Maverick knelt, head bowed, and hands clasped before her offering her soul prostrate to.... something . Once, she might have called it god, but after all she had learned, she wasn't so sure. The architect was certainly like a god, creator of all things, 'architect' of the universe, but was it a god in the sense that it could hear them. Did it see all things? and know all things?

That she wasn't so sure of.

Certainly there was something to the idea of a god. All her life Maverick had found sanctuary before the alter, hidden away in the bowels of the earth, where only the dark memory of civilizations past reamined. There she had found both comfort and horror in the halls of churches, some whose walls could keep out the dark, and some whose walls could not. She understood it now to be her own sin that dogged at her heels, the very void creature, with which she had once made a pact, before her Anima had a body.

Though she understood the reason for her lifelong terror, that knowledge did not make her feel better. It was her own sin that nipped at her heels, her own treachery that dogged at her. All her life she had run from the very thing she had sold her soul too: a creature of the void. It was both liberating and heartbreaking at the same time to know why she had suffered.

But still there was some truth to the idea of holiness, otherwise she never would have found sanctuary in the walls of select churches. She could feel the difference in her, a sort of light that began in her chest and spread outward. Though religion was not as she once understood it, it still held power in some way weather it be in the name of the Architect or something else.

Upon her moment of possession by the void creature, Maverick had come to fear she would never be able to set foot in a church, almost wondering if she would go up in flame as she passed through a doorway. No such thing happened, of course, but certainly the void creature did not like it.

Even as she knelt now, in the mostly unvisited chapel of the Arcadia hospital, she could hear the creature whispering.

Her relationship with the being was not all together easy to understand. Most times it felt like her foe, she feared it, felt her skin crawl and was afraid to look in mirrors in case she would see it staring out through the windows of her eyes. She trembled in the dark, unable to fight the thing that rolled around inside her head whispering horrible things to her in the night. But other times, it seemed as if their wills were aligned, like the void creature was less and agent of the void and more of a symbiotic power she could twist to her will.

But even that made her feel sick and guilty choosing void power over anima power.

She rubbed her temples, as if that would stave away the chattering whisper in her mind.

'Join our cause. Be what you were meant to be' it repeated, over and over and over again.

But still its voice was quiet, bearable.

She bowed her head lowerm falling into the familiar paths of prayer, and soon the voice had faded and then ceased.

There was some power in faith, though she couldn't have said how.

She lifted her head in response to a knock at the door, and turned to find Ramirez standing in the doorway. He tried to keep his expression light, but she could see the worry that cast a pall on his handsome face. He reached up and ran a hand through his loose curls. "They're ready for you."

She stood, and nodded to him, unable to find her tongue.

Ramirez didn't like this idea, not even a little. They had talked it over for hours, going back and forth on the matter until both of them were horse, their mouths robbed of moisture. Ramirez had once confided in her his reason for never taking on any augmentation. Adam would gladly have made him an SE soldier if he asked, but Ramirez had no intention of corrupting his body with either Anima surgeries or metal exoskeletons.

"If I must put my faith in something, I want it to be on myself, and not in some machine. When I die, I will do it knowing everything I did and accomplished was under my own power." Of course he had made no argument with her when she chose to take up the mantel he would not, but he had argued about this, worried about the potential for death, the loss of her soul, what the void creature might be able to do when her strings were cut.

Maverick walked forward and stopped some distance from him. She did not reach out to touch him, and neither did he reach out to touch her.

Maverick knew that she loved Ramirez, but she couldn't help but think it wasn't right somehow. She was still trying to work out what it was that bothered her so much, but articulating was difficult. Maverick had never seen the draw of romantic relationships, at least not the way they were portrayed. She cringed at the idea of being soothed, or protected, or held, and she had some minor aversion to being touched by others, she disliked the idea of soft touches and gentleness, but she did find a draw to the way Drev understood love, an equal to watch your back. To often to Maverick, it seemed that relationships between two people were unequal, a protector and a protectee, and she hated the idea of having someone to protect her or wanting to.

Even now, suddenly pondering her draw to Ramirez, she felt her lips twist with distaste at the idea.

He sensed the look and raised an eyebrow.

She waved him off.

