Author's Note:

Apologies for having taken so long on this one, given it was basically the second half of the other chapter. As you can see, I'm not all that fast at these. I could blame work and a new game and a really, really bad day with my computer, but the truth is this is pretty much how fast I usually roll. So, now you know. I hope you enjoy this one.

That's the dojo mostly handled. I can't believe it's taken this long for Secret to search one out, but I suppose he and Silence didn't need one until now.

Anyway, Ind.

Relays are great places, full of opportunities for every group in the system to interact. They're also unpleasant places, where certain people who nobody likes to spend time with hold court. You haven't seen controlled frustration until you've seen Teshin try to convince Tenno to learn to fight against each other, or understood that the universe loves fools until you realize Darvo makes a comfortable living mostly by virtue of being friends with a particularly well-liked clone. You also haven't seen just how far off the deep end a Cephalon can go until you've seen Simaris.

Cephalon Simaris exemplifies what happens when a Cephalon takes our survival mechanism of… hobbies… and goes that extra step past the obsession most of us had to cultivate. He devotes all his time to rationalizing his pastime and trying to convince others to join him. Which makes him very easy to distract, but we'll get to that.

In maybe two minutes. Not a lot of lead-up here, really. We took Doan to a Relay, headed straight for Simaris, and asked to interview one of his… I think the word is prisoners?

Doan didn't like the polite approach. She seemed to think Simaris had Ind in a cage, and tried to intimidate him.

Simaris hangs out with Tenno. He was not intimidated.

Then again, Simaris lives in his own little world. It's possible he didn't notice. The other Tenno did, but a yelling Grineer is something like a colourful Warframe: annoying if you happen to be forced to experience it, but common enough in daily life to be ignored most of the time.

Still, I asked Secret to stop Doan, since there were already enough problems without ticking off one of the most powerful Cephalons in the system.

That bit earlier about Belyri's music providing creativity and therefore power? That was how Simaris's simulations worked for all those years. On the other hand, the hyperfocus was a lot like mine, creating a fortress within his programming that wasn't going to be disturbed any time soon.

We were in luck, however, it turned out the idea of interviewing one of his prisoners was so novel that it intrigued Simaris. With some fast talking on Belyri's part, we convinced him to help us.

You need to know that Simaris's idea of help is rarely very accommodating. The Tenno were allowed to enter in their usual manner - don't ask - and we were allowed to bring one Cephalon to record data.

Guess who got volunteered to go inside the murder parade and look for Ind?

It was me. I got volunteered for the murder parade. Because I'm a historian. I told them Simaris wouldn't notice if we sent a baker in, but Secret and Silence insisted. It wasn't as if the great and powerful Belyri spoke up to mention her merits in multitasking and neurocybernetic infiltration, though.

That only left convincing Doan to wait. I didn't do that. I don't think I could have. How does one explain to a Grineer, even a clever one, that Cephalons and Tenno had ways to do things Grineer couldn't do?

Well, according to Silence, almost exactly like that, but without the words. For them, it came out something like, "I do, you no can. Body mind no can. I do. Trust." Which… given it took a handful of gestures and Doan was still recovering from the fact that a Tenno had killed her Queen, turned out to be disproportionately persuasive.

Doan grabbed their hands and looked both of them in the faceplates - close enough to their eyes - and said. "You do. Or do not come back."

Neither Belyri nor I liked that much, especially since she was telling our Tenno not to return from the mindscape of a sociopathic Cephalon. Since there wasn't much I could do about that, or my Tenno's careless promise, I instead settled for trying to make it clear exactly what we were doing.

Well, what I thought we were doing. And since it hadn't occurred to me that Doan wouldn't be able to visit the Sanctuary until we got to Simaris, I told her what I'd come up with as a compromise.

"Doan, we're going in now. Secret and Silence will get me to Ind and I'll tell Belyri what she says so she can tell you. Alright?"

Doan didn't reply. Yes, that made me suspicious. She's not exactly verbose, but she usually says something. There wasn't much I could do but ask Belyri to take care of her, though.

Definitely the more worrying part was when Secret signed back to Doan, "will do, or not go here."

