She felt herself awaken from an inactive state she'd placed herself in to rest. He'd activated his helmet and the HUD along with it, so here she was as well. She hadn't been moved into a data core yet, so until she was then she was stuck in-

Something was wrong. His heartbeat was elevated beyond normal levels, a sign of fear. A quick systems check showed that he was fully equipped with his gear including his Pilot suit and jump-kit. Strapped to his side was a P2016, and in his hands was an R-97. He was prepared for a fight- but against what?

As she watched through the helmet's visor interface, he stole down a corridor of the frigate they were stationed on. The majority of power was out, the only light in the halls being a flashlight attached under the barrel of his gun.

"Tobias," she whispered, "what's going on?"

He made sure to check the next corner before replying, "Something happened, Kay. Something bad."

"What is it?"

"Spyglass, my old Fleet Admiral of the Remnant forces- he's making a move while we're still recovering from the Amalgamation. He's made an offer, some kind of deal- the frontier is under his control now."

That was certainly something to be nervous about. "Why is the ship out of power?"

"I was on the bridge when we got the message. We had several people immediately give in- most people gave in. I had to find a way to hide." He crouched low upon hearing something moving in the corridors ahead. "I don't know who to trust, so I shut down power to give us a better chance of grabbing a ship and getting the hell out of here. Not just that, but it means that the frigate won't be picked up on any sensors."

"Why would that be an issue?"

"The leaders of Militia and IMC alike are dead; Graves, maybe Briggs, I don't know. Spyglass killed them. As far as I know, I'm pretty much all that's left, and that means that he'll be looking for me."

This was all happening so suddenly; had she been a fool to think that perhaps just this once they could be spared a chance at tranquility?

He raised his gun upon hearing patters of footsteps approaching from the far side of the hall. After a moment or two, a group of four individuals stepped forward; three riflemen and a Pilot. Kay waited to see how the situation would play out.

"Admiral Four," the Pilot said, her voice non-hostile but firm. "It would appear that the power is out. Where are you going?"

He refused to lower the gun, keeping his aimed trained on a midpoint so that no matter where he aimed he'd hit someone. "As long as I'm here, I endanger all of you. Spyglass will be searching for me. Get out of my way."

She took a step forward, causing red flags to light up in Kay's mind. "You heard him, Admiral. True peace on the frontier at last; are you really so against the idea?"

"The whole reason I fight is for peace," he growled. "I guarantee you that this is not what you think it is. Forcing it upon people isn't peace, it's enslavement. After everything I've done, you really think you can question where I stand?"

The Pilot gave a deep breath, and Kay noticed the other three riflemen raising their weapons ever so slowly. Silently, she highlighted them on his HUD as potential threats.

"Most of us are content with what he's offered, Admiral. You may be the ranking officer; but if you're going to fight this, then you're unfit for duty. You're either with us or against us."

He stared her down. "Go to hell."

Turning his light off, the room was blanketed in shadow. Guns were discharged, though none found a target. After a moment, three thumps could be heard on the hard metal of the corridor's floor before another light was turned on, this one by the Pilot. She raised a CAR around, using it to see the scene before her; the three riflemen dead on the ground, knife wounds to all three of them.

Spinning instantly, she barely reacted before he leapt forward and grabbed the gun in her hands. They fought for control of it, casting shadows on the wall of the hallway before it was finally wrested from her grip, and he smacked her violently with the butt of it. Whether the Pilot was dead or not, Kay couldn't be sure- but she was definitely no longer a threat.

Silently, he threw the gun down and continued down the corridor towards the hangar.

Gates quickly disembarked the shuttle, and made her way through the halls of the orbital station.

Even before Spyglass's rise to power, most planets had an orbital station or two for military purposes. Now, they'd all been converted into general transport hubs, almost like air-ports for space-faring ships. It certainly was nice to see them used for a reason other than war; but it was what had been done to bring about that change that made her sick.

With any luck, the Stalkers wouldn't have predicted she was boarding a shuttle, or at the very least they assumed she hadn't made the deadline and they wouldn't have any sentries looking for her up here.

