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-22-

There was no way of knowing when the Daimakaicho would make her appearance, but the knowledge that she was coming, and what it could mean for the Valkyries, put pressure on them all to hurry along with their plans. More risks were taken to acquire materials. Gunnr was instructed to scout the outside perimeter of the compound if she was sent to clean again. Sanngrior and Rota acquired a vested interest in translating whatever was spoken between Cabatu and his leadership. Mist began stealing more food to help the flight keep their strength up. She was caught twice, though never beaten now. Not by the guards with their gloved hands, and it spooked the flight to the core. Lind kept her head down, ordered not to draw unwanted attention to herself or to the others through disobedience; the Major didn't want to highlight anyone for whatever 'live demonstration' Cabatu and his scientists were readying for.

"We have to be ready at any time," Sanngrior said, two weeks into their sixth month. "They may attempt to take one of us, and that should be our cue. They know our rank structure, and their own doctrine sacrifices lower ranking individuals before the higher ranking." She looked between Gunnr and Lind. "They may call for one of you," she said. "Lind more likely than not, based off the rapport built by Gunnr with the guards, but we can't be sure of anything. The guards will be following higher leadership instructions, possibly from whoever is the actual commander of this base-not Cabatu, but someone above him. He's only an interrogator, and a Captain at that; there's bound to be a whole 'nother section of leadership that we aren't even aware of. Keep that in mind, both of you."

The two Privates shared a look that mirrored each other with anxiety, then nodded in understanding back to Sanngrior. "If they attempt to take one of you and not all of us, we strike. We haven't attempted any escapes since arriving, and that's lowered their guard. They won't be anticipating a sudden escape attempt, but they'll also be nervous if the Daimakaicho is here, and that makes the guards trigger happy. It doesn't matter. Take them off guard, disperse, and make your way to the outside if able. They can't kill us because of the Doublet Clause, but they can still maim us." Her eyes moved to the others, taking the four of them in. "All of you, keep your wits about you."

The guards came for them, as they'd come to expect, at an unholy hour at night when most of them slept. One of Sanngrior's first orders of business upon being moved into the group cell had been to establish a watch shift during the sleeping hours to ensure no one was caught off guard. It served them well, and this time perhaps saved their chances at escape. Mist was on shift at the time, and it was Mist that Lind awoke to, shaking her shoulder as she urged the Private to awaken. Lind was awake and alert at once, adrenaline already surging through her veins, and she waved the Lance Corporal off as she sat up. Mist went to wake Gunnr, and Lind climbed to her feet, ears picking up the sound of heavy boots framed with metal drawing near.

The Rabishu was blessedly absent, though that said little of what was to come. Sanngrior and Rota were both already up, with Sanngrior standing in front of the cell door and Rota standing behind her right shoulder, both in a stiff, parade's rest stance as the pack of demons appeared further down the hall. The others moved to stand beside Rota in a similar stance, and they were greeted by the lead guard of the night shift pack, a woman who's skin and hair lacked any notable pigment like Rota's, but whose eyes were a deep and unsettling black rather than pink. There were only a few guards amongst them; the flight's perceived passiveness had led to a significant decrease in the number of guards whenever it came time to retrieve them, and where once there were close to ten, now there were only three. They were still armed, but the weapons were dormant, lacking the magical energy signature that spoke of them being charged

The lead guard gestured them back with a grunt. Like many of the demons in the complex, she didn't speak any Highkin, instead relying on hand motions and gestures to convey her meaning. Sanngrior turned to the others and spoke in a low voice. "We move back to the wall. We do nothing until they are forced to enter. When the door is clear, bring them down and run."

The others responded by turning and walking towards the wall, and together the five of them spread out across the back. The three demons entered, and the guard moved towards Lind. She stopped in front of the Private and gestured her back to the guards near the cell door. Lind glared but didn't move. The guard muttered something Lind was vaguely aware was an oath, then grabbed the Valkyrie by the wrist. Lind ripped it free and continued to glare. The guard scowled and looked at Sanngrior. Sanngrior shrugged. What do you want me to do?

Muttering beneath her breath, the demon called back to her two companions, who charged their weapons before approaching Lind. Ignored by the guards, Rota and Mist, both of whom stood to either side of Lind, began to slide away from her, and as the guards drew closer to Lind, Sanngrior slipped behind them. Lind ignored them all, instead keeping her eyes centered on the guard before her.

One of the guards moved to strike her with his weapon, and like a pack of wolves the Valkyries descended on the demons.

Sanngrior grabbed the weapon of the guard as he brought it up, then twisted back and tore the staff weapon from his hands. Mist and Gunnr took on the second armed guard, with Mist striking the woman in the knee hard enough to make her drop and Gunnr further off-balancing her as she grabbed the butt-end of the weapon and pulled it down with her body weight. Rota caught the Head Guard in a chokehold, and as the demon tried to fight her off, Lind joined Gunnr and helped wrestle the remaining weapon from the guard. "Go," she said, catching Gunnr's eye as her comrade looked at her with a start. "Go! You've got the best chance of all of us! Go!" She tossed the weapon to Gunnr, and without a second glance the Valkyrie caught it and bolted out of the cell.

"Fog! Pepper!" Someone grabbed her shoulder and hauled Lind to her feet, and it was only Rota's voice that stopped Lind from reacting. "You go too! Both of you, now!" Rota shoved her hard towards the gate, then grabbed the unarmed female guard in another choke hold.

Sanngrior had the other one. "Get moving!" she roared. "The more outside the higher our chances, now go!"

Mist lingered just long enough to test her new weapon on the guard fighting Sanngrior, stabbing him in the side, and as he screamed she grabbed Lind and ran. The two raced down the prison block's corridors, and Lind could hear a high siren begin its whine as someone was alerted to their escape. Gunnr was nowhere in sight, and the two of them reached a door that had been thrown open. There was an unconscious demon on the other side, and the two hopped over his fallen form before racing onwards. Shouts added to the siren's screams, and as the two approached a fork in the hallway, Mist took over. "We create as much of a distraction for Strife as possible. You go left, see what else you can find in this place. Hide anywhere you can and see if you can acquire a weapon. I'll go right and try and slow down anyone going after Strife."

"Right." None of them expected to join Gunnr outside the facility. Not now, with the element of surprise lost and the whole complex awakening to the screech of the sirens. No, now all that mattered was gaining more information they could use and slowing down anyone after the Private. "I'll see you again on the road to the Green Fields of Resurrection, Fog."

