"How is the research coming?" The Commander asked as he entered the science bay of the Avenger. Tygan was at one of the computer, scanning data and typing. Nearby was Keiran, he was a short man, with short blonde hair, he was a Nano-technician before XCOM, working on small robotic units that could fit on the head of a pin, needless to say, that required precision, and that precision was very useful here. Although he was out of his depth right now, Psionics and Nano-bots are rather different things, but he was trying. Soo was in a different room, separated by a pane of reinforced glass, she was currently dissecting a Sectoid, she was completely in her element. She'd been a coroner before XCOM, someone that investigated bodies to determine how they died. Although human and alien anatomy was different, it was a simple enough transition for her. She was wearing an orange hazard suit, not that they though the Sectoid's blood could be dangerous, but as a just in case, they might have some kind of venom sacks like the thin men did. Tygan looked up as the Commander walled in.

"Very well Commander. With the information we received from Miss Lost we have made great headway into it. I have a decent grasp of the science behind Psionic abilities. Although the practical use still eludes me. And that may become a problem"

"Why?"

"Because, without a thorough understanding of the inner workings of Psionics, there is a chance that even if we do manage to create plans for something to help Maxim, we could miscalculate something and-" he trailed off, but he didn't need to finish that anyway, there were dozen's of scenario's flowing through the Commander's head.

"Is there anyway I could help?"

"I don't believe so. As we are, it could take month's to figure it out enough to create something to help Maxim"

"We may need to drop the research then"

"Indeed, about the only thing that could help us understand it at this point is an active Psionic user"

"What about Harold, he was quite a powerful Psionic before"

"Yes, and he still is, however, his body seems to have reacted strangely, locked the ability away in his subconscious. He can't control it actively aside from keeping the stims going now"

"Any idea how that happened?"

"Probably some reaction between the stimulants and his body. They were never meant to be used for more than a few minutes at a time, let alone 2 decades"

"I will let you get back to work"

"Commander" Tygan turned back around in his seat and went back to work. He'd give them 3 more days he decided. If they couldn't come up with anything by then... Maxim would have to stay asleep.

Alice sat in her room on the Avenger. She was holding the file that Lost had given her. She had no idea what would await inside. 'A show of faith' Lost had said 'Something ADVENT would never want you to see'. What could that be, secret plans, the location of a new facility. But they could get those on their own with, admittedly, a lot of work. No, this would have to be something that they'd never be able to find out on their own. She carefully pried open the file (She hated ripping files), and managed to get it open with only 1 small rip. Inside was a small stack of papers. She grabbed them, and slid them out. Upon first glance she knew this was big. First off, everything was written in ADVENT writing. That wasn't a problem, On Peng, one of the scientist, could read it fluently. But it showed it was something secret. And there was something else on the front that she semi-recognised. It was a symbol. It looked like the XCOM logo, but instead of 'Vigilo Confido', it had something in ADVENT, and over the XCOM logo, was what looked like a Sectoid head, made out of human skulls. This couldn't be good. She flipped through it, stopped, went back a page, and saw a picture of someone she thought she recognized. She turned to her computer, and brought up an image, and sure enough, it was him. Karl 'Spray' Wagner. One of the soldiers of the old X-COM. This was big. Nobody had heard from Karl in 20 years. If ADVENT knew where he was.. No, she was getting ahead of herself, she looked back down to the file, and went through a couple pages of text, before coming to another mug-shot. This one was of an ADVENT Officer. But something was different. The helmet was the same, with just a plane back background, and only the shoulders were visible below. But there was defiantly something off. She brought up a picture of a normal Officer, and held the file picture up to it. There was defiantly a difference. It was slight, most people wouldn't be able to notice anything, and even Alice couldn't quite tell what it was. She flicked to the last page, and saw another paragraph of text. She couldn't get anything from this, other than it involved Karl in some way. She flicked back to the fist page, slid it into the file. And headed to her door. As the door slid open, it revealed Aya standing there, with her fist up, as if she'd been about to knock. Alice jumped slightly. "Oh, hi Aya. What's up?"

"That file that Lost gave you. Do you still have it"

Alice brought it up from her side.

"Anything?"

"It's all written in ADVENT, I can't read it. I was just about to bring it to Peng"

"Show it to me. I know a little ADVENT"

"Really?"

"Just basics. I had to sneak into some bases a couple times, I picked it up"

"All right" Alice took the sheets out and handed it to Aya. As soon as Aya saw the front page, she nodded

"I've seen that symbol"

"Where?"

"On an Officer, when I found the plans that lead me to the Resistance haven"

Alice nodded, she'd told her the story. "Any idea what it means?"

"Well, the one on the Officer didn't have this writing" She looked at the writing below it, it took her a few seconds to reply. "Hammer, and, Anvil. Any idea what that's about?"

