Reeve was kind enough to reschedule the meeting. After all, it was important to attempt to excavate Deepground and rescue any survivors that might still be down there. According to Nero, there had been a sizeable civilian population- mostly women and children. However, without Nero, they weren't going to get very far. The meeting began at ten, but Veld had booked the room for nine. There were other things that needed to be discussed.

Max waited, tapping one foot, while everyone chose seats. Veld and Vincent sat side by side, as usual. Shelke sat between Max and Nero. Seated at the head of the table, Max pointed at Veld and Vincent.

"Why don't you start? I think you have something you want to say to Nero, don't you?"

Nero shifted awkwardly, as did Veld and Vincent. Nero hadn't grabbed his shoulders, but still had his arms crossed tightly over his middle. Veld wondered if this was supposed to be some sort of psycho-physical happy medium?

"Nero," said Veld, "I'm sorry that I got angry and yelled at you that night. You and Ned caught me off guard. That's not easy to do."

Max shook her head. "Yeah, I guess that was sort of an apology. Vincent?"

"Just a minute, I'm not finished," said Veld. "Nero, if you want people to understand you and your history, you have to talk to them. To us. We may miss the mark often, but we're doing our best to communicate. Vincent especially has been trying harder than you realize."

"But it was my fault," said Vincent to Veld. "I should have told you about Ned.

"Nero, I'm sorry about the whole thing. I want to understand, I'm just...having a really difficult time seeing your point of view."

Nero looked from Max to Shelke, to Veld and Vincent and back again, clearly on the spot and unsure what to say.

"It's okay," Shelke urged. "It's not like before."

"Apology accepted," Nero told them somewhat mechanically. "I'm sorry I broke protocol. It's...I forget sometimes." It wasn't strictly true. What he did far too often was remember, and when he remembered Deepground, he forgot that he wasn't there anymore.

A pause.

"You...really want to see?" His tone balanced somewhere between disbelief and hopeful.

"Contrary to previous evidence," said Veld, "yes, we actually do. We need to know what we've been missing so we can work with you to get the rest of those people out."

"Well," said Nero slowly, "okay."

Veld started out of his chair as the lights went out, hand automatically reaching for a gun that was not there. Shadows filled the room, deep and thick, more like liquid than an absence of light. Even the glow of Shelke's mag rods was invisible, so dense was the blackness.

"This is your new home," Nero's voice- for once perfectly clear and unmuffled, as if he were not wearing his respirator- penetrated the void. "There will be no escape, no rescue. No one will come looking for you. This is where you will live out your days; how many that will be is up to you."

The darkness lightened slightly, the liquid dark evaporating into a thick, gray fog. Edges of buildings became visible through the mist, and Vincent grabbed Veld's wrist tightly.

The massive outline of Reactor Zero loomed in the distance. Nearer at hand old-fashioned buildings crammed together cheek by jowl. Most disturbing of all, solid shadows of people roamed the streets like ghosts dipped in tar.

"These are your new brothers and sisters," Nero went on. "Either you will bicker, or you will get along. Your choice. Just know that no one else will fight your battles for you. If you start a fight, you had better be able to finish it."

Off to one side, a group of shadows suddenly began fighting. Not arguing, but a knock-down, drag-out brawl that resembled a miniature prison mob swarming one hapless victim. When they stepped back, there was only an oily black puddle left.

"Nothing is given. If you want something, take it, but be ready to defend it. Be ready to defend yourself."

One of the shadows- male from the look of him- shoved a smaller figure against the wall. Afraid he was going to have to watch another murder, Veld gagged as the larger shadow gave the smaller a pounding of a different kind. The smaller statue squirmed, kicked, and clawed, but did not manage to break free. The other shadows seemed to take this in stride. Most just kept walking. One or two paused to cheer on the assailant. No one came to the rescue of the smaller one. Finally set free, the smaller shadow staggered away between two of the buildings, pursued by a couple of other larger shadows.

