightly in the sea winds; how the lower half of it was splashed by the occasional droplet of water. Focusing on all of these details, she pulled the trigger.

In an instant, the target was unmade.

Echoes of the world around her reverberated through Willow's skull. Every one of those particles that Amanita had painted was burned into Willow's soul, colour and position and direction suddenly plain and clear. There was no air around them; there were molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, ozone, carbon dioxide and countless other trace elements that, in concert, could be called "air". In that moment, they were not acting in concert. In that moment, everything was alone.

In the next, Willow crashed back into reality as she knew it. In her arms, she held a weapon. In the distance, a target was crumbling into the sea. And the link between those two things… was Willow herself.

"Holy fuck!" she shouted. "Did you see that?! That was incredible!"

"Yes," Amanita agreed. "Impressive."

"Readings are good," Klein added. "Plenty of data to sift through." Behind her voice, Willow could hear cheers coming from the rest of the control room.

Willow admired the weapon in her hands. She'd never seen something so beautifully destructive before in her life. Maybe this would be just what they needed…

"Amanita," Klein said. "Your turn again."

Without even the barest hint of a grudge, Willow handed the weapon back to Amanita.

"Take good care of her," she said.

Amanita nodded in reply and raised the Cutting Ray up once more. Willow turned her gaze to the next target, shining white chrome standing up in the distance. Without the aid of the Cutting Ray's sight, she struggled to focus on its shape, its arms and legs shimmering like a mirage in the desert. Four arms, two legs, a gleaming white body.

No. Something felt off.

"Iris?"

Iris' Thanatos unit stood there, in the distance, in the blue, standing upon the water. Its shape was unmistakable; Willow would know it anywhere.

Wasn't she meant to be away today? How'd she gotten there?

"Stop!" Willow cried. "That's Iris!"

But nobody heard her.

Then colours erupted once more, and Iris was unmade before Willow's eyes.

By the time Iris got back to the base at around 3pm, the incident had apparently been resolved. Harry Searl greeted her as the taxi pulled up; she paid with her phone and leapt out without saying a word to the driver. There was an quiet un-calm in the street by the base's street-level entrance, as though even the few pedestrians around knew better than to say anything. But Iris' mind was anything but quiet.

"What happened?!" she demanded. After the fact, she wasn't sure exactly which of her or Thanatos had spoken.

"I'll explain on the way," Searl told her, and led her into the base.

Iris hadn't often come to the base via this entrance. In the golden glow of the afternoon sun, the escalators shone like rows of moving teeth, dragging her down into the base like it was eating her whole. Overhead lights flickered. Motors hummed. Iris' lungs pumped shallow breaths in and out.

It was a lot.

"There was an incident at the sparring platform," Harry explained. "We were running a weapons test, and…" He sighed. "Willow just snapped."

Iris' thoughts came to an awful focal point. That bitch. What had she done?

"She 'snapped'?" she echoed, her voice carefully level.

Harry turned to face her on the escalator. "Sorry, I don't really know how else to put it. Something snapped, and she just went for Amanita. Tore into her like…"

"But why?"

Iris found herself sitting in a mix of anger and confusion. Sure, Willow had never exactly gotten on with either of them, but…

He sighed. "I wish I knew."

"You should've gotten her first, you know," Thanatos told her from over her shoulder.

Unhelpful.

The escalator brought them to their destination, and Harry led her off and into the grim chaos of the operational floor. The corridors were just as busy as ever, just as filled with people hurrying from A to B to C via D and E chattering away the whole time, but today, those voices were hushed whispers and apprehensive glances at Iris, as though she were a bomb that might go off at any moment. Iris felt distant from it all, like it was happening on a TV screen. None of it was real.

"Can I see her?" she asked. "Where are they?"

"We've got Willow in the detention cells," he replied. "Luckily, we were able to get the fail-safe working by remote, shut the unit down…" He sighed. "As for Amanita, she's in the infirmary."

"I want to see her."

"You'll have to talk to the Colonel, first," he replied. "Sorry."

At least he sounded genuinely apologetic.

They arrived at Adler's office. Iris had never been inside before; she went through the door a bundle of nerves, filled with apprehension and dread. It was a tidy office, every item of furniture laid out in military order, screens and terminals tucked away where they were least likely to get in the way.