Despite the gravity of their situation, Mist laughed. It was the first time Lind had heard her companion laugh in over six months. "Shut the fuck up, Pepper. None of us are entering the Fields of Resurrection yet." She flipped Lind off, and grinning as well, her heart racing and the sound of demons drawing ever closer, Lind returned the gesture. Then she turned and raced off, leaving Mist to her fate.

She turned down a corridor that was only vaguely familiar to her and then down a second one the Valkyrie was certain she'd never been down before. The Private was greeted by a demon departing another room, and it was only through sheer reflex that Lind stopped him from drawing attention to himself. She rushed him, coming in low and fast, and slammed her body into his with enough force to smash him against a wall. Stunned, the demon didn't think to react, and Lind took the opportunity to smash his head into that same wall until he stopped moving.

Breathing hard, the woman took a moment to listen for any sounds that she might have alerted anyone, yet the screams above the sirens were far off and distant. It sounded like Gunnr and Mist were causing enough of a commotion to have gained the attention of the entire base aside from this lone demon, and a civilian at that, based off his nonstandard dress. One of the scientists Rota and Sanngrior had mentioned, perhaps?

She stared at him, then looked back towards the room he'd emerged from. Taking a gamble, she grabbed the door knob and twisted it, half-expecting it to be locked. It wasn't, and the door opened without a sound, allowing Lind to slip inside. The room was dark. All the overhead lights that illuminated the corridors had been turned down to a low, dim glow. Monitors filled the room with various displays of information, and using the darkness to her advantage Lind crept off to one dark corner of the room, all too aware that her white uniform, though dirty, would draw the gaze of anyone who glanced her way.

It wasn't a large room; barely larger than the cell she shared with her flight. It was crammed with various pieces of equipment of both a magical and technical make and model, and there were only two other demons in the room with her. The monitors depicted various logs in Falken, whereas one monitor in particular showed an area footage of the Wasteland itself. Not a security room as she first expected then, but something else.

The demons were both wearing a pair of large, over-ear headsets, and the room was silent aside from the occasional typing on a keyboard. The sirens that had been so prevalent outside were absent here, and the walls were so thick that their screeches didn't penetrate into the adjoining room. Lind could hear nothing that might dictate what the demons might be doing nor read any of the datalogs on the monitors within the room. Frowning, she crept closer, aware that her time was limited with the unconscious man outside and that it'd take only one person to notice that something was amiss.

Emboldened by that fact, Lind crept closer still to the duo, who appeared so attentive in their tasks that they didn't even seem aware of each other. She froze only when one of them grunted and tapped his partner to gain her attention. The other looked his way, and the man muttered something in thick Falken before removing his headset and rising from his seat. He stretched, said something a bit louder that earned a laugh from his companion, and while they were distracted Lind darted behind a set of equipment.

The other demon laughed and made a gesture with her hands, and the man waved her off as he turned towards the door. Lind looked between the two of them from her hiding spot. The female returned to her work, but Lind was growing increasingly aware that her cover was about to be blown the moment the male either stepped outside or turned back to his desk. He passed Lind without a glance, and as soon as his back was towards her she slipped out of her hiding place and snuck after him. The man approached the door, but rather than leave, he instead locked it, and before he could do anything further Lind struck. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a choke hold and pressed his head forward, ignoring the demon's sudden flailing as he tried to fend her off before he passed out. Limp in her arms now, she dragged him away from the door and to the corner, then turned back to the final demon, fully expecting her to have turned and noticed the Valkyrie's presence in the room.

Luck smiled on her that moment, however, as the female was still busy at her screen, unaware of the fate that had so befallen her partner. Wasting no time, Lind stalked towards the woman, choking her out as well before the demon could sense something was amiss and then dragging her out of the chair as well.

The demons dispatched and the door now locked to give her some warning, Lind turned her attention to the monitors before her, grabbing one of the discarded headsets and bringing it to her ear. She'd expected nothing but Falken on the other end, and so was surprised when the words that reached her ears were in fact Highkin. What the... brows furrowing together, the woman sat down, adjusting the headset to slip over one ear while leaving the other partially exposed for situational awareness. What was she hearing? Why was she hearing Highkin? What was this room?

Her lips pursed, Lind listened carefully to the Highkin on the other end. A Valkyrie. Reports. Requests for coordinates. Passed coordinates. Peregrine01.

Peregrine01.

Lind's eyes widened, and she readjusted the headphones once more, certain she was hearing things. "Peregrine zero-one, this is Hawk one-three, do you copy? Repeat, this is Hawk one-three, Peregrine zero-one, do you copy?"

No. No no no no no no. Was this the...? A lump formed in her throat and Lind swallowed, finding no relief. Anxiety curdled in her stomach like an iron weight, and grimacing, Lind's eyes roamed the control panel before her, searching for something that might allow her to communicate with Hawk13. It's another spoof. She thought. They're-they're using our callsign as another spoof! She ignored the holographic keyboard in front of her and looked to the screens. There. Right fucking there. In the upper right-hand corner of one of the monitors was a small chart depicting an information graph. Lind could clearly read the Highkin CSAR information displayed across it, with what she recognized as the translated Falken beneath it. To the right of it was a large series of chat rooms, all in Highkin, all with callsigns she recognized from Higher Headquarters. They've hacked into our C2 structure. Lind thought. All this time... all the patrols that went missing, all the attacks on the FOBs... how long have they known?

Slowly the pieces of the puzzle began to connect, and Lind leaned forward, cradling her head with both hands. They hack our systems... guide a patrol off course... use the CSAR information to pass themselves off as a downed patrol, then down that patrol and drag them here for their angel eater. And when their done with that patrol... when they need new lab rats, they use their newest prisoners' callsigns to draw in more parties.

How long? How long had this been going on?

There's a Kestrel two-five somewhere in this facility then. They wouldn't kill us because they won't risk the Doublet System, which means Kestrel two-five is somewhere in this facility as well. But where? The flight had been here her for six months now with not even a hint to dictate there were other Valkyries imprisoned as well. So where were they? What happened to Kestrel25?

The same thing that will happen to you if the flight doesn't escape this place, Spear Mint supplied. The same thing that will happen to Hawk one-three if you don't find some way to warn them.

Lind set her jaw and glared back up at the screen. Hawk13 was still calling for Peregrine01 in the headset, and biting her lip she looked once more at the surrounding equipment. There's got to be a microphone somewhere I can use to speak with them directly. She thought. They can't just have a bunch of spoofed recordings, right?

