Megaman X: Elysium Rising
Chapter 23: Espionage
By Genoscythe
AN: After a little bit of research, I found out that Set is the one that killed Osiris, and not Thoth. I've gone back and altered chapter 20 to fit. Thanks for the correction, Ri2!
HQ was silent. All personnel accounted for. 0 risk factors. Endymion stood guard outside Douglas's lab. It was 1:28 AM, and his sister and her friends were most likely still at the docks. He sighed, a rare gesture for a reploid that displayed no emotion whatsoever. They don't understand how important our duty is, he thought to himself. While they're out drinking and indulging in disgusting human emotions, we're working to end the Maverick Wars once and for all. He felt alone, as he always did, and that only bolstered his sour mood.
For the hundredth time, he looked through the door to see if Douglas was done. The pudgy form was still hunched over a flickering holo monitor, typing away at the console. The little mechanic insisted that he knew where to find the source of all the communications disturbances, and Endymion had orders from Signas to guard him until he found what he was looking for. Commander Signas's fears weren't groundless; the temporary hunter HQ had virtually no perimeter defenses and a laughable security system to boot. Plus, the base had no living quarters, and it was next to empty at night.
Why doesn't Selene understand our purpose? Endymion mused bitterly. We were both created from the same design, but our inherent personalities can't be more different. Did Dr. Kikuta make a mistake in her programming? He must have. We were supposed to be a team. How can we be a team if we can't stand each other! As soon as he thought it, Endymion silently berated himself for thinking like a weakling. He didn't need Selene's help. He was strong enough for both of them.
A cry of excitement emanated from the dark room, and Endymion peeked his head inside. "I've found it!" Douglas yelled, leaping out of his chair and dancing about like a fool. "Captain Endymion! I know where the signal's coming from!" Keeping his mask of indifference, the silver-plated Maverick Hunter stepped deftly into the room.
"Signal? I thought you were looking for a disturbance," Endymion stated plainly.
"That's what I thought at first. But it's not! It's a signal! It's a signal, and it's coming from the middle of the Pacific!"
"What kind?"
"I have no idea! That's the strange thing. It's a signal that disrupts our own communications. The wave patterns are so complex that they break up ours. I've never seen anything like it."
"Did you find anything else?" The tall hunter asked gruffly. Sometimes, it was hard pretending to be emotionless, and right now Endymion simply wanted to be alone with his thoughts. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to a gibbering fool like Douglas.
"Yes. Sort of. Not really."
"Well, that's great. Good work, Douglas."
"Wait! I mean...there's nothing there."
"There's nothing in that fat head of yours, I know that."
"No! The signal! There's nothing there!"
"Calm down, idiot. Now, start again."
"Okay. I found the source of the signal, and there's nothing there. According to the maps and trade routes, it's nothing but empty water."
"Maybe it's a ship that went off course?"
"Captain, you'd need a beacon as big as an island to transmit a signal like this."
"A secret weapon?"
"It'd be a waste to make a weapon that only interrupts long-distance transmitter waves. Shortwave transmissions still work because they're simple enough to slip through the signal's pattern."
"So...what is it?"
"I already told you, I don't know! I'll see if I can take a satellite photo of the ocean at the source." Douglas spun on his heels and hobbled back to the console. As soon as he began tapping buttons again, Endymion lost interest. What a waste of time. If a maverick showed up, the little maniac deserved to get his head blown off. Endymion turned to go, hoping Douglas wouldn't notice or care.
However, something caught his attention. It was the slightest flicker of movement on the ceiling, indistinguishable to an untrained eye. Endymion's head snapped up, but nothing was there. There it was again! As if the ceiling were a mirror, it became distorted for a brief second as something darted along the metal surface. The silver Maverick Hunter immediately knew what it was. Damn, a cloaking field! Endymion recognized it as the same type he used, and for a moment he wondered how the mavericks managed to find such an expensive piece of equipment.
Silently cursing when he found that he'd lost it, he turned to Douglas. The green-armored mechanic was typing away, oblivious to the intruder. "Douglas!" Endymion yelled, but that was all he could get out before a trio of blades came down on Douglas's back. Douglas gave a surprised sigh, then slumped forward against the console. The blades retracted and disappeared into thin air.
The meager light in the room shimmered as the maverick charged at Endymion. Without batting an eye, he turned on his own cloaking field and leapt out of its path. The maverick skidded to a halt.
"You're like me?" It spoke, both curious and apprehensive.
