Sowon awoke to a splitting headache.

More than that, it was the sensation of distinct discomfort all over that threw her off. Paired with the overload in her brain, it was all colluding to make the ex-soldier feel mildly nauseous.

And yes, it was a little odd for Sowon to process the additional information about herself. She still felt disconnected, as if her old identity was just a file she had just read the information of. It was a little like watching a movie of yourself, but knowing that this really happened, a long time ago.

A really long time ago. Sowon kept her eyes closed and breathing steady, though the frown on her face had given her away when she regained consciousness, because she heard someone move next to her. It was little more than a scrape of metal on stone, and a brush of fabric on fabric, but it painted the image well enough into her head. Old instincts for threat assessment came to the fore, her training as a special ops soldier being recalled to the surface with it.

It felt odd to finally have context for her instincts. Now she knew why she had all her skills; she had definitely acquired them legitimately as a career soldier in the last great war on the Korean peninsula. The memories felt recent, but Sowon knew better.

The war had ended in 2020, and this was almost 50 years later. And here she was, barely aged a day since, in a world where magic ran rampant and dragons were not just a myth. Sowon had never felt so old in her entire life. No one had ever prepared her for this.

How could anyone have? Nothing made sense the moment the dragon orb had come into their lives. Sowon still remembered with clarity the moment she saw Eunha, no, Jung Eunbi, reach for the orb. It was a little hard to separate the past and the present when it came to her old team and the new. For one thing, they all had the same faces, just that they were all uniformly older during their stints as soldiers.

How could she have been the only one to survive that last mission? Sowon wondered if anyone else could have had the same experience she had, down to the not aging part, but dismissed it as unlikely. Being functionally immortal wasn’t something that happened every day. For one, she had seen Yuna die in front of her, so that was a confirmed death. Umji she had raised from a child for the last ten years, so that was another possibility down.

SinB and Eunha she had seen before when they were still little more than kids, shortly after Eunha’s mother had been lynched to death by the cultists during the Purge. She had arrived too late to evacuate the latest batch of metahumans in that enclave, and regretted it ever since. The only reason she had left those two alone then was because SinB’s parents had taken Eunha in, and she didn’t want to disrupt their lives. It had definitely come as a surprise several years later when she found them again in that gang’s headquarters. Such was fate, and Sowon could feel the threads of destiny pulling them together as a team.

Yerin was a distinct candidate as a survivor, what with the exact same name and all. But Yerin never seemed to exhibit any signs of knowing any of them beyond their current incarnations, and Sowon had her doubts anyway. Yerin the mercenary was distinctly different from Yerin the soldier. The her now was colder somehow, despite being superficially cheerful on the outside. It could be a result of having lived a longer time, or it could just be a result of the unknown past Yerin had never deigned to share with them. There was just too much she didn’t know, and Sowon needed time to parse it out.

All the information was making her head spin, and Sowon finally opened her eyes. She was not at all surprised to see SinB sitting next to her, having sensed someone’s presence earlier when she first regained consciousness. No Umji next to her though, which was mildly odd. If anything ever happened to her, Umji was always one of the first to be there.

“You’re awake, thank heavens.” SinB looked haggard, as if she hadn’t gotten any rest at all. Sowon tried to get up, and winced at the tearing sensation across her skin in various places. The ex-soldier looked down to see the still open wounds from her sword fight earlier. They had been tended to, but it was odd to see her wounds lingering like this.

“How long?” Sowon’s voice was raspy, and SinB wordlessly handed her a mug of water, which the leader downed gratefully.

“Bit more than a day. You’re the first to wake up as far as I know.” SinB shook her head, as if to clear the fog from her eyes. “Yerin and I had to move all of you out of town just in case.”

Sowon nodded, eyes sweeping the room they were in. It was one of the backup hideouts they had prepared just in case of emergencies, so it was fairly sparse. It did have all the necessities though, down to the cot she was resting on, and medical supplies. Paranoia was a beautiful thing to have when it came to being prepared.

“The rest?” Sowon forced herself to sit up, heedless of the pain in her body. It was odd to feel sore all over. Her insane regenerative factor seemed to have vanished, and it felt painfully familiar, being mortal again. That was the word, yes. Mortal. Her eyes descended on the strands of her own hair, no longer a bright blonde. Yet another change.

