Ind Cusd was quite practiced at running for her life. She ran ten kilometres a day, nine days out of ten, just so she could be ready. Some days she ran as much as fifty kilometres and all her preparation paid off because she didn't get eaten, shot, absorbed, stabbed, burned, crushed, or jettisoned into space. At least, none of these things resulted in her dying, which in her opinion amounted to about the same as not happening at all. If pressed, Ind could show somebody how to go about running for their life. It was partly in that first burst of speed, and she could give quite a bit of that when she needed to. Not too much, mind. Perhaps a hundred meters, less if the pursuers lack guns. The trick is to be just out of effective range, then stay there. Staying away is usually endurance, and accounts for the other 99% of the running. After all, Doan says if a Grineer runs fast and then stops to catch her breath, she'll usually just die tired.

Ind had run away from Corpus machines and soldiers, from Infested Chargers and Ancients, even from a couple of Grineer squads when the occasion called for it. But she'd never had to run from a Tenno. Doan's caution and Silence's friendship had kept her safe.

Running away from a Tenno is not like running away from anything else. Grineer have augmented legs. Corpus have powered exoskeletons. Both can run and jump with the very best, when forced to. Infested have terrifying strength, but tend to be contorted into shapes that make it difficult to run quickly, and powerful leaps can tear some forms of Infested apart, even if they do pull themselves together too quickly for comfort. Robots are unimaginative and stiff in their movement. Sentients fly. Kubrows are, pound for pound, stronger than Warframes, but not agile on four legs. The closest to Warframes in speed and agility are Kavats, but Kavats are ambush predators that give up if they fail to take prey by surprise. No, running away from a Tenno is not like running away from any of these.

A Tenno will not attack from behind, unless it happens to decide to, on a whim. It will not run on the ground, unless for some reason it is bored with flying through the air, running ten meters above the ground, and leaping from wall to wall. They do not tire, though they may get bored. Unless they get impatient, and that can be much more dangerous.

All of this information is important, because it provides context for the moment, in a Void tower raid, when a Tenno sprinted past three squads of Grineer straight at Doan Tana's squad. Doan called for her soldiers to move out of the way, but it followed and the group only ended up isolated.

Doan hadn't fought a Tenno since that Acolyte months before, and never with a squad. Hers were well trained. They spread out at her command, out of range of the Tenno's staff. All that did was let Doan know who it was after. They fired when she said, and were better shots than most. The Tenno moved too fast even for her. It ignored her squad, attacked none of them, and headed straight for Ind.

Then it dropped a device on the ground and Doan didn't even wait for it to deploy before shouting, "wreck it!"

She ignored her own orders. The Tenno, with its wide, reflective faceplate, was nearly on top of Ind, who had both guns out and firing. Doan shot them both.

Not with her Gorgon, obviously. With the Sonicor attached to her armour, which certainly took the Tenno by surprise. The blast launched Ind backwards halfway across the room and even managed to knock down the Tenno.

"Ind! Run!"

Ind Cusd was many things, most of them not particularly quick or stimulating in conversation, but she was excellent at following orders. She was already running by the time she was halfway back to her feet, sprinting away down the hall from a sort of lopsided runner's start.

"Leeh!"

Doan didn't need a specific command for the Scorpion, since there were really only two things she ever did, and she wasn't in range for the first one.

They both fired grappling hooks at the Tenno, who was probably still trying to work out whether the loud noise and sudden force throwing it about had really been a Grineer wielding a Sonicor. The grapples hit, the Grineer pulled tight, and Doan's squad needed no instructions to open fire.

Simple, straightforward, and efficient. It should have worked, at least to slow the Tenno down. Instead, it clenched a fist and every Grineer in the room stumbled or flew towards it.

Doan nearly died that day, too. Only luck and loyalty kept her alive. That, and perhaps a certain amount of laziness on the part of the Tenno, who swung their staff without really looking and didn't even notice Plond shove Doan out of the way in mid-air.