"Wrong," Endymion countered, twin blades sliding out of his gauntlets. He dashed at the invisible enemy and slashed downward in an 'X' motion, and to his surprise two sets of serrated claws stopped his weapons short of the killing blow. Twisting in the air and slamming his armored leg into what Endymion only guessed was its head, he sent the maverick crashing to the ground. "I'm nothing like you."
The maverick flipped backward, landing on its feet halfway across the room. The impact had shaken its cloaking field, and for a split second, his enemy was revealed. What stood before him now was a tall, lithe feline covered in dull white fur and black body armor. The plates on its chest, although form-fitting, looked extremely thick and didn't seem to hinder movement at all. It wore small, stocky shoulder pads, and round, fluid gauntlets much like Endymion's own. However, as Endymion's arm blades were one solid piece of metal, this maverick had three jagged claws that arched out and over its hands. On its head, a triangular metal plate rested between its twitching ears. The Maverick Hunter guessed this was where the cloaking field was being generated from.
This was all discerned in the second available to Endymion before the field came back online. Then, his enemy was nearly invisible again, and running toward the door. Unfortunately for him, the equally invisible Maverick Hunter stood between him and his destination. Endymion tackled the maverick and pinned it against the wall.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Endymion spoke quickly. Maverick Hunter protocol dictated that he should ask such questions, otherwise the maverick would already be dead.
"I'm..." The feline squirmed under his steely grip, the voice distinctly masculine. "Stealth Claw. Tactical espionage expert for the Purifier Army. Or, as you'd call us..." He gave a violent thrash. "Mavericks. I'm here to find out how much you know about Elysium."
"About what?" Endymion asked, puzzled.
"Elysium, the Promised Land. You don't know, do you?" Stealth Claw said with a laugh. "Sigma said Megaman X should've been on to us by now."
"Maybe X isn't," Endymion growled as he pressed his blade against Claw's head. "But soon I will be. Tell me everything about this 'promised land.' Oh, and tell me quickly. You don't have much time."
"I've got a better idea," said Stealth Claw, and before Endymion could react, his tail snapped up and knocked the hunter's blade out of harm's way as he leapt into the air. The maverick buried his claws into the ceiling, crawling back to the vent that he had apparently come out of.Endymion swore as he looked back at Douglas. The mechanic could pull through if he got attention quickly, and Endymion couldn't follow Stealth Claw up the vent, so he did the only thing he could. He did the only thing he hated doing in his line of work.Endymion called for backup.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! Pyre Mystic silently berated herself, her head sunk into a stark white pillow. Instead of getting close to Zero, she had managed to land herself in the midst of Maverick Hunter HQ. The med lab, to be precise. She didn't know how long she'd been out, but she knew it had to be long. Darkness cloaked everything around her; it had been noon when the debris had knocked her out.
Mystic never let her powers get out of control, and yet somehow they had. That rock wasn't supposed to fall...I wasn't supposed to get knocked out...I'm not supposed to be here! Her mind screamed. All of her instincts were telling her to flee, to get out of bed and leap through the window and never look back. There were three flaws in her plan. The first was that her systems weren't all online again and she could barely move, the second was that she had made a promise to the Purifiers to kill this monster named Zero, and the third was that there were no windows to jump out of.
Pyre Mystic cursed, loudly. She didn't care if anyone heard it anymore. Everything would've been perfect if that damn rock hadn't decided to fall on her. Now, all their planning was shot through. The Maverick Hunters would torture her and find out what she was really doing in the middle of all those flames, then they would torture her some more and find out the location of the Purifiers' base. Then they'd probably torture her a little more for the hell of it. If she was lucky, they would kill her soon after. At the moment, she wasn't feeling very lucky.
Wearily, she forced herself into a sitting position and fully assessed the damage. To her relief, she seemed to be fine, or would be once all her systems were back online. "Something wrong, miss?" A bland voice called from a doorway to her right. The dull voice reverberated throughout the long hallway full of beds and sent shivers across Pyre Mystic's synthetic skin. It was a Lifesaver unit, and it had probably heard her swearing.
"Nothing, I'm just...surprised." She began weakly, trying desperately to conceal her terror. From what she'd heard, Maverick Hunter Lifesavers had been reprogrammed into butchers, and were frequently used in torture sessions. At that moment, it struck Mystic as odd that all the stories she had heard about the Maverick Hunters revolved around torture of some kind. It also struck her as odd that the Lifesaver wasn't covered in blood, or concealing an unnecessarily large knife behind its back, like she'd heard in the stories.
