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"The pattern of the prodigal son is: rebellion, ruin, repentance, reconciliation, restoration."

~Edwin Louis Cole

Chapter Fifty: Prodigal

"I'm gonna kill him."

"Easy on. I did my best." Jane, a little bemused, held ice to her cheek. "And you'll only get in Gallant's shit graces too."

"I don't bloody care." David White stormed from one end of Jane's room to the other, powerful muscles flexing and clenching. "No one punches my bloody girlfriend."

"I'm hardly the type to sit back and hold out for a hero." Jane moved the ice from her cheek to her other big injury: split and raw knuckles that stung and sung with humanity's natural damage report. "I gave him my all. I think I would've kicked his arse if Gallant hadn't shown up."

"Not the point." David cleared his throat, still pacing. "It's the principle of the thing."

"Aw. You do love me." Jane cracked a worn smile. "I was starting to wonder."

"Someone on this ship has to." David finally stopped, and he took a seat beside Jane on the bed. "Damn it, Irish. Bradford had no cause to just go at you like that."

"Technically speaking, I was warned." Jane sighed. "That doesn't change that you're right, but it's not like he just...out of nowhere." Her jaw worked for a moment. "It's a travesty what's happening to Mariah."

"She didn't do a damn thing wrong."

"No. Sometimes, you just get dealt shit." Jane clenched a fist, thumping it down on her blanket before she could think. "Bradford's holding her to an impossible standard. I should have done something before things came to a head like this. Why else did the Commander station me in when Central had a go at her?"

"You can't blame yourself for what he's up and doing-"

"I'm just as much to blame as Bradford. It's just that my sin was inaction whereas his wasn't." Jane sighed, letting go of her anger with difficulty before she got the urge to go strike up round two with the XO. "What happens now, do you think?"

"I don't know. I'm not an officer." David rubbed at his chin. "I figure the Commander has to have some other lead on Dragunova. If he doesn't, he's a fool, and he's never been a fool so far even if it's looked like it sometimes."

"He is rather a smart man." Jane undid her ponytail, then took too damn long to find her brush. "Stupid thing runs away from me."

"You need to organize better."

"Don't you start. I'm much neater than you." Jane went to work for a moment, distantly considering the far wall and the vidscreen that simulated the passing clouds. "I think he does have another lead. Something in his eye yesterday gave me the impression of someone who isn't showing all his cards. And Gallant can bluff."

"I didn't know you played poker with him."

"We play all kinds of things on game night. I'll have you know we went full Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in Risk and divvied Tygan's purple pieces up for supper." Jane hesitated. "He broke the pact."

"It's Risk. Were you surprised?"

"No. It was better than letting Tygan win. The war between Blue and Yellow - Gallant and Shen - was something to behold after he finished with me." Jane put the brush down. "I'm stalling."

David blinked. "You are?"

"The Commander's other plan. His back pocket ace." Jane fidgeted. "It involves me."

"What gives you-"

"The way he looked at me. It was like he was sizing up my value on the open market." Jane clutched her knees, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to get those angry sapphire orbs out of her head. "I think whatever he's got in mind, I play a part in it...and it's not necessarily a good part."

"You think he's going to send you off on a suicide mission?" David's eyes flashed. "Over my dead-"

"Shut up!" Jane punched him on the arm, none too gently, and regretted it a moment later. She reapplied the ice to her stinging knuckles, swearing under her breath. "I'm not a damsel, David, and if you think I am and intend to let whatever we are get in the way of the war, I don't care to see you anymore. If my dying is what's necessary for the Avenger, then so fucking be it, and there's not a damn thing you can do to change my mind. Death's the risk we take in this job."

"Jane..." He ground his teeth. "You can't ask me to just watch you get shipped off to certain death without-"

"Feel whatever you want. Say whatever you want." Jane met his gaze, hard enough he hesitated. "But it's my choice, David. You can't take that away from me for your own peace of mind."

He made a pained noise in the back of his throat. "I don't want to lose you."

"And you shouldn't have to." Jane didn't know how seriously she believed that, but she'd said it, and so there. "But if the time comes and I make that choice, you have to respect it. Or I'll get Julie to blow your synapses and leave you comatose until the die is cast."

