The Corpus child's questions had made me question myself and my motives, but it was not until I met him (whose name shall not be spoken) that I decided to do something about it. And that was when everything started to go wrong…

Chapter 10: Captured?

Alpha! Could you please and kindly leave your eye open next time you pass out? Do you have any idea how annoying it is to not be able to see but still be conscious? Do you have…

The annoying sound of Beta nagging me cuts off abruptly, and I feel a sort of silence in my head. It's as if I am alone, finally. But where could Beta be then?! I open my eye and go to sit up, but a firm hand pushes me gently back down onto the bunk on which I had been sleeping.

"You are awake, finally."

"Who are you?" I telepath back. I cannot quite seem to lock onto this persons' mind, it seems cloaked in mist or fog of some sort.

"I will answer your question shortly, is the other one inside your head asleep yet?"

I quickly check, and find that Beta's consciousness is in fact dreaming, although what he is dreaming of is beyond me. It seems as though he is a child in his dream, aware but unable to defend himself in what I quickly realize is a nightmare. He is being experimented on by some people in white and golden robes.. or maybe they're lab coats?

"He is asleep; did you do that?"

"Yes, I did. I'm afraid I cannot trust him like I trust you, and if he were to tell your 'brothers' what he would hear from me; they would cut you down without a second thought."

"Okay, so now that Beta is asleep, will you tell me who you are?" I'm beginning to get the impression I'm not going to be brutally killed by whoever my kidnapper is. Which is nice.

"I have no name, but by now the Lotus and your self-righteous 'brethren' will know of me as The Stalker."

"Speaking of my brothers, where are they? Are they alright?" I realize that the last time I saw either Antonio or Isaac was in the middle of the firefight with the quadrupedal proxies. Not somewhere anyone would wish to stay for any period of time without much better shielding…

"Your 'brothers' are currently in cryo-sleep. They are safe. I will give you the pods when you go, but they must not learn of this place."

"Thank you. Now, what did you need with me?" I'm still a little bit on edge, but my kidnapper – this Stalker person – has just said he will be letting me go and that he will let me take the others with me when I go. So presumably, whatever he wants me for is not going to be too bad…

"I had hoped to discuss some things with you; to make you an offer, and to make some things clear to you."

"So, you just want to talk?" I ask, almost letting a little of my incredulity slip into my telepathic voice.

"Not quite, but yes. For the most part. I thought, since I had saved your life and the lives of your 'brothers', you would hear me out?"

This is true I realize, he had saved our lives, those proxies had still been arriving on the platform when I had passed out, and when I awoke every single one was destroyed…. Did he do all of that alone?!

"I haven't even thanked you for that, have I? How impolite of me; Thank you for saving the lives of my brothers and I, we owe you."

"It is simply my way of paying back the debt I owe you, although it is nowhere near repaid."

"The debt you owe me?"

"Indeed. How much do you recall from before you entered cryo-sleep?"

"Absolutely nothing. Like nothing at all, I don't even know who I was before"

"Ah… that is… unfortunate…"

We both sit in awkward silence, mulling the situation over. This shadow-cloaked assassin in the strange warframe owes me a debt of some sort from before I entered cryo-sleep. Bearing in mind that saving the lives of four Tenno 'is nowhere near repaid.'… it must be a pretty impressive debt. What on Earth could be worth more than the lives of four Tenno? Unless he has been adding interest to the debt since I entered cryo-sleep, I cannot think of anything that could compare. A life is the ultimate price, is it not?

"Damian" he finally says, interrupting my thoughts

"What?"

"Your name was Damian, before you entered cryo-sleep. You remembered it even after the experiments, even after the transfer…"

"What experiments?"

"The experiments that made you into an almost-Tenno, and the other ones… if you don't remember, it is probably best I do not tell you… It rather upset you last time you found out…"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, last time you found out what had been done to you an entire facility went off the grid, all that was found afterwards was wreckage…"

"I destroyed a facility in my past life? So what? I can destroy any facility now as well, provided I can access the reactor…"

"You don't understand. It was before you… it was before you became like you are now…"

"What is that supposed to mean?" I almost growl at him; my temper is beginning to flare.

"I mean; it was… no it is probably best if I leave you to find out."

