Designation: [Redacted]

Species: Classified

Location: Unknown

—

I watched as the primitive human craft retracted its ropes and started to fly off, its chemical engines roaring from the effort. Realizing I had spent too much time staring, I quickly took out my suppressed old-world rifle and loaded an Advent grade tracker dart into it, after which I raised my gun and adjusted my aim until I had a good shot. Then I pulled the trigger.

A near silent pew went off and, with my enhanced vision, I saw the tracker dart land on the underside of the transport craft and burrow itself into the metal. 'Good,' I thought. 'They are less likely to notice it.'

I raised a claw up and fumbled with the old-world radio until I heard it turn on, before I switched it to the frequency I only had it on when I communicated with my sisters. I swayed on my tail as I held down the talk button, my head on a swivel as I surveyed the forest for any threats.

"Target tracked successfully. We should know where they are from anywhere around the planet now," I reported through my radio as I watched the craft disappear over the trees.

"Excellent work. Get back to camp before Advent can find you," the familiar voice of one of my clutch mates, specifically the leader of our group replied through the radio.

"I will be there soon," I said, but as I was about to release the button that allowed me to talk, I hesitated. "I scented X09F on the human. There's no doubt about it, she is with this particular resistance group."

"That is for the best, even if they cannot be trusted. They seem to be the most technologically advanced of the resistance, and it means she's still alive after our botched attempt to communicate with her."

"Or that human carried her corpse to some ditch somewhere," I hissed through the radio, displeased. "I still do not understand why you let the others convince our most gifted to try to communicate with her. She may be the best psionically out of all of us, bar X09F, but our powers are still unpredictable. Hell, even the Elders couldn't control us!"

There was a pause on the other side of the radio as my anger seeped through. I felt my free claw clench up, and a small ball of psionic energy start to form because of it.

Curious but also cautious, I brought my claw up to my face and opened it to find a small orb of psionic energy floating just above the palm of my scaly hand. Before I could peacefully dissipate the orb it jerked violently, changing its shape to resemble a comet as it accelerated away from me towards an avian creature flying in the trees.

The psionic ball slammed into the creature, causing it to squak painfully and freefall to the ground, before it landed with a sickening crunch into some plant life, making me wince and tense up. I heard rustling as other avian creatures sensed the harm I could do to them and I saw flocks of them abandon the area, their self preservation instincts rightfully getting them far away from me.

"Shit," I muttered under my breath as I shook my claw, trying to dissipate any leftover energy.

"What happened?" My sister asked, probably already knowing what had just occurred.

"Accidentally killed one of the local wildlife. Psionics is so hard to control," I replied through the radio, clutching the front of my head with my claw in annoyance.

I heard a hissing sigh over the radio. "We will learn how to use it eventually. Psionics takes time to master."

"And yet those Advent priests can use it just fine on their first day," I muttered under my breath.

"But they are chipped, and we are not. Also they have psionic amplifiers which, combined with their chips, gives them easy control over their power. We will have to figure it out on our own. Relax, we will be okay." Our leader said reassuringly in her soothing voice that had calmed me down so many times before.

I was about to retort, but instead chose to let out a defeated hiss, which she chuckled at. "We will devise a plan to retrieve X09F from the group holding her captive, but we will take after our previous failure and not contact her while we devise the perfect way to rescue her. It's all we can do at the moment, trying to fight Advent head-on is a disaster waiting to happen, and the group that has her seems to be able to manufacture Advent-grade weapons, so we cannot fight them either until we get control of our psionics."

"What if she is not alive?" I asked with concern. "What if they decide to kill her before we get her out?"

"I am sure she will find a way out of the situation if she thinks that she is in danger," my sister said with a positive tone, although I could just barely register the uncertainty in her voice. "Now get back to the base, we have some planning to do."

Designation: 'Dan' or Daniel

Species: Human

Location: Xcom asset "Avenger"

—

I quickly closed my locker with a clang, not concerned about the speed that I closed it, as my mind was preoccupied with my previous mission and what I was going to do next.

'I should ask Seytha about that viper,' I thought. 'Maybe she knows something I don't. Plus, she wanted to say something to me before I was called for the mission, and with the body language she put into it, even with my limited understanding of her, I could tell that it was important.'

I walked out of the armory at a brisk pace, not wanting to be distracted by anyone or anything. As a lot of others on the Avenger testified to, I was very goal oriented, and once I had a plan in motion not many would be able to stop me.

Once I got to her room I politely knocked on the bulkhead, not wanting to just barge in uninvited, although I still had the spare key somewhere in my bunk room that would grant me access in case of an emergency.

"Hey Seytha, can I come in?" I asked as I knocked. To my surprise I heard footsteps coming towards the door from within the room, instead of the lack of noise I usually got when she slithered, since she was so quiet.

To further my surprise, Tygan opened the door from the other side, and gestured for me to come in nonchalantly. I was about to ask what he was doing in Seytha's room, but my question was put on hold when I saw Seytha half under her pile of blankets with her datapad, playing something. What surprised me most, though, was that her arm had a device attached to it that was slowly injecting a clear fluid.

