Chapter 4

1

Over the next couple days, the assignments remained as tedious and unremarkable as they'd always been. Nothing as extreme as Ramos' abduction, at least until the end of the week came around. By that time one of them – the dynamic duo, Daniel often called themselves – would attempt something so outlandish their partner would threaten to turn them in to Dispatch. But until then, the assignments rolled in, and like good little agents they carried them out to their best capabilities.

Zima noticed a shift in the city, subtle but there. In the years prior, whenever things changed, it changed over a long period of time, like her commando training – that had taken months of work and effort to build her up into what she was today. But ever since abducting Ramos and invading the Williams' residence, things that normally stuck to the background were coming forward.

Now whenever on assignment, nine times out of ten they attracted a crowd by the time they'd finished up and were heading back to the car. They had spare assault-weapons in the trunk, including one fabled weapon Zima personally had not used since being a part of Advent's main army divisions, but unless things became too intense, they would remain in the boot. The idea of bringing out their personal armoury to scare the off the crowds pleased Zima, but not to Daniel. "Just ignore them," he said, but after a couple days of gathered humans interrupting their progress, even he was getting frustrated with them. But the dissidents stayed put, no matter how many threats she or Daniel gave out. Zima didn't like the implications of this.

During one of these rallies Daniel had to call in for backup. Men and women were blocking access to their car. Zima and Daniel had just been inside a venue and had shut it down for discovering contraband. This was in the Riverside district. Not much Advent presence here, either. Most of the standing force had been transferred a week ago.

The crowd numbered at fifteen, and Zima could see in their eyes that they were ready to step up their interference efforts. They gathered around the Chaser and formed a wall, arms linked together like a paper-doll chain. Daniel grumbled some series of curse words under his breath, and approached the line. They called him 'killer' and 'brainwashed', and Zima wasn't excluded from these taunts. They refused to let him through to the car.

Zima knew how intimidating her appearance was to the humans, a reason why her kind was so frowned upon in general. She hated how she had to use that to her advantage to disperse these people, and her baring her fangs and letting loose a deafening hiss would only cement the prejudice set against her.

However, her display didn't even give her the expected results. The crowd remained steadfast, showing surprising courage against Zima's intimidation efforts. This had worked in the past, what few times this was called for. She wondered what was fuelling these peoples resolves.

Zima noticed Daniel type in a message on his phone. He could tell this was getting nowhere, and their schedule was tight enough already. He offered them one last chance to disperse before things would get nasty.

The crowded howled at the audacity that there 'protectors' were threatening them with violence. Again, they called him brainwashed, and whenever they did that Daniel got that look in his eye. Zima didn't like that look one bit for reasons she just couldn't admit out loud.

Before things could escalate any further, an Advent truck pulled up beside the gathering. The back opened and out poured four lancer soldiers. The lancers wielded wicked-looking stun batons with red electricity coursing through the hilts and blades. Without so much as a final warning, the newly arrived Advent forces tore into the crowd.

Batons swung overhead and crushed down on skulls. Some of the gathered human revealed weapons of their own and fought back, the rest joined in with their fists. Blood flew from mouths on both sides, and Zima would have been forced into the conflict had Daniel not grabbed her arm and pulled her to the car. She got in and no one tried to stop her – the crowd had forgotten all about them. Daniel floored the accelerator and they zoomed away.

This was just one of many times their operations had been disrupted, but this was the worst of them all, because the humans had always kept their distance before and had never been so bold. Ramos Week, as she called it, was getting progressively heated the further time passed. In truth she couldn't give a shit about '31, because quite frankly the whole place just sucked ass, in her humble opinion. If the people living here wanted to fuel the chaos, then they could go right ahead and do it. As long as they left Daniel and her alone, then she was content.

Friday came around, five days after Ramos' abduction, which she held as a sort of anchor point for the beginning of all that was to come. She couldn't be sure there was a connection between Ramos and the humans somehow following their progress, but only fools ignored their instincts. She didn't voice this idea to Daniel just yet.

