Visiting Hours

3238

ADX Vostok, Supermaximum Correctional Facility
Lake Vostok, Antarctica

Despite the weapons pointed at his back, Julian Kintobor felt as if he was still in control. He walked down the hall with his head held high despite everything that had led to this point. If he was showing any degree of self doubt, he was keeping it locked deep inside his psyche. He had gotten good at doing so at a very young age. He had been tormented as a boy by an older brother and a father that had wanted unreasonably high expectations from him, so he learned to lock his pain away. He was glad he did - that pain; that anger, was what gave him strength.

"Straight line." The military policeman behind him commanded, though his tone said that leading Kintobor down this hall was the last thing he wanted.

Julian glanced down at his hands, cuffed together, and with the sort of restraints that barely allowed any movement between the two wrists. The same old tired song and dance. Every time he had been taken from his cell, the same procedure had been carried out. They searched his cell, they searched him, they made sure he wasn't hiding anything in his mouth, or anywhere else for that matter. They ensured that his sealed solitary confinement chamber was clean of any communiques or messages from the outside world. The UEG wanted to make absolutely sure that Julian Kintobor was as far removed from the outside world as possible.

He didn't even know where he was. Not really. He had a vague idea of course. In the rare occasions that he had been allowed to mingle with the prisoners of this place, they had told him he had been taken to a maximum security facility in Antarctica, the southernmost continent on the planet Earth. He had been to this planet many times before; it was important to him as the planet that hosted the Jumpgate to allow him access back to Mobius. Of course, he had devised his own means of traversing back and forth since then. That was a detail he had forgotten to mention at his initial interrogation.

Of course, he knew that this was a transient home for him. They had told him as much as they loaded him up after his farce of a trial. Ten judges. Ten. All of whom already had it in their minds that he was guilty - not that Kintobor actually denied such a claim. He was guilty as sin and he knew it. They had sentenced him to be sent to a far away prison so far away that the void of intergalactic space would dominate the sky. He would go insane staring into the blackness searching for any hint of life, all the while the planet privileged to house him would be without natural light in the dark. They had promised him it would be as close to hell as he could imagine.

Well, he would see about that.

Today though, he had been taken from his cell. He was told he had a visitor. No less than four MPs escorted him through solitary, and then through general population. The exposed section of walkway overlooked the courtyard where inmates 'mingled' for almost ten hours a day. He had observed them using prison exercise equipment, playing sports on ball courts, and chatting among themselves in corners, being watched all the while by guards with high powered rifles, ready to put them down within an instant.

He passed by guard stations and they watched him with unease. The fact that regular prison staff were not permitted to escort him was telling enough, but more so was the reason for why this was. Kintobor glanced down into the courtyard, eyeing several inmates, analyzing them; evaluating them.

Prisoners were so easy to turn. They were so easy to manipulate. Many of them, he had noted, were indeed quite stupid, then again, most people were compared to him. It had made breaking them only a simple challenge.

One of them glanced up, and then another.

"Hey, they're moving the Doc!" the first shouted. Soon the rest of the courtyard glanced up. "Hey McMurphy, why you moving that fat piece of shit around?"

"None of your business, Otto." the guard captain on duty said. "Besides, that's UNSC shit, not us."

"Oh don't stop your game on my account." Kintobor spoke. "It looks like you were having so much fun."

"Shut up." the ranking MP said.

"Too bad Otto can't score a three pointer to save his miserable little life, which is going to be rather short I think."

"The hell you say to me, Eggman?"

He grimaced. He didn't like that name. Oh he didn't like it at all. The worst part was, nobody had told the scum about it in the first place. They arrived at that conclusion all on their own. That's what angered him the most. He would have to fix that. He would need to fix many things.

"I said it's a wonder nobody's heard about how you made those little girls scream before you butchered them. I thought it was something you took a lot of pride in."

Even from here, he could see the color drain from Otto's face. "You're bullshitting, man."

"But then you went after the third sister - Rita. Only eleven months old." He shook his head. "Sick men like you need real help."

"How the fuck you know that, man?"

"You mean that wasn't bullshit?" A burly man near the equipment said, throwing the dumbbells to the ground.

Julian stopped and leaned against the fence. "Oh, by the way Otto, I just wanted to say something else. You're probably going to be busy soon, so I'll be quick. I'm sorry to hear about your friend Carlito passing. Shanked in the neck. What an awful way to go."