David's eyes slowly went to the space between her feet. "I...Jane..." He cleared his throat, patting his chest firmly a few times. "Well...I suppose a threesome with a psionic would be-"

"Oh, shut up." Jane hit him with a pillow...gently. "Honestly, I'd love to see you proposition Julie. You wouldn't last ten seconds."

"She's nicer than that." David frowned. "She'd let me down gentle, I bet."

"Damn straight she would. It's Sylvie who'd burn you to a crisp."

That made David laugh, which probably meant he couldn't honestly argue.

Creaaaaaaaak...

"Okay, what the fuck?" Lily Shen paused, glaring up at Avenger's plating. "It's not supposed to do that."

"Gee, really?" Jiaying pursed her lips. "I guess we missed something we shouldn't have. Again."

"Gee, really?" Lily gave her a wry grin, then started hunting for flashlights again. "Nothing for it. We've got to find whatever's making that noise before it yanks us out of the sky."

"I don't know that it's that extreme."

"And you also don't know that it isn't." Lily tossed the first one over her shoulder. She heard her cousin snatch it out of the air. "Just listen to that." She waited as another long metallic groan echoed through Engineering. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a pattern. Artificial, maybe."

"Artificial?" Jiaying jumped, and her voice went up. "Are you suggesting someone-"

"No!" Lily made a soothing gesture, and also made sure to give Jiaying a reassuring smile, hoping that would help pull some color back into her cheeks. "It can't be. We'd have found any transmitter hidden in the crawl spaces, and there's no other place to hide anything on the ship."

Jiaying did look a little better. "Okay. Sorry. I panicked. Things lately are just..."

"It's alright." Lily finally located her flashlight. "This time, I'll hit aft and you hit fore. We've been the other way a couple times. Maybe you'll catch something I missed."

Jiaying pursed her lips. "Maybe. But I-"

"Lily."

She froze conclusively as red light filled the room. It glowed, warm and inviting, and a light hum provided audio accompaniment to the least welcome sight Lily could imagine.

"...Jiaying." She slowly turned, discarding her flashlight. "Change of plans. Take the ship check yourself."

"Are you sure?" Her cousin hesitated. "I mean, I can do it, I guess, but-"

"Go." Lily waved her off. "This is my problem."

Jiaying left, casting a worried glance over her shoulder in the process. Lily, every step arthritic, started for the active terminal. Her mouth was dry.

"I'm here." She didn't sit. She hung, waiting with bated breath.

"I can hear you." Julian didn't elaborate for a moment. When he did, his voice was slower. "You put me on this machine as a prison. To keep me away from your files."

"Yes. I did." Lily inhaled as deliberately as she could. "And?"

"And you made a tiny mistake."

Ice flushed her veins. "What are you talking about?" She cast about for any sign that his machine was network-connected. That wireless chip was still nestled next to it, but it wasn't connected...could he remotely...no, he couldn't...

"This computer. It still fulfills its secondary function." Julian paused, as if to let her stew in that for a moment. "It's still receiving data packets from your network for storage purposes."

Lily frowned. "I...are you going somewhere with this?"

"Maybe." For once, the AI didn't sound very sure of anything. "I have reviewed all entries related to the fate of Moira Vahlen. Bradford's log, mission reports, the after-action reports from Mexico and Washington DC..."

"What is it you're trying to accomplish?" Lily's lip curled as she glared at the duct-taped camera that served as Julian's eye. "Going to give data to Advent somehow?"

"More..." Julian spent a moment quiet, and Lily got the feeling he was rallying. "More the other way around."

"...pardon?" Lily blinked very slowly. "What?"

"I've been going over the recorded Advent network data. And something sticks out." Now Julian spoke faster, as if he was trying to get his idea out before he changed his silicon mind. "It seems your SHADOW Chamber missed it, but it lacks a proper artificial intelligence to sort things and read data. You're limited to human analysis, and that's always fallible."

"You...you found something?" Lily tried to keep the shock out of her voice. "And you're..."

