Abel sighed in his normal, dramatic fashion; his glasses were already starting to fog up with the humidity in the air, even though it was nightime and the sun had long since set. The atmosphere was practically started to dissolve with instability and the faint sounds of thunder echeod off the darkened buildings around them.

"It figures I finally have time to visit Vienna and it's on an investigation," he bemoaned himself. His stomach growled a bit with hunger so he surrendered another sugar cube to ward it off a bit. "If they keep lowering my ration during these missions of ours I'm going to be the first priest to die purely due to a vow of poverty."

Tres looked at him monotonously. Abel gave him a sheepish smile. "Ah...guess you're not one to empathize with that, hm?"

"Negative. I am not granted a ration in monetary form since I do not require sustanence," Tres replied in his usual even tone.

"That's too bad because I probably would have asked you to share," Abel admitted, a bit frazzled. He readjusted his glasses as it started to rain ever so slightly. "What exactly did Lady Caterina tell you about this mission of ours, Father Tres? She practically shooed me out of her office the moment I got there."

"Our mission is to investigate the strange activity that has been occuring here in Vienna. It is causing unrest in both the human and vampire populations," Tres reported.

"And...what sort of 'strange activity' is she referring to?" Abel asked. "Last time I checked strange things were happening practically everywhere lately..."

"There have been repeated sightings of a creature that cannot be identified as either human nor vampire," Tres added. "It appears to be a female, but that is all that we have been informed of."

"Neither human nor vampire? But...how can anyone know that if they haven't seen her up close?" Abel asked.

"Satellites monitoring the open population have identified that she is neither human nor vampire," Tres said, standing up from where they had been sitting on the steps outside of the local church. "We must initiate the search before the rain potentially dampers her trail. Come Father Nightroad."

With that, Tres began to walk down the road as Abel about tripped over his own feet trying to keep up. He was curious as to what their readings had truly picked up, however. After everything that had happened in the last few months, however, there was little that could surprise any of them anymore.

They walked in silence for a short time before Tres's internal communicator crackled to life, and he paused to listen to it and reply.

"Father Tres, we have just recieved a potential lead on the unknown's whereabouts," Sister Kate's voice came through with a bit of interference.

"I am prepared to receive the information," Tres replied.

"We last recieved the signal from about two miles from your location, in an abandoned industrial district called Weatherdown Heights. It was used almost exclusively before Armageddeon but has been empty for some time now. Her signal is still being transmitted to the Vatican's scanning server as an unidentified being. Please keep in contact with us with whatever you may find."

"Positive. Father Nightroad and I will relay whatever information we can ascertain once we have made contact with the unknown," Tres affirmed, before his communicator shut off. He turned to Abel. "The unknown has been tracked to an abandoned industrial area."

"Well, by all means, lead the way," Abel replied. "My sense of direction isn't nearly as...refined as yours."

Tres nodded, but didn't seem to regard that Abel might not move as swiftly as he did; he suddenly took off at an inhuman pace down the road. Abel yelped as he sprinted to try and keep up, but it was of little use. Tres was gone before he could even make it a hundred metres down the road.

He groaned a bit and panted as he dramatically leaned on his knees. "I'll catch up with you Tres! ...wait, I needed to follow him there because I have no sense of direction..." he shouted, and then whimpered, as the realization finally struck him that he was essentially lost without his android companion.

Nonetheless, he sprinted off in the direction he'd seen him go.

Tres made it to the industral yard in literal moments, though he slowed once he'd reached the edge of the property. His internal scanner started to check for life signals, and almost immediately he could see an infra-red pattern left behind by something that was alive and humanlike. "Signal locked; pursuing..." he reported, arming himself almost immediately with his two guns. They had no way of knowing if this being was hostile or not, and Tres always assumed the former one way or another.

The industrial yard was empty and silent as death. The only sounds that reached his auditory receptors were the sounds of chains rattling in the wind, and his heavy footsteps as he walked along with his guns trained ahead of him. The small red beads of light traced along the dark asphalt as he paused, hearing what sounded like the distant noises of racing footsteps within one of the warehouses. He immediately turned and looked, seeing a figure race by one of the windows.

Tres suddenly crouched down and then leapt up swiftly, easily breaking through the old musty glass and landing gracefully on one knee in the empty room. His eyes immediately scanned for movement, and he saw a small form rushing out of the room. He locked both of his guns on the form quickly, and it froze.

"Halt. Cease and desist escape. You are under investigation of the Vatican for sending out obscured signals to the population control computation system," he reported monotonously as he approached the figure, keeping his guns locked on her.

He heard her whimper a bit, and she turned and looked at him. At first he'd assumed it was a child since she was quite short and frail, but it was actually a young woman. She was to the point of being so malnourished that her form had shrunken slightly and she looked younger than she actually was. She was also dirty and wearing mismatched dark clothing, as though she'd rummaged them from somewhere. Tres, however, was there for answers and not to elicit sympathy for the creature at this moment, though he did lower his firearms when he saw she was fearful and had stopped trying to evade him.

"Answer: Of what race are you?" he demanded of her as he leaned down so he was more level with her. One of his eyes was glowing faintly red as he tried to get a reading on her via his internal database.

But she was too frightened to talk. Tres got almost right up into her face, making her back up even more from him, though she found herself pinned against a wall and unable to distance herself anymore.