"What?" Otto said, his small voice slowly being stifled by the growing din of the prisoners.

"Maybe making fun of people for their appearance doesn't pay off. Think about that while you have the chance, Otto."

"Lito?" Otto said, not even paying attention to the men that now surrounded him.

"How the fuck did he know about that?" the guard captain said, glancing at the MPs, and then running to catch up. "Hey, I want to speak to that prisoner!"

"We're on a schedule, sir." The MP said. "You can question him after."

"I want to speak to him now!" The captain said. "He's been in solitary over a month and Carlito got shanked two days ago!" he roared getting closer.

The MP stood to guard Kintobor. "Sir, you lay a hand on him and I'll have you arrested."

This stopped the guard dead in his tracks as he noted the MP's stance, his clenched jaw, eyes obscured by sunglasses, and most importantly, the submachine gun now at the half-ready position.

"I'm sure the boys would be thrilled getting to know you." Kintobor said, his eyeglasses flashing in the light. "By the way, shouldn't you be calling for a riot team right around now?"

The captain took one look at Kintobor's crooked and wide smile before realizing that there was screaming coming from the prison yard. He shouted into his radio and ran back.

Julian laughed heartily.

"No speaking." an MP said, shoving him forward, almost knocking the glasses off the prisoner's nose. "Eyes forward, and no physical contact with anyone else."

Says the dim bastard who just shoved me, thought Julian. He began to busy himself into wondering if the man had any family.

The room that he had been led to was sparse, nearly bare were it not for the metal table and chairs. The furniture was bolted to the floor, and there were no exposed lighting fixtures, only strips fit flush into the ceiling. Even the cameras were flat panels, the blinking red lights indicating that this room was being constantly monitored. Kintobor was led in by the MPs and instructed to sit in the chair closest to him. He did so without arguing, quietly slipping into the hard metal chair.

"Hands on the table." he was commanded. The Doctor responded by placing his cuffed hands directly in the brushed metal tabletop. The metal was cold, even uncomfortably so. He suspected the temperature of the room was kept low to keep the prisoners brought here in a state of stress. That simple tactic did not work on him. He had endured much worse in the past. These Humans and their concepts of what would actually scare him had no idea who they were dealing with. They couldn't even confirm his identity without a shadow of a doubt. He had no fingerprints in their database, had no documentation that would be of any use to him; indeed his records were part of a database that did not even exist anymore. For all intents and purposes, outside of anecdotal instances, nobody could be one hundred percent certain that the man sitting in the chair was even named Julian Ovi Kintobor. That made them uncomfortable. Good. That was what he wanted.

"Could I get some water?" Kintobor asked. The guard continued to stare ahead though as if he hadn't heard. However, the simple question caused a slight twitch in the guard's posture. The doctor took this into account. Any potential weakness could be exploited in the future. For this man, it was a slight chink in his military bearing. He groaned melodramatically. "Come on, just a bit of water? If I'm going to be talking I want to keep the pipes working.

"Get him something, please." The guard said quietly to another corrections officer at the far end of the room. "If only to shut him up."

Julian's eyeglasses flashed again, and he took note of the guard's name. Lancett.

The other guard returned with a styrofoam cup with clear liquid. He put it in front of the doctor who consulted it, looking it over, and with a dramatic flourish, looked at the man who had given him the cup.

"What?" the man asked in a tone that suggested he was at the end of his rope.

"Is this glacier water?"

"Oh for fuck's sake." Lancett said, rubbing his face with his palm and then leaning in to look at the prisoner. "Look you son of a bitch. I know what you're trying to do. I've been seeing it out there every time you mix with those other poor bastards out there. I am so glad you are not going to be our problem anymore. Three more weeks and you're going out to the ass end of the universe with people who've decided they don't give too much a damn about living anymore. You're going to be one of them. I promise you."

"That's too bad. The place was going to be so much more interesting with me here. I'll have to bump up my schedule before I ship out."

Lancett didn't miss a beat, "Roscko, you mind checking out that camera for a moment to make sure it's working?"

The other guard nodded, walking over to the ball camera mounted in the corner of the room. "Just want to make sure it's working?"

"Yeah, get up there, make sure the wires are all clean and shit."

Roscko retrieved a chair from the corner, putting it in place in front of the camera. He raised himself up, ensuring that he was positioned directly in front of the field of view as he looked it over.