"Surprised?" The Lifesaver decided to take charge of the conversation, seeing as how Mystic had zoned out.
"Yeah," she said. "One minute I was on the street, and the next...bam!" She illustrated with her fist exactly what she meant by 'bam'. "Kinda weird, you know?"
"Miss, forgive me for any inconvenience," the Lifesaver droned on. "I am only following Commander Zero's orders." Zero? Maybe there's still hope after all.
"Zero? Where is he?"
"The Commander is-"
"Please, just let me see him once before you cut me up. I gotta tell him something important."
"Excuse me-"
"Oh god, I don't wanna die..."
"Excuse me?"
"Just let me talk to Zero. Do whatever you want with my body after that, just lemme see him. Whatever you want. Really. See? My arm's practically begging to be cut off." The Lifesaver started forward, curious to see what the thought pattern readout was showing, but she cut him off. "Wait, not 'till after you take me to Zero."
"Wait for what, miss?"
"The torture, the maiming, the slicing. Come off it, I know what you people do," Mystic said warily. The Lifesaver, glad that two of the four emotions he knew how to express were confusion and worry, fixed her with a stare that combined both.
"I don't understand. I think you have me confused with someone else. I am in the employ of the Maverick Hunters."
"Yeah, I know that. So which one of us is crazy here? I'd bet money it's not me. I don't chop people up for kicks, after all."
"What?"
"Who do you think a judge is gonna believe, me or you? Hell, I can tell you're crazy just by looking at you. Never mind all the bodies you probably have stashed in the basement," Pyre Mystic prattled on, completely unaware that she was still talking. Now, however, the Lifesaver had taken too much.
"STOP!" It yelled angrily, showing its third emotion. "I have no idea what you're talking about! If you would just shut your mouth for a moment and let me speak, I could clear all this up in a matter of seconds!" The outburst brought Mystic back into reality, and she promptly shut her mouth. "I am a Lifesaver. I am a medical unit. I repair damaged reploids. I do not torture anyone. I am certainly not crazy. I cut nothing unless it involves sentence number 3," the stark white reploid carried on in a slow, chiding voice, using up the last emotion in its psychological vocabulary: contempt.
"Uh...okay, alright," Pyre Mystic said disarmingly. "Look, I just get carried away, you know?"
"No, I don't know."
"Well, then could you just tell me where Zero is and I'll be on my way?"
"His current location is unregistered. He is off-duty. From personal experience, I would say he is drunk off his ass by now," the Lifesaver had returned to its former bland voice, as if someone had flicked a switch.
"So that means he's...where?"
"Anywhere. You will have to wait until he registers for duty again before I can answer that question correctly."
Mystic sighed. "Don't you know anything?"
"I know that he is probably drunk off his ass at this particular moment."
Zero was, in fact, drunk off his ass at that particular moment. Drinking the entire cooler was only the beginning for him, and he had made a run at the shopping area of the docks to buy more booze. Unfortunately, he had bought enough to last him about a year. At the moment though, Zero didn't give a damn. He was sloshed, and it felt good. It was also nice to have the image of bloody Iris replaced by a parade of purple camels (nobody has ever been able to figure out why Zero sees purple camels as opposed to the standard pink elephants, but all anyone needs to know is that they are his friends and they listen to his troubles any time he needs someone to talk to.)
X had gone off to be all mopey. Marx was somewhere with Nephtis, trying various ways to get her to stop crying intermittently in their conversation. Alia, Zero presumed, had left. And good riddance. Party crasher. Now, all that was left was Axl and Selene. Those two had a habit of sneaking off and disappearing. Zero snickered one of those drunken snickers, the one that looks like you might be heading into a seizure fairly soon, as he thought of what they were doing. However, he didn't have to stumble far until he heard voices. They were coming from beneath him.
"Isn't this cool?" Selene's voice wafted up through the reinforced wood planks.
"Yeah..." Axl said, inarticulate as usual whenever he was talking to a girl.
"Wonder if anyone can see us?"
"I can," Zero said. They didn't hear him, which made Zero wholly confused. He could have sworn that he had yelled it.
"Isn't this a little dangerous?" Axl's voice. "If we fall, we'll sink like a couple of metal rocks."
"That's the fun part, doofus," Selene's voice.
"It's fun to sink into the ocean like a couple of metal rocks?" Axl's voice again. Damn, could they keep it down? Everything was starting to get louder.
