Walking was such a bore, compared to scrabbling in the vents.

The Hunter mused on that as he leisurely strode towards the direction of the Lab, eyes glancing at the ceiling. Already he'd mapped out the whole network of passages through the ship. They were supposed to be maintenance ducts for reaching critical areas of the ship, sizeable enough that even he could maneuver around them. Mordenna had taken to using them as quick transportation... and also a way to spook the hell out of whoever was below. He'd already heard a few cries of "Chryssalids!" during his many journeys and the thought of it made him smirk.

So why not drop on Tygan like that? Well, firstly, Tygan struck the Hunter as the type to lay out a tailor-made trap for the "Chryssalid" in the vents to land in once it exited them into the Lab. Knowing the physiology of the bastards, the Hunter didn't doubt that such a thing would probably take a limb off, and he knew for a fact that loss of an extremity was something his regeneration didn't cover. He'd need the Elders to patch him up in the Void in that case, and considering his status now? He'd faster kill himself.

Secondly? The ceiling of the makeshift Laboratory was really, really high up. Higher than what even Mordenna wanted to game. He'd just have to drop in on Tygan metaphorically rather than literally, which took a bit of the fun out of it for him. But, he'd been meaning to talk to the scientist for a while. The man was high up on his interest list—below Shen and O'Leary, but above a lot of others. After all, he knew Tygan was second fiddle to Lily in reverse-engineering everything the Elders put out, and if he recalled correctly? The man had been chipped before. Either he'd managed to get it out himself... or him and Mordenna were about to have a very interesting conversation. Either way further stoked his interests.

Such reasons, questions, and ideas were running around his brain as the door to the Lab slid open, and Mordenna ducked under the door. Tygan was setting up... a centrifuge, it looked like, gently placing vials inside of it. His back was to the Hunter, and it was then that he could spot the series of scars on the back of his neck, where his spine met his skull. Ah, so he did remove it himself. Or, at the very least, made a convincing effort to look like he did.

Tygan must've heard the door slide open, because he carefully placed down the last vial on the counter and turned towards the door. He didn't seem too surprised to see the Hunter at his door—but Mordenna could pick out a muscle in his neck tensing ever so slightly. "Hunter. Is there anything I can assist you with at the moment?"

"Oh, at the moment? Maybe." Mordenna's eyes shifted to the vial on the counter. It was yellowish, with flecks of orange in it. Ah. Meld-infused blood and he's trying to extract the plasma from it. "Whatcha separating alien blood for, there?"

At that, Tygan looked mildly impressed, but the expression passed quickly. "It's Samhien's latest blood samples. He said there was a special sedative agent they used on him to move him from the Assassin's Stronghold to the compound you recovered him from, and at his request, I'm doing tests to determine if some of it still remains in his bloodstream."

"Oh, that stuff?" Mordenna gave a short chuckle. "It's an alien compound. It's extracted from a race of aliens the Elders never adapted for planet-conquering. If you're looking for it, I'd recommend looking in his lymph fluids. It pools in the glands after going through the blood—only in humans and anything that shares enough genetic similarities, mind."

Tygan raised his eyebrows, looking back to the centrifuge. "I... see. I will have to contact him later about another extraction..." Tygan was silent a moment, then he looked back to Mordenna. "Might I ask how your knowledge is so extensive?"

Mordenna shrugged. "I use a modified dose of it for my darts. Also I got curious what the exact effect of it was when I extracted the first test subject of it."

Tygan's expression didn't change. "You dissected them."

"Sure did!" Mordenna replied chipperly. "And hey, to the aliens? What you guys are doing ain't any different."

Tygan replied smoothly. "If ADVENT had not taken tens of thousands of my own kind in to be experimented on and refined into vials, perhaps I would be more hesitant. As it stands? It is a necessary evil in order to gain every edge we can against them."

Mordenna nodded. "Good answer, doc. All for revenge, and all that. Pretty easy justification." He grinned. "Maybe a bit too easy, eh?"

"If you are here to discuss the ethics of my work," Tygan said, levelling a calm gaze at Mordenna, "I cannot help but think you are the last person to be questioning me, short of the Elders themselves. As you have previously mentioned, you yourself are not above experimentation on humans. With the specific of noticing the serum 'only spreading in humans,' I can only assume your own experimentation has delved into the aliens."

Well! If he was here to shake Tygan to his core, it looked like the Hunter was beat. He shrugged. "Anyone can ask questions of anyone. But hey, I'll take that as a sign to back off... for now." His eyes slid over Tygan's setup... and settled on a container on the far end of the counter. It was suspending a control chip inside of it... a very specific one. He kept staring at it as he resumed speaking. "Now, doc... that's a very unique chip you've got over there." Out of the corner of his eye, he could spot Tygan tensing. "Only one kind of it in the world. Supposed to be in one specific person at all times, conditions being optimal. How'd you get that?"

