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"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

~Oscar Wilde

Chapter Thirty-seven: Pride

"Where do I even begin?"

"Sir..." Mariah looked pale. She'd looked pale since the last moments of the fight, and only paled further when Avenger landed by Liberty Gulch and sent the Shens' team out to assist in the dismantling of the Haven. The remaining survivors would migrate to another hidden position...those who didn't decide their odds were better joining up with XCOM.

"You had one job," Central reminded her, in a low voice. Jane, watching the pair from the side of Bradford's brown office, tried to stay impartial: Mariah had screwed up.

But I don't like where this is going, the Ranger uneasily admitted, seeing the light in Bradford Senior's eye. I really don't like where this is going.

"You were supposed to protect the civilians," Bradford growled, framed by the dual draped American and XCOM flags on his wall. He stood behind his desk, glaring down with righteous wrath. "Your team deployed to keep the Haven safe and protect the Resistance elements in this region."

"I know," Mariah murmured. "I tried."

"You tried." Bradford shook his head. "You got so wrapped up with that berserker that you didn't think about anything else. Because of your foolishness and your target fixation, Mordecai Kowalski is dead."

"Sir," Mariah protested, at something above a whisper but only just, "he sacrificed himself to take down the berserker. Maybe that is my fault, but-"

"But what?" Central's voice cracked like a whip. "What's the but, Mariah? If you had kept your feet and your cool, Mordecai wouldn't have had to do any such thing. Not to mention-"

"I know," she moaned.

"Don't interrupt me," Bradford snapped. Jane took a steadying breath, tamping down hard on her own opinions. "Not to mention, Squaddie, the civilians who took a grenade because you got worked up shooting a corpse. Not even your inexperience and your age can forgive you not realizing the berserker was dead!"

"I...I knew that-"

"And you just shot it anyway?" Bradford demanded. "Knowing it was dead, knowing Quinn and White and Junior were heavily engaged to the south? Thank God for the Haven guards, Mariah, coming in and pulling their chestnuts from the fire like you were supposed to." He waved in Jane's direction. "While you were mauling a dead body, your captain was engaged four-on-one! You're lucky she's good, or she'd be on your head too." He leaned on his desk. "Instead of going to help any of your friends, and instead of making sure the civilians were safe, you screwed around."

"I'm sorry," Mariah whispered.

"I'm sure Mordecai and the orphans in the Gulch appreciate that."

"Sir-"

"I'm half-inclined to take you off the combat roster." Bradford took a seat, and very ostentatiously did not invite Mariah to do any such thing.

"Sir!" She was crying now, crying and struggling to stay locked at attention. "I want to fight. I want to help."

"With your track record, I think we'd have better operational success if you were swabbing Shen's workshops rather than helping."

"Alright," Jane began, but she hesitated when Bradford raised a hand to forestall her.

"I'm not playing games," Central warned. "Because of your incompetence, Mariah, people have died. But!" He inhaled. "You get one more chance. I expect you to shape up and put this behind you, understood?"

"Yes, sir!" Mariah nodded quickly. "Absolutely, sir, thank you, sir!"

"If you screw up again," Bradford growled, "even the tiniest bit..."

"No, sir!" Mariah swallowed. "Thank you, sir!"

"Good. Get out of my face." Bradford turned his attention to his terminal then, and Jane had to return Mariah's salute before she would scramble out through the automatic door.

The hiss after it shut sounded very final.

"Central..."

"Yes, Captain?" Bradford gave her a searching look. Jane swallowed.

"Don't you think you're being a little hard on her?"

"People are dead, Captain." Bradford's eyes were sparks of flint. "I was easy on her."

"Sir, I understand what's happened and why." And Jane resented the implication she didn't, though she was far too diplomatic to admit that. "But she's trying, Central, and she's trying because of you."

"And?" He really didn't get it. Jane knew men were blind, but this was a new low.

