Kingsley never had dreamless sleeps. Her slumber, blanketed by fractured memories of the perceived truth – of reality, danced across the forefront of her mind in fits and starts. It clawed every inch of her, needling her body, making the faint scars left over from medical injection ports burn with a renewed fire. The hospital bed became the back of the heavy, course suit and the lights overhead were the flickering of directives she'd issued to millions of soldiers world-wide.
But awake, she remembers no such feeling until finding herself being stolen away to sleep. She was left with only the gnawing disappointment and cold regret that settled on her stomach like bedrock. Her gaze listlessly traced around the sterile infirmary. Hatred, a close cousin of self-pity, boiled soon after. She hated this. She loathed her enfeebled state. Spite tarted her taste buds – is this how the Aliens will win over XCOM, with her rotting in a hospital bed for the remainder of her twilight years?
So, you have two choices. Her mind coolly intoned, able to separate herself from the situation and analyse it strictly as a Commander, not a person. Let John run this campaign into the ground because you damn well know he cannot lead something like this as you weep over your misfortunes. Or, do something about it.
Vitriol would only get her so far. Her bones protested as Kingsley forced her muscles to co-operate, leaning forward from the bed. All the aching pain begun to numb into a nothingness as she distanced herself from herself. Anger drained, replaced with a languid apathy that set on her face like a fresh pearl. She smoothed her hands through the silvery mass of her hair, collecting it and tightening it into a professional bun, just as her feet touched the infirmary floor.
John had always warned her of the dangers of emotionally haemorrhaging herself in such a way. 'You won't connect with the soldiers.' he'd said.Kingsley lightly shook her head. They didn't need a friend. They needed a Commander and she'd done a right piss poor job of it so far. How could they expect her to lead them when she couldn't even control her own psionic powers?
'It'll get harder to come out of that.. box, Dottie.'
A little late now, twenty years after the fact. But she knew her XO only meant well. A light amidst the void, he was. One of a kind. Knew more about her than a woman would ever like to admit – and in her long, military career? Something's were better left unknown.
Padding over to one of the nearby terminals, she accessed her account and looked up where one of the specific soldiers were. Truthfully, Feng had recovered quite a while ago since the Blacksite and had taken to meditate in her room. She didn't mingle with the other soldiers, though Kingsley hardly cared for her standoffish attitude. Expected it, from a Templar regarded as a 'renegade prophet' in her own right.
In any case, she requested the Templar's presence, marking it as urgent before returning to the sanctuary of her bed. Barely a moment passes when Kingsley slips off, pacing dissatisfied. Is that the image she wants to give to her assets? A dying old hag?
She hooks her foot around the leg of the chair, scraping it noisily closer to her so she can slump into it. Her fingers twitched, and the craving for a cold glass of whiskey rose. The last thing she wanted was to attract unnecessary attention and have John breathing down her neck about her health should she ask for such a thing. So she sat, waiting, brooding. Gaze perking up when the doors slid to and revealed Luminița Feng.
"Commander." she intoned once she had entered, inclining her head towards Kingsley with an air of perpetual, mocking respect. She hadn't changed much since Kingsley last saw her – strikingly yellow armour, heavy, shackle-like gauntlets set on her wrists and pinkish-purple psionic energy creeping up her exposed biceps like a woven web.
"It appears you have decided me worthy enough to finally deign your presence with. I am honoured, truly."
"Cut the shit, Feng and take a seat." Kingsley had little patience when she heard Geist's snakeish charm, she didn't need to hear it from his protégé as well. Feng briefly splayed her hands defensively, though a smile touched at her full lips, curling on the very edge of a sneer. She commandeered the visitor's chair, dragging it to face the Commander, sitting upon it with perfect form, hands folded on her lap.
If anything, it just made Kingsley all the more conscious of her bent-forward position and she slowly pulled back until her spine hit the backrest.
"I'm not in the mood for fancy speeches or dancing around the thornbush tonight." God, what she wouldn't do for a cigarette. " – So you give it to me straight. What is the problem with my psionics? How are the Chosen able to exploit them and not say – yours?"
