Chapter 23, The Admission

"What kind of monster would even think of this?" Cerulean asked, her emotions coming through with every word. Not that Hakke could blame her.

They were currently standing down in the Dark lab, past the wreckage of Hakke's scuffle with Burgundy, next to the Boost Machine. Callie was currently shining blue light over every inch and contour, recording everything on both the exterior and interior. Everything about this machine was wrong, in the way that everything the Hive made was wrong. It should have been completely unusable, as no individual component seemed to function by any principle that Hakke was aware of.

He had known in the back of his mind that the likelihood of actual Hive activity on Remnant was high. It only made sense, seeing as it was more than likely Dûl Yurnath had wanted the Crown to come to this planet. And no self respecting offspring of the Hive Goddess of schemes and plans would send something like that out into the world without someone to receive it. He just hadn't expected that the active Hive activity would have been carried out in any capacity by anything that wasn't Hive.

She was working with Remnant natives. It was the only answer that made any sort of sense. He just didn't like it.

They were alone down here, he had double checked. No other Dark Worshippers, no other Syndicate grunts, nothing. After they had both had a moment to breathe and get Basil's arm in a makeshift sling, Hakke had gone back down into the lab and found the other Syndicate grunt locked in a room by herself.

Alone with some rather medieval lobotomy and other surgical equipment and an empty drum. It hadn't taken a genius to figure out what Burgundy's plan had been. Truth be told, the more he looked around this place, the more satisfied he was that both men were dead.

With the jammer down and a route to the computer room properly memorized, they had set the Syndicate turncoats to downloading data, tearing out hard drives, and grabbing as many physical forms as they could carry. Once they were all gathered, the plan was to sift through everything and begin compiling every illegal activity that the Syndicate had been up to here in a neat package to be delivered to whoever could use it best. Shooting Syndicate members worked great in the short term but an organization this big needed more than one path of attack, if only to take pressure off their primary.

The turncoats would serve as an early warning system in case anyone came by, as without the jammer their Scrolls worked fine again. It would also keep the both of them away while Hakke gave his partner the rundown as to what they were actually dealing with.

He figured she earned the right to know, regardless of how insane the truth would seem. Maybe not the whole 'I'm actually a space alien' bit, but who knows, maybe that would come out today.

"And all of those drums back at the entrance are the same? They all have…" she struggled to verbalize the rest. "They all have people in them?"

"Yeah. Every single one."

Hand shaking slightly, Cerulean began to close the viewing hatch before Hakke reached out and stopped her. He pointed at the interior wall of the drum. To her credit, she followed his finger to the lightly glowing sigils scratched into the metal.

"Are those-"

"Yeah."

"What does this mean? What is this? What..." Her words stumbled out in a jumble. He didn't blame her. There were certain things that should never be seen. "How do you, how much do you know?"

He pulled the view door closed. There was no reason now for that abominable act of savagery to be put on display. He paused there, collecting his thoughts and trying to formulate the best response to her question. He breathed slowly, willing himself into a calmer, meditative state. It was clear now that the Dark and its worshippers were her on Remnant, and they were in one way or another standing between him and the Crown. They would be drawn towards one another.

The Deep would not abide the presence of the Sky. Of the Light. He was as close a champion of the Light as was likely to ever be on this planet. He would become target number one once they realized he was here.

As would anyone who stood beside him.

It was time for the Detective to learn a little about the world they lived in. About the only war to matter. Whether she liked it or not, she had just landed herself a front row seat to the Remnant front.

"A pretty good amount." He admitted. "Bits and pieces, scraps of info that help contextualize whatever the hell this is. Pretty sure I know who to heap the blame on at least, and I think I can make some educated guesses as to why. Might be a bit iffy on that last one though. Still, no way they learned those runes on their own. Only one batch of monsters has the full set."

"Who?" It was less of a question and more of a demand.

No turning back now. "They call themselves the Hive. Those runes are their language, their tongue. Amos seemed to know some words. If any of his speech caused physical pain, well, that would be why. I can't say how long they've been here, I just don't have enough information to tell. I can only hope they haven't been here long. This whole operation reeks of how they do their business; they tend to fester out of sight until they can overwhelm whoever and whatever is in their way. They normally don't use proxies though, like the two men we put down. Or use machines like this.

He could see the Detective's mind whirring, processing what he was telling her. It looked like she wanted to say something, but the words were refusing to come out. He pressed on.

"The Hive, and by extension however much of the Syndicate they've influenced, follow something called the Sword Logic. Both Amos and Burgundy confirmed that to me personally, Amos via his robotic proxies, and Burgundy to my face. It's their main philosophy, what they build their lives around, what guides their every movement and thought.

