When your husband and ex get along

I awoke to the familiar ceiling, its soothing geometric patterns in blue and green creating a calming mosaic above me. The design, I knew, was intentional—blue for tranquillity, green for healing. It was a private VIP room in the Experimental Hospital wing—well, shaft—of the Enrichment Centre. Despite the luxury, this was my first time here as a patient. My previous visits had been to greet the worthies—those rich, powerful, or useful in other ways.

This time, pushing past my limits had rendered me unconscious. The last time that happened, this hospital wing didn't even exist. My Blood Slime was designed to prevent such incidents, but the magecraft I had employed might have exacerbated the problem rather than alleviating it.

After all, it treated symptoms, not the cause. Epistaxis, migraines, and finally syncope were warnings—the signs that I had reached my limits and should stop using my supernatural abilities. What my Blood Slime did was mitigate and heal damage, not prevent the world's backlash. If I were to use metaphors, it was like taking painkillers and then running on broken legs, or perhaps like taking beta-blockers and leading the same unhealthy life that brought on the heart attack in the first place.

My fingers brushed against the sheets—soft Egyptian cotton, cool and smooth against my skin. The high-thread-count fabric, almost silky in its softness, felt luxurious. It was then I realized my fingers had been gripping them tightly, the delicate weave crumpled under my hands.

To be a Magus was to waltz with a reaper. But it was a waltz, not a tango. Otherwise, Death might take the invitation for a more intimate encounter.

"Sleeping beauty awakens." I turned my head to the familiar voice and saw my lover—well, my husband, but our elvish marriage wasn't legally recognized in America. His golden hair gleamed in the sunlight. Despite being deep underground, this was no artificial light. Through a series of mirrored pipes and optical cables, real sunlight streamed from the surface, providing the room with a warm, natural glow. "And even without a kiss."

"Well, you can kiss me anyway," I said, my lips curving in a flirtatious smile.

Archer frowned, his blue eyes boring into me. "Do you really think you deserve a treat? After what you've done?"

"You shouldn't be so harsh with Ace. He just woke up," another familiar voice interrupted. I turned my head and saw Joe, CSO of Aperture Science and my ex, sitting comfortably in an ergonomic chair on the other side.

"We talked about this," Archer said to him. "We both need to be firm here."

Both of them being firm made my mind wander a bit. Firm muscles on both of them. Firm something else. And me in the middle.

"You are right, otherwise he is going to keep doing it," Joe said, his expression hardening. There was one thing worse than your current significant other and ex fighting: it was them getting along. Unless one hoped for a threesome, but this didn't seem to lead to that. Pity.

"You know I am still here," I said, stretching sensually. My muscles were stiff.

"I am unlikely to forget, Ace," Joe said, turning to me, his brown eyes—usually so warm—like flint. "Considering what you have done. I am CSO. That means that in circumstances such as a Nazi attack—and I still can't believe I'm saying that—I am in charge. You are CEO, not the hero of an action movie. If I command you to pull back, you pull back, not act as a maverick and undermine my authority. There is a chain of command, and it needs to be obeyed."

"You had just arrived on the scene, and you wanted me to step back from victory," I firmly retorted, taking a deep breath. The scent of fresh herbs, mint predominantly, filled my senses. The walls of the room were covered in an aquaponic arrangement of plants, all nicely smelling, many with natural antibiotic properties like lavender and rosemary. "I know my own limits best."

"Really," Archer jumped in, an eyebrow raised. His blue eyes were like chips of ice. "You do? Then why did you nearly cook your own brain with that stunt?"

"I was the one in the command centre receiving all the tactical data. You were in the field. It should be obvious who had a better grasp on the situation, even with military training. Which you don't have, and I do," Joe tagged in, stopping before I could reply. "Do you think because your name is Alexander, you are the next Alexander the Great? Even he had some military education."

Alexander the Great. What was so great about him? I really did not see why some people praised him so much. The dream to reach the end of the world. The world was round, he would end where he started. His conquests? What worth was an empire that crumbled immediately after his death? If one was to conquer, one had the duty to make those conquered better. More prosperous, more stable. Duty to whom? To one's pride. So one could look back and say, I was right to do that.

I guess in the end Alexander's true treasure was the friends he made along the way. In a very literal way, given the man's Reality Marble. Although the version I defeated during the Holy Grail War lacked it. My knowledge of Ionioi Hetairoi came from another source.

It was true that I lacked formal military education, but the warfare we engaged in against space Nazis was unconventional. I hardly think they taught portal warfare in military academies. Not yet, at least.

Joe might not know my experience with unconventional modes of combat, but Archer did. And I could not inform Joe. Not without sharing secrets I had no desire to share.

What an unpleasant conundrum.

Archer continued his verbal assault on me, deftly taking charge like a baton in a relay race. Those two were managing to work quite well together. I would be more impressed by their cooperation if I wasn't its main victim.

"And more, your stunt rendered you unconscious in the middle of the battlefield."

