Support

"Where the hell did you come from?" The dazed militiaman asked the white garbed form who knelt beside him. "You have to get out of here! There are Grineer everywhere!"

"They will be busy in a few minutes." The armored woman replied absently as she read some kind of scanner. "Arm and leg?"

"Yeah." The man was wearing cobbled together armor, but he held no weapon. His right leg was...gone from the knee down. His left arm was bent at a bad angle. "They... they hit me and left me to die."

"Mutant scum." The medic snarled. "Hold still." She commanded as she started working. "Won't take long." The militiaman jerked and lay still as she worked. The sounds of fighting came from nearby but the medic did not falter in her work. She was aware of scrutiny, but ignored it until her work was done. When she looked up she nodded to the dark form that stood in the shadows nearby. "This one is alive and will remain so. Others need my care. I go."

She was only mildly surprised when the Tenno -that was what it had to be- followed her. She found two other militia fighters. One was dead, the other screamed as she worked, but then subsided as she finished. She patted the unconscious man's arm and rose only to pause as the dark form that had been following her stepped out of the shadows. Her first instinct was to scream 'mutant' and run the other way. Her second was fascination. In form, the Tenno was humanoid. The armor was far thinner than her own or any Imperium design, but it was obviously functional from the scars that marred it. In form, it was probably male. But it... It was looking at her. She shook her head.

"I have work to do." She declared and checked her scanner. Another human life reading shone nearby and she started for it. The Tenno moved to stand in her way and she snarled at it. Him. "If you are going to kill me, then do it. But if not? I have work to do!"

She could swear the thing seemed...startled. But it did move out of her way as she started for the life signs that were failing. She was hyperaware of the shadow behind her, but as soon as she found the battered human form, her attention was focused on saving the man's life. She was so focused in fact, that the stunning impact that hit her and threw her to the deck was a complete surprise. She crawled back to the man's side and finished her work, aware of fighting all around her now. Only then did she check her own wound. It had impacted her armor and would leave some spectacular bruises, but no more. A minor injury all told. She was...

Where was she? This...wasn't the training center! Special Forces recruit Abigail stared around wildly, aware of fighting all around her as she hugged the deck. She was wearing odd but comfortable garb that seemed armored. The helmet had readouts that she could not understand, but seemed oddly familiar. She had no weapons. She had to...

Sister Abigail snapped back to awareness, conscious of something wrong. She had been lying in place for four minutes according to her helmet chronometer. She shook herself savagely. She would need thorough checks when she returned to the Apothecarium. Maybe even a mind cleansing although she quailed at that thought. She was firm in her belief. The Emperor would prevail.

The Emperor protects.

The Sister Hospitaller rose to a crouch and moved off, aware of combat all around her. But her scanners had picked up another fading life reading. She had to help. It was her calling. Her duty.

Unfortunately she was not warrior trained. If she had been, she likely would have seen the missile that was fired at the Tenno who had been shadowing her and sought cover instead of looking for the wounded human.

She didn't.

Well that sucks...

Quais wasn't on Mars, but fighting Grineer was nothing new. He relished it even if his own personal quest to 'remove' every Grineer from Mars would have to wait. The Grineer were fighting hard, but not particularly smart. Not that they ever did. The few he had killed before finding the oddly garbed woman tending wounded had fallen easily. But the woman... Something was... wrong about her. He couldn't say what it was. Or why. But she wasn't afraid. Not of him. Not of the Grineer. Cautious... Sort of. But then she had risen just as a rocket had come at him and he had not been able to restrain a wince as the explosion tossed her into a wall to slide down boneless. He killed the Bombard and after a Bladestorm, the immediate area was clear. He knelt beside the fallen woman, intrigued. He froze as a groan sounded. She lived!

He knew little of human physiology, but the blood seeping from places that her armor hadn't protected her was not a small amount. This was nothing he had ever seen and his clan leader had given strict orders to report any more 'oddities'. He hadn't managed to get fully briefed yet with the utter insanity that had broken out with Vay Hek's newest madness, but it would come soon. Until then? He had Grineer to kill and a mystery. But... he needed orders.

Lotus? He said in his mind. I have encountered an oddity. He did keep an eye on his surroundings.

Tenno Quais? The Lotus sounded calm and serene as always. Sometimes he envied that serene. Sometimes he did not. It was life. What kind of oddity?

A human woman in odd armor. Unarmed. Quais said, perplexed. A shuriken dropped a Powerfist absently. She was tending the injured militia here and was injured by Grineer.

Are her injuries serious? The Lotus replied. Wait... She said, cutting Quais off when he would have replied. Examine her armor, is there any insignia?

It has golden flowers of some kind all over it. Quais had never heard of a fleur-de-lis and likely wouldn't have cared what it was. Lotus, she is badly hurt. Orders?

Unarmed you say... The Lotus sounded... confused for a moment, and then her voice steadied. Understood. Get her to support. But... full quarantine. Medical and electronic. Make sure they understand that.