She had never been blonde in the past. Waking up in that secure facility as a blonde had been odd enough. She had too many questions and not enough answers, such as who had picked her up from the incident at Gyeongju? But she had time enough to figure that out. For now, she had a team to worry about first.

“Umji’s passed out from some kind of neural feedback thing according to Yerin, but the medical diagnostics came out fine, she’s just exhausted. Yuju-unnie seems drained from overuse of magic, but she’s recovering a lot faster than expected.” SinB paused here, as if afraid to continue. Sowon raised an eyebrow.

“Eunha...Eunha is fine now, but she wasn’t quite right earlier,” SinB started slowly, looking conflicted. Sowon listened quietly as SinB voiced her doubts and observations about everything Sowon had missed earlier, and the sense of unease only grew after the younger girl was finished.

The partial draconic transformation was alarming, and she would require Yuju to run a detailed check later, but somehow it didn’t surprise her. The dragon orb had been involved in the ritual, and Sowon remembered all too well the scales across her own heart. She could hardly be a hypocrite in this case.

More concerning though, was the fact that Eunha seemed different to her childhood friend, which rang enough alarm bells in Sowon’s head already. The soldier had her suspicions, but she would need to talk to Eunha to verify them. The leader of the team eyed the exhausted SinB.

“Have you gotten any rest yourself?”

SinB’s eyelid twitched. “A little.” Which was obviously a lie. Someone had to keep watch, and Sowon could tell that SinB had taken it upon herself to do so.

“You should sleep.” Sowon eyed the exhausted younger girl. So similar, yet so different. She could see the shades of the Hwang Eunbi she knew so well in the past, just...less prickly. It felt odd to compare them, but Sowon couldn’t help herself.

Sowon didn’t want to admit it, but SinB looked at her the same way Hwang Eunbi did in the past, and it was throwing her off more than a little. The concern hidden behind the cool exterior was almost identical, for one. It made the leader softer on SinB, if nothing else.

“I was worried, you weren’t healing right,” SinB admitted, eyes falling on the bandaged areas. “You never take this long to recover from anything.”

Sowon’s lips twitched wryly. She had a feeling it had to do with the orb shattering; despite all the implants in her dampening her connection to the supernatural, Sowon had definitely felt the link between her and that thing breaking when it happened. She hadn’t even known about the connection until that moment, and she still didn’t understand how much it had changed her.

The physical signs were clear; blonde hair, her healing factor, her magical sight prior to all the cyberware cutting that off. Not to mention the scales on her chest. Apart from that, Sowon wasn’t sure how deep the changes went, or even if they were permanent.

Was she some kind of immortal monster now? Or would that change with the orb no longer in the picture? Sowon wasn’t sure. Looking into SinB’s concerned eyes, Sowon sighed. She could promise no one anything, without knowing just what she had become.

It didn’t help that she kept seeing her Eunbi in this version of SinB, and while she and Hwang Eunbi hadn’t actually been dating the way Yuna and Lil Jung had been, there was a sort of understanding that they were kind of getting there. After the war, that was the plan.

Well, it was after the war now, and everyone else was dead except her. Sowon thought it was supremely unfair. She had just wanted to retire from the army, settle down, age gracefully, and then hopefully die in bed at a ripe old age. Not still look like she was 20-something when her actual age was somewhere in the 70s.

Also, she had lost about 30 years or so in between while frozen in some kind of cyrogenic sleep. Who knew what had happened to her during that time? Her first memories waking up had been in a sterile lab that had seemed almost abandoned, but everything had been clean enough, now that she thought about it. Clearly someone had been making sure she was still alive and intact during that time. Perhaps the person or people who had retrieved her?

It seemed like she knew even less than when she was functionally amnesiac. Her old memories only sparked off more questions that she didn’t have the answers to. She must also have been spacing out for too long, because SinB waved a hand in front of her face to get her attention.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need anything?”

Sowon closed her eyes briefly, reopening them before SinB decided to start panicking. Her wounds still hurt, but the leader blocked out the pain mentally. She had things to do, and first of all…

“You need to go sleep, SinB. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Sowon could admit she was being harsh, but she needed to be, just a little. SinB wasn’t Hwang Eunbi, and she was so young. As much as SinB reminded her of her old comrade, they weren’t the same person. She had to remember that.

“Ah...okay.”