Oh no, we definitely didn't like that.

So I sent Belyri a wish of good luck and… disappeared? Probably the best word for it. On a cyber level, or whatever the tech Cephalons call it, it was a bit of a journey, but to everyone outside I just winked out like usual. It was probably more spectacular when Secret and Silence's Warframes dropped like puppets cut loose, but I didn't get to see that part, nor Simaris's little drones tidying the bodies away.

Instead, what I saw was… how to describe this?

Imagine if the real world never matched up corners quite right. Every edge has the sides just missing each other or going through each other. Not by a lot, but just enough to give you a headache every time you look at something. That's what most mindscapes are like. Simaris's is tidier than most, but it's still there. Still nagging.

Not that Secret and Silence noticed. After taking a moment to chat about my appearance in the mindscape, they happily urged me on as if this was their back yard, pulling out their unreasonably destructive weapons and strolling through a portal.

And then I was getting shot at.

I do not like being shot at. I've discovered that about myself. It was not a thing that took long to conclude, once I gave it some consideration.

I ducked, and I hid, and those brats laughed and started shooting things, until ten seconds later when Secret got bored, took away everybody else's weapons, and started running around with his sword. And a minute later - a MINUTE - Silence turned to me and asked, while shooting a dozen Corpus she'd just knocked over, whether I was going to do anything.

"What do you expect me to do?" I asked, in as calm and level a voice as was possible with all the shooting and screaming going on.

And she shrugged while cutting a man in half, and said, "dream. Find Ind."

Dream, to her, meant using powers she imagined I had. Which is fine, as far as it goes, except she wasn't exactly wrong. In a mindscape, I had as much power as I was able to impose on Simaris's version of reality. Which meant about a fifth as much as Belyri had, but let's not get too deep into that. The point is, there were things I could do, just probably not much. So I sort of crawled into a corner and watched the chaos and let myself get lost in one of my histories. Without going into too much detail, in the thirteenth century of the Orokin Empire, a sniper by the name of Pasal Dwergan got on the bad side of the Orokin Council and ended up on the wrong end of a manhunt through a warzone.

It felt apropos.

A small swarm of observer drones and a handful of Dax trackers appeared, wavering into existence and scattering. The Dax fought when they had to, but mostly they looked for metaphysical clues to Ind's whereabouts. Ind being the "Pasal" of the scenario.

And, you know, I quickly noticed something. A great deal of the technology of the height of the Orokin Empire, even examples from several centuries prior to its fall, had to be discarded when the Sentients attacked. The very greatest weaponry of the modern day is the little that has been rediscovered or invented from similar understandings. So my Dax, though weak because of my own abilities, made up for it in being counterfeits of something magnificent. I dare say that pairs of them matched up to either Silence or Secret, under the right circumstances.

This is where things get murky for me. I have to take the brats' word for what happened for the next little while, though most of it doesn't sound very eventful. Keeping up those dreamed searchers meant keeping my mind on that story, and I've been a little too good at that for a long time. Too much practice hiding from the real world. Should have occurred to me earlier how dangerous it might be, but nothing came of it, so I won't make a fuss.

To make a long… long… story short, we searched for several hours, with a little assistance from Simaris. Assistance, meaning he didn't bring back the same people to try to kill us over and over again. At least, I think it wasn't the same people. The point is, the Tenno murderblendered their way through several small armies worth of creatures. At first, the setting changed once every few minutes, but later the battlefields grew larger and the changes less frequent. Eventually, we were fighting our way across a never-ending battlefield.

The Tenno and my minions were fighting, that is. I was doing the sensible thing and trying to keep up and not get shot. And a good thing, too, since I did get shot! Three times! I should have had Secret bring a proper Warframe and not prance around for hours hoping the prisoner-warriors wouldn't notice the most important member of his ship.

Probably didn't occur to him. Better not have occurred to him. I'll be very displeased if I ever discover he expected the situation to be so terrifying.

Anyway, what I was getting at was…

I've lost my train of thought. Can we skip to the part where we found a squad of Grineer in the middle of the battlefield? Like, an actual squad that wasn't fighting over who was the toughest right up until they got chopped in half? That part was interesting.