A whimper from Shelke made Veld turn away. She stood trembling, mag rods gripped in both hands. Tears cut down her cheeks over a decidedly queasy expression.

"'Fair' is a four letter word. We do not use it," Nero went on. It wasn't just his words, but his tone that was so chilling. He might have been commenting on the weather; his speech light and conversational. "Begging for mercy or justice will not be indulged. If you cannot measure up, then you will not last. Know that 'wrong' is something only you perceive. Maybe you had it coming. Maybe you deserved it. If there is a wrong, it's in you.

"We are all subject to the same rules. Some are written, some are not. You will memorize and obey them all, or risk punishment."

Two shadows kissed in a corner, almost unnoticed until a third, much larger shadow, cloaked and crested, came up to them. A gunshot echoed loudly and Max shrieked reflexively, knowing what had happened. She'd seen this once already, in less graphic detail. It had been bad enough as animated silhouettes on a cave wall. There was no way she could watch this in 3D.

"This is home?" Vincent hissed. "This is is what he wants to go back to?"

"Easy, Valentine," said Veld. He shifted, trying to ease the pressure on his wrist. Vincent's grip ground the bones together. It was all Veld could do not to yank his arm away, assuming he could pull free of Vincent's hold.

"Yes," Nero's voice echoed. "This is my home. Our home."

"How?" said Vincent, his voice hollow as death. "You've shown us brutality layered on brutality. You can't possibly miss this kind of cruelty. I don't understand."

Nero materialized from out of the labyrinth of shadow buildings, as dark and ethereal as one of the cast of shadow people he'd created. "I know you don't, which is why I'm trying to show you. That's the speech I give to every batch of new recruits, except you didn't let me finish."

With a sweep of his hand, the cast of shadows disappeared, and Nero with it. The dim light faded, night seeming to descend on the already dark city. A pinprick of white light stabbed through high overhead. Multiple dots of light winked into existence; an indoor milky way of stars strung together with ropes of white. A spiderweb of light was growing, spreading across the cavern. It took Vincent a moment to realize what it was: a map.

These were Nero's routes through shadows, access shafts, tunnels, and caverns throughout Deepground. A couple of children raced past, black shapes against the white light. One was long and thin, the other shorter and much wider. A little girl followed closely.

"There are ways to exist here," Nero said quietly. "Everyone here is a prisoner. Everyone. That includes me."

The shadow children chased each other up and down the tubes of bright light, rapidly changing direction as each tagged the other. Several times all three of them tumbled to the ground, play fighting until two of them got up and ran away again. Eventually they stopped running, and Vincent noticed they'd gotten taller, leaner, yet far more graceful than adolescents had any right to be. One shoved the other, and was shoved in turn. One put the other in a headlock and viciously ruffled their hair. It was rough, but did not quite cross into bullying. After a moment the children- teenagers now- sat side-by-side, shoulders touching.

"You have been forgotten," Nero's voice echoed, "but that does not mean you are alone."

The network of bright tunnels faded, the buried city rising up to become visible once again now that the harsh, white light had gone.

"Look again."

"What am I supposed to see?" asked Vincent. "That's you and Rosso and Weiss. That much is obvious. There's no room for anyone else in your family, that's also evident."

Nero gave a frustrated growl and turned to face him.

"No, there isn't," he snarled. "Get it through your head. I don't know you, you don't know me. Stop fawning all over me like you want something!"

The Nero Veld and Vincent had known would never have dared such an outburst. Perhaps the shadow world he'd created inside the conference room had given him confidence. Even Shelke seemed somewhat taken aback.

"Look, I'm grateful for what you've done, but if that's the price...then no. I don't need your help that badly."

Nero rasped what was probably supposed to be a deep, calming breath, the inhalation crackling loudly in the silence. "Let me try putting it another way."

"What would you do if your world was turned upside-down?" Nero dared. "What if everything you knew was suddenly wrong? Everything that came second nature to you, things you'd been doing since you were born, can get you killed."