"That was the most common tactic used by Alexander the great. Essentially, bog the enemy down with your main force, the send in a strike force, in his case, cavalry, to strike from the flanks and rear, very effective, and deadly to morale. You should check out the rest of it though"

Aya flipped through the pages, and stopped as she reached the page with Karls mug shot. She seemed to be scanning the page. After a few seconds she looked up "I can't make heads or tails of this"

"Let's just take it to Peng. He'll know what it says"

"Yes" Aya flicked it back to the front page, and slid it back into the folder "I think this will be interesting"

William was in a daze. What had just happened. He'd bumped into a girl, and electrocuted her. He'd expected a punch, but had instead been taken to her room, and kissed... There was that photo as well, he knew the name Digkale. But it was far from his thought's right now. And what had Stacy been doing. She was normally such a solid person, speaking normally, carefully, very to the point. Then he bumped into her and she's speaking a mile a minute.

"William!" A female voice called out from behind him

William turned, and saw that it wasn't Stacy like he thought. It was Shen

"Hey. You got a minute?"

"What's up?" William asked. He was kind of confused now. Normally women would go out of their way to avoid him. He hadn't gotten pheromone's from Lost had he?

"I just finished working on something. Come have a look, you'll love it" She turned, and lead the way towards the engineering deck. He was really glad she hadn't grabbed his hand, or her would probably have shocked her right on the spot.

He followed her down a couple ladders to the Engineering deck, then down a set of stairs. He'd never been this deep before. Though ROV-R had-. Oh shit. Was this some kind of revenge plot for when he'd hacked ROV-R. He honestly hadn't know that she took ROV-R EVERYWHERE. He thought she'd leave it outside during her shower's. He hadn't even looked at it. She caught on to the hack and deleted the recordings before he got to it, honest. He was about to consider running back the way he'd came, when Shen opened a door, and revealed a wall of armour. Oh good. So she'd finished the Predator armour she'd been working on. He had to stop himself giving off a sigh of relief.

Shen pointed towards one of the suits of armour. It was a mix of white and dark green, like his current armour. "Try it on. Once that's on, I have something else to show you as well". Aw shit, was this just a REALLY elaborate revenger plot, get him into armour so she could... He didn't know. Something! But he didn't really have much of a choice now. He'd been awed by the sight of the armour, and had walked into the room. So now Shen was between him and the exit. He had no choice but to go with whatever Shen was planning here.

"Peng. Can you have a look at this" On Peng looked up from the screen he was at. As part oft he research team, he was helping with the Psionic's research, but he was a linguist, not a scientist. So his job basically became, 'Hey Peng, translate this would ya'. He looked over, about to shout at Keiran that was still working on the file he'd given him no more then 5 minutes ago, when he noticed that it wasn't Keiran. Or Soo. Or even Tygan. It was 2 of the soldiers. He recognised one of them, Alice, she came down here a few times and had checked out some of the work they were doing. She was the Commander's advisor, so she tended to get around. He didn't recognize the other one. Then again he was kept busy with translations, and rarely left the Research wing.

"Uh, wha-what is it" He had a stutter when he was stressed. A rather strange quirk for a linguist, but there you go. He might have a stutter occasionally, but he could speak just about every language on the planet, from English, to Japanese, to Ancient Greek, to ADVENT.

Alice held out a folder. It was just a plain brown folder like you'd get any file in. It had clearly been opened, as evident by a small rip. He took the file, and opened it. He took out the file. "Hammer and Anvil?"

"Yeah" the other one replied "We got that much"

"Where did you get this?"

"From Miss Lost" Alice answered

"The Black Market robot?"

"That about sums them up, yeah"

He flicked through, and saw that it contained a lot of writing. "Uh, come back in about, I don't know, an hour, hour and a half, and I'll have it translated"

"You can't just do it now?" the other one asked

"No. It's a lot of writing. I could read it out to you, but that could take the better part of an hour, and I do my work better alone"

"Thank you Peng" Alice said "Come on Aya. Waiting 1 hour won't kill us" Alice lead the other one away.

Peng rubbed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and let out a sigh. What he wouldn't give for one of those ADVENT burger's right now. Sure he'd heard the rumours, bu he was beyond caring, he'd had nothing but military-style rations for a month. He needed some real food. He let out another sigh, opened up a new document, and began translating the 10 pages of text he'd had dropped into his lap. And they wondered why he never left the lab.

William stood with his new armour on. He had to admit, it was an amazing piece of gear. It was lighter than the old suit, but you tell by looking at it that it had some serious improvements. It even had a mag-lock on the back for all of his gear, and the fingertips of his left hand had been left open, so he could use hi Taser fingers without electrocuting himself.

"How is it" Shen asked. She was leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

"Great. It's so light"

"Glad you like it. Now for the real surprise"

Oh shit, here it comes, she was going to kick his ass or something right. He didn't feel a kick, and re-opened his eyes, and saw a GREMLIN come flying over. It was white, like his, and had the word NOCLIP scratched onto the front. But it just looked, better. He stared open mouthed as it came over, and settled into a position above his right shoulder. "Uhh" was all he could manage to choke out

"I upped the GREMLIN's. They should be faster, tougher, and, I'm sure you'll appreciate this bit, have more processing power"

"How much more?"

