Unexpected outcomes to well planned sequences

Lily's home.

I can't pretend I understand everything that happened over the last couple days and I was there for most of it. But Lily's home. Alive. Alive! Not just intact, but honest and true alive. Living. Breathing. About as organic as I am. Though I need to spend some time with her to find out just how much of her is still left in there.

Not sure I can really sum up everything that happened. At least not and do it justice. Kind of comes down to Blue's plans not working out how he intended. Krenshar doing what was right and, in the process, restoring much of my faith in my mechanical friend. Ben finally doing something helpful. And me and Belize performing surgery to remove some kind of brain extraction frame from Lily's now fully organic skull with more than a bit of help from Duncan.

There is going to be fallout, I know. Blue wasn't gone. He'd managed to get part of Lily's upload and at least some of Ben's genetic pattern. Wasn't sure where he'd turn up again, or in what guise, but I was sure as I knew there'd be more gunfire on Hale's that Blue'd be back.

Not sure what was going to happen with Krenshar and his brethren. I had to hope his personal agenda didn't include killing every organic on Hale's any more. But whatever it was, his not interfacing with Blue certainly changed something. He'd prevented Lily from going through with it at the last moment and, for that, he'd always have my gratitude.

And what about Ben? Lily says that them running off together was as much her idea as his. At least some of the stunts they pulled. It's plain Lily'd be upset if we ran the boy off. Even more upset if we ran him through. But what were we going to do about him? Anyone who starts off venting about how people don't trust his motives, then proceeds to live down to our least expectations isn't someone I want to be sharing air with, let alone have dating my little sister.

Sad thing was I couldn't even give him a boot to the head without upsetting Lily, which was something I wanted to avoid. She'd gone through some serious trauma and was having to deal with growing up awful fast.

Ah well. We had her back. That's what mattered. There'd be consequences to deal with. There always were. But the little girl we'd wrapped a family around had come home and that was fine by me.