"I'm saying..." Jane seized her patience with both hands and held on as tightly as she could. "I am saying, sir, that she went haring off into battle in Korea because she wanted to impress you. She took that shot on the Hunter and Mox not because she's an idiot, but because she thought you'd approve."

"If her idea of winning my approval is to throw wrenches in our operations, it'll be a long time coming to her."

"Sir..." Jane had trouble keeping hold of that patience. "Did you, or did you not, ever have a conversation with her?"

"Of course-"

"As yourself, not as Central to a soldier," Jane snapped, losing some of her cool. "Did you ever sit her down as her father?"

Bradford glanced back down to his terminal. "There hasn't been time."

"Right." Jane breathed in deeply. "Maybe, sir, if you sat her down and showed her that you do notice her and she isn't just another soldier to you, she won't be so desperate to prove something to you that she starts losing track of things she shouldn't."

"That's none of your business, Captain." Bradford didn't look up. "And I remind you that whatever the reasons for her decisions, people have died as a result and that's on her head."

"Of course." Jane's patience wore to breaking point. "And I think you should bear in mind that, regardless of the reasons for your decisions, whatever happens to Mariah as a result of them is on yours."

"Captain!" Bradford rose as she stormed for the door. "That was out of line, Kelly! And I haven't dismissed you-"

Jane left without so much as a glance.

Din Dourde had a headache. She had cuts and bruises from Jane Kelly's vicious assault - if any human was a warrior to equal a Chosen, it would perhaps be her. She ached and hurt from her flight from the abortive assault on the traitor encampment.

And none of that mattered, because she lay prostrate with her forehead on the cool floor of an ancient sanctum.

"Imbecile!" the Warlock cried. His footsteps were thunder and his voice was death. Violet light seared around his arms and his eyes...or, would have, if Dourde had dared to look up. "I gave to you one mission!"

She was not unwise enough to speak. In fact, she tried very hard not to even think: the Warlock was known to read the minds of all around him.

"I lifted you from the common ranks of the patrols," the Warlock reminded her. "Were it not for me, you would have been punished for California, not rewarded!"

"For which mercy I am grateful," Dourde replied, after long enough it was clear he awaited a response. "I am beyond lucky to have been graced with the sight of your sanctum and the value of your patronage."

"You may be, but I am not!" He was in a fit state. Dourde remained terrified, but she also became resigned in a dark way: she couldn't see any way the Warlock would let her leave his temple alive. "You fled from battle!"

"I beg pardon, mighty Warlock-"

"You fled and abandoned your forces as soon as the going was tough!" He loomed before her, and Dourde squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it would at least be quick and painless. "You are a coward, and unfit to lead warriors of the gods!"

"Mighty Warlock-"

"You will be punished for this cravenness!" And then Dourde squealed as she was lifted from the floor. The Warlock held her up by her arms with chains of purple light, and fury wrapped over his ancient features. "You will be punished most harshly-"

"I only seek to serve as best I may-"

"Then you should have stood to the death rather than flee!" The Warlock threw her aside, and Dourde cried out as she landed well below his upraised podium. She heard the clicking chatter of talons on metal, too: the Warlock's pets knew what it meant when he shouted and flung someone to the ground.

"Mighty Warlock, I beg mercy!" she cried, as a half-dozen of the purple insects appeared around her. Saliva fell from their jaws and dripped over their little vestigial arms. They chirped and chittered, and Dourde quaked as they approached, slavering for her flesh. "I beg you, master-"

"I turn my ears from you," the Warlock decreed. Dourde screamed louder as the first of the chryssalids loomed over her, reaching for her. "For you have turned yours from your duty to the Elders -"

Bang!

Dourde gasped as something hit the chryssalid. It staggered, howling, and in a flash, more shots, red and angry, ripped into its fellows. They collapsed in wild sprays of flying body parts and yellow rain, until abruptly nothing loomed but the Warlock himself.