He closed his eyes. "Did Amos ask you a question when he was trying to kill you? Specifically, did he ask you if you could kill him, or he could kill you? Because that's the Sword Logic in a nutshell. Only the strongest deserve to live. One left standing."

Silence reigned. Finally, Cerulean managed one last question.

"Why?"

The Warlock opened his eyes and looked at the Detective. "Easy. They worship death."

"A death cult."

"Yeah."

She swallowed, looked over the Boost Machine alongside Hakke. Now they needed to do the impossible and figure out exactly what the Hive were planning with this device. How it all fit into the overall plan. What exactly Boost was. Why it needed human bodies as part of its manufacturing. He knew in rough terms what it did, but that couldn't have been it. The Hive wouldn't have made something for the use of non-Hive allies. The concept of non-Hive allies was laughable.

Then again, they weren't dealing with the overwhelming will of Oryx, the Taken King. They weren't dealing with the brutality of Xivu Arath, the God of War. They were dealing with the daughter of Savathûn, the Witch-Queen. They were dealing with Dûl Yurnath, Deception's Prodigy. Traveler knew what the hell this all meant, or where it fit into whatever debased scheme was fermenting on this odd little rock drifting in the back-end of nowhere.

Who was to say she hadn't deceived some cannon fodder to serve her until the main event?

"There's more, isn't there? There's more you haven't told me."

Hakke nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"You told me that there wouldn't be any more of this garbage. If it was relevant, you'd tell me. I've held up my end of the bargain, so you'd better have a good goddamn reason you broke yours."

Her words cut deeper than she could have known. Memories slowly dredged up from deep within himself. Of an oath taken, and an oath broken. He only had 21 years of life and duty under his belt, nothing in comparison to the literal centuries of service that some Guardians could boast, but he felt each one weighing down on him like blankets of lead.

A chuckle escaped him. It was a dead, humorless thing. "No, can't say that I do. Just a fool's hope that I had missed something. That was wrong."

"That's it." It was a statement. One that spoke volumes. Their partnership up until this point had been built on a rocky foundation, uneven at best. The main thing that had been holding them together was convenience and the fact that the other offered something that the former was a poor choice for. Hakke and Callie: brute strength in both the digital and physical sense. Cerulean: in depth knowledge of the city of Vale and its denizens.

Unseen, and unrecognized, they had established a basic trust. One that, as always, Hakke had broken.

He could only think of one thing to salvage this partnership. Too much was on the line for even the potential of a rift to develop. While he didn't think that this would be enough to convince the Detective to strike out on her own, it would almost certainly be enough to lose her trust. And if you couldn't trust your partner in the field, it was only a matter of time before someone would pay for that rift with blood.

That, above all else, was something Hakke knew to be intrinsically true. It always ended in blood. Never his, at least in a way that mattered. Always someone undeserving.

It was time to lay all the cards out on the table. Time for the truth.

His eyes drifted upwards. "Do you know what Callie is doing right now?"

"Really?" Her voice was low, angry even.

"Just… hang on a second. I'm actually going somewhere with this. Do you know what she is doing." He said, his weariness leaking into his voice. By the Light itself, he felt tired. He was too young, by any metric really, to feel this tired. A flash of realization hit him. "Don't answer that Callie. Not in the mood."

Callie gave an all too human pout.

Cerulean, not amused, gestured vaguely at the machine. "She's scanning it? Or something."

"Close enough. She's forming the basis of a deep-penetration contact scan of this machine, which is a fancy way of saying that she's basically stabbing the damn thing with subatomic prongs, a couple million per square centimeter, all so that she can form an accurate simulation of every component, every bolt down to thread count and helix angle. Then, she and I will be able to process everything and create blueprints of this thing, and from that I should be able to figure out just what the hell it is. How it works, what it makes.

He turned to face the Detective. "She is capable of not only hacking into practically every data system on this world, regardless of how secure, but 3D scanning the interior of a machine without dismantling it. And projecting holograms. While flying. With free floating fins. And a full personality that would ace any personhood test that any scientist from Atlas to the Cryptarchs of my home could produce. All while operating without ever stopping to recharge or for a change of batteries. Now. Can you tell me with a straight face that any one of the Four Kingdoms could realistically make something like her?"

Her forehead scrunched up. It would have been amusing at any other time, the level of cognitive dissonance that Cerulean was visibly fighting her way through. Not right now though. There was simply too much heavy-duty material to go through.

"What are you trying to say?" She finally got out.