"Oh, come on. Don't tell me this isn't at least a little exciting!" Zero wandered over to the edge of the docks, where he looked over and saw a small outcropping of black rock sticking out from under the docks. A pair of slender feminine legs were sticking out on top of it. "This is cool. Our own little hideout."
"It is a little damp down here."
"Axl..." Selene said exasperatedly. "I swear, I'm never going to get into that thick skull of yours."
"...get what in?"
"Just stop talking for a minute, Axl. I want to enjoy this."
"What...this?"
"Yeah, that." At this, Zero's curiosity peaked. He tried to lean over more so he could see under the docks, failed miserably, and slammed his head against the side bar. As loud as he could, he screamed out a curse that would make a rapper dive for cover. Somehow, it didn't sound very loud to Zero. Oh well. He was drunk. He could care less.
"What was that?" Axl's alarmed voice came up through the planks.
"I thought you were going to stop talking, Axl."
"But-"
"Whoever that is can't see or hear us. Besides, what's the problem?"
"No problem..."
"Really?"
"Well, it'd be kinda awkward to explain to some stranger why I'm sitting under the docks with a really wet girl in my arms. Other than that though, there's nothing wrong."
"Hey, you splashed me first, it's your fault if this looks awkward."
"I know. Like you said, they can't see us, so there's nothing to explain." Silence for a bit. Zero was starting to get bored.
"Hey Axl," Selene spoke again. "What would you do if I asked you to kiss me right now?" Zero started. Through the fabric of space, he swore he could feel Axl start too.
"I'd ask if Zero gave you too many drinks," Axl said warily, after taking a long time to choose his words correctly. He chose wrong.
"Did you?" one of the purple camels asked Zero.
"Yeah, but don't worry, guys. She's cool." The troupe of purple camels nodded their shaggy heads in consent.
"Sounds like the kid blew it big time," one spoke up.
"Yeah, well, we'll see how she takes it. Selene's a pretty weird girl when it comes to...well, pretty much anything." Zero explained. The camels all nodded knowingly again.
"We are wise. You don't need to tell us these things, yellow-haired warrior."
"Sorry, guys. Look, I'm trying to see what's going on, so could you disappear for awhile?"
"Absolutely," they all said in unison, melting into a fleet of baked hams and darting off into the night sky. Zero shook his head and tuned back into the real world.
"...really that hard to understand? I've been dropping hints left and right, Axl. I thought you liked me."
"I do, it's just...I'm not that good at this romance stuff. You just seemed really friendly, and I didn't wanna make a move in case I'd do something wrong."
"...so, you do like me?"
"Of course."
"So why haven't you kissed me yet? You missed your cue by about ten lines, Romeo."
"Oh...sorry." Silence ensued.
"Well?"
"Oh, right now?"
"Dummy!"
"Okay, uh..." Axl's sentence was cut short, and Zero could hear the faint sounds of lips locking. After a time, the sounds ceased. "Wow," was all Axl managed to get out.
"You can start it next time," Selene said sweetly. "But honestly, it's not very hard to tell when you're supposed to kiss a girl when she's asking you to," she reprimanded.
"Hey, you caught me off guard. That was all a little..." Axl fumbled for the right word. "Unorthodox," he finished.
"You should know I'm not an orthodox girl by now," she said. "So...how was it?"
"Not sure. I think we need to do it again." Axl replied. Zero chuckled.
"Bravo, little man, bravo," he said softly, attempting to clap. His hands completely missed each other, instead choosing to high-five empty space. His mood slightly soured, he picked up a beer bottle he had discarded earlier and took a long swig from it. As he set it down, he began to realize, Damn, everyone's getting more action than me right now!
"I dunno. You've been making out with beer bottles all night," A voice said to Zero's right. The blonde reploid blinked in surprise. He hadn't thought out loud again, had he? Was his conscience finally stopping in to pay a visit? Zero wasn't sure. He had never met his conscience.
"Hey, old friend." Zero spoke, his words badly slurred. "Are you the devil, or the angel?"
"...the what!"
"The devil or the angel. You know. The little dudes that are supposed to be on my shoulders. They ran away a long time ago. Did you miss me? No, wait, don't answer that. I already know you're gonna say yes. So then, are you the angel or the devil?"
"Zero, it's Marx. Sober up for a second."
"Why? My life was just starting to turn around."
"I gotta talk to you."
"The purple camels won't be happy."
"Damn it, I...did you say purple camels?"