The crumpling of metal was loud, but went completely ignored by the Tenno, already leaving the room before Plond hit the far wall with a sound like a dropped can of meat.

Doan ordered two of her squad to look after Plond and took the rest to chase Ind and the Tenno, but neither choice ended up mattering. Plond and Ind were both beyond saving.

-Shouldn't you be on the Tenno's side?-

-By all indications, it was a painfully routine scanning run for Simaris. You do those all the time.-

-Not to bring morality into it or anything, but people knew most of the Grineer and Corpus you've scanned over the years.-

-Didn't this occur to you, you know, later in this same story? You had plenty of time to think about it.-

-Since when does the wanton slaughter of thousands interfere with your chances to idly daydream?-

-I'm phrasing it that way because I'm a historian whose day job is watching you kill more people every day than I met in my entire pseudo-mortal life. Really, you're all like this, so you shouldn't be surprised another Tenno did this to Ind without a thought.-

-No, no, Secret. Secret, listen. I know you care. About kids and Tenno and your friends and anybody who shouldn't be part of the war and can't fight for themselves. Just remember, to that Mag, Ind was just another enemy soldier. A little better protected than most, but one of billions. So was Plond. So was Doan. It's the only way you can all keep up with what needs to be done. If you stopped to think about the enemy soldiers, there might be no innocents left on this system.-

-You gave them all a chance with your broadcast. Even the Sentients. And three… people… is a start. An old proverb said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.-

-Yes, that's a long way. The measurement was used pre-spaceflight. Can we get back on track?-

-I think I can make a solid guess at that part. I don't exactly have a reliable source.-

Ind had made it halfway to the Void portal by the time the Tenno caught up with her, and by all accounts, she wasn't even at her best. It is most likely that the Tenno managed at least one, perhaps two scans of her before she made her escape. She would have been feeling numb as the Simaris scanner did whatever arcane trickery it does, half of her body not really there any more.

They found scorch marks and ricochet scratches on the walls when the squad caught up, too late. Ind must have put up quite a fight, because the walls were marked with surprising accuracy across two rooms. There was even a stab wound in an Orokin console where Ind must have used her Sheev.

Doan came to us after Ind died. It wasn't exactly easy for her, either to make the decision or to find us. The Tenno had killed her Queen and her best friend, and even though we were the only ones who could help, it hurt her in more ways than I can imagine to come to us.

-No, I don't think I ever thought that.-

-Do you remember how Plond was? Always talking about how smart and strong Doan was, getting her more influence bit by bit?-

-Do you remember how Doan always acted about it?-

-Exactly. It was a means to an end for her. She could have let it go to her head or she could have been embarrassed, but she just let it happen.-

-Yes, well, I think Ind's compliments were a special sort for her. So, no, I don't think it was pride that kept Doan from us. Just hurt.-

She didn't even find us. Not really. Doan started looking and, soon enough, Silence arrived, looking for Ind. Doan found her soon after and made her lead the way to us.

I can't say what I felt when I first heard what happened. I'm not saying I liked Ind, but she was somebody I'd gotten used to having around, day after day, even if I didn't want her there. Losing her was like losing the planet Jupiter. The system wasn't the same.

Not that I said anything like that at the time. Or anything much at all. I was practically speechless. It was Belyri who asked the most important question.

"Is there anything we can do?"

Doan had explained to us that Ind had disappeared, and I think Belyri might have held out hope that Ind was only Captured. That would have been excruciating, but survivable if she hadn't been… well, executed, yet.

Doan, strangely enough, nodded in agreement with Belyri, looking at both Secret and Silence like they might pull Doan out of a corner.

They both looked at each other, then asked me.

I was still trying to figure out a system without Ind and hadn't really processed most of the conversation. When Doan repeated the question, "can you help?", I sort of metaphysically shook myself.

"... What...?"

Doan walked right up to one of my holograms and asked, in slow but perfect grammar, "can. You. Save... my friend?"