It was the same as any other operation. They got in their car, and Dispatch called in: "Go to this location, wait for our contact to bring you a package. Bring it to the drop point in the Stacks."

Daniel, and his everlasting mouth, asked what was in the package. Dispatch answered this by cutting the connection. "Huh," Daniel said, looking quite stunned by the conclusion. He started driving.

"Do you really have to ask so many questions?" she said. Dispatch clearly wasn't in the mood and the package was too sensitive and important to speak about over the radio, and he should have known that.

"I just want to know what's going on," he answered. "Something just feels… wrong, lately."

"Really." Sarcastic.

"Yes, really. I wish the city wasn't so cut off from the rest of the world. Make's this place feel so claustrophobic."

They drove on in silence for a time. Night was fast approaching and the street lights were turning on one by one. The cold had gradually risen to the point even the indoor heaters were doing little to counter it. Not even her bunk at the motel was doing much good anymore.

"What was it like out there?" Daniel asked her suddenly. "Before you came to '31?"

Zima blinked. It occurred to her that Daniel had never even left this city. Never smelt the open air of the wilderness, never even seen the other city centres. It was his birth planet, and all he had seen of it was from behind '31's walls, whereas she'd seen a good bunch of Earth in her time. Yet she was technically the alien. Something about that felt really strange to think about.

"There's not much to it," she said, hating how low she was putting Earth to her friend. "It, uh... smells different, I guess."

"That's the best part?" he asked with a smirk. "The smell?"

"Yeah," she said. "No ethanol, no factory fumes, just... air. You've probably adjusted to all the farts balling up around this city by now, but it's a lot cleaner out in the wild. What remains of the wild, that is."

"The farts ball up in the city?"

"Yep. Like a big-ole cloud of anthrax. Can't you smell it?"

"Now that you mention it, I can picture it pretty well." He grimaced.

"You've got it easy," she said. "I'm the one flicking her tongue out and tasting it every other second."

They laughed together, and it was during this time she could almost forget all the troubles plaguing her mind. Troubles about Advent, her paranoia with Dispatch, but most dominantly, him. She continued her answer when they quietened. "Most of the other city centres are a lot less isolated than '31. No big walls or curfews. There's this one city in France I really liked. Um, Par-ee, I think the locals called it. My unit was just passing through for a few days, but it was a pleasant little trip."

"I'll have to take you back there sometime." Daniel grinned, but there wasn't any humour behind it. "Though I guess vacations are few and far between these days. We got XCOM to thank for that." He looked at her. "Next chance we get. What do you say?"

She answered with a subtle hiss of disapproval. "I'm afraid there won't be any next chance. Think about it, when have we ever been given a break?"

Daniel thought she had a point there. Even before she joined up, duty pulled him away early in the morning and all the way into the dead of night, every day, for the last five years. And now that '31's citizens were going out of their way to follow them, there would be no room for any relaxation. "I guess you're right," he said. "Maybe we could bring it up with Dispatch. I'll make a few phone calls, call in some favours."

His little joke didn't seem to affect Zima. She was staring out the window again, her mind filled with visions that she would end up like Daniel – trapped in this damned place. Talking about Paris made her feel almost homesick, and it bothered her that she might die in this city with a number for a name. Daniel preferred when her scaly lips were lifted up at the corners. It always made him do the same thing.

So, to put her in a better mood, he grew mischievous. "Here," he said. "hold the wheel for a second."

"Oh, no," Zima said. "I hate it when you do this."

"It'll just take a second." He let the wheel go and started to take his hoodie off. "I'm cooking up in this thing." They'd had the heater on full-blast and unlike Zima, Daniel was not cold-blooded.

"No! Daniel!" Seeing the steering wheel unattended made her stomach swell. Despite her protests she reached out and grabbed it anyway. Daniel moved an arm out of a sleeve. "Come on, Daniel!"

