Gap Stories #8

[Living The Dream]

Log Date: 7/27/12764

Data Sources: Cherriki 3-G, Penitentiary Security System

When I was young, I had a dream that I would be special.

I had a dream I would be one of those legendary Challengers. I would grow up, join the program, and save lives. I’d fight bad guys, protect the galaxy, and save the day.

I wanted, so badly, to be the hero that I’d never had in my own life.

My dream was not unique, of course. Plenty of children dream of becoming heroes when they grow up. Plenty of children want to be the stars they see on the evening news, or in their Saturday morning cartoons. Back then, when I was a child, plenty of children wanted to be Challengers. We wanted to make a difference. We wanted to matter.

But that was thirty years ago.

I’m no longer a child. I haven’t been for a while. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like; when you’re grown up, it’s all too easy to lose sight of how simple things used to be, to lose track of what you wanted to be. You go years without thinking about it, just doing what you need to do in order to survive, and tell yourself that you’re working towards it, you’re getting there, that eventually you’ll reach that dream that’s starting to fade dim in the distance. You promise yourself that it’ll be everything you hoped for.

And then one day you wake up, look around, and realize you don’t know where you are, or how you got there. You may not even recognize who you’ve become. And you can barely remember who you were, or the way things used to be. Everything has changed; everything is different now.

Little girl, where did your dream go?

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

4:47pm SGT

“How’s it looking?”

One of the Penitentiary’s guards swivels in his chair, turning to see another couple of guards standing in the doorway to the guard station. He shrugs, a motion born of apathy, and raised by it too. “Same as every other damn day, except they sent two of you today. What’s the big occasion?”

“Rookie. We’re showing him the ropes and he’ll be shadowing me today.” says the older guard, a Halfie that looks like he’s a wolf-dog crossbreed. Beside him is a vashya’rei with feathers in his hair, but otherwise looking human aside from the digitigrade legs and talon’d feet. “You mind watching the station for a little longer while I give him a tour of the Pit?”

“Have at it. I don’t mind clocking a bit of overtime.” the chaired guard shrugs.

“It won’t take that long.” the senior guard says, turning and stepping back out of the guard station, and speaking to the rookie as he goes. “C’mon. I’m sure you’re just dying to learn about our most dangerous guests.”

The rookie just gives a polite nod at that, following as the door to the guard station slides shut and locks. Leaving it, the pair step onto a walkway that runs around the rim of a massive, circular atrium, which gradually slopes towards the bottom. The walls of the atrium are lined with rows upon rows of what appear to be prisoner cells, each one large enough to house a single prisoner. The cell doors are a reinforced, heavy-duty affair, with only a small window in the center to peer in at the occupant’s dim confines.

“As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, this is the Pit.” the senior guard says, gesturing to the draconian incarceration system. “The inmates upstairs aren’t angels by any stretch of the imagination, but we can generally let them have some limited freedom of movement with a little supervision and a shock collar. It’s a different story down here.” His hands come up behind his back, clasping together as he saunters along the walkway. “The Pit contains two thousand, five hundred and eighty-four cells, arranged in a widening spiral, each of them constructed with psi-suppressant lining and a thirty-two bolt reinforced six-inch plasteel door. Inmates incarcerated here do not leave their cells; each one comes equipped with a toilet and a flood partition for daily hygiene. Meals are delivered by an entirely automated system to remove inmate contact with staff. Each cell is twelve feet long by five feet wide, which is the bare minimum floor space required to house the bed, flood partition, toilet, and food delivery system. In the event of inmate misbehavior, each cell can be gassed with a sleep agent to subdue them, or prep them for transfer to another cell or facility if needed.”

“That’s…” the rookie begins, staring at the winding spiral of cells below. The senior guard glances over his shoulder, eyebrow raised, as he waits for the rookie to finish his sentence; the rookie notices, and seems to carefully consider his choice of words. “…it’s… impressive.”

“Impressive, yes. But more than that, it is necessary.” the senior guard says as they work their way along the walkway. “I can tell you’re thinking about the ethical ramifications of this kind of confinement, and let me assure you, it is entirely necessary for the kind of individuals that are imprisoned here. The Pit contains some of the most depraved, violent, manipulative, and powerful psions to be found in this galaxy. Not only do they deserve this treatment, but it is to protect the staff, and everyone else, from the people we keep down here.”

“Are all the cells filled?” the rookie asks.

“No, we are only at partial capacity. One thousand, one hundred and forty-seven cells are currently occupied. We still have room for at least a thousand more before we even start to approach capacity.” the senior guard says, pointing down into the atrium. “You can tell which cells are occupied by which cell windows are lit. A dark window is an empty cell. A lit window is an occupied cell.”

“What’s that down there?”

The senior guard’s gaze follows the rookie’s hand to where he is pointing down to a platform at the very bottom of the spiral. A solitary form is visible at the bottom of the Pit, hunched over and restrained within an apparatus that keeps her arms locked behind her back and her legs locked to the floor. A shock of dull red hair, matted and uncombed and greasy, is the only spot of color on the otherwise grey vista.

“I was wondering when you’d ask.” the senior guard says, his stride slowing, but not entirely stopping. “That is our most infamous resident; doubtless you have heard her name in passing. In here, we refer to her by her legal name: Cherriki 3-G. But you, and the rest of the galaxy, know her as Laughing Alice — one of the Challenger program’s last generation of Challengers.”

“That’s Laughing Alice?” the rookie says, his voice dropping a notch in volume, as if he was wary she might overhear him, even all the way from the top of the Pit.

“One and the same.” the senior guard confirms. “After she was finally captured seven years ago, she was brought here for incarceration. The courts of the Colloquium deemed her unfit to stand trial by way of insanity, but as she was a threat to society at large, they ruled that should be sent here for indefinite incarceration. And here she will remain, until the end of her natural life.”

“Shouldn’t you be keeping her in a cell, instead of out in the open like this?” the rookie asks, waving to the thousands of cells lining the walls of the Pit. “There’s plenty of cells available.”

“She’s too dangerous for that.” the senior guard says. “Even the limited freedom of movement of the Pit cells is a risk we are not willing to take with her. The Warden wants eyes on her at all times, so we keep her on that platform at the bottom of the Pit, where the guard on duty can see her from the guard station. They have her hooked up to an IV system that provides liquid nutrition and filtering through one tube, and a mix of sedatives, paralytics, and psi suppressants through the other.” Stopping on the walkway, the senior guard leans on the railing, staring down into the bottom of the Pit. “They say she hovers somewhere between waking and dreaming, always in that twilight place where she has awareness, but is not fully conscious. And if you stand here long enough, and are quiet enough, you might pick up whispers of whatever half-formed dream she lingers in.”

The rookie stops at that, and turns to stare down at the bottom of the Pit as well. The silence stretches long, with the only sound being the hum of the Pit’s systems at work, until a sudden laugh from the senior guard breaks the silence. The rookie jumps, clearly startled, and gives him an alarmed look.

“I’m just playin’ with yah, son.” the senior guard says, lifting a hand and giving the rookie a hefty slap on the back. It knocks him forward a little; as he catches himself on the railing, one of the feathers in his hair jerks loose from the sudden movement. Thinking nothing of it, the rookie gives an uneasy smile to the senior guard, who starts walking around the rim of the Pit once more. “There’s so many psi suppressants running through her veins she couldn’t so much as project a single thought more than a few inches from the tip of her nose. The whole thing about hearing her whispers all the way from the top of the Pit is just a story we tell the rookies to scare ‘em. She used to be one of the most dangerous Challengers in the galaxy, but she’s been in a light coma for the last seven years. She can’t hurt anybody now, and the rest of the galaxy can sleep a little sounder for it.”

The rookie nods. “That’s good to know.” he says as he continues to follow the senior guard around the walkway. The conversation starts to move to other topics as they go, migrating to other aspects of the job, and other infamous psions kept in the Pit. In their wake, the feather left drifting in the air of the Pit slowly helicopters downwards, arriving a minute and a half later on the platform at the bottom of the Pit’s spiral. It seems to hesitate for a moment, then gently touches down on the metal platform in front of the immobilized woman.

And behind the crimson curtain of matted hair, twin eyes of green snap open, glaring down at the feather. After a moment, a soft exhalation is heard, and the feather rocks, then rides a gentle gust of wind, sliding into the gap between her knees, where it is hidden from view.

With that, the eyes slowly close once more, while the questions of the rookie and the answers of the senior guard echo down into the Pit from far, far above.

Event Log: Rewind: 41 years ago

Sybione, Marshy Republic

GeneTechs Inc.

I, like so many other Cherrikis before me, was born in a lab. A means to an end, a living experiment, a creature with no mother, no father, no family. To this day, I still don’t know what my intended purpose was, and I may never know. At one point, it may have mattered to me. It no longer does. The only thing that matters is what I want, not what my creators wanted for me.

GeneTechs, the company that created me, provided what it could in terms of parental support. There were caretakers that looked after me. I had games and rooms that I could explore in the company building, in much the same manner that I imagine normal children would have. I attended the local school, with all the other children. It was the company’s attempt, I suppose, at providing some normalcy that would otherwise be missing from the life of a little girl raised by a corporate entity.

Some things that were notably absent from my early life, though. Things like a consistent adult figure; the caretakers were rotated from year to year, so I never had the opportunity to grow very close with any of them. Siblings were another thing; I had none, and there were no other children to be found within the walls of the company building. But since I had never known these things, I could not really miss what I didn’t know I didn’t have. The games and holoshows were my company for those early years, and I didn’t realize what was missing from my life until I was well into school. It was there that I noticed that the caretakers of other children did not change from year to year, like mine did. And the other kids talked of having to live with other children called sisters and brothers.

I could say more, but you already know this story, don’t you? You know where we go from here. You know that the questions would multiply as I grew up. You know that my childhood was deprived. You know where this culminates when I become a teenager. You’ve read this book; you’ve watched this holo. You know what happens to children raised without a proper support network. I don’t need to retell it for you in all its angsty detail, because we both know where this road goes, and where it ends.

