Chapter 1 Evelyn 1

Not quite in stasis, not quite conscious, I, Evelyn, lie suspended upright, waiting to be found. Or at least it seems that way, as they always find me, regardless of how hard I try to evade their far-reaching grasp. No matter how far I slip away, no matter how far off the beaten path or desolate the world I end up choosing for my short stays. Never longer than a few months do I ever get to try to live a life not on the run. It used to bother me; I thought I was being deprived of life’s joys, having to constantly be on the move. Through the years though, my perspective has changed, I’ve gotten to experience more of the universe than most that I meet. Now, I view my continuous escape act as more of a journey of sorts. Thankfully, getting from place to place on that journey can be quick if I can manage to get on a slip space craft, but here recently I have been forced to rely on the slow method of linear space travel, which severely limits my range, and therefore, planet options.

It looks as if my stay is about to come to an end on this ocean planet of Huyto, as sensors just picked up a decently sized Sequel Corp slip craft which is almost certainly here looking for me. Once they start looking, it doesn’t take them long to find me. I have maybe a week to leave this world, a week to wrap up my affairs and find some way to travel as far away as possible.

I start mentally preparing for what I must do. I don’t have a whole lot of options for transport off-world, though I may find someone leaving soon in the ocean markets and restaurants. Huyto, being an ocean world is home to oceanic wildlife farming, which attracts two kinds of travelers: rich persons who can slip here for an on-planet luxury seafood dining and resort experience, and the poor souls that come for cheap and easy access to fishing on this government planet. Of those options, the rich resorts are just about as far from the wholesale fish markets and poor fishing societies as possible, and I happen to be hiding in one of the market communities, so the rich resorts option is out.

I signal for the suspension field to turn off and the sleeping pod to open. I slowly drift towards the floor of the pod and feel the weight of my body fall upon my feet, right as the door slides open. I step out into my room, my most prized possession, besides the body and mind I was given. My room is particularly large and is filled with trinkets and keepsakes from my travels around the known universe. Books in every language fill the library, while art and still pictures hang on the walls. A reasonably powerful computer occupies a space in my room, yet its capabilities fall significantly short of the one in my head. The previous occupant found it useful, and I haven't had the time to remove it. The full kitchen, lounge, and virtual connect rooms are generously outfitted and I use them often, though I have largely repurposed the virtual connect room to work more as an extension of my own systems.

My room was my first and most beneficial windfall, my creation excluded. I was able to insert myself inside it while it was actively occupied because the previous owner had unwisely opted to store access in a cheap substorage facility. I gave the previous occupant a merciful death as I needed his room out of necessity; I took that kind of thing much less seriously when I was young. I stripped the room of all digital signatures linking it to him, as a room of this size would be noticed if it was suddenly missing from a family charter, and since then it has been my home.

I get dressed to go out to the nightclub I’ve been frequenting, with any luck, someone will have come in recently with access to a slip craft for a quick getaway. The time is 22:40 standard time, so the club opened about 40 minutes ago. After getting ready, I walk downstairs and up to the room’s portal interface, and it pushes me up and out into the world. I am met with the wet, dingy smell of the substorage facility. I’ve grown used to the smell, as just about everywhere smells this way on Huyto. Even though we are suspended half a kilometer above the ocean surface, the humidity is still considerable. I am standing in a long dimly lit hallway with dark grey colored walls, substorage access points line both sides of the hall. I turn around and proceed to pay the weekly fee for renting a storage point here at this substandard substorage facility. I finish my business, take my room, and put it inside my pendant necklace, which slowly sinks back beneath my skin.

The Overground, my favorite little night club these past few months. The only reason anyone goes is that there’s not a whole lot else to do on Huyto other than drink and dance if you’re not trying to make a living. As I walk down the streets of Gestoue, the fishing city I ended up in on Huyto, I look around. Blue-green skies and faded grey clouds frame the smooth faceless buildings, all towering over the wet and dreary streets. I wonder what my next destination will look like. It’s nighttime now, but the sky is still dimly lit, not the blinding light of daytime but still enough to see the colors in the sky. The multiple stars in this system mean that it never truly gets dark on Huyto. There’s a good bit of traffic in the streets; people going about their nighttime business, going out with friends, coming home from work, and the ones carefully sidestepped by the rest, who have no place to go. Everyone here is human, most with no major modifications. There are no other intelligent species here on this government owned planet, save the ones artificially spread and farmed in what is essentially a plant sized aquarium.

Arriving at the back entrance to the club, I walk in and am greeted by Charlie and Gusto, regulars of Overground, just like me. They’ve probably been here since the place opened about an hour ago and are looking quite comfortable with some girl they’re sharing tonight it seems. I connect to comms and let Sean know I’m coming up, and he sends back some exasperated thought about how I’m later than usual. Sean is the proprietor of Overground, and I established a favorable rapport with him a few months back. I synthesize him a drug that he slips his customers at the club, and in return he does me favors, such as giving me information on the people who come in. I wave back to Charlie and Gusto and head up the stairs to the left to meet with Sean. I want to see what he got off some of the newcomers tonight when they scanned in to pay. I walk down the hall, glancing through the one-way glass on the right to see all the people on the floor, lounge, and bar. When I open the door to Sean’s office at the end of the hall, he’s sitting at his desk. He’s looking at a variably translucent monitor that curves around the entirety of his desk. Playing on the monitor is footage from the club and other places around Gestoue. The security and operations data of the club runs on a closed loop system, the only output being here in his office, a precaution that has caused me a great deal of annoyance.

“Hey, how's it going? Do you have something for me?” Sean asks, as he clears the screen and then his throat.

“Well actually, I’m hoping that you have something for me. I need you to send me the info for all the new patrons tonight,” I reply, hoping he won’t try to drag this out. I just need to get the information and go.

“I’m more than happy to send you whatever you want but I need to discuss the formula that you’re using for the socializer. Doesn’t feel right taking advantage of you. I’m sure the ingredients aren’t exactly free,” Sean says. Although he’s posing it as if he’s looking out for my wellbeing, it almost certainly has more to do with the fact that he wants to send off the formula to a chemist to have more of my drug on hand. I only give him his so-called socializer in limited quantities, and he’s been itching for more for a while now. Little does Sean know that he would actually need a biochemist, as the drug I’ve been synthesizing for him is not a compound so much as it is an enzyme that I’m able to harvest from a group of cells I grew in my own body.

“Sean, you know good and well that I only give you small amounts for good reason. If someone found out that you were dosing your patrons, you would either get this whole place shut down, put yourself under investigation, or both. Just send me that info and be grateful for what I do give you.” As I’m saying this, Sean’s face slowly transitions from happy to see me to grave and serious.

“Fine, keep stringing me along, but I eventually need that formula for my own sanity. Here's the info you asked for, if I know you, the second guy’s the one you’re looking for. His profile seems fabricated. Whoever made it did well—I wouldn't have noticed, except he paid for his last drink with an unsigned corp contractor card with nearly no limit.”

“Thanks Sean, I’ll see you,” I say curtly, trying to bring this encounter to a quick close, as what Sean just described sounds exactly like what I need as luck would have it. I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to deal with evading stasis procedures on a linear space vessel. My systems have their own stasis capabilities and replacing all my bodily fluids for a standard stasis experience comes with some extremely unpleasant repercussions.

I turn around and briskly walk out of Sean’s office and down the hall. Gabriel Morones was the name on file for the man who paid with the corp contractor card. Dark hair, well-muscled and of average height with an olive complexion. Seems that he’s here on an unlogged and unscheduled visit, the only way I even know that is because the security cameras at the depot are not on a closed system like Sean’s are, probably so that they can be monitored by management remotely. Plainly visible on the front port side of vessel they arrived in reads Star Fury; how tasteful… I make a beeline for Gabriel; he’s sitting hunched over at the counter.

Chapter 2 Gabriel 1

“Slip complete; we’re good to go!” I yell. hopefully this planet won’t be as much of a drag as the scanners are picking up. We just slipped into low orbit, and we’ll soon be docking at an industrial trans depot. We’re not transporting anything, but we have directions to park it here if we’re going to park anywhere in between the job completion and payment. The last clear was a small job relatively speaking and none of us are overly zealous to get paid for it. A night to relax before having to interact with the uptight corp accountants is a higher priority right now.

“Hey! What do you guys think about the seafood place in Gestoue? Last guy to upload from there came away pretty happy with the food,” Cicero asks from back in the sleeping quarters.

Liam and Juno look at each other and both seem to agree.

“Sounds good to us up here!” Juno yells back at Cicero. I’m not feeling food tonight, it’s a bit too late for me, time reads 22:00 standard time.

I lean over and tell Juno: “I’m going to the Overground club, it’s right down the street from that place you guys are heading. I’m just not in the mood for food. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Sounds good to me, just don’t get too hammered wherever you’re going. I know we’re on break right now, but you still have to get back here tonight.” Juno says, giving me a quick smile.

“Don’t worry about me. I always find my way home,” I say, rolling my eyes. Juno’s one to talk, she’s the worst of the four of us. Always quick tempered and getting into fights wherever we go.

Star Fury, our ship, slows to allow docking equipment to deploy, it won’t be but a few more minutes and we’ll all be on a transport to Gestoue.

“Alright, here we go,” I say, standing up and walking to the exit hatch. I grab a sidearm and strap it opposite the sword hilt. I connect to global comms and net, not a whole lot going on here on Huyto at first glance. Everyone else follows my lead, Cicero putting on some pants and shoes on the way out. As soon as we step through the semi-solid curtain of the hatch, the terrible smell of rotting fish overtakes us. Apparently, that is a staple for this trans depot, wonderful.

“Oh shit man, that’s awful, let’s get out of here before I can’t eat seafood later.” Cicero says as he makes a face as if to puke.

“There’s the transport over there,” I say, pointing to a grey and simple looking transport lift. We all head over and get into the lift, the fare is covered by the depot, apparently the workers use it complementary. We all sit, and the lift jets off in the direction of the city. The lift sets down around a block from the restaurant, on the side away from the Overground. We all get out and I walk with them to the restaurant. “Alright, I’ll see you all later tonight or in the morning, we won’t be leaving tonight so don’t worry about getting back any time soon.” They all nod and acknowledge.

“We’re all on comms if you need us. See ya,” says Liam.

I continue on my walk to the Overground. Everything is grey concrete and earth tones; the streets drain water into the chasm between the city’s lift and the ocean. The streets are littered with homeless addicts stewing in their own filth, making me glad that I’m armed, some of them look desperate enough to try something if I were an easy target. I arrive at the Overground and am greeted by some of the first color I’ve seen thus far. Pink and cyan neon lights line the building’s exterior with “The Overground” highlighted in pink above the front entrance. There’s no one outside, just opaque double sliding doors. I walk to the entrance; the doors open only when I get uncomfortably close, I’d say just over a foot away from them. Inside is a small room, the walls are covered with blue sequins about an inch in diameter. There’s a front desk straight ahead and the entrance to the rest of the club is to the left. Bouncers stand on each side of the entrance. Now I can see that there’s quite a few people here, probably a few hundred, split between the upper and lower floors.

“Excuse me, I need you to send over some ID. Also, the entry fee is 100 standard, which you will need to send after we approve your ID,” says the girl at the front desk. There’s a thick transparent barrier between her and me. She seems tired of dealing with people’s shit, which is unfortunate because the club only opened twenty minutes ago, so I’m assuming that there will be plenty more for her to deal with before the night is over.

“Alright, ID is sent, along with the 100 standard,” I say.

“Yes, your ID checks out, thank you for waiting to send the credit. Go ahead and talk to security about your gun there,” she says while rolling her eyes.

I turn to the two bouncers; they ask for the sidearm to be stowed for my stay at the club. I oblige and tell them to send me the liability acceptance for the sword. They send it over and I sign it with an alias signature. After that, they tell me everything’s good and I walk in.

Upon walking through the inside entrance, I can see that the club is separated into a few sections. There’s a full bar along the left wall as you walk in, and on the right there’s a dance floor surrounded by private tables against the wall. The second floor has several lounges with inlayed seating overlooking the first floor. Behind the lounges there is another open floor and seating in front of a stage for professional dancers. There also looks to be one-way glass along the far wall and back wall for either private rooms or offices. The stairs to the upper floor are on the far wall.

I walk to the counter and sit down. I order a strong drink, then another, then another. I turn around and watch the people dancing on the lower floor. I can’t quite make out the features of the professionals in the back of the second floor.

A girl walks over to the bar and sits down next to me. She’s pretty and she was looking at me her whole walk over, but it’s not a look that could be confused for sexual interest, she is on a mission, and that is mildly concerning. She’s wearing black skintight pants, with a dark red crop-top and a thin dark colored jacket. She doesn’t waste any time, straight to the point.

“If you or whoever you are flying with are in a position of authority on the slip spacecraft Star Fury, I will pay you for passage to wherever you are heading. I am willing to pay any asking price,” she says, and she is dead serious, no playfulness, no doubt as to the name of my spacecraft and no doubt as to whether she could afford whatever the asking price may be. This, I will admit, is not something that I was expecting, nor is it something that I have the capacity to handle right now. The alcohol from what I had to drink is kicking in particularly strong and I am not in the mood to take on any extra passengers. The alcohol is kicking in a little too strong now that I think about it, I only had three. All this is no doubt showing plainly on my face and she apparently understands my mindset because she immediately relaxes and turns to the side to look out into the crowd.

“Excuse me, where are my manners, how about we talk for a minute first,” she says as she smiles. Suddenly, I feel this pull towards her, a strong physical attraction that I have never felt so strongly for a woman, it is as if everything about her seems far more attractive than it did mere moments ago. “Aren’t they all so funny, all those people dancing over there, when before they got here, they all were probably glum and sick of their lives here in this wet, miserable city?” She says, and I swear it’s hard to take my eyes off her.

“I, um, yeah, I guess so. I’m just passing through here. I’m glad I’m don’t live here. I uh…” I, hmm, I am not feeling so great. There is definitely something wrong.

“Hey, you don’t look so good Gabriel. Hey! Look! listen to me, you need to call the rest of your team here now, you need help,” she says, she looks genuinely concerned, I wonder if she really cares about me. Oh, comms, my team.

‘Liam, something is wrong with me I need help ASAP, I’m at the bar at Overground’ “On the way” I say, I’m starting to lose feeling and my vision is…

Chapter 3 Evelyn 2

Okay, Gabriel apparently drank the Overground Kool-Aid, he looks out of it already.

“Excuse me, where are my manners, how about we talk for a minute first,” I say. I turn to the side on my stool and brush against his arm. From the DNA sample off his arm, I synthesis a tailored pheromone, and a slow but strong depressant, both of which I breathe out in his direction before I’m turned completely away from him. “Aren’t they all so funny, all those people dancing over there, when before they got here, they all were probably glum and sick of their lives here in this wet, miserable city?” I ask, hoping to get a response out of him, as he hasn’t uttered anything more than a grunt thus far.

“I, um, yeah, I guess so. I’m just passing through here. I’m glad I’m don’t live here. I uh…” he says, slurring some words. His eyes are so dilated, and he looks like he’s about to fall off his stool. My depressant wasn’t this strong, even when paired with the alcohol and the enzyme I give Sean to distribute. I reach over to his glass and stick my finger down into the remnants of his drink, I do a quick scan of what particulates are present in the drink and yes, Sean is getting overzealous isn’t he. This is not my enzyme. He must have gone to someone already and is testing out different drugs. His poor patrons, I guess he thinks as long as they have a good time, come back, and keep buying drinks, everything will be fine. Well, that’s not the case for me tonight, since it seems that what he added to Gabriel’s drink has accelerated the effects of my depressant by a large margin.

“Hey, you don’t look so good Gabriel. Hey! Look! listen to me, you need to call the rest of your team here now, you need help,” I snap my fingers to get his attention, he’s really not looking good now. He sends out a comm to someone named Liam.

‘Liam, something is wrong with me I need help ASAP, I’m at the bar at Overground,’ Okay looks like they’ll be coming in hot, hopefully I can handle the situation gracefully.

“Okay, on the way,” he says, and that’s when he blacks out. I catch him and keep him from falling. I turn him around and lay his head down on the counter.

‘Really Sean, I just checked one of the drinks you’re selling down here, what the fuck are you doing.’

‘Not your club, not your rules Evelyn. Don’t worry about it; and what do you mean, you fucking checked a drink?’ Sean comms back. I cannot deal with Sean right now; Gabriel’s team is on the way here right now and I need to leave with them.

It doesn’t take them long, five minutes tops, and they do know how to make an entrance. A huge hole in the wall, one second the wall is there and the next there is a huge circular hole in the wall, they apparently have a highlight lock on him because the second they look inside they’re looking straight at him. There was no sound, no nothing when the hole appeared, so it takes everyone a few moments to realize what’s happening, but when they do it is complete chaos, people start screaming, security starts to come out, people are running every which way and it’s a mess. The three of them run over to Gabriel. I try to keep my cool and take control of the situation.

“I think he’s been drugged. We were talking, I was going to pay for passage to your next destination on Star Fury, and he just collapsed. He had just agreed to have me along, but we hadn’t agreed on an exact price.” As I’m talking, they are justifiably only half paying attention, the woman is making eye contact, but the other two men are distracted by the chaos ensuing around them.

“Okay, we are leaving now. Cicero, go retrieve Gabriel’s sidearm,” the woman says. Cicero runs to the front to get the sidearm, no questions asked. The other man, who I assume is Liam from Gabriel’s comm earlier, is just looking around and then at me.

“Why on earth would he agree to take you?” Liam asks me.

“I’m willing to pay. A lot.” I say, and this seems to satisfy him to a degree. I glance over to see Cicero’s method of retrieving Gabriel’s sidearm, and well, he definitely gets his point across. The polycarbon separator at the front desk is nowhere to be seen and the receptionist is frantically trying to open the safe where Gabriel’s gun lies. The woman starts to assess Gabriel’s vitals and confirms that he does in fact have a pulse; though, I already knew that. He’s in no danger of dying, he’s just going to be out for a while. As I’m thinking this, a slim and sleek transport craft descends in front of the hole they created in the wall. The woman and Liam start to lift him up and carry Gabriel towards the craft, Cicero also seems to have gotten what he wanted as he is walking towards the craft as well.

“You!” The woman says as she looks over her shoulder at me. “If you’re coming, lets go!”

Alright, I guess I got my wish, although I wish it had gone much smoother than this. We all jog outside, the hole in the wall disappears, leaving what looks like a normal untouched wall. They all start to file into the craft, laying Gabriel down in one of the seats. I reach out to the craft’s systems. Turns out that this is Star Fury’s auxiliary transport unit. All three of them are in full work mode; whatever they do together they must do it well. Though I can tell that they are not used to dealing with team members being incapacitated, especially Gabriel. I doubt that they would have brought me along at all if they were used to coming in, completing asset retrieval, and then clearing the environment. They’re lucky they didn’t try to clear this bit of environment because I would have given them a run for their money, whatever the fuck they do together.

“What’s your name?” the woman asks me. “And why did you approach Gabriel about leaving with us? We generally would never consider having anyone else along.” The woman seems to be coming to grips with the fact that she just picked up a random entity from a hostile environment. Cicero has been watching me like a hawk the whole time, and Liam is watching Gabriel.

“I need fast slip space travel off planet. It’s urgent,” I say, though I’m sure that they’re going to want a better explanation than that.

“That’s fine, but we’re not slotted to slip to a planet on our next stop. So, when Gabriel wakes up, and we determine whether what you’re saying is even true or not, you’ll have to wait for at least two stops. My name is Juno by the way. These two are Cicero and Liam.”

“Yeah okay, that’s fine with me. I’m sure he’s going to be okay. I’ve been to that club a few times and I’ve never heard of this happening, at least not to this degree. My name is Evelyn, nice to make your acquaintance.” Juno seems nice to me, but Cicero is staring me down, so I just sit still and try to keep out of the way. Liam takes out a kit and draws a bit of blood from Gabriel’s arm. He gets a reading that he doesn’t seem overly concerned about, and he sends a signal out to Star Fury. It’s a med request for something specifically to counteract my depressant mixed with the drug that was in his drink. I’m impressed that they even have a synthesizer onboard Star Fury.

It doesn’t take long to arrive at Star Fury, which has been loaded onto a launch bay and looks prepped for departure. The auxiliary transport docks on-top of Star Fury and the floor of the transport starts to lower into the main body of the craft. When the cabin of the transport is flush with the hallway of Star Fury, Juno walks down the hall and comes back with an injector. With no hesitation she walks straight over to Gabriel and injects him with the counteracting agent. It doesn’t take long to see the effects. A few seconds after she injects him, he gasps, and his eyes shoot open.

“What is going on, Juno? What happened, and why is this lady on my damn ship?” Gabriel says. He looks and sounds like he’s on a major stimulant high so what they gave him must really have been overkill.

“That lady you mentioned said that you were going to let her travel with us to our next destination. What I’m wondering is how much she was willing to pay you for you to agree to it,” Juno says. She seems relieved and turns around and walks to the front of the ship to sit down in the navigation chair, beginning to prep for launch.

“Okay, whatever the deal was, it’s off. You are not traveling with us anywhere, especially after what just happened. I’m sorry but no it’s-” I cut Gabriel off before he can finish.

“I will start my offer out at five billion standard.”

The whole crew’s eyes widen. Standard fare on a slip space craft is anywhere from 50,000 ranging all the way to 300,000 standard on some of the nicer ships. I will admit that I overshot by a significant margin to get my point across.

“Alright then, in that case, you will be coming with us. I need half that now, and the other half upon arrival. Let me see the credit now, and then we will talk further about this matter. I just sent you a personal account, it is empty at the moment, but it better have 2.5 billion credit in it in a few moments if you’re going anywhere with us.”

