I'm on a ship. Somewhere between Neptune and Earth. I'm not sure how I got here.

I'll meet you there.

Ah, of course. I'm going to meet up with my husband and children.

Wait.

I snap the ship to a shuddering halt. Realize with horror that on the way out, I didn't take the Kore Dim. And I didn't do anything to disguise myself as anything other than what I am. No, that would be far too rational.

I – not a decoy clone, but I, complete with glowing eyes and golden mask – am sitting right next to Jupiter in a personal Orokin transport.

And there's a Corpus station here that's just noticed me, and is trying to open a channel.

I need to get out of here.

I try to jump to the Void. The engine doesn't respond.

I don't remember the past however-long-it-took-to-get-here – or how on Earth I managed to excavate this relic from the vault and drag it into space – but I've believe I've just committed suicide. Of a permanent sort.

Standard interplanetary propulsion isn't working either. This ship is falling apart at the seams – I probably broke something with the sudden stop.

Shivering heat burns through my veins. If I survive this, I'm going to destroy Kit.

Breathe. I swipe my hair back, pulling my face into a smile as I accept the Corpus hail – audio only, of course, and lifting my mask so it doesn't distort my voice, "Hello?"

"Identify yourself."

Uhh…

(Can't use Cai Tanya – a fifteen second search will tell them she's dead. What was the new Corpus clone's name? I can't–)

"Glen Dekei," I answer.

(… That'll work.)

There's about a minute of silence on the other end. They're trying to find information related to that name, but there's no way for them to know anything about a Grineer foot soldier that doesn't even really exist. Anyone with the same name can be accounted for, I'm sure, which is going to leave them with absolutely nothing.

It's not the worst position for me to be in.

Finally, the Corpus responds, "Identify your vessel, Glen Dekei."

"Oh, do you like it? This skin cost me a fortune."

"… Probably more than it was worth, unless you specifically asked for that blue cracking pattern."

I frown, "What are you talking about?"

"I assume you wanted an accurate recreation of an ancient Orokin vessel."

"… Of course."

"Well, the cracks may look nice, but they're not present in any historical images of Orokin ships. Whoever designed your ship made those up."

Those are roots, you twat. They're necessary to keep the ship functioning through the Void's technology-damping well.

Though they also shouldn't be visible. Their casings must have rotted away, which would explain why I can't jump to the Void – the ship's failsafes are preventing it. Generating a Void bubble with exposed roots could inundate the interior with Void energies, which would wreak havoc with my body. Needless to say, becoming a Tenno is not on my bucket list.

(Besides, I shouldn't be rude. It's actually very nice of him to point out that I was stiffed on a deal, even if it's just because he's assuming I'm someone important. Or, someone with money to spare at least, which, to the Corpus, means exactly the same thing.)

"If you want to dock," the man says, annoyed, "You need to present ID."

"Ah, well, there's a bit of a problem there."

"What?"

"Well. First. I can't present ID. And second, I didn't mean to stop here in the first place. I just, sort of. Broke down."

"Really."

I fidget a little, running through my options, "Really."

I don't have anything to trade. I can't show my face. I can't leave the planet. I'm not a skilled pilot – if they send ships to take me in, I won't be able to get away. And if I die, then… that's that. No more waking up.

I don't know what to do.

One of the station's bay doors opens. I take an involuntary step back, as the man's voice comes over the channel, "I'm sending a carrier to tow you in."

I don't think. I just punch the controls, sending the ship careening toward Jupiter.

(They can't have this ship. This technology isn't theirs, it isn't anyone's anymore. Not our children, the Corpus and Tenno. Not our creations, the Grineer and Infested. Not even me. I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't have this.)

"Hey! What's going on?!"

"I…" my voice is trembling, as whirling orange clouds rise to meet me, "I was trying to go toward the carrier! I don't know what happened!"

"Stop!"

I stop, but I'm already inside the atmosphere. I can't see anything but fierce ripping gas outside the windows, and the ship is groaning, but holding position.

Curses flow over the channel, and I almost chuckle. A carrier is too massive to come down this low – it won't be able to resist Jupiter's immense gravity. I've bought a little more time.

(Don't get hysterical. There has to be a way out, I just can't see it yet. I won't die here. I'll never die, I'll never die, I'll never…)

At length, the man asks, "Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm… I'm here."

"Your ship's holding up?"

"For now."

"Good. The carrier can't reach you – it can't counteract Jupiter's gravity inside the atmosphere. But don't worry, we're going to figure out how to get you out. Just try to stay calm."