So, clearly this man knew me in my last life, but he refuses to tell me who I was other than my name. He also refuses to tell me what 'experiments' I underwent before I entered cryo-sleep. It seems, almost like he is scared of me… perhaps I can use that to my advantage? Or maybe I should be reasonable… He is still clearly much more capable than a full squad of Tenno, perhaps it is best not to anger him. Also, he had saved our lives, so I could at least try to be grateful…

"Ok, if you won't tell me, will you at least give me a clue?"

"No."

"Why n..."

"I will do better than that." He pauses again, as if in thought. "Stay here, I will be back momentarily"

With that vanishes! No warning, no change in his kneeling stance, nothing. He must've teleported. But that warframe he wore, it definitely wasn't an Ash or a Loki, and there's no line of sight to anything in the room I'm in… I quickly glance around the room, taking in my surroundings; The room itself is Tenno in architecture, but seems to be more… angular and jagged, almost more sinister. The bed I am lying on appears to be some sort of medical bunk, nothing special. But comfy nonetheless. Other than the low-bed the room is devoid of furniture, nothing of any significance is to be seen. I bet there would be secret compartments somewhere - there almost always are in a Tenno owned room - but I have no time to look for them. He reappears seconds later, holding a small holo-disk. He touches my hand, transmitting several sets of coordinates to the holo-emitter embedded in my palm.

"When you feel you are ready, find these vaults, and remove the data. You will need to piece together the data from all the vaults for it to make sense. I will warn you; you will not like what you see…"

"So, you'll tell me, just not in person?"

"In essence yes. Before you go, I wish to make some things clear."

Uh-oh… this is where things get interesting…

"Go on…?"

"Firstly, I would like to make it clear that while my loyalty is to you I am still bound by my oaths, and as such will have to refuse any requests that would hinder my mission. Secondly, while I am your friend, the Lotus must never find this out, and as such I will pretend to hunt you on occasion just to keep up appearances."

"Your loyalty is to me?!" I blurt out, before he has quite finished speaking.

"That is correct."

"So, you when you 'hunt' me what am I supposed to do?"

"Kill me," He replies bluntly. "I can re-form. You, on the other hand, cannot."

"You can re-form?"

"Yes. Almost all the Orokin guardians can. That includes your 'brothers', so if they 'die' don't fret; they will return."

"But… I can't 're-form'?"

"You are not an Orokin guardian, Tenno or otherwise."

"So, you're Tenno, but I'm not?"

"I was a Lower Guardian, a bodyguard. At one point I was bodyguard to the Emperor himself. I was his bodyguard when the Tenno betrayed the Empire. I am not Tenno, nor do I wish to be. You, on the other hand, were created as a… different type of Tenno. Not Tenno in the traditional sense of the word... more of an experimental prototype akin to a Tenno"

"How am I different?"

"You do not want to know, not yet."

"I do!"

"Trust me, you do no- "

"If you won't tell me I'll ask the Lotus!"

"NO!" He shouts immediately. I jerk my head in surprise, having not realized how loud someone could get telepathically. I brace myself, but the next sentence is barely a whisper… "If she discovers what you truly are, she will seek to destroy you! You are biologically, physiologically and psychologically close enough to a Tenno not to be discovered, but if she suspects anything… she knows what to look for. Do not tempt fate, because I'm not sure if I can save you from her. And I know full well, I cannot withstand losing my only remaining brother."

I stare at him for a second. He called me brother like he actually meant it, not with that condescending tone of voice with which he refers to the other Tenno…. Can he really mean? Like, a biological brother? This man is my literal brother?!

"You are my brother?" I half-demand.

He pauses for a moment, thinking. I can almost sense his mind travelling along the different potential routes of what he can reveal without putting me in harm's way. I can almost hear the cogs whirring, and then they stop.

"I have said too much." Just like that he's moved on… even I couldn't be that cold towards a literal flesh-and-blood brother, could I?

"But you sai- "

"Come. I will show you where your ship awaits, I have already loaded your friends cryopods onto it. Each cryopod has the coordinates of where their Lisets are hidden. But now you must go."