Lancett looked once at his partner, then back to Kintobor. Without warning, he grabbed the nightstick out of the harness on his belt and slammed it across Kintobor's right arm.

The prisoner retched, and his left arm moved to cover his right as far as his restraints would allow. He gritted his teeth, he groaned, he growled, but much to Lancett's displeasure, the prisoner didn't cry out.

"Roscko, how's that camera looking? Do we need to reschedule the interview?"

"Just need to clean the lens. Give me another second."

"No problem." Lancett said as he suddenly struck out again, this time against Kintobor's left arm.

The doctor's teeth were gritted, and a slight wheezing escaped between them. His knees were pulled up, and behind his glasses, his eyes were pressed shut in pain. Once again, the man refused to cry out in pain.

"Let me explain how the next few weeks are going to work." Lancett said, walking around to the other end of the table. "I'm going to put you in the deepest, darkest hole we have with other people that fit your bill - traitors, murders, political targets, and pretty much half of ONI that was sucking at Marshall's teats. If memory serves, a lot of those guys still don't like you."

Robotnik spoke through the pain, refusing to give this guard the satisfaction of his agony, "Last I heard half of them hung themselves in their cells."

"This is Ant-fucking-arctica. Bottom of the world messes with people; it's not our fault. We can't be everywhere at once, and the cameras freeze half the time in the Tomb, you know that. Besides, that's half less for you to screw with. I'm sure when that shuttle comes by there's not going to be much left to move anyway. Lot of the guys down in the Tomb are liches now; nothing not even the cold can touch them. You thought things were lax here..."

Liches. The kingpins of the supermax wing buried deep under the beyond freezing surface of the ocean.

"Only reason you're not down there this very second is because your processing was driving half our people crazy."

"I guess that worked out for me. Sorry to disappoint."

Lancett backhanded the man in the chair. Kintobor's glasses flew from his face and hit the ground, skidding until they hit the boot of another guard, shotgun loosely held at the waist. The man glanced down at them, blinking stupidly.

Lancett finally got a glance at Kintobor's face completely unobstructed. He saw a pair of two icy blue eyes first looking at the discarded glasses, and then to Lancett, a look of absolute unbridled rage filling the prisoner's fat features. Rage directed at Lancett and nowhere else. Robotnik's cheeks were red, even the one the guard hadn't touched; his nostrils on his large nose were flared, his brows folded, and his mustache bristled with anger.

Lancett paid no attention though; he had seen that look thrown at him thousands of times in his career at the prison. That rage was impotent. Kintobor's hands were bound, he possessed no weapons of his own, and the guards had live ammunition loaded into their shotguns. If the good doctor decided to lash out at the guard, then it would be the work of only five pounds of trigger pull to paint the metal table red.

"Roscko, I think that camera looks fixed."

"Sure. Looks good to me."

The other guard lowered himself, allowing the camera to peer into the room without anything blocking it.

Lancett walked over to where the glasses lay on the ground. He picked them up, looking over them. He rubbed the lenses on the sleeve of his shirt, made his way back to the table, and casually tossed them on the surface. They clattered, but stopped in front of their owner.

Kintobor hadn't even blinked in the time that passed. His thoughts were filled with rage and planning. Lancett could use his truncheon all he liked, but as soon as he laid a hand on him, the doctor marked him forever in his mind. He was just about to open his mouth, when the door to the interview room depolarized and slid open, revealing a man dressed in black. Kintobor couldn't see the man all that well, but as soon as the man's Texan drawl reached his ears, recognition sparked in his mind.

"Good to see you again, Julian."

Robotnik picked up the glasses, rubbed them on his jumpsuit and placed them back onto the bridge of his nose. Vice Admiral Gerome Andsworth stood in the doorway. He was sharply dressed in a pressed black uniform and tie, his shoes finely polished and gleaming in the sterile light. His bald pate reflected the same luminosity like crystal, and a mustache to rival Kintobor's own was finely trimmed.

Instantly, his rage was gone. Instead, respect rose in him.

"Ah, Gerome. Good to see you too. Come all the way to the bottom of the world to see me? I'm flattered."

Andsworth made his way into the room, looking the Overlander up and down, taking the degraded site in. Instead of his usual red lab coat, he wore prison orange. Julian Ovi Kintobor held a whole world in his grasp. Today, he was just another brick in the wall.

"I'm just passing through. Was here not too long ago. You two can go." he said, indicating Roscko and Lancett.

"Sir?" Lancett asked, shoulders lowering.