Additional shadows snaked up from the floor, coiling around Veld and Vincent's legs, climbing up their bodies. Despite himself, Veld gave a shout and tried to dance away from the encroaching darkness. He calmed slightly as the shadows formed a veil of sorts over his body, masking his clothes with a deep gray likeness of a Deepground uniform.

"Everything is painful, and terrifying," Nero went on. "Everyone knows the rules except you. No one will tell you what the rules are, and if by some miracle you manage to figure out one or two of them, they change. All the time you know you're being watched, so that the minute you fail, everyone will know, and it will all be so, so much worse."

Nero stepped forward, looking each of them dead in the eye for a moment. "Your only way to protect yourself, is to keep the people in charge happy, but most days, you can't even manage to do that right. You do your best, but it's never good enough, but it's all you can do."

The silence hung thick and heavy for several seconds.

"I know that's how you'd feel about Deepground, if you were captured," Nero said quietly. "That's...that's how I feel about the Surface."

Shelke edged over to him, standing close enough that their arms touched.

"You should have said something," she murmured. "I would have helped you."

Nero nudged her arm with his. "You were born into this world. You belong here. I don't."

From the moment Nero had snarled at him, Vincent had gone silent and still. He hadn't even reacted when Veld had started at the shadows crawling over them. Now he turned toward Nero; with his enhanced eyesight, he could probably see him perfectly well in the darkness.

"It's all wrong," he said, voice cracking like rotten stone. "That life. The way you look at it, the way you look at us. You're just as blind as you think we are."

He shoved his chair back, shaking his head. "How you could misunderstand that badly? What am I doing wrong?"

Taking a hesitant step forward, Shelke tried to explain. "Surface behavior will only get you in trouble down there. If the Restrictors know what's important to you, then they've already won. They know how to hurt you, how to hurt them. That's why you don't dare touch, don't show what you're feeling. The moment you do, you're screwed, and so is anyone you care about."

It was a speech she'd given many times, with many variations to recruits too stupid and too soft to be in Deepground.

"You learn to keep it to yourself. There are other ways, quiet ways. Things they won't notice."

"Yes. That. What she-" Nero broke off, paused, terrible realization dawning in his eyes. "They were from the Surface too. No wonder you don't get it."

"Nero," Shelke scolded gently. "Don't. Deepground is as foreign to them as the Surface is to you."

Nero had nothing to say to that. Shelke edged closer to Vincent and lightly touched her arm to his, as she had with Nero earlier. "Yes, it was horrible, but there were reasons to keep going, things that made it bearable. You can still find compassion in dark places."

For once, Vincent was the one who flinched at the contact. He pulled away, breathing hard.

"Don't. Don't touch me."

Veld looked away from the shadows, to Vincent. "Vince? What's wrong?"

Shelke slid away, still within arm's reach, but out of Vincent's personal bubble. Nero tilted his head, eyeing Vincent as he fought for calm.

"Hey," he said, tone calm yet commanding. "Talk to me."

"I...I can't…" Vincent twitched, took a step back, eyes darting around the room, lighting on each person in turn. Emotions flickered over his face, spinning like a roulette wheel from confusion to fear to manic delight, and stopped. His mouth stretched into a grin.

"Shadow-mage," he purred. "Are you the one Valentine claims?" The grin widened. "Baby Valentine, eh?" He snapped a finger on the edge of Nero's mask. "Let's see, little Shadow!"

"Oh, gods," Veld muttered. "Mask, get out. No one wants you here."

"Mask?" Nero echoed, gently yet firmly taking hold of Mask's wrist and moving his hand away from his face. "Don't think I've met you before."

"I'm Valentine's better half," said Mask. He held up both hands in front of his face, peering out between his fingers, grimacing. "Hellllmasker!"

He swung around, pointing at Shelke and Max. "Two little morsels! Verrrry nice." Turning back, he reached toward Veld. "Pretty Bronze! Play with me?"