That was the problem with having a practically omniscient overlord; he could be anywhere. She never knew who to trust; who would sympathize with her plight or who would turn her in at the prospect of a wealthier tomorrow.

She made her way towards the heart of the station, where she'd be able to grab a pass for a planet of her choosing. At least she didn't have to worry about money anymore; if someone needed to get somewhere, they got there. Nobody was paid for working anymore, not with currency at least.

Either you contributed to society … or you died.

Walking towards the ticket-master, her footsteps were quite audible despite so many people lounging about waiting for their own flights. It was a sign of just how far humanity had fallen; no one talked anymore, let alone had anything to talk about.

Peace may have found humanity- but at a heavier cost than most had assumed.

What kind of life was worth living if you couldn't enjoy it? When the whole point of your existence was simply to survive? No recreation, no arts, no … anything. Even the simplest activities such as going out to eat were banned. You received your own rations for your family, and that was it.

Humanity had gone from trying to find fulfillment to just trying to make it to the next day.

Approaching the counter, the man behind it met her gaze quite unenthusiastically; thankfully, he didn't recognize her. That was one benefit of having practically worn her helmet 24/7 for years, almost no one knew her face. Not like other notable members of the Militia and IMC.

Well … what was left of them.

"Destination?"

"Luma," she muttered.

He nodded before turning to a computer station and entering her on the roster of passengers. "Linear route … Here's your pass. Next departure is in forty minutes."

She waved the pass at him in a gracious manner, and sought out a place to sit while she waited. Upon finding one, she quickly claimed it as her own by leaning against the wall and sliding down to the floor in exhaustion.

That poor man back on Thone … she couldn't remember his name, just that he was one of the scientists who they'd been in contact with. Cosgrove, or something. He'd given his life to ensure her survival and, by extension, the cylinder's. At the thought of it, she pulled it out of a hidden pocket in her jacket and stared at it.

This small little device in her hand held, hopefully, everything they needed to topple this tyrannical regime of Spyglass's. A lot of people's lives depended on her getting back to Luma with it and working out a plan from there.

She hadn't known they'd need to use it on the source of all this … that just meant that any kind of action they took would be exponentially more complicated. Not in terms of survival, none of them expected to live through this; but in terms of even succeeding in the first place.

Pocketing it, she sighed. None of this would even happening if it hadn't been for that stranger on Thone. They must have known what they were doing if they were in possession of those magnets; most devices like that were outlawed now, considered lethal weapons against the enforcers of "New Humanity" … what a joke of a name.

Come to think of it, they must have been trained as well; she didn't know anyone who could scale a building like that unless they were a Pilot. Of course, Pilots weren't permitted anymore … but maybe someone had managed to keep their gear and skills under the radar.

"Passengers for Luma, please embark at gate 14-C."

Sitting back up, she oriented herself in the right direction and strode towards it. Onto the next part of her journey.

YAVERNA, LUMA, 4 HOURS LATER

In Gates' opinion, the best part about Luma was just how noisy everything was.

Perhaps not in a literal term; but it was probably the closest thing there was to a place for someone to disappear. It was covered in massive cities, many much bigger than even the esteemed Angel City, one of the prides of the frontier. There was so much going on that it was hard to keep track of anyone.

Before, Luma had been a place to celebrate, to visit when one wanted to travel and see beautiful places. It had been flooded with tourists and waves of people looking to find a diamond in the rough of the frontier.

Now, it was easy to hide because of a different reason; cities had gone from places of happiness and enjoyment to ones of depression and crime. There was no fun, no sparkle for anyone anymore; but the cities were still large enough to the point that hiding out was almost guaranteed to keep someone from finding you.

Which is why it was useful for her and the rest of her group's purposes.

"You want what?"

She huffed in her seat as the car traveled along littered alley roads, no one bothering to clean them up and Spyglass not caring enough about such a massive task to enforce anyone into doing it.

"I told you, I want the collective footage from that group of Stalkers and Spectres that cornered me. It was outside the port. One of them must have seen them."

He gave a derisive snort. "I don't know why you care; if it were me, I'd just thank my lucky stars and move on-"

She shot him a look. "It's a good thing I'm not you then, Davis. Because then you'd miss the whole point of this, which is maybe gaining an extra ally. We're never going to have enough people, but we can try to come as close as we can."