But still, there are some pit stops along the way that I should probably cover. Bends in the road, forks in the trail, moments that shaped who I became, and what happened to that little girl’s dream.

So let’s speed things up, and take a look at those instead.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

7/28/12764 5:26pm SGT

“I know that the galaxy’s been a little unstable recently, but things are still business as usual here, Deputy Administrator.” the Warden says as he leads the way down the single hall that connects the Pit to the rest of the Penitentiary above. “The Collective’s attack on Mokasha and the Valiant recruiting former Challengers to their organization doesn’t mean that the Pit’s occupants are suddenly more likely to break out. Security here is as tight as it’s ever been. If you’re concerned about the priority inmate, I can assure you there is nothing to worry about.”

“Complacency is a fatal flaw in times such as these, Warden.” Nazka says coldly, striding down the hall behind the Warden, with Gossamer following. “Administrator Tenji would rather not take risks, considering Challenger 5402’s demonstrated capabilities. Capturing her seven years ago cost us lives and considerable resources. CURSE is not keen to repeat the experience if she breaks out.”

“Or is broken out.” Gossamer adds.

“Neither of which have any chance of succeeding.” the Warden replies, tapping his bracelet to the pad as they reach the guard station. The door unlocks, and slides back. “But if taking a closer look yourselves will set you at ease, then you’re welcome to do so.”

The guard within the station turns in his chair as the door slides open. “Warden. What can I do for you today?”

“This is the Deputy Administrator of CURSE, and one of their senior Peacekeepers.” the Warden says as Nazka and Gossamer step in. “CURSE would like to check on Priority One. In person.”

“Understood. I’ll bring the lift around.” the guard says, turning back to the guard station’s dashboard screen, his fingers starting to tap across it. On the roof of the Pit, what appear to be the folded arms of a massive machine start to grind to life, stretching out as the entire assembly rotates on a track built into the stony ceiling. Tapping his bracelet to the pad that leads out onto the rim of the Pit, the Warden steps out of the guard station and onto the walkway, over to a docking port where the machine has extended one of its arms. Opening a section of the walkway’s railing, the Warden politely motions for Nazka and Gossamer to step onto the platform that has been extended to the walkway.

After they get on, the machine retracts the platform from the walkway, pulling the extended arm back towards the center as the assembly starts to lower itself into the Pit. Past rows and rows of cells it descends, until the carrying arm is extending downwards to gently lower its passengers to the platform at the bottom of the Pit. Stepping off, Nazka and Gossamer walk around the edge of the platform, with the Warden following.

“As you can see, she’s contained just as securely as the day that you brought her to us.” the Warden says, motioning to the prisoner hunched in the center of the platform, arms locked behind her back, restraining clamps locked around her legs and welded to the floor, which has a number of tubes and IVs winding out of it and snaking into her uniform. “Barely conscious, unable to move, and full of psi suppressants. She isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“So you like to believe.” Nazka says, his crisp footsteps coming to a halt in front of the hunched prisoner. “The Valiant are resourceful, Warden. They have been hunting down and recruiting any Challengers that did not pledge their allegiance to CURSE. And even if she was a sorry, psychotic excuse for one, Laughing Alice was still a Challenger.”

“If they find out she is here, they may come to get her. Or at least try.” Gossamer adds, looking at the Warden. “Will your security be up to the task when they do?”

“I like to believe we can handle an upstart group of vigilantes.” the Warden answers stiffly. “I’m simply surprised that CURSE hasn’t been able to stamp them out after a full year.”

“Once, I may have been sympathetic to your assessment, Warden.” Nazka says, staring down at the prisoner’s dull, matted hair. “We have learned the hard way that the Valiant are not rebels without a cause. They are animated by a particular breed of grievance against Myrrdicato’s current status quo, and they are not shy about making a mess into order to advance their agenda. Nor do they have compunction about recruiting and fielding some of the Challenger program’s… less savory alumni.” Nazka narrows his eyes at the prisoner. “Of which this one quite easily qualifies.”

“The measures we have in place are more than sufficient.” the Warden replies tersely. “We’ve grown quite proficient at preventing breakouts over the Penitentiary’s long history. Whether the attempt originates from inside or outside of the facility, there’s not been a successful escape in the last three or four decades. We intend to maintain that streak, even as the galaxy heads into uncertain times.” The Warden takes a moment to square his shoulders before going on. “And besides, better-funded organizations than the Valiant have tried and failed to get their people out of here. It’ll take more than the dregs of the Challenger program to engineer a breakout.”

Gossamer breaks her gaze away from the prisoner to look at the Warden, the rest of her body following her head to pivot towards him. “You do realize that the Valiant are led by Songbird, right?” she says. “The Challenger that brought down Nova?”

“I have heard the rumors, yes.” the Warden says patiently.

“Then you should be fully aware that the Valiant contains more than just the dregs of the Challenger program.” Gossamer growls, stalking towards the Warden. “Tell me what you know about Songbird.”

The Warden, despite looking like he would like to take a step back from Gossamer, remains where he is. “I am aware that he killed Nova…”

“Everyone knows that, so allow a former Challenger to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.” Gossamer says, stopping but a few inches from the Warden. “At the height of his power, he could stand even with Nova — a mature Starstruck. Before the program fell, he was one of the Challengers that took down Jett Black. He defied the Collective at Vigilance 229. More recently he took on an entire squad of Peacekeepers alone, and corrupted one of them into joining the Valiant—”

“Gossamer.” Nazka interrupts sharply.

But Gossamer doesn’t stop, leaning in closer to the Warden — who does, at this point, take a step back as she points to the fresh scar on running from the edge of her jaw to the bridge of her nose. “—and he gave me this little memento to remember him by. But what you need to know? Is that the man that did all those things?” At this point she snaps an arm out to point out the comatose prisoner. “That is the man that trained Laughing Alice. Your Priority One is his protégée.” Her arm swings around to jab a finger into the Warden’s chest. “That is why Tenji asked us to come here and personally check on her. And you.”

“Gossamer, that is enough.” Nazka orders. She backs off the Warden, recognizing the warning in Nazka’s tone, and starts circling back around the prisoner, sizing her up while Nazka picks up the conversation. “I apologize for the aggression, Warden, but I would nonetheless agree with Gossamer’s underlying sentiment, and reiterate my points from before. The Valiant are not a group to be taken lightly, and complacency is a dangerous mistake to make in these times. The Administrator asked us to check on Challenger 5402 out of an abundance of caution, but also to warn you. The measures that have sufficed over the past seven years may no longer be enough. The rogue Challengers have been reborn as the Valiant. The decade of peace we have enjoyed is at an end. New days are upon us, and CURSE expects you to be ready for them. If 5402 escapes, what follows will be upon your head.”

“We brought her in once. Do not make us bring her in again.” Gossamer mutters, crouching in front of the prisoner.

“I see you are quite concerned about this.” the Warden says tartly, finally allowed a gap to reply. “It would seem to me that you are offering this advice out of an abundance of experience. Mistakes that CURSE has already made, perhaps?”

“We simply do not wish to see you made a fool.” Nazka states, calmly gliding back to the platform arm that brought them there. “And now, you cannot say that you were not warned.”

“A preemptive move on your part to cover your asses and ensure the blame falls squarely on us when you are unable to prevent the Valiant from making an attempt on the Penitentiary.” the Warden observes drily. “You say you do not wish to see me made a fool, Deputy Administrator, yet you seem to think I am one. If CURSE does their job, then the Penitentiary will have no problems with doing theirs. But if you are unable to keep the Valiant under control…”

“The scope of CURSE’s responsibilities is somewhat larger than the Penitentiary’s, Warden.” Nazka replies. “We have an entire galaxy to monitor. You have only a single site. I would happily trade places with you for a day if you would like a taste of what it’s like to deal with the various and sundry threats in the galaxy, the Collective and the Valiant among them.”

“Flattering, but I’ll pass.” the Warden says, stepping onto the platform arm. “The scale of CURSE’s responsibilities, however, is not an excuse for failing to do them properly.”

“And in the unlikely event that CURSE is unable to fully manage their responsibilities, it is not an excuse for the Penitentiary failing in theirs.” Nazka replies coldly. “We will do our part, Warden. The Administrator expects you to do yours.”

“We will have no problems doing our part, so long as you do yours.” the Warden replies, before sharply calling out to Gossamer, who has grabbed the prisoner by the hair to lift her head up and look at her face. “Excuse me! Do NOT touch Priority One! We have gone to great lengths to ensure she cannot move, and we do not want any of her IVs dislodged. The system we have set up is very delicate. Keeping an inmate in this sort of indefinite chemical stasis is not easy.”

“Should’ve killed you when we had the chance.” Gossamer mutters, before letting go of the prisoner’s hair, her head flopping back forward with the telltale bonelessness of a comatose individual. Standing up, she stalks back over to the platform arm, boarding it as the Warden closes the railing behind her. “Let’s get out of here. Being in a pit full of criminally insane brainiacs gives me the willies.”

With that, the many-armed machine retreats from the platform at the bottom of the Pit, taking Nazka, Gossamer, and the Warden with it. Rising back to the top of the spiral, it delivers the trio back to the guard station, where Nazka and Gossamer are released back into the hall leading to the Penitentiary aboveground, while the Warden remains in the station to speak with the guard on duty.

“Next time, perhaps avoid admitting to outside parties that we are having difficulty with the Valiant.” Nazka says as the two of them stride down the hall.

“We don’t have a problem with the Valiant.” Gossamer growls back at him. “We have a problem with Songbird.”

“Songbird is one of the core elements of the Valiant. If we have a problem with Songbird, then by the transitive property, we have a problem with the Valiant.” Nazka replies. “Besides, you are failing to see the forest for the trees. The problems we have with Songbird pales next to the fact that the Valiant now have access to the Bastions. And that their angelnet now has access to computing and surveillance infrastructure on par with SCION. Against those factors, individual problems are dwarfed by the overarching issue.”