There was a line of red buttons on a box she vaguely recognized was part of a transcommunicator, and after a few experimental tries heard a static whine on the other end of Hawk's frequency. Oh thank the Fates. "Hawk one-three this is Peregrine zero-one, Tac Pepper." She looked up at the CSAR information and prayed it was still current. "There are three Pink Elephants on the run, I repeat, three Pink Elephants on the run."

For a long moment there was silence on the other end of the headset. Lind's gut churned with nervous anticipation, and she looked back to the door, certain that someone would storm in despite the locked room. She was afraid now. She was communicating with another flight of Valkyries who could pass word back to Higher Headquarters, and Yggdrasil bless it, she was afraid. The idea that at any moment the comms could be interrupted, that someone would discover her, that another spoof might pop up and interrupt her communication with this small patrol terrified her like Cabatu never could. She felt like she might just kneel over and die if they didn't respond, and the Valkyrie prayed to the Higher Powers that Hawk13 actually payed attention to the duress words. By the stars in Tehome's depths, she certainly never paid the duress words any mind, and had she been in Hawk's place, the Private was doubtful she'd have recognized the odd phrase for what it was.

The next voice that popped up was one she didn't recognize. "Roger, wilco Peregrine zero-one. Can you pass any further information?"

Oh thank Yggdrasil. Some small piece of her wanted to sob with relief. She pushed that piece of herself in the deepest and darkest pit she could find. "At least two flights downed. See Peregrine zero-one's logs from six months ago for further information. Currently in hostile territory in an unknown clandestine facility. Advice unmanned aerial vehicles for further reconnaissance based off AVA that brought us down. Possible biological weapon under development code-named Rabishu." She paused there, then took a deep breath and grit her teeth. "Personal experience dictates coercive angel extract and possible angel eater. All CSAR information burned. Repeat, all CSAR information burned."

There was another long and agonizing moment of silence, and Lind lifted her headset up, for a moment certain she'd heard something through the earpad. "Come on, hurry up," she muttered, glancing back at the door and then back to the screen. She bit her lip, then began to dig through the information stored on the computer before her, rooting through files that looked important and deleting any document she came across whose characters matched the ones assigned to the current CSAR information she was looking at. The overall layout was similar to the computers she used back in Asgard, though the language was different, and so the Valkyrie relied on muscle memory to guide her towards where she needed to go.

"Roger Peregrine zero-one. Bed down somewhere safe. We're informing rescue forces now."

"Negative, Hawk one-three," Lind replied. "Unable to bed down in current location. Hostile forces actively searching the base, need to move before they find my location." She looked back to the door, for a moment almost certain she'd heard a shout from the other side. "Hurry," she said. "I don't know how much longer we can hold out. Tac Pepper, over and out." She tore the headset off her ears before she could hear Hawk's response, then refocused her attention on the computer.

Now sabotage joined her list of prerogatives. This room was dangerous. If she could destroy the database... disable the spoofing jammer that had so set her flight and was about to set Hawk off course... even if it only slowed them down, it'd be worth the effort. The woman began deleting data files necessary for the computer to run, and when the screen began to freeze she abandoned it and crawled under the table, pulling at wires without care or cause. She followed the cords to their power supply and unplugged it, then picked it up and threw it against the wall before moving to something else.

The entire room held a plethora of delicate equipment in it, and Lind went through it like a bull in a China shop, destroying as many components as possible in the hopes of stopping Cabatu's organization from drawing more Valkyries to him. She was panting by the time she was done, her body alive and vibrating with a cocktail of adrenaline and energy. Even if they catch me, Lind thought, even if they let that thing take Spear Mint, if I know I stopped their progress at least for a small time, then I'll have still succeeded.

Let's not think about that right now. Spear Mint sounded uncomfortable. Lind couldn't blame her. Let's get out of here before they discover us.

Lind was inclined to agree, but not before she grabbed a fist full of cables and a broom that she'd found in a storage closet. If she was going down, she might as well be armed. Armed with a monitor cord and a broom handle. She thought. My, this improves your odds by quite a bit, doesn't it?

She moved towards the door and pressed her ear against it, then unlocked it and peaked outside when no sounds met her ears. The hallway was somehow still empty of any patrolling demons, and the man she'd first knocked out was still where she'd left him next to the door. Fortune was indeed smiling on her, but it would only last so long before it turned the other cheek. Opening the door wider, she grabbed the man by the hem of his shirt and dragged him inside the room, then slipped out and closed the door behind her.

The sirens were still screaming outside, and a male voice had risen over the intercom as well. He was shouting either warning or instructions, Lind couldn't tell which, but his tone sounded urgent. "I hope that's telling everyone to stay inside their respective rooms because a bunch of big and scary Valkyries are storming the place and not to urge others to join the hunt," she muttered under her breath, the continued down the direction she'd come by.

It led her deeper inside the facility. How Lind knew this, she wasn't certain, but some sixth sense told her that the direction she was going was away from the building's outer walls. Muscle memory, she later decided, was what kept trying to lead her astray. After six months of being guided throughout the complex in a hood, her feet had memorized what her eyes never saw, and while everything was a new sight for her, on several occasions Lind found herself moving without thought in favor of one corridor versus another. Those times, and only those times, Lind ignored the tug of familiarity and went the opposite direction; she wanted to head deeper into the facility. She wanted to learn its secrets. Gunnr was the only person who'd ever gone outside, and so if the guards and other military units were being called away to deal with an armed Valkyrie, that meant that the inner chambers might be left unguarded. And after discovering the Niflheimian Comm spoofing equipment, Lind wanted-needed-to see what else this place had.

She began testing the doors, seeing if any had been left unlocked and unsurprised to find that none would open for her. At least some of the message being played over the sirens was a warning to the civilians. Lind wanted to laugh, imagining what the message must have been: "Everyone remain calm. Lock your doors and grab your piss bottles, 'cause the whole facility is on lock down. Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wives, hide yo' husbands too, 'casue Valkyries fucking everything up in here."

She was surprised when one of the doors opened on one of the tries, and then immediately suspicious. Her makeshift weapon at the ready, the Valkyries pushed it open with a hearty shove, then moved to the side of the door to avoid any possible traps. Nothing happened, however, and Lind could hear no voices that would have alerted her to demons in residence. She peered inside, finding the light in here too were off, though this room was absent of the many monitors of the sensitive equipment room. A storage closet, perhaps? But no, even as the thought entered her mind Lind dismissed it. Though the light of the corridor illuminated little, from what she could make out the room was enormous.