"Just a second," he repeated, as if car accidents never happened. Zima kept her eyes fixed on the road; eyes as wide as plates. "One more sec and… Wait, wait, oh no. My arm's stuck!"

"Stop it, Daniel!"

"My arm! Zima!"

"Daniel."

The way she so sternly said his name forced him to laugh. His arm came out easily through the sleeve and he took back the wheel. Zima, seeing her friend's reaction to her plight, made her grin in good humour, even though she had been teetering on the verge of panic. To compensate for this, she slapped him hard on the arm.

"Ow! What was that for?" He was still laughing like an idiot.

"Fucking goof," she said. And folded her arms.

"Hey! I got feelings too, Zee."

She shook her head, but he had succeeded in his little mission. Zima's mood was lightened, and all their worries were, for the moment, forgotten.

2

They came to the meeting point, but were surprised to see their contacts were late. Zima paced the clearing, and Daniel could almost see the paranoia radiate off of her serpentine body. Said clearing sat in between an abandoned factory and a not-so abandoned railway. Just at that moment a dark bullet-shaped train zipped past, filling the quiet night with its gentle rumble of tracks. A wire fence stood on the south end. Some dissident had snipped off some of the wires to make a space big enough to crawl through. Just beyond the tracks was the city river, and beyond that the backdrop was of the metropolis.

A lone street lamp provided illumination, and the Chaser sat in its circle of light. There were a hundred blind spots round here, but Daniel didn't outwardly show much distress at this fact, unlike his companion. The way he was casually rolling up another smoke somehow annoyed Zima.

"Could you sit still for five seconds?" he politely asked her, after she had swept by him again, her tail making little rattling sounds. He puffed his smoke. "You're making me nervous."

"They should be here." She snapped in his direction. "What time is it?"

"You just asked me two minutes ago."

"What if another crowd of dissidents shows up? What if we've been betrayed? Elder's know we could be ambushed any second now."

"I'm telling you; Dispatch's intel is screwed up. I'm a little angry at him myself for not doing anything about it."

"I'm not angry with him." She pouted, her hood sticking out wide to full mast. "And at least Dispatch doesn't send me mixed messages."

"What did you say?"

"Never mind," she quickly replied, and resumed her pacing. She had been talking about herself more than him, but she had blurted it out like a fool. That night when she'd been steaming up in her room after Ramos' abduction had not been an isolated incident, and kept on nagging her foremost thoughts. What she said next became distorted by her alien tongue, which seemed to flap away against her will. "Itss jusst that, sso many thingss have gone wrong recently and I don't want to ssee you-"

At that point her English switched to her native speech, which consisted of short and halting hissing noises that Daniel couldn't make much sense of. What he could make sense of was the fact that he had become her main topic, and she was damn scared of something.

He'd been around her long enough to recognize the specific sound that was his name in her tongue. There were a few other words he picked up, but after a while the ramblings were lost to him.

"Hey," he said, throwing his smoke away and coming up to her. He placed a hand on one of her flared hoods, and she turned her snout over to him, her features filled with shame and fluster. A moment later her speech died away. "Hey, Zee, just take a deep breath, all right?"

She followed his advice and breathed, her little nostrils flaring up as she did. His hand on her hood was so gentle it was almost impossible not to hold onto it with her own. "You've been acting funky this whole week, Zee. What's wrong? This about the Williams smugglers?"

"No, no I jusst," she said, her tongue still stretching out the 's' sounds. Daniel chuckled at this and ever so slightly traced the edge of her hood. It sent shivers up her spine. "I jusst don't know how to sstart."

"Start from the top." He shrugged. "You know I'm a good listener. Tell me what's bothering you."

She swooned on the spot at how close he was to her. She tasted the air with her tongue and his scent filled her senses. Zima found the metropolis dominating this places backdrop much easier and a lot less embarrassing to look at than her human companion. "Okay. Okay, it's about you."