He watched as Tygan seemed to deliberate over even telling the Hunter about it, before he sighed, adjusting his glasses. "You... most likely know where it came from, with the way you worded yourself. Regardless, yes. That is the chip extracted from the Commander when we recovered her from the Stasis Suit."

The Hunter kept fixating on that chip. His mouth ran without him thinking about it. "Those chips are planted at the base of the brain stem," he muttered, "and I saw those scars on the back of your neck." Eliza's hair was long enough that it could hide such a thing. "I imagine you did the same to her to get it out?"

Tygan was tellingly quiet. The Hunter finally tore his eyes away from the chip to look at him, and the good doctor wasn't moving. His next statement came quietly. "No. I did not extract the chip from the Commander the same way I did mine. I instead used an extractor device."

Mordenna eyed him, drawing up to full height. Subconsciously, his eyes flitted about before he spoke—his mind was racing as it made connections and drew conclusions. "... you re-tooled a chip implanter—the same kind used on her twenty years ago—and just... Shoved that in her mouth?"

Tygan nodded, looking decidedly grim. "Had I known at the time that her PTSD extended to situations such as that, I would have worked for an alternative method."

PTSD. It didn't really strike the Hunter as surprising that Eliza had it, but it felt a bit odd to consider nonetheless. The Commander of XCOM, suffering from something the Hunter really only considered soldiers themselves to harbor. Truthfully, he knew all kinds could have it, but that still didn't chase off the peculiarity of it in his head. A few emotions were also squirming in his gut, but he was having a hard time identifying what they were.

Nevertheless, he wouldn't let the silence extend for long after that. "Well. The Elders are bastards," he stated definitively. "I'd almost ask 'how were you supposed to know' but I feel like that won't change a thing anywhere."

Tygan nodded again. "I concur. The Elders... leave much to be desired."

Wanting to still discuss the chip, the Hunter mentally skipped past the implications of it. "Alright, enough of that. Truth be told, I never had the chance to really check out the specifics of the chip itself. Mind indulging me?"

The scientist's expression returned to a calmer neutrality. "The chip, for all extents and purposes, is a modified design on the one we've found in Officers. Perhaps the more accurate way to state it would be to call the Officer chip a derivative of this one."

"Built to withstand hundreds of gigs in data streaming at all times, yeah?"

"Indeed, and with capacitor limits of up to several petabytes. Truthfully, at that stage, I would expect a complete Network overload, and I shudder to think what would cause such a surge."

Mordenna shrugged. "It's never come that close, but there's been surges before. Usually upon mass Codex connections or several thousand queries building up in reference to an event. Plus, that's just what the Commander herself was contributing to the Network with her processing power. Lest we forget, I was on there at one point too, and all the Codices and Specters contribute their own bandwidth."

Tygan seemed to study the Hunter for a moment. "Does a chip of your own still exist?"

Mordenna shook his head. "Nah. Odin—the bastard responsible for me—was confident I could maintain a link to the Network via my connection to my Sarcophagus and the processing power he'd shoved my skull full of. Come to think of it, I don't think either of my other wayward siblings have them, either." It was probably a matter of pride for the other Elders, too. To have to shove a chip in their heads was an admittance that they couldn't really control their own children on by themselves. Their loss, he mentally bit.

"All without a chip-monitored connection?"

"Yep! Turns out that six months of cramming they did to me along with all the horrible genetic experiments was useful for something." That being a lot of things. "Can't sleep now, but eh. Got better things to do, anyway."

Before either of them could continue the conversation further, a datapad on the counter rang out. Tygan put a finger up to the Hunter and walked over, tapping a button on it. "Commander?"

"Dr. Tygan. Would you know where the Hunter is?"

"No," Mordenna answered for him, "have you tried asking the Elders? I think they wanna know, too."

There was a short laugh from the datapad. "Implying I want to speak to them, Hunter? In any case, please report up to my quarters as soon as you can. I want to speak with you."

Oh, boy. The Hunter's mind was already at work trying to think of what Eliza wanted now—but all answers pointed towards that "talk" she'd been trying to secure. Still, he kept chipper despite the unspecific dread that was rising. "Oh, sure, Liz. I'll be there when I finish up with the good doctor here."

"Alright. Wrap it up, and I'll see you soon."

With that, the screen of the pad went dark. Tygan turned to the Hunter. "We'll have to continue this discussion at a later point. Despite... some avenues of the conversation, I think you and I have much to share."