"... What happened?" I exclaimed. Seytha seemed to just now realize I was here, as she whipped her head towards me, but Tygan quickly put a hand up, indicating that he was going to speak.

"Let me explain. Shen and I wanted to test some experimental ammo types that would be more effective than what we are currently using. One of our ideas was to use viper venom, so we asked Seytha if she could lend us some."

He looked at her with an apologetic expression, and then turned back to me. "She gave us more than enough venom, but she overdid it. Apparently vipers are not supposed to give all their venom, or they get sick."

A mechanical buzzing suddenly filled the room, causing Tygan to pull out his data pad and frown. "Of course Shen needs me when I'm making a scientific discovery…" he mumbled to himself, although he was not quiet enough to prevent me from hearing. "You can stay, Dan, but try to keep her from being physically active. She needs to rest and recover, and I don't know how long this will last."

He swiftly left the room and closed the bulkhead behind him, leaving just us in the room.

Seytha broke the silence after a few seconds, though. "For what it is worth I did not know that I could get sick by releasing all of my venom," She said with a grin as she moved herself over on the mattress, giving me room to join her. I could just barely hear an uneasy tone in her voice, like she was hiding something, but I decided to ignore it.

"Advent never told you?" I asked with a grin of my own as I took her unspoken offer and sat on the corner of the mattress she left for me. I was glad to see that she was well enough to smile, at least she didn't look like she was in pain.

"Well, they would not care. We are just expendable resources to them," she said as she coiled herself in a way that would allow her to be closer to me, one of her claws deactivating her datapad and discarding it off to the side of her bed.

"That makes sense now that I think about it," I replied, although I wondered if she had any instincts to prevent her from giving too much venom, although her current state pointed to the negative. "Are you in any pain?"

"Yeah, I have a constant headache but this 'pain reliever' is doing wonders," She said, raising the odd device on her wrist before she frowned and hissed a sigh. "I find it nice that the higher ups allow us soldiers this 'pain reliever'. Advent would never let us have any of this, although to be fair their chips block our pain for the most part" she said, before she hissed "Ugh, I hate being 'sick'."

"Yeah, it sucks. At least it sounds like you aren't in danger of dying," I said, shrugging. "Not to mention you get a break. You must be tired after all you've done for us."

"That is what I dislike the most," she grumbled unhappily, crossing her arms over her chest and gazing down at her mattress.

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow, silently asking for clarification and urging her to proceed. She saw that I was confused and opened her maw to clarify, looking back up at me. "I dislike being unproductive."

"What do you mean?" I asked, more confused than I was before. "You've done so much for us. You help us on missions, you helped the engineering team, and now you're helping us with research. What more could we possibly want from you?"

Seytha was silent for a while, her reptilian eyes locked onto me before she looked down at the mattress again. "I… just feel like if I'm not doing anything I'm useless, while my species is rotting away under the Ethereal's control."

A light bulb clicked on in my head as I now understood that this was her childhood indoctrination at play, not to mention the fate of her entire species rested on how well she worked with us. I put a hand on her hood reassuringly, causing her to turn to look at me. "You've done a lot more for us than you think, but you have to take a break every now and then, it's not healthy to overwork yourself. I know it will be hard, but hold tight while you recover and you can keep helping us in no time."

Seytha just sat still for a moment, and her silence allowed me to remember why I came here in the first place. "So, before I went on the mission you were going to say something to me. Are you okay? Well, besides being sick."

Seytha pulled her coils closer to herself, similar to how a ball python would ball up when stressed. She eyed me uncomfortably as she said "I… it's just so hard to understand these 'emotions'. It scares me that I don't understand them."

"That's okay, that's completely normal," I said as I made eye contact with her, looking into her red eyes. "Would you like to talk about what you're feeling?"

She shifted under her blankets, her uncomfortable look becoming more and more apparent the longer she thought. "I… I want to, I just don't know how."

"How to talk about your emotions?" I asked.

"Yeah. Emotions are something Advent absolutely despises. A lot of us would not obey orders, or we'd even desert if we had to do what we do with emotional consequence. So when we were young, before we could get our chips installed, we were forbidden from talking about or expressing our emotions at all, save for glorifying the Elders to further our indoctrination. Expressing yourself was seen as some kind of unredeemable crime."

"Oh," I said. I should have guessed that Advent would try to strip their soldiers of their personalities, but I never really had the inclination to think about it before. "Well, why not just try talking? I find that when I'm having issues I just start talking and everything comes out. And I won't judge you for whatever you're feeling, we all have crazy emotions we can't decipher." I said reassuringly, a comforting smile on my face.

Seytha sat still, taking in what I had just told her, trying to formulate some kind of response. I waited patiently for her to talk, not wanting to pressure her.

After a minute of thinking, Seytha finally spoke. "I... you know how I said I have some emotions for you during our chess night? I don't understand them, so… maybe you could help me understand them?"

Seytha shifted closer to me as I thought of a response. "Of course, but don't mistake me for a professional. Is it a good feeling or a negative feeling?"