SinB seemed a little deflated by Sowon’s attitude, though the microscopic yawn she let out shortly after betrayed her own need for sleep. Unable to resist, Sowon reached forward and ruffled the younger’s hair.

“I’m fine. You, on the other hand, need to rest. I’ll take watch now.”

SinB beamed at the attention, though she rapidly hid it behind a scowl.

“Whatever, old lady. Don’t reopen your wounds, kay?”

The old lady bit hurt more than it should, but Sowon supposed she deserved that. She smacked SinB lightly on the back of her head as she got up.

“Respect for your elders, brat.”

SinB stuck her tongue out and romped off to the another free cot in the same room. The hideout wasn’t huge, three rooms at most, and there was just enough space for all of them and some emergency supplies. Now that Sowon was up, she could see Umji sleeping peacefully in a cot right across from her. The look on her face softened at the sight. Regardless of her old memories, the ones she made as Sowon were just as relevant. The new bonds she had formed with this team were just as important as her memories of her old team.

She was once Kim Sojung, sergeant in the Republic of Korea Armed Forces, squad leader of the 34th Recon Unit. That was her old life, fighting for her country with a team she could trust her back to. The team she should have died with.

She was now Sowon, mercenary and shadowrunner for hire, part of an elite squad not unlike the one she had led before, just with different specialties for a different era. She wasn’t going to let them die before her this time if she could help it.

They were all important to her. Now fully aware of just how old she was, Sowon realized just how much she loved them all for coming back to her in a different lifetime. They might not be exactly the same people, but they were still her team. Her family.

And nothing would ever change that.

Yuju’s expression was...troubled as she withdrew her connection from Eunha, the fire mage’s eyes opening to gaze attentively into hers, as if she was her whole world. The dog shaman lowered her gaze after a second, conveniently missing the flash of disappointment in Eunha’s eyes at her action.

Next to them, Sowon looked expectantly at Yuju for answers. Yuju bit her lip, frowning as she tried to organize her thoughts. Eunha glanced over at Sowon.

“I’m still me, if you were worried.”

Sowon didn’t even look embarrassed about being called out on her suspicions. The leader stretched lazily, waiting for Yuju to deliver the official verdict.

“Eunha…” Yuju started, looking back guiltily at her fellow mage. “I think I messed up?”

“I feel fine, Yuju.” Eunha reassured the other girl, who didn’t look very convinced. Sowon was still watching them, though her attention was more centered on Eunha than anything else.

SinB was right. There was something a little off about Eunha, and it wasn’t in how she looked or anything this time. The scales SinB mentioned were completely gone for one, so that was one less problem they had to deal with on the surface.

No, it was just in the little things, like the way Eunha tilted her head, or held herself. Or even the way she was currently looking at Yuju, which felt eerily familiar to Sowon now that she remembered being Kim Sojung. She had to know for sure.

“But your astral self is... more now.” Yuju seemed conflicted. “You’ve become stronger.”

“Yes,” Eunha admitted, raising one hand as fire started dancing within her palm. Amidst the crackling flames, there were little bolts of electricity arcing through it. Yuju eyed the additional element with a critical eye, heaving a sigh.

“I...wasn’t expecting to see the shape of your soul to change that much.” Sowon looked up at that. Yuju shook her head, holding up a hand to stop Sowon from reacting negatively.

“Eunha is still Eunha...I just uh, I think I did something else at the end.” Yuju scratched at her head in frustration. “I don’t remember much but I think…when the orb broke, I might have fused your essence with it by accident?”

Yuju looked over at Eunha, who seemed extremely calm about the matter. Sowon just looked confused. She never did get the hang of magic theory at the best of times.

It was Yerin who broke the silence, standing at the entrance to the room they were using. None of the trio had noticed her step in, a perfectly normal occurrence. Yuju reacted naturally to the sound of her voice, a tiny smile creeping up her face as she turned to face the other woman. Eunha didn’t say a word, but Sowon didn’t miss the flash of envy at the bond between Yuju and Yerin.

“Is that even possible?” Yerin stepped in, ruffling Yuju’s hair affectionately. The shaman huffed and pulled away, shooting a not-at-all threatening glare at the unrepentant specialist.

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before.” Yuju puffed up her cheeks sulkily, which made Yerin chuckle. Sowon looked up at her.

“Is Umji better yet?”

