PROLOGUE
He hated this place. The light was dim, and the table he sat at stank with the rank, metallic smell of a medical ward. Even the air was repulsive, dank with the stench of rotten wood and smoke from the cigars that still glowing from shallow puffs of displeasure blow from between the lips of the men in front of him.
Ten pairs of eyes swept across the room, each one leering at another with equally cold, soulless glares. Then, one by one, they lazily shifted their gaze onto him, boring into him, sizing him down. Well, they tried. Even without his suit, he towered above the table at which they hunched over, unmoving. He kept still as they raked across him, searching tirelessly and incessantly for any lapses in his composure, any cracks that could be widened to expose a possible weakness. These men did not accept weakness.
A single bead of sweat formed on his scalp and trickled down the side of his metallic skull, dripping into his clasped robotic hands. He took a reassuring breath, and spoke firmly.
"I have a request."
The one with poisonous green eyes growled from his left.
"What makes you think you have the right to return here?"
As was, indeed the thought on everyone's mind.
"Nothing," he replied, unblinking. "However, I may be able to sway your somewhat… distrusting opinion of me."
They all shared a reluctant sideward glance before the one that sat at the right edge droned in the same voice as the rest; callous and dead. "You wish to bargain with the Council? I see that the years have taken your sense away with them, General." chided the one on the right. This one wore a crooked smile, one that glowed under the sickly light. A stray fly buzzed overhead, weaving and ducking in and out of the tenebrific gloom that coiled around it.
He gritted his blackened teeth and swallowed the insult forming in his throat. A mere slip of the tongue would mean the end of him. Processed, scanned, and destroyed. And then, he would disappear; like ashes, cast away into the wind.
"I believe we should show our hands before we rush to conclusions, no?"
A grunt and a few sighs sounded from the group. He found himself containing a grin.
"Very well. Speak."
"I have a plan." His tone was constant, despite the gravity of his words. "One that will find us the Dojos."
One of them roared back in laughter, joined by the grainy chuckles of his associates.
"You think that YOU, of all people, can find them? Do not take us for fools, General, we have tried many times ourselves and failed, and we have armies that dwarf the size of your miserable scrap of half-breeds." The laugh that followed was without life, and his miserable features were etched into his skull, which already were pressing against the blue veins that criss-crossed across his face. The man's augmentations whirred as he pushed himself up from the table with a dissatisfied grunt.
"This is a waste of time."
"Wait."
Regret made itself known, balling in his sore throat, but he had to take risks; his options were running out.
"You dare to give orders to the Council?!" the Councilor's humorous mood vanished as his face flushed a furious red.
"I apologize, sir, but I am serious." They stared him down, like sharks circling a sinking ship. Waiting hungrily for the first drop of blood in the water.
"Fine, how would you go about this farce of yours?" A much older one asked from the centre, with a voice as cold as the ice in his blue eyes. The High Councilor.
"You cannot be serious, how do you even consider-" the man next to him turned in his chair, shocked.
"Quiet, Gras. We shall hear what he has to say."
"Hmm." Gras sat back in his creaking chair, arms crossed. The General felt an insignificant sense of triumph spark from his chest.
"Continue." The High Councilor beckoned, with thin lips.
Five minutes had past and not a word had been spoken after he had finished. He could even count the muted ticks of the clock, chipping away at the time. Silence was shared by all, but all for different reasons. The Council in disbelief, he in victory. He held the cards now. He nearly let himself laugh, how nervous had he been not ten minutes before, under their stare. But now he had them by the scruffs of their repulsive necks.
"So, have we reached an agreement?" asked General Vay Hek, with a glint across his yellow eyes.
Darkness kept him. A single, small pinprick of light shone a brilliant white down through the center of the dome, illuminating just enough for the naked eye to see. He had long learned to live with the near-darkness of his resting chambers. Not a whisper was heard from the huge, domed walls. One of the few things that brought him comfort was, indeed, the silence in his resting chamber, as it afforded him the peace to heal his wounds, both physical and mental.
How long had he trained here, under the bleak light of the White Sun? Days? Months? The wielder of the Nikana could be no ordinary swordsman, after all. The ancient blade was forged from ornate Tenno steel, its fighting prowess never tiring and the blade cleaving through flesh and bone as finely and precisely as it had done centuries ago. Its origin evaded him when he tried to chase it after it had been found with him upon his inoculation and any Tenno beyond his rank whom he tried to ask shooed him away with the flick of a gloved hand.