"Me?"

"Are we interrupting something here?"

This last sentence was spoken from a newcomer, and both Daniel and Zima instinctively reached for their sidearms. Two people had approached the clearing, one hybrid and one Sectoid. The Sectoid was the one to speak. Zima should have seen them coming ages ago but she'd had something big rattling though her head. The hybrid drew his own weapon but the speaker did not, instead raising his large hands in casual surrender. He seemed annoyed at all the guns being flung around.

"Relax, dogs, we've got mutual friends and mutual interests." The speaker, who looked like an upstarting hotshot, tall but almost youthful compared to other Sectoid's Daniel had seen in the past. He had a tattoo over his left cheek that looked like warpaint. He turned to his hybrid companion. "Same goes for you, Spike. Put that away before you hurt yourself."

The hybrid, Spike, glared at his boss, then at Zima, finally Daniel, before holstering. Both of these newcomers were dressed in heavy coats and long pants, kind of like street-vendors who sold contraband to anyone interested. Daniel holstered as well, and while he did, he whispered one word to his Viper friend. "Later." There little talk would have to wait.

"We can come back another time if you two've got business of your own." The Sectoid smirked, revealing one too many teeth that Daniel cared for.

Daniel ignored him. "You're about…" He checked his watch. "Seven minutes late. Where the hell have you been?"

"Had to lose a little heat on the way over, dog. Wipe that look off your face, we lost them a while back. We're not amateurs. Who's your friend here, man?" Their contact looked to Zima. She let her tongue slip out of her maw. "The name's Conner, and before you ask, no, that name doesn't mean I'm a con-man. I've got a Viper looking to start up a… humble business down in the Fringe. Why don't you do her a favour and get in touch?"

Zima waved her gun at him casually. "Why don't you do me a favour and shut the fuck up so we can get this over with."

Conner blinked and raised his hands. Zima's charm made Daniel suppress a grin. "Fine, fine, but she's always looking for help. Name's Pug or Xug or some shit like that. Anyway, I've brought you dogs a treat for your masters. Follow me."

He waved a 'come on' gesture and moved towards the factory, Spike at his side. Daniel and Zima shared a glance before following. The factory floor was mostly barren. A few rusty production lines remained, and Daniel got the feeling that some old-world soft drink had been produced here, judging by the glass bottles dotted on the lines and littering the floor. Zima once told him there was enough sugar in old-world soda to give you diabetes.

"I don't know what's gotten into your masters lately," Conner said as they passed a withered production line. "But whatever it is, tell them to keep taking it."

"What are you talking about?" Daniel asked.

"Advent wired me all the money before we even came here to meet you. All of it! Usually I barter for half now, half later, but it seems you dogs have got a lot of faith to throw around."

Daniel looked at Zima, but she didn't show a reaction to this. "How much money?" he asked. At this point Spike glanced back in suspicion.

"More than enough to send me on a permanent vacation!" Conner had the odd habit of talking more with his arms than his mouth. He waved then this way and that as he said, "Normally I'd tell you the whole spiel about 'better you don't know' or some shit, but you waited patiently for us, so I'll let you have that one for free."

This gave Daniel more questions rather than answers. They were almost at the other side of the factory when Daniel asked one more question. He didn't see Zima glance at him and silently mouth – you and that everlasting tongue of yours…

"How did Advent get in contact with you?" he asked.

"We do deals from time to-"

Spike elbowed Conner, as if to ask what the hell he was doing. They exchanged a few mumbled words Daniel couldn't pick up. Then Conner glanced over his shoulder at him. His large almond-shaped eyes were as deep and dark as pits. "Curious dog, aren't you? Me and you have done many deals before, you just haven't realized. Neither have I, now that I think about it. Two months ago, there was a dead drop of combat plate left in a certain alleyway over at Angler's Point. Were you the ones to pick it up?"