"Yeah," Zero said, activating his system cleanup program and becoming 'sober' in a matter of seconds. "Instead of pink elephants. Don't ask why."
"...sure. Look, I'm getting a little...close to Akila."
"To who?" He asked.
"Nephtis." Marx corrected.
"To who?" Zero repeated.
"I thought you turned sober."
"I know, I'm just messin' with you." Zero said light-heartedly. Marx cast him a dark glare.
"So, anyway, I'm getting a little closer to her..."
"I noticed. I gotta hand it to you, man. If ever there was a queen of all ice queens, she would be it. Everyone in Hunter HQ has had a run at her at some point since she came by, and none of em have been able to stand her for as long as you have. Even me. Most of em didn't even get two conversations out of her before they decided that that unbelievable figure just wasn't worth thebeast inside it."
"She's no beast!" Marx interjected, almost a little too quickly. "She's been through a lot. And that's what I wanted to ask you about."
Zero spread out his arms and leaned back against the guard rail. He noticed that both Axl and Selene had fallen completely silent, apparently afraid for some reason that their commanding officer might find them making out under the docks. "Ask away," Zero said knowingly.
"Well, she's been pretty worked up over her-" Marx stopped himself. He wasn't about to let Akila's past slip out like that.
"Her what?" Zero prodded.
"I can't explain," Marx explained. Zero sighed. This wouldn't be as easy as he thought.
"Will Douglas live?" Endymion asked the generic Maverick Hunter before him.
"He should. The claws only damaged one of his reactors, and the other one's got power to last for a day or two. The little bastard's like a miniature power plant. He'll pull through alright."
"Damn," Endymion muttered under his breath. To the hunter, he said, "Good. He was on to something before the maverick broke in, and we need that information as soon as possible." The 17th Division hunter turned to go, following the Lifesavers carrying away Douglas, but Endymion stopped him. "You did lock down the building, didn't you?"
"Oh." The hunter spoke as if he had just remembered something very important, which, incidentally, he had. "I'm on it right now, sir."
"Damn it," Endymion said again, this time a little louder.
"Computer! Activate full security lockdown!"
Voice identified. User accepted. Lockdown engaged. All personnel, please step away from any windows or doors. This is a lockdown. Emergency exits in the lobby are now activated, and all emergency systems are now online. Thank you, and pray that this crisis is resolved quickly.
Endymion was already running for the stairs.
Stealth Claw scampered up the vertical shaft as quickly as his metal body would allow. He had done it! Where so many had died, he had not only lived, but succeeded! He gathered all the information the Purifiers needed, he sufficiently stalled the Maverick Hunters, and he tested their combat abilities. With a purr, he thought back to how ill-prepared they were, and how easy it was to slip through thechildish security system. He also thought of how ridiculous it was that they hadn't yet activated some kind of lockdown procedure. Perhaps he had wounded the silver Maverick Hunter's ego so badly that he had died and failed to send out a distress signal.
Stealth Claw didn't entertain this thought for very long because he knew how immature it was, and professional spies were anything but immature. Professional spy...I like that, Claw purred as he dropped down into a horizontal vent. He followed this vent shaft until it abruptly halted. Above him, one of the air circulation machines thrummed softly. End of the line, Claw thought as he looked at the grate beneath his paws.
There was no sound, and no sign of anyone in the room below. With a deft slash of his claws, he dropped down into the dark room. He was on a thin catwalk that circled around the medium-sized room, and whatever was below was immersed in shadow. This was last on Stealth Claw's Important Stuff in the Room list, because the first and only other thing on the list was a skylight. A giant, beautiful skylight. The sweet, sweet doorway to freedom.
Not a moment after he thought this, a startlingly loud PA system crackled to life. What it said chilled his proverbial bones.
All personnel, please step away from any windows or doors. This is a lockdown. Emergency exits in the lobby are now activated, and all emergency systems are now online. Thank you, and pray that this crisis is resolved quickly.
Not a moment after it said this, a massive blast door began creeping over the skylight, smothering the only brightness in the already dark room. Desperately, Stealth Clawclamboredup the wall, fighting a losing battle with time as the impossibly thick metal sheet crept closer to cutting off his escape. As his fist crashed into the glass, the last sliver of light was choked off and he was trapped.