I listen to the creaking metal that surrounds me. I… think it'll hold.

Hold. Shields. Obvious.

"Do you have any ideas?" I ask, opening up the control console's paneling. If I can get shields running over the veins, then they should be able to protect the inside of the ship, and I can override the Void generator safeties…

"In the event that you don't make it out," The man says, ignoring my question, "Who should we inform?"

… I'm sitting on the floor. My hands are full of wires. I don't know what to say.

"Dekei?"

"I…"

I don't have anyone. I threw them all away, so long ago. I've had a hundred names, but not one is mine.

"There's only one person to tell," I say, numb, "But you can't reach him."

"What's his name?"

I don't remember, "I… I call him Kit. He's– we worked closely together."

"Is he dead?"

I shake my head, though there's no way for the man on the other end to see it, "I pushed him away. We had a fight. I… I don't have anywhere to go back to now."

The realization hits like a ton of bricks. Kit has control of most of the systems at Telisto – enough that he can lock me out. If he gets creative, he may even be able to maintain the station without me – it'll certainly be easier to do so without the need to support organic lives.

There's nothing I'd like more right now than to strip every circuit in his Cephalon brain. But. I have no idea what I did in the time that I lost, and given my state of mind when I came back to my senses, I think it's safe to assume that the situation only escalated. I'm not confident in Kit's loyalty at the best of times, and he probably knows that I'm going to kill him if I get the chance – he might very well kill me first. I can't take that risk.

I can't get out of this dead end yet, but what does it matter if I can? What good is it to be able to run, if I have nowhere to go?

Silence from the channel. I curl up against the disemboweled console, scrubbing my suddenly stinging eyes, and listen to the groaning ship. There's something whistling through the walls, and rattling the floor. The roar of Jupiter's wind is muffled through my thin shields, like a distant army running over hollow metal.

Ever since the Tenno came back, I've felt that my time was ticking out, but I never imagined it would be like this.

"Dekei."

I startle. I didn't think anyone was still there, "What?"

He sounds hesitant, "How bad was the fight?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean. Some wounds are too deep to heal, and some aren't."

"… We knew how to hurt each other."

"You have to be pretty close to be able to do that."

I don't respond.

"I'm just curious. You say you can't go back, but you also want this guy to know if you die. Why?"

It's. Relevant to his life.

Silence. Kit will probably be able to protect the vault, I think. He seems to understand its importance, so I think he'll keep it safe even if he's never able to get inside. That's assuming he can manage to maintain the station alone, though. And that's a distressingly heavy assumption.

The man speaks again, "I, um… hurt someone that I cared about, once."

I frown, "What happened?"

"Well, we had a violent disagreement. It was a friendship that I valued, that I can never have back. But, looking back, it would have been simple to just reach out and apologize. I could have kept that friendship. All I had to do was set aside my pride."

"This isn't that simple."

"Hm."

It wouldn't just be my pride on the line if I went back. And I will never accept death – I'll give up the vault before I give up my life.

"We're sending a drone to pull you out," the man says, "Think you can hold out for a few more minutes?"

"Yeah, I think so," I climb to my feet, looking out the window, "Isn't there a chance of losing remote control through the atmosphere, though?"

"Well, yes. But the thing is, our pilots that are good enough to navigate through that atmosphere? None of 'em are going to risk their lives on a rescue mission."

You'd probably have to stop anyone who was willing, I think, I'll bet that kind of skill is even more valuable than the drone itself.

I can work with this.

I tap into my ship's stealth settings, carefully fiddling with them to see which ones work. A gentle probe shows me the drone, and the frequency controlling it. It's just left the Corpus station, and is now buzzing toward my position. It's always a relief to deal with machines with minimal human variables, and even more so to remove any human variable outside of myself.

All stealth controls are offline, but it's a simple power problem. I have plenty of excess power going into life support, so I merely divert it from there into the radiant suppression module.

"Dekei? Are you still there?"

"Yes. I don't know how much longer, though. Shields are going critical."

What do I do when I get out of here? There's no way Kit will trust me, but the thought of actually abandoning the vault, the very last vestige of my people – I didn't think I could feel this kind of pain anymore. This… heartache.

But if I did leave, if I cut Kit loose, accepting that I'll likely never know whether he lives or dies without me, then where would I go? The entire system is toxic to me. There's no place for an Orokin here, and I can't pass as anything else.

"We're almost there. You just need to hang on a little longer."