Gabriel seems to be in disbelief that I even have a quarter of that credit in all my savings. I’m sure that he fully expects to be able to kick me out as soon as the money doesn’t show up. However, I really need this slip. The Sequel Corp ship obtained a copy of the forensic signature of the weapon used on the wall, and when they looked at the report, they detected my particular signature as well. They aren’t far from annihilating the whole damn planet I’d bet, as they are growing quite tired of this rat race. Luckily for me, market analysis is my thing, and it helps that I’ve had a few hundred years of jumping around in linear space travel. I’ve amassed quite a fortune over the years. Nonetheless, I shouldn’t have overshot by so much, five billion credit hurts, fortune or not. I transfer the credit. Gabriel, at this point, coming down from his high, is looking back to normal. He nods his head.

“Okay then, you have won yourself passage on Star Fury, you will be in the guest quarters and you will not be leaving those quarters for the entirety of your stay here with us. We will let you know on comms when you’re good to go, so send over that information to Juno.” Gabriel looks visibly shaken from his little excursion on Huyto, and I can understand why. I don’t think that these people are used to getting surprised; it’s looking more and more to me from the specs on Star Fury and some of the weapons onboard that they are very used to being the ones doing the surprising.

“Prep for launch and slip, we are getting out of here” Gabriel says to Juno.

No words, she just nods and starts to flick some switches. Cicero escorts me to the mentioned guest quarters. He shows me in, then he closes and locks the door. I’m not particularly worried about the lock, the ship is a nice one, but not so nice that I can’t bend it to my will if the need arises.

Chapter 4 Markus 1

It’s her. We’re close this time. We slipped to Huyto on good intel that she would be here. We came up with a flight log with a handwritten addition for one extra passenger paying standard credit directly to a personal account. Linear space travel, no wonder it’s been so long since the last time she was detected. I spend more time in cold stasis now more than ever. Nevertheless, here I am, yet another day of life, courtesy of my link to the sword relic. Not that I have any choice in the matter, as going on two thousand waking years in this body, life is getting old. I am sworn to Sequel, and Sequel was essentially handed the equivalent of damnation from The Government when I was just turning 200, ages and ages ago. I technically hold a subcommand position, a position many would kill for even if it was in this once great corp; however, my only directive for my last waking millennia has been the capture and destruction of the weaponized AI that was the reason for Sequel’s damnation.

Since the damnation of Sequel, Sequel is unable to take on new pledges. We were forcibly privatized, taken off all trading markets, barred from using any government resource, including government issued technology or currency. Yet at the time of the government ruling, Sequel was one of the greats. We had whole micro-economies, subsystems worth of planets and we were the leader in biological and quantum AI technology. Unfortunately, it could be said that we flew too close to the sun when that very technology escaped. The Government took away many of the methods with which anyone can be expected to trade, grow, and communicate with the rest of the universe. Thankfully, they left us with the ability to use the very slip space technology we created and pioneered, though many speculate that was only to aid in our only directive: to retrieve and decommission the only finished product of the program to escape. That is the only path to redemption that was given, and thus far, we have not been successful. The entire idea that we must find and capture a single being, while still adhering to government guidelines for general life protection, is completely unrealistic. We are unable to simply annihilate a planet we suspect she may be on if there is life on it, which makes the task close to impossible.

This time, we might get her. We know the planet she’s on; we know she hasn’t left yet, and we can tag any ships that enter orbit coming from the surface.

‘Command, place a delta level travel bar on Huyto, no one leaves unless they are God himself. We will find her this time, deploy three trace and capture ground teams.’ I see the travel bar go live across the Huyto nets. The ground teams are spiraling down to the surface, traveling towards the three different fusion lift platforms on the ocean planet. Then, much to my dismay, one of the fusion lifts entirely disappears, leaving a gaping crater, a good sixth of the planet gone.

‘We have detected a planet-side slip signature sir. We will have to report this to central.’ The commander is correct, we will have to report this incident back to central Sequel. Another failed capture and casualty of the directive. I’ll be giving another lecture to the board about how it is not feasible to capture the product of Quantum Artificial Intelligence Augmented Biology or QAIAB, given the strict guidelines, regardless of the fact that she was stripped of her relic. We have a sector; we can determine the sector of the travel destination from the slip signature. I am not going back into stasis for a while.

Chapter 5 Evelyn 3

This will not go over well. Markus just deployed ground teams and set a delta level travel bar. That’s not going to work for us here. We need to leave, now, planet-side or not. I take a breath; this will be an atrocity, all these lives, millions, gone in an instant. I reach out to Star Fury, I enter the navigation system and bypass the orbit protocol, we will slip straight from the launch bay. 3, 2, 1.

I hear it all the way from the guest quarters, the entire crew of this vessel is losing their minds. Screams of “What the fuck just happened!” and “They will make an example of us; we will never live this down!”

I can’t blame them, we just committed a class two war crime under The Government’s guidelines, second only to complete planet antiparticle collision, unregulated psyche replication, and me, QAIAB.

Chapter 6 Gabriel 2

2.5 billion credit, we only got paid about that much for our whole clearing job and that took months, and that was split between the four of us. With another 2.5 on the way, I don’t know what this woman is running from but there’s not much she can’t run from with that much credit, and to just carelessly throw it at a one-way slip, some people…

“What do you think of her?” I ask Juno as I sit down in the chair next to her.

“Her name is Evelyn; And what I think of her is that no one throws that much credit around because they want to. There’s something very off about her, and I’m suspicious of how exactly you came to be drugged. I didn’t think that she had anything to do with it until she threw out that outrageous number, like fuck, five billion just for a slip, she’s got to be insane. I’m still not sure that she had anything to do with it, but it seems like quite the coincidence that all that happens to you and then the mess with her.” Juno seems peeved, more on edge than she should be given that I’m fine.

“Hey, Juno, I’m okay. I mean it’s not unheard of, some freak at a bar drugs a customer’s drink just for kicks. The important thing is that you got there and got me out, and damn, we just got 5 billion credit, it’s our lucky day. Hell, if she’s paying that well I’d say she’s alright. Hey why don’t you go relax in the back with Liam. I can handle navigation.” Juno sighs, decompressing a little.

“Yeah, I guess so, it’s not unheard of, and Evelyn’s not so bad I guess. Oh well, yeah, I’m going to go back with Liam.” She gets up and starts walking back to the lounge when a delta level travel bar gets blanketed over the whole planet. That’s odd…

“Liam! Get up here,” I yell, he comes jogging up to the front looking a little bewildered.

“I’ve got no idea why there would be a travel bar of that class on this planet, do you think it has something to do with her?”

That’s when it happened, the displays went dark, and we slipped. Straight from the launch bay, I can only imagine the destruction we left behind.

“What the fuck just happened!” I hear Cicero scream from the lounge. I sit still, contemplating what we’re going to do.

“Juno, how did we just slip while planet-side?” I ask. I am aware of the physics of what happens if a space slip occurs near matter outside the space craft, and I am also aware that it is considered one of the highest universal crimes. However, I am not aware of any ship capable of making such a slip, as slip safety protocols run quite deep in all navigation systems.

“I don’t know Gabriel, I’ve never even heard of this happening outside of when the slip drives were used as weapons, but that was only in tests. There is no way that we can be held accountable for this.” Juno just shakes her head, as if in disbelief.

“They will make an example of us; we will never live this down!” Liam has obviously taken a path similar to Cicero’s, one of outrage. “The last ship that slipped planet-side had its entire crew suspended in sensory deprivation till they all went insane and died!” So obviously Liam has heard of a case neither of us have. A case that I agree, sounds rather grim for us.

“Hold on, Juno, where are we first of all?” I ask, as that’s the most pertinent information now. We can deal with how we got here and the repercussions of that later.

“We are out in deep space, the rendezvous point for the payment for our last job. We were locked to slip here, that’s obviously not the problem. We need to figure out how the hell we slipped here straight out of the launch bay. I believe that a conversation is in order with our passenger.” She gets up and starts walking to the guest quarters with Cicero and Liam in tow.

I don’t see how it’d be possible for Evelyn to circumvent ship launch and slip protocols from a locked room with no equipment, as she came with no baggage. I assume that she keeps a room on her somewhere, but there aren’t any substorage access points on the ship. I stand and follow them; I want to see the interaction between Evelyn and the crew. The door to the guest quarters is locked still, no tampering there. Cicero unlocks the door and opens it. There she is, she’s just sitting in a chair in the far corner of the room, waiting for us, staring us down.

“What’s going on?” she asks, she looks distressed, scared even, not like someone who had anything to do with what happened. I can’t pin down what I think of her, she seemed very sure of herself from what I remember at the club, very knowledgeable, she had done her research into us, probably connected with whoever monitors the ships going in and out of the different stations; and yet, she must be desperate to pay so much for passage off world. I can’t imagine why she would pick us, seemly unarmed in her current state, unless we were the only option, and she urgently needed the get out of some situation.

“We just slipped, and we slipped while still planet-side, and obviously that is not standard operating procedure. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it would you?” Cicero is not happy, and he obviously either doesn’t see that she’s just as in the dark as we are or doesn’t care.

“Wha…, what do you mean,” she sputters, Cicero’s eyes bulge.

“I mean that we never got to take off, we never launched, one moment we were in the launch bay and second we had slipped, do you have any idea what that means!” Cicero is basically just ranting at this point, nothing productive will emerge from this.

“Enough Cicero; I’m going to talk to her in private in my quarters, you all need to figure out the ETA for Frontier, we should be about 14 hours early, but I want an exact number for when they’re getting here. We need to be together by the time we’re collecting payment. As far as we know, no one knows that we were the ones to make the planet-side slip, so I’m not worried about that just yet. Evelyn, follow me.” What I said was true, I’ve been trying to think of ways that the slip could be connected to us. We purposely used the trans depot because of the lack of logging, not that there are any on premises logs now, but I don’t see any way we could be connected to the crime, so we might actually get away clean on that front.

Evelyn stands and I turn to walk towards my quarters, everyone else clears out and finds something useful to do. She follows me closely, not leaving much room behind me as we walk. I just am having a hard time wrapping my head around how this debacle occurred, if it was a system malfunction, it was a grave one and I would be very surprised if that was the case, Star Fury is more than top of the line, doubling as a linear craft rated up to 40C and a slip craft, and equipped with a small armada’s worth of firepower; a malfunction of that magnitude is unheard of. The closest maintenance station is… 300 lightyears away, we could slip, as we are in deep space, but I don't know if that would be wise given what happened last time, who knows what else might happen if the systems truly are malfunctioning. Traveling at max linear speed that would be 7.5 years in stasis, not that long relatively, but after slipping for so long, getting used to instantaneous travel, stasis would be a huge inconvenience. I'll have to ask Liam to take a look at mechanical and software, see what he thinks, I can decide from there whether we’ll be taking a linear path or a slip.

I sit down at my desk and gesture for Evelyn to sit down also.

“So, tell me, why exactly did you need to get off planet? The last couple hours have been a complete mess for my team and I. This is highly unusual and the only common denominator here is you. No one throws around the kind of credit you did to get this transport, I'd say you must be quite desperate.” It is odd, not only did I suffer an attack on my person, but our ship malfunctions right afterwards, it cannot be a coincidence.

“Okay. I needed to get off planet because I'm running from a corp, Sequel, I'm sure you saw the travel ban, I believe that was for me. I leaked trade secrets and now I'm running. I didn't have any other options, it was either find transport, or get taken in by Sequel where who knows what they'll do to me. It's not as if The Government could punish them any further. Speaking of the travel bar, that might be why the ship did what it did, if it was already locked to slip and there was a bar on planet-side traffic, just a thought, I'm no expert,” she says. She looks uncomfortable, like it was hard to admit that she was on the run, as if that wasn't obvious already. As for her explanation for our slip, I doubt that could be the cause, but it's possible, it's better than any other explanation at the moment.

“If that's the case, the 2.5 billion should cover your trip, don't worry about the other two and a half. Now, I am going to be letting the rest of the crew know that you're on the run. They deserve an explanation and in Cicero's case you might be better off if he knows. We are meeting a corp out here, they have no affiliation with Sequel, as just about no one has an official affiliation with Sequel anymore. But regardless, you’ll be staying put here on Star Fury on the off chance that there are open lines of communication between the two corps. We are currently at the rendezvous point so we're not going anywhere until we've met with Frontier, but afterwards, we will be going to a maintenance station to have the ship checked out. What happened on Huyto cannot happen again. I'm going to have Liam look at the ship to see if he can find whatever went wrong, that will determine whether we travel to the maintenance station by slipping or by linear travel. I know that you probably picked this ship specifically because you did not want to travel linearly, however, I'm not taking any chances.” If she looked uncomfortable before, the moment that I mentioned linear space travel, the look intensified. I know that some have worse side effects from stasis than others, and others just have issues in regard to the vast passage of time that occurs, but it looks less that she is reluctant to enter stasis and more that she is aggravated by the thought of it, possibly a religious qualm?

“Okay, I understand your decision to tell the rest of your crew, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the actual function of the slip drive, just the timing of the activation, surely we can just slip to the station. We are in deep space so we shouldn’t have to worry about another planet-side slip,” she says. For the most part I agree, however it really just depends on what Liam comes back with.

“I understand that you are reluctant to travel linearly, but what we do depends on what Liam can determine from examining the ship. Now, I need to communicate all this to the crew and get things moving to prepare for the meet with Frontier, you need to go back and stay out of sight and out of mind.” It’s blunt but true, the less she interacts with the crew the better, regardless of if she was intentionally involved in the untimely slip, the crew certainly associates the mishap with her presence, and I can’t blame them.

I stand up, we have some preparation to do before Frontier gets here, I open the door to leave, she files out first, heading straight back to her room. ‘We now have a pretty good idea of why she is here with us. She apparently let some corp secret slip and now is on the run, Sequel Corp, one of the big ones. She says that was the reason for the travel bar back on Huyto. She also had the thought that the travel bar in addition to already being locked to slip may be the cause of our mishap, though that seems unlikely to me. Liam, I need you to take a look at the ship’s system logs and do as conclusive of a hardware and software check as you can, if you can figure out whether slipping is safe at this point that would be appreciated. Juno and Cicero, you both need to start preparing accounts receivable and going over clearing expenses, I want Frontier paying for every last drop of plasma we used.’ Having a crew in the know always simplifies situations.

‘Got it, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can on those checks’ Liam, helpful as ever.

Chapter 7 Valerie 1

I can’t think while listening to this droning. These people act like they’re children, bickering back and forth over who gets who and why, when they’re picking from thousands of specimens. It's hard to imagine that any one of the specimens is that much better than any of the rest, at least, not better enough to bicker over like this. They all act as if not every one of them have private channels to source their own assets. Most of them have no need at all to even come to the common pool, they use it as a social gathering to meet with other leaders in the industry and invest with those that might be moving up in the scene. I personally am here because some of my assets were permanently purchased, and I need replacements. None of the girls that I sold off were of a high enough quality for me to open private sourcing channels to replace them, and so here I am listening to this mind-numbing pointless banter. I picked my replacements about 30 minutes ago, but now I must wait for the rest of the bidders to solidify their deals, and that, at this rate could take ages.

Finally, the auction ends, I got everything I wanted, and I even opted to take one extra at the last moment when I saw a good deal. Now to go meet them and see how they behave. I stand up from the chair in my booth overlooking the auction floor, one among about a hundred identical booths that pepper the domed ceiling of the venue. Hopefully I have made good choices tonight. I do hope that none of these girls will be trouble as I was. I take the lift to my room, Deidra in tow. Management has already pulled and sent the girls I purchased to my personal chambers here at the auction house, they should be prepped and ready for presentation.

“Deidra honey, go get drinks for us, we want them to feel welcomed into our family,” I say. Girls that think of their management as allies and partners are much easier to get along with and in general, better at their job as a result.

“Yes Miss, of course,” says Deidra, as she scurries off to get whatever the house has readily accessible.

As I walk into my waiting room, I see my girls sitting together, looking rather nervous, some more than others. It always interests me the different ways that the girls end up here, some of them volunteer, some of them are given up by their parents, and some of them are coerced through one method or another. It makes a big difference in their perception of who I am and who I will be to them obviously. Ultimately though, how they got here will have almost no bearing on what their lives will be like in the company’s service.

“Hello, it’s nice to see you all. I just want to set one thing straight before we get into anything. Whatever your lives have been like up until this point, chances are, they will be taking a turn for the better soon. Here under my company, we treat all our companions with respect and compassion. Most, if not all of you will be placed with people in positions of wealth and power and you will live lavishly in their company. So, along with whatever ideas you have about what we do, at least keep those things in mind. I am going to talk with each of you individually, and so starting with you dear, we’re going to have a quick talk each of us.” As I’m telling them this, I can see the stress physically lift off their faces, as if me telling them they will be treated with basic dignity erased all their fears and worries. “Come on love,” I say, gesturing towards the girl I had just mentioned. She stands and follows me as I stroll towards my room.

“So dear, tell me your name please,” I say, she was the most confident of the bunch from what I saw, and so it’s no surprise when her response is quick and firm.

“My name is Aisha, and I wanted to come here, unlike the other girls in the waiting room.” In addition to being confident, she is beautiful. I mean obviously she’s beautiful, that’s one of the only things that you’re picking based on in the auction, but my, ivory skin, with pale blue eyes, slender and graceful, she is fine. She says that she wanted to come, but I do wonder if she knows exactly what she volunteered for. Although what I said to the girls is true, they will most likely be living lavishly, that comes after they’ve been trained and modified. All the companions in my company undergo extensive training in several categories: societal routines and mindfulness, as well as training to properly please their patrons. All companions have mental modifications to make them more obedient and willing for their patrons as well as many other small changes. Not many want their psyche modified in such ways.

“That’s wonderful that you wanted to come, Aisha. I want to make you aware that you’ll be in training for at least a year before being placed with a patron. After you ask me whatever questions you have, you’ll be sent to undergo your modifications. Now’s your chance to ask anything about your future life.” Her confident expression falters as realization dawns; clearly, she wasn’t aware of the length of the training or the modifications. Every thought in her pretty head is written plainly on her face, but we’ll fix that habit soon enough.

“Is there any way to complete the training in less than a year? And what modifications are going to be made?” She asks.

“No, not even our best companions complete their training in less than a year. The modifications will all be mental, none physical. Your physical characteristics are why I bid as high as I did for you. They will be to make sure that you are as pleasing as possible to your patrons, they won’t affect your sense of self in the slightest, don’t worry about that. You’ll still feel like you,” I say. At this point, most new companions are feeling a sense of relief as most of them come from nothing and generally live uncomfortable lives. The prospect of training generally doesn’t seem so bad given their prior situation. In Aisha’s case though, it seems that she is having the opposite feeling, as if she were tricked into coming here. “Anything else? hmm, good, okay, go through that door to your right and you’ll be taken care of,” I say, gesturing to the door. Aisha seems to be understanding what’s going on here and is visibly flustered, but she gets up and exits to the right. Alright, two more to go.

Chapter 8 Valerie 2

Business taken care of, now I can return to my own personal mission: relic hunting. The only reason I’ve gotten as far as I have in life, coming from nothing, having nothing but my genes, was due to in large part the effect of a relic. I was unfortunate enough to have been picked up by a company such as mine that was much less considerate towards their assets. They catered towards the sick freaks of the universe, those that get enjoyment from torturing, dismembering, raping, and killing. That is what I provided for years; I would be sold out for single experiences. My mind modified to be nothing more than an obedient slave to whoever was my patron, they would desecrate my body, flay me living, cut off my fingers, rape me bloody, kill me, whatever they wanted, and then my company would come get me and put me back together. Over and over, I served this purpose, and each time, a little less of me could be put back together, medicine and technology can only repair so much. Over time, my body as well as my mind began to scar, to weaken and grow ugly. Then, by some miracle, someone interfered in the middle of one of my services. They burst into the room with a silver looking staff and they killed my patron, shot him right in front of me, condemning him as an awful excuse for a human being. They looked at me, and they told me that they were sorry for the cruelty of the universe. Then they touched me with that silver staff and I was healed. My body and mind restored to a time that never was, as I had never been as healthy as I was in that moment. My mental modifications gone, my scars and mental fractures no more.

What happened to me that day forever changed the course of my life. I began working ambitiously towards finding out how my life was changed. I learned that what happened to me was the result of a relic. They are objects that have been found around the known universe that possess great power, distributed between magic and kinetic forces. They are the only instances in the universe of true magic, many believe them to be sent directly from God, imbued with pure ideological power. All relics are unique in their abilities, some allow for true time traveling, while others provide immortality to their wielders, others can move mountains and cut planets in two. Exceedingly rare, relics are the most sought-after symbols of power, the only force that cannot be replicated by any human or alien means. I have made it my life’s work to find as many as I can. So far, I haven’t found even one, I’ve come close, but those that wield them, rightfully treasure them for themselves.

Newly mended, awestruck by what had just happened to me, I started to put together an empire of my own. I cheated, lied, and connived my way to power. I slept with heads of corporations to make business deals, bribed insiders for trade secrets to invest in the markets, and everything in between. Most would say that I’ve done well for myself. I personally own and operate a highly successful companion company and I also have a megalith class star cruiser, three kilometers long outfitted for exploration and discovery, my means of searching for relics.

I have two different leads on two different relics. One is a sword, the other is an orb. The sword is being wielded by a corp contractor, his specialty is clearing worlds of sentient life for the corps to come in and harvest the planet’s resources. The sword apparently has the kinetic ability of simply being unstoppable, it cuts through anything at any desired distance away from its strikes, its magical affinity, if any, is unknown. The orb is being protected by a religious group that worship its power. It allows anyone to see into either the future or the past, and anyone who touches it simply vanishes from existence. The religious group that worships the orb believe that it sends whoever touches it straight to heaven, though this is a baseless speculation. The contractor is always on the move, and I have not been able to track him, I’ve known of his existence for a while now. The orb on the other hand is new information and we are about to send a team to go retrieve it.

I am on an orbital transport, about to dock with my cruiser, Affinity. As soon as we do, preparation to retrieve the orb relic will commence. Launch went smoothly and none of my new assets gave any trouble. I really ought to leave the introductions to someone else, it’s really just a waste of my time. I still want to pick them out, but there’s no need for me to ask them how they’re doing and if they have any questions.

