Sean sat in his room on the Avenger, his left leg was opened, and he was fiddling with the wires, he'd taken a shot in it during the battle that they found that Harold guy, Shen had fixed it, but had apparently missed something, it had been acting a little strange, not enough for anyone else to notice, but it was reacting just a tiny bit slower than the other one, and he was checking for any loose wires. He could just go to Shen of course, but he'd rather be able to repair it himself, and didn't want to give Shen more work, she had a lot to do now that the Commander was back. He found a wire that was slightly loose, and he began taking open the casing to fix it. It was a strange sensation, to be taking apart your own leg, and not feeling pain from doing it. As he was closing the casing after readjusting the wire, he heard a knock on his door.

"Come in" Sean called, as he started closing up the rest of the plating on his leg

"Hi Legs" Alice's voice came from the doorway, and Sean looked up from his leg to see her standing in the doorway, wearing a dark blue T-Shirt and Black Trousers, and Trainers, he hair was out of the pony-tail she kept it in during missions, and hung behind her, it reached just below shoulder height. Sean meanwhile was wearing a dark green shirt and shorts, he never bothered with shoes anymore. "What're you doing there?" She asked

"There was a loose wire in the left leg" Sean explained as he finished closing the outer-casing on the leg "How can I help you?"

"It's the man we picked up on the last mission, Harold, I managed to convince the Commander to give him a chance at talking to us and-"

"And you want me to be the one to talk to him" Sean guessed

"Precisely. You do have a calming voice, I thought that it might help"

Sean smiled, they often commented on his voice, if he didn't have his legs, his nickname would probably involve his voice. "What would this entail?"

"Explaining what happened to X-COM, and what's been going on since"

"Surely you know more on that subject than I, as would the Commander"

"But, the Commander was part of the old X-COM, so we don't know how he'll react"

"Understandable. But why do you not do it?"

"Because he saw me the last mission. But he hasn't seen you"

Sean thought for a moment. He'd seen what the man had done to the Officer, he had taken his bare hands, and smashed the ADVENT soldier's head, helmet and all, into the statue, until the head more resembled a yellow-ish puddle on the side of the statue. If he freaked out, he doubted they could stop him before he suffered a similar fate. If it was anyone else, he'd decline, but he knew how strongly Alice felt about this, she had talked about to the Commander about it for days before she got her way, and he knew she wouldn't be coming to him if someone else could it, also, not that he'd tell anyone, but she was like a daughter to him. He knew the other's thought he was in his 40's, and he let them think that, but he was actually 57, so it was quite possible that she could be his daughter, in an age way anyway.

"Very well" Sean replied "Give me a few minutes to finish up"

"Thank you Sean" Alice said, she did look genuinely grateful.

"Of course. But, if I do get my head destroyed, I am going to haunt you"

Harold sat in his prison cell, as that is what it was to him, that forcefield was all the way around the room, but most concentrated at the window. When he'd awoken a few hours ago, he found he was on the same bed as before, but was not strapped down this time, and there was a plate of food on the floor. He ate the food, not worried about any kind of poison, if it was poisoned, his Combat Stims would destroy it the moment it tried to enter his blood stream. The Hunt-Pain was constant, and he had spent the last few hours sitting on that bed and gritting his teeth. His instincts were yelling at him to get out and kill something to dull the Hunt-Pain, but he forced that down, it was incredibly difficult, and as time went on he found himself sliding off the bed before he realized what he was doing and he got back on. He was running out of willpower to resist it, a few more hours and he would have to break something. Whoever was holding in here had apparently figured out that tying him down hadn't helped, but they still hadn't done anything other than keep him locked in here, if they were torturers, this would be effective against most people, fear of the unknown, but, all it did was make him angrier, and if someone came inside, he was quite likely to just rip their arm off, just to get rid of the Hunt-Pain for a few minutes.

Sean stood in the room, looking through the 2-way mirror, Alice had described his reaction before, and Harold was clearly a lot calmer than before, maybe because they hadn't tied him up this time, maybe because he knew the forcefield would knock him on his ass. Fixing that wire had sorted out his leg, and it no longer had that slight delay, which he was happy with, but now he was going to have to try and talk to that guy, and his heart was going nuts

"Thank you for doing this Sean" Alice said.