Seytha thought for a moment, her scaly claw on her chin showing how much our body language was rubbing off on her as she responded with "It is a good and exciting feeling. It makes me want to be near you. Also, I want to spend a lot of my time being near you, and I worry about you too much."

"Do you feel this for anyone else?" I asked. As I waited for her reply, I suddenly remembered what she had said during our squad chess night, when she had opened up to me, and I started thinking about it further. 'She can't actually be interested in me in that way… right?' I thought, thinking about the times in the hallways she had seemingly gilded towards me, her eyes always locked onto me. 'Her exciting feeling must be some predatory feeling she got from being taught to hunt insurgents like me down,' I reasoned to myself, although I had a sneaking suspicion that I was wrong.

"No, just you." She said, shattering the thought that this was just some predatory feeling, and instead reinforcing the growing impression I had that she cared about me more than I thought she did. I felt her tail start to coil around my leg, her now half open eyes almost completely distracting me from it. In a sudden panic I exclaimed "Uh, what are you doing?"

"What?" she asked, confused, before she looked down at my leg and saw the end of her tail wrapped around it. "Oh, oops," she said sheepishly as she removed most of her tail but still kept some of it lying on the length of my leg beneath my kneecap.

I remained silent, mentally going over what was happening. 'Do vipers even have the ability to be interested in others like humans, given that they evolved in their own environment millions of light years away and have been modified by the Elders?'

I felt Seytha shift, and before I knew it she had moved herself so she was right next to me. I felt my body tense up, although I tried to act like I was not nervous.

If Seytha could tell how nervous I was, she surely wasn't showing it. To my surprise, she rubbed her snout against my neck. I froze, not knowing what I should do, or even if I should do anything. Next, she started rubbing her body against my shoulder.

'This is escalating fast,' I thought, my shoulder feeling like electricity was coursing through it as Seytha stroked my shoulder with her body. 'What is causing her to do this? Maybe our species are a lot more similar than we humans originally thought.'

I felt her rub her snout against the back of my neck again, making me shiver slightly. It was not that I didn't like it, it actually felt nice in a way I had never felt before, in fact it was actually somewhat comforting, but it all just felt like too much too fast. I wanted to tell her to slow down what she was doing, but at the same time I didn't want her to stop. Then again, if I didn't stop her now, how far would she go?

"Seytha?" I asked as she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me closer, her body emitting more heat than it usually did and her tongue flicks intensifying.

"Yeah?" she responded in a different, almost sultry tone as she started to wrap her tail around my waist.

"Don't you think this is going a bit too far?"

She didn't respond, she just kept holding me. I decided that I should attempt to put some distance between us and then try to make a point, so I eventually reached my hands up and tried to unwrap her arms from my torso. She held on tighter at first, but eventually she relented and let me go, although she kept her tail on my leg and she moved her head to rest on my shoulder.

"I… think I understand what you are feeling," I said as I slowly moved away from her. She raised her head when my shoulder was too far away to support her as she gave me a questioning yet hopeful look.

"That felt… wonderful," she commented as she looked at me, her tongue still going crazy. She noticed my flushed face and continued speaking. "Do you feel the same for me?"

I fell silent under her gaze as I realized that I did have an attraction for her, my previous interactions with her were definite proof of that, such as our bonding on the rooftop in the lost city. So, my response came out easy, as I was confident with my answer. "Yes, I do-"

Before I could add anything else, Seytha's face lit up and she immediately started to move towards me, but she stopped as I shifted away from her. She deflated, and with a pleading expression she asked "Am I scaring you?"

"No no no no," I quickly said before she could get the wrong idea. "This is just too much too fast. I never imagined something like this would happen, so I just need time to…" I paused as I struggled to find the correct word. "Understand... what this means."

Seytha's face didn't light up, but she also didn't look upset. I moved close enough to her so that I could stroke her hood, but not too close so that she couldn't tempt me back into her embrace. "I'm just going to go take a walk real quick, is that okay with you?"

"Only if you come back afterwards," she said as she leaned forward and grasped my arm, albeit this time she was more gentle, more in control of herself now that she knew I felt the same way, although she was still somewhat tense.

"I'll be back," I said, raising myself off her mattress before she could stop me, or I could stop myself. I left her room, closing the bulkhead door and then proceeding to wander down the hallways, not knowing what to do with my current predicament.

'I know I've had an attraction for her, but I never thought that she would like me back,' I thought to myself. 'I wonder what she makes of this… Also, what should we do about this, even if we decide to act on our mutual attraction.' I remembered her suddenly cuddling me and smiled. 'She certainly seems to want to act on it.'

I continued pacing around the Avenger, going over what had just happened repeatedly. She had rapidly escalated what she was doing when I had shown no resistance, but that still didn't explain why she had an interest in me.

'Does the reason for her interest really matter too much, though?' I asked myself mentally. 'We both have an attraction for each other. The most important thing right now should be what we want to do about it.'

'More importantly, what does she want to do about it?' I thought. 'We are entirely different species from one another, for all I know she has different criteria for what two individuals should do when they are attracted to each other.'