"All that is context for this next bit. I'm not from Vale, or Atlas or Mistral or any place you've heard there is a hell of a lot more that I need to tell you. I've held too much back, I freely admit that. And if you want, I'll tell you everything. I don't have much in the way of proof, but I have a few means of proving my claims."

"Look, stop. Just stop. I… I need a minute to process this. I-" She began to walk towards the exit, stopping as her hand came up as if to make a point. It dropped. "I'm going back up. I'll be out front, we'll finish this talk in a bit."

He nodded. "Sounds good. Callie should be done in, say, an hour. I'm not leaving her down here alone, Traveler knows what else they were doing down here."

Cerulean nodded in response, her brow slightly furrowed before she turned and began making her way out of the Dark Lab. He watched until she turned a corner and vanished from sight.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? What are you planning to do for proof?" Callie asked, the faint hiss of her scan stopping.

"She deserved to know. She needs to know. Callie, we're in the shit properly now, and we still don't have the slightest idea what Dûl Yurnath's goal or plan is. So I'm going to catch her up, get her on the same page as us. I'm going to tell her where we're from. Have you transmat something big. Stuff that no one here on Remnant could do. Sci-fi stuff." He turned from where the Detective had vanished only to see Callie hovering at head level. Her fins were at an angle, one raised above the others like an eyebrow. "No, not that. This day's been traumatic enough without introducing her to the wonders of thanatology."

Shooting himself was his trump card, anyways. And one he really didn't want to pull out after encountering Dark worshippers. Once he got off this property and away from the Dark Zone in the lab, then it was on the table. Otherwise killing himself in a Dark Zone, while under the influence of the Barrier, was an experiment he really didn't want to conduct.

"So I take it we don't mention that the Hive aren't Human. Or Faunus, for that matter. I really don't like that they distinguish between the two groups so much, they're practically the same. You say 'humanity' back in the City, and it is accepted that you're talking about Humans, Awoken, and Exo."

"A little harsh there, Callie. And not very understanding, the physical differences aren't that subtle."

"Are you playing Devil's Advocate right now?" Callie asked as the sounds of scanning returned.

"Yep, I am. Not in a bantering kind of mood right now Callie. Not down here next to this thing."

"Yeah, that's why I'm trying to engage in small talk, Hakke. You can look away from this thing whenever you want, I'm forced to deep scan it for all its juicy, Hive secrets. So, if you would be so kind. Please distract me."

Hakke's eyes widened slightly. "Oh. Right. Sorry about that Callie, I think my head was beginning to slip its way up where the sun don't shine."

She tittered a small laugh, a sound Hakke rarely got to hear, and one that he treasured. "You have a way with words. No wonder you became a Warlock."

He laughed in return, before steeling himself and turned his attention to the Boost machine once more. If his Ghost was stuck deep diving into this nightmare device, then it was only fitting that he should be there beside her. After all, what kind of Guardian would he be if he wasn't willing to show solidarity with his Ghost?

After some time, less than thirty minutes total, they were done. Data collected, Callie returned to the Backpack and Hakke exited the Dark lab for hopefully the last time. He turned to look down into its depths at the steel entrance. They still needed to figure out what to do with the bodies in the drums. The drums may have kept the bodies alive, but there wasn't a single person in them. Not anymore. Just empty shells. His first instinct was to disintegrate them, but that felt equal parts pragmatic and wrong. They had been people once, before this Syndicate cult pulled them off the street. People with thoughts, ideas, dreams, lives.

The dead deserved respect.

He strode out to the entrance, stopping by the office to find it properly ransacked. He smiled. The two Syndicate goons they had picked up had done a fantastic job gathering everything that could possibly help them deal an unexpected blow against the Syndicate. Apparently Basil was an accounting major from one of the local non-combat universities, how he wound up at a Syndicate chop-shop was a mystery for the moment, but one he was confident would come out in the wash.

Hildy was proving to be surprisingly useful as well, less nervous than her accountant counterpart, and a little more street savvy. She had known where stashes of both Dust and Lien had been kept around the Farm, and after having been given a gun she had taken Basil on a cash hunt. Cerulean thought she was the actual criminal of the duo, or the one who had had the rougher upbringing at least. She also didn't have a severely broken arm, which made her a perfect companion for Basil.

Made sense to Hakke at least. He had never been particularly good at reading people. Machines, absolutely. They only worked in one specific way. Except for the times they didn't, but that's what made engineering fun. It was like a big puzzle that ended with a real tangible result. Like a Theon rifle for example: an Arc charge ignited the propellant, sending a projectile down a guiding barrel into a target. Or a Boost Machine: impure Boost is filtered via unknown means through a living body and into pure Boost. A multistage process, one that indicated both a high level of engineering acumen and a solid grasp of Hive magic.