He moves suddenly, grasping my arm and teleporting both of us to an ancient looking docking facility. I can see my Liset there, glinting slightly due to the buildup of ice. We must be really deep in space, because I can't see any planets I recognize… My Liset's entry hatch spins to receive me, and The Stalker gently, but firmly, moves me towards it. I step into it and take hold of the handgrips. As I turn to look at him, he whispers some last words into my mind.

"I am your brother. I will see you again, but for now farewell." And with that he kneels and vanishes, leaving only the lingering shadow-smoke that accompanies him to fade into the thin atmosphere of the hangar. It seems to be Tenno in design, but… older?

I stare at where he knelt, finally realizing; I am not alone, I have an actual brother – not that lunatic who I share a psyche with – an actual brother… Not a brother in arms, but an actual flesh and blood brother… One who is currently up to his eyeballs in trouble, and is no doubt about to drag me into the conspiracy with him. I get the feeling this may not have been an uncommon occurrence in my previous life either.

Uuuuggghhhh…. What time is it? The ever irritating voice of Beta re-emerges within my head, as the other lunatic within my skull awakes, hopefully unaware of what has just transpired.

"It's about time you stopped snoozing. We have work to do." I reply, glancing at the two frost-coated pods that are blocking the corridors of my Liset.

Don't be silly, I can't fall asleep in your head. Sleep is a biological thing.

"Well, what do you call what you just woke up from then?" I retort, feeling a small glimmer of satisfaction in the knowledge that Mr. Know-it-all is going to absolutely freak when he realizes he's not sure what's going on. And sure enough…

Wait, what?! I slept? That's not physically possible. What the hell is going on?!

"Chill, you just spent a while snoring in my mind. It's no big deal." I know my acting nonchalant is going to set him off…

NO BIG DEAL?! You think it's no big deal for an entity incapable of sleep to do the very thing he cannot do? I literally just did the impossible!

"Yea, and if you weren't so lazy you wouldn't have slept through it all."

Shut up Alpha, and tell me what you did!

Oh crap, I need to come up with a cover story for what just transpired. I had probably been unconscious for quite some time. Ah, not good…

"I… I errm… I slept too. I had this really weird dream as wel-"

Yes, I can see... A dream where you sat and stared at some sort of weird Tenno for half an hour in an abandoned dojo. Come on, I might not know what you said, but we can both use your eye and your memory.

Well… shit.

"He wanted me to make a bargain to betray the Lotus, in exchange he'd give us back the hostages."

The hostages. Hmpf. I've heard that he's good, he almost got Isaac the other day. But I doubt even he could defeat and capture four Tenno at once.

"Beta, don't you remember how the proxies basically defeated us? And what do you mean he 'almost got Isaac'?"

Oh, yea. That sounds just like one of them; wait until they're weak and then drop in and kidnap them before they can revive! Bloody cowards. I mean he appeared out of nowhere, shot Isaac and left him to die. Fortunately he had enough energy for a revive - else we'd be hunting for his distress signal right now..

"He saved our lives. You should at least be grateful for that." I make a mental note to ask him later about why he referred to the Stalker as 'one of them', are there more shadow-cloaked assassins looking out for me? Do I have more brothers?

We would've reformed. There's nothing in the system that can kill a Tenno long-term.

"Really?" I ask, but in my mind I make a note of the fact that Beta doesn't seem to know that I - allegedly at least - can't re-form. That is nice to know, but also very inconvenient. "So there's no way whatsoever to kill a Tenno?"

I exaggerate. Anywhere with sufficiently high radiation can screw up the re-forming process and effectively kill a Tenno. Oh, and you can get assimilated into the infestation. Or fall into the sun, or the vacuum of space, or if you're really unlucky you can be 'integrated' into one of these crazy projects the assorted factions have going on.

"Crazy projects? Like the Zanuka project or whatever it was called?"

Yea. Couldn't you see that those proxies had warframe technology built into them? The Corpus don't have the technology to produce such agile robots.

"Say What?!"

