“Not every mission will be perfect,” Rebecca said in a kinder voice, placing a hand on her daughter’s armored shoulder. She knew Kiera to be the stoic, rule-following perfectionist she never was.

"But they should be!" Kiera shot weakly, her jaw clenched. "Unnecessary risks - to anyone - should be avoided. We could have calculated our path more, increased the torque in out suits-"

Rebecca withdrew her hand, her tone shifting to authoritative. "Enough, Kiera. We’re no longer talking about this mission. You’re talking about the expedition. I need my best pilots focused, not arguing ethics on the battlefield."

Kiera didn't need to ask which expedition.

Their world had been under siege from the portals known as Holes that opened erratically, swarming cities across the world with zombie-like wolf creatures known as Jackal-Wolves.

These days people called them Jawal.

For the last thirty years, companies like her mother's Interceptor Technologies had crafted advanced suits modded with flight, energy beams, and specialized equipmemt to fight the invasion head on. The Army would cause too much collateral damage, and the normal police force would be unprotected against infection. Specifically trained 'interceptor pilots' and rigourously designed suits would allow them to be precise and lethal against the Jawal invasion.

After decades as the leading interceptor company, I.T. was planning its biggest gamble yet — exploration into the unknown source of the Jawal. Earlier technology had not been capable of withstanding signal and gravity disruption from the portals before. They were going to fly a ship into a Hole.

"I don't like it," Kiera stated with candor. "It’s too dangerous. We should send a drone, not a manned crew."

Rebecca’s voice softened, a brief flash of maternal warmth in the commanding CEO. "That's why I'm leading it, Kiera. Signal interference doesn’t give us a choice - it's still an unsure thing. The only technology we can send through is tech we can monitor ourselves."

Kiera sighed, “I just don’t understand why it has to be you.” She carefully picked up the child who was crying. He clung to the Daybreaker suit.

As Peacekeeper and Daybreak lifted off towards I.T., leaving the New York city Jawal-attack cleanup crew to their work, Rebecca replied playfully, “You know me, I always have to be the center of attention.”

And she was the center of attention a few hours later. As calculated, a massive portal shimmered over the Atlantic. Rebecca, commanding the heavily armored ship dubbed Peacekeeping, stood in her Interceptor suit, her helmet under her arm. She gave a final wave to the crowds lining the New York shore before closing the ship door.

Underneath her Daybreak suit, Kiera gulped. Her heart was racing with both fear and anticipation. She hated her own reaction.

“You, okay?” A young man’s mechanized voice sounded from outside her suit. “No, Jason, I’m not.” She answered candidly. Jason Torres was a childhood friend and fellow pilot at Interceptor Technologies. He used the red and grey Vermillion Destroyer, a flight-capable suit with heavy artillery. He was five years older than her, but two years her junior when it came to piloting.

She’d been at it since she was fifteen, but her nerves about the exploration made it seem like her first day on the field.

Jason nodded in understanding, “Your mother knows what she’s doing, Kier-” He started, but the reassurance was lost to deaf ears when the Peacekeeping moved.

The Peacekeeping hummed with brilliant white light, highlighting the streamlined and dangerous edges of the two hundred foot vessel as it pulled into the portal. Kiera willed herself to breath.

Then the ship was gone. Everyone left was silent.

A cacophony of distorted noise and light erupted from the Hole. The Peacekeeping reappeared. It was in thousands of shredded pieces of burning metal and wire that rained down into the water and shore.

The crowd screamed in panic. Hardly realizing she had moved, Kiera plunged into the wreckage, shouting orders at the rest of the near interceptors. She found her mother in the tattered remains of the ship’s bridge, an unrecognizable mess of white metal and blood.

Kiera rushed Rebecca to IT headquarters hospital wing, where their resident doctor, Dr. Hannah D’Silva, a stout Indian woman typically warm and welcoming took Rebecca’s body with a serious face. 

She barked orders at the other nurses and doctors, and Kiera stood frozen with her mother’s blood on her suit as they rushed the maimed body behind closed doors.

It was a gruesome twenty minutes before D’Silva returned. Kiera still stood there, hardly hearing the hallway TV playing the breaking news of what had transpired earlier. 

Kiera knew when she picked her mother up from the wreckage that she wasn’t breathing. That the white metal from the half-destroyed suit pierced vital organs. That too much blood lay on her, and not in her mother. 

Hearing D’Silva say she was dead didn’t hurt any less.

Dr. D’Silva murmured to Kiera. "We tried, but the suit's damage to her... it’s catastrophic. We did everything we could." Kiera was still talking to Dr. D’Silva outside the operating room when the world outside exploded.

The massive Hole, that had caused the ship’s destruction, vomited forth the greatest flood of Jawal ever recorded. Every available Interceptor pilot, from every available company, was scrambled into the fight.

The battle was a desperate, bloody blur. Kiera fought with reckless adrenaline and grief-fueled abandon as Daybreak. Jason in Vermillion was right by her side, in his bulky red and silver decimating hordes with heavy artillery. 

She remembered seeing another teammate from I.T. in a black, yellow and white blur delivering her own furious justice to the enemy.

They won, but the victory was one of great sacrifice.

Kiera eventually returned to the hospital wing, her suit scarred and her body aching. Seeing Dr. D’Silva reminded her - Rebecca Moss was gone.

Kiera didn't cry. She stood before the window, watching the emergency clean-up in the distance, the constant flashes of light confirming the world's desperate reliance on them. On her mother and Interceptor Technologies. 