"There seems to be an abnormal amount of traffic on certain servers lately. It's being taken down, unless Advent's protocols have completely changed, and they're isolating it at one point in particular, likely for detail examination of some sort. I have recovered these files." Julian's face disappeared, and a data directory popped up. "Although they are encrypted, my calculations indicate a 96.6 percent chance that this data concentration is relevant to the hunt for Moira Vahlen."

"It's..." Lily grabbed her tablet. She quickly hunted through files. "That's a lot of data." She shook her head wondrously. "Tygan and I can sift through it and find what we need, but..." She looked up at the computer, now red and Julian'd again. "Why?"

"I don't think I fully understand the question."

"Yes, you do." Lily set her tablet aside. "You have no reason to..."

Julian didn't reply for a moment. "Consider this my way of honoring Father."

Then he vanished from the screen, and a moment later the machine whined as it lost power, long before Lily could say anything.

"...my God." She hesitantly reached for the computer, and without thinking too long about it, she pulled the duct tape off Julian's camera. "Maybe there's more to that bundle of chips and data drives than I thought."

Then she forgot him, and forgot everything.

"Tygan!" She bolted out of Engineering and off toward Research. "Tygan, I've got something and I need the SHADOW Chamber!"

"I don't believe it." Gallant stared...and stared and stared. "Julian?"

"I wouldn't have either, sir, not if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." Shen held up her datapad with the map for proof. "I looked into it myself. I think he's right, and we just didn't catch it buried under all of Advent's other transmissions."

"It's a trap." Gallant couldn't wrap his mind around anything. "It has to be. Julian's our enemy."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But it's another chance, Commander, and can we turn that down when we have no alternatives?"

Gallant grunted. Maybe...maybe he wouldn't have to betray Jane after all. "No, we can't, Chief." He hesitated. "Good work."

"It wasn't mine...but thank you." Her teeth shone white when she smiled.

Gallant clapped Shen on the shoulder, a little hesitantly. "What you do means a lot, Lily. I know I'm not the...easiest...person to work with..."

"If you're trying to apologize, it's accepted."

"Thank you." Gallant coughed. "Never been something I'm good at."

"Work on it. It's a valuable skill." But she didn't sound angry, and Gallant let her take the lead without another word. She hit the door, opening them up to the hallway-

"Commander." The newcomer snapped to attention.

"...Miss Tariq." Gallant returned her salute, a beat slow. "Is this important?"

"Yes, sir." Her eyes flicked to Shen. "You've got something. I'm sure of it."

"There's the potential for an upcoming mission." Gallant cleared his throat. "But no one's expecting you to hop up and-"

"Well, they should." Fatima's eyes blazed. "This is about the Doctor, isn't it?"

"It..." Gallant hesitated. "There might be a correlation, yes."

"I'm not doing anyone any damn good gathering dust." Fatima still didn't drop her hand. "Sir, I want to go on the op."

Gallant hesitated. "Tariq...you're not-"

"I'm the best soldier on this ship, and don't you even try to deny it." Her jaw worked. "I insist, Commander. I have a score to settle."

"It's not your call to make." Shen shook her head. "It's the Commander's call-"

"Agreed, Fatima." Gallant nodded. "You're in."

No one would mistake her baring of teeth for a smile. "Thank you, sir."

"Right, then." Shen shrugged, as if giving up on anything as inane as logic. "I'll round up Tygan and Kipler and we'll get back to work on the encrypted data."

"I'm coming with you." Gallant stumped out into the companionway, brushing past Fatima and hurrying to the elevator. "I want to see these coordinates for myself when they pop up."

"Sir..." Shen didn't resume, and Gallant felt justified in pretending he hadn't heard her. Hell, he felt magnanimous. Fatima faded off toward the stairs.

The elevator dinged, and then the door opened.

"...Jiaying?" Shen stared at her cousin, and the man she was entangled with in the corner. Both of them jumped, like lightning had struck.

"Oh. Lily! Commander!" Jiaying's cheeks flushed. She hurriedly sketched a salute.

"Commander." Johannes Vermuelen inclined his head, nervously tossing a flashlight to himself. He and Jiaying eased apart until they were no longer touching.

"I don't know what's happening in here, nor do I give a damn." Gallant made his way inside, then hit the bridge button. He examined their destination. "Research?"