Gossamer shakes her head. “You were there at the Cradle, Nazka. You got your ass kicked six ways to Sunday just like the rest of us. You aren’t going tell me that the Bastions are a bigger problem than Songbird, are you? You saw what he did. What he was capable of.”

“I also know what the Bastions are capable of, with the correct permissions. As do you.” Nazka points out. “Songbird is a problem, I will admit that. But do not give him the credit for being the entirety of the Valiant’s threat potential. He is but a small part of it now, though still a substantial part.”

Gossamer huffs a breath through her nose. “…do you think the Valiant will actually try to break her out of the Penitentiary? Even for them, that seems like a bridge too far, considering what she did while she was loose.”

“If I were their tactician, I would not advise it. The issue is that, as far as I can tell from past reports and her eventual capture, she cannot be controlled.” Nazka replies. “Laughing Alice makes Onslaught look like a girl scout. So no, if the Valiant have any sense, they will not try to break her out. She would be more a liability than an asset to any organization that tried to control her, I think.”

“Yet Tenji still sent us here.” Gossamer points out. “Clearly she thinks they might try it.”

“I trust the Administrator’s discretion. Whatever the rationale for our checkin here, I’m sure she had a good reason for it.” Nazka says. “Even if nothing comes of it, we can report back and tell her we did as we were asked. In the best-case scenario, nothing does come of it — and we can keep our focus on whatever other machinations the Valiant are working on.”

“Let’s hope nothing comes of it, then. Having a crazed redhead on the loose that can shred people’s minds into party confetti isn’t a scenario I want to deal with.”

Event Log: Rewind: 32 years ago

Sybione, Marshy Republic

Praelion Middle School for Gifted Children

I had many friends throughout my early years, but there was one that mattered more because she was, like me, a Cherriki.

At the time, I did not know I was a Cherriki, and I would not know for many years more. My assigned designation was Alice, and Alice I was to everyone that knew me. But this other girl that I met — the people that adopted her had not bothered to rename her. Her legal name was Cherriki 10-G Locke — Cherriki Locke to most who knew her, and Cherri to her friends.

She had been born two years earlier than me, but we overlapped in middle school. I was two grades ahead as a matter of my more stringent upbringing; since I was confined to the company premises while not in school, I did not get to explore or go out into the city the way other children would. And since all my leisure privileges were predicated on my academic performance, excelling in school became a priority. Skipping grades was a natural result of this, and put me in the same grade as Cherriki Locke.

We met only because there were other students that mistook me for her, and vice versa; even with different hairstyles and clothes, we were still clones derived from the same base template, and similarities were inevitable. Those similarities were apparent when we first met in person; of course, being children, and not having been told what we really were, we joked that it was because we were twins that were separated at birth. And we did look like twins, albeit one slightly older than the other. In a setting where I was younger than most of my other classmates, Cherri was the friend I needed to feel comfortable, and keep up with the older kids. Academically, I was every bit their equal, but socially, it was usually a different story.

So, how can I sum up the history of a friendship in a few paragraphs?… it feels like nothing I could say would really truly capture the magnitude of a friendship. A friendship, a real one, is a big thing. It’s made up of so many moments, big and small and filling the cracks between other parts of your life. How do you capture the feeling of in-jokes, which were hysterical to us but probably stupid to everyone else? How do you capture the feeling of relief when you get paired with your friend for a group project, instead of with someone you don’t know? How do you capture those breezy lunches, where you were free to talk about what you wanted outside the classroom?

You can’t. Or I don’t have a good way to do it. Or I don’t know how to do it. Any one of those, I suppose. I can tell you about Cherri, but I can’t really bring her to life for you, not the way she was when we were kids together. All I could tell you is that those were good days for me. It was like having an older sister, which I’d never had. She looked like me, and was older than me, and could tell me some of the things I didn’t know, the social things that adults never really teach you. And both of us had dreams, dreams about being part of the Challenger program one day.

I suppose that’s as good a place as any to sum up our friendship. That dream that we shared. It wasn’t an uncommon dream. Back in those days, the Challengers were the galaxy’s heroes. They weren’t at the absolute height of their popularity — that was about a decade or two earlier — but they were still the biggest thing around. Every kid wanted to be a Challenger when they grew up. And most of them knew they wouldn’t get to be Challengers, but they still wanted it. That was the dream.

Both Cherri and I had the dream. We dreamed about the type of heroes we would be when we got into the Challenger program, and the systems we wanted to be deployed to, and the type of Challengers we wanted to be. We had phases. Sometimes we wanted to be Titan pilots. Other times, combat ops sounded good. Covert ops was cool because spies were cool. And then there was Accounting. We didn’t know what Accounting did, but we knew that they were important in the Challenger program.

There was just one problem with the dream: we didn’t fit into it. We weren’t special. We were smart, yes, but not special. Everyone in our middle-school was technically above-average, and we weren’t unique in that regard. Was being smart enough to get you into the Challenger program? Maybe, if you were really really smart. But we weren’t that kind of smart, and it was obvious that to be a Challenger, you needed to be more than smart. You needed to be special.

Special, of course, meant having some kind of power. And if smarts weren’t your power, then it had to be something else. The way we broke it down, there were five different ways that Challengers were special. Either they were smart, were good at magic, were psions, had a biological trait or advantage, or had some kind of tech that made them unique. If you had one of those five things, you might have a shot at getting into the program. If you had more than one of five things, then your chances were even better.

But alas for us — we were plain, boring humans. We didn’t have the benefit of belonging to a culture that was steeped in the arcane. We weren’t members of a unique race, like Shifters, or wereckanan, or orcs or Halfies or half a dozen other races that had unique physical traits. We were smart, but not smart enough, and we certainly weren’t in possession of any kind of technology that could make us stand out from the crowd, and we definitely didn’t have the mechanical or engineering aptitude to create something like that. And neither had either of us been born as psions.

But on the last count, a psion didn’t always have to be born.

With luck, and a little bit of neuranium, they could be made.

Given how young we were, we didn’t really fully grasp either the complexity or gravity of what neuranium could do to a person and their brain. Our understanding of the mineral was limited to the vague, generalized perception that most of the galactic public has about neuranium, which is that it’s used to give people psionic abilities, and used as a key component in many military-grade psi-based technologies. Cherri and I were of course more interested in the former application, and to our credit, this general understanding of neuranium was not technically incorrect.

It did, however, lack nuance.

The idea that any type of exposure to neuranium would turn a person into a psion is an idea popularized by the entertainment industry, which too often takes liberties with scientific facts. There’s countless works of fiction where the main character gets their psi powers from coming into contact with neuranium in ways that are frankly silly, ranging from falling into a vat of the stuff to getting bitten by a neuranium-dosed spider. These characters are portrayed as having a bout of sickness, and then shortly segueing straight into a convenient suite of powers once they’ve recovered.

The reality of neuranium is much less glamorous and far more brutal.

As a mineral made out of a number of heavy elements, neuranium is at once rare and toxic above certain quantities. It is difficult to find natural deposits of neuranium, harder to mine them due to the depths those deposits are usually at, and the product is rarely sold in quantities larger than an ounce or two. Even in small quantities, ingesting it can be fatal, and if you survive that, you will not always develop psionic aptitude. Certain genetic predispositions raise your chances of developing powers, and even if you do, they do not come without cost. Psions created through the use of neuranium often suffer from a broad range of psychological issues, and are frequently unstable and dangerous, both to themselves and those around them.

As a result, neuranium is one of the mostly tightly controlled substances in the galaxy, with harsh penalties for unauthorized sale or production of the mineral or its synthetic approximations. Various nations have military programs that exist for the creation and training of psi operatives, and they are some of the most tightly-controlled programs in the galaxy. They pour vast amounts of funding into researching how to dose their candidates with neuranium in a way that unlocks their psionic potential without also turning them into schizophrenic psychopaths. They screen their candidates with the utmost rigor, and if a candidate becomes psi-capable after treatment, then they are trained to highest standard of discipline. And most importantly, they provide the highest-quality psychiatric care to their psi operatives, who will sometimes suffer from lifelong side effects of neuranium exposure. Yet even all of this is not enough to guarantee that an operative will not go rogue, often requiring the military to hunt them down and neutralize them before they become a threat to the galactic public. To this end, these programs usually prefer to recruit those who are natural-born psions — but when they cannot get them, or enough of them, they will make up the gap by creating their own.

Of course, these harsh realities were not something that two young teenage girls were privy to. We knew only the simple math that had been taught to us by the entertainment complex: neuranium + main character = psi protagonist. This simple math, we reasoned in our young, teenage brains, was our shortcut to the Challenger program, which seemed so far out of reach for us. We knew we weren’t special, but if we could make ourselves special, then maybe, maybe we could get into the Challenger program. Because that was the dream.

Our dream.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

7/29/12764 4:18pm SGT

She could feel it dripping down her neck.

It was a leak, specifically from one of the IVs that fed into the vein in her neck. It had been loose since yesterday, when Gossamer had manhandled her, and had been leaking chemical cocktail since then. Not a large amount, just a couple drops every minute or so.

But it was enough.

It took some time for the change to be noticeable. But that was fine; she was patient. She had waited seven years; she could wait a few days or weeks more. Freedom was calling, but if she lunged for it, it would be yanked out of her reach again, perhaps indefinitely. So she waited; waited for the loosened IV to do its work, waited for the haze to clear.

And it wasn’t long before it did.

It didn’t go away entirely, but the waking dream that she was trapped in for the last seven years started to weaken. She could sense the platform beneath her, the spiraling cells around her, the many-armed machine overhead. She could sense the IV system hidden beneath the platform, and the release keyhole for the entire assembly, just behind where her feet were bolted to the floor. She could sense the feather hidden between her knees.