"No," said Veld. He rose, dodging Mask's grasping hands. "Last warning. Let Vincent go and leave us alone, or I'll put you back where you belong the hard way."

The grin fell away from Mask's face. He jerked his right arm, and a knife appeared in his hand.

"You wanna play that way? Fiiiiine," he drawled, dropping into a crouch. "Who's first? You or shadow mage?"

"I'll play," Nero volunteered, putting himself between Mask and the others. "Just you and me. One-on-one."

"Nero," said Veld, "you don't understand. He's got all of Vincent's...enhancements. Strength, speed, combat training. What he doesn't have is empathy. He'll gut you as soon as look at you. Let me handle him. He knows me."

Nero looked at Veld as if he were crazy. "I'm a SOLDIER, a colored Tsviet. I can do this. It's okay."

Turning to Mask, Nero gestured at the knife. "How 'bout you put that away?"

"Mine," Mask growled, holding the knife a little closer to himself. "Can't have it." The grin twisted. "Why don't you come and get it?"

"Didn't ask you to give it up," Nero said calmly, "just to put it away. I don't want it."

"Don't wanna," Mask grumbled. "Don't….don't want…"

He shook his head, scowling. The knife disappeared, though whether he dropped it or hid it away was anybody's guess. He backed against the wall, panting.

"No...! Mask...N-Nero…?"

The darkness melted away, condensing, converging on a single spot, leaving only Nero standing in the stark white light of the conference room.

"It's okay," Nero soothed. "I'm on your side."

"Nooo, not fair! Never get out to play…" Mask slid along the wall toward the door, his voice rising and falling, one moment Vincent's deep tones, the next higher-pitched, wavering and cracking. "Out….need to get out…!"

"Vincent!" Veld started toward him. "Nero, be careful. He fights dirty."

Nero held up a hand for Veld to stay back, never taking his eyes from Mask. "Stay here with me. We can play. Just us. Okay?"

Vincent's red eyes darted from Nero to Veld and back again. "I want to stay…"

He reached out, grasping Nero's arms. "Stay...with me?"

Nero flinched, but held on. "Yeah, I'll stay with you. It's okay."

Vincent sagged against him, staggering them both. For a moment, Nero's strength held both of them upright. Slowly, Vincent got his feet under him, then straightened up, pulling away.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Never wanted you to see that."

"Is he gone?" Veld asked.

"Yes, but I...I need out. Now."

"Nero, do you mind waiting?"

"Yes, Sir," Nero replied. "I mean no, Sir. That is...I don't mind."

Veld followed Vincent to an empty office across the hall. Vincent sank onto a chair, both hands gripping his head.

"I can't do, this, Veld." Vincent could barely speak around the lump in his throat. "I. Cannot. Do this."

"Breathe, spook," said Veld, one hand on Vincent's shoulder. The pressure of his fingers made a lifeline for Vincent to hang onto, to hold his troublesome headmate at bay. Mask cackled with laughter, crowing obscenities, all knives and blood. Vincent pressed his palms tight against his head, holding the bastard back by sheer will.

"Can't," he panted. "Please, just...get out, go, now!"

"Nope," Veld murmured, sliding his arm along Vincent's shoulders. "Come on, Vince. Deep breath, that's it. Hold it, four, three, two, one...let it out now, four, three, two, one. Again…"

The steady cadence of Veld's voice guiding him, Vincent obeyed, breathing in, out, in again, while his heartbeat slowed and his demons subsided. The pressure in his head, in his mind, eased, little by little. Vincent closed his eyes, deliberately blanked his mind of everything but the warmth of Veld's touch, his voice, his presence. Mask's grumbling faded away, taking with it the creeping certainty of impending disaster. Slowly, the shaking subsided

Forcing Hellmasker to back down always gave him a headache. Worse than that, worse even than the humiliation of turning into a crass, egomaniacal lunatic in front of his friends and his son, was the deeper pain of knowing that he could never mean anything to Nero, would never be a part of the family Nero wanted.

"Better now?" said Veld.