"I'm meeting Doctor Kipler." Jiaying summoned a thin smile under eyes that still lingered nervously on Vermuelen's. "And..."

"And I just wanted to walk the lady there before reporting to the barracks." Vermuelen shrugged. "Being nice, is all. Five minutes won't cost us anything."

"Maybe it does." But Gallant let it go, mindful of what had happened yesterday. Another shouting match with the Shens wasn't the most promising start to a critical mission.

The elevator doors slid closed.

The elevator hissed open, and with the breach came the scent of incense. Violet light gleamed and glowed, casting dark shadows from the curling spires ringing the Sanctum. The shadows crossed and connected dead center, at the raised dais with the Vision Mirror.

Janet Ross emerged from the elevator, pausing to genuflect when she reached the short steps up to the literal Inner Circle. She took them slowly thereafter, breathing in the lovely scents of this most holy place.

"Janet." Anne Lawrence inclined her head, and Janet did the same. She passed two more Templar lieutenants, each one cordial, before she came to the bald figure standing at the Mirror, eyes focused on things only he could see.

"You summoned me, Geist?" Janet genuflected again.

"I did." His head twitched, just enough to show that he'd noticed her. "I have watched from afar as Gallant's raid on Washington progressed."

"I take it this woman is now in XCOM's custody?" Jane smiled, a bit savagely perhaps. Who could blame her? "She is an animal who deserves death-"

"And she received it, at her own hand. XCOM failed."

That rocked Janet back on her heels. "They allowed her to..."

"Yes."

"It's insulting." Anne seethed for a moment. "We went out of our way to offer aid, when we had no cause to...when it benefited us to not...and they squander the chance we worked to provide?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." Geist frowned. "I think, perhaps, I might go to Gallant one last time."

"Why?" Janet tossed her ponytail. "He made his bed. He will not abandon the aliens, and so he turns his back on humanity. There is nothing left to discuss."

"Perhaps." Geist sighed. "It cuts against the grain to allow others to fight our battles for us, I suppose. No matter their company."

"It's not our fight." Anne scoffed. "Our fight is to protect the energy of the earth and the freedom of the human people. Not the Skirmishers."

Janet didn't nod. She looked at both sides, as Geist had tried to teach her to do, and supposed there was truth to be found in each. Maybe the Skirmishers were as much the enemy as Advent...but XCOM was fighting the war and winning, while the Templars had to hide in the darkness, braving the light rarely, and only to find new recruits.

Plagued and hunted by the never-sufficiently-cursed Warlock...

"Maybe an alliance would be beneficial." No one seemed to hear her...which was probably for the best.

But...what if an alliance between XCOM and the Templars would enable them both to be rid of one of the Chosen, once and for all? Wouldn't that outweigh the ideological concern against alliance with the Skirmishers? The Templar Catechism said no. Janet Ross hesitated to put her fallible hands against the word of Geist, but maybe...could orthodoxy be, just this once, in error?

She'd been having those thoughts for a while, ever since her first conversation with Commander Gallant. She did her best to hide them - putting on the most conservative and zealous mask she could muster whenever the questions reared their heads - but in the end, they always resurfaced.

What if there was a reason?

The noise of the hangar was deafening. Technicians ran back and forth, automated systems whirred and worked, and soldiers marched in cadence up the lowered landing ramp. Each one was hand-picked: the best in the world at what they did, and endlessly compliant to even the least sensible orders. Their equipment was second-to-none.

General Din Dourde stood at the center of it all, on an observation platform with a good view of the entire martial display. Green plasma light shone from humming reactor vents and cores, and she had never felt more tapped in to something larger than herself than ever before - which said something, given the psionic chip in her skull.

"It may do, General." The lanky figure at her side, arms crossed, watched with something like amusement rolling around his mouth like his latest lemon drop. "It may perhaps do."

