Tess replaced the power packs in her blasters, jamming them in her belt and pacing nervously. She, Oro, the chief strategist and several other military officers were all packed in a small room in the basement of a government building a few blocks away from the Senate council building. They had been tracking the movements of the Hari Anuma for a week now, and had narrowed the day's target to a particular Senator that had been pushing a stricter smuggling bill in the past few days, thus making herself a prime target. The killings had escalated to several a day and none of the public were under the impression that they were suicides or accidents any longer. Discord among the masses was rising. Erik's voice was a siren call that no Eranae could resist and the exaggerated stories of attacks by some sort of demon or phantom being passed around were only fueling public fear.

The situation could no longer be ignored by the Eranae government. This mission was to be the first of many military strikes against the ever-bolder Hari Anuma, though it would be the last Tess got herself involved in, if she had anything to say on the matter.

As they waited, hundreds of snipers and soldiers were being slipped into the area, quietly surrounding and infiltrating the Senate. The military lacked the technology and funding for exotic armor such as Tess's but they were still armed to the teeth and would pose a significant threat to the crime ring. Great pains had been taken to keep the plans secret, as any sniff of it would send the Hari Anuma back into hiding. Everything seemed to be going as planned, though.

"You understand what you are to do, Tess, correct? The success of this campaign depends entirely on you. You are to retrieve the target no matter what he does or says, or what obstacles you have to remove in the process. If Erik cannot be retrieved, he will be silenced. It took me a long time to convince my superiors to allow Oro this chance to have his grandson back alive. Do not fail."

Tess nodded and checked the status of her tranquilizer dart gun and her net launcher. Her nerves were electrified and only the comfort of routine was holding her together. She was determined to treat this like any other bounty, giving Erik no quarter. She would risk hurting him in the short term to not have him gunned down like an animal by the military. Oro and the strategist would receive visuals directly from a camera mounted on Tess's helmet and she would bring Erik to this basement room once she completed her mission until any remaining Anuma were dealt with. A small headset had been placed within her helmet to request further backup and to report back to the strategist if need be.

Tess took a deep breath and pulled her visor down as they received signal from a sniper that Erik and his customary two escorts had been sighted. She dashed from the door as Oro wished her good luck, running up through the building and leaping from roof to roof until she arrived at the Senate building. She vaporized a window and dropped in on the top floor. She had memorized the building's floor plan over the past week and made her way down to a third floor office, again shooting the two Hari Anuma in the back.

Erik stopped when the two men hit the floor and stood still as a statue. Tess hesitated only a brief second, but it was long enough for another Hari Anuma to appear from the shadows. She did not react, knowing the sniper she could not see but knew was hidden somewhere in the Senator's room would shoot him as soon as he was in view. As he stepped into the light, she recognized his face.

"Erik! Sing! Bring the insects from their shadows!"

Erik's back was still to her, but the voice that issued forth seemed to come from everywhere at once, wrapping itself around her brain and covering it in a thick fog. She watched as one, two, three and more snipers slid from their hiding spots, walking forward like zombies toward Erik and Sota Enaga laughed, shooting them down as they appeared. She wanted to move forward, but could not quite bring herself to do so.

Another voice suddenly cut through the fog surrounding Tess's mind, shouting at her from the earpiece she wore.

"Tess! Get Erik or he will be shot, stop him NOW!"

The barked order brought her to her senses and she shook off the soporific effects of Erik's voice, grabbing her tranquilizer gun and planting a dart in the back of Erik's neck. The song stopped and he slumped to the floor.

Sota Enaga dashed toward her, tackling her to the ground, his own armor multiplying his already ridiculous Eranae strength. Tess sent her elbow back against the man's face, cracking the plates covering his forehead. Enaga did not react to the blow or the blood seeping into his eyes, instead grabbing Tess's helmet and wrenching it off of her. He flipped her over and wrapped his hands around her neck. She could feel her windpipe collapsing under the pressure

"You worthless interfering mongrel scum!"

The Hari Anuma squeezed tighter and held her down as she struggled against him. The last thing Tess felt before she blacked out was the pressure on her neck suddenly lifting and the weight of the enraged Eranae falling heavily over her.

---

Tess woke up lying on the table in the basement conference room with Oro's worried face leaning over her. It disappeared from her blurry sight and she heard him speak to someone else in the room over the wheezing of her own struggling breath.

"She's awake, Yana!"

He reappeared and prodded at her bruised throat. She cringed and swatted at his inquisitive hand before attempting to sit up. Pain flared in her entire neck as Oro pushed her back down.