Well, not magic. Sort of magic. Incomprehensible ritualistic pseudo-science in a spiky hat maybe.

You may as well call it magic, he surmised. Was easier to just do that and call it a day.

He found the Faunus sitting on the entry steps, leaning against a decorative post holding up a second floor awning. Off in the parking lot the two Syndicate goons were loading boxes full of hard drives and Dust vials into their van. There hadn't been too much physical Lien held here, but there had been enough that none of them would need to worry about money for a decent month or so. He sat down on the opposite side of the stair, leaning against the opposing awning support.

Night was falling fast, the glow of Vale proper drowning out the first early evening stars in a dim glow of artificial lighting. Far out in the crop fields, headlights traveled independent along slim beams of blue hardlight, all backdropped against the Vale Wall. From here it looked so small, more like a guiding beam than an actual defensive structure.

They sat for a while, listening to Hildy and Basil's voices drifting over the gravel parking lot. To the chirping of night insects.

"You know," Cerulean eventually began, "originally, I had you pegged as being from Mantle. Lots of fancy tech, your own drone, but not nearly snobby enough to be from Atlas. Too gritty, too quick to reach for a gun. Now though, I bet it's fair to say I was wrong about that, wasn't I?"

Hakke opened his mouth to answer, but stopped as the Detective shushed him. "No, it's my turn to get to my point in a stupid, roundabout way."

Another bout of silence. She averted again. "There's gaps in your knowledge that I can't explain. Simple stuff that everyone I have ever met had down. Like the fact that you didn't know what a pumpkin was. Or the staggering lack of knowledge about well known places in the city, like Beacon. Then there's your Aura, the way it works I've never heard of. Or seen someone recover from wounds as fast as you can. Brother's sake, an hour ago your face looked like ground beef, now you look and move fine.

"Then, there's your irritating habit of not actually answering my questions. You just hand out vague affirmations or skirt around the question in the most obvious way possible. And I think I get it, or at least why. Now don't get me wrong, I'm pissed, but I get it."

Hakke's head turned sharply at that.

"You get it." He said incredulously.

"Not fully, but I'm putting it together. A man with no past, and yes, I've looked. When I went to the CCTS Tower, I looked you up. There's no information on you on any site I know, or from any public access record from any Kingdom. So a man with no past, who has intimate knowledge of this weird cult crap, some of the most advanced tech I've ever seen or heard of, very little knowledge about really normal stuff, an Aura that breaks all the rules, and stares at every bird and blade of grass like he's never seen it before wanders straight into a gang war. All for a stone hat covered in cultist runes.

"You're not from Mantle, or Atlas. Your drone, or Ghost, well, I definitely believe you when you say she has a mind of her own. Callie talks and acts like a person, not a robot." She took a deep breath. "Who are you and where the hell did you come from, Hakke?"

Hakke let his head fall back against the support. Over the mountains, fragments of the shattered moon were beginning to appear over the horizon.

"First off, my name is Hakke. That's it, one word. Hakke. I'm a Guardian of the Last City. I can't tell you where it is, mainly because I don't know myself. I'm lost in ways I didn't even know were possible. The reason I act different than most, is because I guess I am. Hell, two weeks ago I was completely unaware what the Four Kingdoms were, let alone that they existed."

"Guardian?"

"It's equivalent to a Huntsmen as far as job description goes. Guardians guard the Last City from whatever is threatening it and its people. And I know the Last City isn't a very creative name, but it is accurate for home. There were others, but they're gone now. Ruins. We only have one left."

"Okay, what about these 'Hive' people? Why didn't you say anything about them?"

Hakke pulled out the vial of Boost he had taken from the machine. "I didn't have any evidence that they were here, not anything tangible at least. I guess I knew in the back of my head that it was going to be them and the nightmare that they bring with them, I just didn't want to admit it. Felt like if I did that it would guarantee that they would be here. Now though? Hard to deny the evidence when I've seen it in front of me."

A mental command to Callie, and the vial vanished in a wash of flickering lights.

"What the hell was that?" Cerulean asked, sitting up and staring at Hakke's now empty hand.

"That was a transmat. I send a mental ping to Callie, and she encodes it for digital storage. I don't really get how it works, the science is above my pay grade. It has to do with collapsing the Higgs Boson field and a bunch of other quantum nonsense. I have transmat sensors built into most of my equipment for quick swapping."

"Digital storage?" Now it was her turn to be incredulous.

