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  “Alright,” the doctor said in a soft, calming voice. “Pupillary reflexes seem to be fine. And you said the dizziness is diminishing?” I nodded and definitely did not groan. “Good. Then I can definitively conclude that at the very least you didn’t suffer from a stroke. From your symptoms and the, ah, situation you’ve described, this seems to be a regular stress-induced migraine.”

  She scribbled down something on her tablet, went and opened a glass cabinet and grabbed two small packets of something from it. She tore one open and deposited the powdery substance in a glass of water – her assistant had grabbed one for me earlier – and then handed it to me.

  “Six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen; a basic painkiller, if a higher dosage than usual. Go ahead and drink up.” As I did, the doctor turned to Mom. “I’ve sent my report to be added to your daughter’s medical dossier. If this becomes a recurring problem I recommend taking her to your PCP and take things from there.” The doctor then flipped over and held out her tablet while offering Mom her stylus.

  Mom accepted it and signed whatever document the doctor had given her. “I will,” Mom said. “Thank you.”

  The doctor nodded and, seeing I was done drinking, said, “I have to ask you to stay here for at least half an hour to an hour – just to be sure rather than due to any real concern. After that, try to get some sleep, drink plenty of water and take things easy for the next couple of days. If the migraine returns you can use-” she handed Mom the other ibuprofen package, “-this, and, as I’ve already said, see your physician for any further treatment. Any questions?”

  After some ‘thanks’ and ‘goodbyes’, the doctor exited the room and left the two of us alone.

  Mom took the glass I’d just used and gestured toward the bed I sat on. “Go ahead and lie down while I go get us something to drink. Would you like tea or water?”

  “Water,” I groaned out, sounding much too pitiful to my own ears.

  “Alright.” She stood still for a second and looked at me for a smidge longer. “Go and lie down,” she reiterated softly.

  She turned around and left the room.

  Doing as I was told, I stretched out over the medical bed – one much more comfortable than the steel one my creator had put me on, thankfully – and lay down insofar the half-upright bed would allow me.

  Tonight had been… I wished to think more about it, but I couldn’t. Although the dizziness had mostly faded, my head still hurt as if I’d been domed by a concrete brick. My skull felt split in three by two sharp cuts above my eyes carving a canyon all the way to the back, along with a vice-like grip squeezing down on my temples trying to pop my head like a water balloon.

  It would’ve been more frustrating if it wasn’t also sapping all of my energy.

  The door opened again and Mom returned with a mug and a refilled glass. She sat the latter down on a table next to me, while she herself took the empty chair near the window on my left.

  The air turned thick with silence. Mom, stooped over with droopy eyes, looked to be on her last leg, and who could blame her? When I threw up into the lake, she’d both nearly panicked with worry and fear while also needing to focus and take rapid action; a combination that was surely draining. She’d driven the boat up to its max speed and all but rammed it up the beach at the edge of the lake, all while taking care of me, guiding me onto my back in a preemptive recovery position, and doing her best to both figure out my symptoms and try to ease my – and her own – worries.

  Seeing how it wore on her now, the words, “I’m sorry,” subconsciously left my mouth.

  “What?” Mom said. She blinked a few times and her glassy look faded as she focused on what I’d said.

  I hesitated, but ultimately repeated it. “I’m sorry.”

  She exhaled through her nose, running her hand through her hair at the same time. “No Sammy, it’s not your fault,” she said. “I… should’ve planned this better somehow. Maybe it was a mistake to do this during a vacation rather than back home, in a safe and comforting environment. I just-” She cut herself of with an inhale and a deep sigh. “I don’t know…”

  “It’s not like there’s a good place for it,” I consoled, picking up where she left off. A brief wave of head pain washed over me. “Besides, I was the one who kept pushing and-”

  “It’s alright Sam,” Mom said. “It needed to be done anyhow. I just wish it'd gone differently.”

  Silence returned again as we both nursed our drinks. Once again I looked for things to say, but while the pain was quickly fading – and had been since we went ashore and my split mind became whole again – I found I still had difficulty thinking. A constant dull throbbing remained, fogging and clogging up my mind.

  Still, there was something I could say, even if I didn’t know how I should put it. It was the same thing, or the same sentiment I was trying to share – or believed I was trying to share, at least – back on the lake right before the headache hit in full.

  “I-” I licked my lips, unsure of the words. Mom looked up from her mug again, eyebrows raised and staring me in the eyes. I stared right back and, with all the conviction I could muster, said, “I forgive you.” At least two-thirds of me did, and the rest would get over it.