In another time, at her prime, she would’ve been able to destroy the assembly with a few thoughts and a bit of focus. Right now, stifled under layers of psi suppressant, she could only sense things around her, and had only the barest strength to shift them with her mind. But it was enough, because the barest strength was all you needed to move a feather.

It wasn’t long before said feather glided between her legs, the quill lodging in the keyhole in the floor behind her. It was an old-fashioned affair, a simple lock with no digital or electronic components, to prevent it from being hacked or opened from a distance. The idea was that you had to have the physical key, and you had to physically be there to open it. And the only key was, ostensibly, in the Warden’s possession.

But having been trained by the Accounting department meant acquiring knowledge in how to pick locks, among other things. And the only thing she had been missing was some clarity of mind to work with, and pick to use.

Both of which she now had.

She still had to be careful; it was all too common to break off a pick in a lock, and feathers did not have the same durability that an actual lockpick did. The lock’s tumblers were stiff from disuse; in the entire time that she had been here, she had only been released twice so that the IV assembly beneath the platform could undergo maintenance. More times than she could count, the feather slipped and pushed some of the tumblers out of alignment, forcing her to start all over again.

Yet she persisted, forcing herself to be patient and deliberate, because that was the only way she would be able to escape. And in time, she was rewarded with sensing all the last tumbler click into place, the lock mechanism ready to be twisted into its release position.

Behind the dirty curtain of crimson hair, chapped lips pulled back slightly to reveal a smile.

Taking a firm hold of the lock mechanism with her mind — as firm as she could manage — she threw all her meager psi strength into twisting it. There was a firm, satisfying clunk as it clicked into the release position, the restraints binding her legs to the floor opening. Behind her back, the cuffs holding her wrists clicked open, and there was a dying hum as the IV assembly below the platform started to cycle down. As the machine stopped circulating the chemicals through the IVs, the ports within her skin closed, the tubes popping loose with a pressurized hissing, flailing around weakly on the platform.

In the guard station far above, the guard on duty didn’t notice the alert notification on his screen for a good ninety seconds. Upon noticing it, he had to do a double take, and when he couldn’t clear it from his screen, he sat up in his chair, then leaned forward, and then stood up altogether, peering through the guard station’s main window and down into the bottom of the Pit.

Priority One was staggering to her feet, grinning up at the guard station through greasy strands of red hair.

Despite seeing it with his own two eyes, the magnitude of what he was seeing still floored him. It was the stuff of nightmares, if the nightmare happened to be oddly, specifically work-related and yet also apocalyptic at the same time. It induced a shock so total that you could only stand there for a moment while you processed that what you were seeing was, in fact, happening. And it was only when Priority One started staggering to the edge of her platform that the guard scrambled into action, fumbling at his screen to get to the right window and confirm the prison break alarm.

“Shit, shit shit shit shit! Security, this is the Pit! Laughing Alice has broken free!”

Event Log: Rewind: 29 years ago

Sybione, Marshy Republic

Praelion Middle School for Gifted Children

I don’t remember much about that day, which is funny thing to say about a day that changed the course of your life.

Perhaps it’s just that details fade with time, and it was almost three decades ago. Perhaps it’s the fact that I was young, and my developing brain didn’t know what should have been retained from that day. Or perhaps, I don’t remember much from that day because most of it wasn’t important anyway. All that mattered were those few minutes, and then few hours, that completely destroyed the person I once was.

We had talked about becoming psions for months, but it had only ever been talk. Getting our hands on neuranium was damn near impossible for two young teenage girls; Cherri knew the kids in the school that dealt, and she bought from them every now and then, but teen dealers didn’t have access to neuranium or any of its street substitutes. That was an adult drug, way out of their league, and one they weren’t willing to mess around with. The stuff that the school kids dealt was twitchleaf and watered-down stardust — if you got caught using, you’d end up in jail or juvie for a few weeks; dealing, maybe a few months. But neuranium? If you got caught with that, you’d be in prison for years — and that was just for possession. Using or dealing, you’d be in the slammer for even longer.

So I’d largely assumed that our dream was out of reach. We’d still talk about what we’d do if we got into the Challenger program, because it was fun to talk about dreams even if they’d never come true. Dreams took the edge off real life, made it a bit easier to deal with the day to day, even if it was a dream that was out of reach. For me, the dream of being in the Challenger program meant freedom — no longer being confined to the GeneTechs facility, and being able to go where I wanted and visit all those different systems and worlds that I’d only ever seen while watching my holos. For Cherri, the dream of being a Challenger meant making a difference in the galaxy. At least, that’s what she claimed when I knew her.

Either way, it was something that I’d silently accepted was probably out of reach. At least until the day that Cherri showed up at school — with neuranium.

She didn’t tell me right off the bat; no, she saved it for recess. That might be why I don’t remember much about that day — I didn’t spend most of it in anticipation, so to me, it was just another day at school until recess arrived. And even during recess she didn’t tell me until she had pulled me aside, and we were alone by the tree in the corner of the courtyard. There, in furtive undertones, I found out that she’d snuck it out during a visit to her father’s lab. As he was a high-clearance biochemical scientist for the Marshy military, it was unsurprising he would have access to restricted substances like neuranium — and, as I would later find out, things like a Cherriki clone that he decided to gestate and raise as his own daughter.

I remember being surprised by the dosage of neuranium that she’d managed to steal from her father’s lab. It was, quite literally, no more than what you might consider a pinch of salt — a grey dust that was slightly iridescent under the dappled light filtering through the tree’s leaves. Cherri also had doubts about the volume of the sample, but as she told it, that’s how all the samples in the lab had been divided. It was what she’d managed to get her hands on, and so it was what we had to use, and hope for the best. So she carefully divided the sample in half, we mixed it into our water bottles, and after looping arms together, we drank it together after counting to three.

Neither of us realizing that the sample Cherri had stolen from her father’s lab was a dosage allotment intended not for a single individual, but for an entire squad of adult spec-op soldiers.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

4:36pm SGT

“I swear to Sylak, I don’t know how she got out! Nobody’s been in here in the last four hours! Look, does it matter? She’s loose now; we need a containment team down here—”

The sound of something slamming against the door of the guard station has the guard jumping in his chair, fumbling his radio as he twists around. Behind two inches of clear plasteel, Priority One is pressed against the door, hands splayed against it, hair leaving behind smears as her green eyes lock onto him.

The guard struggles to get a good grip on his handheld and turn it back on. “Guys, guys, I need that containment team now, she’s outside the guard station!”

“Management’s getting a team together now. They have to get into their damper suits first.” the radio crackles back.

“Okay yeah but how long is that gonna take because she is here right now.” the guard demands, scooting his chair to the corner of the guard station furthest away from from Priority One, keeping his eyes on her the entire time.

“They should be down in a few minutes.”

“That’s not fast enough.” the guard spits back almost immediately. “I need backup down here man, this is fumrucking Laughing Alice, for god’s sake!”

Open the door.

The guard freezes as the whisper crosses his mind. Across the guard station, Priority One stares intently at him, her forehead resting against the plasteel while her green eyes glow.

“Guys.” the guard whispers, his voice starting to break. “Guys, the suppressants are wearing off. I can hear her voice. We need containment down here now.”

“Then turn on the station’s psi damping, you idiot! The guard station down there has protective measures installed for a reason!” the handheld crackles impatiently.

“Okay okay!” the guard says, scrambling to pull up the right screen on the guard station’s dashboard. “Tell me where find it, I’ve never had to use it down here before!”

I know what you’re doing. The whisper crosses the guard’s mind again, causing him to flinch and look over. Priority One still has her hands splayed against the plasteel door, staring intently at him. If you won’t let me in, I’ll let myself.

She grins as scarlet light starts to manifest across her body, much of it flowing towards her head to wreathe around it. Tilting away from the door, she lolls her head back almost as if she was falling over — and then, with sudden violence, jerks forward, slamming her head against the plasteel door.

The guard shrieks as scarlet light explodes away from the violent impact, which instantly sends hundreds of cracks splintering through the plasteel door. Alarms go off in the guard station as tamper sensors pick up the damage, and the guard clutches his radio to his chest, sobbing now. “Guys, guys, please get a team down here! She’s gonna kill me!”

Open the door and I won’t kill you.

“No, no, I can’t.” the guard sobs, hands clutched to his head as he shakes it. Turning to the dashboard, he tries to pull up the window to engage the guard station’s psi-damping, but Priority One slams her head against the door again. This time, the explosion of psi energy shatters it, and the guard shrieks again, jerking his arms up to block the shower of transparent shards. As Priority One shoulders through the hole in the door, the guard scrambles to get his stunner unholstered, but by the time he’s pulled it free, she’s already crossed the guard station, reaching out to plant a hand on his face. A paralyzing force locks him in place, preventing him from lifting the gun to point it at her, and it begins digging into his mind like hydrochloric rain eating through concrete, seeping into cracks and widening them as it goes. He lets out a low moan, but is unable to move as Priority One digs through his mind, searching for information and not liking what she comes up with.

Useless. She’d had a hope of scouring his mind for access codes and engineering a prison break for the other psions held in the Pit, but her brief inspection of the guard’s mind showed her that there was not a centralized way of releasing all the prisoners. Each cell had a rotating password that only locked when the cell’s inmate was scheduled to be released, and that could only be initiated if the paperwork cleared and the order came down from the top. The Warden needed to sign off on each and every Pit release, and without the authorization from him, none of the cells in the Pit would lock in a password for release.

And without the ability to release any of the other inmates, it meant that her escape would be that much more difficult. Security would be focused on her, instead of dealing with a larger breakout. Though she hated it, she had to admit their containment system was pretty good.

But not good enough to hold a Challenger indefinitely.

She lets go of the guard’s face, though she retains the hold on his mind. It requires only a thought to get him moving, standing jerkily and moving towards the door that leads to the hall connecting the Pit to the rest of the Penitentiary above. His biometrics, in conjunction with his access bracelet, are enough to get the door open. Following through behind him, she takes the stunner from him as she continues to force him down the hall, unsteadily so. All the while, she can feel the suppressants slowly wearing off as her body metabolizes them, the seven-year haze slowly lifting as the world around her becomes clearer and clearer. Clear enough that she can sense the containment team rushing down the stairway at the end of the hall, several seconds before they actually come into view.