Daniel remembered the time and place clearly. So these deals have been going on for a long while now, trading money for gear with whoever this Sectoid or his employers were. Spike's consistently glaring face switched to Zima when she, surprisingly, asked the next question. "You were on time then, but not now. What's changed?"

"Oh, just a bit of heat, like I said. Nothing Advent can't handle, right?"

"What kind of 'heat'? Dissidents?"

"Something like that." He lifted four fingers and mimicked air quotes. "You know that saying, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'? That kind of thinking has a way of backfiring, believe me, and I'd like to have more friends than more enemies. We're friends, us four, yes? Spike! Stop glaring at them! You look like a damn creep."

For the moment Daniel didn't fully understand what Conner was implying. Perhaps if he had understood then and there, things might have turned out differently. But regardless of his dislike for Conner, if that was his real name, he'd commit that saying to memory.

They reached the other end of the building. An old sedan, perhaps as old as the occupation itself, was parked halfway through an opened garage door, its boot jutting out into the manufacturing floor. Conner produced a key and hit a button. The taillights of his sedan flashed once and the car beeped twice.

Spike moved to the boot and lifted it up. Inside was a device perhaps as large as a wagon wheel. It looked like the most modernized box Daniel had ever seen, made from some sort of silvery material that reminded him of what Advent weapons were made out of. On each of the four faces there were two yellow rods embedded in the device, pulsing slowly. On the top were several wires, a few red, a few green, spilling out of a hastily welded lid.

"What is that thing?" Daniel asked. Conner raised his brow at him.

"It's what Advent wants. Even I don't know what it is." Daniel thought that was bull. Conner knew more than what he as letting on, but his big sly face told him that Conner would say no more. He gestured to the device. "Well, there you go, dogs. She's all yours."

Zima went to lift the thing up. Something about the device seemed awfully familiar to Daniel. Something about that shiny material, and those pulsing rods of energy. He'd seen them before somewhere, but when? While he hung back and thought, Zima used first one hand then both, but found she couldn't lift the device up an inch. Conner saw how crudely she was handling the device and tapped her shoulder. "Okay, step away, I'll get Spike to lift it for you. I wouldn't want you to drop this thing."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Well, its fragile, okay? Besides, it's the least we can do. Spike?"

Spike grunted and the strain contorted his face, but he was able to lift the thing up. Years of forced genetic manipulation made most hybrids absurdly strong, Conner explained on the walk back, it was why Spike was hired in the first place.

Meanwhile, Daniel followed the group like he wasn't really there. The snipped wires on the top of the device, that was the key. Somewhere in the deepest part of his memory he knew what this thing was. It was like forgetting someone's name – it was right there, but whenever he went to catch it, it slipped away from his mental grasp.

"Is everything alright?" Zima asked, noticing his stoic look. "Daniel?"

"What? Yeah, yeah I'm good." He grinned. She grinned back. Whatever it was, he would stop thinking about it for now. It would come to him eventually, and so he decided to drop it. Still though, there was just something off about this whole deal. Then again, what wasn't off these days?

When Spike went to the Chaser's boot, Daniel raised a hand to stop him. "No room, we'll put it in the backseat."

"No room?" Conner asked, gesturing the question. "What've you got in there? Guns?"

"Curious dog, aren't you Conner?"

"Ah, now you show me some wit rather than questions! Fine. Do as he says, Spike. Just promise me you'll put a seatbelt over it or something."

"Sure. Come on, Zee."

He moved to the driver's side, but Conner stopped him with an outstretched, bright pink hand. "Wait, dog. I want to hear you say you'll secure it – this is precious cargo."

He sighed. "I'll secure it. Why do you keep calling me a dog, anyway?"

"It's not just you! Your friend's a dog too! Don't take it personally, it's what I call everyone who lets others control their minds."

Daniel had to hold back the sudden urge to break Conner's arm. Spike moved aside and Daniel leaned in to put a seatbelt over the device. He ran a hand along its smooth surface. Something so damn familiar about the texture… What the hell was it?