"I said you're dismissed, gentlemen. Mister Bartley can handle security." he said, indicating the third guard who blinked again at being identified.

The guard looked for a way to talk himself out of it, but simply sighed and said, "Yes sir."

Roscko followed his superior out of the cell, leaving only Andsworth, Kintobor, and the third guard specifically asked to stay.

The silence built over the span of mere seconds that could have been hours. Never once did the two men break eye contact as they stared each other down, wondering who was going to have the first word in.

"I understand you're going to be transferred very soon." Andsworth said, breaking the silence.

"So they tell me." the prisoner said.

"Truth be told I won't miss you."

Robotnik canted his head left and right. "Oh Gerome, you're getting me right there." he said, tapping his heart with his bound hands. "We haven't seen each other for months now, and this is how you greet me?"

"What were you expecting?" Andsworth asked.

"'Hey Julian, what's up? How's your stretch treating you...', I mean you could use your imagination."

"Where you're going, Imagination is going be your best friend." the admiral said, sitting down on the chair and placing his cap on the table. "You ever hear of it?"

"No." Robotnik simply replied.

"High Moon Supermaximum Correctional Facility. As close to hell as you're going to get in this life. It's one of the worst ever conceived of. You're almost out in intergalactic space you know; even our best ships take their time getting there in case they end up in the void. Lonely little star. Even lonelier planet; all dust, barely any water, but there's millions of the worst examples of Humanity that we have to offer there. The death penalty's too good for them."

"Are you trying to scare me?" Julian said, eyebrow raised. "You know that won't work."

"Not in the slightest." The admiral said spreading his arms. "I'm only stating facts. I'm sure High Moon will be thrilled to house the first Overlander prisoner in their history. Hell, you might even end up on a record book somewhere."

"Lucky me."

"They'll make sure you won't breathe without a guard watching. Nowhere to escape to as the world is a scorched desert."

"I'll be the judge of that, my old friend."

"Friend." Andsworth said, mustache broadening in a smile.

Silence for ten seconds.

Andsworth then said, "How long have we had the pleasure of knowing each other's acquaintance?"

"What year is it?"

"'38."

"Four years now." Robotnik said. "Four years since our first little scrap on Mobius."

Scrap. The understatement burned Andsworth like a red hot pick. Over a hundred people died in Julian Kintobor's surprise attack on a UNSC training base within days of its establishment. It was his little welcoming committee to the planet.

"Seeing how we aren't going to be seeing each other for quite some time in the foreseeable future, I just wanted to ask you one question."

Robotnik bobbed his eyebrows and leaned forward. "And what would that be, my good admiral?"

"Why?"

The doctor leaned back, as if the question was a direct blow. "What do you mean, 'why'?"

"Why did you do it all? Why the attacks? Why the anger? Why... everything? I just want an honest answer."

Julian Kintobor didn't know how to respond. Not because the question was stumping him, but because of the honesty of the question - the sheer desire to simply know. For a moment, Julian considered it. He considered longer, wondering if he should spin a ball of yarn, but he considered his options. It wouldn't alter the outcome. The game was over for him; or so it appeared. No. The truth would do. Against the rational side of his mind, he spoke.

"How much do you know about my family, Gerome?"

"The Kintobors?"

"Last I checked that was them." Julian shrugged. "You no doubt had your people dig up whatever intelligence they could find. It wasn't much. I know that because my... people... took their sum knowledge with them in their endeavor to start a new life somewhere else. That was twenty... three years ago now." he said, pausing at the end to make the quick calculation. "I was still a young man." he said, trailing off as if in though. He was in fact remembering the times of his youth, sorting through the slew of images. But then he rooted himself in the present. "Tell me, what did you find?"

"Less than we would like." Gerome said after staring at the doctor for a long moment. "Most of the knowledge we have about the Overlanders comes from derelict spacecraft and a choice encounter with a few straggler groups. Even then, those were small in number, less than fifty individuals, and even then, most of what we gleamed was military structure and doctrine; virtually nothing about culture or notable families. A good number have heard of you though."

"Have they, now?" Robotnik's glasses flashed.

"I can't exactly repeat what they've said."

"That doesn't surprise me. You know how the Kintobors managed to make it aboard the crew of the Last Million's ships? Note I said crew, and not passenger manifest?"

"No. Our records hit a brick wall after a point."