"Of course!" The Hunter clapped his hands together. "Maybe I can wrangle you into some mad science. Lily's a hell of a lot of fun but when it comes to compounds and anything of a more biological nature? Seems like I've got a lot of talking to do with you."

Tygan's mouth moved into a dry smile. "I look forward to our talks, in many ways. Now, the Commander wishes to see you."

"Right, right." The Hunter spun on his heel, heading towards the door. "Don't do anything fun without me!"

"I'll certainly try my best, Hunter."


The trip up to the Commander's Quarters was uneventful, though Mordenna's brain had been going over every negative possibility.

He knew, rationally, this probably wasn't over anything major he'd done wrong. No, this was just going to be about the Elders and what happened to him and if that wasn't a can of worms to open, the Hunter didn't know what was. He'd thought over it, occasionally, only ever in a self-pitying way, right up until he ended one of his countless lives himself. Then came the embarrassment and self-loathing, then the status quo... up until he had one of his pitiful "episodes" again.

He couldn't have any more of those, he knew. Well, he supposed he could, and he probably would, given him, but there would be no more capping himself in the head or taking a dive off a sniper's nest or what have you to punctuate it. Just... having to deal with it, as unthinkable as it was. Yikes, he mentally noted.

Mordenna's head was still running circles like that when he finally made it to Eliza's door. It slid open uneventfully but with a certain dread to it, and revealed the room beyond. Eliza was in the same place she was last time, and nodded to Mordenna. He walked in and found his place on the couch opposite of her again, his nature leading him into being the first to start the conversation. "Alright, I've gotta be in the doghouse this time, Liz. What's my charges? How long am I serving?"

The Commander did not laugh, but she smiled and shook her head. Her smile was less "happy" and more something else, but the Hunter was trying to figure out what. "No, no trouble." Her smile fell and she regarded him seriously. "But I will be clear about my intentions. I've called you in here to talk. Not idle chit-chat, either—I want today to be the start of you and I talking over what happened to you. I've made the time in my schedule, and as long as you have the time in yours? I would like to get into things."

It was so tempting to say that he had other things planned just to worm out of this and kick it down the road again. God knows he'd stalled enough before to manage to get interrupted... but something told him Eliza would look into whatever he had "planned." She had to keep track of her soldiers, after all. But wasn't Eliza just trying to help, god forbid? Wasn't she interested in what was bothering him? The thought was still hard to grasp.

Not hard enough to grasp that it prevented him from accepting, though. Plus, he knew what he thought earlier. If he got this talk with Eliza out of the way? He could go bug his sister in her cell with the newfound trust. "I've got nothing but time nowadays, Liz. Let's see you play therapist." How bad could it really be, anyway?

The Commander nodded, sitting up and clasping her hands in front of her. "Firstly, there's something I want to clear with you, Mordenna. Do you remember, almost a week back, when I tried to touch your shoulder?"

That was one way of putting it, he supposed. The Hunter nodded and Eliza continued. "I've got the habit of trying to reassure people through touch and physical affection. It's a bit of a recent one, but nevertheless? I wanted to ask you if it's ok that I did that with you."

Hmm. Establishing boundaries before anything else. Eliza was a card. Though, something stuck out at him in that sentence, and he leaned back in his seat, crossing one of his legs over the other. "'A recent one?' I mean... depending on how physical we're getting, I suppose I could get used to it, but I'm more interested in that qualifier. If you're going to 'care for me,' you might as well let me learn about you."

Eliza's eyes flitted to the left for a second as she considered something—god knows it was if she really wanted to reveal more things about herself to the Hunter. Her caring nature must've won out, as she looked back to him and nodded. "I'd be willing to answer questions, yes. As for that? Twenty years in a tank does horrors to you, Mordenna. I was never a touch-starved person before, but you can imagine that twenty years with little to no physical contact would create such a trait in me, if not make an existing one worse."

Geez, was this a pity party for him or Eliza? It could always be for the both of you, his mind reminded him, and he crossed his arms. "Suppose you've got five years over me in that aspect. Still, how much of physical contact are we talking, here?"

"As far as you'd want," she replied, "but as a baseline? Up to and including hugging. You'd be surprised what a good hug can do for you."

"As far as he'd want," hmm? He cursed himself for even lingering on that and instead opted to continue with the conversation. "Alright. Think I can do that, though excuse me if I'm a bit weirded out at first." He didn't crave touch, he thought. Wasn't repulsed by it, either. But getting touched—getting hugged by Eliza? Perhaps he shouldn't have agreed to it.