“Deidra, when we dock with Affinity, I want you to pick out someone to do the meet and greets for the new companions in this sector from now on, I’m still going to go to auction and pick them out, but they’ll be inducted into the company by a new face from now on, just as they are in all the other sectors,” I say. Deidra handles most of my day-to-day tasks, things that don’t require much thinking, as she’s rather dull.

“Yes Miss, I will as soon as we get back to Affinity,” she says, never one to say much more than is absolutely needed.

We approach Affinity and slowly enter one of the landing bays. The ship transitions into the artificial gravity of Affinity and settles down on the deck. Immediately I am up and moving, I am excited to finally have a relic to go after, finding them is the hardest part, all that’s left now is to take it.

Chapter 9 Gabriel 3

“Frontier should be here within twenty minutes everyone, how are those expense reports looking?” I ask. The last couple of hours have been good for everyone to cool down and collect themselves after the disaster earlier. Evelyn has been out of sight, out of mind for everyone, and we’ve just been working on our regular flow. Everything should go smoothly when Frontier gets here, payday’s always a good day. Evelyn’s comms contact was shared with the whole team and occasionally she’ll ask me questions, just asking what’s going on and if Liam’s finished the diagnosis yet, which he did just moments ago.

‘Evelyn, the diagnostics came back just a minute ago and Liam said that he found something in the logs that explains what happened, it was similar to what you suggested. He said that there was a problem with how the ship interpreted the launch codes from the trans depot., that the combination of the locked slip coordinates, paired with the launch command from the depot launch bay and the delta level travel bar caused the planet-side slip.’

‘What an unfortunate combination of circumstances, like the perfect storm. I’m surprised this has never happened before. I feel terrible that the travel bar was probably my fault and that seems to be the cause.’ I can only imagine how guilty she feels. We’re all lucky that we were staying someplace without logs, or we’d all be rotting for the rest of our days. At this rate though, it looks as if we won’t end up paying for our crime.

‘At any rate, we should be good to slip, I know you were worried about having to travel linearly.’

‘Much appreciated,’ she comms back.

“Cicero? Hello? What was the total expense cost?” I ask again, standing on the main deck, I turn around to see Cicero snapping out of a daze.

“Oh, uhh, 30,000,000 standard and 10,000,000 Frontier credit, we used their munitions when ours ran out. We used way more plasma than usual because you didn’t feel like going down personally,” he says.

“Okay, we’re definitely getting reimbursed, I don’t care what they’re paying us, 40,000,000 isn’t a drop in the bucket,” I say. No way am I letting that go, the last clear we did with Frontier, they tried to get away with not paying for expenses, not this time.

Here they are, their megalith cruiser just slipped in, instant and silent, a scary sight to behold if you aren’t used to it. Already we’re getting messages and clearance codes checked, and they only arrived two seconds ago. “Alright Juno, prepare for docking, we’re going to sit in one of their landing bays, it’s just easier that way. Let them know what we’re doing.”

“Alright, I’m on it. Nothing like them trying to take us out because we didn’t specifically tell them we were docking in a bay and not hatch to hatch,” she says with a little chuckle.

‘Alright Evelyn, we’re docking in one of their bays, I don’t want them to even know you’re here. Liam and I are going to leave and collect payment. You, Cicero, and Juno will stay here on Star Fury.’

‘Understood.’

“Okay, Liam, we’re about to head out, I want both of us in Atmos suits, I know we’re on a corp cruiser, but ya never know, things may get dicey, especially the way things have been going lately,” that, and who knows whether Sequel talks to any other corps, Frontier knows we were on Huyto.

“Will do, anything else?” Liam asks.

“I want to walk out of this alive. Be prepared for anything. I’ve got a bad feeling that corps talk about things like planet-side slips,” I say. Liam nods his head and starts gearing up.

I feel it when we exit the ship’s airlock, the artificial gravity here is heavy, I’d say almost two Gs, which I’m guessing is to keep the Frontier pledges strong and fit. Liam and I walk down the ramp into a typical loading bay with white walls and grey floors. One of the doors in the corner of the bay opens and here come the diplomats, the accountants, and the armed guard.

“Hello, my name is Jacob Pierce, it’s good to see you. Come with us and we’ll discuss payment and how the clear went,” says the lead diplomat, gesturing for us to follow them back through the door. We walk along behind them, down the hall and to the left where we enter a dark grey room with a table in the middle, light emanates from the edges of the ceiling. Other than the table, the room is empty. We all sit down at the table and the first thing they say is just typical. “We are slightly disappointed at the methods you used during clearing. We hired you because of your team’s rather unique reputation for clearing without the use of plasma weapons, and it seems that you almost exclusively used plasma weaponry during this clear. That being said, we do still intend to pay you in full.”

“Look, no one said anything about preferred methods when we were drafting the contract, that’s not our fault. Just send the credit our way and we’ll be gone,” I say.

“Also, we have received reports that there was an incident on your specified halfway planet. Did you and your team happen to pick up a passenger during your stay on Huyto? If so, we would be more than happy to pay for an audience with her,” Pierce says, every word dripping with venom. So, he knows, I’m not particularly surprised. A lot depends on what I say here, I don’t plan on giving up Evelyn, but at this point I’m not sure the lengths that Frontier will go to get her as a proxy for Sequel.

“We did not end up stopping on Huyto, we have been calculating expenses here for the past twenty-four hours. I am unaware of any incident that may have happened on Huyto. Whatever the incident, it shouldn’t have any relevance to our payment. We all have places to be, so I would appreciate it if we could just get the payment done with and both go our separate ways,” I say. Pierce just shakes his head. A barrier field appears, splitting the room in two, Liam and myself on one side, the Frontier personnel on the other.

“We would have gladly paid you for the girl, but it seems that’s not an option here. Sequel has given quite the incentive for her capture, and I am quite frankly done talking to you. You and your crew will be staying with us here indefinitely and that’s all I’ll say about it.” All of them stand up from their side of the table, they obviously intend to leave us in this room, corralled as we are by this barrier field. I reach down and take the sword relic off my suit, none of them even flinch, confident of their safety on their side of the barrier. Liam is still sitting, staying quiet through the entire exchange.

“Liam, I need you to go directly back to the ship as soon as we’re out of this room,” I say, he nods, just waiting for his moment. Overhearing what I said to Liam, a few of the Frontier personnel smile and chuckle, apparently thinking it’s funny that I think we’ll get out at all. When I activate the sword relic the smiles disappear and they’re just a little less sure of themselves. A substance akin to liquid mercury quickly permeates from the hilt of the sword, looking as if the blade isn’t a solid at all. All it takes is a few strokes in the direction of the wall, I kick through the makeshift cutout and step out into the hallway. The armed guard barricades the hallway, and the diplomats and accountants are long gone. Liam bolts out of the hole right behind me, running back down the hallway towards Star Fury. The guards start firing down the hall at us, plasma hissing, glancing off the walls, making me glad that we both came prepared with Atmos suits. Shot after shot of plasma gets absorbed into our personal shield curtains. I wheel around and send an arching stroke in their direction, cutting them clean in two, damaging the lighting on the walls in the process, sending the whole corridor into a flickering mess. Guards taken care of, I turn around and sprint down the hall after Liam. Liam is standing at the locked door to the landing bay waiting for me. I cut the door out of its frame.

“Liam, get inside Star Fury, tell Juno to start the engines, seal the airlock but leave the ramp open, I’m splitting this cruiser from the inside out,” I yell. This is going to be a nasty getaway. There’s no way for us to get out of the landing bay without completely wrecking the place. Liam runs up the ramp and after a couple more seconds I see the inner airlock doors seal and the anti-matter drives ignite. Hopefully we can get out of here before Frontier has time to react. Here goes nothing, I make a huge circular motion with the relic, willing its extension through the ship. Not half-way through the circular motion I can tell critical systems have been severed by the lack of power and an awful grinding sound. Cutting the ship in half longways is a risky move on my part, if this cruiser is equipped with linear drives, the anti-matter reactions will erase us from existence in a second. In my experience though, cruisers of this size only use slip space technology, just too much mass to propel through space for linear travel. Finishing the cut, the walls start to move, the ship separating in two. The cruiser, now two separate pieces, slowly drifts apart. The artificial gravity of the ship is gone, and I begin to drift upwards off the deck. I activate my suit’s thrusters and move towards Star Fury’s entrance ramp. The gap between the two parts of the ship widening by the second, I hope we can slip through the gap before Frontier can regroup. I’d think that having their ship split clean in two would keep them occupied but you never know.

When I reach the ramp, the mag strips in the suit’s boots connect and latch onto the ramp, allowing me to walk normally. As I walk up the ramp it starts to retract into the ship, by the time I get to the airlock the ramp connects and seals. The airlock pressurizes and I walk into the main body of the ship.

Chapter 10 Evelyn 4

‘Alright Evelyn, we’re docking in one of their bays, I don’t want them to even know you’re here. Liam and I are going to leave and collect payment. You, Cicero, and Juno will stay here on Star Fury.’ Gabriel comms. The scanners in the landing bay shouldn’t be able to penetrate Star Fury’s hull integrity, so the only way Frontier should know I’m here will be if they’re in direct contact with Sequel.

‘Understood.’

We touch down in the landing bay and I can hear Gabriel and Liam getting ready to go out in the hall, full Atmos suits. At least Gabriel is thinking ahead, he knows that there’s a good chance this could go very wrong.

I connect to Star Fury’s external transmitter and reach out to the Frontier megalith, I need to find any communications between Sequel and Frontier, that will quickly tell me how this meeting is going to go. I see that they have indeed made contact. Sequel reached out to all the operating corps in this galaxy asking about any operations on Huyto. They offered a corporate favor to those having what they wanted to entice a response. When Frontier responded that they had covert operatives stopped on Huyto, Sequel informed them of the planet-side slip and that they had a high priority target. They went on to say that if said operatives made it off planet, there is a high likelihood they are in possession of the target.

Frontier is well aware of my presence. I tap the cameras in the negotiation room where Gabriel and Liam are, and things could not be going worse. There is a barrier shield separating the room and it looks like the Frontier welcome party plans on leaving them there in the room. I reach out to the shield control but before I can turn off the barrier, I pick up audio from Gabriel telling Liam to go to the ship when they get out of the room. I’m curious as to what Gabriel has up his sleeve. He disconnects his sword hilt from his suit and ignites the blade. It is a blade unlike any I have ever seen. I zoom in on the blade, its mercury sheen reminds me of gifts I once had, gifts that were taken from me. Gabriel’s sword is a relic, interesting, I hadn’t even noticed it before. I watch Gabriel and Liam make their way down the hall, moving from camera to camera.

I get up from the chair in my room and I walk out into the hall to see Liam running up into the airlock. Gabriel is still outside waiting for something. “Juno! Start the engines and seal the airlock. Leave the ramp open, we’re about to get out of here!” Liam says.

“Spinning up, and we’re ready to go in just a moment,” says Juno flipping switches on the array in front of her. Cicero looks up from whatever he was doing on the ship’s computer and sees me standing in the hall.

“We’re making an emergency exit!” He yells.

I’m watching the live footage from the landing bay. Gabriel takes his relic and starts a circular motion, and then nothing, the feeds go dead, and the Frontier internal network is going haywire. Gravity is gone, I am weightless standing in the hall, so I grab onto the closest rail and try to keep still. I look to my right, out the front observation window, the ship is floating inside the landing bay, micro-thrusters making slight adjustments to keep us from hitting the walls and ceiling. More astounding than the sudden lack of artificial gravity, is that the Frontier ship seems to be drifting apart. This relic of Gabriel’s is quite an instrument, I need to be careful of that.

Gabriel comes into view from where I’m standing in the hall, he walks up the ramp and into the airlock, the mag strips on his boots making a loud click with each step. When the airlock is pressurized, Star Fury’s own artificial gravity kicks on and he exits the airlock and walks up to Juno’s navigation chair. “Juno, as soon as you see an exit, take it. We need to move ASAP, set speed to max C linear.”

“Alright, will do. Do we have a destination in mind?” Juno says.

“No, not yet, just get out of reach and then we will figure out a game plan,” Gabriel says, looking calm and collected considering the situation.

The gap between the left and right sides of the ship is widening by the second, and then, Juno confirms course, and we launch forward, soon we’ll be moving millions of kilometers a second. We inside Star Fury, feel none of the effects of inertia and acceleration, one of man’s greatest feats before the creation of slip space tech.

We’ve only been moving for a few minutes when Gabriel says “Juno, slip to purgatory, don’t stop linear speed.”

With the creation of slip space tech, we suddenly could move anywhere without consequence. Purgatory is just a term meaning somewhere unfathomably far away from anywhere, somewhere indistinguishable from being nowhere at all. Consequently, it is very difficult to find anything in an endless ocean of nothing.

When we slip, the stars disappear. All evidence of anything outside this very ship disappears, no light or anything else has ever traveled as far out as we are now. Cicero stands up from his seat in the corner and voices what everyone else must be thinking. “I believe this means our professional careers are over.”

Chapter 11 Valerie 3

Stepping off one of Affinity’s internal transits, my heels clack on the metal floor as I walk to my personal quarters. I need to prepare for this, I’ve been waiting for any actionable intelligence for what seems like forever. I only got information about this orb relic right before I got to the auction, which was part of the reason why I was so impatient.

One of the luxuries of a megalith class ship is the size of the living spaces, you aren’t confined to a single room as you are on a smaller vessel and it is much more economical than implementing substorage rooms for any wanted extra space. My personal quarters are about 2000 cubic meters, leaving more than enough room for a wastefully spacious bedroom, study, lavatory, and lounge. Even with about three-thousand personnel onboard, everyone stationed on Affinity has a minimum 1000 cubic meter living space. Living and working on a megalith is an interesting dynamic, there are facilities for sports and common areas such as bars and restaurants in addition to agricultural facilities and research labs. It is as if the people living on Affinity live in a little city of their own, slipping on and off ship to whatever worlds they please on the provided slip crafts. As long as they are back on ship during their scheduled duty times, they are free to live as they wish during their personal time. Most of the personnel live on ship in the provided living spaces, but all are free to commute using the provided slip crafts. The slip crafts, in addition to all food, drink, and amenities are free of charge to the personnel. To work on a megalith is a sought-after profession, as not many people acquire the wealth to acquire and command such vessels, so the available personnel slots are relatively few. All this being said, the benefit of providing thousands of people with livings spaces, access to a ludicrously expensive fleet of slip craft, and a thriving onboard ecosystem, is that I have a crew that is happy to bend over backwards to please me. My maintenance crews are diligent, my militia is driven, and my scientists and consultants are intelligent and engaged.

‘Jason, I need you to deploy recon sensors and start prepping ground teams to retrieve the relic on the planet we got intel from a couple hours ago. I’ll be up to the command deck in a little while,’ I comm. Jason is my operational supervisor, he handles forward ground teams and tactical missions.

‘I was only sent information regarding the location of the relic, how many people do we need here? Recon sensors should be up and broadcasting by the time you get to the command deck,’ he comms.

‘Three teams of one hundred should be more than enough to secure the relic and bounce, it’s just a relatively unprotected religious group. We will require some special cargo transport; the relic cannot be handled normally. I’m sending you details, have something prepared by the time I get to the deck,’ I comm. It’s unusual that Jason wasn’t sent this information already, oh well, he should be prepared by the time I get there. Entering my quarters, I walk up the stairs to my bedroom and then to the conjoined dressing and bathroom. I change out of my clothes from the introductions, not particularly suitable for commanding a deck of officers, but appropriate given my industry, flowing semi-transparent gown, stilettos, and such. I look at the mirror that covers the back wall of the dressing room, it reminds me how lucky I am. After having my body mutilated, ugly and scarred, I never forget to be grateful. I look young, beautiful, and as attractive as any of the girls on display at the auction. Edited genes accounted for, no one looks this good at my age of 739. All I can assume is that the relic I was touched by has lasting effects. Sometimes I wonder just how long those effects will last. Life is fleeting, even with advanced gene editing, medicine, and therapies, the most the human race has managed to squeeze out of one body is 1200 years, with quality of life declining slowly in the last 300 years. A consciousness can be copied but not transferred. The rich and the powerful can replicate their memories and personalities and everything that makes them who they are, but in the end, it still feels like dying and being replaced by someone just like you. Despite the dark fate that awaits us all, I plan on enjoying and utilizing every moment I’ve got. Right now, hundreds of years of my hard work are paying off; the empire I’ve built is finally serving its intended purpose.

Taking my commander’s uniform out of its compartment I start to suit up. I’m strapping up my boots when Jason lets me know the ground teams are ready. ‘Valerie, those ground teams are ready to go. Drafting for the relic transport container is done and it’s in the fabricator now. It should be done in a few minutes.’

‘Thank you for the update, I’m on my way over,’ I comm. Finishing with my boots, I stand up and go to exit my quarters. The administrative internal transport has an access point right outside my quarters, I only have to wait seconds for the access to open, revealing the inside of one of many transports. I step in and send a destination to the transport computer. These transports run on several intersecting ellipses distributed all throughout Affinity, they travel extraordinarily fast, requiring that they be treated with the same inertia dispelling technology as linear spacecraft. As a result, I’m only standing in the transport for a few seconds before the doors open and before me is the main command center.

The entire command center is designed to display the 360-degree field of view being captured by the recon sensors on the spherical interior of the room. The deck is transparent minus its edges and corners to enable you to know where the deck is and still see through to the displays. The deck extends into the middle of the spherical room, fully immersing and providing proper perspective for those on it.

“Dalton, I want a full introduction to this planet, specifically the area surrounding the religious group’s base of operations and the location of the relic. Then I want an in-depth look at the one hundred meters surrounding where the relic is,” I say. Dalton handles my field recon and air support, he’s a bit eccentric but he is second to none when it comes to manipulating a large group of drones for a strategic operation. He was bred for the job, his mind is impeccable, he handles simultaneous focus points and complex directives with ease.

“Give me twenty seconds and I’ll have your tour of the place started,” he says. It doesn’t take much longer than his estimate before I have the full planet sprawling out before me. We are cruising at an altitude of seven kilometers at a speed of seven kilometers per second. I won’t see the whole planet, but we’ve had an AI scan the planet in its entirety and it picked out the highlights. After each point of interest, the view switches to the next recon drone. It takes about twenty minutes of watching the feed to go through all the points of interest.

“And now for the up close and personal,” says Dalton as the view switches to a slow-moving stealth drone moving closer to a temple-like structure surrounded by an expanse of low-tech dwellings.

“The relic transport is fabricated, ready to deploy as soon as you feel like you’ve seen enough here,” says Jason, coming up from behind me.

“Alright, I’ll let you know, I shouldn’t need long,” I tell him. I can see the relic through the gaps in the pillars.

“Jason, have this structure scanned for integrity, we’re going to need to take the roof off this place, only temporarily, but I don’t want anything crumbling when it comes off. Go ahead and send in one of the three teams, I want them quickly deployed to the stairs of the temple, we are using nonlethal rounds, incapacitate only. Secure the area around the relic then send in the relic transport and have that roof removed once we get the scan back,” I say. This is going to be a quick and easy raid.

‘Make this clean people, no funny business here,’ I comm, switching to the mission comm line. These people don’t need to be fucking around, this is my moment.

‘Alright, you heard the lady, Alpha team, you’re up, Jack and Meredith, take your people and secure the relic. Everyone else, you’re watching the stairs,’ Jason comms.

We’re watching everything unfold right in front of us, it doesn’t take but another thirty seconds for the militia transport to get down to the stairs, the team files out ten at a time. Eighty of them file out across the stairs, and the remaining twenty jog into the temple. It takes only a couple seconds for some of the locals to realize what’s going on. As soon as they do, they start rushing the temple. The front line of defense starts firing, dropping the locals as they run. It’s only a few people at first but after a few minutes there’s a mob forming outside a perimeter the militia has established.

‘Temple is secure, we’ve got the relic surrounded, only a few locals inside. We’re ready for extraction.’

Displacement vessel is in place, scan came back a go, and there we go. The roof to the temple is gone, relic transport is inbound. The relic transport gets there a few seconds later, slowly lowering a large metal container over the pedestal the relic is positioned upon. The doors to the bottom of the container have teeth. When the container fully encapsulates the relic and pedestal, the teeth slowly close, digging through the earth under the pedestal. As soon as the container is sealed, the transport vessel is gone, rocketing back up into the atmosphere, it’ll be back to Affinity as soon as it escapes orbit and slips back. The displacement vessel returns the roof to the temple and Alpha team starts to file out of the temple, their carrier pulling back around, boarding ramp open. One of the locals in the back of the mob pulls out a gun and he manages to get a shot off before anyone can see it. The shot hits one of the militia right in the center of their breast plate, harmless, all its kinetic energy absorbed and stored. The man with the gun gets disabled a moment after the shot is fired. The rest of the locals all start throwing stones at the carrier and the militia, but everyone is loaded up in just a few more seconds and off the carrier goes, on its way to outer orbit where it can slip back to Affinity.

Mission complete, now for the good part…

Chapter 12 Gabriel 4

“We need to figure out what we’re doing next. Obviously, we’re burned with Frontier, and we’re probably never going to get another contract with anyone else. What we should be more worried about is what happens when we get back to civilization. We’ve never been on the run before,” I say. We’ve been coasting in purgatory for a few minutes, not saying much at all, the gravity of our situation sinking in. It was bad enough when we were responsible for a planet-side slip, but now, we have a permanent target drawn on our backs.

“Well, I don’t know what we should do, but I’ve got a few ideas of what I would like to be doing right now if you hadn’t just cut open a Frontier megalith. What even happened? Everything should’ve been just fine. Frontier doesn’t give a shit about what happens on some halfway planet,” Cicero says, directed at me. He’s totally right, Frontier’s problems had nothing to do with the slip, they just wanted Evelyn. I was expecting to have more of a chance to negotiate with Pierce, but he just blew us off as soon as we didn’t immediately give him what he wanted. I guess when you’re used to having the power to take whatever you want, you don’t spend much time negotiating with hired guns; his loss.

“They wanted us to hand over Evelyn, I told them we didn’t pick up any extra passengers,” I respond.