There was a strange heaviness to the air here. As though Lind had stirred a heavy layer of dust upon pushing the door open. The result played and danced with the light from the chamber, and the woman would have thought nothing of it if not for the scent that accompanied it. The air was stale, and beneath it was a sour and rancid smell that made her stomach churn. Lind wrinkled her nose at it, then proceeded inside.

The lights in here were motion sensitive, hinting that the room was designed for many active, moving bodies at a time when only a small section of the chamber brightened. The lights appeared high over Lind's head at what she judged to be around fifty feet. Though they were bright, their rays illuminated little of the deeper enclosure but hinted at a possible scaffolding towards the ceiling. A small bit of light reflected off what might have been glass, and with no other direction Lind moved towards it.

It was a room. A mirrored room, like the one she'd been in when she'd first encountered the Angel Eater. This room had a secondary door off to one corner of the chamber, and when she tried it, Lind found the door unlocked. The woman slipped inside, discovered the smaller room didn't hold any motion sensitive lights, and flailed in the dark for a light switch or a lamp. Her fingers brushed against a dial, and grumbling curses Lind turned on the lights, finding herself in a long, secondary chamber whose walls were little more than a long stretch of glass on either side. There was a long line of equipment along the west wall, facing into another room she hadn't entered yet, followed by two doors on the far end of the hallway. One of the doors led into the room she was peering into, dark like the rest of the building, but the second door appeared to be connected to another section of the chamber.

The woman approached the door directly across from her first. There was another dial in here that she used to illuminate the chamber, and this room in particular made Lind pause. The walls of this one were composed of tiles, like the changing room the demons had used to strip search the flight upon their initial arrival. The air here was heavy with the scent of cleaning solvents, and Lind's arms broke out in gooseflesh. The room was small. Little more than thirty feet by thirty feet in length and width, with three doors into the chamber. Lind's was one of them, and there appeared to be two doors on the east and west sides that led into the half she'd first come through and into the second chamber that she had yet to explore. The hair stood up on the nape of her neck, and before Lind explored further she used the broom handle to prop the door back into what had to be an observation room open, suddenly afraid that the door would lock her in as soon as it closed.

She moved to further explore the chamber, though the reality was that there was little to explore. A thick, black curtain hung from one wall towards the door leading out to the unexplored chamber, and off in one corner was a metal disposal bin. A line of shower rods, old-fashioned and outdated, rested in a corner of the room near the curtain, and when she turned one on the substance that came out was not water but a sanitization byproduct. It was the same material the demons had been using for the flight to help save on water, and she made a face as the familiar chemical scent struck her nose.

Turning it off, Lind moved back to the bin. It looked like a large trash bin of some sort, and while Lind doubted she'd find anything of use, she decided to search it anyways on the off-chance of gaining more information about the area she was in. The Valkyrie pushed the lid up and peered inside. A stale smell like that of dirty laundry struck her nose, and she made a face before reaching in and grabbing one of the articles of clothing.

She pulled it out and almost dropped it as the light hit the material. "This is…" Lind stared at it with wide eyes. "This is... " It was a Valkyrie's white military blouse. It was dirty and torn from use and abuse, but there was no denying the material or the design. "How did... " She dropped it at her feet, then reached into the bin and withdrew more of the disposed clothing. Another blouse. Pants. A couple of shirts. Lind's breath caught in her throat. "No... no, please no... " The woman's actions grew more urgent. She tore the lid off the metal bin and tossed it aside. It clattered loudly behind her as it collided with a wall. "Please no." She grabbed as many garments as she could from the bin and tossed them to the ground, then withdrew what remained and began sorting them into piles. Four shirts. Four blouses. Four pants. Four pairs of boots.

Her knees felt weak, and Lind sat down on the ground, her hands grabbing fistfuls of hair as she stared at the discarded uniforms before her. "This isn't Kestrel," she told herself, and shook her head. "This isn't Kestrel." Her voice was trembling. "It can't be. It's... they're fake," she denied. "Reproductions. Disguises that were discarded. These aren't Kestrel's uniforms."

Look at their tags, Lind. Spear Mint's voice was gentle in her head. Gentle but mournful. We need to know... for the others. For ourselves. Look at the tags. We need to see if there's any identification information.

"No." Lind's voice came out a whimper in the darkness. "No, I-I can't, Spear Mint. They-they're fake. There wouldn't be anything there anyway, right? They aren't Valkyrie uniforms!"

Lind... despite the gentle tone, there was an edge of steel in Spear Mint's voice. Look at the tags.

"No!"

Look at the tags, Lind. No longer a suggestion but an order. You're a Valkyrie, just like they were. You have a duty to identify who they were.

Her hands reached out with a will of their own, grabbing one of the blouses and dragging it towards her. "I don't want to see this, Spear Mint." Her voice cracked in the quiet, and her eyes felt hot. "I can't-"

You can and you need to. Spear Mint urged. Look at their tags.

Her lips peeled back in a grimace, displaying teeth pressed so tightly together her jaw hurt. Her eyes looked to the inner lining of the collar, and in that moment Lind prayed. She prayed long and hard. She prayed that the uniforms were fake. She prayed that the tags had been erased. She prayed that the information had been destroyed through the abuse of the facility. She prayed for blindness or for a distraction, anything that would prevent her from seeing what her mind was slow to acknowledge and whose identity Spear Mint whispered in her ear. GA5294.

"Damn it." Her voice was thick with emotion, and with hands that had taken to trembling, Lind folded the blouse and placed it to the side, then picked up another. IF5285. "Please no." HS8455. "This can't be right." Her gaze was getting blurry, and she almost didn't see the tag on the final blouse. JD8249.

The hand holding the blouse went limp, and the uniform item fell into her lap. Lind brought a hand to her brow and tried to stop herself from crying.

We need to get out of here, Lind, Spear Mint prodded. We have their identification tags now but that's all we can afford them right now. We're still being hunted.

Lind bit back a sob, feeling a bubble of raw emotion lodge itself in her chest. She got to her feet, but not before the bubble punctured. A high keen emerged from her throat, and then Lind screamed. It was raw and wild and bare, and the woman kicked the metal lid with enough force to dent it. It sailed around the small room, bouncing off walls and cracking tiles, and still Lind screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed, until her voice gave out on her and her strength abandoned her, leaving Lind to fall to her knees amidst the disposed uniforms of four Valkyries whom she only knew by their IDs: GA5294, HS8455, IF5294, and JD8294.

