"Welcome to the Lost Emporium" the figure behind the counter said. It was a small room, and dark, bare metal, except for the metal counter the figure stood behind.

"Miss Lost?" Alice asked. After getting the coordinates, the Commander had ordered the Avenger to make for them, he was just as curious as Alice to find what they were, and nobody could find Ash to ask him. Once they'd arrived, they'd had to spend a couple days finding the exact location. It was an underground bunker. The Commander had ordered an exploration. Alice lead the group, Aya came as well, her shotgun would be deadly in such close quarters, William joined too, they might need to hack through some doors, and Roman completed the group, his demolitions expertise would come in handy if things went south. They had followed a single corridor, and got to a door, William had been about to try and hack it open, when it slid open, and revealed the room in front of them.

"That is one of my names" their hood was pulled up, and the darkness prevented them from seeing their face.

"You like being mysterious don't you" Roman said, it wasn't really a question.

"I like my mystery as you like your privacy" Miss Lost replied "A, diary, a believe, no-one ever see's inside"

"How do you know about that?" William asked

"We know many things here" Lost spread their arms, and the walls slid up, and a second wall slid in. This secondary wall had all sorts of computing equipment along the back wall, files spread across the left wall, and a variety of weapon modifications, and skulls along the right, lights also flashed on from overhead. "Many of which will be useful for your Commander"

"Many things we have to offer" she waved an arm across the counter in front of her, and the metal slid down, revealing a glass case, like in jewellery stores, but it contained what looked like computer chips "But we do not offer this for free"

"Who are you?" Aya asked, Alice could see she was slowly reaching for the knife that she kept in an ankle-sheath.

"You have no use for that" Lost said, and with another wave of her arm, the knife flew up out of the sheath, and into her hand.

"How did you-?" Alice began

"We do not reveal our secrets" Lost said, and held out the knife, it flew back into the sheath. "But, we may be persuaded to part with some"

"Persuaded?" William asked

"We have resources you need. You have resources we need. A simple arrangement"

"How do we know we can trust you?" Aya asked

"We oppose the same foe. The saying 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' seems particularly apt for this"

"How do we know you aren't working with ADVENT to sabotage us" Alice asked

"Ah, a thinker. Very well. A show of faith". Another wave of her arm, and something dropped from the ceiling, right into Alice's hands "Something ADVENT would never give you. And perhaps, something more personal" she reached up her arms, and pushed her hood down.

It was difficult to tell if the face was human, with robotic parts, or robotic, and made to look human. The entire lower jaw was a dark silver colour, and clearly metal, both eyes glinted with a pale green light, the head was completely bald, but had dozens of thick cables coming out of various parts of the head, and into the back or shoulders, the skin seemed human-like, but it had a kind of toughness to it, that made it look like leather rather than skin. As they lifted their arm to pull back the hood, the sleeves fell down their arm slightly, revealing hands that were made out of the same dirty silver as the lower jaw, and seemed skeletal, along with tubes moving around it.

"Woah!" William exclaimed "That, is, AWESOME!" he took a step forward, then seemed to hesitate "Can I touch it?"

Lost held out it's (for it was difficult to say if it truly was female at this point) arms, and slid up the sleeve of it's left arm with it's right, revealing that the skeletal metallic arm continued up past the elbow, along with the tubing, every few seconds there was a slight hiss and what looked like steam smoked out of the joints of the arm. "Proceed"

William took another step forward, and just touched the arm, after nothing happened, he seemed to get more confident, and he began moving the arm around, messing with it, and looking at it from different angle's. Lost spread her other arm "Have a look, see what you like. Everything has a price of course, but I'm sure we can come to an agreement with your Commander"

"Who is this we you speak about?" Aya asked

"Do you think I do this alone?" there were several burst of steam from the connection of the jaw to the skull, it seemed like laughter. "There are many Misses and Mr's here. Lost is merely the keeper of the market"

"Who are these, Mr's and Misses?" Roman asked

"Agents. They work with us, gathering intel or other resources" it turned to look at Aya "Ensure safety" it looked at Roman "Providing motivation" it turned to Alice "Showing people the dark side", and finally it looked to William, who was still playing with it's arm "Providing motivation".