"Before I am able to give you the answers you seek, Commander, we must determine the origin of your psionics – "
"Is that necessary? I thought you'd gathered the moment you saw me that my psionics aren't.. right."
Feng flayed her with a look. The soft earthly brown of her natural eye colour suffused with the alien purple made for a stunning – and deadly gaze. A muscle in Kingsley's neck twitched as she understood the silent point. They'd hardly get anywhere if she was insistent on being so curt and direct. Begrudgingly, she gestured for the paladin to continue.
"Yes. It is necessary in order to ascertain whether or not your psionics are truly malignant and exploitable, or benign. I do not think your psionics started this way. Not to mention that not all bodies are capable of sustaining the gestating Earth's Gifts, or the twisted aberrations of the false Gods." She smoothed a hand down her thigh, watching the way the latent energy of her own arcs across her gauntlets with the mere motion, low-thrumming and brimming with power begging to be tapped into.
"Whatever notions or preconceptions of psionics you may hold, I advise you to disregard to take what I say in a new light, Commander." Feng straightened, if that was possible. "You must ask yourself. Are these psionics natural – or artificial? When did your Gift first emerge? If you cannot remember, when did you feel as though these powers begun to effect you?"
Kingsley appreciated her frank tone. It felt thirty years prior, being schooled with a hundred questions by her superior. Sinking further into the chair and slipping one leg over the other, she cast her mind far back to the earliest instances of her psionic capabilities. That would be…
…It would be…
Her throat tightened. She couldn't remember.
Her elbow came to rest on the arm of the chair, lower face propped up by her palm. Struggling to remember what was fact and what was dream. She managed to reconstruct some sequence of coherent memory in the past twenty years and cleared her throat first before speaking to ensure her voice was strong and confident.
"Maybe a few days before I was nabbed officially for XCOM." she answered. "I knew there was something.. within me. Like an eel, slithering through my innards, living just beneath the surface of my skin. Not painful, not directly. But the sensation could get to the point of.. discomfort. Everything seemed so louder. Somedays, I didn't even need my glasses."
"You are certain?"
Kingsley tried not to let a frown raise to her face, but knew it was a valid question, nonetheless. " – Bradford can back me up. He was the first person I told about it."
"Bradford." Feng clarifies; a singular silvery brow rising. "The only one whom is capable of confirming that is the one with a history of alcohol and or substance abuse. If my sources are to be correct, that would include the time during his service, too."
It took a moment longer for Kingsley to process the information that Feng had dug. Something that the two senior officers agreed had been only between them. Subconscious panic rose, mind whispering; had she found out? You buried everything. All leads, all trails – until reason and logic calmly swept in to silence the storm that threatened to brew.
"Sources?" she questions, succinctly inquisitive and with a gaze that could curdle milk. The insufferable Templar only offered a hidden, non-telling smile in return. Kingsley closed her eyes briefly – funny, how all her past actions had been rattled awake to haunt her – before opening them and adding, much more quietly, though just as deathly calm.
" – He never did drugs. Not during the original campaign. I know that much." But she didn't deny the man's alcoholism. It was enough doubt to have Feng shake her head.
"Then I cannot determine if they have ever been natural or not through your recount. I have reason to believe the latter. You were.. in some stasis chamber, correct? During the twenty years."
"Yes." Kingsley tried to ignore the growing feeling of dread claw at her stomach and pool into her gut. She swallowed thickly. "I was – Tygan removed a chip, from me. He theorized that through the stasis chamber, I was hooked up to the ADVENT Network, performing.. administrative work, I suppose. Subconsciously."
Feng slowly nods. The Commander liked to think she was good at determining faces, but the woman was structured like a diamond and just as unfeelingly hard to crack. " – Perhaps these.. psionics had been surgically implanted into you. Crafted by Them. So that you may 'perform' to the best of your abilities to their horrid abomination of machine code and biology."
"Is that.. even possible?"
