Chapter 1: Night

There was nothing at first.

Then there was pain.

She was thrown against something hard, something that hurt her deeply. She heard laughter and then a low swish, the laughter dying away, getting away. She waited for a bit, to see if this wasn't some kind of trick, then she tried to get up, or move a bit studying her surroundings.

Then again there wasn't much to study, she barely knew the names of more than half of the things she saw. She didn't understand the language of the people keeping her in the small room. There was never anything to do here, and when they wanted her to do something, there was only pain.

She quietly crawled to the wall (at least she knew what a wall was) away from the thing that opened, leaned on the wall, and brought her legs to her chest, hugging them tightly. She wanted to stop hurting, she wanted the pain to stop, she wanted to see what was beyond this room.

A tiny voice in her head told her "Have faith."

She heard a loud noise and scrapping and banging. She cried.

"Believe," said the voice.

So she waited.

XxxX

According to Ordis, it was night on the Solar System, the dojo that it's clan members composed of at least eighteen Tenno, was silent. Normally it wasn't like this, but the Tenno, who everyone in the clan called Frost for simplicity was pretty grateful for the silence. At least after the rookies were rescued from the Grineer's clutches, the dojo had even been livelier that ever.

They had been fighting for a while now. Almost a year, and there seemed to be no end to it. Between the Grineer, the Corpus, the Infected and the Orokin-crazed AIs, even Frost was starting to get tired, yet he never showed this, as he was the leader appointed to the others, and as Vauban had said several times Frost was 'a natural-born leader'.

And here he was now, in the darkness of his quarters, sitting on the floor, mediating; thinking of where the team should be headed next. He paused for a moment, and sighed, "Yeah, 'team'," More like a big band of misfits. Frost decided not to go into detail of how many times Mirage and Loki had pranked him, or how many times he had to stop Vauban from zapping Volt, as the former's temper was the second worst of the team and Volt was mostly an annoying little shit (a different type of little shit from Mirage and Loki).

However in battle, every single one of the Tenno he was leader of, and every single one of them was deadly, even the rookies, were at least to some degree, they had yet much to learn. Frost still didn't complain much; this was the closest to what he had to a family. His own brother, at least according to his own memory and his brother's, had decided not to join this band of misfits, and instead began to be what some called a "space pirate", he never left the clan, not officially anyway.

Another Tenno, Saryn, had decided to leave the band (but not the clan), leaving to get a life as a mercenary, to sell her abilities to the highest bidder. Many didn't understand nor liked her choice, but all respected it anyway. At least—

"Operator Frost." He heard Ordis's voice. "Are you awake, Operator?"

He hesitated a bit, he really didn't want to answer, but then he yielded. "I'm awake Ordis, what is it?"

"Well, the Lotus has been trying to contact us, but since everyone is asleep she thought she should ask me first."

"And?"

"…There is something she would like you to do."

Ordis didn't say another word. Frost then heard the Lotus's voice.

"Tenno."

"Lotus. What is it?"

"I have a mission for you. A top priority one," She paused, Frost waited. "It's a hostage rescue mission."

"Rescue mission," Frost repeated to himself. "I'll go then, I'll get the oth—."

"Alone," the Lotus emphasized. Frost blinked behind the helmet and frowned.

"Why alone? Wouldn't it be better to have a team in this rescue mission?"

"This mission's hostage must be secured at all cost, no chances can be taken, if the hostage remains in enemy possession—"

"Whose possession?" Frost interrupted, not really caring.

"Grineer."

Probably a keyword to get him working, but Frost wanted to know more about the hostage. So he waited.

"As I was saying, if the hostage remains in Grineer possession, they may as well recreate entirely their cloning process."

Behind his helmet, Frost blinked. "What?"

"The hostage is neither Grineer nor Corpus, whatever they are, their genome seems to be what Vor wanted from the Tenno."

"A way to restore the Grineer."

"Yes."

Frost stood silently and headed for the hangar to deploy a ship.