"Silence is not an accepted response," Tres said. "Answer: Of what race are you?"

"I...I don't know..." she choked out after a moment. "I...I was hoping to find someone that might...might be able to tell me what I am and...why I was made. I was...looking for this," she said; she reached into her blouse and pulled out what looked like a slightly damaged silver crucifix.

Tres honed right in on that. "That crucifix is a relic of the ancient Vatican. Where did you obtain it?"

"When...when I woke up...it was lying on my chest..." she said, looking down at it quietly, before she held it more firmly in her hand. "There was nothing else around me that...that wasn't in ruin already. I thought if I found out where this came from, I might...know what it is I am."

"Answer: Where is it that you awakened?" Tres asked, standing upright once more. He could tell his presence was intimidating her and he wanted her to calm down enough to give him information.

"I...I can show you..." she said, trying to edge around him. Tres held up one of his guns suddenly so that it was pointed upwards.

"Positive. I will be monitoring your movement. Do not attempt to deviate from showing me the location of your origin, or I will be forced to terminate you," he replied.

She frowned a bit and looked at him a little incredulously. "Aren't you a big charmer..." she sighed, though she turned and led him down one of the corridors. "I can't tell you how long I've been asleep...I only just woke up a few days ago and almost immediately I could tell I was being tracked by someone."

"By whom are you being tracked?" Tres asked.

"You mean besides you?" she replied, cocking an eyebrow at him. She turned back around as she continued. "I...I'm not sure who it was. But it didn't feel like a human or Methusalah either."

Tres narrowed his eyes faintly as this information, but remained silent.

The girl led him into what looked like it had once been a crude, makeshift laboratory that had since been overtaken by plant life and time. There was broken glass and decaying machines all over the place. In the center of the room was what looked like a modified cryogenic chamber with a clear top, which was open. The glass was compromised and cracked badly, as though the girl had had to fight her way out of it.

Tres took in his surroundings in silence; he could see the state of disrepair all of this was in. But if the girl's words were in fact the truth, how had she been kept asleep for this long while the rest of the laboratory had fallen into such rot? He got his answer as he looked closer. The single device that had been left attached to a generator was the girl's chamber, and it looked like it had only recently been severed from its power source by a rodent chewing on it. Once the chamber had failed to sustain her any longer, she had woken up.

"This is where I woke up...it took me hours just to force the lid open," she said. "But the moment I got out I could sense there was something wrong, so...I've stayed hidden here for the last couple weeks."

"Positive. Your malnourishment is consistent with your recollections," Tres replied. "The Vatican will have further questioning required of you. We must relocate you to an infirmary where your health can be evaluated and improved."

The girl suddenly looked at him, startled. "No, no! I can't leave here. It's not safe for me to leave!"

"Answer: Why do you not feel it is safe outside?"

"Because...because I...I don't know why I feel that way..." she said, clenching her fists. Her long dark hair was matted and hung over her shoulders as she shook slightly. "I can...just sense something awful is here. It's like a darkness that hangs over the whole world..."

"Come; I will escort you there. You will be safe," Tres said, offering her his hand.

The girl looked at him with a furrowed brow. "Weren't you the one that was just threatening to shoot my brains out if I tried to run from you?"

"Positive. But my mission has been diverted. The mystery surrounding your creation constitutes making sure that you are healthy enough to be questioned."

"Well isn't that just gentlemanly! You only want to get me help so you can have me interrogated!" she growled. "I'm not going anywhere until I feel like it's safe to."

"Negative. You are coming with me," Tres replied, reaching forward for her arm to make her come with him. The moment that he stepped forward, however, the floor beneath them started to crack.

It was like a cobwebbing effect; a small pressure fissure from his weight caused the entire floor to begin to give way. He could sense it was not mere decay that was causing this, however; his auditory receptors detected a low frequency sound that was disrupting the integrity of the building around them. The girl cried out and staggered as the entire room started to crumble apart around them.

Tres wasted no time; there wasn't any way to escape the room before it collapsed, but his mechanical body would handle whatever trauma it was dealt. The girl, however, likely could not. He quickly seized hold of her and kept her close as the floor suddenly fell away, and they both toppled down into the darkness.

The girl screamed and had no choice but to cling to him closely as they fell; it wasn't only the room they were in that had fallen apart. The entire building seemed to have dissolved into rubble in an instant. Tres couldn't determine what had caused it yet, but he held the girl close nonetheless.

"Do not panic. No matter how far we fall, my body will absorb the impact. Please stay atop me until we have reached the base."

The girl looked at him with fear and surprise. "How can you remain so calm...if you're the one who hits first then you'll be killed!"

"Negative. I am not human and thus am not crippled by the same manner of force as them."

"You...you aren't human either...?" she murmured.

She didn't have time to question him again, however, before Tres suddenly slammed against what looked like a massive pile of stone along the ground. It was so dark that she could barely see, but she could hear the crunch of his form hitting them. The rush of blood she'd been expecting to see, however, was instead replaced with the sound of metal being twisted and wires short-circuiting. The girl gasped as the dust started to clear, and she could see in the dim light his form sprawled out underneath her. Tres's eyes were closed and he appeared to be unconscious, and she could see the wound in his shoulder where some stone had impaled him. There were small electrical misfires coming from around it.

"You...you're an android..." she murmured, though she was met with silence this time.