"You dare!" the Warlock screamed, while Dourde wiped hot yellow goo from her face. "You have nerve to show your face in this sacred place, defiler-"

"Oh, trust me, brother." That voice made Dourde shiver too, and she remained low as another supernaturally-tall form sedately cruised past her, slinging his rifle back over his shoulder. "I'm not here for you."

"You enter my home and slaughter my pets, and act as if it were a game?" The Warlock confronted the Hunter, and Dourde wondered how quickly she would become collateral damage. The Chosen often fought, though never before in times of resistance and crisis. Very few lived to tell the tales of their matches, but what tales they did tell were the stuff of legend.

"It's not sporting," the Hunter objected mildly. He kicked a body as if to underscore his point. "Honestly, brother...feeding them to chryssalids? That's just cruel. I wouldn't do that to a human."

"Begone," the Warlock ordered. His gaze flicked to Dourde, and she quailed and prostrated herself again. "I have business to conclude."

"Not anymore." The Hunter scoffed. "I want her. And I'm going to take her."

"You what?" Dourde couldn't help herself. She stared up at the mighty Chosen - both of them - and the concept that they would do battle for her was utterly absurd. She was merely one of millions.

"She has betrayed the Elders!" the Warlock preached. He raised his arms to the sky. "She sacrificed her sovereign duty to stand her ground and die for the gods if it was asked of her, all in the name of preserving her own skin!"

"Yes." The Hunter didn't sound at all perturbed. "I like that. The hunt isn't just about shooting things and getting shot, no. It's about knowing when it's high time to fold your cards and walk away from the table so you have a chance to play again someday. I don't want someone who will die for the Elders...I want someone smarter than that. Someone who will live for them, and intends to keep living so she can keep serving."

The Warlock was undoubtedly the most powerful of the Chosen. Dourde wouldn't have bet against him in any match against Hunter or Assassin: good they were, but he was without question the eldest and strongest. But, lying there in the remains of the Hunter's latest crop of victims and listening to the difference between the Warlock's single-minded zealotry and the Hunter's cold pragmatism, she realized she had been entirely wrong about which of the brothers was the more dangerous.

She would not say that. She tried not even to think it: such thoughts were hazardous to her health as long as she sat in the Warlock's sanctum.

"You would take the rejected and the forsworn?" The Warlock's lip curled. "You never have shown anything but disdain for the gods' will."

"That's me," the Hunter said agreeably. "We'll be going now."

"Very well!" the Warlock waved his hand, and Dourde nearly cried in relief. "Take her, and when she brings you to grief, do not come crawling to me saying I did not warn you."

"When have I ever before?" the Hunter wondered. He turned, carefully picking his way through the fruits of his labor to avoid getting guts on his shoes. "Come along, Captain Dourde. We should leave before he remembers he hates me."

"How could I ever forget?"

"I'm coming, Mighty Hunter," Dourde scurried to his side, staying as meek as possible. She didn't stop trembling until they reached the Ascension Gate. She shivered in delight as blue light wafted over the pair, and they flew...and...

"Oh, thank the Elders," Dourde gasped, the instant they were well away from the Warlock. The Ascension Gate had not taken them into the Warlock's entry chambers, but instead to another purple-tinged Elder-style room, this one dominated by a large central platform from which hung dozens - even hundreds - of mounted heads as trophy. Dourde breathed in air that, while the same as that in the Warlock's chamber, somehow tasted sweeter. "And thank you as much, Mighty Hunter." She took a knee. "I am yours."

"I approve of gratitude," the Hunter allowed. "But 'Mighty Hunter'? That's a mouthful, isn't it? I like the way it sounds, but you can drop the adjective and I won't feed you to anything."

"I..." Dourde did not exactly know how to respond. "I owe you a debt."

"Well, I didn't do it for you." There was no room for pretense in his manner. "Spiting my big brother is a worthy end in and of itself." He laughed. "But, Captain...as a matter of fact, I think I would appreciate the help of an Advent officer who remembers she has a brain to do more than learn litanies of boring trivia about the gods."