But then again, even with humans there are different thoughts on what a relationship should be like. I couldn't lie, a relationship with an alien was tantalizing, especially with a kind, scaly beauty such as Seytha. But on the flipside, I would be walking into this blind, which was something I was not too keen on doing.

But the thought of being closer to Seytha, physically and as something more than a friend also appealed to me. 'Maybe we could try doing stuff that a human couple would do, and I could encourage her input on what we should do as well. After all, she was raised in Advent, so given her previous talks about her younger life she probably has no idea what romantic couples do. She probably doesn't even fully understand the idea of being romantic with someone'

'You're getting ahead of yourself,' I thought. 'Ask her what we should do about this first, and then go from there.' With my mind made up, I made my way back through the never ending maze that was the Avenger, ready to talk to Seytha.

I didn't get far, though, as a drunken Jacob appeared out of nowhere and clasped my arm roughly. "Heeeeeey Danny!" He said with a heavy slur, a bottle of… something in his free hand, the little amount of tan liquid within sloshing around wildly.

Jacob wasn't a raging alcoholic by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it was a rare occasion to see him tipsy, and it was even more unusual to see him-full on intoxicated, as he usually paced himself very well compared to a lot of the other people on the ship. Well, that and he could take a lot more alcohol than most.

While I desperately wanted to get back to Seytha, the thought of Jacob getting his hands on anything dangerous while drunk scared me. I didn't want a repeat of the incident where someone had mistaken an elerium core for a baseball and had managed to throw it directly in front of someone who was shooting at the range. To put it shortly, we weren't even able to recover their bodies, and the body parts that weren't vaporized were scattered throughout the room into tiny pieces. It tooks weeks to repair the damage because we were in a tight spot with little supplies.

While I was thinking, Jacob started walking in the direction of the engineering bay, so I quickly grabbed him and started dragging him back to the safety of our bunk room. He opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it, his scattered thoughts in no shape to be presented to me as I dragged him back to our bunk room.

Designation: Seytha

Species: Viper

Location: Xcom asset "Avenger"

—

My mind raced as minute after minute passed, and still Dan had not come back yet. I cursed myself for allowing my emotions to control me, even though I could tell that when I had started to rub against him he was uncomfortable, but at the same time it felt like a large weight had been lifted off of me when I did so.

...Just to be put back on once Dan had announced his intentions of leaving. I sighed and took a deep breath to calm down. He told me that he would be back, and he hadn't lied to me so far, in fact he was very open and trustworthy. I trusted him, and he trusted me.

'You have to think of something else,' I thought as I raised myself to sit up. 'It cannot be healthy to think about him all the time.'

To distract myself I raised the medical device on my arm that was composed of Advent alloys and grimaced. I was sick, sure, but I hadn't been completely honest with Tygan as to how I got sick. He didn't know that a pressure in my head had caused me to collapse and started this whole mess, and if I was to be honest with myself I also wanted to believe that I had just lost too much venom, but I knew it was false. Somehow I had gotten sick from psionic means, and given that I had very little knowledge on how psionics worked, I was left with no ideas on how to combat it.

However, I did know that psionics could only be used by a being who could wield the gift, so I could deduce that someone was trying to interfere in my attempts to help Xcom. But who, and how? Even the Elders lacked the power to manipulate me from across the globe, although that was only because I was free from their chips.

I shook my head in a vain effort to disperse the dulled pain, but for some reason it intensified. I sighed and held my head, unsure of what to do.

Eventually, I decided to just lay down like Tygan had ordered, so I shed my clothes, tossing them out from underneath the covers to the side of my bed before I grabbed a sheet and another thicker blanket and wrapped them around myself, making a cocoon to rest in.

'It feels nice to shed those clothes,' I thought to myself. Most of the time I did not mind wearing them, but when I was in bed the clothes just felt unnecessary, and the blankets felt great on my uncovered scales.

I laid on my mattress for a while, trying not to give into the urge to get up and do something. I glanced at my datapad, remembering that Bradford had installed some games and other distracting applications on it, as he knew that giving me nothing to do would only make me restless and would worsen my condition, but I did not feel like doing anything on it.

"How does anyone manage to be sick?!" I muttered angrily to myself, although I knew I wasn't really sick in a biological sense, I was just feeling the after effects of some odd psionics.

I grabbed my pillow, raised it above my head, and then tried to cover my face with it to somehow drive me to sleep until Dan came back, but unsurprisingly, it did not work.

"I need something to do…" I said to myself. "I need Dan to come back…"

Then, miraculously, I heard Dan's voice on the other side of my door alongside a few knocks. "Hey Seytha, can I come in?"

"Yes, yes, come in!" I said with perhaps too much excitement, raising the pillow off my face as my rapid heartbeat came back in full swing, filling me with a kind of adrenaline that made my stomach feel odd.

The door opened and Dan entered, wearing an apologetic look. "Sorry I took so long, I had to help out Jacob, he was drunk."

"That is fine," I said in a calmer tone as I made room for him to sit down on the mattress. He sat down like before, except now I could tell that he had a nervous expression on his face.

"Are you okay?" I asked as he fidgeted, his fingers twirling around each other.