"Russian technicians. Worked on some of the first Jovian-bound colony ships. They were masters of their field back in the day. Just a bit of trivia, however. The real star of this story is my brother."

"Brother?" Andsworth asked. "Colin Kintobor?"

"You know him?"

Andsworth lied quickly. "A well known member of the AFO? Virtually everybody knows about Colin."

It was a very plausible lie. The truth was that Colin was quite well known to the UEG in that he had turned a new leaf and was leading his own slowly growing society out among the stars. However, Andsworth dared not speak of it to Julian. It was the one bit of leverage that he had over the man. Even in his imprisoned state, any advantage he had could be lost, and Julian could clam out forever.

"Well, my brother was the scion of the family. Colin was smart, strong; had a full head of hair too. Colin..." Kintobor trailed off, seeming to focus on a point past Andsworth. Without warning, He slammed his fists onto the table, causing the cup of water to bounce a fraction of an inch. "Colin was everything to my parents. Colin was the graduate of the military academies! Colin was the master of any sport he put his hand to, and at the same time. Everybody remembered Colin, but never once did Colin remember me."

Andsworth said nothing, betraying no emotion, only blinking calmly as he let the man continue, letting the facts come to him.

"You know what I was doing, Gerome?" Robotnik asked. "You know what I was up to while Colin was bedding a new conquest or while he was on yet another parade while Charlemagne De Silva pinned another medal on his chest? I was researching. I was learning how to make our people great. So much was taken from us by follies of the past. Yes, the Dark Ages hit us too, just like everyone else. What caused it? Nobody knows. Not even I do. Whatever happened wiped so much of our advances from us. The Lost Million were so much more advanced than us by the time it happened. I wanted to bring it back."

"You wanted something to call your own."

Julian twitched, not expecting words to be placed to his narrative. However, just as he drew breath and bunched his shoulders, he let it out as a long sigh through his nose.

"Yes." Kintobor said. "But it was nowhere to be found. I used my family's money to travel the world from the Uralles to Afrik, searching for some trace of the Lost Million and how they could help us. Then the war happened. I hated those rats just like everyone else. If the Civil War back at the beginning went differently; you'd be dealing with a different civilization. A greater civilization; something that you'd recognize as something as your own. But the chips fell a different way."

He took a sip of water, breaking the stream of the narrative. Kintobor took off his glasses and with his thumbs, wiped his eyes.

"I almost never see your eyes." Andsworth said, leaning forward. "I'm surprised. For person who names themselves Robotnik..."

"You're wondering why these stayed?" Kintobor pointed to his blue eyes. "Ironic, eh? I have my reasons, especially since my people weren't squeamish when it came to enhancing themselves. It was during the war when I saw my chance. To prove that I could do what my brother couldn't. Four years the Overland was at war and for four years they couldn't just beat the wave back. They had better weapons, better technology, and they were being beaten by people, for two years mind you, were fighting with swords and bows. Swords and bows, Gerome." he said, wagging his finger to stress the point. "I had a better plan."

"Subterfuge."

"Bingo." Robotnik smiled, "The art of deception. My father was a politician after all; dear Bertram Kintobor." he stopped again, giving his head a small shake.

"What did you think of your father?"

"Sorry?" Kintobor asked, caught off guard.

"Did you love your daddy, Julian? There was nothing you felt for Colin, but you must have felt something for your old man. The man you looked up to."

"Who said I looked up to my father?" the prisoner asked, eyes darting around.

"You got that silver tongue from him. Colin got the brawn, while you got the brains. It's a natural match."

"My father isn't part of this discussion." the doctor said in a warning tone.

"I think he is, but you don't realize it." he said, then adding "Alright, alright. I'll shut up." when he saw Julian begin to rise. Kintobor stopped both at the retraction as well as the guard raising the weapon in his hands.

"So I put on a good face." Kintobor said. "I made myself a target for defection."

"I thought you were captured in Old Megaopolis."

"I was." Kintobor, rubbing the spot on his neck where he recalled the tranquilizer lodging in his jugular. "I wanted to be captured. To look like an unwilling participant at fist. I made myself useful, and then, after the quite fortuitous dethroning of the last Warmaster, General Kodos, I took the next logical step. Make myself one for the role. You know what happens next, Gerome."

Andsworth decided to get a word in, "Did you have any hand in Kodos being exiled?"

Kintobor smiled genuinely. "Funny enough, no. That was entirely his own doing. I had my own plans for him though."