It was only then, with Lind sucking in huge, loud breaths that hurt her lungs, that the Valkyrie crawled back to her feet. The toes of her right foot hurt from where she'd kicked the lid. She ignored it. "I'm finding out what they did to Kestrel," she declared.

Lind, we have to-

"No!" Lind snapped. "I don't care! I looked when I shouldn't have, and now I need to know! What the fuck did they do with Kestrel?! What the fuck is in that room that these fuckers wanted to monitor? Why haven't we seen anything from them? What the fuck are they going to do to us?!"

She pulled the door to the examination room open so hard one of its hinges was ripped from the door, then proceeded inside. The woman looked at the console before her, lined with buttons and knobs and keyboards in Falken, and began mashing her hands on it. She pressed buttons, she turned knobs, she flicked switches. Anything to get some kind of reaction from the adjoining room. Nothing happened. Lind screamed in frustration, then smashed her hand against the glass before her. The glass spider webbed around the indent of her fist.

Something popped up beneath the area she'd struck, and Lind recoiled from it as Spear Mint let loose a scream in her mind. It was a Rabishu. A tiny one, one smaller than even Cabatu's pet. It was perhaps as large as a house cat, and its false head lashed out at the impacted glass, the false head opening and displaying the underdeveloped stinger housed within. It struck the window as though the window was alive, and the stinger tinked harmlessly against the glass, leaving not even a scratch to mark its presence.

What's it doing here?! Spear Mint screamed. Lind, let's get out of here! Let's go! The Rabishu lashed out at the glass once more, then let the tail fall back out of its striking mode as the tiny creature attempted to scale the smooth surface. The mouth pressed itself against the glass, giving Lind a healthy display of bony teeth that were small and useless in comparison to the triangular razors she'd seen with the Rabishu that had so stalked the flight from their cell. Its tarsal claws scratched and tapped on the glass, searching for purchase, and finding none the creature slid back to the ground. Lind watched it with wide eyes, frozen, before the creature lost interest in the glass and wandered back into the darkness.

The Valkyrie released a breath she'd not realized she was holding. Spear Mint was still screaming in her mind. Let's GO Lind! Before that thing finds a way inside! Yet Lind's feet were rooted to the spot.

"Kestrel is in that room," she whispered, and the voice she heard was one she didn't recognize as her own. She looked down at the panel before her, this time taking the time to observe what she was looking at. The woman kneeled and looked under the protruding shelf holding the various pieces of equipment, and her efforts were rewarded when the Valkyrie spied a power switch. She flipped it on, and a wheezing hum filled the room as the energy poured into the control panel. Lights flickered, then glowed on the console, and breathing deep, calming, breaths Lind went back to the dial that lit the room. There was Falken text on the dial directing how to turn the lights on, and she committed the text to memory before returning to the console and searching for a matching piece of text amidst the array of buttons.

She found one after some searching, a switch towards the bottom, and flipped it on. The lights in the adjoining room flickered once, then began to illuminate at such a slow and gradual pace Lind had difficulty following it. She saw forms, all of them tiny, shudder and scurry about in the darkness, and other forms that dangled in the air in closed, compact shapes. Cocoons, perhaps? She squinted into the dim light, trying to make out the details that further alluded her and failing. Something in the shapes was almost...

Not cocoons, no. Something else, but not cocoons. She blinked and rubbed her eyes and looked again. No, definitely not cocoons. There was something almost, almost human in those suspended objects, but they were all so dark and far enough away that Lind couldn't figure out what.

She looked back to the console, this time experimenting with the control panel with a bit more control. A monitor built into the control panel to the left of her came to life with a static whine, and with it Lind no longer needed to wonder about what the cocoons far off in the adjoining room were.

"Oh Yggdrasil... "

It was the only phrase she felt could come close to the describing the dismal sight before her, and even that felt somehow flat and inaccurate; lacking the true depths of unfathomable anguish that swept through Lind as she stared at that screen. It had taken her eyes a time to identify what she was looking at, but not through a lack of recognition so much as her mind refused to acknowledge what she was seeing.

It was an overhead view of a woman. A woman suspended by wires and threads that looked both natural and artificial in the same light. She was curled up in a tight ball, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head bowed, hiding her face from sight like a child trying to hide from some sort of bogeyman. If I can't see it, it can't see me, came to Lind's mind, and the Valkyrie felt ill. She could have been asleep for all Lind knew, though the combination of suspension, wires, and fetal position let Lind with more than enough reason to doubt. She was nude as far as Lind could identify, and there was something on her back. Something that was aiding the suspension and looked altogether wholly unnatural and painful on the woman.

"Yggdrasil, it's one of Kestrel, isn't it?" Lind breathed. "It's-it's one of Kestrel. She's got a-it's one of Kestrel!" The Valkyrie stared at the monitor, then back into the large chamber. Four cocoons that were not cocoons but women, suspended high on wires and cords and thread that dangled like black vines from a tree.

Lind, they're in there with that thing. Spear Mint sounded frightened. Why are they-where are their angels, Lind? What happened to their angels?

Lind experimentally hit a button next to the monitor, hoping it would zoom in on the woman it was focused on. Instead the monitor switched to another camera, treating Lind with a view of another member of Kestrel, naked and bound in a similar position as her comrade. "Is it an egg sack?" Lind asked aloud. "Is that what that thing on their backs is?" From the current camera angle, it sure looked like one; the camera was looking directly down at the woman, and Lind could see where the flesh first blistered and then expanded outwards in a series of long, neat, tumor-like clusters. The sacks were translucent, and on occasion something writhed mindlessly inside.

Lind swallowed and tasted bile, then moved the monitor to another camera. Another woman. There was no egg sack on this one, though. Instead a series of sores, deep and ugly, lay open and exposed on the woman's back. One was horrific enough that Lind could see the woman's spine protruding out of the injury, and unable to stomach the graphic display the woman quickly hit the camera button again. The fourth image was the final woman, yet she was different from the others. Red text was flashing in the bottom of the screen, and her body did not so much hang suspended as it dangled listlessly in the room, like a puppet who's master had left it hanging in an attic. The woman's face was pointed towards the ceiling, and her face was set in a permanent display of terror and pain. Though her back had blistered, only one possible 'egg' rested on her person, and Lind could see no movement that hinted at something forming within. Lind didn't need to read Falken to understand what the text meant.