"Don't worry, you can't stash a person. Well, you can transmat a person from one place to another, but that's an instant exchange. Basically a teleport. Can't store them though, neural activity or positronics will crash the system if it has to deal with them for too long."

"Huh." Cerulean muttered something softly under her breath, before a single silent laugh escaped her.

"What?"

"I had a few thoughts about who and what you were, and I think that just sealed the deal. You're a gods damned Avalonian."

"I… don't know what that means."

"From Avalon, the Lost Kingdom." She said with a smile. "It's an old legend about a mystical land that the gods made or seeded or something. It's supposed to be from 'across the longest ocean' whatever that means."

"Yeah, no. We don't call it Avalon. We call it Earth."

"Earth?" She exclaimed.

"I didn't name the damn thing." He said defensively.

"So what? You're an Earthian? Earthling? Earthese?" She was laughing hard now.

He made a face. "Lets stick with Avalonian. Sounds better."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh." She laughed. "I just, oh gods I needed that. I nearly died today, why am I laughing?"

"Well, what else can you do? Amos bit it and you didn't."

"Yeah, true." She said, taking a few deep breaths to calm down before getting to her feet. "Well, no point in sticking around here any longer. Basil and Hildy should have finished up by now, and we all have a lot of data to go through."

Hakke's brow began to furrow. "That's it?"

"What do you mean that's it? Did you, wait. Did you think I was going to throw down some ultimatum over the lack of info you've been giving me? I mean, it was definitely a strike against you, but I really got the feeling that this whole shitshow blindsided you as bad as it blindsided me. I don't think that if you had told me about the Hive beforehand that it would have been that helpful. I don't run on a three strikes policy.

"Tell you what." She said, extending a hand to help him to his feet. "You put together what you know about these Hive people and whatever other insane crap you think would be helpful, and we'll call it even. Deal?"

He nodded and grabbed her hand. "Deal."

They began walking back to the van.

"So, what do we do about the drums? Feels wrong just leaving them."

"Nothing an anonymous tip to the cops won't solve. Not like you could pay me to go back down there." The Faunus said with a shiver. "Look, lets just focus on getting home, and figuring out our next move."

"Sounds like a plan."

Good ol' falling action chapter here, nothing too crazy. I figure a little down time before the next smaller arc begins is needed to disseminate all the crap that just went down. And get Cerulean up to speed on Hive stuff. That's important too.

- RangoTango

Time 2 review reviews

Seyd - Oh good. I know if left unchecked I have the tendency to start jumping the shark, so it's very good to hear that this arc seemed to work overall. I agree wholeheartedly as far as the Cerulean bit goes. Her intro already skirted close to the whole 'damsel in distress' trope, which I am not a fan of. Showing that she is capable of holding her own was vital to help cement her as a capable partner to a Guardian.

zirnitradandm - Gracias mi amigo.

Master-ofmanga - We got a ways to go! Now that we're getting closer to a bit of a time skip, (of like a day or two) the whole Barrier shenanigan will have some neat payoff in some unexpected ways. He may not have normal supers yet, but he's done enough wacky stuff to start figuring out some new techniques.

Guest - Glad to hear you liked it. And, no. Describing people seems to be the number one thing I do not do well in this tale, as outside of approximately one to two sentences, the main character has not been described in detail. I got his armor/shader combos down in a reply to The Baz in chapter 16, so there is that. TL;DR: I describe people bad, will fix. Eventally

sundew112604 - Eyy no problemo. Also, yeah, that's basically the Sword Logic in a shellnut for ya. The worms I think are Hive specific, but even they are starting to realize they got played for suckers (mainly Savathun. Xivu Arath still be vibin same as always, and Oryx is dead.)

AidsNinja - You would be correct! Ascendant anything are tough enough to give Veteran Guardians pause (outside the Young Wolf of course). He would get slam dunked into his final death by anything Ascendant.

TheWeepingTurtle - Oh good to hear. Although now I have a benchmark to clear. I also wanted to take time to build up a roster of characters and events

Rentozu - No Aura for Hakke. The Barrier is a weird unknown at the moment that limits his Light, the biggest cap being he can't cast Supers like Dawnblade.I'd love to say more, but it's also incredibly important to the overall plot, so no can do.

The Baz - Warlock Media (Its a Canadian Advertising firm!) Oh you know it. Plug in one of his vidyas while I'm on the road, download that sweet lore right into my bloodstream.

Chaotic - Thanks man. Her Aura's there now, it's just a matter of training it to a usable point. It's definitely blue, since that's the color her entire character was built around

Guest - I truly hate how well that works.