As Lost mentioned showing the dark side, Aya remembered what it was that had made her realize that ADVENT wasn't as perfect as the propaganda made it out to be. She'd been 19, walking home from her university, when a figure had run past her, and, somehow, gotten her backpack off of her back, and sprinted into an alley. Alice loved her books, and chased after him. She'd managed to keep up, getting to a corner with just enough time to see the figure go around another one. After a few minutes, she'd found the backpack lying on the ground in front of a chain-link fence, she'd figured they'd dropped the bag to get over the fence, she picked it up, and had been about to head back, when she realized she had no idea where she was. She looked around, and saw an ADVENT trooper was standing a short ways down the fence, apparently guarding the entrance. She looked behind the fence, and saw a small building, it seemed no bigger than a garden shed, and she had no idea why an ADVENT trooper would be protecting a shed. She was curious. So she began approaching the Trooper to ask him where the nearest bus stop was so she could get home, where she could try and find out what this place was. Just as she was about to step into view, and vehicle came around the corner. the Trooper opened the gate, and it drove through. While it was stopped at the gate, she saw someone sitting in the back seat. He was sitting looking straight forward, he had a receding hairline of light brown hair, a few wrinkles showed his age. She recognized him, Sean O'Connor, one of very few people who spoke against ADVENT. She hadn't really seen anything about him, but had heard he'd gone missing a few days ago. As the car stopped at the gate the man turned, and looked straight at her, and she realized that his face was covered in bruises, his left eye was swollen shut, and his nose was pointing the wrong way. He looked at her, and she saw that he hadn't bee calmly sitting, he was terrified. He stared at her, with terror in his eyes, and mouthed a single word to her 'Run'. And she had. She'd ran, taking turns at random, and eventually found herself back at the bus stop she had been waiting at before her pack had been stolen. She had then devoted all her time to figuring out what had happened that night, and discovered many unpleasant truth's about ADVENT, hidden deep, deep down in the deepest, darkest Archive's possible to get to.

"That night, in the alley-" Alice began

Lost held up the hand that wasn't being fiddled with "I believe that was Mr Fade"

"How did you-"

"We know much, and can guess what we do not know"

Alice saw similar realizations in the other's eyes. Had these guy's really had a hand in all of their joining XCOM?

"We are a subtle group. We do not engage ADVENT openly as you do. And we knew Bradford was looking for soldiers to re-start the war. We found those with suitable attributes to allow success, and, gave them a push. Not all were successful, but enough were"

"You have your hands in a lot of pies" William said, as he stopped checking out Lost's arm. "Did you guy's fuck with my hacking"

"I do not know the exact details of all the agents, I do not believe I even know all of the agents. Besides" It put it's hood back up "You are here to shop"

"Speaking of shopping" William said "You guy's do cybernetics?"

"Hey guys" Ash said. He was standing near the Avenger as the group came back, minute William, who was still 'Shopping'.

"Who are you really?" Aya asked

"How much did lost tell you?"

"Quite a bit" Alice replied

"Well. I'm Mr Ash, nice to meet you guys"

"So, you're with this group?" Roman asked

"Yeah. But I was never as good at the whole sleuthing thing, which is why I was sent to you guys. Mr Phoenix figured my skills were better suited to you guys"

"Phoenix?" Alice asked

"One of the higher ups" he held up his hand to silence them before more questions came out "Don't bother asking more, I don't know much, and even if I did I'm not allowed to tell you. Just introducing you to Lost had to be ordered by Phoenix"

"Your boss is Phoenix and you're Ash?" Aya asked

"It was his idea. Rising from the ashes. He likes metaphor's"

"So Ashlie isn't your real name?" Roman said

"I don't know"

"What do you mean you don't know" Roman pressed

"I mean I don't know. I've never had any name for more than a few years"

"What?" This was just too much information in too short a time, Alice was struggling to process it

"I can't tell you much. But basically-" Ash's eyes went wide, and he make a choking coughing sound, then fell backwards.

"What the fuck!?" Alice was just confused, scared, angry, and about 20 other emotions at the same time

After a few seconds there was a loud gasp from Ash, followed by laughter

"No, no, I couldn't hold it any longer, oh god that was too good" Ash was just laughing on the ground "Ow!" he stopped laughing quickly as Aya kicked him sharply in the side

"Stop messing around, and just tell us" Aya snapped

"Okay, geez, just trying to lighten the mood. Alright, so I'm not entirely sure, they never told me much, but, from what I know, and some educated guesses, I think that we're basically raised to be agents of the Shayyyy- I can't tell you that. But we're just raised to be these badass ninja guys or something, and I was never as good at the stealth, so I ended up being the enforcer type deal. I can't give you guy's my entire life story, but yeah, secret agent-type deal"

"What is Miss Lost?" Roman asked

"I think they're an Android. Like, I think they started off human, they went really robotic and stuff. They've been with them a lot longer than I have. Hey, where's Hax?"