"No. What am I doing wrong, Veld? We've given him a home, a job, simple friendship. He expects violence in return-he thinks I'm trying to coerce him into bed with me! I'm losing him, just like-"

"Vincent. Forget the rest of it for a minute. Nero is not Sephiroth. You can't force him into that space in your heart. Nero is Nero, and you have to accept him, or not, for who he is, not who you want him to be."

Vincent flinched. "Is that what I'm doing? I didn't mean-oh, gods." The shaking started again; it wasn't Mask this time, just the shock of an unwelcome revelation.

"But...Nero wasn't afraid of me...of Mask. He said he'd stay. Did he mean with Mask, or...with me?"

Veld sighed. "Vincent, I need to say this, even though you won't like it..."

"I'm listening."

"Nero was right. He doesn't belong up here. Deepground will never be what it was, thank the gods, but if that kind of strictly-regimented life is what he wants, what he needs, then I don't want to stand in his way. We were wrong to try to force him to fit into surface society. Let him create what he needs with his family, once we find them."

"And if they're dead?" Vincent asked, very quietly.

"Then he can make an offer to those who survived: Make a new Deepground, one with the kind of rules and values they all understand."

Vincent shuddered. "You can't mean that. You saw what it's like: Every man for himself, the strong preying on the weak….Even with the Restrictors gone, it's still limited, still brutal."

"And what kind of system did we adhere to, as Turks?"

"That was different!"

"No. The difference was, we had a choice. If Nero wants to live that way, if he finds others who choose, of their own free will to, to do the same, they have that right."

"Is it really a choice if it's all he's ever known?" Vincent shot back. He was pushing, and he knew it, but he couldn't stop. "That was indoctrination talking, not free will! He's taking the easy way out."

"Maybe, but it's not our decision. It shouldn't be."

Between the pounding in his head and the queasy feeling in his gut, Vincent couldn't find a hole in Veld's logic. Underneath the instinctive denial, it all made sense.

"Why?" he said, knowing the answer would only make him more unhappy.

"Look at it this way, Vince," said Veld. "To us, the violence and cruelty outweigh the kindness. To Nero, it's the other way around."

"All right," Vincent said, although it wasn't. He couldn't argue anymore. Thinking it through, he found other things to worry about.

"What if they become a new threat to us? You once said Nero's too powerful to ignore."

"We'll be on guard," said Veld. "We know what to watch for. You may not be the expert Nero is, but with your affinity for shadows, and Chaos as a backup, we can defend ourselves if we must."

"I won't treat my son as an enemy!" Vincent hissed. "He may not want me in his life, but I won't turn my back on him."

"We can keep the lines of communication open," said Veld. "But here and now, we stop treating him as a lost soul who just needs a hot meal and a blanket to be like the rest of us."

Vincent winced; he'd dragged Veld into this, brought Nero into their home, forced Veld to accept him. Not cool, Valentine. Veld had a right to be impatient with him, a right to be done with the whole situation.

"I'm sorry," Vincent whispered. He couldn't get his voice to work properly. "Don't...be angry, Veld, when I say it's my fault. It is. And I'm sorry."

Veld knelt next to him, put his arm around him. "You're forgiven. Now, what do you want me to do?"

"What?" Vincent turned his head. Veld reached, brushed Vincent's hair out of his face.

"What do you want?" he repeated gently. "I'll do it, whatever it is. Just tell me. It'll be okay."

That was more grace, more generosity, than he had earned, more than he deserved. It gave him strength.

"Help me find his family," Vincent said. "We promised."

"We'll do that," said Veld. "And afterward?"

"Help me let him go," said Vincent. "At least he'll be alive. That's more than I got the last time I lost a son."

Veld started to speak, perhaps to disagree, to argue, perhaps to admonish. Vincent watched him change his mind. "If that's what you want, spook, then we'll do that."

"It's not what I want," said Vincent. "It's what Nero wants. I can't expect anything more."

"That's probably true," said Veld, rising and pulling Vincent up with him. "You think you can live with it?"