She was going to enjoy this.

Event Log: Rewind: 29 years ago

Sybione, Marshy Republic

Praelion Middle School for Gifted Children

It took about an hour for the ambulance to arrive.

Not that I was aware of it. It was something I only learned in retrospect, later on, when I was being scolded by my caretakers. I only came to as we were arriving to the hospital, and that was when my nightmare began.

But prior to that, as others would tell it, both Cherri and I started having seizures shortly after chugging our neuranium-laced water bottles. The other students noticed, and informed the teachers, who called triple zero. The school nurses were brought to stabilize us and keep us alive until emergency services arrived. Nobody knew what was wrong with us, and as we were not conscious, neither of us could tell them.

We were rushed, in separate ambulances, to the hospital. I would be told, later on, that Cherri started to regain consciousness about halfway there, and though she was shaken and suffering from the aftereffects of a neuranium overdose, she would eventually recover with no side effects after her close brush with death. She would not end up developing psi abilities; even though Cherrikis were genetically predisposed towards it, predisposition was not a guarantee.

I, on the other hand, was not so lucky.

I regained consciousness as I was being wheeled into the emergency department at the Praelion General Hospital. Under normal circumstances, waking up strapped to a gurney, being moved into an unfamiliar and busy building, would be distressing enough for a twelve-year-old.

Being a newly awakened psion in the emergency department of a large, inner-city hospital made it infinitely worse.

I was immediately bombarded with an absolute cacophony of emotions. An emergency department in a hospital is already a stressful place, both for patients and staff. But when you are able to sense the feelings and emotions of everybody within it, it is far worse, by orders of magnitude. I was a child; I was only twelve, and I knew nothing about blocking or filtering out any of it.

And so I felt all of it, and could do nothing about it.

I felt everything. The pain of various patients in rooms undergoing procedures meant to save their lives; the worry and concern and grief of friends and family in the waiting room, pacing and hoping and fretting. I could feel the immense pressure on the doctors, who practically radiated stress and fear and resolve and resignation as they worked on the most recent critical patients. I could sense the harried frustrations of the nurses, who scrambled to tend to patients and keep up with physician requests; I even remember the near-constant tension in the receptionist, who despite handling panicking friends and family members every day, still felt the strain as keenly on every shift. I felt the full scope of mortal suffering and desperation in that emergency department, from one end of the spectrum to the other, whether you were the victim or the health worker expected to save them. And I felt all of it as keenly as if it was happening to me personally — because the dosage of neuranium I had received had rendered me hypersensitive to it all, even by the standards of psions.

I was only twelve. I was only a child. And it drove me insane.

I am told that I started screaming and thrashing not long after being wheeled into the emergency department. I don’t remember that part, either because I blacked out, or because my mind has blocked out that part of the memory in the years since. I am told that I would not listen to anyone and I would not stop screaming, and the emergency pediatrician only knew what was wrong with me because I wouldn’t stop screaming for people to get out of my head. I am told that they eventually had no choice but to deploy additional restraints to keep me still. I am told I fought the doctors tooth and nail and almost took out someone’s eye, and that it was impossible to get a needle into me, so they ended up having to force a mask onto my face and gas me. And it was only then that they were able to get me under control long enough to treat me.

When I came around, it was in a psisolation room — a variation on one of many such psi suppressant rooms I would be forced into in the following years. I was alone and I was scared, but for the moment, the cacophony of emotions had stopped. It was still there in the background, but muted, as if heard from a distance; muffled, as if heard from behind a thick layer of water. It was manageable, and it was the relief I needed at the time. It was a reprieve from the overwhelming firehose of emotions that had just about drowned me in the emergency department, and even though I was scared and alone and didn’t know where I was, I felt safe in that room. I felt protected.

So I curled up there and waited for someone to come get me, unaware that it was the first day of the rest of my life, and the person I was before would never come back.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

4:41pm SGT

Seven years of paralysis was nothing to sniff at.

There was an inevitable muscle atrophy that came with that sort of thing, and even a psion of commensurate power was not exempt from it. The physical act of escaping the Pit had, of a necessity, required Alice to buttress what strength her body lacked with psi energy. It had gotten easier as she had gone; as her body metabolized more of the psi suppressants, their inhibiting strength waned and her power slowly trickled back. But she was still not at full capacity, and constantly having to keep herself upright was a drain on her reserves.

That was why the Pit guard, now fully dominated and under Alice’s control, was carrying her through the Penitentiary. It seemed the best approach, since dealing with the containment team had exhausted her; and besides that, it conveyed the impression of vulnerability. Threats could come in many shapes and sizes, but a guard carrying an emaciated woman was not one of the common manifestations of a threat. As few of the Penitentiary staff had ever seen Priority One up close, it was easy to turn aside enquiries by simply stating that she was an inmate that had collapsed and needed to be taken to the infirmary.

Progress through the Penitentiary accordingly went much smoother than Alice had anticipated. Even with the lockdown sirens going off, they were not often stopped, and when they were, she simply had to reach out and seize upon whoever was accosting them. In an earlier era, she would’ve been able to easily break into a mind from a distance; but fresh off her long imprisonment, she found that physical contact helped overcome the residual inhibitions of the psi suppressants that her body was still metabolizing. Those that accosted them either became part of her retinue, their minds broken down and their will dominated; or they became fuel, the psi energy extracted from their minds until they collapsed insensate on the floor. In this manner, she made her way through the Penitentiary, collecting a sizable escort, and where possible, using them and their security clearance to open cells and rooms that would otherwise be locked down. It was not the full-size breakout or riot that she would’ve preferred, but it was enough to keep the Penitentiary staff busy as chaos spread through the facility, and groups of criminal psions clashed with their jailors.

And throughout it all, Alice fed off that chaos. She could feel it hanging over the facility like a thunderhead, pent-up and turbulent and filled with energy. The emotions of the prisoners, heightened by fear and hope and exhilaration; the feelings of the staff, so often laced with panic and fear and anger. It was a crackling miasma of conflict and tension, released in violent bursts whenever freed inmates clashed with staff. Pain and adrenaline and fear and frustration, all swirling together in an overwhelming cacophony of feelings. There was a similarity here she couldn’t ignore: a flashback to that first emergency department in the hospital, where she almost drowned in a flash flood of emotions.

Except now, she was feeding on the chaos, instead of being pulled under by it.

Event Log: Rewind: 29 years ago

Sybione, Marshy Republic

GeneTechs Inc

Things were never the same after that day.

Everything changed, in the very literal sense. Even after recovering and being returned to GeneTechs, nothing could go back to the way it was before. Specifically, I couldn’t go back to what I was before. I say that everything changed, but really…

I was what changed first, and everything else changed in reaction to me.

I could no longer have a normal relationship with my caretakers, if you could call the relationship normal in the first place. I could sense them now; could sense everyone, really, but my caretakers had more exposure to me. I could sense the things they hid; their exasperation, their impatience, their wondering thoughts. I could feel that to some of them, I was simply a job; that they had children of their own at home that they cared for more than me. And even though I had always been aware of it on some level, I started to realize more and more than I was an abnormality.

I could go on, take inventory of how completely my life changed in those incipient years, but to do so would be a deep dive into psyche and self-history that I doubt you’re interested in. So I’ll cover the highlights instead, such as they are.

I did not go back to school; GeneTechs pulled me indefinitely, and eventually revoked my enrollment altogether. Which seemed unfair, of course, but in the end was probably for my benefit. Sending a newly-psionic twelve-year-old back into a tightly-packed middle school full of hormonal, emotional teenagers was the very definition of a disaster waiting to happen. Even I admit that I likely would not have been able to handle it; constantly filtering a deluge of emotions from everyone in a classroom and beyond would’ve been torture. I was already unstable enough in the GeneTechs facility; that would presumably get worse in a school facility with a higher population density than most workplaces.

As a result of being pulled from school, I never saw Cherri again, at least for the better part of a decade. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, and had nothing in the way of closure from her regarding what she’d turned me into. I did get told that she had survived the incident, and without any lasting damage or abilities, which left me conflicted. I was unsure about whether I had come away having gained or lost, though the years to follow would prove to me that what I had lost was not worth what I had gained in turn.

As for Cherri herself — well, that was a story unto itself. One I would not find out until much later, but one which I can still tell you now.

GeneTechs was rightly outraged over what had happened to me, and considering how it had changed me and ruined whatever long-term research project they had intended for me, they were hellbent on getting an explanation from the school. This in turn ballooned into a full-scale investigation by the Praelion police and child protective services when it came to light that two teenagers had overdosed on military-grade neuranium in the corner of a school courtyard. The event even made the news, though only in passing — a mere blip in a 24-hour news cycle, quickly lost under the noise of every other newsworthy thing on Sybione.

But even after the spotlight turned away, the investigation continued, eventually pulling in the Marshy military as well. Cherri’s father would lose his job with the military, fired by way of recklessly negligent handling of sensitive resources, and the Praelion court ordered the Marshy military to pay GeneTechs the cost of any trauma and psychological recovery services I would need. Cherri and her family moved offworld in disgrace, the military had to foot the bill for my parade of therapists, and GeneTechs had to toss whatever they had planned for me. In the end, nobody won, and all the bickering that happened after the incident was just everyone trying to get their pound of flesh while looking for someone to pin the blame on.

And me?… I suffered the most for all of it, not that anyone cared. While GeneTechs, the military, and the school duked it out in court, each one trying to cover their asses and shunt the blame on each other, I struggled to adjust to my new sensitivity to the world around me, and the loss of the one thing I would never be able to get back.

My childhood.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

4:46pm SGT

“It is not possible.” the Warden hisses as he stalks down the hall with a shift manager and a pair of supervisors following him. “Seven years we’ve held her without incident, and it’s only now, a day after Tenji’s lackeys visit us, that she gets loose? Those little shits did something, I know it. They engineered this somehow.”