She switched the camera again.

This time the perspective changed to the ground, and at first Lind saw nothing before something rushed past the camera. Lind jumped, yet the Rabishu didn't bother appearing a second time. Another camera showed the ground from another angle, followed by another, and another still. Five more rotations throughout the room with the occasional sighting of the tiny Rabishu inside, and then it circled back to the first Valkyrie Lind had seen.

The woman sucked in a long and shuddering breath, leaning forward with her elbows near the control panel. "Is this what they have planned for us?" she asked aloud. "Are we-are we going to take Kestrel's place?" By Tehome's depths, they might as well kill them during the escape! It'd be a kinder fate than whatever... whatever this was. "Damn it all," she whimpered. "I can't-what am I supposed to do?"

Run. Spear Mint supplied.

"Until what?" Lind snapped. "They capture me and throw me back in the pin? And then what? Tell the others about-about this?!" She thought of her flight. Of the Major, whose orders the flight took strength in. Of the Sergeant, who kept them together when things grew dismal. Of Mist, who lifted moral with her many songs when the guards were absent. Of Gunnr, whose play had granted them additional food and water amongst the guards and might yet make it to freedom. "I-I can't. It'll destroy them. I-" She grit her teeth and growled, smashing a fist down on the console.

She jumped and nearly screamed when a voice emerged speaking Falken. It took her a full minute to realize that she hadn't hit some kind of comm dial but in fact had triggered some kind of recording, and the voice was depicting what she assumed was a dialogue for something new that had appeared on the monitor. It's a video log.

She watched it, enraptured, and let it play through to the end, though some small piece of her begged her to stop. What she saw horrified her, horrified Spear Mint, yet as it ended and another log began, Lind found herself unable to look away.

She watched on through the second video.

Then the third.

Then the fourth.

She watched until she could take no more of it, the dropped to one knee and killed the power. The Valkyries in the adjoining room returned to darkness with the Rabishu (not even fully grown. A Nymph.) and Lind proceeded out the door she came. She felt... numb. Detached. A sense of lethargy had engulfed her, and though she recognized it as bad, a part of her was grateful for the dissociation that came with it. She walked out of the room with its singular motion sensing lights and back into the corridor.

Right into the waiting hands of the demons who were readying to storm her hideout.

They came at her with weapons, with magic, and with snarls, and with open arms and dead eyes Lind welcomed them into unconsciousness.

XXX

Screaming.

Someone was screaming. Someone was calling her back to the light.

Lind fought it though. There was pain with that light. Pain she didn't want to deal with right now, like the pain that accompanied a bad hangover after a long night's drinking or one of Sanngrior's grueling physical training sessions. Let someone else deal with the screaming. Let someone else deal with the pain. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to stay in the black darkness that came with so deep an unconsciousness.

Yet the screaming was only getting louder, and though she fought it, the Valkyrie knew she was being pulled to the surface, and that when she broke the surface, she was going to be in a whole new world of pain. She could feel it in her bones and in her head; a throbbing that pulsed like a heartbeat and grew stronger as the screams rose in pitch. She groaned and tried to swim back into sweet oblivion, yet even that was a vain effort, as the world began to brighten around her and-

Oh Yggdrasil. By Apsu's blue waters, she remembered. Kestrel's flight, the Rabishu's eggs, Iritif's agonized shrieks as the life was slowly drained from her body...

She remembered.

Lind awoke with a scream of her own, one that rose and joined Gunnr's voice and a hail of unwanted memories rushed through her mind. She tried to move and that awoke even more pain as a streak of fire rose in her chest and lent its voice to the choir, joining the throbbing pulse of a re-broken nose and unending heat of magical burns.

And then Mist was in her range of vision, cradling her head and shouting something to her, though Lind was uncertain what. The other screams, Gunnr's screams, drowned out everything else. "My leg!" she howled. "They ripped off my leg!"

Lind moaned and covered her face. "They killed her." Her words came out in a croak. "They killed her, but they'll say the Rabishu did it. That it was all a failed experiment."

Rota was trying to calm Gunnr down, her deeper voice a soothing plea as it tried to convince Gunnr that she still had her leg, it was still right there attached to her body, that she didn't lose anything.

"What are you talking about?" Mist asked. "Who was killed?"

Yet Lind only moaned. "Why didn't you escape?" she cried. "You needed to escape. That was our only chance. I thought we might have more, but I was wrong. Oh Heavens, I was so wrong."

"We tried," Mist said. "We did our best, but... " The woman face took on a defeated cast. "We ran right into them, Lind. They... the Daimakaicho must have just arrived. Gunnr was-" She bit her lip. "I caught up with her. Right after we parted. There were so many demons, but, you know, we just plowed 'em down without thought. They barely even offered a fight, and I remember thinking, 'wow, these guys are poorly trained', but I was wrong. They were just a bunch of unarmed civvies. A bunch of unarmed civvies who were meeting the Daimakaicho outside, and... " Her voice wavered. "She's a monster, Lind. She doesn't require an escort because she can take out anything that's a threat to her. There weren't any guards because she didn't need any guards and... and it was her and Cabatu and the Rabishu, and Yggdrasil, we walked right into them!"

Lind tried to sit up and failed as another bolt of pain surged up her spine, and Mist paused in her recollection to help her up. She was greeted with a new sight, and one that left her stomach churning. Gunnr was lying in the center of the room, flailing as she tried to cradle her right leg. It dragged uselessly on the ground while her left kicked the air and stomped the ground, but it was whole and it was there. Rota was with her, clutching the woman's head as she tried to speak with the Valkyrie, but the Private was in hysterics. "They ripped it off! I can't feel it anymore, they ripped it off!" Though Rota hovered above her, Gunnr didn't seem to see her, and her eyes bulged and rolled madly in their sockets as she fought off Rota's grip. "My leg!"

Sanngrior stood before the entrance to the cell, her back turned to her flight as she glared at someone on the other side of the cell bars. Her stance was stiff and angry, yet the person on the other side seemed unaffected by the Major's gaze. A demon, she stood tall and regal on the other side, her violet eyes locked with Sanngrior's in what Lind recognized was an assertion of power. Yet the Major refused to look away, refused to submit, and as she stood defiant against the Daimakaicho Herself, Lind felt a small piece of admiration pull itself out of the desolate remains of her emotional plane.