"Do not move, child. We will have a medical team in here as soon as one can be spared. I'm afraid this mission turned out to be a bit of a mess. More of the Hari Anuma were present than we'd anticipated. Apparently they had been expecting the attack. There are still a few being searched for. I am sorry to say that the military has lost several young men today."

Oro's guilt was obvious, but Tess was too tired to muster the emotional energy required to care about a few soldiers. She tried to speak, choked and spit up a small amount of blood.

"Where—"

"Erik is right beside you, child. He has not woken yet. I do not know what type of sedative you used, so you would have a better idea of how long he will sleep than I do. You have been unconscious yourself for over an hour. I feared that you wouldn't wake at all. That armor of yours might withstand a plasma blast, but apparently it was not designed to protect against madmen."

Tess tried to turn her head to the side to see the man laid out beside her but her swollen neck would not obey. She blindly reached out with her hand instead, feeling the slightly fevered skin of his belly under her fingers.

"He is not well, Tess. I do not think they fed him at all, if his appearance says anything."

Oro reached over Tess to his grandson, murmuring something she could not discern. Exhaustion and Oro's voice lulled her to sleep.

Something prodding at her sore neck woke her again barely a half an hour later. An Eranae she did not recognized pulled a needle from a large metal box and punctured the skin under her larynx with it, slowly injecting some unknown substance. The pain in her throat lessened almost immediately. Several hands flipped her onto her side and her head was pushed toward her chest. She cried out at the pain that flared in her vertebral column at the movement. The hands held her down firmly as another injection was inserted in between two of her neck vertebrae into the spinal column.

The medical team packed up without speaking a single word to her and swiftly left the room, presumably to tend the other casualties of the day's festivities. Oro gently lifted her into a sitting position and she finally caught sight of Erik. He was thinner than ever and reminded her more of a dried up Egyptian mummy than a living man. She tried to swallow only to find her mouth dryer than the Sahara. She turned to Oro.

"Is there any water around?"

"Yes. I will be back in a minute. Yana, watch them for me."

Yana blinked from the corner where he was dozing in a chair.

"Yea, sure thing."

Oro left and Yana stood up and yawned, stretching his arms over his head.

"Quite a mess you made, Tess. Figured a Hunter like you would know better than to hesitate."

Tess blushed deeply.

"I usually don't. But then, I don't usually know my prey, not personally anyway."

"That shouldn't make a difference. You should follow your duty no matter what."

"Just say 'yes sir' and ask no questions? I don't agree with that philosophy in the slightest."

"Hm. Well I suppose I shouldn't expect some off-worlder Hunter would understand honor and loyalty. So far as I have seen, there is none among your kind anyway."

"You obviously don't know many of 'my kind'. We tend to be quite loyal, under the right conditions. Such as with our friends, for example. That's the problem with your kind. You only deal in absolutes."

The strategist rolled his eyes at Tess and sat back down in his corner seat. Tess wondered slightly at her own speech. Since when did she have friends, or feel loyal to anything?

"So how long is that bag of bones going to be out? The medics didn't recognize the sedative in his blood."

"It lasts about a day, or until the antidote is administered."

"So where's the antidote?"

"On my ship. I don't have any with me. Probably better to leave him out until we get back home anyway."

"Home?"

"The Ohtamacil estate, I mean. Erik's home."

"And where is your home?"

Tess shrugged and glanced at Oro as he returned with a bottle of water for her.

"Nowhere. Anywhere, really. Wherever my ship is."

"A rootless wanderer, then. No wonder you don't understand national loyalty. Stray animals, your lot. Uncivilized if you ask me."

"I had a permanent home once, and a country."

"Hmph. Didn't stop you from abandoning them."

Oro handed Tess the bottle of water and sat down beside Erik.

"May we dispense with the unpleasant bickering, children? I am tired."

Tess wanted tos ay she had no choice, but the she knew she would have left if she had.

"When can we leave this place?"

"When the area is cleared of the enemy and I receive word from my superiors that it is safe to emerge with the target."

"His name is Erik, moron."

Oro huffed and stood up before the strategist could reply.

"I said stop it, now."

The communicator hanging from the strategist's belt beeped and he answered it.

"The area has been cleared, we are to leave immediately."

Oro nodded and picked Erik up, following the army officer out of the building. Tess trailed behind. The trip back to the Ohtamacil estate was subdued as everyone was either exhausted or sedated. It was nearly dawn when their escorts dropped them off and Tess and Oro, with Erik still draped over his shoulder, stepped through the doors.