"The ADVENT Priest exists." she coolly pointed out, sneer proudly on display. "Disgusting, vile nymphs that they are, wielding unnatural, artificial Gifts."
"So the origin of why they aren't right has even more theories surrounding it's nebulous state. Let's – Let's get to the point, already." Kingsley reared the topic back to it's purpose; mind frantically at work as she tried not to wrestle with the reality of the power she knew was not supposed to be there. It had never been anything but uncomfortable. Ice-fire against the skin. A swimming feeling in her gut. Nothing natural.
"What can I do to stop them being exploited? What can I do to prevent them from.. growing further?"
"There is.. an experimental technique that the Holy Father is working on." Feng hesitantly began. Not only was it breaching Geist's confidentiality towards her to mention it, the fact that she was considering the tactic in the first place was.. risky, to say the least. The other alternative, that she did not want to pitch to the Commander, however, was nothing.
" – To.. lock the Gift, as it were. He only intends for it to be used for those whose bodies are too weak to handle a disproportionate amount of psionic energy they may have. To even suggest such a thing is.. sacrilegious to the Earth itself, that we may be dissatisfied with Her Gifts, but.."
Kingsley scoffed quietly under her breath. It was nice to know that Geist was a man first, beyond his visage as a supreme pontiff. She folded her arms, capitalizing on her trailing sentence. "If this is something that Geist is working on, then I think I'd want him to perform … whatever it is that needs to be done. I mean no disrespect to your abilities, of course. I just want to minimize as much risk as possible."
The Templar's apprehension vanished in a moment, replaced with a collected veil of calm that she was infuriatingly known for. " – A wise thought, Commander. Unfortunately, you would never be granted face-to-face audience, not whilst the Templars officially refuse to ally with XCOM so long as you assist or associate with Skirmishers. At least, that is the current reasoning."
She blinked. Then swore under her breath. "Granted audience – Oh. Don't tell me. Are the Templars run by council?"
Kingsley was already burying her face in the palm of her hand as Feng's humourless smile reached her lips and her head dipped in a brief nod. She pinched the bridge of her nose, even as the paladin confirmed what she already had.
"Three bishops, two paladins – and Geist himself."
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." she muttered into her palm before dragging it off from her face and pinning Feng with a flat look. At least she had the decency to look mildly ashamed on their behalf; though it was almost impossible to discern from her chiselled features. " – Alright. Alright, What will this experimental technique entail?"
"I forewarn that is invasive and requires that you must be at your most vulnerable." she prefaced. " – A mind meld will take place, with more direct control on my behalf, to seal or extract the psionic energy within, depending on what is the best course of action."
" – Extract." Kingsley interrupted, tone questioning. "Where would this energy go?"
Feng's lack of an immediate answer sharpened the Commander's gaze, prompting her to call the paladin's name. She exhaled slowly, before finally answering. " – I will be attempting to absorb the energy, to add to my own. It is a safer alternative to simply letting it free without a suitable host or conduit for it to inhabit."
"So." There was an unrewarding sense of smugness that hit Kingsley, all the pieces falling into place as she recrossed one leg over the other, arm resting partly over the back of her own chair. " – You benefit from this, don't you? Is that why you are so forthcoming with Geist's 'special technique'? Why you are even helping in the first place?"
"Benefit?" the paladin echoed. " – I am sacrificing myself on your behalf, Commander. I take no pleasure from the power if it was spawned from those fiendish devils."
"Always a martyr, never a Saint, Feng. Heaven knows I hardly believe people act on the good of their heart any more. But I like my assets to be as forthcoming as possible with their intentions." She met Feng's gaze evenly, reflecting the clinical frigidness that seemed to freeze the atmosphere around them. "Honesty is far more valuable to me."
The paladin slowly shook her head, raising her hands to slowly work off her heavy gauntlets so that she may begin the procedure. They clattered to the floor with a resounding thud, indicating to Kingsley just how heavy they might be. She flexed her fingers, habitually massaging her wrist. The psionic power that pumped through her and ran through her biceps seemed more vibrant now; her natural eye colour lost to the otherworldly energy.