He shrugged. "Whatever." He looked towards a radio in his right hand while his left clutched the wheel. "You get all that, Gray?"

A woman's voice came through on the other line, "Yeah. Accessing the database is always risky … but if El thinks that it's worth it, I'm up for it. I'll have the footage waiting."

"Thanks," she spoke into the radio as Davis rounded a corner towards their building.

Parking the truck in an alley where it wouldn't be seen, the two of them trudged their way towards the steps of the run-down structure. Not much as far as living space went; but it kept them off the radar.

Walking up the miniature flight of stairs, Davis knocked four times, spaced out evenly with a second in between, and then rapped his knuckles twice quickly against the door-slab.

After a moment, the metal block slid away to allow them entry. Waving his arm in a mock-gentlemanly fashion, he let Gates go first. She accepted, not having the patience to engage with another argument with him tonight.

While Davis had once been a reckless Pilot with a sense both for humor and thrill; now he was a careful and calculated man with a tendency to be skeptical of just about everything and everyone. It'd been a long time since she'd heard him laugh. While it was beneficial to have him so focused, it didn't mean she didn't miss his old self.

Walking into their two-room flat, she was pleased to see Gray scrolling through some frames of a video on her monitor. The woman was definitely talented, at least enough to have found a backdoor in the main database of Spyglass's forces. They weren't able to alter anything or make a real difference of any kind; but they were able to basically see through the eyes of the enemy, and use those recordings to predict where the damn machines would strike next.

Gray turned around at the sound of their footsteps, and made an effort to press a button that shut the door behind them. "Alright, El. Streets outside the port on Thone, right? Quite a large congregation you had there. You're lucky that none of them sent out a beacon or anything, you'd have been royally screwed then."

She'd been undercover for weeks before meeting with the scientist, and all of it had been blown in less than an hour. 'Screwed' was putting it lightly. "Well, did you find anything?"

Gray nodded. "Yeah, I got a few different angles of your mystery savior. These two here saw them up on the building when the home-made flashbang landed." She pointed to two squares of different Spectre cams, each of which could barely view the person peeking over the edge of the building before they'd come and dispatched them all.

There wasn't a face she could see; the individual was wearing a black mask and hood, with some kind of goggles over their eyes. She assumed that it was for protection from the flash, and so that they could still see.

"Those are the only shots of their head," Gray muttered before clicking on the last in a row of squares. "But this one here was the last to have those magnets or whatever attached to it, and its targeting-vision had cleared up barely enough to see them before it got shorted out."

Scrolling ever so slowly through the footage, she analyzed the video frame by frame. The last twelve or so frames showed the upper body of the stranger as the blinding white light disappeared. They were wearing a jacket of some kind, one that had been adapted to have more utility; pouches, straps and a sheath for starters. And looking down at where their waist was just visible before the bottom border, you could barely see a-

"Is that a jump-kit?" Davis asked incredulously. She couldn't blame him; all of their gear was still left over from years back since it was practically impossible to get it anymore. If this person had a jump-kit, it was a confirmation that whoever it was used to be a Pilot, and they'd kept their old gear in spite of the new regime-

"Stop," she commanded, her eyes wide with what she'd just seen as Gray scrolled through.

The woman lifted her hands from the controls, and looked back confusedly at Gates. "What? What is it?"

She pointed at the monitor. "Go back a few frames, right to where they reach their hand forward and attach the magnet."

Obeying her word, Gray skipped a few frames back to see the stranger latching the magnet onto a place right below the camera of the Stalker. A few frames farther and the hand was in full view.

It was a left hand, wearing fingerless gloves that would have been otherwise completely unremarkable if it wasn't for one detail she'd noticed.

"They're missing two fingers."

Gray looked at it again. "It's blurry from the motion … but I think you're right. The fourth and fifth digits."

Gates looked down at her own left hand, examining the phalanges. Her ring finger and pinky stared back at her, and she felt a pounding sensation in her chest as her heartbeat escalated in excitement.

"He's alive."

A/N: I told you I'd make it up to you for the short chapters.

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Until the next time,

- Matteoarts