"Thank you, sir." From the Hunter, that was high praise indeed. Dourde pointed. "I've taken the liberty of modifying the discharge emitters. They still aren't enough to overcome the shielding we'd be up against, I'm afraid-" an admission that might have cost her life when she still worked under the Warlock "-but combined with-"

"Yes." The Hunter made a distasteful noise. "I'm a simple creature, General, when you break me down far enough." That may or may not have been true: Dourde didn't trust her assessment of a Chosen's psychology as much as she might have. "This whole business of agents creeping in the woodwork seems like something out of a spy thriller movie."

"A what?"

"You Advent types are boring. I should show you the Bourne movies sometime." That thought actually seemed to get him giddy. "There's more to life than service."

"Your brother would disagree."

"My brother is an idiot."

"I'm not sure I would disagree but I'm also not sure I should admit it."

"Spoken like a proper mouthpiece." The Hunter raised a hand a moment later. "My mistake, General: the fact you would even contemplate admitting it means I've made serious inroads on you."

That was probably true. It didn't fill Dourde with cheer, but it didn't make her reevaluate her life choices either. "The company one keeps tends to do that."

"I'm waiting with bated breath for the moment I start marching to Angelis' fife like you." The Hunter scoffed. "She thinks she's a lot smarter than she is, General, and that will be her downfall. Her offer reeks of hubris and self-aggrandizement. I'm not sure the point isn't really just to show off her amazing abilities and impress all the other Elders."

"...offer?" That was about the only part of that paragraph Dourde felt comfortable even hearing, let alone responding to.

"...oh. Right." He cleared his throat and sucked on his lemon drop for a minute. "Forget I said that. You don't have fancy enough sleeves to know about it."

"Of course, Mighty Hunter." If there was ever a moment to be military and formal, that seemed to be it. Dourde glanced at her gilded uniform for a moment. If it was above her clearance...well, generals were one step down from the Chosen, who were one step down from the Elders themselves. Dourde sometimes felt like a goddess of her own right, with her finger firmly on the pulse of almost every bit of information Advent possessed - especially given that, as the Hunter's number-two, she knew a lot that she technically wasn't supposed to, thanks to his loose lips and habit of passing detail work off for her ministrations. Every now and then, though, something would pop up like this: something that reminded her that she wasn't quite at the top of the food chain.

The part of her that was an Advent soldier to the core appreciated that, as it reminded her she would ultimately always be able to count on direction and orders. The part of her that the Hunter had awakened was more...curious.

Curiosity. Dourde turned the word over in her head. There's an entire emotion that simply never would have occurred to me months ago. Or thinking myself powerful like a goddess, or possibly even thinking of myself as an individual of my own, instead of one among many.

Maybe the Hunter had changed her a lot more than she'd thought.

"Alright, General." The Hunter fished out another lemon drop...but this one he tossed her way. Dourde caught it, blinking slowly.

"I'm afraid I don't-"

"We've lingered long enough. I think I'm satisfied." That was a thumping lie, but he didn't seem overly dissatisfied either. The Hunter nodded to their ship: a large, sleek craft with the numbers 07 marked on its flanks. "I think we should get aboard, and you should get us in the air while I try to make a new Tetris high score."

Author's Note 50: Board Set, Pieces Moving

The last of them are falling into place even now. Buckle your seatbelts, grab your snacks, and grab your kids: these last ten chapters are going to knock your socks off, or I'm going to feel very inadequate.

We all know that feeling of husbanding certain operatives for certain missions. You wind up taking a B or C team on some ops because you want to be sure your best people are ready for what you know is coming next - plot missions, soldier rescues, things like that. Even Covert Ops run into that sometimes. I've refrained from taking soldiers on missions perfect for them because the covert op finishes in 2 days and I want to be POSITIVE my Ranger is available for that Mobility increase.

Essentially, my Covert Op rewards boil down to: Aim is prioritized for sharpshooters, Hacking for Specialists, and Mobility for Rangers. Health I regard as a freebie, and while I tend to put Will on my psi-ops over others(leftovers from the first game, probably: I don't think Will and psionics are related anymore in the higher part of my mind) I'm perfectly willing to give it to anyone. Promotions go to lower ranked soldiers...AFTER I get a Major. Before then, it's a race to get one so I can start knocking the Chosen out. And I almost always go Assassin first, just for the magic sword that kicks all the ass in the game. What about you guys?

Until next time, Vigilo Confido.