Not that it was actually functionally any different from other squads the Grineer had set up in this hellscape. The toughest one was nominally in charge, mostly choosing which thing to attack next and shooting anyone who disagreed if shouting didn't work. Except in this case, the toughest one in charge lasted from when we saw them on the horizon as a little gap in the carnage all the way until we reached them.

No prizes for guessing who it was. Apparently having two guns is a major advantage among the Grineer, even if the wielder is a few pies short of a picnic.

As we got into sight, Ind raised a hand and yelled, "Tenno scum!" in the happiest tone those words have ever been uttered, then smacked a Lancer upside the head for aiming his gun at us.

Silence leapt across the battlefield - leaving me and Secret to clear the rest of the path, I might add - and crashed into a hug with Ind. I, on the other hand, did the responsible thing and contacted Belyri to let her know we'd found Ind.

"Already?" she asked. Which is when I discovered that there is a significant time dilation within the Sanctuary, with Simaris running thousands of simulations at a time, hundreds of times an hour. The exact dilation level varies, and apparently my presence was interfering, but we still ended up taking a bare few minutes to do hours of searching.

Good thing for Doan, at least. It made me wish I'd switched with Belyri even more.

The other Grineer were rather baffled by the whole situation. They can't have expected to see Tenno acting kindly towards them, especially after, for some of them, tens of thousands of years fighting and dying against all manner of enemy. Still, they did the one thing they understood and shot at all the enemies that came close, including other Grineer in some cases.

What followed was a whole lot of confusion and translation. After getting Belyri to convince Simaris to put us in normal time, half of the things Ind said needed to be relayed to Doan. Doan would fill me in enough so I could follow the parts of the conversation Silence seemed to be having no trouble with. It had the side benefit of helping Doan know exactly what we were talking about and making her feel a lot better about not being able to see Ind.

To sum up what we discussed, in mercifully abbreviated form: everybody was happy to meet again; Ind had been fighting for a long, long time; we told her she was in a simulation. That took longer to explain than I care to bother recording. And that was with it being made easier by the fact that Ind had died inside the simulation. A lot.

She took it rather well. Said something along the lines of, "dying hurts," which Secret and Silence commiserated with.

Then somebody said what I was afraid they'd say.

"We're going to get you out of here."

Silence is a really inconvenient person to have around sometimes. Especially since, when Simaris heard those words, he wasn't very happy. In a moment a giant golden avatar had appeared in the sky and was glaring down at us.

"You will not."

Have I mentioned I'm not very powerful by Cephalon standards? I feel I should mention that again.

There is a positive to this, however. The situation, not being weak. That's definitely bad. The thing is, Tenno are a bit of a special case even when it comes to Cephalon mindscapes. Like the humans and machines and Infested of the mindscape, Tenno have their own inviolable free will. They also, like Cephalons, have the ability to impose their will on the mindscape. Hence use of Void powers.

So, when Secret and Silence took positions beside Ind, I looked up at him and said, "we're here. We're taking her data. Do you really-"

"The Sanctuary scans are MINE!" Simaris roared, in a way that shook the land just a little. "Each one is a unique test subject. You will not take any away from me."

Ind gave a brief but perfect reply before I could think of something persuasive. "Want to go home."

There really wasn't much else to it. Ind wanted out and the Tenno were taking her. What, exactly, we were going to do once we had our quantum scan, I had no idea, but if we didn't get her out, eventually even Ind's little mind was going to be broken by the endless torture.

I really shouldn't have been surprised Doan and the Tenno came up with something. They'd even thought it through a little, except for this part, which I'm convinced boiled down to a colour wax drawing of swords and guns without anything else in the way of detail even occurring to the three of them.

One of these days those children are going to come up against a problem that wanton violence doesn't solve, but for the life of me I can't imagine what it'll be.

Simaris, on the other hand, seemed to think he was that unsolvable problem. It's possible he might have been, if he'd had anything besides fear to bargain with. Instead, he opted to order his Sanctuary prisoners to attack us. Mostly by yelling.

