After a problem that had happened too quickly for comfort and a climax that ended too soon for understanding, it was all over. From one day to the next, everything brutally came to a stop and life itself seemed to turn a new leaf.
The Department of Technology never actually made another move for Sierra. In fact, Reez got a check the next day, specifying the exact time at which the job had been fulfilled, which corresponded to Mr. Karl bolting out of his office, down to the nearest second. The job completion form commented on his few reckless decisions but otherwise noted an overall satisfaction with his work. Officially, Reez had completed his job adequately, would be paid the full advertised reward, and the job form would go into the database as usual. Though, eventually, that entry in particular would be lost and whisked out of existence. That didn't matter much - nobody even went so far as to search for it for the time the entry was still up and public. Nobody would search for it afterwards either - there was simply no interest, just like ninety-nine percent of the archives anyway.
A look into the far future would reveal this:
Reez kept at his work in the Unionized Mercenaries and mostly took on larger-scaled jobs where he'd get to form a one-day team with other members he had never seen before. Despite his best efforts, he would never get a promotion out of his rank of Mercenary. It would be a frustrating predicament at first, but on the flip side, it would allow him to gain a reputation as a solid and reliable teammate. Eventually, he'd settle into his position no matter what; he was good enough a simple Mercenary-ranked man that no one would want to move him out of that comfort zone. Not that this mattered much either: Reez had no grand ambitions. The jobs he took were fun, he still saw and teamed up with Nolla Lephon, and over the years, the Ariman army would manage to push the Reli creatures back enough to justify the let-go of hired Mercenaries, filling the building with more life and activity.
He would never speak to Fredaris Baker again, at least not under informal circumstances. While Fred did his best to be friendly to Reez, the latter didn't return the good faith and considered the newly appointed Section Lead (the "Interim" prefix had disappeared thanks to Fred's good job) as an unforgivable traitor. As such, Fred eventually avoided contact, and things went for the better that way. Whenever it was appropriate, he issued orders, and if those orders concerned Reez, he would follow them. Sierra did attempt to talk some sense into either party but came at a brick wall when it came to Reez. Fred, on the other hand, simply told he had no hard feelings against him and understood where he was coming from - it was simply a clash of interests. "I ain't white as snow," Fred told her, "but I'm alive and well, and that's what I need to keep doing my work and to keep seeing the people I love."
Kod's death would be definitely ruled as a suicide, with the hypothesis that it was stress from his work and in light of his failure in catching Shrike Naïnsev, who turned out to be related to him in some unspecified manner - the news made but a brief statement about it and never spoke of it again. The case would be closed, archived and forgotten forever. Some would have doubts about it, but nothing would happen that would justify a story; the ideas would stay that way, as doubts and nothing more.
Sierra would release bribes of information to the independent media. With the database files she had saved into her memory, she would spend hours on end piecing things together and concocting reports, a bit padded and filled-in to make up for breaks in the information, and a bit embellished and sensationalized due to her bias against the Department. With the sheer amount of data she had on hand, it would be just a matter of time before the news would spread to other networks and become more than simple urban legends. This would push some mutants to reveal their stories as well, be them true or not - what counted was the bad publicity for the Department of Technology, and it would come in greater numbers, and with stronger evidence from now on. She wouldn't live to see much of a noticeable change, and would never fully realize that she had been the catalyst everyone with a grudge was waiting for, but would never accomplish themselves, out of fear of the retaliations and out of hope that someone else would sacrifice his life just for the sake of saying "Something's wrong!"
She would realize that Mr. Karl had effectively been vaporized. His name had rarely been mentioned before and would never be mentioned again. The Department's external contact and PR officer would be replaced by yet another man in black, whom she would never get to know, for she would never set foot inside the building again. If one were to look in the back alley the next day, he'd see absolutely nothing hinting of the confrontation; the window had been replaced, and the asphalt literally vacuumed clean. Even the dumpster had been emptied and removed.
The fear that had plagued her in the Department's headquarters would never really come back as strongly as it had done. But, she would feel it whenever she went close. Was it some sort of traumatic reaction to the building itself, or was there something hidden inside that somehow influenced her psyche? Again, she wouldn't live long enough to find the answer.