Nevertheless, Eliza moved on. "Right. Now, there's something I want to ask about first. Mordenna, why would you say you're 'nothing good?'"

Oh, boy. That was a whole can of worms Eliza wanted to open there and from the looks of it, she may not have even known it. Well, Eliza at least looked serious, but... that whole "self-worth" thing was something Mordenna had been dealing with during his entire run with the Elders... and was still dealing with it, come to think of it. He sighed, straightening. "Eliza, you and I know I look at things based on thousands of variables. When I calculate, my mind's on ten different things a second. So when I say I'm 'nothing good,' you can know I damn well mean it."

"And?"

"What 'and' is there?"

"I know you mean it, and you say that there's 'thousands of variables.' But what are those? What's just a few of them?"

He lidded his eyes at her. To be difficult, or not to be difficult... "One of them is my unwillingness to work with my siblings, which is pretty counterproductive to you wanting to help all of us. Fuck, Eliza, I want to kill my siblings for various reasons. But they're alright with each other, Jax and Fal-Mai are. Cutting me out of the equation would only be a benefit. Why have one that murders two when you could have two?"

Eliza kept her gaze firmly on him. "Because I haven't worked with you yet. I haven't tried with you yet. So I'm not going to throw in the towel before I've even started. I will deal with absolutes, but only when I have proven such things are absolutes. You've shown you can work in a small squad, and it's been a week or so with you on the Avenger. Lily's taking an interest to you. There is promise; hence, why I brought you up here to talk."

Mordenna's lidded eyes moved into a squint. "You stick your neck out pretty far with that kind of attitude, Eliza, and one day someone's gonna carve your head clean from your shoulders."

"Is that person going to be you?"

The Hunter was quiet at that. The truth was, he didn't want to be that person. He'd already decided he'd much rather have Eliza alive than dead. He got the strong feeling that it wasn't a rhetorical question, so he answered. "No."

"Then I will continue to stick my neck out for you. I don't think you're worthless. You have to remember, Mordenna, I was also hooked up to that damn Network for my brains. I'm taking everything into account, here, too. So when I say I want to keep you, I have my reasons as well."

"Name a few," he replied.

Eliza rattled off the list in short order. "From a completely tactical standpoint? You're the Hunter, a master tracker who is good at taking down priority targets and stalking VIPs for days on end. Stealth is your element and I can always use more stealth operatives with the skill of the Reapers. Not to mention your engineering skills—I heard from Lily herself what you've done to our Plasma weapons, and let me say that it's greatly appreciated, your work is.

"From any other standpoint? My biggest reason is that I simply want to help you, Mordenna. There is enough injustice in this world. I can't stop and hear the life story of every ADVENT soldier, no. I'll let the Skirmishers handle that. But when given the choice to kill a major figure without a second thought or to capture them and hear what they have to say? I'll gladly choose the second. Yes, it's more work out of me, and yes, it's more risky. But I would prefer having to work harder to never having tried."

His eyes scanned over her for a minute. "You want to try."

"Was that not what I said? Yes. Before I declare anything a 'lost cause,' I like to try, first. You'd be surprised how much works when you have that line of thinking."

She wanted to try with him. Even if he was difficult? Mordenna was used to the one being that "tried" with him having given up at the first few early signs of resistance, and it had been all downhill from there. He had the scars to show it. Maybe there was hope—he could certainly feel his want to be needlessly difficult going down. That was something. He sighed again, closing his eyes. "So you're serious. You want to take me, the Chosen Hunter, in. You wanna care. You wanna make me part of this little family you're running."

"Absolutely."

He let that answer hang a bit. "And if I'm difficult with my siblings?"

"Well, we'll build that bridge when we get to it."

Her sheer optimism got a single laugh out of him, and he relaxed his arms on the back of the couch. "Alright, Liz. You've got me. I'm well and truly convinced." That... may or may not be actually true. He had yet to see if it would be true.

Eliza smiled, a genuine, warm smile, and Mordenna felt glad he'd said that. She regarded him well as she spoke. "And I'm happy to hear it. Happy to know this talk has gone so well, too."

He grinned slyly. "So, Commander, am I out of the doghouse now?"

"If you want to be. I think we've accomplished a lot with this talk and I'd be fine with letting you go... for now."

Oh boy. "For now." She did have other talks with him planned. Thankfully he'd managed to divert a lot of the talk about himself and learn a bit about Eliza—hard to say if she realized that, but knowing her? The Commander was likely fine with the result either way. Now, it looks like he was free to go. He stood up, stretching. "Alright then, good ol' Commander. Riot of a talk we had. Most of 'em are!"