"Shopping" Aya replied, walking past Ash and going inside

Roman followed behind her.

"Hey, Alice, are we cool?"

"That depends"

"On what?"

"Do you know a, Mr Fade?"

"Fade? Fade, Fade, Fade. Ah yes, Mr Fade. Not personally, but I can get in contact with him. Why?"

"Just tell him, Archive says thank you"

"Is this going to hurt" William asked. He was lying on an operating table in a chrome room, there was an assortment of medical equipment around it, and only 1 other person. Miss Lost.

"I do not remember"

"That's comforting"

"You are certain you want this?"

"Yeah. It'll be awesome"

"Very well"

"Hey guys" William arrived back at the lounge room on the Avenger, all the other soldiers were there. "Check this out" He held up his left hand, and there was a loud crack and electricity shot out of his fingers into the air "Taser Fingers!"

They all just stared at him.

"Oh, I can also do this" from the corners of his eyes, a small beam of blue light shot out, and created a hologram in front of him, it showed all of them looking at him, in miniature, see-through blue form. "And this". The last statement came not from his mouth, but from a nearby speaker.

"You are a strange man" Harold replied before returning to beating the stuffing out of the poor training dummy he had been in the process of the destroying. This broke the spell, and the other's also went back to doing what they'd been doing before, not even giving William a second glance

"You guy's are no fun" William headed back out, going back to his room. This is why he didn't socialize.

On the way back to his room, he bumped into Stacy, one of the resistance fighter's they'd picked up during that operation. He'd been distracted thinking about how to get past ROV-R's firewalls, so he literally bumped into her. When he bumped he got a little shock, and she got a big shock, as he accidently set of his 'Taser Finger's' (Not what Lost had called them). Stacy let out a yelp, and jumped backwards. Her hair, although already short, was all sticking straight up. "The fuck was that!?"

"Uh... Taser Finger's...?" William was getting ready to get punched. He'd bumped into people at school when he younger, often it had resulted in a black eye.

"Wait, you did that with your fingers?" Stacy asked

"Uh, yeah" He held up his hand again, and the electricity cracked out of his hand.

"Thatissocooldhowcanyoudothatcanyouteachme" she spoke so fast that William couldn't even keep up, he got 'That is so cool', then it all blurred together

"Did you just say you think the Taser Finger's are cool?"

"Yeahthat'sfreakingawesome" Again she was speaking really fast

"Then check this out" the holograms came out of his eyes, he hadn't been focused on anything in particular, so a hologram appeared of himself and Stacy in the see-through blue hologram, slowly rotating.

She just grabbed his hand, and began leading him away. William didn't protest. A pretty girl was holding his hand, he was just trying to make sure he didn't electrocute her again.

William wasn't paying attention to where they were going, he was devoting all of his mental capacity to controlling his taser fingers. It was like someone had told him 'Don't think about shocking her'. Just as he felt that he would shock her through loss of willpower, she released his hand, and he released the shock in a loud crack. He'd have to learn how to control that properly. He looked up, and noticed they were in one of the room's on the Avenger, but it wasn't his. His had a big computer against one wall, and most of the panels were missing, and there was exposed wiring all over the floor from his tinkering. But this room, was messy. There was clothes just thrown on the floor, plates of food left on the side, bits of paper strewn about. It took him a second, then he realized that it reminded him of his dorm at college. It was the room of someone who just couldn't be bothered to clean. He liked it. Then he noticed that among the clothes, were bra's. And he finally connected the dots. They were in Stacy's room.

"Uh, what are-" He didn't get to finish his thought, as Stacy just leaned down (she was an inch or 2 taller than him), and kissed him, square on the lips.

"Toodles Taser-Fingers" Stacy said, and walked off, leaving him in her room. William just ended up standing there for about 10 minutes, as he tried to process what just happened.

As he just stood there. He noticed a picture on the table, sitting on top of a box, which was the only reason it was visible above the piled junk on it. It looked like a family photo. There was a dark-skinned girl, with short cut hair, she was kind of blurry in the picture, like she'd been moving when it was taken. Standing next to the girl was a boy with messy blonde hair, glasses, and a cap for some sports team (William had no idea who, though he thought it had an eagle on it?), the boy looked a year or 2 older than the girl. Behind the 2 children were 2 men. One was a large man, well muscled, he looked like a boxer, dark skinned, either very short dark hair, or bald, William couldn't tell. And next to him was a, in comparison, thin man, with glasses and white skin. Written beneath the picture, in what looked like black felt-tip, 'The Digkale's'.