“We’ve locked down the Penitentiary, but there are… irregularities.” one of the supervisors says breathlessly. “Priority One has dominated some of the staff and is using them as her personal escort, to guard her and to bypass the lockdowns. And they’re releasing some of the inmates as they’re making their way through the facility. Security is having to respond to those breakouts instead of focusing on her.”

“Forget the other inmates; that’s like focusing on a house fire when the forest is burning down around you.” the Warden snaps as they step into the Penitentiary’s armory. “We cannot let Priority One escape. The fallout would be incomprehensible, not to mention the damage she could do if she got loose in the galaxy again. Have we alerted the Vaunted yet?”

“We haven’t reached out to them yet; we weren’t sure about the optics—” the shift manager says as the group starts arming themselves.

“What do you mean, you weren’t sure about the optics?” the Warden demands as he pulls a disruptor rifle off the wall. “Yeah, the optics are bad if they find out she broke out, but if she actually escapes? They’re gonna be even worse! Go call the Vaunted, you brainlet! If we can’t contain her, we need the Vaunted out there to catch her before she can get away from the facility!” He points out the two supervisors. “You two with me. If security can’t lock her down, we need to stop her ourselves. If we come across any guards on the way, we’ll bring them along. We’ll need a large group to deal with the escort she’s got.”

The supervisors hurry to get the last of their armament together, while the shift manager scurries off to carry out the Warden’s orders. Elsewhere in the Penitentiary, chaos continues unabated as Alice and her escort make their way through the facility, seeking the exit through multiple layers of lockdown and security. Other inmates are released as they go, less as a measure of solidarity and more as a matter of practicality to help keep security occupied, and prevent them from reinforcing the guards in other parts of the facility.

All of it is directed by Alice, still cradled like a child in the arms of the first Pit guard that she dominated. Surrounded by the sturdy bodies of the other guards that she has dominated, the group journeys through the Penitentiary, keeping their frail charge at the center while body-blocking any danger to come their way. Whenever one ends up stunned or too injured to continue, the others fill the gap left behind, while Alice reaches out to break the mind of the nearest candidate and use them to fill the gap, regardless of whether they are a guard or an inmate. In this manner, the composition of her escort cycles through a variety of individuals, each of them dedicated to the sole purpose that has been forced upon them:

Protecting Priority One, who is playing idly with the feather that set her loose.

Event Log: Rewind: 21 years ago

Sybione, Marshy Republic

Streets of Praelion

The remainder of my teenage years did not go well.

I could write a book about those years, but a summary will have to do in this case. In short order, my relationship with GeneTechs was inversely proportionate to the growth of my powers; the more powerful and adept I became, the less I got along with my overseers. Being a teenager was just the start of it; on top of being emotional, I was unstable, had difficulty filtering the emotions and feelings that others radiated, and was capable of reading minds, and eventually controlling and manipulating them. It was obvious I was not prepared to deal with it, and even more obvious that GeneTechs was not equipped to deal with it, despite how they tried.

There were many incidents in the following years, but it came to a head when I was sixteen and I decided I’d had enough. I felt like GeneTechs had deprived me of something that everyone else had, that being a normal family and life, and demanded to be released so I could go decide what to do with my own life. Being as I was sixteen, they naturally refused; to myself, in the typical victimizing manner of teenagers, I reasoned that this was because they wanted to control me and use me, rather than due to the fact that I was still a minor and legally could not be without a guardian. There may have been a kernel of truth in my teenage paranoia, but my adult self also looks back on that and understands that the practical reason they refused to let me go was because one simply could not release a mindreading minor out into the wide world and expect that it would go well.

At any rate, the finer points of such debate were largely rendered moot when I obliterated an entire floor of the GeneTechs facility in an impressive tantrum, and achieved emancipation by force, since I could not have it by asking. Forty-three people dead, another few hundred injured, millions in property damage, and a lifetime of occasional guilt for having killed the caretakers that had almost somewhat thought of me as a daughter.

Teenagers, am I right?

The next few years were spent on the streets of Sybione. All things considered, I did pretty well for someone that didn’t have a clue how the real world worked. I had to learn fast, as anyone who lives on the streets does, but being a psion provided an edge that others did not have when it came to picking up on the nuances of surviving on the streets. That did not mean I managed it perfectly; all too often there were mistakes made that I never repeated again, and more than a few times, I found myself in a suboptimal situation through my own poorly considered choices. But the advantages afforded by being a psion gave me the tools I needed to prevent those mistakes from entering fatal territory, and with lessons learned, they were usually not repeated again.

By the time the Challenger program’s recruiters tracked me down, I was a veritable nuisance that had become rather adept at evading Sybione’s local law enforcement and the planetguard generally. Lacking proper training and discipline, my powers had developed in some unique directions; but what I lacked in traditional proficiency, I made up for in raw power. This was, presumably, the basis on which the Challenger recruiters were willing to look past my otherwise spotty history and recruit me anyway. From what I learned in later years, the program’s recruiting criteria leaned away from quality in the years before its collapse; in the words of former Challenger, choosing power over principles.

But I didn’t know that at the time, nor did it matter to me much afterwards. What was important to me, and the reason that I accepted the recruitment offer, is that it was another chance at that dream that I thought had been lost eight years ago. It was a chance to reclaim something from my lost childhood, to maybe, maybe make things right, and be the hero I had dreamed of being, instead of the manipulative underworld criminal I’d become. At least, that’s how the Challenger recruiters sold it to me. And even though I knew that the program had ulterior motives — I could sense it in the minds of those recruiters sent to persuade me — the allure of the dream was too powerful. I told myself that whatever minefield awaited me, I’d be able to navigate it, and become the kind of hero Cherri and I had always dreamed of being. Powerful, confident, an inspiration to the rest of the galaxy.

If I’d known that they’d already recruited Cherri two years earlier, then I might’ve made a very different decision.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

4:53pm SGT

“We think we’ve got them cornered, sir.” a guard says, jogging up to the Warden as he thumbs over his shoulder. “They’re just around the corner down the infirmary hall; we sent a group around the other side to cut off their escape. We think she might be looking for drugs to clear the rest of the suppressants out of her system.”

“Cornering them is the easy part. Subduing them is the rest of it.” the Warden says, checking his disruptor rifle to make sure it’s charged. Behind him, the two supervisors and a smattering of guards are following along behind, while another squad of guards is hanging back at the corner of the hall, waiting orders. “The big issue is Priority One. Her escort are just body shields; she is the real problem. We’ve got riot shields with psi dampening; we need those in the front.”

The supervisors with the riot shields move to the front, while guards equipped with disruptor guns follow up behind them. The Warden is close behind them, giving orders as he goes. “Speed is of the essence; we will need to rush them and get the escort out of the way so we have a clear shot at Priority One. If we can hit her with a disruption pulse, it will delay her ability to muster a psionic counterattack, and in that time we will need to stun her. Once she’s unconscious—”

“Sir, do you hear that?” one of the guard interrupts, looking around. “I’m not the only one that hears that, right?”

The other security personnel in the hall all go still, listening. Drifting on the air is frail, soft voice, cooing the lines of a soft song.

“Look out, look out, it’s Laughing Alice; dancing, dancing by the burning king’s palace…”

The Warden blanches. “She knows we’re here. Move! Breach the infirmary, we have to take her down now!”

The supervisors lurch forward with that, turning the corner and running down the hall to the infirmary, with the guards following close behind. Kicking through the door to the infirmary, they rush inside, coming up against Alice’s escort, who have formed a circle in the middle of the room. The group rushes forward, the guards at the back firing stun pulses at the group while the supervisors work to yank the other escorts away, and meeting no resistance as they do so — only to find that there’s no one at the center of the circle. Lying on the ground is instead a large oxygen tank, akin to what would be used to help a struggling patient breathe. The Warden, who had made his way to the front, comes up short when he sees the oxygen tank on the floor. “What the…”

It was all in your head, darlings.

Alice’s voice echoes in the minds of everyone within the infirmary, a soft, wispy whisper. The Warden backs up a couple of steps, looking around as if expecting to see Alice lying on one of the infirmary beds, or peeking out from behind the curtains, but no such reveal presents itself.

You didn’t think I’d let myself get cornered, did you? Please, Kaiser trained me better than that…

“She’s not in here.” the Warden says, whipping around. “She sent her escorts here as a decoy; she’s in some other part of the facility! Fan out and find her!”

Stay with us, Warden. The members of Alice’s escort that are still conscious all turn about, grabbing and clinging to the nearest members of the security staff. There’s shouts of alarm as the guards try to disengage, and one of furthest escorts turns around, revealing that he’s holding a fire axe — and is activating it, a sheen of superheated plasma rippling over the edge of the axehead. Stay and play.

At first the Warden is under the impression that he’s about to be set upon by a mindless man with an axe. But instead of lunging forward, the dominated guard swings the fire axe up, and then brings it down in a mighty chop.

Right on the oxygen tank.

Across the Penitentiary, Alice smiles as she feels the tremor of an explosion pass through the walls and the guard carrying her. Humming softly to herself, she strokes the feather in her fingers as the fire sprinklers go off, filling the halls with the soft hiss and patter of falling water.

Look out, look out, it’s Laughing Alice; dancing, dancing by the burning king’s palace…

Event Log: Rewind: 21 years ago

Rokolos System

Sunthorn Bastion

Even though I knew Nova was part of the Challenger program, I didn’t know that Nova was Cherri until I’d been there for five months. And when I did find out, it was a difficult pill to swallow. Even though our paths had diverged eight years ago, we’d both been able to make our way to the dream we’d had when we were kids. But the ways by which we’d gotten there were not equal in any sense.