She nodded, leaning over and grabbing a datapad. Seems like it was back to business as usual for the busy Commander. "Glad to hear it. Where you off to next?"

Oh, right. He was intending to head off to the Workshop to lose himself in a project or two but he'd almost forgotten to ask. "Oh, mischief as usual up in the Workshop. Say, mind if I ask you something?"

Eliza nodded, putting the datapad on her lap. Mordenna continued. "Your talk of helping me with my siblings got me thinking. More than usual, anyway. I ain't gonna do it soon, but do you think it'd be too much trouble if I went and bothered my sister in her little cell? Not like nobody but you wants to talk to her, so I figure she'll... think something about the company!"

Eliza's brows furrowed in thought and she considered the Hunter for a bit. "Are you actually intending on having an honest talk with her or are you intending on antagonizing her when she can't fight back?"

"What, me? The poor old Hunter? No, not at all!"

Eliza gave him a particular look that said that he wasn't helping his case. He shrugged. "I just wanna talk, see how she's holding up. You're the one who put the idea to rebuild bridges with my siblings in my head."

To be truthful? He'd decide what he was doing as he felt like it. He was just gonna enter that room and see what he'd get up to. If he actually ended up doing something constructive with his sister? Hey, what happened, would happen.

Still, Eliza seemed to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Tell me when you want to go see her and I'll see you beforehand. No guns, of course."

"Of course, of course! Would hate to shoot my sister, after all. I'll let you know, Lizzie."

After a bit more thinking, she nodded. "Sounds good. You can head out to the—ah, wait." She spotted something on her datapad and gave the Hunter a knowing smile. "Actually, one more thing. You interested in a more... loud mission, Mordenna?"

He fixed her with an intrigued look before he grinned right back. "Ohoho, wanting me to tear it up out there, Liz?"

"In essence, yes. Got a supply raid on a train some Resistance contacts are about to stop. Need to clear out the area first before we take anything off of it. What do you say?"

Mordenna could feel his smile turn a bit darker. "You hardly need to ask, Liz. I'd be happy to thin the ranks."

She nodded, tapping away on the pad. "I'll have you in the mission and let you know if anything special comes up. Now you can head out."

He gives Eliza a two-fingered salute and turns on his heel, sauntering out. As he walked through the door and heard it close behind him, he got thinking.

Eliza cared. Least, she said she did. Odin said he cared, those first few months. Yeah. It was easy to believe when it happened, but as soon as the curtain was drawn and Mordenna was left to think to himself? Things got a lot more muddled.

He kept walking, feet on autopilot as he headed down to the Workshop. Eliza herself seemed to have a big thing about trying before giving up, supposedly. "Odin tried, I'm sure," he muttered to himself. "Fat lot of good that did him." Then again, even in those early months, the way he looked at Odin was different. Mordenna had only respected him at first out of fear and the feeling that there was nothing else he could be do without potentially getting killed off permanently. With Eliza, those worst he could see her doing is locking him right back up in his cell and dealing with him after the war was over. There wasn't a Sword of Damocles over his head...

But depending on his behavior, there sure as hell was one over hers.

"Like I've said," Mordenna remarked as he reached up and undid a vent latch, crawling into it and closing it behind him, "I'd want her alive rather than dead. Maybe to the point of stopping her from dying if I can help it. Nothing more than that, of course." But was he being truthful with himself? All he had to do was think of her smiling at him again to make him question that.

He scowled. "Elders never smiled at me. Maybe if they made some sort of proxy that could I wouldn't be pathetically clinging to the first thing that showed any inclination of actually giving a damn. But they didn't, so here I am, feeling like a fucking fool because she cares. God."

Mordenna took a turn in the vents. "She wants to try. She sees my merits. Fuck, it would have been a lot easier to kill a sorry fuck like me when she had the chance. But instead she decided to take one of her operatives out for—fuck, over a week now, and take me in. She cares."

His crawling slowed down. "... Not like it's gonna be worth it in the end. I'll hurt her, I'll hurt someone she cares about, I'll hurt somebody and then I'll no longer be worth it. Just a ticking time bomb and she wants to ignore it." But was she? Was she ignoring it when she brought Mordenna into her Quarters specifically to talk about that?

"Better yet... maybe it'll be just me I hurt. And I never hurt myself just a tad. Maybe it'll be one bullet short from a gun, maybe it'll be a long walk off of the short deck of the Avenger, maybe..."

He caught his line of thinking and it made him stop in his tracks, both physically and mentally. He scoffed, disgusted with himself. "Fucking yikes, Mordenna, you ever wonder why nobody wants to hang out with you? Pathetic."

With that, he resumed his trip to the Workshop. At least there he could just lose himself to his projects.