  It took her a few seconds, but realization slowly dawned. Mom’s eyes grew wider, then narrowed as tears began to pool and stream quietly down her cheek. With only a sniffle, she wiped the tears with her sleeve as her other arm reached out over the medical bed, blindly reaching for my hand. I offered it.

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  She squeezed and raised her head. With a raw voice, red eyes full of gratitude and tear-stained cheeks pulled into a wobbly but wide smile, she said, “Thank you, Sam.”

  I felt great relief; I felt tremendous guilt. It was a good, right thing to do to help lift a great burden from Mom’s shoulders; what right did I, her not-daughter, have to forgive her, when I was the most guilty out of the two of us? Like with many things surrounding my identity, I was once again of two minds about it – though thankfully not three.

  The dull throb grew sharper with the thoughts, and Mom must’ve noticed it because her smile turned into a concerned frown.

  She opened her mouth, hesitated, then opened it again. “Let’s… put off further talk for a while, okay?” she said. “I mean, at least until you’re better… and maybe after seeing a doctor?” I opened my mouth to argue, but Mom beat me to it. “We’ll talk about it, but let’s do it after Christmas. Agreed?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Great,” she said. “Is the medication helping? I saw you get a bit of a headache just then. You can take the other-”

  “It’s working Mom,” I interrupted. “Like the doctor said, just takes some time to work.”

  She nodded in acceptance. “Good. That’s good.” She took out her phone and turned it on. “Just a bit over twenty minutes and we can leave. Then we can finally get a good night’s sleep in – sounds enticing after such a day, right?” She smiled as she said it, and I smiled back politely at the comment.

  X

  Midnight came and went, and Mom was asleep at last. She’d had a couple of false starts before, tossing and turning near-constantly, and although I had my eyes closed in pretend sleep every time she so much as shifted, I could’ve sworn she more than once just sat or stood up in order to take a look at me.

  But now her breath was steady and deep, a slight whistle passing for a snore indicating she was finally down and out for good. That, combined with the absence of any headache, meant it was time for my regular routine, and figuring out what exactly was going on.

  I fast-rewound my memcordings of the day for examination, replaying the entirety of it what must be two dozen separate times in full, and particular moments even more. Most parts I fast-forwarded through as quickly as I could, while others – the scene at the boat primarily – I reexperienced in real-time again and again.

  With headaches re-felt; the dizziness, churning and ultimate vacating of my stomach re-experienced; and the splitting of my view and confusion of my senses re-minded; after all that, I could only conclude one thing: my nightly review of my memcordings were of little use in figuring anything out.

  Which I should’ve expected, really. It didn’t record thoughts or emotions, limiting itself only to the sensory experiences I’d had. Still, the thoughts I’d had back there had felt so… strange in a way that, despite them clearly coming from me and me alone, I’d figured some of them might’ve been foreign or external somehow, and thus replayable.

  No such luck, unfortunately. Well, not really unfortunate since it would’ve meant some powerful psychic caster was messing with my mind, but that still left me with figuring out what these split thoughts were exactly.

  If the trains of thought were limited to two, and if the experience hadn’t been so disabling, the conclusion would’ve been easy: one my own, and the other my Heroic Impulse.

  After having been all-but-gone even before the whole Jannacht ordeal, the Heroic Impulse had popped up fiercer than ever when I kicked Nth-Sight off the roof. And if it was like in the beginning – a guiding light, a moral beacon, and a counter to Mad Android Syndrome – that would’ve been fine. Great, even.

  Except it wasn’t. Or rather, I found myself… not disagreeing, but getting annoyed with it. Angry, even. The advice it gave – that Nth-Sight had to die, that it was good that I’d killed him then and there, that Mom being Peakstar and behind other-Sam’s disappearance was a good thing, and that I had to protect my android identity – was, objectively, sound. And even the ethics around heroism it imparted had only rarely been wrong, and could and did change with new information introduced, or argued down if I was morally in the right.

  But something felt wrong about it now. I found myself disagreeing with it not because of its advice, but because of something else. A gut feeling that something was off with what it said, what it wanted me to do. Like it was… I didn’t have the words for it. Like we had a difference in opinion? A philosophical, or ethical disagreement? Except today should not have been a time for it to intervene or disagree; where was the moral quandary surrounding masking, or crime, or something like it for it to react like this?