After Cherri’s family left Sybione, they’d relocated to the Currituck System, where she’d gotten the chance to start fresh, on a new world, a new school, with new friends. And for some reason the cosmos decided that she, of all people, would make a good Starstruck. She got the kind of powers that would make her a prime candidate for the Challenger program, and what did it cost her? Nothing other than the expectation that she’d use them to protect people, and give them back when it was required. While my powers? They’d cost me my sanity and my peace of mind, and left me skulking through Sybione’s underground just trying to survive, while she lived out the sparkly, candy-colored high school fantasy of any girl that’s ever wanted to be Starstruck. Even after what she did to me, she had everything given to her on a silver platter, while I had to struggle and fight just to make it through each day.

If I’d been left to dwell on it, it would’ve eaten me alive. As it was, we were both adults now, and the program demanded a lot of its recruits. I wasn’t given a lot of time to grind axes, and the Challenger administration figured out early on that one of those axes was Cherri, and they went to lengths to keep us from sharing missions or common space. I only got to confront her once, and that confrontation went about as explosively as you would imagine it would; the administration learned their lesson after that and never let us within a mile of each other ever again. But that single confrontation hadn’t resolved any of my traumas or given me the closure I’d been hoping for, and that unresolved anger ended up channeled into my work instead, often with deadly results. I became the loose cannon, the wild card, the uncontrollable variable.

And that’s how I met Songbird.

My proclivity for going beyond the parameters of the mission, or generating collateral damage in the pursuit of our objectives, had me placed on a remedial track within the program. I was paired with other Challengers that were supposed to model good behavior and skills for me, and I would only modulate my behavior to keep them off my back. But one of them, Songbird, got my attention not because I found his role model compelling, but because I was able to sift through his mind and determine that we shared something in common: we’d both been burned by Cherri.

Here was someone that could understand what I’d been through, and how I’d been hurt.

That made me feel closer to him than I’d ever felt with any of the other Challengers. And because I knew he’d been hurt by Cherri just like I had, I was more disposed to listen to him than I was any of the other authority figures in the program. I trusted him because of our similarities, and he never did betray that trust. He wasn’t like some of the other people in the program, who were always looking for ways to climb the ladder or land a sweet sponsorship deal with a gigacorp.

But he wasn’t always there to keep me in line, and it was all too easy to let my anger get the better of me when there wasn’t someone around to tell me to dial it back. Although… that’s not entirely accurate, since there were plenty of people around to tell me to dial it back, but I didn’t trust them like I did Songbird, and so I often didn’t listen to them. When my particular method of problemsolving became a bit too problematic for the program, they moved me to Accounting as a last resort, where I trained under Kaiser — and that’s the department I was in when news of the Songbird Incident hit the news like a paint balloon hitting a white wall.

While the rest of the galaxy watched in shock and horror, I rolled on the floor of the main lobby in the Sunthorn Bastion, laughing and cackling and giggling. Because the moment the news broke on that big holoscreen, that day became the best day of my life.

And no one would ever be able to take that away from me.

Event Log: Penitentiary Security System

Pallus Psi Penitentiary: The Pit

4:57pm SGT

With a good chunk of the Penitentiary’s leadership and security command structure indisposed, the chaos that had been somewhat contained started to gradually spill loose. The triggering of the fire suppression systems added an element of concern and uncertainty, and for the inmates which had gotten loose during the breakout, gave them some cover and a little bit of parity in contending with security. The complex had descended into a state of crisis; one that was not going to resolve any time soon.

But all of this was of very little concern to Alice, who at this point had reached the main entrance of the Penitentiary, still in the arms of her dominated escort. Most of the entrance guard had been diverted to help back up other security units in the complex that were at risk of being overwhelmed, leaving only single guard in charge of overseeing admissions and departures. Since most of the conflict was taking place further into the complex, it was a logical division of the available manpower; if you devoted more people to handling the problem, then it was less likely the problem would manage to make its way all the way to the front entrance.

That being said, a problem like Alice was unique in its capacity for evading obstacles.

So having reached the main entrance, all that stood between Alice and freedom was the vashaya’rei who had received his tour of the Pit two days ago. Having never seen Alice up close, he didn’t recognize her, but he did recognize the thousand-mile stare that the dominated guard had. It was why he was now reaching for his stunner, fumbling to get it unholstered and charged up.

Put that away.

The voice comes to his mind as a whisper, but not a soft one. It’s a tired whisper, an exasperated one; an order, but one that lacks compulsory force. And he can see, in the glow of green eyes sunken behind the greasy red hair, that the prisoner could very easily make it compulsory if she desired.

Open the door, little bird.

His stunner lets out a little chirp as it finishes charging; he starts lifting it towards the approaching guard, only to find a sudden, crushing force descending on him. It is a sensation akin to sleep paralysis, his feathered ears suddenly full of an incoherent roaring of white noise, a noise that seems to travel through his body, locking every limb into place. It is terrifying, in that he can do nothing about it; every muscle in his body feels like it is tensing and straining against a force so complete that it feels like being encased within hardened plaster. And thus immobilized, he is unable to bring his stunner to bear, or to prevent the prisoner and her escort from reaching him.

Normally I would break you for trying to resist. But you helped me escape. In spite of the white noise roaring in his ears, he can still hear her thoughts within his head as the pair move alongside him. One thin hand reaches out, holding a feather with the signature colors of his plumage, and she gently tucks it back into his hair, leaving it nestled there as the dominated guard takes his keycard to the main doors. So for that, I’ll spare you.

With that, the pair move past him, quickly rewarded by the chirp and the click of the front doors unlocking. Even while paralyzed, he can feel the rush of warm desert air as the doors open, and then the return of refrigerated silence as they swing shut and click into their locked state once more. It’s only after a long half-minute that the roar of the white noise fades, and the paralysis that had gripped him goes with it. He collapses forward all at once, catching himself on the floor as he heaves deep, gasping breaths, the cold sweat on his brow mingling with the fine misting of water from the sprinklers overhead.

And when his breathing has slowed, he turns and sits, using his talon’d feet to push himself across the floor until his back meets the wall. Clamping a hand to his chest, he works on bringing his heart rate down, only pausing to lift that hand and tentatively, gingerly touch the feather she returned to his hair.

Swallowing hard, he pulls his hand away, and reaches for his radio.

Event Log: Rewind: 7 years ago

Rokolos System

Sunthorn Bastion

After the collapse of the Challenger program, I went on the run, like many Challengers did.

It wasn’t a hard decision. The resettlement agreement had been offered, but that was the off-ramp for Challengers that were somewhat well-adjusted. Challengers that could, if given the chance, settle into normal lives, working nine-to-five jobs, paying their taxes and being good, quiet citizens wherever they chose to settle down. CURSE showcased the resettlement agreement to the rest of the galaxy as a generous amnesty agreement that demonstrated their moral fiber and superiority, knowing all the while that it would be used as justification to come down like a sack of rocks on any Challengers that refused to take the agreement. They were counting on it, and it was a masterclass in getting the galactic public to sign onto hunting and killing people whose only crime was their presence on a Challenger roster.

Besides, there were some of us that would never be able to take advantage of what the resettlement agreement offered. When you train people for combat, for battle, for special ops and infiltration, you don’t create a normal person that is at ease in everyday life. The Challenger psyche was geared for conflict. Outside of a Bastion or Challenger facility, it was constantly at a level of low alert, ready to ratchet up at a moment’s notice and respond to threats. Some Challengers could cast off that training and lean back into a civilian life, but too many of us had seen battle and ambushes and bloody, lopsided power brawls between larger-than-life characters. Sometimes we were the larger-than-life characters. And when that is your life, when that is your existence, it does something to you, leaves a mark on your brain structure, on your neurochemistry. Some of us were never going to be able to settle into a quiet, civilian desk job or a mild middle-class suburbia, and CURSE was perfectly aware of that. They engineered the resettlement agreement knowing that it would have no space for people like me, people that could never go back to a normal life, people that never had a normal life to begin with. The point was not to give us a way out, but to create the illusion of a justification for going after us when we refused to take an option that couldn’t provide what we needed.

And so many of us went on the run. I was gone before the program formally collapsed, but that was because I’d seen what was coming, and I knew I needed to get ahead of it if I was to survive. I got my shit together, lifted some high-value necessities from the Bastion inventory in the chaotic months before the collapse, and hitched a ride out to Halomorian, where it would be easy to disappear for a while. I watched from a distance as the program imploded in full view of the galactic public, one crushing headline after the other, until the Challenger Activities Ban was signed into law, and hunting noncompliant Challengers became legal.

Which was all very sad, of course. Or it would be, for someone that was attached to the program. I had distinctly fallen out of love with it when I found out that Cherri had become a Challenger, and become further disenchanted when I found myself walking among bodies, and realized that I was living the dream I’d always had when I was a kid. We’d finally become Challengers, making a difference in the galaxy.

Just not the kind of difference we thought we’d be making.

So that’s where your dream went, little girl; you spent so many years chasing it, always seeing it from a distance, that you didn’t realize what you were chasing after until you finally caught up to it. And by then it was too late; you couldn’t back away or back down, not after everything you’d been through, not after everything you’d sacrificed to get where you wanted to be. You paid for the ticket; you might as well take the ride, even if it wasn’t what you thought it would be.

In the years following the fall of the program, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I’d spent so long wanting to become a Challenger, only to find that being one wasn’t what I’d thought it’d be. Absent that, I could’ve refocused my drive on Cherri, finding ways to make her pay for what she’d done to me — but Songbird had killed her, and even though that made me happy, it left me without anything to motivate me. If being a Challenger no longer called to me, and I couldn’t work towards getting revenge on Cherri, what was left? Those two things had defined me up to that point. Without them, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t know who I was, what I was meant to be.

So I wandered, evading CURSE and bounty hunters as I went. I could’ve turned and fought CURSE the way that other rogue Challengers did, but I didn’t share the feeling of duty that they did, because I felt no outstanding loyalty to the Challenger program and what it used to be. The other rogue Challengers idealized the program and what it stood for, but having worked in the Accounting department, I had a different view of the program. I knew where the dirty laundry was, and I knew that the Challenger ideals that the rogue Challengers were valorizing was only part of the Challenger story. If Songbird hadn’t killed Nova, she would’ve leaked the Challenger archive to the rest of the galaxy — and that would’ve taken down the program as surely as the Songbird Incident had.