Sean turned and gave her a smile "As long as I do not lose any more limbs, I will be happy to do it"

Dr. Tygan was at one of the consoles, apparently Shen had set up a speaker in there when they had knocked him out, so that they could talk to him without having to actually go in, which Sean was grateful for, however, in order to use them, they'd have to deactivate the forcefield, which could mean that Harold could get out. Alice had a Taser in a holster, as did Tygan, but Sean himself had nothing.

"Whenever you're ready" Tygan said, motioning to the controls

Sean came over, and looked at the console, he didn't understand what half of the thing did, but he saw a microphone with a red button beneath it, and knew enough to know 'Press the button to activate the microphone'.

Sean pressed the button, and spoke into the Mic "Hello Harold"

Harold was just about to break the bed he was sitting on, in the hopes that it would be enough to dull the Hunt-Pain when a voice came from nowhere "Hello Harold". It was quiet, and soft, and sounded gently. It sounds like a kindly granddad was Harold's first thought, though he didn't know where that came from. He looked around, trying to spot where the voice had come from, and the Hunt-Pain receded slightly at the prospect of having something to fight.

"I am Sean" the voice said "You are currently in the Avenger"

Harold didn't say anything, he had identified where the voice was coming from, the far corner of the room, though he couldn't see where it was from exactly.

"Can you confirm that you are Harold Sanders from the original X-COM operation?"

Sander's? He'd heard that before. He knew his name was Harold, but who was this Sanders? He recognized the name, but didn't know where from. X-COM? He'd heard that, it felt important. He looked around, trying to recall what It was, and noticed that there was no longer a red sheen over the glass wall anymore. He approached it.

"Can you confirm that you are Harold Sanders from the original X-COM operation?" Sean asked. Though they had confirmed it from Alice's Archived photograph's of the survivors of the original, he figured he should at least test his memory, or see if he was lying. Harold looked around, he looked like he was thinking, then he turned, and looked straight at Sean. It was disconcerting, but there was no way Harold could see through that. Harold approached the glass, put his hands up against it, then brought them back, and slammed them into the glass. There was a muffled boom as he hit it, and crack's spider-webbed from the point of impact. Tygan drew out his Taser, and Alice put her hand to the holster.

He slammed his hands into the glass, and the Mirror effect failed. He looked through the glass into a small room, with several panels scattered around it. There was a man behind one, a microphone in from of him, clearly the one that was speaking, he was and older man, next to him was a dark-skinned bald man, with a pistol-like device in his hand, on his other side was a woman, her hand at her hip. He had met that woman before. He pointed at her "X-COM", remembering the events before he had first passed out.

"X-COM" Harold said, pointing directly at Alice. It seemed he could see through it after-all, there was a flashing red light on the panel, and Tygan said

"It's lost the mirrored effect, he can see us".

"X-COM" Harold repeated, pointing at Alice again.

"Yes" Sean said, using the Microphone, since he didn't know if Harold would be able to hear through it "We work for X-COM. Apparently so did you"

Harold looked down, looking like he was thinking. "Commander. Shen. Vahlen" He said eventually

"Do you want to see the Commander?" Sean asked

"Vampire. Psycho. Spray. Boomer"

Sean looked to Alice "The Code-names of Maxim Popov, Aya Haidar, Karl Wagner, and Harold Sander's. The only soldier's that survived the betrayal of Ryo 'Xeno' Goto. We don't know where they are"

Sean turned back to the microphone "Do you know where they are?"

Harold didn't even seem to be hearing him, he just kept muttering names, which Sean had no idea what they meant. He turned to Alice "I don't think he's all there"

Memories came flooding back to Harold, he was remembering the last moments of that day, before he flooded himself with the Stimulants. The memories raced through so fast he almost didn't know what he was seeing. But one thing stuck out at him, a man, who looked a bit like him, on the balcony above him, his left side burned and scarred, and mostly replaced with robotic parts. He remember the code name first, Smokes. Then he remembered his actual name Joe Sanders. Then he remembered what the name Sander's was. His own last name, and he slammed his fists into the glass in front of him again, using all his strength, the glass shattered, raining down in a razor-sharp hail that you'd have to be mad to run through.