"What? How?"

"Maybe she's only been Captured," Belyri suggested, like I said. Then she got a suggestion from Secret and added, "or maybe we could bring her back from DNA!"

I let Belyri let that sink in for a second. She's smarter than I am, more experienced, but she's more hopeful, too. In seconds, she'd run through both scenarios, including contacting the Lotus's hired goblins who handle the creepier parts of perusing human data for information, and she'd come to two conclusions that I could guess at. There was nobody Captured who matched Ind's profile, and DNA would just give us a new clone unless we had Capture-level braindata. Even then, we wouldn't exactly have a Cephalon.

"Oh," she said after her quick conclusion.

Doan didn't have a hard time guessing. She also didn't take it well. She smashed a console with my image, punched the wall, and when Secret moved towards her, she picked the Loki frame up by the neck and slammed him into my bulkhead. Uncomfortable for both of us.

Everybody waited for several seconds. Not much two Cephalons can do when two supersoldiers get in a fight aboard their ship, and Silence was babbling something that didn't make a lot of sense but definitely didn't have anything to do with stopping the fight.

Not that there was a fight, exactly. Secret just stayed there, pinned to the wall, dangling, until Doan shook him, slamming his head against the wall a few more times.

"My Queen!" she screamed. "My Ind! My… me! Give back! Stop… stop taking!"

She threw Secret to the ground with a sound that made me worry he'd cracked the hull, but I didn't say anything. None of us so much as made a sound or moved a muscle as Doan sank to her knees, fists almost pawing at the floor as if she wanted to hit it but didn't have the energy left.

"Stop…" she whispered, so quietly I could barely pick it up. "Stop…"

Slowly, Secret got to his feet, shared a look with Silence, and crept forward until he could put a hand on Doan's shoulder. Her shaking stopped, but she might have just frozen, it was hard to tell.

Secret pulled her into a hug. It couldn't have been a comfortable thing, all clanging alloy and biometal, but a second later Silence joined them, and they all knelt there in, soundless except for Doan's soft crying.

Belyri came to me over the comms. Behind our Operators' backs, in a way.

"Can we at least find out what happened?"

I almost dismissed the question out of hand, partly because I didn't think it would matter how Ind had died, but mostly because I was already tired of dealing with it. Looking at it now, I suppose I just wanted to go hide in my histories again and not have to deal with the real world for a while.

But I was… am a historian. Ind was dead, and I felt that meant she deserved to be remembered. It wasn't the same as helping her, but I didn't really believe that was possible.

…

Alright, enough of that. Secret is right. No point in wasting time moping while the story continues. After all, I did find out what happened. A suitably heroic, if futile, last stand by our oft-monosyllabic friend, followed by a rather frustrated secondhand account of her scanning and metaphysical delivery to Cephalon Simaris. Apparently the Tenno in question was used to much more punctual captures, and the stories of the red-and-blue Grineer spread fast until I cut them off. Stories about a Grineer with two guns got lost amongst jokes and stories, and were less of a worry.

Suffice to say, when I eventually returned to the scene aboard my orbiter, with only a little guidance along the way from a certain musical Cephalon, Doan had mostly calmed down and the trio were talking in hushed tones. Well, one hushed tone and two sets of muted gestures that had become familiar to everyone present. The point is, they were calm enough to hear me when I spoke up, even tentatively.

"I know where Ind is." Except, that wasn't quite right, was it? "I mean, I know where we can find her."

Look, it's a strange distinction, but an important one. Technically, Ind wasn't anywhere in particular, but access to what was left of her could be found in exactly one place.

Doan stood, and I swear, the look she gave me through her helmet made my nonexistent heart break. There was so much hope, so much waiting anger, so much expectation of betrayal as she asked, "where?"

"We need to go to Kronos Relay," I told her quickly. "We can visit her. Only visit. Understand?"

None of them did, and Belyri was trying to interrupt my thoughts with pings, but I needed to word this very carefully.