Colonel Adler sat behind the desk holding on to a cup of coffee like it was a mission-critical asset, his greying hair looking even whiter and more tired than usual.

"Iris," he said flatly as she came into the room. "Please have a seat."

"Colonel," she replied; she'd never actually been told what the correct way to address him was, so she was guessing. She sat down on the spartan chair in front of him and sighed deeply.

"Searl," he called out to the door. "See if you can get Iris some coffee. How do you take it, Iris?"

"Um." Iris had never seen the Colonel act with quite so much care and compassion, and she wasn't entirely sure how to respond. "Milk, and sugar."

"See to it, Lieutenant," Adler said.

Lieutenant Searl saluted and left, and then the two of them were alone with their thoughts.

After what felt like an age, the Colonel sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I can't… begin to express how sorry I am about all of this," he said. "I'm sure you have questions; ask, and I'll do my best to answer them."

Iris only really had one question. "Is Amanita going to be okay?"

Adler took a sip of coffee, pondering a moment. "The doctors say she's suffered worse, but…" He put the cup down. "Well, there's the cumulative stress, of course. The simple answer is—"

The door opened, and Searl came back into the room with a large mug of coffee. "Milk, and two sugars," he told her. "Hope that's okay."

Iris took it. "Thanks." She preferred it sweeter, of course, but maybe the bitterness would jolt her back into her body. She took a large swig, scalding the tip of her tongue, and then put the mug on the desk in front of her.

"Is there anything else?" Harry asked. It took a moment for Iris to realise he was addressing the Colonel.

"Not for the moment, Lieutenant," the Colonel replied. "You're dismissed. But don't stray too far; I may need you."

"Right, sir." Harry Searl left the room once more.

Adler ran a hand through his hair and adjusted his glasses. "The doctors are hopeful that she'll have recovered enough for a debrief within twenty four hours. But they say there may be… well, let's just say that her tenure here may be cut short. Right now, her condition is stable."

Iris nodded. Really, that was all that mattered. Who cares if Amanita wouldn't be able to pilot Thanatos ever again? As long as she was alive, and safe…

"Wow." Thanatos' voice was sardonic. "You want to get rid of me just like that?"

It wasn't like that.

Well, maybe it was, a little.

"Can I see her?" Iris asked.

Adler shook his head. "No visitors," he told her. "Not until after the debrief."

Iris tensed. Surely Amanita needed a friend more than she needed a "debrief"?

"I want to see her," she said firmly.

"Miss Platt."

"Let me do it," Thanatos said.

"Let me see her," Iris repeated.

"I can do it…"

"Miss Platt, you're acting like a child."

"Let me do it!"

Fine, Iris thought. Do it.

Thanatos smiled, and stood up from the chair. "We're going to go see Amanita," it said flatly, and walked out the door.

It took the Colonel a moment to respond.

"Searl!" he yelled. "Stop her!"

Harry Searl was standing in the hallway; he watched as Thanatos, in Iris' skin, walked towards him. His hand went to the pistol at his hip.

"Iris," he said. "Stop."

"No," Thanatos replied. "I'm going to the infirmary."

Thanatos pushed past Searl and dashed away; footsteps crashed behind it as Searl, Adler and a couple of grunts chased it through the corridors of the base, guns at the ready. At a T-junction, Thanatos ran left, not even stopping to think. All it had to do was get to the lifts…

"You go that way, cut her off!"

"Sir!"

Military boots squeaked behind it as Thanatos ducked through a break room and along a tertiary corridor, down an arterial hallway and to the lifts. It hit the 'down' button and kept running: no use waiting like a sitting duck. It ran to the end of the corridor and turned right.

Harry Searl was waiting.

"Iris," he said, holding his gun aloft. His grip was shaky; his tone was more plea than order. "You have to stop."

"You going to shoot me?" Thanatos taunted.

"I might."

Thanatos laughed. "Fucking do it, then."

Harry Searl moved his gun to the side, and pulled the trigger; light and sound reverberated around the corridor as Iris found herself yanked violently back into her own skin.

Thanatos had abandoned her.

The next thing she knew, she was in handcuffs.

Next time:

A friendly chat with the girls.

Episode Twelve: Rhizome!