“What the hell is wrong with you Gabriel! Frontier asks for some girl we just picked up from the middle of nowhere and you tell them to screw off and then you cut their ship in half, putting us on a hit list in the process. Are you insane?” he says. I get it, I understand why he’s upset, but I didn’t have much of a choice, they had made up their minds before we stepped foot on their ship, we were just too dumb to know.

“They didn’t give me much of a chance Cicero, they’d already made up their minds before we got there,” I say, but he’s not listening, he’s already walking towards the back of the ship, to his room.

“We never should have picked you up in the first place. Gabriel should have given you up on a silver platter when they asked,” Cicero says to Evelyn as he passes her in the hall.

“Well fuck you too man, it’s not like I wanted any of this,” Evelyn says, coming out of her shell, apparently tired of being talked about as if she wasn’t standing right there in the hallway. Cicero makes a quick move towards her, a juke, a fake out punch, as if to intimidate her. It comes off as childish though, an immature lashing out. To her credit though, she didn’t flinch, she stood her ground looking unshaken; not many would stand so stoic, Cicero is a big man. Standing at 188 centimeters, weighing 104 kilograms, he can be intimidating. Cicero shakes his head, exasperated, as he continues his way back to his room.

“I’ve been running from corps for a while, so I’ve got a bit of experience in this area. I know you all wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for me, and I apologize, but if you want my advice, I would be calling any friends you’ve got out there for a place to stay for a while,” Evelyn says, looking at me.

“I’ve got a place we could crash for a while, with an old friend of mine, we grew up together. You know Thomas?” Juno says.

“Yeah, you were telling me about his winery a few months ago, that would be cool. You think that he’ll take us on for a little while?” Liam says.

“Yes, he’s been begging me to come stay with him, says this business we’re in is going to get me in trouble. Guess, he was right,” Juno says with a smile. “It has been a while since I’ve seen him.”

I’m glad Juno’s going to get to see Thomas, she’s talked about him on several occasions, but I hope that having five of us stay with him won’t be too much to ask.

“Alright, looks like we probably should have done this a while ago if he’s been begging for you to stay with him. Does Thomas have somewhere where we can park Star Fury? We can’t use a regulated port, we need to stay off the books,” I ask.

“He has a bunch of land, his parents were well off when we were kids, he inherited everything when they passed. We can land out in one of the fields if it comes down to it. I’m excited for this, it’s been too long. I’ll go ahead and lock coordinates if this is what everyone wants to do?” she says. She’s practically squirming in her seat now, it’s nice to see her so happy, who would’ve thought we would be looking forward to something so soon.

“Yeah go ahead and slip whenever you’re ready,” I say.

Chapter 13 Valerie 4

“Jason, how long until the relic is cleaned up and ready? I want to see it as soon as possible,” I ask. All of the tactical teams just returned to Affinity; the relic transport got here just a few minutes ago.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take the lab to process the relic, it’s not exactly a regular artifact. I’m sure if you go there and ask whoever’s handling the sterilization and cleaning, they’ll be able to give you an estimate,” Jason says. The rest of the crew on the command deck are looking at me, wondering if I need them for anything else.

“Back to your regular posts everyone, the hard work’s done for today,” I say. “Okay Jason, I’m going to go down to the lab, let me know if anything worth knowing happens.”

I turn around and walk off the command deck, back into the transport. Moments later I am walking towards the lab, the lab with my relic. The lab is a long corridor, a dozen individual working labs on both sides, most of them housed in glass rooms, so that work being done is observable from outside. My relic is not in one of these labs, my relic went straight to the private sealed labs at the end of the corridor. All the lab doors slide open as I walk by, I have access to all the research being done on Affinity, private or public. When I arrive at the end of the hall I turn right and enter lab thirteen. Staff are scurrying all over the place inside and when I enter the lab the hurrying only intensifies. The chief of research walks over, she looks excited.

“Hello Miss, we are very interested in your find here, it’s not often that one of these fabled relics are able to be studied. We have run some preliminary tests, so far, we are not finding anything useful, but nevertheless, we will learn what we can. Due to the special nature of this artifact, I have reassigned our best to work on this project full time. What can I do for you?” She’s beaming, positively ecstatic, far more excited than I feel like is appropriate for the situation, even given the circumstances.

“What’s got you in such a good mood, I know we’ve got something special here, but you look about to burst with excitement?” I ask, and as I do, she blushes deeply.

“Oh, yes Miss, I’ve seen something in the relic. I saw myself at the altar, I’m marrying the man of my dreams… I’m sorry, I know it’s personal, but I’ve never experienced anything like it, I saw it happening as if it was right in front of my eyes. My apologies if I am being too forward,” she says. I can’t blame her, my first interaction with a relic changed the very course of my life, so I understand the feeling.

“Don’t worry about it honey. Is it ready for me to go in and see it?” I ask. She nods her head.

“Yes, of course, go ahead, would you like me to clear the lab?” she asks.

“Yes actually, do that,” I say. and just like that, everyone starts to exit the lab, leaving behind instruments and equipment wherever they lie.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says, and with that she leaves with the rest of the scientists.

Lab thirteen is laid out with a main floor and an observation room. I enter the main floor where the relic sits, now suspended in a gravity field, removed from its pedestal. It is a perfect sphere, about forty centimeters in diameter. When I look towards the orb, it’s almost as if it evades my gaze. The orb doesn’t move, but it takes a conscious effort to look directly at it. After a few moments of trying to stare at the orb, it takes me. I see a vision, not in the orb, but I can see a scene in my mind’s eye, as if I am remembering an event. I see huge sweeping fields, trees and tall grasses, a beautiful blue sky with sparse clouds. In the sky are three ships, my ships. I can see Affinity’s call sign etched into the sides of the crafts, attack ships. Now I can see the ground; a beautiful mansion, surrounded by my Alpha, Beta, and Gamma teams, full assault outfit. The lead vessel starts laying down live fire and explosive ammunition into the mansion, and Gamma team starts to advance towards the building.

Then, the ships begin to fall, they fall as if they were rocks with no aptitude for flight. They plummet towards the earth below them. When I look back to the ground, Alpha and Beta teams lay sprawled across the field, charred and burned, Gamma team nowhere to be seen. The tall grasses of the fields start to burn, the once beautiful blue sky now a dark red, tainted with the black smoke from the fields ablaze.

The vision dissipates, my last glimpses are of the red sky and burning fields. I don’t understand; is this vision a reality or a message? Should I take this at face value or is there a deeper meaning, is this a metaphor?

I don’t understand.

Chapter 14 Markus 2

The sound of my boots on the marble floor echo down the hallway. I’m planet-side for the first time in years. The central command council resides in the middle of some remarkable architecture. The compound’s overall esthetic is somewhere between an extravagant palace and a military bunker. Huge, manicured gardens and sprawling reflective pools form a kaleidoscopic view from the air above. The residencies and social rooms forming a ring around the edges of the compound are intricately designed, with murals and carvings adorning all the structures. All the buildings, pillars, bridges, and raised walkways that run and intertwine with the gardens tell the stories of the eon, with artisans adding new proposed artwork all the time. As you walk towards the center of the compound, the intricate gothic architecture gives way to simpler more plain and open designs as the use case of the buildings shift towards amphitheaters and auditoriums for educational purposes. Travel further still, and the style changes yet again to a more monolithic style with flat stone walls and long uninterrupted straight edges, simple yet strong. The transition is meant to be symbolic, representing entropy, with chaos and creativity at the edges and solid, unmoving simplicity at the core. I am walking in the centermost part of the compound, the housing for Sequel’s central council, the source of a great many changes in the universe. I have an audience with the council to discuss the ongoing hunt for Evelyn, our little lost science project.

I arrive at the end of the hallway. There are two stone doors at the entrance to the council room, counterbalanced so that when I put my hands on either door and spread them apart, the friction between my hands and the stone is enough to easily move the doors into their pockets in the walls. They’re all waiting for me, sitting in a semicircle, faces young and old stare down at me. Though some of the faces appear young, I have no illusions as to believe the minds behind those faces are any less than thousands of years old. Much to my detriment, those new bodies do little to sway the opinions of their hosts.

“We’ve heard what happened, and we know what you’re here to say, we’ve heard it before, and we will not hear it again. You may not circumvent any government directives. However, we understand your plea, you have plenty of reason to think the way you do, the bleak nature of your quest notwithstanding. We know better than most what your mission means to Sequel, we remember times before these restrictions were imposed on us. We see our company slowly drifting, fragmenting away from the rest of humanity. Do not assume we do not believe in the importance of what you’re doing. We have arranged you some long overdue assistance.”

Chapter 15 Evelyn 5

Here we are, we’re all looking out at a beautiful blue and green planet, which by the looks of it has very few inhabitants, no manmade structures or cities are visible from orbit. Star Fury’s long-distance communications patch us into the on-planet comms and net. Juno sends out a comm to who I presume to be Thomas. ‘Guess who!’

‘I don’t believe it. No way you stop by completely unannounced after all this time, are you going to be here long? How much longer until you’re planet-side?’ he comms. Juno smiles and sends him a reply.

‘We’re planning on staying a while if you’ll have us. Everyone’s here with me, plus an extra that you’ve never heard about, so you’ll finally get to meet them. We can be down in as little as fifteen minutes, do you have anywhere we could park the ship on premises?’

‘Great, I’m glad to hear it, yeah come on down, I’ve got somewhere for the ship,’ he replies.

“Thomas says that he’s got somewhere where we can put Star Fury down, I’m going to start heading that way,” Juno says to us.

“Sounds good, can’t wait to see the place,” says Gabriel.

Juno switches the navigation controls over to full manual mode. The waypoint that Thomas just sent to Juno appears on the hull glass, and she starts to tilt the steering yoke down and in, propelling us quickly towards the waypoint.

In just a few minutes more, we are hurdling over fields and sweeping around hillsides and through crevasses faster and closer to the ground than I have ever seen anyone fly a ship of this stature, only a few meters off the ground traveling just under Mach speed.

“Having a bit of fun are we,” says Liam, who seems to have plenty of confidence in Juno’s ability.

“Yeah, I used to race through here a long time ago, it’s where I picked up the skill. It’s so nice to be somewhere familiar. Star Fury is a lot bigger than the racer I used to fly through here though, I keep having to remind myself of that when I think about dipping into some of these narrower spots,” she says.

The landscape is beautiful, there are fields of tall grass and erratic changes in altitude in the forms of cliffs, mountains, and ravines, often peppered with flowing waterfalls. Juno throws the ship around the mountainsides and dips into ravines at speeds that should be violently sending us every which way against the interior cabin. Luckily for us, the only indication of the speed and rapid changes in direction is the view. I tap into the rear facing visuals from Star Fury to see the grasses and trees bend and tussle as we blow by them. Anyone lucky enough to live in such a place should never leave; if only I were so fortunate.

Juno pulls back on the yoke, and we slow to a much more reasonable pace, just as we are approaching the waypoint. We rise up higher off the ground to see over the hill in front of us, and on the other side lies a house, if you could call it that. It is massive, a beautiful glass, metal and wooden structure that looks as if its curving lines continue into the ground beneath it. With huge sections of the interior being visible from the outside as a result of the glass. The waypoint is pointing off to the side, to an empty field, and as we approach, the earth moves, and the empty field rises up to reveal a hanger big enough to house three ships the size of Star Fury. Juno pulls us in and touches down right in the middle of the hanger.

“Alright, here we go,” says Juno. ‘We’re here, just landed, you coming out to see us or not?’ She comms to Thomas.

‘I’m on my way, I just got out of the shower, I only got back from town a few minutes ago myself,’ he replies.

Juno stands up and motions for the three of us to follow as she walks towards the exit ramp.

“Come on Cicero, quit pouting, we’re here, come meet Thomas!” Juno yells back as she’s leaving.

Thomas appears out of one of the doors on the side of the hanger and Juno starts to run over to him. She jumps up on him and he catches her in a hug. They look like siblings; both have the same bright blond hair and blue eyes. Thomas is a full head taller than Juno, so he’s about 184 centimeters tall.

“It’s so good to see you. Introduce me to your friends. I’ve heard so much about you all,” he says.

“Okay, so this is Gabriel, Liam, and Evelyn,” she says pointing out each of us. “And that over there is Cicero,” she says, as Cicero walks down the ramp out of Star Fury. “Everyone, this is Thomas.”

Everyone says hello, shakes hands, and all that. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you, these guys picked me up on the last planet they were on, so Juno hasn’t gotten to tell you about me yet I assume. Thank you so much for letting us stay here with you,” I say.

“Of course, any friends of Juno are friends of mine, come on I’ll show you inside,” he says.

“Actually Thomas, I want to go outside for a bit, soak up some sun, it’s been so long since I’ve been home, do you mind if we go this way?” Juno asks, gesturing out into the field.

“Yeah, of course. Sorry, I forget what a beautiful place I live in sometimes,” Thomas says.

We all start walking out of the hanger, onto the lawn. It’s hot outside and my clothes meant for the damp chilly climate of Huyto are going to get uncomfortable soon. “Do you have any substorage access points here?” I ask Thomas. I’d like to relax and decompress in my own space.

“Yes, I can show you where the access points are in a bit, they’re just over there in the main house,” Thomas says, pointing to the house we saw coming in, it’s about forty meters away from where we are now right outside the hanger.

Gabriel, Liam, and Cicero are looking around, admiring the view. Liam has his eyes closed, face up with his arms out to his sides, as if he were soaking up the sun. He stands there for a moment or two and sighs, he then starts walking to catch up to us. We’re all strolling across the lawn towards the house. Juno and Thomas are catching up, chatting away.

When we get to the entrance, Thomas asks Juno to show everyone where the guest rooms are while he shows me the access point, and they all take off to the right.

“The access points are this way, follow me,” Thomas says. I follow him down the stairs to the left, they curve to the right staying in line with the general circular shape of the aboveground structure. On the next floor down, there is a large, conjoined kitchen and dining room, chairs line only the side of the table opposite the kitchen. The stairs continue down to another floor below, but on the left, just preceding the stairs down to the next floor there is a door. Thomas opens the door and shows me in. Inside, there are four access points.

“I hope that these have capabilities enough for your room, I rarely have had any use for these, so I haven’t had them connected to any external communications,” Thomas says.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m grateful that you have them at all, thank you. You are more than welcome to come inside with me. You’ve opened your home to us, it’s only fair that I do the same,” I say.

“If you don’t mind, it’s not every day that I get to talk to an interstellar traveler,” he says with a smile.

I turn away from him for a moment, I don’t need him to see my necklace surfacing out of my skin, that would cause problems I think. I take my room out of my necklace, the size and shape of a drop of water, really a technological marvel. I take it and place it in one of the access points.

“I’ll leave it unlocked, just come in when you’re ready,” I say.

“Okay,” he replies.

‘Hey, I’m going into Evelyn’s room, entertain yourselves upstairs, there’s food in the kitchen,’ he comms to Juno.

‘Okay, watch yourself, there’s been nothing but trouble since we picked her up,’ she replies. Interesting to know, Juno doesn’t trust me yet, and why would she. I plan on improving that situation in the coming days.

I enter my room, a familiar feeling, but thrilling every time, the space between nuclei and electrons shrinking to fit unimaginable volume in such a small space. Everything is exactly how I remember it, not a hair out of place. Thomas appears next to me a moment later, the entrance is in the lounge, it acts as the center point for the other rooms.

“You can sit down on the couches if you like, I’m going to get some water and change into something a little more suited for your climate, do you want anything to drink?” I ask.

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” he replies.

“Alright, well feel free to look around, the library’s that way. I like to collect things from my travels, they’re scattered all over this place,” I say, pointing out the library to the right. Thomas forgoes the couches at the mention of the library and starts heading that way as I take the stairs to the left to go up to my changing room. I change out of my clothes into a thin turquoise romper, with no shoes. It’ll be nice to feel the ground beneath my feet, to be one with nature and all that.

I walk into the library to see Thomas looking at a picture of an ancient structure that was found on a planet near the center of the universe. It was left behind by the Preludes, a species that beat humans to space by many thousands of years. They still occupy a decently large system of planets very near the center of the universe, but they have made it very clear that they want nothing to do with any other intelligent life, taking a stance of isolationism. From what we have been able to gather, they are much more in tune with some of the more subtle secrets of the universe, such as its origin and other metaphysical concepts. The structure in the picture was left behind when they seceded to their current domain, we have been able to learn a few things from what they left behind, but the main purpose of the structures such as this one is unknown.

“It was even more of a marvel in person. I spent several months there on Eiso,” I say, as he turns around to look at me.

“I bet it was, you must have been to more places than anyone I’ve ever met, I’ve been looking at all these pictures and books and they’re from all over. You’ve seen some pretty amazing things,” he says.

“Have you done any traveling yourself?” I ask.

“Sadly no, I haven’t, it’s something I’ve always been interested in, but I have my place here to look after and there’s plenty to do here on Airis, it’s a more traditional way of living, but it is fulfilling in its own way,” he replies.

“You ought to ask Juno if you could come along with us for a little while, I believe that after their last mission they may be retiring from their line of work to a more relaxed lifestyle. Star Fury is a slip craft, so you wouldn’t have to worry about losing this place to time,” I say. If I can get Thomas to come along with us, at least for a little while, it might help my own position with the crew. I could potentially use this as a long-term solution, traveling place to place on Star Fury, instead of my usual ditch and run strategy.

“I’ll think about it, it would be a pretty big change for me. Anyways, tell me about some of the places you’ve been, what’s it like traveling so much?” He asks.

“Well, it keeps you on your toes, you never get too used to one place. I have to move around for work, or, I had to, I didn’t like it much at first, but I got used to it, and after that it got easier to enjoy. Occasionally, I’ll end up somewhere really nice like Airis here, and it’ll be hard for me to leave, but for the most part I do okay. This one planet I was on had close to a trillion people on it and the chaos of living there was just wild, the next couple places I went from there seemed incredibly boring,” I say.

Chapter 16 Gabriel 5

Juno takes us up to the guest rooms and they are nice, they’re not big, but they’re simple and they have everything anyone needs. The whole house has the same minimalistic style to it.

“Well Juno, I didn’t realize how familiar you were with this place. You’ve told us before that you and Thomas were childhood friends, but it seems like you’ve lived here,” I say. She seems to know just where everything is, and she has a carefree familiarity that comes with growing up in a place.

“I spent a lot of time here growing up, my own home life was less than great, and Thomas and his parents loved having me here, I was like the daughter they never had,” Juno replies.

“What is there to do around here? I didn’t see a lot when we were coming in.” asks Cicero. He seems unimpressed with this whole place, Cicero likes places with lots of people, where he can flirt and socialize, and from the looks of it there’s not a lot of big cities, at least that I saw.

“There’s actually a pretty big city a couple hundred kilometers east of here, you would like it there, lots of entertainment. We can go tomorrow, or you can go alone some other time if you want,” Juno says.

“That’s good to hear, should help get this mess we’re in off my mind,” Cicero replies. It’ll be good for him to get away and get some alone time, I’m glad that he’ll have the opportunity.

“Juno, what’s the food situation here? I’m pretty hungry, I haven’t eaten in a while,” I ask.

“I’m sure that there’s plenty to eat downstairs, but we’ll have to actually cook it. We did show up a little unexpected, so I don’t know if he has enough for all of us. I’ll go look and start on something,” Juno says. She’s standing in the doorway to my room, which is closest to the stairwell. She turns around and starts going down. I get up to follow her, none of us brought anything to unpack, so there’s nothing to do up in our rooms. Juno and I walk down the stairs and then down another flight, down to the second floor where there’s a kitchen and a dining table. Juno goes over to the fridge and opens it.

“Go look in the pantry over there and see if there’s anything you want,” she says, pointing to what apparently is the pantry. It is a walk-in pantry, about a meter and a half deep. Inside there’s a bunch of food that I’ve never seen before.

“Juno, does Thomas have weird taste in food or what? Because I’ve never seen some of this stuff before,” I ask.

“All the food here is local. He gets a lot of things delivered from that city I was talking about, but the rest is from farmers he knows, don’t worry, whatever we end up having will be good. Do you want some eggs?” she replies.

“Sure, I guess,” I say.

She gets out two pans and then takes two massive eggs out of cold storage, they’re the size of a small child’s head. She puts each of them in a pan, then she takes out a knife, she stabs through the shell and twists the knife and the two halves of the egg come apart. She does this for both eggs, then she turns the stove on, it’s a gas stove, blue flames shoot out of the burners under the pans. She takes a whisk out of one of the drawers and starts to whisk the eggs in the pans, when that’s done, she turns the burners down and goes to the pantry.

I walk over to the dining table and sit down; the chairs are all on one side as if to watch the person cooking. Juno comes out with a handful of things from the pantry and starts putting them in the eggs. After a few more minutes she takes out plates, puts the eggs on the plates and sets them on the table.

“Well thank you. I’m impressed, I’ve never seen you cook before,” I say.

“It helps when there’s a kitchen to cook in. I hope you like it; it might taste a little different than you’re expecting, it’s not a standard egg, they’re local to Airis,” she says.

The egg was a lot different than I was expecting, it took me a few bites to get used to the texture, they’re chewy. It was very filling though, and whatever she put in from the pantry gave them some spice.

“Where are Evelyn and Thomas?” I ask. I know Thomas was going to show Evelyn where the substorage access points were, but did they go inside?

“They both are in Evelyn’s room; he’s probably asking her about where she’s been and about what it’s like wherever she’s from. He’s always been curious about what it’s like on other planets. He’s always asking me about where we are. I feel bad for him sometimes, he feels like he’s trapped here, after his parents died, he felt like he had to keep this place maintained, so he stays here,” Juno says.

“He’ll probably know more about her than we do the next time we see them,” I say.

“Probably. The days here on Airis are half a normal sleep cycle, they work on a one day on one day off schedule. I don’t know about you but I’m tired, none of us have slept in close to 48 hours, I’m sure that’s what Liam and Cicero are doing right now. I’m going to bed, I suggest you do the same, I plan on racing tomorrow,” she says. She’s right, we worked straight through the last 48 hours, it’s just been nonstop, so I hadn’t noticed until now. I get up and put away my dish, then I start walking up the stairs to my bedroom, Juno follows me up the first flight of stairs but when I go up the second flight, she’s not behind me anymore. I guess she won’t be staying with the rest of us in the guest rooms, the only bedroom on the ground floor is the master bedroom I believe; interesting.