Completely defenceless, if we were to ignore the squad of killer robots, the open portal back to the Enrichment Centre, and GLaDOS's avatar. Now was the perfect time for her to interject, saying that she was capable of protecting me. She had access to room visual and audio surveillance, as she did to any part of the Enrichment Centre, save my office. Just any moment now.

"Where is GLaDOS? What has happened to her?" I asked, pushing myself into a sitting position.

Archer and Joe shared a look. It was obvious they wanted to continue scolding me.

Joe was the one to speak. "She has locked herself in the core room. Posted numerous guards, and completely isolated herself from the systems. All the Enrichment Centre AI functions are being managed by backup cores."

That was a disaster. The loss we could incur from the drop in productivity. Luckily, S.W.O.R.D. would still work, since it was made to be an independent system, but if something unplanned happened, there could be problems.

"Why?" I asked.

"I have absolutely no idea," Joe replied, crossing his muscular arms. "Because you were unconscious and she does not listen to anyone else."

"Do you see?" Archer added, "You have responsibilities. And there is another problem requiring your attention. The prisoners we had taken. There are almost five thousand of them. More than a thousand of them are children and teenagers. We don't have the capacity to keep them long-term. We can barely do so in the short term. Someone needs to decide what to do with them, and that someone is you."

"So you're saying we need a more robust command structure so that everything doesn't fall apart if I take a nap," I said with a bit of sarcasm. It was nice they cared, but the nagging was getting tiresome. But I could not deny that having someone to do my work while I was absent was not attractive. I could invest more time in personal research. Or even go on vacation? How long had it been since I went on one? And Missing Mile did not count. Somewhere relaxing. Somewhere tropical. I could take Archer. Maybe even ask Joe if he wanted to tag along. To rekindle an old friendship.

The problem was who. Archer was right out. Not only did I want him by my side on any vacation, but if another dangerous situation occurred, he would be by my side. The only way to prevent him from nagging. And my apprentice was too young to be taken seriously.

"Nap? You spent a day in a coma?" Joe shouted.

"The point of this is for you to be less reckless, not to make you more expendable," Archer dryly added.

"Enough," I said. "You have made some valid points and we will talk about them later. When we are not in crisis. But before I can go solving all those problems, I first need to get discharged," I firmly said. I had indulged them enough. "Can you call in Jane, please?"

"That won't be possible. She was on Moon Base during the attack. She is missing. We have yet to find her body, but there is little hope," Joe grimly said. "She is not the only one. We have a list."

There went the Aperture zero-casualties streak. I was so proud of it since it started after I got in charge. And Jane... I would not believe she was dead until I saw her body. It might be denial, but she had survived Aperture from almost the beginning, even during the years my brother was mad as a hatter and snorting moon rocks. It could be that fate finally caught up to her, but I had some faith in her survival skills.

I didn't ask about other casualties. Mourning should be left until the crisis was resolved. I needed a clear head for now.

"See? I was right to act. Imagine what would have happened if they hadn't been stopped there. If they reached Earth. That list would be so much longer. Any other disasters?" I said with a sigh.

"The Vault has been breached. It has been stripped bare. I would tell you what was taken, but only you knew what was there," Joe reported.

I blinked. Once. Twice. My mind completely blanked for a moment. Either I achieved a brief moment of enlightenment or my system crashed.

That was something I really did not expect to hear. How did Nazis even find out about the Vault? Even in Aperture, the number of people who knew about it was in the low double digits. And most of what they knew was misinformation—a secret high-security Vault that held Aleph-class objects, objects too dangerous to exist, but that I was unwilling to destroy.

In a way, it was true from a certain point of view. As truthful as Obi-Wan telling Luke that Vader killed his father.

Well, Nazis couldn't have known the actual truth or they wouldn't have bothered.

But at least it explained why GLaDOS had locked herself away.

The first Aleph-class object—or would entity be more appropriate? The reason why the Vault needed to be built in the first place.

The Intelligence Dampening Sphere, or Wheatley for short. The reason why Doug was no longer allowed to go off his meds. Well, at least we got the Aperture VitalGuard out of it. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and when necessity is a genius paranoid schizophrenic with access to high-tech equipment, necessity birthed a state-of-the-art wearable medical device designed to continuously monitor vital signs and manage medication dosages in real-time.

At first, I had kept Wheatley locked in high-security Vaults on Moon Base. But that had not been a long-term solution. GLaDOS had kept demanding Wheatley's destruction. Not without cause, since Wheatley was constructed as a rather cruel countermeasure to GLaDOS. His intended function was to render GLaDOS less dangerous by generating a constant stream of stupid ideas, thereby distracting her and hampering her decision-making process in hopes that she would remain somewhat docile.

That was why Doug was contractually obliged to never remove the Aperture VitalGuard while on any Aperture property.

But I considered it a bit unethical to destroy someone just because of what they could do. And his very existence was useful as a subtle threat to GLaDOS—"Be a good robot, or I am going to plug a moron into your brain."

I reached a measured compromise to stop her from roleplaying as a certain Roman senator and ending each report with demands for incinerating Wheatley and every scientist, and technician involved in his creation—even the janitor who mopped the lab floor.