If you're wondering why he didn't just boot us from the system, he tried. Belyri said no. Yes, she can do that.

I wish I could say I'd come up with some strategy for just this sort of possibility. I wish Secret or Silence had. Or Doan. Or even Ind!

Forget Belyri, she's always happy to play things by ear.

None of us had. Nope. My plan was to meet Ind, collect information, start planning how to negotiate with Simaris to get her out, maybe wait until he got bored of her, and then go from there.

Secret, Silence, and Doan had come to the conclusion that Simaris had Ind hostage and this was a prison break.

Those three idiots - the Tenno and Ind, not Doan - fought like Maenads. I got shot. They got shot, too, but the point is, I got shot. I bleed when I get shot! Well, I don't literally bleed, it's more of a cybersomatic… except I don't have a body… a cyberpsychic…

That got a bit away from me, but the point is I got shot and it hurt. Dangerously. I can die when I get shot. I'm pretty sure I lost a full year and a half of the biography of Dr. Alarm Tutizha. She practically invented fourth-dimensional superconductors! And that was just with the first shot.

There was nowhere to hide. Periodic flashes of energy would let Secret stem the tide a bit, and even the strongest and most experienced wills can't handle Silence's power easily.

But they couldn't protect me. Do you know how scary that is? Yes, I wasn't a threat, and they attracted attention away just by existing, but every once in a while a clever Corpus or wild-eyed Grineer would hit me. One of my constructs disappeared before my eyes and I couldn't tell you for all the books in the ancient libraries of Earth who it was. The others, at least, left a hole I could piece together when they died, but…

Every shot took a part of me. I hid behind Ind, and she really did try to protect me, and Secret asked what was wrong but at the time I couldn't even put it into words. I panicked. My Tenno needed me and… and I panicked. I make no excuses. I failed them.

I'm sorry.

I wish I could look him in the eye and say that.

…

I don't…

I think… Doan got us out of there, in a way. See… Secret and Silence, they were expecting me to download Ind and escape. Log out from anywhere in the mindscape. Maybe I could have, but… I was scared. Trapped between wanting to get away and needing to stay with my Tenno.

Stupid of me.

You know who's in danger inside a mindscape? The prisoners, first and foremost. They have no power, except whatever their host gives them. Guest Cephalons, next. They have whatever power they bring with them, what they can force on their host. Next, the host. On their home field and comfortable, with all their power in one place.

You know who's not in danger in a mindscape? Tenno. They operate on entirely different rules than we do. Technically, the only thing at less risk than a Tenno interfacing Transference technology with the mindscape is the Warframes, and they're not really there in the first place. Just figments of Tenno dreams.

But tell me that, back then. Please do. There were three Warframes capable of time shenanigans at one point. If you ever find Urdr, send one my way.

I wanted to escape, almost logged out even as I cowered behind Ind's leg. Then I saw Secret's Warframe fall. Not die simply fall backwards, hit hard enough by something or other to knock him down.

Tenno are invincible. Despite some casualties over their years of service, I stand by that statement. Despite their defeats, I believe it. But Secret fell, and I stayed. I wish I could say it was because I wanted even the smallest chance to help. I wish I was thinking that we wouldn't get another chance to rescue Ind. Those weren't the reasons. Even as I lost memory after memory, I saw a Tenno fall and, I think, a part of me wanted to be there to record it. Just to watch and make sure it was in the histories.

Let it never be said the Orokin chose Cephalons who lacked dedication. Or perverse obsession.

He rolled to his feet, already shooting, and Ind put a hand down on my… I'm going to say head, but anybody with passing knowledge of Cephalons knows we don't have much in the way of humanoid shape.

In a mindscape, however, we do have a certain amount of physical substance. Thus the getting shot and getting head-pats.

Which was why, as Ind was busy shouting, "there, there. Good smart-box," over the noise of way too many guns, I had an idea. Then I got shot, which distracted me for a second before the idea occurred to me again.

"Secret!" I yelled.

He turned to me. Sort of. He was a bit busy killing a couple of the most experienced prisoners in the Sanctuary, and that's a closer fight than you'd expect.

"Can you shoot Simaris?"