Andsworth shook his own head and leaned back in his chair, projecting an air of confidence and comfort; warming to things. Julian's egotism fueled his story, but the admiral decided to do all he could to extend that. He was getting intrigued.

"Why didn't you stop? Your brother was beaten. You showed him that with your brains, you won the war against your own people, and then took the Kingdom with a push of a button. You let him run."

"Colin got away because he was one of the first to jockey for position on the first of those shuttles. I assumed he still had an air of dignity and would be on one of the last flights off-planet. I was going to shoot him down just as he was making for the stratosphere. Give him time to think about things."

Andsworth bit his tongue, surprised by the sudden and casual musing of fratricide.

"No, Gerome. Colin was a coward at heart. He didn't want to die. By the time I realized what had happened, he was already past well out of the system. There was nothing I could do. I didn't have the resources I had now. My parents were dead by then; I had nothing to prove to them. No. Colin knew though. He knew just as I set the SWATBOTs on him at the Siege of Knothole just what he was dealing with. I made sure of it."

"But why continue?" Andsworth asked.

"Why? Because it was easy. Because it came naturally. Manipulation; reprogramming, like machines. I barely broke a sweat taking the Mobians' every territory from them, slowly snuffing out resistance here and there; the regular army was useless. Then someone had the bright idea to turn to guerrilla warfare."

"The Freedom Fighters."

"And what cute little gnats they were. Children, Gerome. Surely any civilized nation would see the horror in that. Child soldiers."

"They felt they had no choice."

"Maybe. Doesn't excuse what they did though."

"Don't act like you're the better man in this, Julian. You created the roboticizer."

"The roboticizer was one of the few relics of the old era that had survived. I was merely the one who stumbled upon it and brought it to the forefront again. So, the little puffballs break my toys, muddle my plans, and just when I thought I fought them to a standstill and was about to bring out the big guns, then Humanity itself arrives on the scene. A supercarrier of the Ancients appears in the skies over my planet. Oh, that bloody nose you gave me in Carson Valley was a message Gerome, and not one that I could ignore. You dropped tanks and mechs on the flight decks while the real battle was going on inside, gutting the critical systems and then finishing with an orbital strike? Bravo. I'd give you a bigger clap, but the cuffs are interfering."

He tapped his hands together as if responding to a golfer making par.

"We set you back years."

"You gave me a fight; a real fight. You did more than that though; you gave Max and his people a kick square in the ass and forced them to upgrade. I was thinking about really investing further, but I already saw greener pastures. Not one world, but two. Mobius and Earth. I took one while barely flexing. Imagine what I could do with two. Then I saw a whole universe to play with; then infinite. I had already stuck it to Colin, but with the UNSC? Oh that was a fight I was ready for. I slipped away, made connections with promises of technology, and then I got to work. Oh Gerome, Gerome. You should really be paying more attention to the Outer Colonies. Some of those rebels have a lot more toys to play with."

"So that was your goal in the end? Take on the UEG?"

"Maybe twenty or thirty years down the road. Certainly not off the bat."

"Playing the long game. Think you had thirty years left in you?"

"You'd be surprised how far Overlanders could naturally live."

"Provided they met a natural end."

Kintobor chuckled. "You know my people well."

"Brutus would be jealous."

"The Roboticizor couldn't be taken with me so I had to make due with it from memory. My copies were imperfect though, never like what the Lost Million could create. It worked fine with Humans, but only if they were fine with the process."

"That part we knew. An individual had to consent to the process."

"Yes, but if you refused, your brain put up a fight, and a calm mind with neural pathways at ease would help the transition. If you fought, then the process would hit errors; roadblocks, and the program would default to a null operation. The statue effect with no free will. Only Humans, and as a result, Overlanders. But Gerome, oh I was ready to throw the Roboticizor out the window."

"Why? Did you grow a conscience?"

"Ha. Hardly." Kintobor barked a laugh. "The Forerunners were amazing people you know. What little is known about them of course. I've delved many ruins before the... accident in late '35 which resulted in a two-year vacation."

"And you coming back in chains."

"Yeah, don't remind me." The jovial expression slid from his face. "The ruins had data stores. It took some time to translate even the barest of their language and even then, there's tenses, declensions, contextual responses, hell, when you viewed the text in three dimensions it took on a different meaning. Amazing language, Gerome. I also had to convince others to help. Ask me how."

"How?"

"Do you mind if I stand up?" Kintobor asked the guard, who then looked to Andsworth.