Vincent nodded. "I have to."

"I shouldn't have done that," Nero mumbled, mask fizzing with the words. "It was a stupid idea. All I did was scare everyone."

"I just wasn't expecting it," Shelke soothed. "It's okay, really."

"No it isn't," he argued. "I know you're just being brave. I should have thought about that."

"It's okay," she insisted.

Forlornly, he looked at Max. "If you don't want to talk to me anymore, I understand."

She blinked. "What? Why wouldn't I want to talk to you? Honestly, guys can be so dense."

She rose and went over to Nero. "I know Deepground was a violent place. You told me enough, that one time in the cave, to make it clear. But the world's….not a safe place. I'm not a kid, Nero. I don't believe in unicorns and glitter fairies. You don't have to sugar-coat anything for me. I'm not going to hate you for being honest. Okay?"

He seemed a bit taken aback by her answer, but nodded. "So you don't think I'm a psycho? Or that I don't like you more than the people I knew underground?"

"You're not a psycho," Max said. "I've known a few. As for the rest...we're still friends, aren't we? I mean, we are as far as I'm concerned. Vincent's got his own issues. You'll have to ask him what that was all about, it's not my story to tell. All I know is, I'm still cool with you if you're cool with me."

Behind his mask, Nero grinned. "We're cool."

The door opened, letting Vincent and Veld back into the room. Neither one said anything more about why they'd left.

"All right, Nero," said Veld, as cool and professional as only a Turk could be. "You've had your little show, and we get the point. Now let me make one as well. We all had a home. Good or bad, rough or soft, we all came from somewhere. Believe it or not, we old men and women miss our old homes, too. We want that solid ground, that familiar routine.

"But we all have to grow up. For most of us, growing up means leaving home. Time only moves in one direction: Forward. I'm sorry this happened the way that it did, but all it really did was push you out of the nest.

"Here's the deal. Work with us. Between your shadows and your knowledge of Deepground, and the sheer muscle of the WRO, we'll search the compound stone by stone until we find every survivor, pull out everyone who didn't make it. I hope your family survived. But either way, you're going to have to take the result and move on, make a life however and wherever you can. Anything less dishonors every principle you believe in."

He glanced at Vincent. "Anything to add?"

Vincent stared at the tabletop, rather than meet Nero's eyes. "I understand about family," he said, his voice thick in his throat. "I promised to help you find yours, and I will. Anything else is...not a consideration."

Veld looked back at Nero. "And there you have it. Let us know what you decide."

"Yes, Sir," Nero said, bristling slightly at Veld's speech.

Max gave Veld a Death Stare before turning back to Nero. "I think he means 'life sucks, now get on with it.' In his own nasty Turk way, he's saying he wants to get started on the work and everybody should stop crying about it."

Veld gave her a poison smile. "That's close enough."

Reeve entered the conference room and was greeted by five uniformly haggard expressions.

"...did the coffee shop close, or did I miss something?" he asked.

"Forget it," Veld told him waving the remark away perhaps too forcefully with one hand. "Nero was...just trying to give us an idea of what we're walking into."

"I'm sorry I missed it," Reeve said, juggling a couple of long rolls of blueprints. "These were the most recent plans I could get my hands on. Nero, if you wouldn't mind?"

Nero and Shelke stepped forward to examine the old architectural drawings. Nero's brows creased as he squinted at the tiny print.

"Is this supposed to be Level A?" he asked, pointing at the labels.

Reeve shrugged. "You'd know far better than I would. What's on Level A?"

"Nothing on here." Nero shuffled the papers, looking at the other plans, sighed, and pulled one at random from the pile, spreading it out.

"Okay, none of these are any good," he began. "So Deepground's like up here, except in reverse; everything goes down instead of up."