I didn’t really find my sense of purpose until I saw what CURSE was doing to the rest of the galaxy. Or rather, what it wasn’t doing. Their aversion towards interfering in conflicts across the galaxy — or, as they liked to put it, their ‘respect for the local right to self-determination’ — meant that they stood by and watched while governments rolled back rights for their citizens and crushed uprisings and mass protests. CURSE only intervened when a system government requested it — but if the government is the one perpetrating the crimes, they aren’t going to call the thunder down on themselves. And that’s precisely what regimes across the galaxy were  hoping for, and why many of them provided CURSE with material support in their fight against the Challenger program.

It bothered me, seeing everything that the rich and the powerful were getting away with once CURSE had replaced the Challenger program. So about a year after the program collapsed, I decided it was time to take on a new project.

Someone had to assassinate those fledging authoritarians.

Somebody had to terrorize their extremist sycophants.

Something had to be done to protect the rights of ordinary people, and now that I was no longer bound by the Challenger rules, there was a lot of stuff I could do that I’d never been allowed to do.

And with my background in Accounting, I had just the skillset for that sort of thing.

I had a good run. Six years, I think it was, that I worked my way from system to system, leaving chaos and destruction in my wake. A consummate professional would’ve been surgical, precise, and efficient. But a true believer would be indiscriminate, messy, and reckless, and I was a true believer.

I’m sure there were good people among the hundreds of nationalists and traditionalists I ended up killing in psi bombings and engineered disasters. But I could never be bothered to look for them, or even count them after the fact. If there was something I learned from Cherri during her time as a Challenger, it was that the ends justified the means. Cherri’s end had been power, and the means to getting it, even if it meant paving a path of corpses and broken friendships to get there. For me, the end was a better galaxy for everyone else — and the means was forcibly removing certain groups of people from it.

But recklessness had its price. CURSE eventually caught up to me, and the irony was not lost on me; they would stand by while regimes forced the boot onto the populations they were trying to rule, but god forbid I should stand up and do something about it. To CURSE they’d go, sniveling and whining about how Laughing Alice was disturbing the peace and riling up the citizenry and making it hard to use the levers of government to persecute political opponents. And CURSE would always dutifully answer the call, claiming every time that they were not endorsing the regime, but simply responding to the need to capture or kill a rogue Challenger. But anyone with half a brain could read between the lines.

Yet I’d known, even when I was captured, that it would not be the end. The Challenger program had been around for too long, and had a legacy too big, for it to simply fade into the echoes of history without protest. There would be people, whether they were former Challengers or new believers, that would carry on the fight even after the institution was gone. And that was one of my last thoughts before I was interred in the Penitentiary’s Pit, and submerged beneath a haze of suppressants and sedatives.

One day I would be free once more, and there would be a reckoning for CURSE and everyone that had benefited from their tenure of negligence.

Event Log: ???

Pallus: Highway 27

10:05pm SGT

“Consternation tonight as a breakout and a subsequent riot were reported at the Pallus Penitentiary—”

-krrrsszghrstttzck-

“—the Confederacy of Original Systems claims that the campaign to retake Mokasha is proceeding as planned, but independent security experts state that the failure to reclaim control of high orbit around Mokasha indicates that the assembled warfleet may not have the numbers or raw firepower needed to disperse the Collective reinforcements supporting the initial invasion fleet—”

-krrsghrzzzt-

“—will be swinging through the local galactic arm for two weeks only, with shows in Pallus, Gesper, Wrinchoth, and the Triangle! Get your tickets now before they all sell out, and rock the night away with the Racuriel Rockettes this Augus—”

-krrszrworlgrrht-

“—not public yet, a leak from an anonymous source close to Vaunted intelligence confirms that the galaxy-wide transmission burst detected last month was Challenger in origin, possibly an encrypted recall broadcas—”

-krzzzewssktc-

“Pick something and stick to it. Stop hopping around.”

Alice’s green eyes slide to the side, then return to the car’s radio after a moment. It cycles through a few more stations before settling on a local broadcaster of late-night smooth jazz, before the volume dials down a few notches, all without hands making the adjustments. Once the music is at a comfortable background level, she leans her head against the cool glass of the passenger window, the green glow of her eyes dimming somewhat.

So the leftovers finally stopped moping and got their shit together, did they?

“You have a voice. Use it.”

Her eyes slide to the side again. Sitting in the driver’s seat is a man in a waistcoat and a dark jacket, his black hair impeccably coiffed and his violet eyes cold behind the thin-rimmed spectacles. As men went, he was slender and small; there was a certain austere elegance to his very presence. It was in the way he held his shoulders even while sitting, the way his gloved fingers curled around the car’s steering wheel, the way his sleek white tie had been knotted to his collar with the utmost precision and carefully tucked within his waistcoat. Every movement was an act of smooth, almost surgical accuracy, even if it was as simple as hitting the turn signal or turning off the headlights.

Alice stares for a long moment, then peels her chapped lips back to offer her driver a queasy, yellowed smile. “You mean this voice?” she rasps. It’s a sound that squeaks and grinds all at once, setting the ear on edge with the rust of seven years of disuse. “If you insist.”

“While your psi voice is nominally more pleasant, you will need to communicate verbally if you intend to maintain anything resembling a low profile.” the driver replies with a certain velvet chill. “Your escape will not be long-lived if you are continually revealing what you are to others.”

“Cautious as ever.” Alice rasps, turning her attention back to the miles of dark road stretching through the desert before them. “A lot’s happened while I’ve been asleep.”

“It is good to see that the years-long coma has not impacted your incisive and thoughtful commentary.”

Alice’s lips peel in another small smile. “I missed hearing you roast people alive. It has a certain spice to it. Adds seasoning to a good conversation.” She exhales on the window her head is leaned against, watching her breath fog a patch of the glass. “So they’ve reclaimed the Bastions, then? Those are the only places where a mass recall could be triggered from. Is there anyone even still alive to answer the summons?”

“It is not a question of who is alive, but who will answer.” the driver answers, tapping the dashboard display to check a message sent to his phone. “Some have been waiting years for this. Others will avert their eyes, and pretend they did not see the recall summons.”

“Will you answer?” Alice asks, using the tip of her finger to draw on the fogged glass.

The driver’s violet eyes glance toward her, before returning to the road. “Diametric as we are, you are quite aware that we share that one commonality: we are not bound by the sense of loyalty or duty that afflicts other Challengers. Our reasons may differ, but you know that neither of us will be answering the call.”

Alice smirks. “But if he comes to you, will you hear him out?”

“He will have to find me first.”

“He will, eventually.” Alice murmurs as she finishes drawing the crude outline of a bird on the fogged glass. “You trained him, after all.”

The conviction in Alice’s words draws the driver’s gaze towards her, if only for a moment, before returning to the long road ahead. “I attempted to train him. For all his many and variable talents, he lacked the predisposition required to leverage them to their full potential.”

“You mean he wasn’t cruel, like we are.”

“A crude and partially inaccurate reduction of the intended sentiment, though it comes as no surprise. You always had a particular gift for butchering the message in the process of relaying it to others.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“That his moral arithmetic suffered from an overabundance of sentimentality. He could never reconcile the ends justifying the means, and more than once it prevented him from acting with the alacrity and surety required by an Accountant.”

Alice is quiet as those words sink in, watching the outline of the bird slowly fade as the fogged glass returns to normal temperature. “Perhaps he was better for it. Once you can justify the means, nothing is off-limits. No price is too high, no bridge is too far. You never stop until somebody else stops you. Nova was a case study in that, all the way to the end.”

For a moment it seems as if the driver is going to argue. And yet he hesitates, and in that long hesitation, one can see him setting aside the contrarian impulse and evaluating Alice’s statement on the merits. After a long silence, he answers, and his answer is short and to the point. “Yes. I will concede there is a measure of truth in that.”

The pair lapse into silence, and say little for several miles. Outside, the desert vistas of Pallus slowly slide past, silvered under the light of twin moons, while soft jazz continues murmuring in the background. Each of them are lost in their own thoughts, at once contemplating the past, and the present that is still being shaped by it.

At length, the driver turns onto an off-ramp that leads down a long road to an old starport, where a single small cruiser is parked and waiting. As they raise dust along along the straight and narrow road, the driver starts to speak again.

“The crew will take you where you tell them to, so long as it is not Collective space or an active warzone. It is a one-way trip, so choose carefully — their contract concludes once you step foot off their ship.” he says as they drive past the starport’s abandoned guardpost.

“Anywhere, huh?” Alice says, watching as they cross out of the parking lot and onto the maintenance road that leads around to the runway. “A whole galaxy, at my fingertips.”

“Indeed. Do not waste the opportunity; it is the only such one you will receive for a long time.” the driver says as they round the corner of the starport, the cruiser coming into view. The hatch is down, a couple of the crew waiting at the foot of the stairs as the car pulls up alongside them. “I doubt I will see you again, 5402. We both know I am not given to sentiment, so—”

“It’s okay, Kaiser.” Alice says, smiling as she opens the car door. “We both know you don’t give a damn about me. That’s what I like about you.”

Kaiser raises a single well-defined eyebrow as she staggers out of the car. “You like that I don’t give a damn?”

“No.” she says as one of the crew comes over to pick her up. “I like that you don’t pretend like you care.”

With that, the door to the car is closed with a soft thump. As Alice is carried to the hatch stairs, Kaiser sits back in his seat, looking somewhat perplexed; but it does not persist very long. The car is shortly put back in drive, heading back the way it came, eventually merging back onto the highway to the nearest city on Pallus.

And overhead, a small cruiser can be seen in silhouette against one of Pallus’s twin moons, quietly making its way to orbit.