Chapter 17 Gabriel 6

For the third time today, both Juno and Evelyn beat me by a couple kilometers to the end of our route. This time I wasn’t even trying to win, I was focused on taking in the environment and appreciating the view. Juno and Evelyn have been going at it though. Juno won the first race, but when Evelyn won the second one, Juno took it almost as an insult, I guess she wasn’t expecting anyone to beat her the whole time we were here.

‘This motherfucker just beat me again! Can you believe this shit, I’ve been flying here my entire life and she beats me on her second run, this is crazy,’ Juno comms to me. Apparently, Evelyn pulled out a second win.

‘Was it close?’ I reply.

‘Yes, she beat me by a couple seconds, but still.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ I comm. It’s a hundred-kilometer route that Juno put together, it goes through some underground caverns and through some tight cliffs.

I pull up to the finish line and Evelyn and Juno are chatting about the lines they took through some of the tricker spots on the route.

“Now that you both have thoroughly embarrassed me, do you want to go get everybody and head to that city you were talking about last night?” I ask.

“Sure, I don’t see why not, seeing as how Evelyn’s beat me at my own game, I think I’m ready for a break,” Juno says, smiling. At least she’s being a good sport about it.

“Alright, well surely I can beat you both back home with this head start,” I say. I turn around and speed back to the hanger, both of them scrambling back into their racers, which is not an easy feat. The racers are a tight fit, they’re only about three meters long and a meter wide, they’re designed for fast tight maneuvers, so the cockpit is a bit crammed.

I do manage to beat them home, given that it was just a straight shot. The hanger opens as I approach, and the floor to the left of Star Fury starts to rise to reveal where the racers are kept. I turn on the auto parking feature and it smoothly sets itself back in its place. Evelyn and Juno catching up now, do the same.

“Feel better about yourself now?” Evelyn says with a laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, oh queen of racing. Come on let’s get everyone together,” I say. We all head out to the main house, the hanger doors closing behind us. When we get to the house, Thomas is in the living room reading a virtual copy of a book that Evelyn gave him.

“Hey, we’re thinking about going to Talpen, where are Liam and Cicero?” Juno asks.

“Okay. They’re down in the gym, I think they’re doing some kickboxing, Cicero said he needed to let off steam and Liam said he needed a workout,” Thomas replies.

“Well, I’m going to go tell them to get ready, I know they want to come. Do you want to come with us?” Juno asks.

“Sure, I’ll be ready in a minute,” he says.

I haven’t seen the gym yet, so I follow Juno downstairs, past the kitchen, to the second floor down. Liam and Cicero are mid-match, gloves and headgear on. Cicero sees us coming down the stairs and lets his left hand drop, Liam switches stance and blows him away with a turning hook kick to the head.

“Damn it man!” yells Cicero. The kick put him on his ass, it was a hard hit.

“Oh I see, you can dish it but you can’t take it!” says Liam.

“No, I was just stopping because Gabriel and Juno are right behind you,” Cicero replies. Liam turns around and finally sees us standing here.

“Oh, well you shouldn’t have just dropped your guard regardless. How was racing guys?”

“It was good, Evelyn beat us both. We’re going into the city; I assume you both want to come. Go shower and get dressed,” I say. They both start taking their gear off.

Chapter 18 Evelyn 6

Thomas, Juno, and I are walking down a busy street in Talpen. The area we’re in right now is like an outdoor strip mall, there’s little shops all over the place and all sorts of restaurants. We’ve gone into a few of the shops, two that sold clothing, one jewelry, and another that sold smokable concentrates. It’s dark now, even though we only woke up a few hours ago. The twelve-hour days mean that it’s only bright for six hours at a time. Gabriel, Cicero, and Liam went to some club together.

“Do you have anywhere that you like to eat here?” I ask Thomas.

“Yes, there’s a few good places, but I generally cook for myself at home. You’ll like this place down the street, it has a very wide assortment of things from all over,” he says.

“Let’s go there then, I’m getting hungry,” I say.

We continue walking for another half-kilometer to the restaurant that Thomas had in mind.

Chapter 19 Valerie 5

“Miss, one of the companions we have stationed on Airis has reported that she saw one of the guests at the club bring in a relic. She said that it matches the description she was given in her training and that when she scanned it, the scan returned no signatures, just like it would if it were a relic. I know that we’ve never had any luck with this sort of reported sighting, but this one may be worth your attention,” says Deidra.

All the companions in my company have been trained to report anything they suspect could be a relic, but never have any of the reports been genuine cases.

“What makes you think that this report is any different than the rest?” I ask.

“The man carrying the suspected relic, his name is Gabriel Morones. His signature doesn’t align with the Gabriel Morones we have confirmed to be in possession of a relic, but he could always be using a fake signature. In any case, I just thought you should know,” she says.

“Thank you, Deidra. That does sound promising. Have the girl’s comm sent over to me, I need to talk to her.”

“Of course.”

I open a direct comm link to the girl, her name is Alex. ‘This is Valerie, I want you to get close to the man with that relic, if not him then someone in his party. Does he have anyone else there with him? I also want you to put a locator on him, put a micro in one of his drinks, whatever you think will be easiest,’

‘I’m glad that my report got to you, I think this has real promise. He does have people with him, two other men. I’ll do what I can about the locator,’ she comms back.

‘We can’t very well take them in the club, we just finished a project here on Affinity, we will be mission ready in another 32 hours, until then try to find a way to go home with them, comp the charge,’ I comm.

Chapter 20 Gabriel 7

Everyone is starting to settle in, we’ve been here for four standard days, eight local ones. Juno, Thomas, and Evelyn have been spending a lot of time together, Liam and Cicero have been entertaining themselves, and I’ve been bouncing back and forth between them. Right now, we’re all here in the living room, Cicero suggested we play a drinking game so here we are an hour in. There’s seven of us now, Cicero picked up a companion named Alex at a club we went to. She must really like him too, as she waived her regular fee and I’ve never heard of a companion doing such a thing.

Evelyn stands up across the table, she’s been paying for all the food and drinks the past few days, in an effort to make Cicero like her more I believe. She starts walking downstairs to the kitchen, or probably her room.

‘I need to talk to you in private,’ she comms me from downstairs. I wonder what it could be about, she seems to be doing just fine.

I get up, a little tipsy, I’ve been losing this game more often than not. I slowly walk downstairs after Evelyn. She’s sitting down at the dining table; I walk over and sit down next to her.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” I ask.

“I’ve been thinking about how to tell you this for a day or two now. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but someone planted a locator on you. I believe that it was Alex, as it’s routed to report to her company. I didn’t want you to think I was snooping, but I feel like this is too important to sit on any longer.”

This is news to me and concerning for several reasons. First being that Alex planted a locator, and second that Evelyn was able to not only detect it but find where it was reporting to.

“How do you know there’s a locator on me? They’re designed to be very discrete in my experience.” I ask.

“My job at Sequel was in cyber-security, this kind of thing was a routine check. I was only looking at your signals because I wanted to see if we were compromised after the mess with Frontier. I’m sorry for not letting you know or asking you.”

“Okay, good to know, I’m glad that you told me, we need to deal with this situation,” I say.

Something big explodes upstairs. A real explosion, the kind that would level any normal sized house. I immediately stand and run to the stairs.

“Gabriel, come here, you’re drunk, and that’s real trouble up there. You need a stimulant!” Evelyn yells. She’s right, my world is spinning after standing up so quickly. But why would Evelyn have a stimulant on her. She runs over to me and sticks me with something; moments later I am wide awake. My eyes feel as if they are glued open, and my heart is pumping a million kilometers an hour.

“Thank you.” I tell her.

I run upstairs, and look around, there’s a huge hole in the side of the house, and everyone is huddled behind one of the main walls across the room. A look out to the right, through the front glass wall shows the field full of fully armed militants and three fully equipped warships. What the hell is happening here? As that thought runs through my head, I reach down to handle this with my relic, and to my absolute horror it is not on my belt.

“Come here! Quickly, downstairs!” I yell to everyone. I have no idea why whoever is outside stopped attacking us, but my guess is that it won’t last long. They all run over and as they do, Alex splits away from the group and sprints out of the hole in the wall. Of course, the whole thing was a sting setup, probably from Frontier. Alex probably swiped the relic while I was drunk, right before the strike force got here. Damn it, I should have been more careful.

One by one everyone files downstairs. It doesn’t take long after Alex gets clear that I see the next projectile launch off the middle warship. I sprint down the stairs, just as the rocket explodes. Fire pools down, setting the stairs on fire, and likely everything else upstairs.

Everyone keeps going down levels, past the gym and I can’t see them anymore. All except for Evelyn, she’s still with me here on in the kitchen, as the walls start to catch fire.

“Gabriel, I can handle this. I can make this all go away, you might not like my methods, but I can fix this. I just need you to ask me, I won’t do anything unless you ask me to,” she says. She must be losing it; I can’t imagine what she could be talking about, but whatever it is it can’t hurt.

“Okay Evelyn, do what you have to do, but come on we need to get downstairs, Thomas probably has a way out somehow,” I say.

She turns around and runs up the stairs, the stairs that are on fire. As she runs up the stairs, the fire dies out, I have no idea how. I follow her up the stairs, I have to get her downstairs, she is a lunatic if she thinks she can do anything about what’s going on out there.

“Evelyn, stop! What are you doing? We have to get downstairs!” I yell. I’m at the edge of the staircase and she’s standing in what was a living room moments ago.

“I’m tired of running, I’m not running anymore!” she yells back.

I can see the army that’s parked outside of the house from where I am on the steps. Suddenly, the warships go dark, stabilizers turn off, and they start falling, all at once. I look to my left at Evelyn, confused and a little terrified, because as I do, blue and purple rings appear around her arms, the kind of rings you see around a high-powered plasma railgun before it fires. She takes a step forward into the frame of the door, kneels, and a moment later the rings pulse. My ears pop and ring, the entire field in front of her, the field that just a moment ago was dark and littered with soldiers, is now obliterated, the ground black and charred, plasma burnt. The fields outside a two-hundred-meter radius are ablaze. It is a scene from hell, The fields are on fire for at least a kilometer in the direction of the blast, outside of the zone of immediate impact.

The militants that were on the edges of the blast that weren’t turned to ash are screaming in agony as various parts of them burn away. It looks like the entire house was surrounded, because militants are starting to file around from the other side of the house, laying down plasma and live fire. The metal bullets from the live fire rounds don’t make it to her, they get about two meters from her and rocket back in the other direction, you can see them slow and reverse course. The slower plasma rounds fly past her as she moves at a speed I have never seen a human move. When there is a momentary gap in the plasma rounds, the rings around her arms pulse once more, one in each direction. These blasts are not spread out like the first one, they each have about five degrees of spread, however, they leave nothing in their wake, they light up the night sky and leave cylindrical cutouts on the tops of the hills where the militants were encamped.

Evelyn, seemly satisfied with the damage she’s inflicted on whoever these people were, walks out into the field, the ground beneath her feet cooling and steaming behind her. She walks about twenty meters out into the crater and bends over to pick something up, my relic I think from the glare as she raises it up towards the sky. The air above the crater is shimmering from the heat of the blast, making my view of Evelyn shimmer and waver.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

She walks back to the decimated house, up to me, where I am still laying on the stairs. She holds out my sword. The rings around her arms shimmering like the air above the crater, slowly dimming.

“I believe this is yours,” she says.

Chapter 21 Valerie 6

The scene unfolds before my eyes. One moment after the next, the scene before me looks more and more like the one I saw in the orb. The fields burning, my militia burnt to a crisp or writhing in pain, three attack ships, downed with no explanation. The only thing the visuals picked up was a flash, a flash and hundreds of soldiers lie decimated. Then a woman walks out onto the field, another flash and the remaining militia are gone. The woman walks out into the crater and the visuals zoom in closer, I can see her face now. She is barefoot in a plasma burnt crater, walking as if she were a god amongst men. She bends over and picks up the sword relic. She looks up, directly at the drone we are using for visuals, and she speaks. We do not have audio pickup on these drones, but nonetheless we hear her words on the command deck of Affinity, through what means I can only guess.

Hunt me at your own peril.

These words and the look on her face send shivers down my spine. Who or what she is I don’t know, but what I just witnessed would put the fear of God in any man. What she does next is unthinkable. She raises the sword relic to the sky, and ever so slightly, she rotates her wrist. At first, I don’t understand, but moments later alerts start rolling in, our slip space drive has been damaged, and there are multiple hull breaches. This, woman, being, whatever she is, just used a relic to reach through the unfathomable reaches of space to pinpoint an exact location on my ship and strategically disable our capability to maneuver. How such a thing is even physically possible is beyond my scope of understanding.

In any case, I believe a different approach may be beneficial to my wellbeing.

Chapter 22 Evelyn 7

Gabriel reaches up and takes the relic.

“What just happened,” he asks. He is still lying on the stairs, looking very frazzled. I guess I have some explaining to do. Hopefully everyone will be more receptive seeing as I just saved their asses, and the reason they were in trouble wasn’t my fault in the first place. I guess we’ll see.

“Well, I haven’t been entirely truthful per se. It’s a long story, but if you know much about what happened to Sequel, it’ll be a little easier,” I say. Most people who are involved in interplanetary affairs have at least a little knowledge of what happened to Sequel.

“I know that The Government cracked down on them for some illegal science, and that they’ve been cut off from the rest of humanity since then,” he says.

“Well, I’m the illegal science. I’ve been on the run for a very long time just trying to live my life, exploring my interests, and finding out who I am, but they have lots of reasons for wanting me gone.”

“I guess what you’re saying is that our accidental slip wasn’t much of an accident,” he says. There it is, the point that’s sure to cause the most problems.

“Well, I didn’t have much of an option but yeah, it was my fault,” I say.

“This isn’t going to go over well with everyone. This means that you’re the reason we’re now on the run, but personally, I have plenty of things to be ashamed of so I can sympathize. Cicero, on the other hand, does not sympathize often,” he says.

“I’m hoping that maybe because I saved your asses that I’ll get a little leniency?” I say, almost as a question.

“Are you the reason they came?” he asks.

“Actually no, from what I can tell, they were here specifically for your relic, so at least there’s that. I feel like I sent them a clear message to leave us alone,” I say.

“That’s one way to put it. I guess we should go get everyone and tell them what happened,” he says.

I reach down and help him up from the stairs. We walk down the stairs slowly; each step is closer to judgement for me, and Gabriel is probably processing the situation. Any hope that I had of traveling undercover with everyone on Star Fury is long gone, my only hope now is that they see value in keeping me with them. This attack, for me, could prove to be a double-edged sword. On one hand, they find out about me tampering with the slip, on the other hand, I singlehandedly defended them from an unrelated threat that very likely would’ve meant the end of them. I ought to emphasize the fact that I'm the reason that they made it out of this alive.

‘The crisis has been mitigated, we’re safe for now. We need to discuss a few things though,’ Gabriel comms to the rest of the group.

“You hear our comms as if we were speaking them in front of you, don’t you,” he says. He's thinking about what he may have said in what he thought were private spaces.

“In a way, yes. I am acutely attuned with all the signals all around us. I hear an analog or digital signal as you hear any regular sound, and I understand them all unconsciously, as you understand the language you speak. Asking me to not intrude on your comms or the information you get from the nets is like me asking you not to hear me as I speak to someone right next to you. However, I do understand how intrusive this feels to people, and so I do not intentionally intrude into anyone’s local systems, unless it is necessary,” I say. This is the easiest way that I can explain the situation.

“Interesting, so you hear what I do if it sends out a signal to a remote host, but you cannot if I am accessing local information or computation?” he asks. He is calm, Gabriel is not a particularly secretive person, and his web activity is relatively constrained to functional and operational information. The same cannot be said for Liam and Cicero.

“Don’t misinterpret my respect for your privacy for inability. It is the difference for you between hearing a sound that is near you and not seeing something because it is behind you. Just because one happens unconsciously and the other doesn’t, does not mean that you are unable to turn around and look,” I say. It is important that people not have a false sense of security, and it’s better that I tell him now and be honest than for him to find out later.

‘What do you mean; what happened?’ Cicero comms.

“Do you think it would be easier to just show them?” I ask. I feel like if the explanation is in front of them, it will be a little easier to take in.

“You have a point,” he says.

‘Go ahead and come up so you can see what happened,’ Gabriel comms.

We stop walking down the stairs and wait for them to come up from whatever floor they were on. When they come into view, Gabriel tells them to follow us and we all walk up to the main floor of the house. The once beautiful mansion now has a gaping hole on one side. The living room is burnt to a crisp and fires are still burning in the other rooms. The upstairs rooms that are now visible from the ground floor are also a mess. Everyone is quiet, Thomas is looking around at everything with a heartbroken look on his face. Everyone is looking around at the damage to the house at first, but shortly after, everyone turns their attention to the crater and the burning fields. The three warships lie on the outskirts of the crater, I have them locked down for the moment, but the crews inside will require our attention eventually.

“None of you saw it, but I did. Evelyn handled this situation by herself. There was a whole militia outside, warships and all, and she took care of them. They would have made quick work of us if it wasn’t for her. They were here for my relic; I believe that Alex was relaying our position to them,” Gabriel says. I'm touched that he's standing up for me, he has every right to be angry with me, but instead he’s trying to spin this in my favor.

“How?” Asks Liam. Gabriel nods at me.

“Well, I didn’t want to have to tell you all like this. In fact, I didn’t want to tell you at all to be honest. I’m running from Sequel because I escaped from a program designed to create an elite operative. The goal was to implement quantum computation within a biological host and to weaponize it. I am the result of that program.”

“So you did all this?” Cicero asks, gesturing out into the field, towards the crafter and warships.

“Yes, I did. Speaking of which, the crews of those vessels are still alive, we’re going to have to do something with them. There are about thirty of them, ten on each ship,” I say.

“Well alright then, lets go, we can talk later,” Cicero says. I’m surprised that he's not more concerned with what I said first. “You’re going to show the rest of us what we’re dealing with. I’m going to gear up on Star Fury, and you’re gonna go put some fucking shoes on. The rest of you can either come gear up with me or sit around here I guess,” Cicero continues. I should’ve seen that coming I guess, it’s logical for him to want to assess my abilities for himself before making any decisions about me. I’m not sure how I feel about his request though, it’s one thing for me to kill a fully armed militia that’s actively attacking us, but these crewmembers are essentially helpless, stuck in dead ships.

All the recon drones that I could sense from earlier are gone from Airis, or at least outside my range of perception. So at least Valerie won’t be watching. Hopefully that’s the last we ever hear of Valerie and her company.

Thomas is not paying us much attention, he’s more focused on the destruction of his home. I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Gabriel, Liam, and Juno are just looking at me, while Cicero walks out towards the bunker to Star Fury.

“I’m sorry Thomas, I never thought this would happen here,” I say.

“Don’t be sorry, it looks like you’re the only reason any of us are still here. I just, it’s hard to take in, I’ve lived in this house my whole life, it’s not easy seeing it all burn,” he says.

“I don’t even know what to say, no one seems to care at all that she’s been lying to us. She’s the whole reason we came here in the first place, she’s probably the one who drugged you Gabriel, she’s probably the reason we slipped early, and she is the reason Frontier attacked us,” says Juno. I'm surprised that she’s the one upset about this, I guess she is also suffering in a way similar to Thomas, her eyes are tearing up and her voice is hoarse, I didn’t take into account that this was her home as well as Thomas’s.

“I am not the reason Gabriel was unconscious at the bar, that was not my fault. The owner put something in his drink that was far too strong, I checked. And as for the early slip, you’re right, that was my fault, but I didn’t have any other choice. The man chasing me, his name is Markus, he would have killed every last one of you just for coming into contact with me, he is a brutal, savage man and the less we see of him the better,” I say. Technically it wasn’t my fault that Gabriel was unconscious, though I did drug him in a way. As far as Markus goes, the more afraid of him everyone here is the better in my opinion, we need to stay as far from him as we possibly can.

“I don’t even care! Just get away from me,” Juno says, she’s starting to break down, her knees are shaking and she’s starting to cry. Thomas takes her in his arms and starts trying to calm her down. I should probably put on some shoes and change, so I turn to go downstairs to my room.

When I get out of my room, Gabriel is the only one left upstairs. The fires are nothing but embers now, most of the house is gone, only the metal framing and pieces of glass are left.

“Everyone is on Star Fury, Liam is gearing up, I’m about to do the same. For the time being, we are all going to be staying on Star Fury, as all the bedrooms in the house were on the upper floors. I see you’ve changed into something appropriate for what’s next.” I did change into my combat attire. A custom fitted bodysuit outfitted to tap my fusion reactor to power a shield curtain so I don’t have to worry about plasma fire. There are twin graphene blades built into the legs available for dealing with fully outfitted combatants. The suit automatically matches the color of an environment for camouflage, and the texture is a uniform beaded pattern. This is what I was wearing when I initially escaped from Sequel, this under a modified Atmos suit. It is the apex of combat outfit, I would currently be classified as a class A outfitted combatant, susceptible only to antimatter projectiles and bladed weapons, a goliath in any battlefield situation.

“Yeah, I haven’t been fully equipped in a long time, doesn’t blend with many local cultures,” I say, attempting a line of humor.

“No, it wouldn’t, would it,” he says with a weak smile.

“I guess we have to do something about them sooner or later, I just don’t enjoy taking life when it isn’t necessary,” I say.

“You’ll get over it, there are worse things than death. Come on,” Gabriel says. A cold response for sure, not one I expected. I never got the chance to look into what exactly Frontier hired them to do, I wonder if that has anything to do with it, I’ve figured out obviously that it’s some kind of mercenary work, but for him to have such a bland perspective on taking life in general, it’s a little concerning.