Yes, it was a dumb idea, but I just wanted somebody to shoot him instead of me for a second.

Secret looked at Silence, who looked back. There was, presumably, a lot of Sending happening. Then Secret looked up, raised his offhand, and switched with Simaris.

This was a problem. Not a problem for Silence, who was well prepared and already busy lighting up weak spots on Simaris, and not a problem for Ind, who took the whole thing in stride and just started shooting the glowing parts, but a problem for me, who went blank on Belyri and just stared, dumbfounded, at a Simaris much larger than he deserved to be. Also a problem for everybody who had been on that side of us, which I suppose was a good thing for us.

Oh, and Simaris was now close enough to squash us and all my little soldiers without really trying.

Except it turns out he didn't like being shot any more than I did, so he roared in agony, yelled something about having his revenge, and started rising into the air.

Secret slammed into him from above. Part of the landscape fuzzed out of existence and Simaris hit the ground again.

Silence put a hand to Simaris's body and created another quake.

Ind kept shooting. I think she was humming.

I curled up into a ball until Simaris escaped, barely looking up enough to see that the landscape was starting to rebuild, but differently than before.

The memories Simaris had lost were gone forever. He was doing his best to repair the superficial damage, but it wasn't hard to guess how much he must have lost, trapped between two Tenno even for a few seconds. He was lucky to still be functioning.

He knew it, too. His avatar disappeared as soon as Simaris could muster the concentration to move himself outside it, and the Tenno were left fighting hordes of immortal enemies again.

There is a myth - not exactly my forte, I know - from millennia ago that tells the story of a man tasked to roll a boulder to the top of a round hill. The details why he was given the task and for what purpose are left to the imagination, but the point is the story is this: the task was impossible, and therefore endless. Pushing back the waves of Sanctuary prisoners was like that. The Tenno fought tirelessly for what felt like days, and each time they pushed the enemy back, more filled the ranks and came at us.

Meanwhile, out in the "real world", Doan Tana was talking quickly.

Don't quote me on exact wording, because Doan is very good at communicating, but doesn't always have the vocabulary to back it up. So, without further ado, let's escape my little breakdown inside the Sanctuary and review the conversation between Simaris, Belyri, and Doan.

"What are your Tenno doing?!"

"Causing trouble, I imagine."

"Doing the plan."

"What plan is that, dear?"

"To bring Ind out." I'm confident in imagining Doan said this in a perfectly matter-of-fact sort of way, as if she were reporting that she planned to do a walk around a Grineer outpost.

Simaris didn't take it very well. This was about the same time the Tenno started shooting people properly.

"They will leave my Sanctuary at once! I have no time for interruptions or distractions. My work is too important."

"That is sad for you, not for me. Give back Ind."

"They will be removed!"

"No, they won't, Simaris. They'll be in there as long as they need."

"Belyri, I warn you! I will have them destr-"

I'm told his avatar scrambled a little at that point, which Belyri estimates as about the time Secret switched places with him and all the unpleasantness happened on his end.

Doan, it turns out, is very good at guessing when Tenno are causing trouble. Insert your preferred joke here. She lost no time speaking softly while Secret and Silence carried the big sticks.

"Tenno do not stop. Not even if they die. I have learned that. Will you stop if you die? Can you fight longer than Tenno?"

"You can't -t -t -t do this! My findings are priceless!"

"They are worthless to us. Ind is priceless."

"If they destroy the Sanctuary, everyone inside will die."

I'm pretty sure that Simaris was panicking at this point, because Secret and Silence were destructive, and definitely aiming at things most Tenno don't in the Sanctuary, but I don't think they had the capability to actually destroy a Cephalon's mindscape from within.

"Secret says you are hurting her."

I'm not going to repeat what Simaris said here, but imagine a whole lot of yelling and language not fit for young ears. It continued on for some time until Doan interrupted.

"Stop hurting Ind. Give her back and we will stop hurting you."

I could go on, but the gist is there. Simaris gave a few more half-hearted protests, but with Belyri keeping him from booting myself, Secret, and Silence, he was completely out of options. Not that that mattered. Both Doan and the Tenno were distractions, after all. Not that anybody saw fit to inform me of that going in.