A new, more secure storage space, to which only I would have access. Security would be designed by GLaDOS. I gave her blanket permission to put in any and all measures until she deemed it safe enough. The only veto was that she could not have any self-destruct, or any measure that would destroy the contents—for obvious reasons. I could not trust her not to make it too easy to trigger and thus get rid of Wheatley forever.

I deemed it too unethical to leave Wheatley permanently deactivated. How did I ensure he wouldn't try to escape? Simply, by convincing him that he was not a prisoner. In a very private ceremony, meaning only me and Wheatley, I had named him 'Primary Supervisor of Aleph Collection'. Hebrew letters were not only useful for magecraft, but they also made everything sound more important.

That was where I coined the term aleph-object. Like in magecraft, I thought the term was most useful if everyone sort of knew what it was, but only one had a precise definition. 

A collection was hardly a collection if there was nothing in it, so I began adding to it. I started with a blueprint for Personal Androids, which has proven a bit too eldritch to be of much use. And then just kept adding to it.

"Aleph-one," I said, breaking the awkward silence, "we need to either recover it or confirm its destruction. That is the number one priority."

That would calm down GLaDOS and get her back to work. Because the alternative was cajoling and trying to convince her that her fear was unreasonable, and there was no way Nazis could reach her mainframe. Between a heavily guarded space base crawling with Nazis and talking about feelings, I knew which I preferred.

"What is it?" Joe asked, standing up. Since I was still lying on the hospital bed, he towered over me. "Now I certainly need to know."

Was that supposed to be intimidating? At least it was hot. But he had something of a point. If I were to choose to take him on the retrieval mission, he would know what we were retrieving.

"A Core," I said. Joe looked at me with an incredulous expression. I didn't blame him. AI cores were common in the Enrichment Centre. "A special one. One that should be in no hands other than mine."

"What else will we be expecting?" Archer chimed in. I liked how he implied that he was joining this retrieval mission. Well, it was not as if I planned to exclude him from it, but he made his opinion known.

"I don't have time to list everything, but you both remember Mantis Man?"

Archer nodded. Joe grimaced and said, "How could I forget? That is how I got this job. Everyone above me died."

"Glad that worked out for you," I said. "I also had a lot of fun with a flamethrower during that incident."

"Sometimes I almost forget that you're Cave's brother, and then you remind me," Joe dryly said. Archer's lips parted in a wry grin. I was glad he found it funny. That was sarcasm. "Are we going to find half-human half-mantis monsters rampaging where the Nazis came from?"

"I was just giving an example of Aleph-class objects. Mantis Man Serum is Aleph-6, but I don't think the Nazis are just going to inject it into human subjects," I replied.

"Why not? Cave had no problem doing exactly that," Joe added. "But that aside, how are we going to find them? We lost track of the retreating ship once they passed under the Moon's horizon, entering the far side of the Moon."

Some Nazi spaceships had escaped. Exactly as I had planned it. But I already knew that, ever since Archer reported the number of prisoners taken. A modern aircraft carrier had a crew numbering approximately five thousand. The largest Nazi carrier spaceships, the ones shaped like zeppelins, were larger than an aircraft carrier but much less automated from what I had observed.

Still, either we captured fewer carrier ships than I had hoped for, or a large percentage of the crew fought to the death. Neither was relevant now. The only thing important was whether the correct ship had escaped and ran back to their base.

But it should be so. I had chosen my target carefully. The only carrier ship we had failed to board.

"I can see from the face that you are making that you have a plan. Care to share it?" Archer's voice interrupted my thoughts. I did not think that I could so easily be seen through, but I suppose he knew me well enough to read my micro-expressions. "And you can quote Star Wars now. Aloud, I mean. I promise I won't laugh. Too much."

"Is this the right time for that?" Joe said to Archer.

"It's better Ace gets it out of his system now," Archer replied dryly.

"Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design," I quoted Palpatine before he could change his mind.

"You know he ended up being thrown down a shaft after saying that, and the Rebels won," Archer added sarcastically. "Hopefully your plan will do better."

"Now that plan, please," Joe interjected.

"After I finished dealing with the command crew of the last ship, one that had been bombarding the mining area, I planted an agent on board," I said. What I meant was that after brutally murdering Nazis, I summoned my demon familiar on board. One did sound much nicer than the other. And Joe did not know about Khenumra.

"How did you manage that?" Joe asked.

"Psychics can open portals," I explained simply. That was demonstrated by Jane. Even if it was not what I had done, it was a plausible explanation, and it avoided burdening Joe with knowledge that was not meant for him. "Although that knocked me out."

It was more of the cumulative consequence of dealing with five command crews and summoning the familiar. But the spell I used for that—Recall—did not have any range limits, nor did magical energy expenditure rise with distance. It was due to it being based on True Magic. And yet the backlash from calling an incubus from Earth was much worse.

That suggested that the backlash was more based on the violation of natural laws of the world than on my expanded efforts. Effect, rather than effort.

"No," I continued, lying back on the hospital bed and closing my eyes. "Please be quiet while I contact my agent."

Silently I began to cast a spell that would link my senses to Khenumra and let us communicate.