She scraped the chair closer to Kingsley, close enough that their knees almost knocked together. Her hands delicately turned upwards.
"Commander. Relax your body, your mind, and place the weight of your palm on my wrist."
Kingsley's gaze flicked to the outstretched arms in question, before reluctantly followed as instructed, gripping her forearm. Feng's fingers closed around her own once it was in place – and she tried to ignore the electrifying feel of psionic static race from the Templar's fingertips across her skin.
"Close your eyes … and follow my suggestion. Let yourself be lulled into a sense of security."
The suggestion, as it turned out, was the whispering probes of psionic energy beginning to stretch outward and touch at the very surface of her mind. Kingsley gritted her teeth; jaw squaring, but forced herself to screw her eyes shut and loosen her first response of shying away from such temptation. She followed the 'sound' of it's voice. It lacked tone, charm, or anything, other than mental compelling that she should continue.
With the mind meld taken place, Feng shifted through the corrupted memories that lied on the surface of her mind. Pushing them aside – searching deeper for her soul. She followed the faint pulse of psionic energy until she could visualize it – and it was just as she expected when she first felt, standing before the Commander in her office.
The energy seared with a hostility that was unlike what their Gift should be. A brimming fire instead of a calm docility kept under control. She reached out, tentatively, introducing her own energy against the Commander's.
It was the greatest mistake she could ever make.
Images flashed across her mind's eye, rapidly, lashing her with a rejected feedback that smarted worse than a weal. Something alien – fluttered across her view. A multi-armed creature clad in silk and steel, but it was gone as fast as she saw it and in it's place a growing, overwhelming pain that demanded her to withdraw. Feng complied as fast as she could, but her haste only stabbed the backlash of energy deeper into her core.
Kingsley exhaled a shuddering gasp once the Paladin severed the link between them, hand nursing her head and vision worsening to the point of blurriness. It passed, slowly, but surely, though the other was not fairing as well as she. Rubbing at her eyes harsh enough that they stung, she blearily glanced to her.
" – Feng? What the fuck just happened?"
The woman waved her off, her own head cradled and fingertips digging into the skin, enough to leave little crescent moons from her fingernails. Her tenseness slackened, fresh, salty tears wiped away as the migraine refused to co-operate. What she had saw – what she felt now, was just a warning to stay well enough alone. Feng was inclined to heed it.
"Your psionics are corrupted and volatile." she tells plainly, tone curt as pain cut away pleasantries. "Safeguarded and malformed by vicious intentions. I cannot extract them from you, nor will I be able to lock them away without any grave danger to myself in the process. Teaching you is – out of the question. But.. I believe I may have a temporary solution in mind."
Those were not the answers that Kingsley wanted to hear and her displeasure reflected as such. Nevertheless, Feng plucked her fallen gauntlets, fussing them about back over her wrists.
" – You should think about requesting your Chief Engineer to create replicas of the Templar's gauntlets. They are tools for the psionics, just as much as an amplifier is. This should stop any exploitation from happening. I can provide the blueprint."
The Commander frowned. The discovery ultimately lead to one more stress overhanging her and a dead-end. But, there was more than one way around such obstacles, even if she had to brute force one out of the situation. She spared Feng a nod, gaze drifting away, slumping in her chair once the paladin's back was turned.
"I see. Thank you, Feng. You are dismissed."
"Power levels increasing all around you, Shen. Stay alert."
Julian had followed Menace as they ascended up the shaft through the singular MEC-intended lift, his voice permeating throughout the entire facility as a sarcastic lilt overtook his fanatic ramblings of earlier; " – Yes, it goes without saying that you're walking into a trap, Lily. May I advise using your compatriots as meat shields? I do still have use for you."
"There are turrets stationed around the room. They bear ADVENT's sigil." Dragunova calmly clarified of what awaited them as the squad carefully advanced, with Kelly signalling the various support beams and machine structures for them to use for cover that was out of the turret's sight. An electronic sigh was heard, a long, delaying whine of sound.