"About 4 times what they had before"

"Woah"

"Yeah" Shen had stopped leaning on the wall, and now seemed to be coming out properly as the computer geek she, they both, were. The followed about 20 minutes of non-stop techno babble about how she'd improved the GREMLIN's. William had a great time. Until Shen said "Which should make it easier for you spy on me in the shower"

William stopped dead in his tracks. So she was going to hit him. He stood there, getting ready to brace or run, for about 20 seconds. Before Shen burst out laughing.

"Too easy" she explained as she doubled over from her laughter

"Not funny" William said. Which made her laugh even more, she was holding onto the wall to stop herself from falling. "I thought you were going to hit me".

Slowly Shen recovered from her laughter, a couple stray chuckles still going through her. "Anybody else, and I'm sure you'd been on the wrong end of an ass-kicking. And I'd be taking bets as to how long Zacharie would have to look after you for" she stopped for another fit of giggles "Besides. You've got nothing I want anyway"

With that statement, she turned, and went back up the stairs to the engineering room. This was the second time within an hour that William had been left alone in a room after a woman had done something entirely unexpected. He wasn't used to this much social. But he decided that he didn't really mind it. After about half a minute, he got his act together, and headed back to his room, still not entirely sure what had happened to him today, but deciding to clear his head with some good old- Masambe. The name just shot into his head as he was heading back. Masambe Digkale. Where was that name from? Quickly he sprinted back to his room before he forgot the name. Today was only going to get weirder for William.

"You need to try harder than that" Roman said as he closed his diary before Sean could get a look, yet again.

"Seriously Roman, how are you doing that"

"You would have to read it to find out"

"You know I'm going to get a look at that at some point"

"Not while I'm around"

"We'll see" Sean called as he went back out of Roman's room.

Roman took a deep breath. For all his bravado, he knew Sean was right, one day he was going to get a look at these. Then none of them would ever look at him the same way again. He should just stop, burn the book, and make sure no-one ever saw it. But he couldn't. He'd spilled his soul into this book, and couldn't just get rid of it, nor could he stop. Once he was finished, he'd take it straight to the Commander, and face the consequences of keeping this to himself. He was nearly done as well. It wouldn't take him more than a few weeks to finish it at this pace. He took another deep breath, and finished off the sentence he was at before he closed the book and put it away. He didn't want to have to put those words, but he knew he needed to get it out. So he wrote down the 3 words he most regrets ever using. 'Hammer and Anvil'.

"How's it coming Peng?" Alice asked. Peng was just sittign in his chair, staring at what was in front of him. "Peng?"

Slowly he turned to look at them. He ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair, it looked like he hadn't cleaned it in a while. "I need a lie down" was all he said before he got up, and walked past them, heading for the door.

"Peng?" Alice asked as he passed her

"It's all there" he replied as he passed through the door "Every last word" he went around a corner and was gone.

"This doesn't seem promising" Aya said, but Alice was already at the chair, reading the translation. Aya might be fearless in combat, but when it came to knowledge, nobody beat her.

She read through the document, picking up the key facts then turned to Aya, who hadn't been reading it. "Alright, essentially. This, Hammer and Anvil, basically, the ADVENT version of XCOM"

Aya cocked her head to the side

"Small strike force that would go places their larger armies couldn't. Which, on it's own, is bad. If we have to go up against them, it'll hurt. But it get's worse. Well, Karl, he's, he's leading it"

Aya didn't really seem to react, and she spoke with her regular, monotone voice "So there were 2 traitors in X-COM"

"No, that's not it. It seems that Karl was captured that day, and he was the first subject of the alien's 'Gene therapy'. And they turned him into an ADVENT Officer. Now this is an older file. So I can't say what they're doing. But if ever face anyone with that symbol" She pointed to the symbol on the front of the file "We need to be prepared. They'll be well equipped, better trained, and probably with better Gene-mods than the rest"

"You had better inform the Commander" Aya said, and then she turned and walked back out of the room. Alice would have gone after her, but she had to sort this out, and get it to the Commander, quickly.

If it seems like these are coming out fast, it's because they are. It's half-term, so I have a lot of time on my hands, and I'm in a real XCOM mood. So they should keep coming out quickly for this week. Guess we know what happened to Karl now. And if anyone has been wondering about how Harold and Aya managed to use ADVENT weapons. Don't worry, there's explanations for it. It'll just be a while in the coming. This one should be a fair bit longer than the first one. Because it started a good way into the game, while this one started right at the beginning, and this one also has a lot more non-combat stuff to do as well. Thank you for reading, and I hope you stick around for the rest. Shits about to hit the fan.