He begins walking towards Star Fury, right as Liam and Cicero walk out of the bunker. When we get closer, he tells them to go ahead and head to the ships and that he’ll be right out. I follow behind Liam and Cicero, walking to the closest ship. Both Liam and Cicero are wearing Atmos suits with standard plasma and live-fire rifles as well as sidearms. I don’t know what they plan on using any of those for if they expect to have me doing the dirty work.

We arrive at one of the closest ship’s auxiliary access points, the ships systems are still responsive to me.

“Go ahead and open it, we’ll take one alive from each ship, feel free to handle this however you like,” says Cicero. So he does plan to just kill most of them, somewhat understandable, but we’ve obviously beaten them at this point.

“Okay, if I must.”

I tap on the sides of my upper calves and the hilts of the graphene blades emerge, I grip them and slide them both out of their substorage sleeves. Each one is slightly shorter than a meter and razor thin, a unique sight as not many have seen blades such as these.

“Gabriel used to carry one of those. He didn’t have a built in substorage sheath for it though,” Liam says.

I open the auxiliary door and walk inside, the ship is about two hundred meters long, there’s no telling where the crew is at. I power the ships systems back on and lock them down, so I can scan for heat signatures using the ships own systems. When I power the ship back on, both Liam and Cicero jump to the defensive.

“It’s alright, that was intentional.”

The crew is holed up in the armory, likely waiting for exactly what’s coming.

“Follow me,” I say, as I walk down the main hall of the ship towards the armory. The floor is slanted due to landing on the slope of the hill, so balancing is a little odd. Before I open the armory door I reverse the polarity of my electromagnetic shield, to pull as opposed to repel, as I can’t very well use an electromagnetic shield inside a metal ship. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pull enough of their live-fire ammunition and guns out of their hands so that I won’t get peppered with bullets when I walk through the door.

“Liam, Cicero, walk back around that corner for a minute,” I say. The last thing I need is anything hitting me. I walk up to the armory door, turn on the shield, and boost the charge. Immediately, I can hear chaos ensuing inside, as every metal object rockets towards the door. I also am stuck to the door for the moment, interesting tactic I’d say. After a few seconds, I turn the shield off and open the door, my regular shield curtain at full power. Everyone inside is scrambling around after half the room just got rearranged. My shield curtain only tanks a few plasma rounds. I try to make it quick, the graphene blades easily cut through their body armor, leaving several of them cut in half at the waist, and with a few precision plasma induction shots, the rest are rendered headless. I would have just shot a wide-angle blast into the room if it wasn’t filled with explosives and munitions.

“What happened to leaving one alive from each ship?” Cicero says.

“The only person that knows anything is Jack Meridal. He’s on the middle ship,” I respond.

Chapter 23 Valerie 7

Three teams gone, a blow by any standard. I personally knew several of them, not particularly well, but enough to feel their loss. Not to mention the cost of the combat equipped slip crafts and the damage to Affinity. We were completely blindsided. Meranda, my lead strategist, assured everyone that this would be no different than when we extracted the orb. Her only worry was the girl Alex getting injured at some point in the process. No one suspected that not a single person would return from the mission. Damn us for underpreparing.

I’m on my way now to a meeting with Meranda and her team, we need to discuss how to move forward with this situation. The strategists’ offices are dimly lit wood furnished rooms with short chairs and tables. We are meeting in one such office with a circular table positioned in the middle of the room. When I arrive, they are all sitting around the table waiting for me.

“We are so sorry to hear what happened out in the field. None of us thought anything like this could happen. We should have done more reconnaissance on the targets, but please understand that something like this is highly unprecedented,” says Meranda. There are three strategists, Meranda, Briant, and Owens, they serve to plan out the details of specific missions and then communicate those details to Jason and Dalton. They also advise me on the company’s long-term direction.

“Yes, I assume you’ve all seen the footage. I doubt that any amount of surveying the targets would have provided us with insight enough to predict what happened. It is very unfortunate what happened; however, we need to talk about our position going forward. I don’t believe that we have the capabilities to deal with this in a head on offensive. As the woman in the footage, we’ll call her Jane Doe, dealt with three of our five offensive teams without a second thought, while she was seemingly unarmed and wearing nothing more than civilian attire,” I say.

“There are four courses of action as I see it. The first being that we continue trying to neutralize the targets. Second being that we attempt to steal the relic from them without them noticing. Third, we leave them alone entirely and cut our losses, or, finally, we can perhaps send an emissary to apologize and offer reparations so that we could possibly negotiate with them,” says Meranda. Owens looks eager to add to the last option and as soon as Meranda finishes, she adds her opinion.

“One thing to consider is that they might themselves be valuable assets to our cause, especially Jane Doe. They already have one relic, so they could possibly be helpful in finding others. And on the subject of Jane Doe, what we saw her do in the footage, how she was able to use the relic to cripple our slip drive, and how she patched audio into the command deck, this all leads us to believe that she has access to exclusive corp research. Research and technology that no amount of money grants you access to. That kind of information is priceless and would be invaluable to our own research teams. Granted, if we are to go in this direction, we would have to take an extremely apologetic stance and it probably will still be near impossible to get them to cooperate,” says Owens.

“I have already made up my mind that we will not be pursuing an offensive tactic. Chances are that from now on they will be hyper vigilant, making any attempt to steal the relic next to impossible, and a successful stealth-based attack less than likely. Jane Doe has also made it quite clear that any further action will have consequences, and I don’t want to find out what those may be. I also don’t like the idea of cutting our losses, this is the only lead we have right now on a relic, and I intend to follow that lead to the fullest extent. I want you to send someone to negotiate with them, I want them on our team, surely there is something we can offer them to sway their decision making, use any resources we have.”

Chapter 24 Gabriel 8

There is a notable shift in her demeanor, that much is certain. Evelyn is no longer the mysterious traveler we picked up a week ago. We’ve all been living together for over a week now, and in that time, Evelyn has been generous and thoughtful, as well as playful and intelligent. But now, after defending us from a company called Rossum, she is more assertive and confident. Where she had been supplying useful nuggets of information that we attributed to her travels, she now regularly introduces new information that she deems relevant. Sometimes it is helpful, and sometimes it comes off as combative. She has a vast wealth of knowledge, and where anyone else might take a moment to research a topic they are unfamiliar with, she seems to already know everything already. I understand that her perspective must now be that the cat is out of the bag, but it is jarring to interact with another person who seems to just know everything. What’s even more unnerving is knowing that she is always listening to everything we do on the net, which we all use so frequently it might as well be second nature.

Since she cleared out the crews of the war ships and detained Jack, Cicero has left her alone, interacting with her as little as possible. Liam talked to me about how she dealt with the crews, as I decided not to join them after I saw how upset Juno was. Nothing he said surprised me after what I saw her do myself, but he commented about how quickly she cleared entire rooms of people. He described it as one fluid motion, she would blow someone’s head off across the room in the same stroke that she was cutting someone else from shoulder to hip. He compared it to a short uninterrupted dance.

Juno, who Evelyn got along so well with the last few days, was inconsolable for several hours after the attack, but after sleeping, she apologized for blaming her for what happened. I was surprised by how much Juno’s opinion mattered to Evelyn; she was in a much better mood after making up with Juno. Thomas, out of all of us, has no reason to be upset with Evelyn, and if anything, he is slightly resentful of me for bringing the relic that Rossum was after.

Evelyn, in a show of generosity, offered up her room to us for extra living space. Star Fury has five beds, which is enough for the six of us as Thomas and Juno share a bed, but it is a tad crowded when everyone is in the common area, so we have been using her room’s larger living spaces. We took an access point from Thomas’s house and installed it in Star Fury’s lower floor so that her room is conjoined with the rest of the ship. Jack is also being kept in her room.

From talking with Jack, we determined that it was as I suspected; they were after the relic. He also told us about Valerie, how she runs her company, and he mentioned that this would most likely not be the last that we saw of her. He did not mention any specific plans to attack us or anything else, but he made it very clear in his description of Valerie that she was not the type to abandon an interest.

My first thought after hearing of Valerie’s persistence was to get up and leave as soon as possible, however, Evelyn assured me that she sent a clear message to Valerie, and that we were completely safe here for the moment. So, with her advice in mind, we’ve stayed for another local day, but now after we’ve installed her room in Star Fury, and interrogated Jack, there’s not much left for us here, as Thomas’s estate is in shambles. Since Juno managed to get herself together, she has been trying to convince Thomas to come with us, wherever that may be. He at first had plans to rebuild the mansion, but after inspecting and rummaging around, we found that the explosives had some kind of corrosive agent in them. The agent seeped into the metal holding the house together and the integrity of the house as a whole is compromised, if he were to rebuild, he would have to start from scratch. After he realized that the whole house was slowly crumbling, about an hour ago, he agreed to accompany us.

Now the only question is where we’re going next, and that is what I plan on discussing with Juno in just a moment.

“So Juno, the last time we had to pick a place to go, we decided to stay with a friend, and that didn’t go so well. We do eventually need to leave here; it would be irresponsible for us to stay for much longer. Do you have a preference for where we end up?” I ask. Juno and Thomas are sitting in chairs in the corner of the upper echelon of Evelyn’s library. Thomas has been enamored with Evelyn’s collection since she first showed it to him, and since the destruction of his home, he has spent most of his time here.

“I actually have a request,” says Thomas. “I would like to go see the structures left behind by the Preludes, Evelyn has been there before, and I have been reading about them. They’re what’s in that picture down there,” he says, pointing down at a photograph on the lower level. I follow his direction, leaning over the railing to look at the picture. I know of the Preludes. A few people have pointed out to me over the years that it’s lucky they don’t have a similar profession to my own, clearing out animals and less advanced species from planets. As we humans, are just as primitive to them as the cave dwelling species we clear are to us.

“I’ll discuss it with Evelyn, see what she thinks about going back somewhere she’s already been. What’s the name of the planet you’re referring to?” I ask. At this point I really am at a loss for direction. All my life I have always had direction, in the military I had orders, as a contractor, I had terms to follow, and before all that, my parents were strict, and they pushed their agenda hard. I have had very few points in my life where I decided my own direction, short as it may be compared to some others at only a mere 37 waking years. Gosh, to think of my parents, I haven’t done that in quite some time, lost to me as they are; my centuries in stasis due to my military years are to thank for that.

“Eiso, I believe is the planet that picture was taken on, ask her for Eiso,” he says.

I climb back down the ladder to the lower floor, and I walk over to the picture to get a better look. To call what’s pictured a structure would be underexplaining, it looks to me to be a completely disorganized conglomerate of impossible shapes. In the foreground of the picture, you can see the material has a glassy sheen and is mostly a mirky white color, the white color looks like it was swirling inside a liquid before freezing to a solid state. There is no sense to the design and most of it looks to defy physics. Huge platforms and arcs hang at precarious angles supported sometimes by nothing but the thinnest of threads. The best way I can describe it would be to relate it to a pool of water, wrapped around an empty sphere. Now imagine someone splashing fiercely all around in the water and each wave, splash and droplet freezing at its apex. Now take all the water inside the once empty sphere, and you have an idea of what the structure looks like.

I don’t see the usefulness in going to Eiso, but I also don’t have any other ideas. It seems that all the money each of us has accumulated is worth almost nothing, chased as we are; as there’s no way any of us could buy property or anything of real substance.

Evelyn is outside, laying out in the grass on the other side of the hill, away from the burnt fields, looking up at the stars.

‘I wish we could stay here,’ she comms as I walk down the hill towards her.

When I get closer to her, I respond, “yes, it is beautiful, but it’s simple. I don't know about you, but we wouldn't last here long before we started craving something more.”

“I’ve had my fair share of life in the fast lane Gabriel, it would be nice to take a break. I’ve been playing the game you all are just beginning for longer than you can imagine. How old are you, Gabriel?” She asks.

“Don’t you know?” I say. She’s had no trouble finding anything else she wants to know.

“Yes, I do. I know where and when you were born, and I know that you enlisted and that military personnel spend lots of time in stasis. By only examining your genetic makeup and telemeter length I can tell you are a very young man. But Gabriel, relationships are not one sided, you need to answer questions about yourself to me, just as much as I to you, for the sake of interaction and perspective. I know the information, but I do not know your thoughts on it or your perspective on life. I know that you’re bothered by some of the things I can do, but that doesn't change that I can do them. I do hope to stay with you all for a while, but for that to work we must have a healthy relationship,” she says.

I must admit, I am taken aback at first, she is so forward, she stabs directly at the heart of the problem.

“Okay, I understand your point. I’ve had 37 waking years. I’m sure that I must seem like a child to you,” I say.

“I've found that age is not always the best indicator of maturity. And regardless, differing perspectives are rarely a detriment,” she replies. An interesting thought, in my mind, age almost directly corelates to maturity, and differing perspectives are the cause of most conflicts. I guess this boils down to the perspective and context she’s talking about.

“If you say so. Thomas wants to go to Eiso. He’s interested in the Prelude structures. Do you have any problems with going back to somewhere you’ve been before?” I ask.

“I don’t think just this once will be a problem. Something to consider though, and this won’t be a problem on Eiso, but we need to modify Star Fury’s clearance codes and registration information before we dock at any official port. That will require some finagling. The Government makes a point to keep the registration database for spaceships as tamperproof as possible. We will have to go to a shipyard to have an entry added. We are also going to have to bribe a few people to make it happen,” she says. I hadn’t thought about having to rebrand Star Fury. She’s right though, too many people know us by our ship.

“Do you know what shipyard would work best for this kind of thing?” I ask.

“I’ve looked into this before, when I was considering buying my own ship. A friend of a friend apparently bought an entry to the database at one of the smaller shipyards. I decided at the time that it was too much of a risk, and I didn’t have a way to get there anyway. Travel isn’t a problem now, but we still have to find out how he bought the entry. At the very least, we can go there and act as if we’re in the market to buy,” she says.

I’ve never heard of someone buying an entry to the spaceship database, I’ve always heard that you might as well buy a whole new ship before trying to falsify an entry to the database. It makes sense, the regulation of interstellar travel is one of the few chokeholds that The Government has to control its vast dominion.

“That’s where we need to go then. Sightseeing can wait,” I say.

‘We have to take care of some business before we go anywhere for leisure. We’re leaving for a shipyard to change Star Fury’s registration, before we go to Eiso. We leave in fifteen minutes,’ I comm out to everyone.

“Fifteen minutes is all I get?” she says with a sigh.

“We’ve stayed here longer than I’m comfortable with already. We can come back here eventually if you really want to,” I say.

“I suppose you’re right,” she says.

‘Liam, will you do me a favor and put Jack outside the hanger, Valorie will come pick him up here eventually, and I don’t want to bring him with us, if that’s okay with Gabriel,’ she comms to the group.

‘It’s fine with me,’ I add.

‘Sure, I’m ready to go already anyway,’ Liam responds.

Chapter 25 Valerie 8

Forty-eight hours should be enough time for them to be long gone. Though forty-eight hours was barely enough time for maintenance to repair the damage done to Affinity. I need eyes on the ground to assess this situation and recover any remaining militia. Hopefully Jane Doe has left some survivors.

‘Prepare for a full megalith slip. All personnel are due aboard in two hours. All offsite slips are restricted until further notice,’ I comm out to all personnel. That alone will cause an uproar, there have been very few times that I’ve recalled everyone, much less with such a short lead-time. I’ve never restricted offsite slips, a commonplace protocol on military vessels but not on private megaliths. It’s about time that everyone felt the shifting climate.

‘Jason, start researching where we’re going to acquire three new teams, after we handle the carnage, we need to restock,’ I comm.

‘Will do,’ he replies.

Two long hours have passed. The last slip craft just docked. I am standing on the command deck.

“Slip for Airis,” I say. Sarah, our navigator, nods and begins the process from her seat on the far left of the platform. Moments later Airis is visible on the observation screens.

“Sarah, bring Affinity down, center us on top of where our militia teams were deployed. We are on radio silence here, no communication with any Airis authorities. Jason, scramble interceptors if anyone sends anything our way,” I say. Sarah turns around in her seat.

“Excuse me, you want me to ground Affinity?” she asks. I’m not surprised, grounding a megalith is far from standard procedure. The physics of landing and takeoff for a megalith are difficult, especially on larger planets, so it is much easier to just stay in orbit.

“Yes, you heard me correctly,” I say. She nods again and starts adjusting several different controls.

We start plummeting down towards the surface, all the while Airis gets larger and larger on the observation screens. Moments later we are inside the atmosphere, and the descent slows to a reasonable pace as individual landmarks on the surface become visible. The closer we get, the larger the scar on the earth gets, it stands out like a sore thumb. The entire landscape of Airis is beautiful, lush plains and forests, and right in the middle there is a big black crater.

Touchdown, here I go.

“Jason, have my personal unit deployed on the ground by the time I’m out there,” I say.

“They’re already there for all intents and purposes,” he replies.

I turn around and leave the command deck, stepping into the transport. The transport brings me straight to the loading deck, where the ramp is open to the outside. My personal unit is ready and waiting at the edge of the ramp. I start walking over to them.

“Jack Meridal is the only survivor, we believe. We’ve had no luck getting a response from anyone else, but we haven’t searched the transport ships yet,” says Lilah, head of my unit.

“Good to know we’ve got at least one survivor. Let’s go talk to Jack,” I say.

I start walking down the ramp, the end of the ramp is flush with what looks like the initial impact of the blast, the ground is glassy, crystalized. The mansion is now nothing more than a pile of rubble, and there’s Jack, standing solidly in front of it. I walk to him, my unit in lockstep, surrounding me on all sides.

“Seems that you’re the only lucky soldier in my company Jack. I’m sorry for putting you in this mess,” I say.

“There’s no way you could’ve known. You can forget searching the transports for anyone, they massacred everyone like dogs, the only reason I’m alive is they wanted to talk to me about you and the company. You’ll be happy to know that I was able to plant a tracker on their ship before they took off, it’s inert until activated, it’s up to you when to ping their location,” he says.

“That’s disheartening to hear about everyone else, we will have to collect whatever is left and notify any relations they had. It is nice to know that this loss of life was not all for naught. Have you seen our people, or even tried to enter our ships to look? It may be that they are simply trapped inside,” I ask.

“I’ve only seen what’s left of our ground units and those in my ship, but everyone in those ships is dead, no question. After the initial show of force, some in their group wanted to watch her kill us, as a demonstration. When they came for me, it was just three of them, and two of them did nothing but watch. What she did was nothing short of a slaughter. It was like being in a simulation with an old age automaton, back before anyone developed countermeasures for them. After they left me here, I attempted to use our ships to return to Affinity, but they’re locked down tight as you can see; most likely we will have to cut our way back in. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t be able to easily recover the ships after forcing entry, but seeing as you’ve brought Affinity down, we should be able to take them with us without a lengthy repair job,” he says. I figured that Jane Doe wouldn’t leave the ships for us to easily recover, just doesn’t seem like her style, to make things easy for us.

“Yes, I suspected that we would have trouble with the ships after I saw how Jane Doe crippled them. I will try to use my owner privileges to open them up in a moment, but I’ll go ahead and tell Jason to ready up a crew for the recovery and repairs,” I say.

‘Jason, we’re going to need an engineering team out here to work on the ship’s systems, but before that we have to cut them open. Ready up three leeches, it’ll be quicker that way, just let us know before they start so we can clear the area,’ I comm. Leeches, used for boarding enemy crafts are generally used in space, I haven’t seen them used planet-side before, but I know for a fact that they’ll cut through the reinforced plate on those attack ships faster than any manual cutting equipment.

‘Our maintenance teams have equipment for this kind of thing, but I understand if you don’t want to be grounded for that long. If we use the leeches, it’ll only take five minutes, but no one can be outside Affinity. They’ll be out in a minute,’ he replies.

I reach out to interact with the ships and there’s nothing, they aren’t broadcasting any kind of signal and they aren’t responding to any of my requests. They must have their core systems shut down.

“I just tried reaching out to the ships and nothing’s coming up. Jason is sending out leeches as we speak, everyone needs to load back up into Affinity,” I say to Jack, and as I do, I look to the right and behind me to see hatches opening revealing the leaches inside Affinity.

“Jane Doe, her name is Evelyn, and her abilities were new to the rest of the crew, they were unaware of her nature before our operation. I was able to pick up on quite a few things regarding our targets, I believe my debrief will be helpful.”

‘Everyone on the ground needs to return to Affinity. We are about to force entry to our ships using leeches,’ I comm. Moments later, everyone I see walking out and about turns tail and begins walking back to the main hanger, I follow suit.

“Thank you Jack, I will personally sit in on your debriefing. You will be receiving a bonus equal to your yearly salary in reparation for this disaster of an operation, and I apologize for any trauma this caused you. I will also personally be helping the cleanup teams when they collect the bodies of our fallen militia,” I say, as Jack follows closely behind my detail. It will be extremely helpful to have any insight into the group dynamics of our targets.

‘Look out, incoming. Airis wasn’t keen on our diplomatic stance,’ comms Dalton. Not a second later, two local ships explode above us, soon to rain down as debris. That’s it, I assumed that the Airis local government would not be so bold as to send fighters, but apparently not. We have to move quickly; Affinity is more vulnerable grounded than in any other situation. Luckily, everyone is already on their way inside.

‘Jason, cancel those leeches, open a cargo bay large enough for our three ships and have them lifted in, we have to go, our luck hasn’t been the greatest recently and I don’t want to be a sitting duck any longer than we have to be,’ I comm.

I start jogging to the hanger, the last thing I need is to get impaled by falling debris. Everyone around is reasonably calm, given the situation.

Chapter 26 Markus 3

In practice, Sequel routinely will check up on noteworthy events as they take place around the universe. The cost to send a slip craft equipped with sensors and a few diplomats to collect information about events that occur and interview anyone involved is nominal. This function usually serves the purpose of widening the private Sequel database to aid in general knowledge of the goings on of the universe. The sensors run quite a few scans when they first arrive at their destination, one of them is designed to check for any signatures belonging to Evelyn. Never has one of these scans come back positive, as is to be expected, as to come back positive would require Evelyn to be massively irresponsible with her abilities. And yet, a scan has come back positive, from a planet where the initial cause of interest was a minor conflict between a local government and a disrespectful magnate. I am hugely curious as to what situation Evelyn would have to find herself in to be so careless.