"Your unconscious one has awakened." The silver haired woman spoke surprisingly good Highkin, and though she did not raise her voice, the Daimakaicho's words projected themselves into the cell with such a strong sense of power that the hair on Lind's arm rose with gooseflesh. "You'd best tend to your flight, Major Rota 'Durga' Mahishasura-mardini, rather than continue this farce with me. There are more important matters you must attend to, unless my interpretation of your priorities was as misguided as my general's perspective on your flight's docility."

The Major snarled at the veiled insult and lashed out at the bars before she could reign her temper in. Her fist smashed against the bars with enough force to produce an echoing, metallic groan, and throughout the cell walls a current of yellow electricity danced and sparked.

The Daimakaicho didn't so much as twitch.

Instead she turned and stalked down the hallway. Her gaze flitted over Lind's once: cold, sharp, intelligent eyes, and then her interest was gone, leaving the flight in their cell.

"They were showing off their Rabishu to her." Mist's voice had dropped into a whisper. "Gunnr came across them right next to the exit, and I was just rounding the end of the other hallway, and that thing... it just went wild when it saw her. Just... berserk. It... the thing must have trampled three demons trying to get to Gunnr, and then that thing just fucking screamed, and there was Ridge Walker, racing towards the thing as everyone was screaming. Gunnr tried to hit it, but all she struck were demons, and then that thing just-just grabbed her. Gunnr, not her angel. And she was screaming, and I was screaming, and I was trying to hit it and Ridge Walker charged right in and-" She shook her head, unable to continue.

"It bit off Ridge Walker's leg." Sanngrior approached, still glancing over her shoulder towards where the Daimakaicho had disappeared from. "That woman stopped it from biting off more."

"It was horrible, Lind," Mist muttered. "She ripped it to pieces with her bare hands. And then she was in front of me, before I could even make sense a' what I was seeing. She-she must have hit me, but I never saw her move. I just remember feeling like someone struck me from behind, and the next thing I knew, Gunnr and me are back here, Gunnr's screaming, and that-that thing was watching us like a wolf watching a bunch a deer."

"She dragged Strife and Fog back here with her own two hands," Sanngrior murmured, and satisfied when the Daimakaicho made no further appearance, the Major's attention turned to Gunnr. "She came with no escort and with us already subdued. Strife under one arm like a child throwing a tantrum and Fog over a shoulder like a sleeping babe.

"She should have killed you," Lind said.

"No she wouldn't." Sanngrior's voice was soft but angry. "It would have gone against the Doublet System."

"It would have been kinder if she'd killed us all where we stand," Lind muttered.

"What do you mean?" Sanngrior looked at her sharply.

Behind her, Gunnr's scream had faded into large, whooping sobs. Beneath it, she could hear Rota trying to soothe her with gentle words and reassurances that in the end, would mean nothing for the Valkyrie. For any of them, really.

"We lost our chance, Major," Lind replied, and this time she didn't bother using her callsign. It didn't matter. Not anymore. Not after what she'd seen. "We had one chance, and we fucked it up."

"Lind, what are you saying?" Mist stared at her in increasing alarm, then looked to Sanngrior. "Durga..."

"That's enough, Pepper." Sanngrior's voice had taken on that low, soft pitch that Lind had always thought of as a warning tone to her ears. A 'stop now or face the consequences' tone that she'd always heeded in the past. Had always feared, because back then there were so many more things to worry and get excited about.

Not now.

Not anymore.

Lind met the Major's gaze with her own flat ones. "We aren't leaving this facility, Sanngrior. Not anymore."

She saw the Major bristle, watched her lips pull back in a sneer, and felt nothing. She held the woman's gaze with an even one of her own, and like magic the display of temper vanished. "You saw something," Sanngrior murmured. She moved towards the Private, and then moved to kneel before her, eyes searching. "What happen to you?" The expression lightened to one of worry as black brows furrowed together. "Pepper, Lind, what did you see while you were out?"

"Kestrel," Lind replied, and her voice cracked with constrained emotion. "I-I found Kestrel. We're going to take their place, Major. All of us. You, me, Rota, Mist, Gunnr... all of us. We-we're nothing but food to those things!"

Now even Rota had paused to look, and Lind flinched when she felt the woman's pink gaze fall on her. "There were video logs. Of Kestrel. Of that thing's-that angel eater's-life cycle." She clutched her brow. "It's an artificial creature alright. I don't even think they even know what they're doing with it. It's a-they're rushing its development, and so there's something different with each generation, but its root purpose is still the same. It has a magical nature designed to mimic the frequency our angels use when maintaining their material form. It calls them out. It eats the angel. And when the host falls into shock it lays an egg clutch on the host."

The woman buried her face in her hands, like a child trying to hide herself from the world after seeing a monster. Perhaps that wasn't too far from the truth. "One of the sacks didn't set properly. I don't know how or why-all of it was Falken, but the Valkyrie... Iritif, by the stars above they forced the entire flight to introduce themselves... something happened to Iritif. And she... those fucking videos, Yggdrasil's roots, those fucking videos! They didn't do anything! The doublet system was in place to stop this kind of thing from happening, but they just-just let her die! And oh, Heavens, Major... she never stopped screaming. I'd never seen a person in so much pain... even here, after everything they've done to us, it paled in comparison to what she went through. And you want to know the worst part of it, though?" Lind let her hands drop as she looked up at Sanngrior. "She was the lucky one. She's not-the others are still alive. Still alive and hosting nothing but eggs for that, that thing," she moaned. "And we're going to take their place once there's no more eggs."

"But I just watched the Daimakaicho rip that thing apart with her own two hands," Mist whispered. She sounded scared. "Are you saying there's more?"

"There was a nymph," Lind whispered. "I don't know who it came from, but it was crawling around trying to get to me. They have replacements."

For a long moment Sanngrior was silent, her face a blank mask that hid her true feelings towards this new information. At length, she took a deep, meditative breath. "Were there any like the Stalker?" She asked, referring to the Rabishu that had been slain by the Daimakaicho's hands. "Any that were fully grown? Any that could be used as an alternate for Cabatu's little 'demonstration'?"

Lind hesitated for a moment, thought, then shook her head. "It was just that small one. It was about as large as a cat."

Sanngrior nodded. "Then we might still have time," she said. "If they want to demonstrate their Rabishu's capabilities, then they'll want to do it at a time where they'll have the most success. Especially if they're trying to impress the Daimakaicho. They'll wait for it to mature before trying again. Did anything you see hint at the lifespan of these things?"