Agreeing with that sentiment struck Dourde as dangerous if the Elders ever found out. "I am happy to serve in any way you desire" seemed reasonable, though.

"I'm glad to hear that." The Hunter strode into the depths of his sanctum. "Because I've just been tasked with bringing in a certain very elusive quarry who has bothered the Elders for a long time...and I could use a general to make it look all official and such."

"A...a general..."

All at once, Dourde was very happy the Warlock had tried to feed her to his pets.

Thunk...thunk...thunk...

"You sent for me?" Shaojie Zhang's voice echoed through the Lab Space, bouncing off the high ceiling and far corners. Acoustics were always wild in underground facilities, and one lined with alien alloy-based stealth metal was designed to keep sound in. It reflected from silver and blue steel panels, marked at corners with the great shield sigil. Above all on the far wall, orange letters spelled out Mutare Ad Custodiam. After all these years...Zhang still didn't know what it meant.

"I did, Colonel." Moira Vahlen was a short woman of middle age, her face lined by the years she'd spent in the wilderness after the War. She wore a lab coat every waking minute, one breast pocket filled with her tablet and the other with a photograph she took out on occasion. Her hair was brown with graying streaks brought on by years and fears alike, but her blue eyes had nothing but savage intelligence, and her voice had never cracked. In fact, the biggest change since Zhang had first met her under Commander Gallant's leadership was that she'd started carrying a laser pistol with her in a thigh holster. She probably didn't take it off to sleep.

"Is it about the Warlock?" Zhang ceased his approach, halting in the darkened shadows that enveloped the entryway. Vahlen remained in her white-floored technological sanctum, admiring the containment cells her work teams had worked so hard to erect at the far end.

"Yes." Vahlen's accent veered from German to French almost at a moment's notice; legacy of her origins in a Swiss border town. "I am impressed with your work, but we do not have the information necessary to pursue a strike on his stronghold."

"I figured you'd send us back out sooner or later." Zhang produced a cigar. "Tempt you?"

"I cannot fathom your interest in those disgusting things." But Vahlen didn't say he couldn't partake, so Zhang just shrugged and pulled out his novelty cyberdisk lighter. Flame spouted from the little thing's tail end, and a moment later the beacon was lit.

"What's the drill?" Zhang finally asked. He squeezed the lighter, and it folded back up into the little silver disc he could slip into his pocket.

"There is a facility in Brazil." Vahlen turned to her terminal, and Zhang waited as a hologlobe appeared over the Director's head. A scarlet dot showed the point she was talking about. "This facility is known to be one of Advent's data centers. If anywhere will have the necessary information to find the Warlock, it will be here."

"I see." Zhang puffed. "Standard procedure?"

"I see no reason to deviate." Vahlen paused. "I have received a report on Beta."

"Have you?" Zhang gave her a sidelong look. "Who'd she kill?"

"No one!" She huffed. "Without direction and training, Beta is simply lashing out at anything she considers unfamiliar. She is not a beast, Colonel Zhang."

"She's a berserker hopped up on gene steroids and equipped with pneumatic bracers and heavy armor-"

"We had this discussion." Vahlen sighed. "I did what was necessary for science and for humanity as a whole."

"In that order."

"That's enough." Vahlen shook her head. "The decisions were made, Colonel. We must recover Beta before Gallant's men put her in the dirt like they did to Gamma." From the Director's tone, it would be a cold day in Hell before she forgave the old Commander.

Meanwhile, Zhang wanted to buy him and his men a round or two. "Things aren't going to go back to the way they were, Doctor. The Rulers escaped, and you can't undo that."

"We have to!" She would not yield an inch. Vahlen's eyes flared with defensive anger. "They are the only hope humanity has of matching the Elders' power. We can - and must - turn the weapon of the Enemy against him if we are to have any hope of prevailing."