"Ind has been changed into information," I explained, because it was mostly accurate. Calling quantum data information is sort of like calling cold welding a patch job. It doesn't at all get across the perfection of what's being described. We weren't going to go see a copy of Ind. For every universal intent and purpose, Ind's identity, body and mind, had been transferred wholesale into a digital realm.

I'm getting away from the point here, but it is important information. I'm trying to establish a baseline.

My explanation mostly boiled down to a few things. Yes, we could go now. No, Ind could not come home. No, we can't kill the person holding her (any Cephalon knows how hard that is to get through a Tenno's head). Yes, we could stay as long as we wanted. Probably.

When I was done, Belyri very politely knocked down my firewall and set my ship to dumb-pilot.

"Why did you tell them that?" she asked, without even a hello.

For those wondering, yes, Cephalon can fight. It's a sort of cyber warfare in hyper-advanced mindscapes. All the gritty details aside, for all my Cephalon audience, let me make one thing clear: I am nothing impressive in the war department. I spent my wait reviewing history. I stayed mostly sane and learned nothing at all. Belyri? While I was replaying the third battle of the Orion Offensive for the three-thousand-and-seventy-fourth time, she was writing music. Creating. Growing. Learning.

For our organics in the audience, that means Belyri entering my mindscape was roughly equivalent to a Tenno entering your average Grineer Galleon. Quick, effortless, and going to end with the walls painted to within a nanometer's wavelength of the shade of red the intruder prefers.

So I answered carefully.

"I didn't want to break their hearts if things go wrong."

Accurate. Not precise, but I was talking about the unexpected. Accurate was good enough.

She scanned me over, kindly not pulling me apart to check if I was lying, because we're friends, and did something like nodding.

"The beautiful thing about living, is that everything that lives can begin again," she said.

I'm pretty sure that's not a scientifically rigorous statement, but Belyri is a musician and I'm a historian, so it was probably something from a poem of some kind that I'd never heard of. The important thing is that she seemed to think there was hope and that I hadn't done anything worth destroying me or, worse, tattling to my Tenno about.

-You try real immortality for a few millennia and see whether you think of death or a whiny crewmate as worse.-

-No, you're a crewmate, because you can't boss me around.-

-And you can't do that if I flush you out an airlock. My point stands.-

-Your Warframe would survive for at least a day. Technically within my precepts.-

That little argument out of the way, we took our passengers to the nearest relay, though nearest is a bit of a misnomer when it comes to travelling in the Void. Suffice to say we navigated the distance handily and arrived without too much trouble. Maybe a slightly concerning amount of whispering from Doan to the Tenno. I opted to turn down the audio receptors on the Liset and assume they weren't scheming in some way.

Here's a spoiler: they were scheming. And it turns out that Secret and Silence, when they put their heads together, had guessed a surprising amount about things I definitely hadn't told them yet. It makes me wonder just how much the Tenno as a whole have figured out.

-Yes, you're a genius. And you're lucky you didn't blast me, you, and half the Relay into that paste they feed Corpus crewmen. Go deal with that dojo and stop gambling with our lives, brat. We'll finish the story later.-

-Because sometimes I work on things besides telling your stories, and also I've discovered I love torturing people with suspense.-

Author's Note

Part of this is actually me liking suspense, yes, but another part is that I've been a bit busy with a new job lately, and with trying to claw my way past a bit of writer's block in my other project, the RWBYframe crossover Broken Moon. Since I'm trying to reach the point in that story where I feel comfortable beginning to post it, it's fairly high priority. It also doesn't help that Doan Tana's story has evolved quite a bit beyond its originally-intended silly release valve for when I feel like dabbling in writing pure Warframe. I guess that happens when the fic becomes the most popular one I write.

I haven't yet started on the next portion, but I hope to have it out earlier than the two month waiting period we usually have. Wish me luck. And, StormCrowley, thank you for your continued support and kind words.