"I… I just never imagined that… this," he said as he used one hand to gesture to me and his other hand to point to himself. "Might be a thing. I just find it interesting, is all."

'What does he mean by that?' I thought to myself. 'Us being a thing? Of course we are things, otherwise we wouldn't be here,' I mused. Humans were so weird sometimes.

I decided that I would ask him for clarification later, as I had higher priorities at the moment.

"Hey... Dan?" I asked hesitantly.

"Yeah?" He asked in his normal tone with a smile.

"Can I… come close to you?"

Dan tensed up for a second before he nodded. I crawled out of my blankets, forgetting that I had removed my clothes before he had gotten back, and that humans oddly always wanted to be clothed.

He did not see me emerging from my blankets, though, as he was turned away when I started coming towards him. Giving into the previously buried instincts I was now feeling, I wrapped my arms around his chest and gently pulled him back towards me into my coils, pressing his head in between my venom sacs and resting my head on top of his.

If he was nervous before, words could not describe what he was like now. He completely froze, and I could see his eyes lock onto one of my venom sacks before he quickly shifted his gaze up to my eyes.

I smiled and snuggled him close, nuzzling him against me. He looked uncomfortable at first, but as time passed he grew more comfortable and even looked like he was starting to enjoy my embrace.

I rested my head on top of his and released a contented sigh. This felt right, this was all I needed. As I sat there with him, feeling his body against mine, I felt all my worries vanish. At that moment it was just the both of us, and nothing else mattered.

I just felt so at ease, I momentarily felt angry that Advent had denied me and the rest of my kind this, but Dan being here with me made me forget all about the trauma of being raised under the Elders. I just wanted more of whatever I was doing with him.

After some time, Dan wiggled one of his arms out of my coils and stroked my hood, making me gasp from the sudden, pleasurable contact, which eventually turned into me purring, pleased by the feel of his skin on my scales. I leaned my head downward so that Dan could have easier access to my hood, and in response he freed his other arm and used both his hands to rub my hood.

I wanted to make him feel good as well, but I had no idea how to. I decided that instead I would satiate my long time curiosity over a part of human biology; What did human hair feel like?

I removed one of my claws from his chest and ran it through his hair. It felt weird, much different from my scales. His hair was smooth like my scales, but where my scales were rigid, his hair was loose, and I could move it in whichever direction I pleased.

I flicked my tongue out and noticed that Dan smelled different. His scent was not too different, but there was a subtle change to it. I briefly questioned how and why his body did that, but my thoughts dissipated when my body started to respond to his scent. For whatever reason it made me want to do something... primal. The thought disturbed me, and although it was hard, I prevented myself from going along with the feeling, no matter how much I wanted to. I had already scared Dan away before, I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

However, when I attempted to suppress the feeling like I had done with so many others, it resisted and only seemed to get more powerful. Every time Dan's hand caressed my scaly hood or I breathed in his scent, it got stronger. I briefly wondered if Dan was feeling what I was feeling, but the strange, powerful emotion commanded my attention, begging me to indulge in whatever function was buried deep within my DNA.

'You cannot give in,' I thought to myself, trying to push the feeling away so that I could enjoy the moment. 'He already got concerned by your fast advances before. You cannot scare him away.'

Nevertheless, I could not help but indulge in the feeling just a little bit. I slowly started to lower myself onto my bed, and Dan did not resist.

I felt the mattress change shape to accommodate me and Dan, and I hissed a sigh when we were both lying down, me on the mattress and Dan on top of me. I eventually turned so that I would be on my side, and he would be next to me.

The transition was smooth, and upon Dan ending up right beside me I moved my head to be on top of his shoulder. We stayed there like that for what felt like forever, and for the first time since I got freed from the Elders, I truly felt happy.

A week later…

I tackled the sectoid to the ground as both Dan and Alexis restrained the mind-controlled Jacob from blowing us all up, while Davis sprinted towards the motionless Advent train to get whatever data was stored in the data box within before it self-detonated, his gremlin not far behind him.

After some struggling I managed to pin my target in my coils and simultaneously recover my gun from where I had dropped it. Instead of biting my target and pumping it full of venom I simply raised my magnetic rifle and shot the sectoid in the face at point blank range, making a gaping hole in its head, and its effects on Jacob almost immediately ceased.

Dan, Jacob and Alexis collapsed to the ground from their struggle as I raised myself off the ground. "How is it going over there?" I shouted to Davis as I rushed towards Dan to help him off the ground before more Advent reinforcements could arrive.

When I got to Dan I grabbed his arm and hauled him up without a second thought, the adrenaline pumping through my body making me forget that humans were less capable of adjusting to fast speeds than my species were. Dan swayed for a second, adjusting to the sudden change of perspective as I leaned down, picked up his shard gun and then shoved it into his arms.

I looked to my left to see Jacob still on the ground, recovering from his mind being invaded by the sectoid as Alexis slowly got herself up. I scanned the surrounding area, which was a rather impressive train station that Advent was using in an equally impressive city. It was no wonder the humans in this city were not willing to join us, their lives were simple, and the futuristic skyscrapers towering everywhere surely gave a sense of technological advancement.