How long can I survive without Telisto? She's been my home, my only refuge for as long as I can remember. How long can I keep running without her?

How long can I keep pushing everything, everyone away?

The drone enters Jupiter's atmosphere.

I know what to do.

"Hey," I say.

"Yeah?"

"What's your name?"

"Gar Sen."

"Gar Sen," I repeat, and smile, just a little, "Thank you."

With one motion, I sever the channel tethering the drone to the Corpus station, and the one connecting them to me. The radiant suppression will keep my action entirely off their sensors – to them, I and the drone have simply vanished, swallowed by the gas giant.

I take control of the drone, guiding it down to latch onto my ship, giving an immediate boost to my shields. I channel that power over the veins, and then override the Void bubble safeties.

Space turns white.

I set a course for Telisto.

I drop out of the Void on the opposite side of Telisto as my station, and reroute all power from shields into propulsion. The drone is a marvelous source of energy – it's probably a new model. I'll have to poke around its generators later.

I punch the thrusters, speeding around the gas giant. Success hinges on not being detected – which is quite unfortunate, given how much work I've put into the sensors. If Kit isn't using them, then I'm fine. But if he is, then I can only hope I move fast enough to get inside before he can lock the door.

I need to suppress my radiant visibility, just slightly. If I'm too loud, it'll set off alarms inside the station. And if I'm too quiet, I'll set off a lot more of them. It takes a delicate balance to keep my emissions at just the right level to not put the station on high alert. I'll still be on the sensors, of course, but that's unavoidable. I designed them to stand against Tenno and sentients – to my knowledge, no technology exists that can escape this station's eyes.

I speed into the hangar, pulling the ship to a halt so abrupt that it shoves me, sliding, across the floor. I barely keep my feet.

I can see the Kore Dim in the distance, its orange lights faint. We'll be in alignment soon.

I shake my head, and pull open the door, jumping out into zero gravity. My station surrounds me, looming, lightless as the gas giant it orbits. Only starlight, a few blue-white spots on the drone, and my own dim radiance illuminate this place.

I zip toward the station's southern pole, crashing through the doors nearest the vault.

"Hello," Kit's voice comes over the intercom. Still biting cold, "I wondered if you'd come back."

I start running.

And skid to a stop when a hatch slams in front of me, sealing the hallway.

"You know, I have this compulsion to obey you. To protect you. That's what I was made for, after all – to serve my operator. But you know what? Maybe it's because I'm a prototype, or because you cut me up and stuffed me into this ridiculous body, but I'm done kowtowing to you. You're not going to kill me!"

"I wouldn't expect anything less," I say, opening the hatch's paneling and ripping out its locking circuit, gritting my teeth as the wires send a numbing shock through my arm. I let the limb fall to my side while its nerves struggle to get back in working order, and manually drag open the hatch with my still-functioning arm.

Kit hisses. Oh, yeah, he probably felt that.

The vault is just ahead. Once I'm there, I'll be outside the Cephalon's reach–

Something pops and crackles in the ceiling as I jump forward. Sounds like nerve circuits overloading – Kit probably just tried to electrify the area. He should know we don't have the power for that.

I slide in front of a nondescript door, and breathe on it.

It slides open.

Kit screams, terrified, "No!"

The door closes behind me, and I stand in a small, empty, cubicle room.

Then the walls dissolve.

I remember.

"I was a researcher," I say, feeling as though I'm waking from the longest dream. I call golden script into existence with my fingertips, "I specialized in resource manipulation..."

"What?" Kit sputters, "What are you talking about?"

Words and memories. Dreams brought to life. I continue, "After the Ten-O incident, I was reassigned. As one of the few surviving parents of the Ten-O children, it was thought that I would be especially helpful to rehabilitation efforts.

"I tried. Over and over, I tried. But it seemed like the more time I spent with my surviving children, the further apart we grew. When my baby girl tried to split my head open, it finally became clear that although my youngest had lived, they were just as lost to me as their older siblings.

"I moved away, and buried myself in other work. When the Council decided to weaponize the kids, their supervisor begged me to help her change their minds. But I couldn't. I pushed everything away, focusing only the next project. I slept at work so I wouldn't have to wake up in an empty home. If someone tried to befriend me, I would ask for reassignment. When the kids' supervisor was executed, I didn't even notice until a month later.

"That was when I started losing time. My occasional lapses went unnoticed, though, since they didn't hinder my work.