It had taken her a while to be able to articulate her distaste, but Maverick finally understood that she hated the dominant/submissive nature a lot of relationships took, but she was also too unsure of herself to take a more aggressive position. As far as she knew Ramirez was the only person that had ever been interested in her like that, so she had little experience, and no way to take control in the way she wanted, but the simple idea of being less confident was, she felt, what held her back.

Even to herself that explanation seemed convoluted and difficult to understand and completely stupid.

And even now she wasn't quite articulating it right.

'Are you ready?" Ramirez asked.

"Is this the part where you ask me if I really want to do this/" She said to him, raising an eyebrow

Ramirez paused and then shook his head, amber eyes fixed on her, "I'm not stupid. You've made up your mind, and I have as little chance of changing it than I have chance of ascending to godhood right here and now."

"That I would pay to see."

She would have reached out and taken his hand if she were a normal person, but even the thought of such a thing didn't give her any satisfaction. She had never liked handholding or hugs. She never understood why they made other people feel so good. Didn't matter who hugged her or held her hand, but she got nothing from it other than emptiness. A hug was no more thrilling to her than a wave, though handshakes could make her feel something in the way hugs and hand holding could not.

Another frustration.

Instead she hopped up, and to Ramirez's surprise wrapped one arm around the back of his neck, dragging his head towards the floor and forcing him to hunch to her level. She ruffled his curls with a hand as he protested. In return he tried to do the same, and what followed was a partial struggle as they crab-walked their way down the hall.

She would win, of course, SE enabled as she was, but he didn't seem to mind.

Wrestling, and partial combat would have to do where hugs and hand holding could not because in them she could actually feel something.

She paused, just outside the pre-op room and made a decision. There was a possibility she could die in the next few hours, her soul lost to the void, and if that were the case there was something she needed to do at least once.

Maverick didn't pretend her feelings worked like other people, and didn't plan to start now.

WIth her superior strength, she shoved Ramirez in the chest causing him to stagger back and bump, not painfully, into the wall. He seemed startled, but not upset. Making sure to carefully read his reactions, she reached up with one hand and took him firmly by the face.

Maverick had never kissed anyone, not in her life, but she tried, and forced herself to keep control though she had absolutely now idea what she was doing.

This was the only way she could.

His lips were simultaneously soft and hard against her own, and he didn't try to take her control away from her, leaning back against the wall.

She broke it off quickly, glowering at him when she could find no other expression to give.

He grinned at her, and, again, ran a hand through his hair, "I have a few notes, but I'm sure we can work on it later."

And then she punched him lightly in the stomach. Still it was so out of the blue, he doubled over with a surprised gasp, and stood there gawping at her as she walked past him and into the pre-op room.

Dr. Krill, Dr. Katie and several nurses were already waiting for her when she entered. Katie smiled, but Krill was all business, "Are you ready/"

She nodded once.

"Good." SHe only partially listened as he explained the procedure, stepping behind the little curation to dress in the scrubs and slippers that were provided. She had cut her hair short for today, so the surgical cap they gave her fit snugly over most of the stubble, leaving the back of her neck open and ready for the operation. Then, on Krill's instruction, she lay down as the anesthesiologist stepped forward.

"You understand, with the nature of this procedure we can't put you to sleep, so we will inject a paralytic and operate under a local, which we won't need much of since the brain has no pain sensors in and of itself. Still, the sensation will be startling, as an addition we will add something to keep you relaxed."

She nodded, "Alright, Let's get this over with."

With a nod the medicine was applied, and slowly, maverick felt her body began to lose control of itself. It was indeed a difficult sensation, one she didn't like in the least, but she didn't mind it so much as the other medicine took effect. She watched herself as if in a half trance as she was moved, her body manipulated by others, carried this way and that, and eventually placed into the operating suite covered by blankets all except for her head which remained.

"We begin." Krill announced

And from there she felt as if she was floating through a dream, the hours passing like minutes or the minutes like hours, the light overhead swelling in her vision and then receding like the waves of an ocean.

Voices filled and swelled in the room around her ebbing and flowing like a tide.

And eventually, through the hazy fog she heard Krill say "There it is." There was a puse in the room, as even Krill's steady surgeon's hands had to pause.

And then.

Blackness.