Harold stopped his muttering, and slammed his hands into the glass again, and it shattered. Without even a pause, Harold launched himself through the hail of glass, there was a splash of red as he was lacerated by the hail of glass. Just as he jumped out of the hail, he was struck in the chest by something, and Sean turned to see Tygan had fired the Taser. Harold twitched, but kept coming forward, slowly, but he still kept coming. He got 2 more steps before he was struck by a second Taser. This second Taser overwhelmed him, and Harold collapsed to the ground, crunching into some remnants of glass.

"That could have gone better" Sean said

"Could have gone a lot worse" Tygan replied.

"The Commander was right. He was too unstable, we should have just left him sedated.

"We had to at least try" Sean replied "He might have known where the other survivor's were. We know he knew their names. So he does remember things. But it seems like seeing you triggered something"

"I shouldn't have been here. Someone else should have done it"

"Hindsight is 20/20" Sean replied, laying a reassuring hand on Alice's shoulder "We can keep him sedated until we can be sure"

Alice laughed "That was exactly what the Commander suggested"

"But at least we tried"

"I guess"

"Come on. Let's go get a drink. I heard Ash has got his hands on some new drinks"

"I'd still like to know where he get's that from"

"And I'd like to know what Roman writes in his diary. There are some thing's we'll never know"

Aya woke up in the tiny room, and stayed still. She pressed her ear to the wall and listened, nothing. She grabbed the dagger, and pressed the button to open the wall. Cautiously, she poked out, and searched the room. Nothing appeared out of place, though she noticed the dust around the table had been moved. Someone had been down here, and had looked around. She went over to the 'Bedroom' and peeked in. The same as she'd left it. She went back to the hidden room, and brought out the bags, then pulled Maxim back out as well. She took him back into the 'Bedroom', and placed him back on the mattress. She was about to head back into the when she heard a noise, and she turned to see Maxim bolt up to a sitting position. Aya was about to get the bags and prepare to move out, when, instead of screaming, Maxim spoke '3 Days. Blood Way. 4 AM'. After saying that, he fell back to his usual position as if nothing had happened. Aya was a bit taken aback that he'd actually spoken, but she recovered quickly, and headed to the ladder to figure out where this 'Blood Way' was.

William cracked Rover's firewall, and took control of the GREMLIN. "Yes!" William allowed himself a brief celebration, before he started programing in his new orders. Normally, he took manual control, but he wanted to do something a bit more sneaky this time, if things went right, Shen wouldn't even notice for a few days that he'd even done the hack. He set it to record constantly, send all it's recordings to him, and never shut down, he also adjusted some things, so it would fly slightly crookedly, and a bit slower, so she'd think it was broken a bit. He also set up a few other sneaky things that she wouldn't find out for a while. He also, sneakily, set it to use it's own firewall to block his own. So any time Shen attempted to break into NoClip, she'd actually be trying to hack ROVER. He thought that was pretty clever, it took him 3 days to figure out how to do that. He was probably going to give it away next time he saw Shen, as he knew he'd have the biggest shit-eating grin ever, but it would be difficult to de-hack what he just did, he spent a lot of time working on it, so even if she did find it, she'd basically have to go into it and manually reset it's code. This was fun.

I've only been following the 5 soldiers (And Harold Aya and Maxim), because, unfortunately, the loading screens for XCOM take ages, and it's really annoying, so I've only actually gotten around to doing the first mission. Although I will hopefully be getting a new computer in a few days (potentially), which will, hopefully, speed up the damn loading screens and the lag. The missions will be a bit less turn-like in the description, since I think XCOM 2 allows for it more with the skills of the soldiers. Also, just so no-one get's confused, I have a few mods on, so I'll have leader training at some point, and have the 7 Long War classes (Shinobi, Ranger, Assault, Gunner, Grenadier, Sharpshooter, and Specialist). The Character's will also be a bit deeper, and actually have some stuff we find out about them as time goes on, rather than the first one, where I just gave them personalities, I actually gave them backstories, and the XCOM 2 world actually let's them be involved. Anyway, I'm rambling. So, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy this story.