The seatbelt clicked and he closed the door. Spike was already moving away. Conner stayed and stuck his hand out. "Maybe we'll see each other again sometime, do some more business? I'd rather end on a good conclusion than a foul one."

Daniel declined the hand. Zima was already in the car, looking over her headrest at him. "We're late enough as it is, thanks to you. Goodb-"

"There'll be more advice for you if we part on a shake. Friends?"

Daniel rolled his eyes and took the offered hand, the fingers so absurdly long they wrapped his hand almost twice over. He secretly suspected some trick, sharp fingernails or even something so stupid as a hidden hand buzzer. But Conner had a solid grip, and nothing peculiar happened. Conner even let the handshake end first. "There, friends?"

Daniel shrugged. "Sure, yes, best friends."

"Great! Do you have a place to stay outside the city?"

"Er, no. Why?"

"Might want to think about that. You never know when it might come in handy, for you or your friend. Later, dog."

The way Conner said you friend certainly implied something, and the way he said dog wasn't so demeaning as the last dozen times, though Daniel could be mistaken on both accounts. Before Daniel could open his mouth to ask about this, Conner turned on his heel and joined his companion. Daniel shook his head and turned to open the door. Just another thing to think about, Elder's knew he needed more of that.

He pulled out onto the street, looking back to make sure their new cargo was secured. He spied Conner's sedan, which he hadn't heard come in, now that he thought about. He must have been too engrossed at the time. The freakishly tall alien's forehead stuck out of the sunroof, and the Sectoid looked so ridiculous Daniel wasn't sure if he was hallucinating the whole thing. Conner drove one way and Daniel went the other.

Their destination was at the Stacks, and it was quite a bit of a drive to get there. Would have been worse had this not been in the dead of night. He looped through Downtown to get there faster, passing within a few hundred meters of the Advent Tower. He asked Zima if anything about their newly acquired device seemed odd to her, and she said that there was nothing remarkable about it. This observation only made him more suspicious. She asked him if he was feeling alright, that he looked a little pale. He decided to hold his piece from her.

The Stacks was perhaps the richest district in all of City 31. It was the main metropolis, always dominating the background no matter which part of the city you were in. The apartments numbered in the thousands, and the skyscrapers almost matched that of the Advent tower. It was also home to the biggest commercial market square, and every Unification Day a parade was hosted there. Yet for all its popularity it was very quiet, even in the dead of night the traffic should have been present, but it was if the whole city had either evacuated or was sleeping. It was odd, but nothing to remark over.

The drop point was an ordinary dumpster, vaguely reminiscent of the one they'd stuffed Ramos and his buddy into earlier in the week. It took the both of them to heave the device into the drop point. Their cargo hummed very faintly, picking up decibels whenever the rods pulsed. Carefully, they placed it in the drop and closed the lid. Daniel did the honours of marking their logo on the side of the dumpster.

When he was done, he turned back to the car, half expecting a crowd to have gathered there. Fortunately, they'd either been discreet enough or had driven too far, and the road was deserted. He hesitated, giving the dead drop one last glance. There were no dominant outpost in the Stacks, besides from the wall checkpoints. And what would they do with a strange device such as this, that may have been militaristic, or maybe something else?

"Daniel!" Zima hissed. "Let's go!"

Daniel didn't want to linger. He shook his head and swept back into the car. He reported their success to Dispatch, who told them that they'd done good work, and were relieved for the night. "It's a long way back to the motel," he said to Zima after the call was severed. "Want to fill the time with that chat we talked about before?"

"I think it would be for the best."

And so, they did, but Daniel's thoughts would often wander. Wander to the crowds following them, to Conner's strange advice, to the fact Advent was using third-party assets to arrange deliveries, and of course, to the strange device that was so familiar, but was now out of his hands. Tonight would be Daniel's first night of restless sleep, and there would be many more of those to come.