The smooth steel ground felt good on my scales as I twisted and turned in the cool early evening air. After a long period of pause and uneasy silence, I slithered into the train to find Davis and his Gremlin struggling to hack into the completely black box that stored the data we wanted.

"Did Advent increase their protection from our hacking?" I asked as I leaned against a wall of the train opposite of him and looked out a window, observing the futuristic, brightly-lit city surrounding us.

"Yeah, but I think I got it," Davis said as the others moved into the train quickly, exhausted but still having enough energy to keep going.

All of a sudden an alarm sounded, making me wince in pain. Davis and his gremlin fiddled with the box more, before his eyes went wide with fear.

"It's going to blow!" He shouted over the siren. On instinct all five of us exited the train, the others deciding to sprint out while I coiled myself like a spring and flung myself out one of the open windows on the train.

I landed hard on the ground, cursing to myself before the databox exploded into a green ball, enveloping the train cabin we had been in just seconds ago as a piece of metal the size of my clawed hand ricocheted off the ground next to me, getting dangerously close to taking my head off. After the shrapnel stopped flying I cautiously raised myself off the ground and quickly glanced towards the others, who had all dove to the ground as well to avoid shrapnel.

"Everyone okay?" I asked. They all nodded as they got up, making a wave of relief go through me. I opened my mouth to suggest we break radio silence and request an evac, but Alexis beat me to it.

"Firebrand, we need an evac now. The package self destructed, there's no way Advent didn't hear it going off," she said as she checked herself and her clothes for any smaller pieces of metal.

"And you think Advent did not hear all the gunfire?" I teasingly asked. The others rolled their eyes, not having enough energy to counter my comment, also staying quiet so that we could hear a response if we got one.

"Roger that, ETA five minutes. Just hold out until then," Firebrand responded. I glanced towards Jacob, who was staring off into the distance, almost like he was somewhere else.

"Jacob, are you okay?" I asked, looking him up and down to see if he had any shrapnel embedded in him, but he looked completely unharmed by the blast.

"Yeah, I just… I've never been mind controlled. It's freaky," he said as he uncharacteristically shivered, his mag cannon dangling loosley in his arms.

I was about to respond sympathetically, given that I had been mind controlled most of my life, but the sound of Advent transports closing in on us diverted my attention away from him. "Advent reinforcements incoming!" I warned, before we collectively scrambled towards some cargo crates that were supposed to be loaded onto the train, taking cover behind them and readying ourselves for another fight.

I saw two troop transports fly in and several Advent forces disembarking, which included a few troopers, an officer, stun lancer, a muton and a new soldier Advent was fielding called "priests". I opened fire on the enemy forces as they landed and dashed towards whatever cover they could find, managing to hit a trooper, but not well enough to impair its ability to fight. The rest of the squad managed to graze some of the enemy forces but, like me, they did not do enough.

We traded fire, Alexis managing to kill a trooper via a well aimed headshot while Davis was able to shoot at the Advent officer, hitting it but not killing it. Dan motioned for Jacob to provide covering fire, so Jacob stood up and started suppressing the enemy forces, sweeping his cannon side to side while Dan dashed towards a stack of crates closer to the Advent troopers, trying to find a better angle. I opened fire on anything that moved, trying to take down anything I could but unable to succeed.

Before long, though, the Advent priest stopped firing at us and pulled out its psionic amplifier, causing a purple orb to grow in the center.

"Take down that priest!" I shouted, but I was too late. The priest fired the ball at Jacob, which to my surprise did not slam directly into him and do damage, but instead it dispersed a foot away from him, the psionic energy forming a bubble around him and freezing him in place.

"What the hell is that?!" Davis exclaimed, referring to Jacob's still form.

I felt that I should know what the priest did to him, but for some reason it was eluding me, like so many other details about my life while I was chipped. Instead of responding, though, I persisted in trying to take down the Advent priest, aiming to land shots on it but the vending machine it was standing behind protected it well.

With Jacob's suppressive fire ceasing the Advent forces took the opportunity and started firing back, almost taking off Dan's head and one of them hitting Alexis on her left arm, although Davis's gremlin quickly buzzed over to her and sprayed a dose of a medkit on her. Instead of shooting to kill like Advent forces normally did, though, they looked like they were trying to suppress us, similarly to what Jacob had been doing. Was it possible that Advent was changing their tactics?

I froze as I suddenly heard rapid footsteps approaching me and a stun lancer's baton being activated. I knew what was happening, Advent was trying to knock me out like at the blacksite mission, and my squadmates wouldn't be able to help me because they were being suppressed.

I hissed angrily at the realization and shifted my rifle in my claws. Then I fully stretched myself out of cover to my full height and opened my jaw, spitting a small could of poison at the lancer and hitting it directly in the face with the odd substance I produced and could weaponize at will.