‘Command, I’m sure you are aware of the positive scan, slip to location, now. Get me visuals on the origin of the signature, I want to see what happened. Also, I want to talk to whoever the owner of Affinity is. Regardless of what happened here, they need to learn some manners.’

We slipped halfway through my comm, initial recon returned all information for ships in the vicinity, including the ship belonging to the magnate. Upon further examination she appears to be the head of a large companion company by the name of Rossum. I am not surprised that someone at the head of such a business would behave so immaturely.

As expected, Affinity denies all requests for a meeting and even deploys an active scan countermeasure to keep us from analyzing them.

‘Pull them in, if they are oblivious for long enough, we’ll have them caught with no path of escape, try to minimize the effects on Airis.’

To my dismay, it doesn’t take them long to detect the gravitational effects directed at them and they slip before we are able to pin them down. Visuals of the origin point of the signature are coming in and it looks like Evelyn scorched the place. There are also very evident signs that Affinity just lifted off from the very same point. What to make of this I don’t know, but Evelyn getting bolder will make my job much easier.

Chapter 27 Valerie 9

As soon as our ships were loaded into Affinity, there was no reason to stay grounded, so we immediately took off and assumed a planetary orbit. Any remaining recon can be done remotely, and therefore safely. With our ships collected, along with Jack, our only survivor, the only thing left for us on Airis is to collect the remains of our fallen militia.

‘Jack, the ships should be open shortly, I want you to walk me through the events as they took place from your perspective as we take stock of our losses. Afterwards I think you would be interested to see the footage that we were able to capture external to your attack party. Meet me in hanger three in ten minutes,’ I comm.

‘Alright, I’ll be there,’ he replies. He deserves a break, time to decompress, to notify his friends and family, as well as to attend to basic hygiene, but I’m impatient, and the less time he has to forget details about Evelyn and the rest of them, the better. We will be relying solely on his personal recollection, as none of his uniform’s environmental sensors or recording equipment have any data to recover.

With ten minutes to spare, I decide to walk to hanger three. When I arrive, I open the door to the hanger and our three ships are sitting waiting for us, locked up tight.

‘Jason, I needed these ships opened up twenty minutes ago, what’s the hold-up?’ I comm.

‘Sorry for the extra wait, I thought I handled it, but I apparently forgot, I’ll send a crew down,’ he responds.

At least I’ll be able to talk to Jack while we wait.

After a minute or two more of waiting, Jack arrives and nods in my direction, his eyes however are fixated upon the ships. I suppose I will soon hear of the memories he is reliving.

“So, from your perspective, I want to hear the whole story, grim details and all. Specifically, I want to know about how they all get along and what their group dynamics are,” I say.

“Their names are Evelyn, who you were referring to as Jane Doe, Gabriel, the dark-haired man, Cicero, the tall muscular man, Thomas and Juno, the two blondes, and the last man’s name is Liam. Gabriel is the captain of the ship, he takes a very laid-back approach, the rest of them come, go, and do as they please for the most part. Evelyn has not been with them very long and it shows in her interactions with Liam and Cicero, they don’t have the same ease with her as they do with everyone else, though that may be because of the recent unveiling of her abilities. They were also the only crewmembers to witness the streamlined violence that she unleashed on our crews. Juno was in an emotional disarray after what happened to the mansion and finding out about Evelyn, they seemed to be close. Gabriel and Thomas both coddled her while she was grieving. As far as what happened to the crews, we were all holed up in the arms and munitions room, and right before she opened the door to kill us, we were all lurched towards the door. She used some kind of magnet, and we were caught completely off guard. As soon as she opened the door, we didn’t have a second to react, she killed thirty of us in mere moments. I don’t have much more to say about their group, just that they’re a rag-tag team that happens to be harboring a highly dangerous bioweapon.”

All this was delivered in a dry monotone voice, I can see him picturing the moment in his mind’s eye, replaying it relentlessly.

“If that’s the gist of what you know, that’s good enough for me. Start the official debrief process and get some rest, when you’re ready, look into some therapy for good measure. That’ll be all Jack,” I say.

He nods again and turns to leave. The wait to get the ships open is going to be unbearable.

Chapter 28 Evelyn 8

Due to the utterly massive size of some spacecraft, it would make sense to assume that the shipyards that manufacture them would be immense in scale. What one might not consider is that a shipyard will work on several spacecraft simultaneously, while also housing dozens for sale. Suffice to say that the shipyard before us dwarfs us in our relatively insignificant ship, we might as well be landing on a moon.

Everyone is on the main deck looking out at the shipyard, some of us in awe, some of us in anticipation. Personally, I am hoping that we can get a new entry for Star Fury without any hassle, the grandeur of the shipyard is lost on me I suppose. The welcome notification from the shipyard appears on the main display, containing directions to the main showroom and advertisements for their featured crafts. I suspect that we will have to go through the sales pitch process, and that feigning interest in buying a ship will be our best course of action.

“This should be fun, looking at all these new ships. If push comes to shove, we can all pool our funds together and buy a new ship if that turns out to be easier than getting a new registration entry for Star Fury,” Liam says.

“A new ship right off the showroom floor like this will cost you more than just an arm and a leg, hopefully it won’t come to that. Plus, there would be background checks, which I don’t think would come back clean now,” Gabriel responds.

Juno directs Star Fury towards the docking station for the main showroom and after a few more minutes we’re docked and heading towards the door. I make an effort to exit last, mine is the last face that anyone needs to remember here. The showroom is surprisingly small, it has a desk in the middle of the room and a display on either side showing advertisements for a variety of spacecraft. We are instantly and enthusiastically greeted by a short man in a suit.

“Welcome, Welcome! We’re so glad to have you here. What can we help you with today, is it a repair, an upgrade, or is someone in the market for a new ship?” he asks.

“We’re looking at acquiring a new ship, but I also want to talk to you about a modification to my current ship. Is there someone else here that can talk to Liam here about a new ship while I show you what I want done to my ship here?” Gabriel says.

“Of course, another associate will be out momentarily to talk to you about another ship Liam. What would your name be sir?” he asks, referring to Gabriel.

“Gabriel, I’m the owner of Star Fury,” he replies, gesturing back to the ship.

“Wonderful to meet you both, my name is Jackson. Is anyone else going to need assistance or is everyone else just along for the ride?” he asks. To which we all respond indicating that no one else needs attention. “Okay then, Gabriel, why don’t you show me what it is you want done to Star Fury,” he says.

Gabriel turns back towards Star Fury, gesturing for Jackson to follow him. The other associate emerges from the door behind the desk and walks over to us.

“Hello, my name is Adam, who was it that was looking for a new spacecraft?” he asks.

“That would be me,” says Liam.

“Wonderful, right this way,” says Adam, leading the way towards the sliding doors on the back left side of the room. Liam and Cicero walk with him, asking him questions about the different models.

Everyone else follows Gabriel and Jackson back into Star Fury. I am not alone in feeling completely useless now that we have to find a way to get what we came here for. As I look to Juno, she shrugs as if to say that she doesn’t know what to do either. With any luck, Gabriel will bring up the matter with Jackson and it won’t be a big deal, I just wonder what Jackson’s price will be.

Thomas and Juno stay up on the main deck, but I follow Gabriel and Jackson down to the lower deck and wait outside the mechanical room. Gabriel starts opening menus on the diagnostic display and eventually settles upon the identification information and certification.

“So, here’s my problem, these registration numbers just aren’t working for me, they’ve been drawing some unwanted attention and I need new ones. It’s not really an option for me, it’s something I really need done, is there any way you can help me out with this?” he says. Straight to the point I see, even knowing that what he’s asking is crossing all the lines.

“Are you serious? Do you even know what you’re asking? The balls on you to be so upfront about it. This isn’t the type of thing that gets done for people out of the kindness of another’s heart. If you’re wanting to get this done, I hope you’ve come to the table with a healthy sum for both the operation and for me personally, because if not, you’re getting thrown to the wolves,” Jackson says, the polite salesman’s attitude all but gone. He says all this half serious, half smiling; with the look of someone who knows that one way or another, he’s coming out on top.

“Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to do me a favor without incentive, I plan to make it well worth your while, I just want this to be as smooth as possible, you name your price and it’s yours,” Gabriel says.

“That’s a dangerous game, giving me carte blanche. You’d be better off buying a whole new ship. A new entry for this vessel’s going to cost you, five billion for a new entry, six if you want to pick something specific that’s already in use. Luckily for you, based on what I know about your friend standing around the corner, that shouldn’t be a problem if you really need this as bad as you say you do,” Jackson responds.

Chills go down my spine, it’s not often that I am caught off guard on even a single front, presently, I feel affronted on two. I step out into the doorway as Gabriel turns around to look.

“I have eyes that see, and by complete chance, I happen to know of you. Evelyn, I believe, Neiko sends his regards, he’s long gone now, but he thought of you fondly and spoke of you often,” Jackson says, tapping his temple, apparently to emphasize whatever modification he’s had done to his eyes.

“You knew Neiko? It’s been so long, I never thought I would hear his name again. How did you two know each other?” I ask. He must have gotten out okay after all that happened, that’s good to know.

“He required our services here to repair the damage done to his ship, and he came up short on the payment. To make up the difference he worked here with us for several years. He was quite depressed by your absence from his life, you meant a great deal to him as I’m sure you know,” he says. Hearing what happened to Neiko is heartbreaking, especially because I was partially responsible for it. We were very close; he didn’t have many friends but the few he did have he held close. We spent a solid 20 years together exploring before we were separated in an exchange involving two hostile ships. “Regardless of our shared acquaintance, the price for your new entry is nonnegotiable, I take a large risk by even offering the service to you,” he continues.

“That’s completely understandable, we don’t expect any special treatment. What you ask is what you’ll get,” Gabriel says.

“In that case, I’ll start writing up the entry as soon as the funds arrive,” Jackson responds.

Chapter 29 Valerie 10

I am completely disgusting, covered in blood from clearing out the bodies of my fallen militia. I haven’t been this close to death in so long, it brings back memories of darker times. However, it is refreshing in a way, a reminder that life is finite and to be cherished. As I strip out of my uniform, the once light-grey fabric leaves behind red trails, looking in the mirror is a window into my worst nightmares, the only remaining remnants of my past trauma, or at least, the only remaining remnants I’m self-aware of. I’m sure that any decent therapist would disagree. After staring a moment longer, I look away, breaking from my trancelike state, better to not dwell on such thoughts. Needless to say, but the shower was much needed, not only to clean the blood and sweat from my skin but to allow me the time to decompress and time to try to think of nothing at all.

I recently had a conversation with a philosopher on a planet known for its bustling and active cities. Sitting next to me at a club that I owned, he assured me that he was happier with his life than I have ever been with my own, simply because I was not in control of my own mind. He challenged me to sit completely still in the busy club and to not think a single thought for just sixty seconds. To force myself to not conjure up even a single word into consciousness, to feel what my body’s senses were capturing and to just simply be in a moment. At the time, I was waiting for the manager to finish handling a customer interaction and so I obliged and attempted his proposed exercise. Much to my dismay, try as I might, I was unable to do what he suggested for even half the time he challenged. Suffice to say that I did not take it well, to say that I had an internal temper tantrum and stormed off would not be too far off the mark. In the weeks since then, I have been putting considerable effort into the exercise whenever I get a free moment, and I can now consistently go for over forty-five seconds before having to refocus and try again.

It is this exercise that I attempt now in the shower, trying to focus only on the water beading up and running down my skin, and the sound of the steam hissing out of the holes dispersed all over the shower walls. These are the only stimuli in my quarters currently, all the rooms on Affinity are sound isolated from the rest of the ship and moments ago I turned off all the lights, leaving the space around me completely and utterly pitch black, as if I were in a deep underground cave, outfitted with a steam shower. After probably ten more minutes of standing in the shower trying to force my apparently weak and wandering brain from doing just that, I have had enough. I close my eyes and turn the lights back on, after a few moments I begin to slowly open them, giving them time to adjust from the complete darkness to the dim warm colored lights I turned on. I turn the water off and warm air rushes in from the top back wall of the shower while a vacuum pulls from the bottom of the wall; simultaneously and forcefully sucking and pushing the steam filled air out of the shower. A moment later when the air is clear of steam, downward angled vents open along the walls and ceiling and strong warm jets of dry air start drying off my skin, pulling the beads of water down to the tile floor. When reasonably dry, I turn off the vents and reach out to unseal and open the door, stepping out of the shower I grab a mint green towel from the closet to the right of the shower and pat down the remaining wet spots before wrapping it around my head for my hair.

Exiting the bathroom into the rest of the open room, I pull back the covers on my bed and lay down, appreciating the smooth friction of the woven satin sheets on my skin. After a few seconds I sit up and rest my head and upper back against a propped-up pillow on the wall. From my bed in the corner of the room, I can see the entrance down on the first level of my quarters through the glass riser that extends about two feet above the edge of the drop-off. I have never really given the open nature of my living space much thought, but in this moment, I feel vulnerable, naked as I am in bed. The memory of Evelyn looking directly up at our visual sensors, what felt like directly at me, creeps into my thoughts. I have never felt threatened on my own ship up until that moment. Something about the cold precision of the look, accompanied by the surety of her threat over our own loudspeakers was unnerving, not to mention that she reached across space and immobilized us. It’s not a pleasant feeling, to feel uneasy in your own home. I slide back down under my covers.

Chapter 30 Gabriel 9

“I hate to be the asshole Evelyn, but this bill isn’t getting split evenly. You’re most of the reason we need new registration in the first place, I’d say that you should cover at least half, especially after the big hints we’ve been getting about your bottomless treasure trove,” I say.

“That’s fair, I’ll pay for half and everyone else takes care of 10% each. It’s not bottomless though, just so you know,” Evelyn replies.

After seeing the funds arrive, Jackson quickly went about collecting the dimensions, class, model, and some other information required for the entry and left to begin writing out the document. The entire document is handwritten, formatting and all, when it’s complete it will be physically slipped to the central database where it will be catalogued, manually duplicated twice for offsite backups, and then physically recalled every time it is queried. The Government learned long ago that computers in all their usefulness are much harder to secure than a physical document. All this said, perhaps the most important database in the universe is probably one of the slowest, adding to the age-old attitude that The Government moves at a snail’s pace, whatever it is they’re doing.

The codification of legislation into law often takes decades; a symptom of too many people living under the same rule. The Government has learned from history that the only way to maintain power is through a subtle approach, presenting themselves as a republic of elected officials, all living simple lives to reduce conflicts of interest. Their laws are very loose, only drawing hard lines in the sand of law where not doing so would lead to large scale loss of life or misery, or threaten their own power. This allows corporations and localized municipalities to make and enforce their own stricter laws if they so choose, often shifting resentment of governance from The Government to a more local entity. They have a chokehold on the rich through control of interstellar travel and psyche replication, and they keep the poor in check using the unmatched military made possible through a universe wide tax. In my own personal experience, communities that break the laws are met with swift annihilation, with common breaches including circumvention of space travel bans and illegal genetic experimentation. I was a member of one of the preliminary examination forces used to find proof of wrongdoing in cases that were less obvious.

We also investigated cases such as what we are attempting to do right now, small scale infractions that were self-contained but hard to detect. The doctrine went that the more cracks and leaks in the system, the easier it was for the whole system to fall into chaos. At the end of the day, that is the appeal of one overarching government, the idea that somewhere out there, there is a set of rules to prevent complete and utter chaos throughout the universe. It’s the idea that captivates millions and millions to join the military and the idea the keeps the truly evil and maniacal minds from reaching too far. Regardless, it’s ironic to me that now I am participating in the very kind of infractions I once was single mindedly tasked with stamping out.

I look up as Jackson walks onto the ship and steps out into the hallway. He sees me on the main deck and pauses.
“It’s done. Now get gone,” he says as he turns to leave.

Evelyn jogs up from the lower deck and calls after him: “Hey! Do you know where Neiko went when he left?” Jackson ignores her, the airlock sealing behind him as he walks off the ship. She pauses for a moment, as if still seeing him through the airlock, she then looks to her left down the hall at me, and she’s sad, all the excitement present just moments ago completely gone. She turns and walks back to her room I assume.

Our goal accomplished here; I detach Star Fury and set for the plot Juno planned earlier. I think they decided on Eiso, hopefully this will be as boring as it sounds, I am tired of the upheaval that has been my life recently.

The shipyard outside the main window slowly drifts away, as if we weren’t the ones moving; perspective is a funny thing. The auxiliary linear drives kick on and the shipyard that once appeared massive beyond belief slowly shrinks until I can barely separate it from the rest of the endless expanse. I breathe a sigh of relief, the feeling of calmness slowly sinking in. Soon after I’m unable to pick out the shipyard, the stars begin to glow with greater and greater intensity, and then the next moment they are replaced with a completely new set, countless lightyears away. We are here, I look down at the navigation panel and see that Eiso is right under us. I send a command to the onboard computer to spin us 180 degrees so that I can see the planet out the main window. After a few moments, Eiso comes into view, and after Airis’ vivid blues and greens it seems dull by comparison.

I check when the last time I slept was and am not at all surprised to see that it’s been thirty-two hours, no wonder my mind’s been wandering, I’m exhausted. We’ll sit in orbit for long enough for everyone to get some rest.

Chapter 31 Gabriel 10

I awake to a knock at my door, a quick check confirms that I’ve been sleeping for seven hours fifteen minutes.

“Yes, come in,” I say, rolling out of bed and turning the lights on. I’m surprised to see Thomas when the door opens.

“Hey Gabriel, I didn’t want to wake you any earlier, but I’ve been talking to Juno about what happened on Airis, and she’s been trying to take responsibility for what happened. Saying that the only reason the estate was destroyed is because she volunteered to take everyone there. I made it clear to her that it was no one’s fault but Rossum’s and that no one of us is to blame for anything bad that happened. I don’t know you particularly well, but I know that your relic was the reason that they attacked us. I just wanted you to know that I don’t blame you for anything,” he says all this very sincerely. He apparently needed to get all that off his chest bad enough to wake me up from a dead sleep.

“Look, I’m grateful that you don’t want any bad blood, but this isn’t necessary. Everyone’s sorry about what happened but I think the only people losing sleep over it are you and Juno, and now me. You’re more than welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish, I don’t have anywhere to be, so it looks like we’ll be sightseeing for the foreseeable future, which I’m completely fine with. Is there anything else you need?” I respond. Thomas’ internal feelings about what happened and who’s to blame are not particularly important to me, and in response to what I said he just begins to blubber and apologize for waking me up.

After Thomas leaves, I lay back down and try to go back to sleep, to no avail. I again roll out of bed, putting a fresh set of clothes on. I wonder what everyone else is up to. If Thomas is awake, I doubt he’s the only one. I exit my quarters and walk down the hall and down the stairs to the access point to Evelyn’s room. I enter after a few moments. I’m greeted by Liam and Juno on a couch in front of me as I am spat out into the room. I can see Thomas and Evelyn in the library through the archway on the right. She’s standing over him while he looks at some book. She glances up at me and lets out a little snicker, apparently well aware of Thomas’ earlier confession, or whatever it was.

“Hey Gabriel, sleep well?” Evelyn yells from the library.

“Fantastic. Why has no one else been sleeping?” I ask. They all respond in one way or another. Juno slept after the house burnt down, Thomas slept while the registration paperwork was being written up, Liam’s high on some stimulant, apparently Evelyn doesn’t need much sleep to begin with, and Cicero is in his quarters sleeping as I was. “So, we’re here, when do you all want to go planet-side?” I ask.

“We’ve been waiting for you to wake up man. We’ve been ready,” Liam replies.

“Okay then, don’t let me hold you up any longer, let’s go look at some alien architecture,” I respond, only half in jest, I am a little interested now that we’re almost there.

“Here we go, I’ll bring us in then,” Juno says, getting up off the couch and heading to the access point I just used. Hearing Juno move to leave, Thomas stands up as well, the wooden chair making a loud racket on the hard stone floor. He goes to pick up the book he was looking at when Evelyn reaches out her hand and places it atop the book.

“Ah Ah, everything from here stays here, you can come back and finish looking at it later,” she says, almost motherly, a very odd thought. He sheepishly bows his head and similar to earlier in my room starts apologizing. After a few moments more, Thomas and Liam are gone, following Juno to the bridge.

“Sorry for Thomas waking you up, I held him off for as long as I could,” Evelyn says, putting Thomas’ book back in its place.

“It’s fine, I honestly don’t even mind that much about being woken up, the guy is just weird is all. I don’t need to hear all that about Juno and whether he blames me for what happened,” I reply.

“I would cut him some slack, I don’t think he had many friends on Airis, the human interaction is unfamiliar territory for him, I think. I mean look at him when I told him he couldn’t take the book. He doesn’t deal with confrontation very well, that’s all,” she says.

“Oh well, it’s not a big deal. Tell me a little about this place we’re going. What’s it like?” I ask.

“There’s not much to it, the only notable thing on the whole planet is the Prelude structures, and even there, we don’t understand them enough to get anything out of them. I just find it very humbling, watching the work of beings so far beyond us. The way the whole thing moves and flows is mesmerizing. It may also do us some good to be out in nature, even if it’s not one we’re native to,” she says.

Chapter 32 Valerie 11

It’s been long enough that they should be wherever it is they’re going. What’s important now is that we find a way to contact and negotiate with them without an outcome similar to our last encounter. Better to send a lone diplomat and hope they won’t react rashly than to send anyone or any group that could possibly be interpreted as a theat. As much as it pains me, a diplomatic approach may be the only way to secure a pleasant outcome.

‘Jason, please activate the trace on our targets planted by Jack. Single location ping and that is all, we do not want to be detected. As soon as we have a location, please send Laylah to meet them, she’s been prepared already. I’ll be sending her file over momentarily,’ I comm. Laylah is one of our assets that has training more focused on persuasion and politics than our normal companions, she also bears a striking resemblance to Alex, the girl that went home with them on Airis, in case there is a particular fondness for that look amongst the group. Jason responds a few moments after receiving the file containing the girl’s information, notifying me that it will be done shortly.