  Hence, the split in two. Which, if it was an intended function, should’ve been harmless. A byproduct of its implementation, maybe, though it could also be a deliberate function. Something made to unsettle me or even put me back on track if I ever wound up truly getting Mad Android Syndrome.

  Yet yesterday had been anything but harmless. Even at the worst of my shifter training and forms mastering I hadn’t felt so great a headache, dizziness, nausea or anything else. I had never had a migraine before and, if Mom’s reaction was anything to go by, nor had other-Sam had problems with it for my creator to incorporate out of some sense of authenticity.

  Above all else though, was the trifecta of the appearance of a second split in my mind, the unclear boundaries of which thought came from where, and the contents of what, exactly, each thought was.

  One, a feeling of betrayal, of anguish, and of anger – the one that I would’ve identified as the real me, if the emotions had made any sense. The second was most likely the Heroic Impulse, but with such a strong and dark, depressive, manipulative edge I did not realize a program – no matter how advanced – could possess, all the while intervening where it shouldn’t. And the third, a thing of doubt and questions that seemed wholly out of place if it weren’t for the contents, reaching conclusions about myself that I didn’t know whether to accept.

  And all of this hindered me processing the other realization: my mom being Peakstar. The moment I thought about it, instinct tried to stop me, and whenever I tried pushing through it, I could practically feel the migraine-inducing trio trying to claw its way back up again.

  Perhaps Mom was right. Maybe I should put this off until after Christmas – or, at least, until my mind could come to terms with itself.

  So, I stopped thinking about it for now. As quietly as I could, I rose out of my bed with a repressed sigh, heading for the bathroom with phone in hand, ready to distract myself.

  The lights went on automatically as I opened the door, which I hastily yet quietly closed so as to not wake up Mom. I walked past the sink and the bathroom mirror – briefly pausing to grab a glass of water and to, incidentally, see my reflection; a ghastly sight – and sat on the closed lid of the toilet.

  There was an urge in me to reach out to someone. I wanted to message Mille and ask her whether she knew, and what exactly she knew. Did she know my mom was Peakstar? I figured she did, and though I felt a bit of anger leak through the thought – why was Millie allowed to know before me? Why did she not tell me? – I understood that it was irrational of me to feel that way.

  And headache-inducing as well.

  The other question, though, was far more important: did Millie know Peakstar was behind other-Sam’s death-by-displacement? Because if she did, that was something to get angry about. If my friend – my first friend, even if only by a few hours – knew and had kept this a secret from me-

  Except, of course, that I wasn’t really her daughter, but-

  I cut off the thought with extreme prejudice; I had no desire for another spiral.

  Besides, it wasn’t like I could actually talk to Millie about it. If she didn’t know Peakstar was my mother I would be breaking the Treaty, and there was no way I could think of to let her know I know without, you know, telling her I know. Unless Mom had told her and then told Millie that she told me, there was no way for me to talk about it.

  Hopefully I would find out tomorrow during the Christmas Eve dinner.

  Contacting Amber was an even worse idea. No matter how much I might wish to talk to her about this, Amber one-hundred-percent didn’t know Peakstar’s identity. The same went for Saga and Jolie, let alone the still-nascent friends I had by association through Amber. Or my therapist for that matter.

  In other words, I was stuck on my own on this one for now.

  I idly spun the phone around in my hand as I drank from my glass.

  Except, there was one person that was also in the know. Even if I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, this whole thing started with Michael’s now-understandably cryptic explanation of his relationship to Mom. Mom herself had even not-at-all subtly hinted that Michael knew when I pushed her a bit too hard after that therapy session.

  But while I was ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent sure Michael knew, that lack of a hundred percent certainty meant that I didn’t feel comfortable messaging him about it. Also, it was abundantly clear that he didn’t like Mom for what she’d done as Peakstar, so he was far too biased to help me sort through my own thoughts.

  How frustrating.

  Still, there was a sunny side: it did mean I could make some strides in reconnecting Mom and him. If he knew I'd genuinely forgiven her for what she'd done, he would have less of a leg to stand on. Of course there was still the death of Pierce, but maybe this was enough to start something at least.

  That brought a smile to my face. For as much of an ass Michael could be, I still liked and recognized him as my brother, much like I recognized Mom as Mom. Aside from them getting along being a good thing all on its own, if I could help make this family whole again, maybe it’d help me come to terms with my own feelings.

  At the very least, it couldn’t hurt, right?

  The only question now was how, but… eh. I highly doubted there was a manual for this kind of thing. He’d be back for Christmas. I’d just have to figure it by then.