Lind shook her head. "Nothing I could understand."

"Then we assume the worse and up our efforts to escape," Sanngrior reasoned. "We try again, but we do it smart. They're on guard now, so our opportunities will be slim. We take what we can, we learn their weaknesses, we try again. We keep trying until we can try no more." She looked at them, her dark gaze sweeping over Lind and Mist, Rota and the still-sobbing Gunnr. "If there's no options left, we go down fighting."

"We leave them nothing."

XXX

Nothing more happened that month.

If the Daimakaicho departed, then it went without word from the guard or the interrogators alike, though Mist reasoned that they must have departed, for the interrogations began anew. This time there was no longer a focus on Valkyrie FOBs or various patrols or any other thing that could be used to sabotage blue force deployments along the DMZ. Instead they were detailed more inwards, with a heavy degree of focus reserved for the Valkyries who'd managed to escape the cell.

All of them, Mist in particular, returned with bruises so deep they appeared black, and none of them were capable of moving after being dragged back to the cell. They were all returned to the isolation chambers, and were allowed to meet as a group only during meals or showers, and Lind always grew vicious during those times. She fought the guards with a savagery that was almost barbaric, and oftentimes was restrained and later knocked out, where she would later awaken cramped and cold back in the tiny stone closet they found so appropriate for the flight.

Gunnr lost the use of her leg. Rota claimed the shock of her angel's pain had fed down the link between her and Ridge Walker in such a debilitating manner that it had left her crippled. Though her leg was still whole, it dragged like a dead and useless stump wherever she went. The sole of her boot began to wear away from the excessive friction, and towards the end of their seventh month in the facility there was a large hole in it. Soon it expanded, and as Gunnr's leg began to wither away from lack of use, so too did the socks within, until the Major ripped apart the pantleg and fashioned a split to keep the Private's foot off the ground.

Cabatu provided them no relief, and no longer listened to any requests for aid or additional food. "You can sit and rot, for all I care," he told Sanngrior one day. "You're little escape attempt during the Damkianna's visit was an embarrassment to everyone in this facility, to include the General himself."

"You have an obligation under the Joutenheim Convention to provide us with food, water, shelter, and medicinal aid as prisoners of war," Sanngrior reminded him. "We haven't received proper medical care for a month now, and my troop needs a proper splint now that she's lost the mobility of her right leg."

"What's this?" Cabatu raised an eyebrow. "It's almost as if you've forgotten where you are. There's no medical care that can be provided to group of women that no longer exist," he said in disdain. "We have no obligations to you, and our orders are to ensure you receive no remittance." He departed, and Sanngrior was left fuming as the others looked on.

Ofthe Nymph, the Rabishu Lind had discovered, there was no sign. The guards were alert but not tense as they had been with the Stalker's roamings, and the flight received no Patet Nihil as they moved into their eighth month in the facility. Lind dreamt of it, though. Locked away in isolation with little to do other than sleep-and oh, how easy sleep came as their food rations were docked down to the bare minimum, and she dreamt of its growth. I am hungry. It whispered to her in her sleep, and its false head, growing ever larger with each molt, would swing from side to side as though searching for prey. They do not feed me, and I have eaten my sisters. Yet I hunger still... where is my food? When will I feed? Where are you? Where are you? I know you were here before... in the half-sleep that so often became her state of being while locked away, Lind would hear claws scratching in the cell room next to her There is one in here, is there not? Sometimes she heard it on the other side of her door.

Maybe it was just the guards trying to scare her.

Lind decided it didn't matter much either way. The Valkyrie had become cold and withdrawn since their failed escape attempt. She grew quiet when with the others, speaking only when addressed but otherwise providing no other input as the flight began plans anew. When she did speak, they were in short, clipped sentences of one or two words, and each time Rota would send a worried look to Sanngrior, perturbed by change in behavior. Even Cabatu relented on her somewhat, for though the Runt, Cabatu's pet, still brought her agony with its screams, any attempt to bait her resulted in nothing. The spark of defiance once so attributed to the 'Violent One' was gone. What replaced it was a shadow; a creature not so much docile as non-existent, one that did not so much live as it simply 'was', and towards the end of nine months moving into ten, the Niflheimian Interrogator stopped calling for her altogether.

"She has nothing more to give." Of their last session together, those were the only words Lind remembered, lying on the ground, her heart wild and erratic and staring into nothing as her body throbbed and pulsed with pain. Her own screams still echoed in her ears, yet even that seemed dim and meaningless in some inexplicable way. The pain fed through to her from Spear Mint was enough to make her weep, yet that too mattered little. Surely, none of it mattered in the grand scheme of things, did it? In the end there would be pain, in the end they would throw her back into isolation, and in the end they would keep her just enough alive to stop her from dying. Why? Because they were saving her for the Nymph, saving Spear Mint for its maw, and saving Lind for its eggs. Rota couldn't fly, Gunnr couldn't walk, and as every day, every week, every month came and went, Lind couldn't summon the will to care.

It was starting to affect the unit. Morale was a strange thing. It was like a virus or a disease; one that could start with a single person and then spread and affect others in such a manner that it could grant one strength or sap it, inspire or depress, invite or withdraw the attention of others. It was a thing only conversed of when it was low. For the first six months of internment, the flight had managed to keep morale stable, despite their circumstances, by formulating a semblance of structure and order. They obtained intelligence they held of value for when they escaped, and the possibility of a successful escape was one deemed possible at that time.

Yet knowledge could hinder morale just as it could help it, and there was such a thing as too much information. Lind's revelation had struck a blow to the flight's morale that none were prepared to deal with. Though she tried her best to keep the Valkyries on track with productive tasks that they could take advantage of, without more time together to discuss possible plans and strategies even Sanngrior was having issues keeping the flight together. Tempers grew heated. Rota and Sanngrior fell into arguments like they had back at home station, butting heads like a couple of mules. Mist, against Sanngrior's orders, tried to escape on two separate accounts and suffered for it with a broken foot after the second occasion. Gunnr, like Lind, grew withdrawn from the others with the loss of her angel's leg.

Low moral ran rampant, and the flight was falling apart.

They were running out of time.


A/N: Sorry for the later chapter. Some real life issues of late on my part. Hope you enjoyed it. After this arch is done, we will delve into a much lighter subject.


Comments of a Madwoman: Almost done with this section, and what a difficult arch it is to write.