The damage done by Karl's electric hands had drastically reduced her life span. Through research, she came to learn that the amount of energy dealt to a Nova unit effectively determined its age. It was given a jolt to grow into an adult form, and as it took punishment on the battlefield, it would use the energy to heal its wounds and use the rest to launch deadly bolts at the enemy or some other form of dissipation. But eventually, a Nova would wither and die. Technically, if one was to be kept in a tank away from any and all sources of energy, it would continue living on forever... but Novas didn't serve the purpose of just sitting around. Likewise, by the time Sierra found out about this weakness of her species, she had already lost the ability to call up most of her advanced satellite Novas, keeping only the ones that could sense the heat and unique signatures, but then, she rarely found a reason to use them at all. She figured the food tasted too good and that sooner or later, she'd run into an accident and be forced to absorb some form of energy to recover. What the hell, let's live like a human, she thought. And thus, she'd have her meals with Reez as usual, taking her baby's portion, the best she could do with her rudimentary digestive system. She would live for five more years that way.
In the meantime, she would work at various odd jobs within the Mercenary Union. She called upon Fred's status to plug her into something she could easily do without getting into much trouble. He assigned her to database maintenance in a windowless room, and she would use her acquired computer skills learned throughout her expeditions on the net to process and update the database's files. Because the database system ran on stupidly old software, it wasn't compatible with android spike ports, she'd have to copy all the information down by hand. She was paid by the hour to do her work anyway.
Shrike's car would slowly but steadily go through a makeover. Sierra had saved a bunch of information specifically in the goal of restoring the car in some form or another. The end result would be far from the mean Wildsider she had used to ride in. The external body kit would be borrowed from a Laserfire Hard Top, painted midnight blue and given pop-up headlights. The engine compartment would be fitted with the newly cleaned Boxer she had gotten from the junkyard, and she would realize the painstaking work had paid off, giving the car enough power to pull itself, while remaining silent and smooth. The seats would all be replaced by cheap blue cotton, leaving only the driver's seat in its original black leather. The resulting car would be an amalgam of parts pulled from here and there across all makes and models. The seats had come from a ten year old Lancila Crosscut, the dashboard was from a Kasieri TK-707, the steering wheel from a scrapped Chiana Reverend and the suspension from a Trinity 404. For the sound system, she would have to buy a complete, custom set and fit it into the central console as best as she could. With the car in working order, she would go over it all over again, readjusting parts to solidify them into place and get something legal and safe to drive. She would end up registering it as a kit-built vehicle named Honeydew, since would end up becoming too dissimilar to her mother's ride.
She also would hold the crazy intent of adopting a child and eventually convince Reez that it was a good decision. Shrike had raised a daughter that wasn't like her at all; she could learn from the experience and use it to do the same: an android raising a human. She used this to also tell Reez it was his opportunity to shape up to the detachment he had expressed to her when she was a child. He could learn from that too.
After she'd be gone, the kid would go to school while Reez would keep on working at the Unionized Mercenaries, albeit on smaller and easier jobs to get a more stable schedule. This way, he'd get to pour some love into that kid - or, as Reez put it himself, "make a man outta him." Because he was more her son than his, he would give him his mother's imagined family name: Ilica. Hopefully, he'd be a nice guy with a head on his shoulders and make his adoptive parents proud. At least he'd be headed the right way.
Sierra and Reez would think that the whole episode was over and that there was no more to worry about. They'd loosen their guard and start going out some more, gradually appreciating life to a fuller extent. After the rain would be nothing but sunshine and lead to an uneventful, and rather boring story to watch.
The Department would simply keep watching from the shadows, carefully spying on Sierra and recording events of her life from a purely visual standpoint. They'd jot down details about her aging process, and know the exact moment of her death. They'd whisk her body away from the morgue and into their headquarters in order to thoroughly dissect and study her unusual body. Against her will, she'd have given the Department a great opportunity to further advance their research on Nova units, contributing to better and stronger Novas at the front for the lucky few allowed to use one. Project Flycatcher would become Document Flycatcher, and thus Sierra's story would come to its complete end.
But, in the meantime, there was work to do. That car wasn't repaired yet, nor had she fully healed her wounds. She didn't even have a left arm nor a pair of legs to move about without attracting attention.
First, Reez got home and hugged her for such an amount of time that she grew impatient. She had to tell him he could hug her at his own leisure later on. As he stood up, he realize his uniform was stained with a large patch of her blood.
He administered first aid with the little knowledge he had - but then, wrapping some bandages was far from a complex task.
She requested something to eat. The energy from Karl's jolts had oddly dissipated her reserves, but as she laid a hand on her wound, she found it to be only half as large as before. She munched on the peanut he brought her and focused on the taste, trying to forget the sharp pain she had in her ribcage area. Because she was essentially disabled, it was Reez who tended to her few needs for the rest of the day.
In all this, there was still something good: she still had her right forearm, and it so happened that it was this one that contained the data spike.
At least she'd get to keep browsing the net tonight.