Zhang considered pointing out that the source material for the quote use the weapon of the Enemy against him had some choice things to say about the idea. He also considered reminding Vahlen that she owed him and Annette her life - if they hadn't pulled her from the base when Gamma got loose and hell followed in a hurry, she'd have become viper food in the process of trying to coax her pet back to confinement.

He did neither. Vahlen's mind might as well have been carved from stone: it was made up and would not budge. Zhang, ever the pragmatist, turned his attention to battles he had a prayer of winning.

"Have you thought at all about opening contact with them?" he asked. For a wonder, Vahlen didn't shoot him down in a flash.

"I..." She moved her head back and forth: such a gesture of uncertainty that the Heavy nearly started the Faceless Identification Drill. In the nick of time, Vahlen carried on. "It would be nice to see...Central again." She was very bad at pretending she hadn't changed names midsentence. "But if we try to make contact with one group in the outside world, we expose ourselves to detection by others. If the Templars discovered us, I do not consider it a certainty that they will show us friendship. To say nothing of the possibility of the Chosen catching wind of our attempts!"

"But there's strength in unity," Zhang objected. He also knew what buttons to push. "Just think of the scientific possibilities if you combine your work here with what they might be doing on that alien ship." He felt a bit of pride in knowing his own role in Avenger's capture, even if it was indirect.

"Perhaps." And as usual, that was the end of the conversation. "Your team will prepare for deployment as soon as practical, Colonel. It will take some time for us to ship your people to Brazil, so I encourage you to make that very soon indeed."

"Of course, Doctor." Zhang gave her a lazy salute, then turned for the door, still puffing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vahlen draw that photograph from her pocket.

"It's so...it's so..." Cameron Rogers couldn't think of a better word. He could only gawk, and try his hardest not to make that obvious.

"Clean," Da-Xia Liang suggested from his side. "That's the word you want, Moose: clean."

"It's white, too."

"You're one to talk."

"Come on!" Cameron gave the Grenadier a dark look. She smirked under glasses she didn't need - but they broke up her outline nicely. Their current walking track took them right past a holodisplay that had her own face on it, and no one called anyone out.

It wasn't just the glasses. Cameron was used to Liang the soldier, decked up and decked out with gun and kit and grenades, ready to mix it up at the slightest real or imagined provocation. This woman at his side - this short but not tiny Asian woman, adorned not with blast padding but a red floral blouse, jeans, some gemstone bracelets, and tall heeled boots - was not the Sergeant Liang Cameron knew. Instead of her business bun and her face wrappings giving her that ninja vibe, she'd wrapped an orange striped scarf up in her dark hair, creating such a contrast of colors that Cameron could almost forget it was there so she could cover her face at need.

"Well, it's not just me," Liang observed, raising an eyebrow when Cameron's glance lingered a little too long. The sharpshooter jumped.

"Oh! I'm sorry, it's all just-"

"Look at yourself sometime," Liang ordered. The corporal thought about it for a minute, and decided she likely had a point. He'd been born in a small town to begin with, and Advent's creation hadn't fundamentally altered his upbringing even if it had given it more urgency. He spared a glance at one of those shiny white city center walls in passing, and almost had to laugh: didn't he look respectable? Loose slacks and dress shoes, combed hair and a little golden goatee-mustache combo north of an aquamarine button-up T-shirt. Back in Canada, short sleeves in May would have been a funny joke, but here in Virginia, May seemed like a boiling approximation of Hell already. Cameron wondered what July and August would be like, but decided he probably didn't want to know.

"And the odds of our mission taking that long are low," Liang agreed, when he voiced the thought. She kept her voice down, but Cameron did a surreptitious glance left and right anyway.

"Present identification," ordered a computer, as if it knew what was what. Cameron wasn't nearly as nervous doing so now as he'd been right after Firebrand dropped them off down near Midlothian, but his heart still skipped a beat. Trying not to hesitate, he produced his forged papers. He also pressed the stone on his ring, and knew Liang was doing the same.