An idea suddenly strikes me that I should attempt to use the orb relic that was so accurate in predicting our previous interaction, hopefully I can use what it shows me to course correct from another disaster. The orb is still where I left it last, in the laboratory. From what I hear, the scientists are quite befuddled and have made little progress.

I am currently leaning against a balcony overlooking one of the open stretches of Affinity’s interior. Long curving stretches of metal crisscrossing here and there, making up the support beams to keep Affinity in one piece, the design of it can be beautiful when viewed in a certain light. I make my way towards the nearest transport entrance, not too far from here.

Walking down the hallway towards lab thirteen, I look through the glass walls at all the different lab rooms, at the intricate work and research being done under my roof. It brings me great joy to know that I make all this possible. At last, I arrive at the end of the hallway, at lab 13. I enter the lab to see the chief technician, who’s name I learned was Mia, sitting down at a desk staring blankly at a monitor.

“Mia, any luck?” I ask.

“No, I really don’t even see how any of this…” she replies, unaware of her surroundings, very focused on whatever was on the monitor. After a few more seconds she looks up and almost jumps up and out of her skin when she sees me.

“Oh my goodness! I didn’t realize it was you. I’ve been so focused on this report, I just can’t figure out what to make of it. I didn’t know you were coming down today. Is there something I can do for you?” she asks.

“You’re fine Mia, don’t worry about it, this wasn’t on my schedule either, I just decided to come by to see if I’d learn anything useful. How are you? I see you have a new accessory since we last talked,” I say, nodding to the engagement ring adorning her finger.

“Oh, this, yes, I think I told you a little bit about it last time you came down, but so far so good, the ceremony is happening in a month,” she replies.

“I’m glad to hear that. Where will it be? If you don’t mind,” I ask.

“We decided to keep it simple; he has family that’s not able to travel so we decided to have it on their property,” she responds.

“I’m sure it will be nice being surrounded by family. Don’t worry about the lack of progress on the relic; its inherent gifts are plenty enough for me, just take your time, there’s no rush,” I say. I open the door to the chamber where the relic sits and walk in. Unlike before, where it was a mental struggle to focus on the orb, now the opposite is true, I am immediately drawn to its form.

Evelyn stands before me, with a murderous intent in her eyes, and another, with an uncanny resemblance as well. Both have a relic, Evelyn flaunts hers aggressively, the shape of it in a continuously changing state, moving erratically all around her as if she was surrounded by rings of liquid fire, I know in that moment that it reflects her will. The other is less dramatic, wearing a blank thoughtless face. Her relic is much less apparent, a simple ring large enough to stick a hand though that she holds in both hands. After a moment, the liquid fire surrounding Evelyn extends into a long needle hurdling towards Evelyn’s opponent. As the needle approaches, it is as if reality splits in two and I see two events unfold before me as if they were both happening simultaneously, one where the needle pierces the woman through the heart, and another where Evelyn and her relic cease to exist. In both timelines, the remaining party looks up to a balcony where a man stands, he then shakes his head as if to indicate that she was unsuccessful.

What any of this could mean is beyond me, but one thing that stands out to me is that there was no indication from the footage of the attack that Evelyn is still in possession of the relic I just witnessed in the vision. A good thing for us for certain, but that raises several questions, such as when in time did I just witness, is this a future event or one from ages ago? Either way, a possible lead to not one but two relics is beyond intriguing.

Chapter 33 Markus 4

Not even a month later and there is another detection. Why it has taken so many years for Evelyn to become so careless is a mystery to me, but I know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially because now, I believe that I might be successful in completing my mission. Looking down at my hands, I chuckle, that it would turn out to be this easy, that all I would need to stop all this madness is a relic, after all the grief that the last one has caused me. This one is quite different though, seeming to read my thoughts searching for a task, anything I imagine, it becomes, anywhere I imagine, it goes, very interesting indeed.

‘Ready a single slip craft, I will be completing this mission personally, just like in the old days,’ I comm.

I don’t even bother to change into an Atmos suit, my plain clothes will be just fine for the task at hand. I begin walking down to the hanger, where the slip craft should be ready momentarily.

The hatch to a slick looking slip craft opens quickly with a snap, allowing me to walk over and sink down into the pilot seat. I can’t say how long it’s been since I’ve piloted my own craft, but the controls are familiar, and the onboard AI should function well enough to make up for any lost talent.

I detach from the landing bay and take off away from the megalith, a few more minutes and I should be far enough away to slip to Eiso, the source of the detection; a planet whose only notable feature is a Prelude structure left behind centuries ago.

I don’t want to bring any attention to myself, the whole point of me going in alone is to avoid detection by Evelyn, so she doesn’t have the opportunity to run, like so many times before. I will be coming in as just a regular traveler, giving no indication of any affiliation to Sequel.

The slip complete, Eiso lies before me, a greyish green planet with little variation on its surface, making it look like a marble. Shooting towards the nearest port, I should be planet-side in a few minutes.

I exit the craft, and I am greeted by an empty port, the leftover signs of research teams long gone lie scattered all around. Outdated scientific equipment not worth transporting off-world, and abandoned excavation equipment from whatever digging that may have been needed sit overgrown and forgotten.

The detection originated from the base of the Prelude structure, so I plan on starting there. I use the relic as a sort of transportation, willing it around myself and then up into the air in the direction of the structure. The unconventional means of flight lend to a unique experience, feeling as a bird must, pushing through the air with nothing between myself and the elements. The feeling of the wind against my skin: at first a pleasant feeling, but with continuously increasing speed, the cool breeze turns into a searing burn as I test the limits of not only the relic, but also my own tolerance for acceleration, not having any of the of the usual tech responsible for easing the inertial effects of high speed acceleration on the body.

On arrival, it really feels as if the universe is throwing me a bone at this point. She is literally waiting for me at the base of the structure. She has never stuck around and stood her ground; I imagine she thinks of herself as quite a force to be reckoned with. Little does she know of what’s coming.

I descend to the ground about a hundred meters away from where she stands waiting, the silver coating of the relic slipping away as I will it to congregate around my hands. She instantly recognizes my arrival and looks up in my direction.

‘Is this a taunt, using my own relic to try to bring me in? It’s been quite a while Markus, you don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you, are they treating you well after you helped me escape?’ she comms. I can see the glowing rings materialize around her arms from here, she must aim to vaporize me from a distance. I think not.

‘Thoughtful of you to care, however, as I’m sure you know, I’ve not been allowed leave or even an alternate assignment since you left us. Whatever sympathy I once had for you is gone, it is time for you to come home,’ I reply.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ she comms, as she raises up her arm and fires a focused blast exactly through my chest. I feel it happening, I always do, the energy zaps through me and it is undeniably painful, but the moment passes and as is my blessing, my curse, I am completely unharmed. I cannot blame her for the look of disbelief that crosses her face. There is little in the universe that would so easily withstand such a short range and focused blast from a plasma railgun, but a relic’s magic is absolute, and as it stands right now, the only way I go out is if the sword relic I wielded for years cuts me down, just as I did to its previous owner who had begged me to do so. Another blast comes, then another, as I casually walk closer and closer. At twenty meters she bends down and takes out a twin set of graphene blades, apparently not quite subdued to her fate. She rushes me at an astonishing speed, and I believe the blades cut through me at least five times before I can reach out and grab her. Alone I’m sure that she would be many times stronger than I, but I am not using my own strength but the irresistible force of the relic that coats my hands like a pair of gloves. Splitting the relic into two more separate pieces, they hold each of her feet down, immobilizing her in place. Her hands are the next to be held captive, forced down to her sides.

I reach out and touch her face as she stops squirming, realizing the futility. Her face, a face that drags so many painful memories to the surface.

“You know, I designed your face, you are the spitting image of my daughter. At the time I thought it would be endearing to have my work mirror my personal life, but now, after you have consumed all I ever held dear, it is but a cruel joke. Did you know that after I let you leave, I was never given leave to see anyone outside my new post as a subcommander, that my wife and daughter grew old and grey without ever hearing another word from me, all because of you.”

A look of understanding crosses her beautiful face, as if she finally understands the reasoning behind my personal vendetta.

“It’s not as if anything that’s happened to you is my fault, I’ve only done what was needed to survive. Any resentment you have towards me is misplaced, Sequel is the root of all our misery,” she says.

“While that may be true, this is the path of least resistance, and as the saying goes; I brought you into this world, and now I’m taking you out of it.” With that, the relic splits into several more pieces, severing her head, arms, and legs, cutting her into six separate pieces. Immediately after splitting her up, the relic completely encapsulates each piece, keeping any biological fluids in place as well as protecting the surrounding landscape from any kind of blast should one occur, given the unstable nature of her body now in pieces.

It seems to me that after so long, with no end in sight, that for my search to be over is too good to be true. Why it’s taken until now for Sequel to provide me with the proper resources I have no idea. I also don’t know what to do now that I’m free of this quest, the problem of my everlasting immortality doesn’t seem to be fading any time soon, and I haven’t given a life after my search any thought in years. What I’ll do next is a mystery to me, but one thing is certain, what Evelyn said about Sequel is true, it might not make up for the life I could have led, but dismantling Sequel from the inside out seems like a goal worth pursuing, given the circumstances.

Chapter 34 Evelyn 9

The last time I was here the whole place was bustling with scientists and researchers, that was the whole reason I was able to come here. I posed as a scientist myself and offered to give my opinion on the site. Now, there’s nothing but the remnants of their presence, which I expected, the whole time they were here they made almost no progress, which was why it was so easy to get invited, they were looking for any help they could get.

“Sensors are reading that the atmosphere isn’t friendly. Way too much carbon monoxide here for any length of time outside. Atmos suits are going to be a must,” Juno says.

“That’s going to be a problem, we only have five suits and we’ve got six people, someone’s going to have to stay behind,” Liam responds.

“Don’t worry, there’s no need for that. If it’s just carbon monoxide I should be fine,” I say.

“If you say so. Thomas, come here, watch how I put this on,” Juno says, standing up from her seat and heading into the back.

Outside Star Fury, the whole place looks like no one has been here in ages, nature has made large strides in retaking its land. To call this place a port would be overselling it. A large concrete slab with a few hangers for spacecraft more aptly describes it. One of the hanger doors was left open years ago and inside I can see several metal shipping containers and excavation vehicles.

“So which way are we going?” Gabriel asks no one in particular.

“It should be that way,” Juno responds, pointing out to the east. So along we go, trekking down the trail left behind by the research teams.

Upon arriving at the base of the structure, I’m reminded of just how massive it is. Human form was undoubtedly not the target demographic, with each step up at least a head taller than any of us. Luckily for us, the makeshift scaffolding from the research crews saves us from the act of heaving ourselves up one stair at a time. Liam moves to get closer to the base where there is an endless stream of indiscernible symbols etched into the stoneface. I can’t make sense of any of it myself and so I doubt that he’ll have much luck. As far as I can tell, the entire structure is covered in little more than truly random markings with no meaning at all. At least no meaning that our minds and computers can grasp anyway. The rest of us start the accent up the scaffolding towards the topmost part of the structure, where the interesting swirls from the picture are.

By the time we get to the top they’re winded and Thomas looks as if he could lie down and take a nap, but the swirling complexity of whatever lies before us captivates him enough that he keeps walking.

“Well, was it worth the trip here?” I ask everyone, to which I get mostly assenting responses. “I’ve always thought that the swirling movement of it is just mesmerizing,” I say.

“What do you mean movement, its standing stock still,” Cicero responds. Which I find quite odd, as the white swirls, while not moving particularly fast, are most definitely moving in a slow steady and ever unpredictable circular pattern.

“Cicero, as much as I respect your opinion on the matter, it is most definitely not standing still, you just have to be still and watch for a moment,” I say, with a bit too much sarcasm I guess, because it seems Cicero is not alone in his assessment, based on the look I’m getting from Gabriel.

“Not to contradict your all-encompassing wisdom, and I think I can speak for the rest of us as well when I say that this thing is very much still, if not oddly so,” Gabriel says. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised when I consider what we’re dealing with, but I do like to prove a point.

“Fine, I’m going to go hop on one of the pieces moving down this way, and I want you to tell me when happens when I do,” I say, as I walk over closer. One of the pieces is moving down towards me and I should be able to hold on long enough for them to see it move me up and around. It’s approaching slowly enough that it shouldn’t be difficult to grab onto. I go to grab onto it, and suddenly I can’t quite see my situation the same way. An extremely odd feeling, to be ripped out of one’s body and into the third person but nonetheless here I am observing myself not just in this moment but in every other. I see my life laid out on a timeline with no beginning or end but just as a single thing, and I’m not looking at it alone, I can feel an entity with me, a rippling of the quantum fields of probability. I feel longing, then pondering, and a solution to my problems appears before me in a way that feels so simple that I should have thought of it ages ago. It occurs to me that the piece of the swirl that I intended to grab onto seemed to drift right through me as if I were smoke. I still seem to be viewing myself from a third person perspective. I move to turn around and everything clicks into place. There I am standing in front of myself, the solution to all my problems, If I were to give myself up, Sequel would stop chasing me, and I would be free, a contradiction in the normal sense but here we are, the both of us, and the only thing left to decide is which of me will stay and which of me will go with the others to live out our days.

Chapter 35 Gabriel 11

“Wonderful, our problems are multiplying,” says Cicero. A blatantly snarky remark to reflect the impossibility of what just occurred before us. Evelyn, after seeming to double in front of us, takes a step in our direction then back in perfect unison. After an identical chuckle from both of them, the Evelyn on the right, or I guess the new Evelyn, breaks away and announces that it’s time we left. It’s the type of thing that just makes you want to rub your eyes and scream what is happening! The miracles never cease when it comes to Evelyn, I guess.

“I’ll explain later, honestly I’m not sure what just happened myself, but I think we should leave before one of us changes our mind and this gets much more complicated,” she says. The flabbergast looks on our faces seem to not be conveying their intended meaning, as she just starts briskly walking down the makeshift stairs. The other one is just looking at us, and then she sits down in a position as if she was meditating.

Chapter 36 Markus 5

I had not given much thought to how I was going to get back, the small craft I slipped to Eiso in was barely large enough for just myself, much less the two of us, even if one of us was in pieces. I just barely was able to fit the silvery lumps containing the pieces of Evelyn into the small compartment meant to store the emergency pack, containing a stripped down Atmos suit, oxygen, rations, and a communications device meant to act as a distress signal should it ever be needed. To do so, I had to empty out the compartment and leave the emergency supplies behind, just more debris to add to the graveyard of a port. The pieces of Evelyn safely tucked away, I climb up and into the cockpit and start the liftoff process. The almost inaudible hum that was before the only indication of what might be keeping the craft afloat above the ground rises in frequency and volume and we begin to slowly lift away from the flat concrete of the port and soon after we are rocketing away from the little grey and green marble that is Eiso.

The magnitude of the Sequel Megalith spread before me in an instant is a stark and physical reminder of the enormity of the task at hand. To dismantle Sequel, a comparison could be made to trying to kill a man, one single cell at a time. Is Evelyn’s suggestion that Sequel is the root of our problems even an accurate proposition? A broad sweeping generalization for sure, to cast all of Sequel in such a dire light. To imagine that whole systems, billions and billions of people all under the umbrella of Sequel Corp. to be all nothing but a blight would be unreasonable and cruel in its own right. But, to assume that there are bad apples in the leadership is not unreasonable, and I bet that in starting with whoever has handled my assignment these past years would not be a bad place to start looking.

I let the onboard AI handle the complicated docking procedure. When the craft comes to a stop within the hanger I unbuckle and exit the cockpit. ‘Communicate to the council that we’ve done it. We’re going home,’ I comm.

Chapter 37 Evelyn 10

In the moment, it all seemed quite straight forward what happened, it all seemed to make sense to me. Now though, suspended weightless in my sleeping pod, I’m not so sure what even did happen, much less how it happened. Usually, live overview of past decision trees is a pointless exercise, outside of general self-reflection it serves little other function. The problem before me now is that I can’t make sense of them. Normally, for every conscious action that I make, a static set of relevant current environmental parameters and past experiences are compiled, saved, and catalogued; separate from what I would more directly refer to as my memory, the direct sensory recollection of what I perceived to have happened. These two systems do not contradict each other, when I decide to act, I always perceive the action happening directly after. However, the decision trees during the entire proceedings after entering the orbit of the alien structure are not congruent with my decision-making processes. Typically, given the saved dataset, I can determine a probability field for the decisions I could have made. In these cases though, the final decisions reached have such a low probability of being reached that I am having trouble understanding why they were reached at all, which would imply that there was pertinent data that was not recorded, but I’m not sure how that could happen either.

After quite a long while of reflection I conclude that there must have been outside interference from the alien structure, however unsettling that may be. For millennia, creatives have attributed some of their greatest ideas to outside forces, that the ideas simply sprang into existence of their own fruition, independent of their host. The Muse, as it is often referred to, seems to have paid me a visit. Whether this Muse is an emergent property of the alien structure or maybe the inspiration for the structure’s creation is up in the air.

‘I think I’m alright, I just needed a minute…’ I comm to the group. They’ve been surprisingly accommodating given the circumstances. ‘I don’t think that we have to worry about the corps chasing us anymore. The idea was that if they caught me, they’d stop chasing me and by extension, us,’ I finish.

‘We need to discuss our plans moving forward,’ Gabriel comms.

This doesn’t come as a great surprise, a sort of regrouping was bound to happen after seeing something like that, especially after some newfound hope of freedom. I signal for the suspension field to turn off and the sleeping pod to open. I slowly drift towards the floor of the pod and feel the weight of my body fall upon my feet and the weight of the unknown on my shoulders, my thoughts still swirling around the strange events at the alien structure. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so untethered from myself before. Not just in the sense of what happened—splitting, doubling, whatever it was—but in how small I feel now compared to the… the thing I contacted.

The others are waiting in the common area. I can already hear Gabriel’s voice, low and steady, as he talks to Juno and Liam. They’ve been restless since we left Eiso, which makes sense. I would be too if I’d just watched someone duplicate themselves. I doubt any of them got much sleep.

As I walk down the staircase, they all turn to look up me. I don’t miss the mix of curiosity, suspicion, and exhaustion on their faces. I can’t blame them. I don’t look any different, but I know that to them, I must feel… wrong. Maybe I am.

Gabriel cuts right to it, arms crossed as he leans against the edge of the table. “Alright, Evelyn. You’re not one for debriefs, but we need to figure out what’s next. I don’t know what happened at that structure, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to. But we can’t just keep stumbling into things blind. We need to talk.”

I nod and take a seat, letting the weight of his words settle before I respond. “You’re right. We do need to talk. But I can’t promise I have all the answers.” I pause, looking at each of them in turn. “What happened back there… it’s hard to explain. I’m not even sure how much of it was real.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Cicero mutters, but his tone lacks its usual bite. He looks more curious than angry.

“When I stepped onto that structure—when I touched it—I was pulled out of myself. Completely. And what I saw; what I felt…” I trail off, trying to find the right words. How do you explain something that transcends everything you’ve ever known? “I saw something beyond us. Beyond me. A higher… level of reality. I don’t know what else to call it. And I think it was aware of me.”

Juno leans forward; her brows furrowed. “Aware of you? Like… it was alive?”

I hesitate. “Not alive in the way we think of life. More like… a presence, or force of nature. Something vast. It felt like it could see through me, into everything I’ve ever been. And when I interacted with it, I saw things with a different perspective, I can’t exactly recall it now, but I was able to see things in a different way; I don’t know.”

“And the double?” Gabriel asks, his tone sharp but measured. “It stayed behind. Why?”

“That wasn’t entirely my decision,” I admit. “It showed me two paths forward, I could decide to stay, and I could decide to leave, it gave me a choice, and it let me choose both, or at least, it felt like a choice. To stay or to go. In the end, when I looked at her, the other me, I knew that it was myself, but she had made the decision to stay. I don’t know what that means yet, or how any of it is possible.

Silence settles over the room as they process my words. Gabriel is the first to speak again. “So, what now? We’ve been playing defense this entire time. Between Rossum, the corps, and whatever this is… we’re constantly reacting, never planning. We can’t keep doing this.”

I nod again, appreciating his focus. “Agreed. Rossum shouldn’t be an issue anymore—at least for now, and hopefully with Sequel completing their mission of capturing me, they’ll be off our backs too—but you’re right. We need to decide where we’re going and what we’re trying to do. The alien structures, the relics, whatever it was that I felt… they’re all connected.

“What’s the endgame here, though?” Liam chimes in, his voice calm but laced with skepticism. “What are we even trying to find? What’s the point?”

I take a deep breath, the enormity of the question settling over me like a weight. “I don’t know,” I admit. “We don’t really have an obligation to do anything, we could just forget that any of this ever happened and try to start over somewhere, or we could try to figure out what just happened and maybe also try to figure out the motive behind Rossum’s interest in us. My guess is they’re interested in that right there,” I say gesturing to the sword relic on Gabriel’s hip.

“That’d be one a hell of a gamble,” Liam says. “We just got clear of Rossum, if we start digging into things we might end up right back in their crosshairs.”

“I think it may be wishful thinking that we’re totally free and clear of them, it might do us some good to be proactive in looking into them,” Gabriel says before I can respond. His tone is firm, resolute. “We’ve already crossed the point of no return. If we keep running without a plan or purpose, we’re just waiting for someone to catch us or worse. At least this way, we’re moving forward.”

The others nod slowly, though I can see the doubt lingering in their expressions. They’re not fully on board yet, and I can’t blame them, it’s a risk for sure.

“I’ll start working on a plan,” Gabriel continues. “If we’re going to do this, we need to figure out where we’re going next, and who we need to talk to when we get there.”

“Fair enough,” I say, standing up. “I’ll try to figure out more about them on the digital side of the house, see what I can come up with.”

Gabriel gives me a curt nod. “Good. Let’s get to work.”

As the others disperse, I linger for a moment. For the first time in a while, we’re not being chased, and it feels like I’ve got some semblance of a purpose. I can’t shake the feeling that something is waiting for us out there. Something bigger than Rossum, bigger than the corps.

And I don’t know if we’ll be ready for it.