At once. Quais agreed. The battered woman did not even scream as he digitized her. But...

NO! The voice in his head was screaming. No! Don't! It was female, young. Don't... It begged and then screamed, a long drawn out wail of agony and loss.

Quais shook his head as he sequestered the data that comprised the human female in a secure partition of his warframe buffers. The screams cut off with dreadful finality.

What the hell was that? Quais asked nobody as he started off. The few remnants of the human's fighting forces withdrew as the Tenno did. The Grineer pressed forward, but were too late to stop the escape.

Too late... for lots of things...

Only after the Tenno had left the small colony did a red armored from appear. But this time... instead of a rifle... his weapon was the size of an old style motorcycle and the shells it fired were far, far larger than his rifle had boasted. The Grineer charged. It was what they did. But they fell as wheat before a scythe. Or just about any human sized infantry before a Heavy Bolter. The heavy machine gun version of the boltgun.

Quais had delivered his prisoner to the Tower and had expected to be sent back out into the field. But he had been asked to wait. So he did.

"What hit her?" Iriana asked, stunned as she watched through the quarantine field as drones worked on their 'guest'. Until they were sure she posed no threat, she would be tended remotely, every scrap of data going anywhere near her would be carefully checked for tampering of any kind.

"A rocket." Quais replied calmly. Iriana turned to stare at him and he nodded. "She should be dead. But her armor must have saved her."

"It did." Iriana said with a frown. "Lots of damage. But she would have survived. For a while anyway, until she bled out." She said with a sigh. "This is... odd." Quais stiffened at her tone.

"Healer?" Quais asked carefully. "What is odd?"

"I am reading three different wavelengths inside her mind." Iriana said slowly. "Which isn't possible. Two I can see. Cognitive dissonances are known. But three? No..." She shook her head. "No. She wouldn't be able to function with three minds fighting for control."

"She was functioning." Quais shrugged. "And she was skilled at healing. Just not at combat."

"An armored medic not trained for combat?" Iriana asked, confused. "That makes no sense."

"I know." Quais agreed. "And then... when I digitized her, I heard a voice -not hers- screaming." Iriana froze and turned to look at him. "Healer?"

"You need to be checked, Quais." Iriana said slowly. "Your warframe systems may have been compromised. If you heard her..."

"I understand." Quais said with a sigh as he started the unsealing sequence. "It wasn't her voice though. It was younger sounding. And..." He paused. "She was terrified." He finished the sequence and stepped out of his warframe. "With your permission healer, I will do a set of checks myself."

"Fine by me." Iriana said as the Ash warframe as lofted by a set of drones to be scanned carefully. "Just..." She shook her head, face furrowed in thought.

"Healer?" Quais asked as he knelt in a corner. The checks were quick. He was clean.

"She has been... modified." Iriana said heavily. "Her body altered. I..." She paused. "These techniques are known. In our database." She shook her head. "This makes no sense!" She complained. "According to every reading, she is only in her teens. Why would someone change a teenager? And into this?"

"Because that was what it was designed to do." A new voice had both Quais and Iriana turning. The Frost Prime warframe looked... wrong on close inspection. It wasn't until you looked hard at it that you realized it's surface was covered in glowing circuitry. Quais went still as Iriana nodded.

"Olim!" The Tenno healer said with a wide smile. "You made it."

"Yeah." Olim said sourly. "Three days worth of talking to that... thing and it finally gave me some of the information I asked for." Quais looked at the Cyberlancer and Olim sighed. "The only source of information on the game that we knew of was Cephalon Suda." Quais went still and Olim chuckled without mirth. "Yeah. Talk about long winded..."

No one was sure if Cephalon Suda was an AI, a hybrid AI/human or something else entirely. No one had ever gotten a straight answer from it. The Lotus might know, but she was very tightlipped about it. Stood to reason. Cephalon Suda's endless quest for knowledge at any price was well known to many factions within the Solar System. And not all of them appreciated it. The Lotus was neutral, painfully so in the squabbles between various factions that had aligned themselves against each other. The Syndicates' as they were known, were distinct from the Grineer Empire and Corpus megacorporation, but no less pervasive.

Quais himself had been emailed by another syndicate a few times. He had little use for Grineer however, even Grineer deserters. He was more drawn to the Arbiters of Hexis and their philosophy, but parts of that clashed with the Code, so he was reserving judgment.

"So what do we know?" Iriana asked. "This girl needs help."

"More than you know, Healer." Olim said sadly. "You see... The game was originally designed as a LARP by a group called the SCA."

"A what by the what?" Iriana demanded. Olim sighed.

"LARP is 'Live Action Role Play'. A form of storytelling in person. The players become the roles." Olim said with a shrug as Iriana stared at him. Quais was still. That... sort of made sense. "And... apparently, two centuries or so after Orokin was founded, a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism made a way to take part in the Warhammer 40000 game. In person. For real."