"Scanning." The lamppost, for that was what it was, blinked a few times, examining what it was given. If the slightest thing was out of order...

"Identity confirmed. Remember, only together can we build a better tomorrow."

"Oh, good." Cameron kept it light, trying to act the part of a civilian who'd avoided inconvenience. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned back down the pristine ivory sidewalk, surreptitiously mimicking the crowds bustling all around. "This is one hell of a city."

"Is it?" Liang sounded amused. "You could drop the whole of Richmond into Shanghai and you'd never notice you'd done it."

"I defer to your experience." Cameron resisted the urge to look at his ring. "I'm glad the...jewelry purchase was a good idea." And I'm damn glad the Shens figured out how to mimic those head-chip signals, at least well enough for casual scanners.

"Any jewelry purchase is a good idea," Liang said. Cameron nearly jumped out of his skin when she hooked her arm through his. "Especially if it's you purchasing for me, dear."

"What-"

"We'll attract less attention if we play the part," she muttered through her teeth. "In case you missed it, Moose...I'm not white." Her eyes flicked around the street, and that was definitely worry in them. "Maybe people will think I stand out and maybe they won't - I mean, it's America - but if they see me attached to you, maybe they'll just think I'm your mail-order bride and no one says anything else."

"I'm...relatively sure no one's going to jump to that conclusion-"

"Just shut up and pretend to be my boyfriend."

"I guess if I act scared of you, that's a good start."

"Yes," Liang decided, after a moment's thought. "That's a very good start." She paused. "Heads up, Moose: incoming."

"Yeah?" Rogers did his best to crane his neck and visibly admire the statues on Monument Avenue. What he made surreptitious was that he kept stealing glances at the figure emerging from what had become Advent's central research hub in the city. "Who's that one, sweetie?"

"Johnston."

"You know your Confederate war heroes pretty well." Cameron couldn't help but be impressed. "You did a lot of research."

"His name is written down there." Liang pointed, and now Cameron felt pretty stupid. "Don't ask me who he was or what he did. Probably something incredibly idiotic that happened to come at the right moment, so he's now a hero instead of a footnote."

"Isn't that how most heroes get made?" Cameron eyed the woman - the human woman - and her Advent guards, clambering into an armored car by the side of the road. "I see a shadow car two blocks down. People in it, not Advent. Civilian markings."

"Copy that." Liang glanced the other way. "Lead car one block up. This one is marked."

"The bait and the knife." Cameron studied the building. "Fortified with turrets and foot patrols."

"Head-on is a no go." There was heavy surveillance on the streets, but there was even more back at the apartment they'd rented with the Resistance's hard-saved money. Their only chance to talk tactics was to do it here in low voices. Not that there seemed to be much to talk about: their target could have slept in a tank and she'd have been easier to get at.

"And she goes from here to the Defense Ministry," Liang recapped. "Which is patrolled by mutons and archons and houses at least one gatekeeper. We can't engage there either."

"Then what can we do?" Cameron wondered. He waited to be called an idiot again when Liang spelled out her brilliant plan.

He'd never before been so unhappy an insult didn't come.

"Your people are safe," Commander Gallant said, very firmly. "We'll relocate them somewhere with better farming land and some better security." He eyed Meysam rather critically. "You should get your leg looked at."

"I will, sir." This was the legendary Commander? A cripple without a chair? Meysam didn't know what he'd been expecting, but Edward Gallant wasn't it, whatever it was. "The other wounded?"

"We'll be on the ground as long as events permit, and we can leave a good load of medical supplies behind when we have to ship out." He was almost the antithesis of his office: this room was luxurious and decorated in a way Liberty Gulch couldn't imagine. Meysam would have put three people in here without blinking, either for working purposes or simply to sleep, and yet it was one of two cabins set aside for the Commander? Life on the Avenger seemed like heaven from his perspective.