The lancer slowed down due to my poison, and I knew my time was now. I leaped out of cover and landed in front of the stun lancer, surprising it. It was about to try and club me with its lance, but I quickly hit it in the helmet with the stock of my rifle, causing it to stumble backwards. I whipped the length of my tail from behind me in a circle and swept its legs out from underneath it, sending it crashing down to the ground and its stun baton clattering across the tiled floor away from us. I then pointed my mag-rifle at the lancer and quickly pulled the trigger, sending a flurry of bullets into its torso and flecks of its blood onto my lower tail. With that problem taken care of, I instinctively dove into cover, ready to take care of other problems.

I stayed in cover for a few seconds before I leaned out again to survey our situation. Davis was just finishing firing a salvo of rounds into an Advent trooper, killing it, while Dan had flanked the Advent forces and killed all the other troopers, but was now trying to fend off the muton that was attempting to engage him at close range.

Dan was brave, but he was not stupid. As the muton swung at him with enough energy to cave in his skull he dove to the ground and rolled away from it, allowing Alexis plenty of room to land a shot on the muton, which she did. The bullet exited her gun and hit the muton in the back of its torso armor, drawing its attention. It turned around, enraged, and was about to shoot at her but Dan had finished his roll and, using his laser sight to get a quick lock onto his target, he rapidly fired two shardgun shells into its back, one of which hit it as Davis I and discharged our own bullets into it, sending it crashing down the ground, its blood exiting its many wounds and quickly forming a yellow pool underneath it.

With the threat of the muton now gone, Dan charged at the Advent priest with his arc sword. The priest fired at him, managing to land a few shots on him, but his predator armor was able to take some of the damage, and he still kept moving towards it at a rapid pace.

The priest backed away from Dan, right out of cover into Davis's crosshairs. Davis fired at it but missed, however Alexis covered up his mistake by hitting the priest in one of its legs, causing it to collapse to the ground. Dan quickly tried to slash it with his sword, but he… missed. I looked on in bewilderment, wondering how both Davis and Dan, especially Dan, had missed. With Alexis reloading and Jacob in stasis, I knew that I would have to rescue Dan before the priest could shoot him.

I quickly aimed at the priest and dispatched it, its sudden absence making the psionic energy around Jacob disappear. Jacob abruptly fell to the ground and breathed heavily, his eyes darting between us, wondering what happened to him.

"...What in the actual fuck was that?" Jacob asked with confusion as he tried to figure out what had happened, but none of us were listening to him. Instead we all turned toward the Advent officer, who was reloading its mag-rifle after it had failed to land any of its shots on Dan.

Dan sheathed his sword as he advanced towards the officer, readying the wrist-mounted skulljack that he had received from the engineering team yesterday. It was about to try and shoot Dan again, but he was able to quickly close the distance between them and he shoved the skulljack into the officers head, raising it off the ground slightly with the all too familiar sound of flesh being pierced.

My radio crackled to life in what seemed like seconds after Dan's skulljack made contact with the officer. "What did you just do? We're receiving a ton of information!" I heard Shen exclaim excitedly. "I thought you said the package was destroyed?"

"We are doing a field test of the 'skulljack', I replied nonchalantly as I watched Dan slide the officer off of it and onto the ground with a thud. I was about to slither over to Dan to check his wounds, but what looked like psionic energy started to appear near him, next to the officer's corpse. I cocked my head as I observed the anomaly, wondering what was causing it.

Before I could voice any concern to my allies, the psionic energy dissipated and what appeared to be a golden humanoid emerged from where the energy was. It looked…odd, though. It looked like it was constantly fading in and out of reality in the blink of an eye, being in one place and then all of a sudden appearing somewhere else slightly farther away.

I heard my radio crackle to life with Bradford's voice on the other end, his voice tentative. "Seytha, what is that thing?"

I was about to answer in the negative, but the thing leapt into the air and vanished. I saw it reappear behind some cargo boxes, and it pointed its plasma weapon at Dan, who was completely exposed.

Dan immediately sprang into action, somehow managing to dodge the plasma beam that flew dangerously close to piercing his torso. He slid into cover next to me and pulled out his shard gun.

"Jacob, can you suppress that thing?" Dan asked as another plasma bolt sailed towards Davis, going right through the boxes he was hiding behind and narrowly missing him. Luckily, there were no explosives in the crates, so Davis would remain okay.

"Yeah," Jacob answered confidently, now that he had gotten himself back on his feet and finished reloading his mag-cannon. He pulled the trigger and unloaded whatever he could at the being, but it remained unfazed.

Instead of firing at it like the others were doing, I took my time to study it. I knew what that thing was, I had to. But why was it eluding me?

When the thing teleported again, though, I remembered. It was a codex, a being Advent made to help guard their cities with their teleportation abilities, and their power to disable insurgent weapons with their psionics was incredibly useful.

'Coiling around it would not work,' I thought to myself. 'It could easily teleport away.' I decided to shoot at it with the others, but I was quickly cut off when it used both its hands to send psionic energy toward us.

All of our guns clicked empty as the codex's psionics tampered with our gun. I looked around and saw that the codex had made a psionic hemisphere around us. I evacuated from the area, fearing what would happen if I remained in it too long, and the others quickly followed my lead. The codex tried to use our abandonment of our cover to take down my squadmates, and I felt the color drain from my scales as it aimed at the already injured Dan. I knew what these weapons did to the human anatomy all too well, even though I had never fired at an insurgent during my days under Advent.