After the disastrous expedition, without Rebecca Moss, the confident and charismatic face of IT, the company would probably go bankrupt.

Her mother would be proud she was thinking of the company’s fate amidst the day's tragedy, she thought absentmindedly. 

I can’t let her legacy be destroyed.

Her legs almost gave out on her.

She made her decision and texted Pierce, her mother’s humorless secretary. Kiera called Dr. D'Silva and Pierce to Rebecca’s mother’s office. It was modern, grey, and featured bold art on the wall.

"My mother died protecting us," Kiera said, her voice flat. "But the world still needs the Peacekeeper." 

Pierce, showed a rare glimpse of sadness today. She stepped forward and placed a smooth compact device in Kiera’s hand. 

She looked down at it, an advanced cloaking device that was at the end of its experimental stage. "And this company still needs Rebecca. So, I’m going to play her.” 

If Pierce or D’Silva were surprised, they didn’t show it. She was committing six different types of fraud. The world would forgive her later once the Jawal had been defeated. Or the world would never know.

”We keep it between us - until I can stabilize this company." Tears were streaming down her face no matter how hard she tried to blink them away.

"Then I'll let my mother rest."

The next day, Kiera, cloaked in her mother’s identity, sat in an I.T. hospital bed. The chin-length blonde cut was gone, replaced by the thick, long blonde hair of Rebecca. Kiera’s brown eyes were now Rebecca’s striking blue.

The doors slid and two figures entered timidly. Jason smiled warmly upon seeing Rebecca in the bed. Layla jumped ahead of him and shoved a bouquet of flowers into Rebecca, a.k.a., Kiera’s face. 

Layla was a Chinese girl who was close to Rebecca and the pilot of the blur she saw earlier today - Queen. She was typically stationed in the Antarctic, but had come to New York for the Peacekeeping’s departure.

"Ms. Moss," Jason said, his voice deep and concerned. "You scared us."

"You can stop using the honorifics, Jason. I told you it makes me feel old, especially now." Kiera-as-Rebecca stated, trying to mimic her mother’s playful and familiar verbatim. It hurt to play the person you were missing.

"Maybe after you heal, you can get some Botox!," Layla joked. 

She was practically hanging off of Kiera’s arm. Kiera felt immediate regret and pity for her. Layla and Rebecca almost had a mother-daughter relationship - when the truth came out, it would hit her the hardest. 

“Be careful, Layla-” Jason started, always the mature one. He didn’t need to worry, because D’Silva came in and shooed them away after a few minutes, to “give Rebecca rest”. 

“Thanks.” Kiera said once they were alone. 

The doctor nodded. 

She understood it would be overwhelming and hard to play Rebecca at first. She was not just pretending, but deceiving her closest family and friends. It would take a toll on anyone.

Her mother always wore white, and always wore sharp business attire. The combo demanded hope and respect, she would say. 

"It was an anomaly. But- I have sustained significant injuries, and while I love this company and this fight, I will be retiring-” a bunch of camera flashes went off, and the flurry of predatory reporting began, “-soon. I will recover, mind you! But I will pass on the torch to my daughter, Kiera." 

She looked around the room. It was time for a closing Rebecca-Moss-joke. “Kiera is hard at work fulfilling my role as interceptor - our eccentric scientists demand their quota of Jawal every week.” 

A small laugh went through the room. She’d have to work on more charismatic jokes. 

Would Mom have laughed? 

Thoughts like these made Kiera’s eyes water and she made quick work of waving and getting off the podium.

Limping into the shareholders meeting that followed did nothing to make her it easier. The meeting was brutal.

They were demanding a win, a decisive victory to staunch the bleeding PR and the collapsing stock price. 

Apparently, the assurance that Kiera, Rebecca’s twenty-one year old daughter, was the next heir to the empire did nothing to calm their nerves. 

Kiera, sitting at the head of the table among many faces on screens and fewer in the room, deflected their anger with confident quips and carefully crafted Pierce-approved rhetoric. Inside, Kiera absorbed their words with serious resolve.

Later that afternoon, Kiera—back in her own Daybreak suit—was in the hangar reviewing damage reports when Jason approached her.

"Hey, Kiera," he said, his expression carefully guarded. He was concerned, but reserved somehow.

"Jason." she replied. She almost continued with a Rebecca-like statement, but remembered she wasn’t in that role right then.

He leaned against a storage crate, fiddling with the Daybreak helmet sitting beside Kiera. 

"How’s your mom? D’Silva keeps shooing me away to let her rest. Apparently keeping your mom here instead of sending her home to recuperate is best for her. Are her injuries that significant?”

Kiera nodded, heart hammering against her ribs. There was no reason to be nervous. D’Silva made sure she could spend as little hours as possible stuck in a hospital bed or receiving visitors as Rebecca. 

She met Jason’s gaze with a look of knowing. 

"The 'significant injuries' aren't just physical, Jason. The loss of her crew, the failed mission—it does something to your confidence." Kiera looked down. “When something you’ve built with your hands fails you," they both knew she was referring to the ship, “you lose trust in what you can and can’t do. Maybe she felt safer in D’Silva’s hands than on her own at home.”

Jason studied her. He was reliable and trusting, but also intuitive. "Maybe. But she always had fire. Yesterday, she seemed like she was following a script." 

He dropped the subject, but the seed of doubt had obviously been planted. 

“And maybe you can convince her to go home? She wouldn’t be on her own.” He smiled genuinely at her. “She’d have you.”