" – That would be the trap I just mentioned. Really, do you surround yourself with them to make yourself seem smarter, Lily?"
"I wish I did find that mute button." she mutters. As light graced the rooms, those turrets became clear, the head of it twisting in place, actively seeking targets. The barrels were coated with a thick layer of brownish rust that ate most of the black paint and decal away, but she was going to bet that much like the MECs, they were still functionally deadly.
Far enough away, Clacher safely drew out his sniper rifle from his back, steadying a good chunk of it's weight. He needn't take his time with a target that was unmovable, but he wanted to ensure he'd only need a single shot to take the left most turret down. He centered the muzzle to a vital point on it, and shot. The conventional bullet chewed through it's rusted, broken down armour easily, causing it to short out and explode in a hail of sharp, metallic chips.
As Dawn pushed up to deal with the eastern turret, Lily kept on watch for any MECs that Julian might throw on them, spotting several depots like before where they could feasible rise from. They had learned a lot since arriving there, even before accessing the data. Julian's existence – ADVENT getting their hands on him. His 'assistance' and subsequent turncoat.. It made her blood boil, but one question hung in her mind.
"You talk a lot, Julian, but you don't seem to say anything of worth." she spat, gaze lifting from the ground. " – Maybe if you just told me what you need me for, I might actually be inclined to help you."
"Lily.." Bradford warned, but his voice was drowned out by Julian's haughtiness.
"Second only to my creation, Father had another breakthrough. A prototype, unlike anything the world had ever known. A body meant to be paired with an equally adept mind – my own. Yet activating the device has proven.. difficult, even for me."
"If Dad meant this device to be for you, don't you think it would have happened by now?" she tries for reason, but Julian continues, fervently. He manages to drop his voice softer, as if nobody in the room but they existed.
"Of all organics, only you possess the key of unlocking the true potential of his design, Lily. You alone can activate the design.. and you alone can free me."
"Why would we want to do that?" Bradford joked lightly, but when dead silence came from the Chief Engineer, he paused. ".. Oh no. Don't tell me you're seriously considering this. Lily!"
Implanting Julian into the device was not what she was considering, no. But throughout her so called 'brother's' rambling, she was struck with an epiphany. He was an AI. Intended to improve the base's AI. Shen senior might not have intended Julian to occupy this mystery prototype, but he did intend for him to be what he was.
Lily refused to believe that her father would want her to plainly abandon the AI. He didn't simply forget projects like Julian felt like he had been. Perhaps he was meant to be found just as much as the prototype itself. The gears in her mind turned rapidly. The key element she felt that was missing from the Shadow Chamber was an organic processing component. AI certainly wasn't organic, but Julian could simulate the same neural networking that composed a Codex.
Theoretically.. Julian could eliminate much of the heavy lifting. A single calculation done by AI could be made in the fraction of the time it'd take her or Tygan to do it. The alien systems wouldn't reject him, unlike ROV-R, who spat back the information in ones and zeros. Julian was a quantum computer in comparison..
"Actually.." she finally spoke. "You're right, Julian. You should be free."
"He is?"
"I am? I mean, of course I am. Oh, it is such a RELIEF to hear that you've come to your senses. Finally! I should have expected more, you are the daughter of Raymond Shen, after all." A bit of excitement bled into his tone, hardly able to contain himself. "Please, please, ascend the stairs, ignore the turrets killing your companions."
Speaking of, Kelly unloaded a two shots worth of magnetic spit from her shard gun into the turret, destroying it. Her head turned and she mouthed a question. They all knew 'helping' Julian was a bad idea, but Lily merely mouthed back to 'trust me.'
She ascended the stairs leading up to the air tight clean room. Julian more than happily lowered one of the windows – though, only one, it seemed, as the rest were stuck – to allow her access to the prototype.
Lily stepped over the short step, squad at her heels, when her eyes landed on the prototype – and marveled.