I watched as it hit him directly in his chest, making him fall to the ground with a yelp of pain. My self preservation instincts completely vanished, and I slung my rifle over my shoulder and slithered in a mad dash towards Dan, racing against time as the codex leaned out of its cover for a follow up shot to finish him off.

I heard the codex's plasma rifle charging with a high pitched hum, and I knew my time was running out. I dove towards Dan, quickly grabbing him and coiling myself around him defensively, as we were in an open area where there was no cover. I saw the codex quickly point its weapon elsewhere to avoid hitting me, and I realized that I could be used as cover because the Elders did not want any of their forces to wound me.

An idea popped into my head as I pondered how to get Dan back to safety. I slowly got up, making sure to keep myself in between the codex and Dan as I grabbed him by his shoulder and started dragging him back to cover, with his quiet whimpers of pain reminding me to be gentle.

I heard another shout of pain, and I whipped my head towards the squad to see Jacob falling to the ground with a plasma wound to his left leg. Alexis tried to line her sights with the codex, but the codex teleported back to cover just before she could pull the trigger, her missed shot passing through the spot where the codex had been in no less than a second ago.

I finished hauling Dan back into cover just in time for the codex to try to fire at Alexis, but the shot narrowly missed her head, the close encounter making me flinch. I allowed Dan to hold onto my tail as he got up, using my body to stabilize himself. I was impressed that he still wanted to fight although he was bleeding profusely, but I knew that it was only a matter of time until Davis' gremlin would give him a dosage of our medikits. With my worries diminished, I poked my head out and lined up my magnetic rifle with where the codex was hiding.

"Jacob, I need a grenade on its cover!" I shouted. In my peripheral vision I saw Jacob load his grenade launcher and line it up with the codex. Alexis and Davis caught onto what I was thinking and also aimed at where the codex was.

I heard a thoonk as Jacob's grenade left his grenade launcher and watched with satisfaction as the grenade exploded and tore through the unsuspecting codex's cover like it was paper, scattering debris everywhere. I quickly opened fire on the codex before it could teleport away, with Davis, Dan and Alexis following my lead.

The codex had no time to react as our bullets pulverized its body. It let out an ear splitting shriek as it clutched at its head, and then its body disappeared, with its head clattering to the ground.

We stayed quiet for a moment, the only sounds being our labored breathing and Davis's gremlin hovering over to Dan to use a dosage of our medikits on him. I watched the gremlin spray the medicine on Dan, and I quickly coiled my tail around his legs so that his squirming to the initial stinging would not result in him getting less medicine, and so that he couldn't accidentally hurt himself.

Our radios suddenly crackled to life, with Tygan on the other side. "Can you hear me now? Advent started jamming our comms when they sent more troops to take care of you," he said.

"Yeah, we hear you," Alexis said between heavy breaths, her empty rifle slung on her back and her mag pistol firmly clenched in her hand.

"Firebrand is almost right on top of you, before you leave you need to grab the codex head." He said. The others looked confused, so while I adjusted my tail and looked over Dan to ensure the gremlin's medikit stopped his bleeding, I cleared up their confusion by clarifying "The teleporting thing we killed."

"Oh," Alexis said, now understanding what a codex was. "Yeah, we can grab it." She quickly half walked-half limped her way to the codex's head and picked it up, before coming back to the rest of us, all of our nerves still on edge.

Then, to my relief, I heard the skyranger. I looked up to see it coming in fast, and for a brief second I was worried that it would crash into a nearby building, but Firebrand was very adept at piloting it, and she was able to bring it to a full stop above us.

The ramp lowered to become a flat platform and the four old ropes descended to us. I put an arm around Dan's shoulder and we made our way to a rope, trying not to move too fast in fear of opening up the wounds Dan had obtained that the medikit had temporarily patched up, the others in the squad also moving at a slow pace, their faces contorted with pain or exhaustion.

Once we got to the ropes, I quickly grabbed onto one with one arm and Dan grabbed another and we all ascended to the ramp, my tail dangling below me giving me a feeling of paranoia. Even though I had been raised up to the Skyranger several times before, I had never gotten used to the feeling of being suspended in the air, and I was confident that I never would.

When we finally got to the ramp we speedily scurried into the Skyranger, not wanting to stay here any longer than necessary. Dan and I plopped myself into the cabin of the Skyranger, and I held him close. Although I knew Dan would be fine, I could not help but wonder about what would have happened if the plasma beam had hit any of his critical internal organs.

I watched as everyone nursed their wounds, no doubt pondering over our mission. My eyes scanned over everyone, and eventually landed on the codex's head that was secured to Alexis's combat belt. I stared at it for a minute, wondering why I could not remember what the codex was during combat, even though I had been serving under Advent for all of my life. It was almost like some of my memories were… suppressed.

My thinking was interrupted by Dan rubbing one of his hands on my hood, and I smiled as I snuggled my head into the crook of his neck. I hugged him tighter, glad that he had survived the mission. As long as he was with me, I would be okay.