Yerin, who had just come from checking up on Umji, nodded.

“She’s still a little disoriented, and she’s definitely not going to be jacking into the Matrix anytime soon until she unscrambles herself, but she’ll be fine. She just needs more rest to recover.”

Sowon nodded, somewhat relieved. Yerin was the other person in the team other than Umji who was trained to use all the medical equipment they had, though all of them knew basic first aid. It was part of the profession. Injuries were to be expected. They could have relied on Yuju to heal them, but it was unwise to make their shaman drain herself to heal every small wound.

Besides, it probably wasn’t great to rely on healing magic according to Yuju, since what it really did was simply accelerating the body’s natural healing process. Doing it too much could actually be unhealthy for the person being healed. Short of magical injuries or life threatening wounds that needed immediate attention, Yuju rarely used it on them.

Eunha coughed diffidently to get everyone’s attention. The fire mage looked at all of them, though her gaze lingered longest on Yuju.

“So, am I clear yet?”

Yuju cocked her head, clearly thinking about it. She zeroed in again on the electricity that still arced between Eunha’s fingertips.

“Other than the lightning, what else can you do now?”

Yuju had only heard about the scales from Yerin, but she hadn’t seen them for herself yet. Eunha smiled indulgently at the blatant curiosity written all over Yuju’s face, like a child fascinated with a new toy. The fire mage had been experimenting a little when she could in the last couple of days, trying to get a feel for her new abilities, so it didn’t take long for her to satisfy the shaman’s need for knowledge.

Scales emerged like a second skin, starting from the tip of her fingers and running up her arm like a devouring wave, encasing the entire limb in a light but near impenetrable armor that flexed with every motion. Yuju was watching in both the magical and physical spectrums, and was visibly awed by the sight.

Yerin and Sowon were slightly less comfortable with the display, but they were both very good at hiding their reactions. They did however exchange a glance, fleeting at best, but the older pair were twins in their discomfort. It was sort of creepy to watch.

Yuju crawled forward on her knees to prod at the scales tentatively, marvelling at the structure. Eunha watched her indulgently, allowing the shaman to do whatever she wanted.

“How durable are those scales?” Sowon wondered aloud, thinking about the lizardman she had fought, and also of the scales over her own heart. The ones on her chest were less brightly colored compared to the shimmering ones on Eunha’s arm, but she remembered all too well how it stopped a knife. The lizardman had even been able to shrug off shotgun blasts at close range, but she certainly wasn’t going to shoot Eunha as an experiment.

“I haven’t tried, but I don’t feel temperature as much when I scale up.” Eunha admitted, letting her own fire wreath around her wrist as a demonstration. Yuju had to back up a little from the intensity of the heat, but Eunha seemed utterly unaffected.

“Useful,” Yuju commented. She produced a knife from her sleeve with a flourish, not unlike a stage magician with sleight of hand, making Eunha chuckle. The pup looked uncertainly at the bunny.

“May I?”

“Go ahead,” Eunha stretched her arm out for Yuju. She knew the puppy wouldn’t seriously hurt her, and well, healing magic was still a thing she could do. Given the green light, Yuju carefully applied the edge to the scales, glancing up every now and then to check if Eunha was in pain. Eunha smiled encouragingly at her, and Yuju even tried sawing the blade back and forth. The only result was a much blunter blade, and Eunha giggling because it tickled.

“Interesting.” Sowon had come closer to take a look as well. She remembered her fight with the lizardman all too well. The razors in her gloves hadn’t been able to penetrate his scales either, and she had been punching to hurt.

“Is that anything like the thing you fought before?” Yerin was also peering curiously from above Yuju’s head. Eunha frowned instinctively, clearly knowing exactly what Yerin was referring to.

“I’m nothing like that abomination, thank you.”

Yuju looked at all of them curiously. She had been out cold when that lizardman appeared, and only heard bits and pieces from the rest. To save her the trouble, Eunha directly projected the image of what she had seen of the creature’s magical signature over to Yuju, who wrinkled her nose in disgust at the sight.

“That’s sick. Some kind of dark magic...that’s not even human anymore, is it?” Yuju looked back up at the still unconvinced Yerin.

“Eunha doesn’t look anything like that. I think it’s because her soul wasn’t even anchored in her own body when the fusion happened, so it didn’t really change her body the same way. She’s still very human, just that her soul is... more now.” Yuju shrugged. “She can control the scales, I don’t think that lizard thing you guys mentioned can even do that.”