The vice admiral nodded.

"Just don't get close to me." the guard responded.

Julian Kintobor got to his feet. He stretched a little, started to laugh, and then said, "I made them a promise."

Andsworth began to tingle with worry. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear this, though his mouth produced, "Promise what?"

"Promised that I would single handedly give them the means to get back at the UEG for hundreds of years of their superiority. I promised that I would give them every defensive weakness and opportunity to wreak as much destruction as possible. It only took twelve months to nearly seal the deal. The thought about a 'Human' turning against his own was too delicious to them with all the aid they were getting."

"Human?" Gerome asked, a deep feeling of nausea threatening to lurch him from the chair. The implications were too much to bear. He had nearly done it in a year? Only a year? Did Julian Kintobor have that much influence? Impossible.

"There was one trump card I had. Turns out the Forerunners had the same idea as me. Great minds think alike. Imagine what the Roboticizor did, but did it better. Do you know what it's like to be in the presence of such power? To actually have it at your disposal? You feel like a god. Now, imagine if you had the desire to make that power even better?"

Gerome's face was blank. He was lost. What did he mean.

"You mean you don't know?"

"Know what?"

Julian Kintobor's face lit up. "Oho! Oho! Do I have one over the great Vice Admiral Gerome T. Andsworth? A little secret? So maybe the records were wrong. You don't have one of them after all. Guess they were all lost in the distant mists of the past. Centuries wiping away the age of discovery? Hmm. Maybe Mankind and the Overlanders are more alike than we think. Unlike us, you perhaps chose to forget about your greatest discoveries for the horrors they would cause. I think that's where I'm going to stop."

"No." Andsworth said, now on his feet. "What did you mean? What did you find?"

"Sorry, Gerome. That would be telling." he said, with a wink, before realizing what was on the table. He reached down, grabbed his glasses, and then placed them on his nose. "I'm done here."

"You're done when I say you're done." Andsworth said, a finger raised towards Kintobor.

"I thought you would have taken the hint whenever we've butted heads; I'm not afraid of you." The grin disappeared. "I've never been afraid of you, Gerome. I've never been afraid of the UNSC. I've never been afraid of whatever Earth or even the Colonies throws at me. I've got so many insurance policies you're not even aware of. By all means, let me sit in the chair, I won't say anything, or will they need to make sure the camera works again?" Julian snapped, looking at the panel of the two-way mirror. "Kodos figured out he couldn't break me that way."

Andsworth was noticeably breathing.

"You want to talk some more, come visit me in High Moon." he glanced at the guard. "I think it's time to go. Be a good man Lawrence and get the door for me?"

The guard nodded. "Yes sir, Mr. Kintobor."

The doctor looked back at Andsworth, this time with a cold smile stretching from ear to ear. "The guards are really nice here once you get to know them. Oh, by the way, before I forget, how's that little team of freaks you're running?"

OMEGA. Andsworth deduced, getting over the shock of what just happened. "Still active."

"Sonic?"

"Active."

"As he always is. You'd think by now he's realize there's things faster than he is. That boy of yours?"

"Don't you have a cell to go back to?"

"I heard that there's a bit of friction between him and the blue rat now. Care to comment?"

Silence.

An explosive sigh from Robotnik. "Fine. See you at High Moon, Gerome. I bore of this." was the last thing he said before turning on his heel and leaving the room, the now more competent looking guard scanning the room once before stepping through the open doorway.

Then it was closed. Andsworth stood alone searching for answers to questions he wasn't ready for. What did he mean? What had Julian found? What had he accomplished? What was already set in motion? He was forced to sit down again, burdened with realizations and confusion. The truly terrifying thing about Julian Kintobor was that there was no sure way to verify that what he said was the truth. The entire thing could have been a lie. It could have been a half-truth. In the end, there was no way to be sure that Andsworth could have had a line of nonsense fed to him. He didn't know.

Julian had given him clues though. He had provided him for a chance to fight. Fabricated or not, he had a new job to do. He scooped up his hat. He needed to make calls, meet with people, and move entire fleets now because of only a few sentences. He shuddered at the possibilities, and moved with a purpose. It was all a game to Julian, but to Andsworth, there were more lives now in the balance than he cared to think about.

A thought crossed his mind. Was he being manipulated? Right at this moment? Was this another play in the long game? Did Julian have this all mapped out?

Andsworth didn't know, and that frightened him.