"Eventually I was stationed at a research facility in Neptune's upper atmosphere. We developed weapons. I don't remember much of what we made, but I recall working on warframe technology for a while. The time passed in a blur, until a moment came when I felt ready to try to reconnect with the world.

"Then… the betrayal. My team had gone to the ceremony, while I stayed behind and watched the broadcast. It was clear what would follow.

"My research station wasn't designed for space travel. I changed that. The place was packed with old technology and new, with a thousand prototypes stuffed into the cracks. I cannibalized most of it to turn it into what it is now – some things I broke down for parts, others I implemented directly into the structure. Like you, Kit."

My fingers trace lines of light through the air, speaking a dead language to the systems around me. "I didn't expect to stop at Telisto. It may be an empty, dark planet in the middle of nowhere, but I thought someone would still come looking. I guess no one thought anyone would be stupid enough to abandon civilization completely, to scrounge out a life utterly alone.

"That's the thing, though." My hand stops moving, "I'm done being alone."

The glowing lines of code coalesce into two words before me.

User added.

Kit is waiting for me when I emerge from the vault. He's clearly tense. I would be too, if I weren't so exhausted. It feels as though the accumulated weight of centuries is all coming down on me at once.

"You let me in," Kit says. He sounds stunned.

"I know."

"In all these years… you never let anyone in."

"I know."

"So… you're not going to kill me?"

"I was going to. At first. But, then… I realized… you're important. Not just as someone to talk to, but you do half the work of keeping this place alive. I'm sorry I don't give you credit for that. And if something happened to me, then it would all fall on you, and… and you would do it. You wouldn't disconnect from the station. You wouldn't run away. Because you know what's important, far better than I do."

"I…" Kit hesitates, "I wouldn't be so sure about that. But, I, um… I'm sorry, about what I said. It was… horrible, and wrong, and… I didn't really mean what I said about this body. I actually kind of like being a cat."

"I'm sorry, too," I reply, "You were right, about a lot of things, and… I'm sorry that you were right. And about what I said."

Kit fidgets. I reach for him, and after a moment of hesitation, he hops into my arms.

For a moment, it's silent, save for his purring.

Then–

"Wow," Kit breathes, "That's a lot of data."

I smile, just a little, putting my back against the wall as I sink to the floor, "It should be. It was built up over years. It started with, uh, one of my team members – he had this hobby of collecting guns. He'd brag about it all the time. 'Hey, check out this antique,' 'look at this one, it's a special version'. He was insufferable. But the problem was, his collection was impressive, and he'd often use the little design quirks in special models to improve our current project. Since it was our job to develop weapons, we couldn't really complain.

"Then, one day, another team member brought in an archwing prototype and put it on display in the main hall. It was much cooler than anything the guy had, and it finally shut him up. But, then yet another team member disappeared for a few days. We started to get worried, wondering if she'd gotten caught in a skirmish with sentients.

"Then, during lunch, she just showed up again out of the blue, carrying a whole chest of rare, antique mods. It turned into a competition between all of us to see who could amass the most impressive collection of technology. And each new thing we developed would become part of our team pool, which we could rub in the faces of other research teams."

My smile widens, eyes closing. I'd forgotten that there were some dreams that weren't nightmares, "That guy, though. He could make it sound like our project was the most impressive by far, even if the other team's was clearly superior. And the one with the mods – she had crazy connections all over the system. Probably even had ties with the mob. You were one of hers, Kit – a prototype of the first Cephalon. Everyone… they were all a little insane, really. I wish I'd gotten to know them better.

"Anyway, specs were part of the competition. They were the strongest part of my collection – with all the fields I jumped through, I had more and better blueprints than anyone else. A lot of them were my own designs, too, which sort of counted extra. I wasn't often 'king of the hill', so to speak, but I was never far from the top."

I shake my head, "This vault… it's all the legacy of my people that I know of. Anything we take out has a chance of being lost forever. So…"

"I understand," Kit says, "And I think I see your section. It's, um. Extensive."

"Mmhmm. You know, if you want to know your real name, look through the… second-largest manifest, I think."

Kit is silent.

I glance at him, "Is something wrong?"

"My name isn't the only one in here."

"Oh." I close my eyes, leaning back against the wall, "Right. Leave that alone, please. I, uh. I don't want to know."

"Very well."

"I brought a drone back with me. It should have everything we need to stay running for another week or so."

"You should get started on that immediately. The Kore Dim needs to start slowing down soon, and getting it docked may take the rest of the day."

I hum in agreement, but I don't move. Neither does Kit.