Yerin looked thoughtful, as did Sowon. Eunha recalled the scales, snuggling up to Yuju, happy that the shaman had defended her. Yuju rubbed her fingers against the now smooth skin of Eunha’s hand, fascinated by how thoroughly the scales had vanished, as if they had never been there.

“So Eunha is still Eunha, but with dragon powers now?” Sowon summed up succinctly. Yuju nodded, then shook her head.

“I don’t know exactly what the essence of the orb entails, and now that it’s broken I can’t know for sure.” The shaman sighed. “But it definitely powered her up. As far as I can tell, she’s still herself, the magical signature of the orb is completely gone.” The shaman raised a hand, ticking off her fingers.

“She’s not possessed, her astral signature is still hers with some slight variations thanks to the soul fusion, and I haven’t found any foreign things latched onto her when I was scanning earlier.” Yuju looked down at Eunha, who was still cuddled against her.

“So I’d say yes, you’re clear.”

Eunha beamed up at her. Sowon nodded decisively.

“Good. We could use the extra firepower.” The ex-soldier looked over at Yerin, who nodded reluctantly.

“We’ll probably need it, considering now that we’re most likely on a hit list with the mission failure.” Yerin sighed. She had been doing her best to stay low profile all these years, and the sudden spotlight on her new team was doing her no favours.

“No big deal, we’ll just move again if we have to.” SinB yawned as she strode through the open door. She had clearly caught the tail end of the conversation, because there was less wariness in her stance when she approached Eunha.

“Incheon isn’t that far off, and Hyeongdae won’t be able to send in people there like they did this time.” Sowon frowned as she thought about it. SinB gulped quietly and shifted as nonchalantly as she could out of her immediate line of sight. Yerin raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t expose her. Yuju looked bemused, and Eunha shot her childhood friend a I know you screwed up glance.

“The only way to get us off that list is for the employer to either drop the request, or drop dead. I highly doubt they’re going to drop the request if they managed to call in reinforcements from Hyeongdae, but I don’t think we’re ready to erase a cult on our own quite yet.”

Yerin summarized their predicament with a glum look. Sowon patted her on the shoulder, making her wince minutely, a motion that didn’t escape Yuju this time. The shaman frowned and tugged at the hem of Yerin’s shirt, eyes questioning. Yerin mouthed a ‘later’, squeezing Yuju’s hand reassuringly.

“We’ll work something out.” Sowon shook her head. They needed Umji to get better before they could make any concrete plans. Their hacker was their eyes and ears, an indispensable part of their team whenever they needed information, especially with this much left unknown. Sowon remembered that Umji was still working on some data regarding the dragon, and that would play a part in deciding what their next step was.

Sowon wasn’t sure if she had the right to involve the rest in her vendetta against the dragon. She was going to go after Mireu anyway if Umji was able to confirm that the dragon was indeed behind the cult. It didn’t seem fair to make the rest come along though. All of them had died in the past because of the dragon, and they didn’t deserve to suffer through this all over again. This was her burden to bear as a survivor from the past. She needed to lay old ghosts to rest if she wanted to make peace with her present.

Sowon looked at her kids again. SinB was sitting by Eunha, Yuju was tugging Yerin to one side to check on her shoulder, and Umji was currently still sleeping in the next room over. She loved them all so much it hurt. They meant the world to her, and it gave her peace to see them all alive and well now.

Watching Yuna die in front of her back then still haunted Sowon. She never got to see what happened to the rest after the orb had come free, but the odds were that none of them save her had survived it. Thinking about the orb inevitably led her to look over at Eunha again.

The fire mage was chatting distractedly with SinB, though her attention kept wandering over to Yuju and Yerin in the corner. Again, that odd sense of familiarity nagged at Sowon; she needed to know.

“Lil Jung.”

It was just loud enough for Eunha and SinB to hear, though Yuju and Yerin were out of earshot. SinB was facing her already, and looked up quizzically at the sound of her voice. Sowon pursed her lips, waiting for Eunha’s reaction.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Eunha whipped her head around, surprise colouring her eyes. Hesitantly, the mage answered.

“... Sojung?”

SinB looked confused. Sowon closed her eyes. It was just as she thought.

“We need to talk.”