He no longer thought of the Nikana as a weapon; it was an extension of him, a perfectly crafted weapon of war that knew nothing but bloodshed. Many would call him a killer, an outcast, a sociopath. He admitted to all of them without hesitation, he may have gone as far as to embrace it. He knew his brothers and sisters may have detested him for his heartless glee in the field of battle, but it was his inhuman grace and finesse in combat and assassination that had kept him and his comrades alive.
A sound. Ash was up within a moment, his Nikana poised in front of him. He lowered his weapon when he recognized the alluring face of Saryn. She scanned the room with narrowed eyes, trying to pick apart any movement from in the black shroud that hugged the walls, hiding anything inside it. Her devilish eyes rested upon Ash, who had knelt back down again, only his head moving slightly downward in what appeared to be acknowledgement.
She took another step into his cold chamber, the clacking of her stilettos echoing off the walls. The beam that shone through the roof crept its way along her pearly white skin. Ash admired her beauty, which was never rare to appreciate. Flawless, wavy blond hair cascaded onto slender shoulders, which complimented her thin waist and perfectly sculpted hips. Her apple red and cream suit finished off her striking image with tall, willowy legs on pointed stilettos.
Ash hid a smile; the nature behind her allure was nothing sweet. Saryn often released aphrodisiacs and lustful pheromones into the air on the battlefield to distract and lure in oncoming enemies with a lascivious aura of pleasure before stabbing them in the throat with her Fang stiletto knives. She had often compared her deceitful tactics to those of a Venus Flytrap, one of the Old Earth's carnivorous plants. Ash had always admired her for this approach to their work; sadism was one of the few things they had in common.
The corners of her lips curled up into an impish smile.
"Hello again, Ash."
Not this again.
"What do you want?"
"Just to chat. We haven't had a good conversation in a while."
She spoke softly, with a kind of calm amusement, with no unneeded movements of her lips.
"We have. Just none of them were good. And most seemed to rather be one-sided, to say the least."
She giggled rather childishly, before looking back up at him. Her eyes lit up the room, outshining the bleak light of his chamber.
"I didn't think you had it in you for humor."
"Neither did I."
She giggled again. Saryn knew how to be adorable when she wanted to.
"What do you want, Saryn?"
She hesitated, lips parted, before answering with another smile.
"I just worry about you sometimes; all alone in here, no one to talk to."
Liar.
"Perhaps the silence of the chambers is just what I need." He remarked, fresh mists of cold breath billowing out from his helmet.
She raised a perfectly-plucked eyebrow very slightly in mild disapproval.
"Get over yourself, Ash. I know that something is bothering you; normally you would at least be in the baths or some place hospitable." She said with a slight shiver in her breath.
Silence, again.
"Well?"
"What makes you think that I would tell you, of all people?" Ash replied snidely.
Her smile was gone, but only for an instant. She started to pad slowly towards Ash, perhaps purposely making the swing of her hips too obvious, but Ash was mesmerized nonetheless. A subtle click came from the back of the warframe's collar as her fingers swept her golden hair back behind an elegant ear. Ash began to notice a small shimmer appear round her upper body, and he could have sworn that he picked up a slight smell of…
Rose.
His hand went straight to the kunai on his hip, drawing it and standing up within a heartbeat. His hand moved on the next, straightening outwards and releasing the kunai before snapping his hand back for another throw. It whistled through the air, landing just within a hair-length where Saryn was about to place a graceful foot.
"You'll have to try harder than that." He smirked.
She remained motionless, before stepping back, but not too far. Just enough so the light could let him see her face.
"I honestly wonder when you'll learn to live with us, because right now it feels like you're just... passing through." She looked at him with something that resembled sympathy, but it was more of a pathetic type of pity.
She said nothing as she arrived at the entrance to the chamber. Light poured in through the partition between the doors, casting a long shadow that stretched all the way to Ash's perch. Once the doors opened, she stood, looking straight at the ground. He listened.
"Ash, I…" She stopped mid-sentence, shaking her head. She breathed another breath of cold air in, and shivered as she exhaled it out.
"You know what? Forget it."
She looked round at him with that same, horrible look.
"I'll be in the Oracle, if you decide to join us. Goodbye, Ash."
The doors shut, blocking out the precious light, and leaving him in blackness once more.