"What little I have read of the game said it was dark, horror filled." Iriana protested. "Why would anyone want to play such a game in real life?"

"I don't know." Olim admitted. "If Cephelon Suda knows, it isn't saying. And..."

"And I am not going to do that again!" An irate female voice sounded as a holo of a young woman appeared nearby. Her face was half flesh, half metal. An AI. "You will not make me talk to that... that... librarian again, Olim!" She snapped as Olim just sighed again. "It was... insufferable!"

"Riana." Olim said mildly. Quais just shook his head. He had heard about the Cyberlancer's AI sister. Who hadn't? But the actual reality was far more than any story.

"Three days your time, Olim." Riana said was a snarl. "Do you have any idea how many 'requests for further information' it sent me in three days? And now it has my contact information. You had to give it my contact information! You just had to! Gah! Another one! Another 'Hello, can I ask about...?' email! Three hundred in the last twenty minutes alone!" Now she was growling. "That thing is going to get accidently wiped and formatted! I swear!"

"Riana, it was needed." Olim said softly. "And you agreed."

"I did." The AI replied tightly. "But geez... One virus Olim. Just a little virus? Please?" She begged.

"No, Riana." The Cyberlancer master said with a sigh. "We can't. Tempting as it is, we can't. If we destroy or even just damage the Cephalon, it would create all kinds of chaos. And what is our primary function?"

"Protecting against such." Riana said in a small voice. "I am sorry, Olim." She said, her ire fading. "But that thing made me so mad... It was and is distracting me." She said with a sigh. "I wasn't a lot of help."

"Yes, you were, Riana." Olim reassured her. "While it was focused on trying to figure you out, I managed to get the information we needed. Most of it." He qualified as Iriana smiled. He shook his head a little. "The live action game was designed as a game. Not dangerous. So something changed. And the facility was not just shut down, it was destroyed during the war. A survey drone that was sent into that pocket of the void found nothing functioning."

"So... She likely has the answers we need." Iriana shook her head. "This girl needs help Olim. She cannot help herself. Not with three of her fighting inside her mind."

"I know." Olim said quietly. "But Iriana..." He paused and looked at Quais.

"I have not been briefed." Quais said quietly. "I do not know what I am cleared for."

"Karl offered you a place and you accepted." Olim replied just as quietly. "I can help her, Iriana. And I will need Quais' help. And... no matter what I do, it will change her. For the better? For the worse? I don't know."

"You have but to ask." Quais said with a nod. "But what would we do?"

"To fix the problem, Riana and I will have to enter her mind." Olim said with a frown in his voice. "And as soon as we do, we will be vulnerable to whatever changed her. If it comes to it... if I start to change... I need your word, Brother." He said formally. Iriana froze.

"No!" Iriana said sharply, "No! There has to be another way!"

"Maybe there is." Olim said quietly. "Do we have time to find it? To talk to the Cephalon for a week to find whatever scraps of information it lets drop?" Riana made a disgusted noise but subsided when Olim turned his helmet to look at her. "Brother? Can you do it?"

"I..." For the first time in a long, long time, Quais was speechless. Olim was asking the other male Tenno to kill the Cyberlancer if he was subverted! "I do not wish the deaths of any kin, Cyberlancer Olim." Quais said after a moment. "Can you send me instead?"

"You would be more vulnerable." Olim sounded reasonable. "The thing is... If whatever did this to her and the other wanted to hurt us, it could have. The other saved Karen when it didn't have to. This one was working as a medic. Helping people. That is atypical behavior for any of the characters I know of from the game. Admittedly..." He said with a shrug. "I only skimmed stuff. Riana?"

"I read through most of the available works." Riana frowned. "Some of it was good reading. Most was horrifying. Horror stories were a favorite of that twentieth century for some reason and that game took them to a new level. But so many of the stories flatly contradict each other and that is flatly ignoring the stuff by someone named C. S. Goto..." She shook her holographic head. "Talk about silly..." Olim coughed and Riana nodded. "Okay, okay, sheesh... Lighten up, Olim."

"You are silly enough for both of us, Riana." Olim had a smirk in his voice as she made an obscene gesture at her. And where did you learn that? Mom would spank you." He shook his head and answered his own question. "Never mind. You have been talking to Karen. Crazy AI and crazy Marines... figures." He sobered. "Quais? I can ask for another if you cannot. There is no shame in such."

"This girl needs help now." Quais said with a shrug. "I stand ready." His warframe reappeared and he slid into it quickly. "Any discrepancies?" He asked the healer as it sealed.

"No." Iriana said, her face working. "Olim... I..."

"It may not come to that." The Frost Prime said quietly as he stepped toward the airlock door that led to the quarantine area. Quais rose and matched his pace. Riana's holo vanished. "There is... one thing... The chip you detected..."

"In her sternum, yes." Iriana said quietly. "Encoded."

"I have the codes." Olim said quietly. "We got them from an interrogation a while back."

"She is Corpus Special Forces."