"No!" He said aloud. "Open, damn it!" He slammed his fist against the glass again, sending spidering cracks along its surface. Stealth Claw raised his fist again, but stopped himself. He suddenly felt that he wasn't alone in the room anymore. His head swiveled around and he turned on his NV. The room became illuminated again, but he could still see nothing. He's cloaking too, Claw realized. He scanned the environment for any wavering particles in the air. Still, he saw nothing. With a sudden feeling that could only be described as like having his heart take an elevator down to his tail, he looked directly below him. A flash of blurred movement, and he knew at once what he had to do.
Stealth Claw sprung off the wall and onto the catwalk below, activating his own cloaking field as he did so. He rolled, and stopped moving completely. He knew that he was almost invisible. "What, no swapping idealisms?" He called out to his attacker. "No witty banter? No duel? You were just gonna kill me right there and be done with it?" The invisible Maverick Hunter came down at him like a bolt of lightning, slamming his blades into the catwalk where Stealth Claw had been right before he flipped backward. "How horribly tactless," Claw concluded.
He made another impressive backflip, which he lamented being invisible while doing so, and disappeared over the side of the catwalk and into the darkness below. He landed and immediately took cover behind a large glass case, the contents of which he didn't notice until it was staring him in the face. It was a dead reploid.
Stealth Claw choked back a cry of surprise. It was an incredibly early model, perhaps one of the first. It had no synthetic skin, no muscle structure of any kind. It looked for all the world like a robot. A prototype?Claw thought, and then he noticed the plaque at the base of the display. It read something like: "#1: "X Junior." The pioneer of the reploid race. Malfunctioned and shut itself down on..." The date was unreadable due to the blur generated by the NV function.
Claw soon figured out where he was. He was in a showroom, or a museum, or both – all of the displays showing Dr. Cain's early reploid models. He quickly scanned the row of glass cases in front of him. Slowly, they seemed to become more sophisticated down the line. One caught his eye, and despite his best judgment (or lack thereof), he made his way over to it. What caught his eye was that the reploid inside the case was obviously a combat reploid. This became apparent immediately, as did the cause of his death.
The reploid's armor must have once been a staggering green, but dried blood, dirt and age had turned it to a faded olive. A huge, ragged gash ran across his chest, and one of his arms ended at the elbow. The lifeless face, scarred and burnt, stared blankly at him, and caught up in his curiosity, Stealth Claw examined the plaque.
"#17: Drake. In retrospect, the finest reploid I have ever built. Drake carried all the emotions of a human being, and was equally tempted by the vices of human culture. His crimes, his sins, have all been forgiven, and he shall never be forgotten. To my only true son, Drake. Killed in action at Dopplertown, January 2124." Wow...Cain wrote these himself, I guess. Hey, what the... Stealth Claw noticed a message, scribbled in black ink on the glass, which wrote "IM SORRY."
Stealth Claw sighed. He wasn't personally connected to this Drake person, but he could feel the emotion poured into the gold plaque and on the pained message scrawled on the glass. This war was tearing apart people's lives. What made the humans worth dying for? Stealth Claw felt anger bubble inside him. He had completely forgotten that he was being hunted by the silver reploid.
Something else attracted his attention. It was the case next to Drake's. It was empty. Not daring to move in case it would give away his position, Claw looked down at the plaque from where he stood. "#18: Sigma. The most monumental failure ever achieved by man. Died the moment he was infected." Was all it said. Looking up, Stealth Claw found that the empty case had been vandalized, with words like "TRAITOR" and "MONSTER" scratched in bloody red ink on the glass surface. There were other, even less savory words written there, as well as a few explicit drawings.
They don't know who the real monsters are, thought Stealth Claw. Feeling thoroughly sickened, he renewed his search for the Maverick Hunter. He was nowhere to be seen. "Hey, you still here?" Claw called out, rather stupidly. Being as bored as he was, it sounded like a good idea at the time. "Hey! How about we call it a truce? All I came here for was some information!"
"So you've already forgotten about the mechanic you stabbed?" The silver Maverick Hunter finally spoke up. Claw gave a wicked, toothy, and completely invisible grin. The voice was coming from behind a glass case on the other side of the room. Silently, Stealth Claw moved around the perimeter of the room until he was poised to ambush the spot where he'd heard the voice.
However, this brilliant plan fell short when something crashed down on him, knocking his head against the ground. "Idiot. You think I'd just sit there after giving away my location?" The hunter said, its voice a mask of neutrality. Claw growled in resentment. "Now, tell me about Elysium. Tell me what it is, where it is, and what it has to do with Sigma."
End of chapter 23
AN: Sorry if this is too much of a cliffhanger, but it's been awhile since the last update and if I had kept going, this chapter would be over 20 pages long.