Which wasn't what led him here today, even if it was a nice side benefit.

"Sir," Meysam began, "there is one other thing."

"Hit me, son." If he'd meant it literally, Meysam was sure the cripple would crack and break. With the arrogance of twenty, he supposed Gallant's mind must have been far sharper than his body.

"Commander, sir." Meysam stood straighter. "I would like to volunteer to join your crew."

Gallant paused. He gave Meysam a quiet once-over. "Is that a fact?"

"Yes, sir. And two of mine want to come too." Kang and Nui were busy helping with relief supplies, but they'd discussed this when Avenger landed.

"What about your people?"

"You said you're folding us into another Haven." Meysam shrugged. "Half the guards will still remain if we join with you, and that combined with this other Haven's defenses should keep them safe. I think we'll do a lot more good with you than hiding in the desert."

"Hm." Gallant leaned back in his chair. "I don't often get people asking to join."

Meysam stayed quiet. He thought of the Reaper who'd been flattened, and wondered if Gallant was calculating his losses too. Gaining some new recruits might even out some of the pain, even supposing the Pole was a veteran.

"Get the approval of your Haven leader," Gallant finally allowed. "We run a tight ship, understand? You get to stick with us if you're good enough to deserve it."

"Yes, sir!" Meysam saluted. "I look forward to doing my part, Commander."

"And I look forward to working with you." Gallant returned to his forms. "Get your friends, let them know they're in too - if they can keep up - and finish work outside. Move your belongings aboard as soon as you have written confirmation from whoever's in charge-"

"Commander!" The scientist, Tygan, burst in the door without even bothering to hit the chime. Ignoring Meysam, he practically sprinted to Gallant's desk. "Commander, do you recall the transmission from the Eastern Seaboard I mentioned to you before the deployment in Korea?"

"I recall," Gallant replied, very curtly. "And Richard, I am in the middle of something-"

"I have a positive identification on the source!" Tygan cried. "It's a scientist by the name of Matthew Kipler, one who worked for Advent almost from its inception, who's finally come around to the truth of what they are!"

"That's very nice." Gallant glanced at his terminal. "I don't have a hit from Shadow Man." He glanced back to the soon-to-be operative. "And, Doctor-"

"Commander, we must send an extraction team immediately," Tygan pressed. "Doctor Kipler is holed up in Yonkers with the Lost closing in on all sides, and if we don't respond and rescue him, he'll be overrun! We must-"

"Tygan, if he was one of ours, Shadow Man would be blowing up my com," Gallant finally snapped. "I don't want to leave anyone to die to the Lost, but what on Earth is so valuable about this particular scientist that we have to drop everything all at once?"

"Because he was my mentor," Tygan replied quietly, which made Gallant's mouth snap shut with an audible click. "And because he was tapped to work directly on the Avatar Project."

Author's Note 37: I'm Sorry That I Let You Down

We all have that one soldier, don't we? The one who just can't do anything. The one who always seems to miss all his overwatch shots. The one who can't land a critical hit with every bonus in the world. Whose grenades just seem to destroy every cover tile...except the one the enemy's cowering behind. Who leaves Lost left standing with one hit point, every time they actually land the shot. The one you always wind up sending off on covert ops, because whether it's right or wrong, you're not really certain they aren't cursed(and they usually get wounded on those ops too, don't they?). You're reluctant to take them on missions, and every time you rely on them to make the clutch, they fuck it up.

Now imagine that soldier is your kin.

Forgive the provincialism in my descriptions of Richmond. I don't live there, but I've been many times, and I have family that does. It's a lovely city...but the heat in VA gets awful starting in early May. It's not just hot - there are plenty of other places where it gets hotter - but muggy, and walking around feels like swimming. Good AC is a must, and unfortunately, I haven't had that for several years. I much prefer winter to summer.

Until next time, Vigilo Confido.