On the inside, Simaris was trying his best to limit the damage done to his Sanctuary, but that was also reducing the number of enemies who could attack us, not to mention their tactical options. Ever tried to charge straight at a Tenno in full murderblender mode? Not an easy thing to do.

Secret was yelling at me to get Ind to safety, and I was still panicking for the most part and had no idea what that was supposed to mean

Ind knelt down beside me.

Grineer are not known for a myriad of talents, either as a group or individually. There's yelling, shooting, mining, building, and patching stuff up. On an individual level, I've seen the exceptionally talented Doan Tana yell, run, shoot, and even plan at the same time. Quite the feat of multitasking for one of her race.

Ind, it turns out, is capable of hugging a vaguely rhomboid set of crystal sheaves while firing two rifles.

This is not a talent I would have ever expected to be needed, let alone to be as comforting as it was. Despite the very loud sound of two guns going off right beside what were certainly not my ears, I managed to gather my thoughts and try to come up with a plan.

The plan boiled down to, "memorize a history." On a cyberpsychic level, it was significantly more complex, but it helped me to think of it as exactly what I'm good at.

"Ind," I told her, in a voice I hoped was comforting, but truthfully I have no idea. "I need you to come with me."

"Okee."

"Really?"

That easy? Ind had no idea what was going on, and she was trusting me, anyway. I mean, I can understand trusting the Tenno, but even now I'm pretty confused why she was comfortable taking my word for it. Especially given her response was to just nod, reload, and say, "smart box say go. Okee."

Threw me a little off-balance, I have to say, and I wasn't feeling too steady at the time, anyway.

Now, I could explain the mechanics of what happened next, but not only would it be dreadfully boring, I don't understand about ninety percent of it. I know the words, but that's not the same. In terms closer to what I understand, imagine if one computer asked another for a file, and then the file said yes.

And for all the Cephalons shaking their geometric heads at me, you try explaining the process to your Tenno. I dare you. Then, if you have any luck with that, give it a shot with Grineer.

I don't think I'll be getting many complaints.

Speaking of which, Ind faded out without a word. Disappearing qubit by qubit, still shooting, definitely humming, and without a single word of complaint.

Considering I didn't know what I was doing, I felt pretty guilty.

Ind finally disappeared completely, without even being shot, and I was just about to say that we should probably escape soon if we could, when Belyri contacted me. The exchange went exactly like this.

"Simaris gives up. You can get Ind and come out now."

"I have Ind, but the prisoners are still attacking. Why hasn't Simaris called them off?"

"I think he's sulking."

"Sulking."

"Yep. So tell Silence that's the last of them and I'll pull you out once she's done."

I told Silence, and Silence let out a war cry that made me feel like perhaps the Orokin should have figured out after the third time their creations turned on them that crazy begets crazy. The entire world shook and rattled and tore itself apart, and I swear Silence created an earthquake that dropped the ground out from under us just before we were pulled out.

Doan ran up to Secret and Silence the moment they stood from their little transfer, looking around like she expected Ind to be with them.

"She's with me," I piped up before anything drastic could happen. "Only… I don't know what you want me to do with her…"

"Give her back," Doan said, as if that were the easiest thing in the world.

It almost hurt that she wasn't scared anymore. No, it did hurt. I didn't know what to say. It was like she thought it was all done, and we'd won, and Ind was as good as back, and she just wasn't. Ind was a pile of perfectly preserved data that I was too scared to even touch, because I'm not a monster like Simaris.

Then Silence contacted me, and tapped on her chest for extra effect.

She had a very bad idea that I tried to talk her out of. I told her things didn't work that way. She told me Warframes did. I told her Warframes were semi-organic at best, and also some of the most robust specimens conceivable by the highest and most desperate time of the Orokin. She argued that Ind was pretty tough, too. I tried to explain that the two weren't even comparable.

Eventually, we settled on a compromise. She told me that if I didn't give it a chance, she'd tell Doan I didn't try. I caved like a thesis on Orokin compassion.

"Miss Tana," I said, "do you trust us?"