Veld blinked as shadows rose up from the blueprints in solid shapes- miniature halls, rooms, and corridors. Some of the details were glossed into generalizations- classrooms, dormitories, barracks, storage bays- while others were rendered in meticulous detail. The shadow models rose up, each on their own floor, like plates on a tea tray. There were more layers to Deepground than he had imagined, at least as many circles of hell as there had been floors in the Shinra building: close to seventy.

"Level A is the highest," Nero began. "It's unimportant stuff: vehicles, weapons, ammunition, stuff that if it was found, it wouldn't matter all that much. All the sensitive stuff is way down here at the bottom.

"Just looking down from the top, Levels A through G are more or less gone."

The shadow miniature collapsed on itself, forming a crater the size of Veld's head.

"The alphabet floors end on Level L," Nero went on. "After that, it goes by numbers. They descend as you go deeper. There's no people housed on the alphabet floors. That doesn't start until level fifty. It's in rough shape, and I haven't seen anyone in there yet, though all I did was make a cursory sweep.

"The storage record vault and the mainframes are all on level ten, it's also the ground floor of Reactor Zero. There's still more stuff under it, but again, it's mostly storage. The only things below that are the mako caverns.

"The Mothers are over here, under Sector Six. The children are right next to them under Sector Seven. The barracks are in Sector Four. The barracks got hit hard, and there's a lot that's fallen in. As far as I can tell, the Mother's area looks okay, and so does the kids'. It's the troops and Tsviets area that got squished."

Each of the sectors covered multiple levels, and Veld felt his stomach sink at the sheer scale of the task in front of them. From the look on Reeve's face, he had also realized that they might have bitten off a bit more than they could chew.

Vincent studied the areas that Nero had highlighted, drawing on what little he remembered clearly from the night Chaos had trashed Deepground.

"There were a lot of bodies in the halls went I went through looking for your records," he said, without looking directly at Nero. "I'm assuming those were mechanics, office workers, some troops, and so on. I didn't see any kids, thank the gods."

He glanced at Veld. "What I'm wondering now is whether Chaos-um, if we got everything we intended to get. Nero, where were the labs located?"

"Well, the people-labs are over here," Nero pointed. "There's the ones for the soldiers, and the ones for the Mothers and kids. They kept the mongrels over here," he pointed at the other end of the complex. "I wouldn't worry about those. Animals are smart. If they survived, they can take care of themselves."

"Mongrels?" said Vincent.. "...You know what, never mind. What about the scientists? I assume they were housed in the lower levels as well. Could you give us a list of the people you remember...doctors, other medical people? There may be people we'll want to question, if they survived."

"I can try?" Nero hazarded. "I only really knew the ones who dealt with the soldiers."

Shelke looked up at him, a sceptical look on her face. Nero glanced at her and she looked away, expression once again smooth.

"I can...provide you with a list of people from my unit," Nero said slowly. "I can't speak for anyone else's."

Veld hadn't missed the byplay between the two former Deepground residents.

"Nero," he said, "this isn't going to work unless we're all on the same page. Our main goal is to get the survivors out and to locate your family. However, Deepground as an organization represented a threat to the surface world. A lot of what went on down there was unauthorized research and experimentation. Anyone who worked in those labs should be able to provide information. We need to talk to them. So is there something you're not telling us?"

"I can't tell you what I don't know," Nero said, a slight huff to his words. "We weren't supposed to know or care about what went on in the labs. Most of them wore surgical masks all the time. I didn't know their faces much less their names."

"I can help with that," Shelke spoke up. "I was a bit more nosy that way."

"All right," said Veld, still looking at Nero. "That would be good."

Max looked from Veld to Vincent, to Nero and Shelke, and back.

"I think that about wraps it up, unless there's anything else…?"

"Nope," said Veld, packing up the maps.

As they all moved toward the door, Vincent stopped Nero before he walked out.

"One question. What was your title, in Deepground? Commander? General?"

"Commander Sable; General, Third Division," Nero replied, monotone.

Vincent nodded. "Fine. Commander Sable it is from here on, then."

He turned to leave. "Until later, Commander."

It was cold, and he knew it; and that was the way it had to be.