Those robot wolf things with the missiles, they were made using pieces of Tenno. Most likely the Corpus had been scavenging every cryopod they could find and got lucky on a few… The Tenno they take from cryo-sleep remain unconscious… but if a awakened Tenno is 'integrated' they will remain aware of what their components are doing, but be unable to control it. It's a really really awful way to…

That's when something clicks. Without any explanation to Beta, I turn and rush back to the interior of the Liset, squeezing quickly past the cryopod in the left corridor. I race around the corner to the blast door, and feel my heart sink. There isn't a third cryopod! There're only two cryopods. I can see Antonio in the one I just passed. Isaac is in the other. But where's Loki? Shit…

I quickly message Loki, and upon receiving no reply yell at Ordis to set a course for Jupiter. If Loki has been captured…

There's no response. "Beta, what's happened to Ordis?"

He's logged off. I'll restart him. You get those two out of Cryo. We have some rescuing to do!

I step to Antonio's pod and type in the standard code to open it. For the first time in five minutes something goes right, and the pod begins the thawing process. I move to Isaac's pod and repeat the process. I glance down and see that The Stalker has carved the coordinates of the Lisets onto the reinforced glass on the top of the pod. Impressive, bearing in mind how strong that glass stuff is….

I'm dimly aware of Beta yelling at Ordis through my head, but I ignore it and move to navigation. I enter the first set of coordinates and then put the second into the ship's memory banks. In my frustration I'm about to turn on the manual piloting when Ordis grouchily agrees to take us to 'the middle of bloody nowhere'.

Antonio has just woken up, and upon realizing this isn't his ship has let out a string of curses so foul that I can feel the contained atmosphere turning blue from it. Isaac is even less patient and, sensing the frenzied tension in the small space, punches straight through the glass of his cryopod and hauls his colossal frame out through the gap – stretching the metal bars on either side. I'm so glad I wrote down the coordinates before I woke him…

Both Tenno join me by navigation just as we blur into the void, and we exchange glances as we drop out of what is practically hyperspace - only to be greeted to the sight of two Grineer galleons circling the small black and grey coloured Liset. Bloody marvelous! At least Stalker was kind enough to the others to put their weapons into the pods with them.

Its barely half an hour later when we leave the two floundering galleons - spewing oxygen, fuel rods and other important looking bits into the vacuum of deep space – and turn our ships towards the second set of coordinates. Both ships are now devoid of life, and bearing in mind the state of their reactors, they will probably be sufficiently swamped with radiation to make them unusable for a few centuries. Space and time blurs and this time we see that the second Liset is intact and undiscovered. I quickly jettison Antonio through my ship's airlock, roughly towards his Liset, and watch as he skillfully redirects himself in the zero-gravity – despite his shields flaring from the cold - towards his own ship's airlock. Seconds later he's on board and the third Liset's engine's power up – accompanied by the sound of distant telepathic swearing.

We quickly arrive at Jupiter and locate the site of our last battle. The colossal city is listing heavily and smoke is obscuring most of it, but we find the platform we had occupied before. Our cephalons turn the ships and allow us to 'combat deploy' which consists of jumping from the airlock on the now-vertical ships to the platform a couple of meters below. I hear Beta cheering as the three of us land in sync, barely a meter from the pod. I move to it and check it over, it seems to have been tampered with... but its intact. That's when I notice; it is now empty… Not good. At the moment though, we have more pressing concerns. The whole gas city is falling apart, and there's a good chance Loki is still aboard it somewhere, since his Liset is still orbiting Jupiter and scanning this particular city – waiting for him to approach a landing platform or edge so it can swoop down and retrieve him. The question is; where? The city is one of the larger ones, probably 20km across the central segment. If we weren't in such a hurry, I'd stop to admire the magnificence of it. It may not have the golden splendor of an Orokin Space-City, but for sheer size and complexity it was not far off…

As I jumped I had noticed that there was still a significant quantity of debris on the platform, but as I move through it now – at ground level – I realize that actually, in some places the piles of robotic limbs and components are about waist high! Stalker must've really screwed this 'Zanuka project' over, if he destroyed so many of their troops… Then, almost randomly, I'm drawn to one of the hulls. The proxy that once operated it has been destroyed, it's processors impaled by a large arrow, but the shell… The shell does indeed look a lot more organic than normal Corpus proxies. Perhaps Beta was right, perhaps these are made of Tenno… What a horrible thought. I was running a hand over the hull when Beta interrupts my thoughts;

Hey, why don't you scan them, since you don't seem to believe me that'll prove it.

"Does it need proving?"

Yes, I'm not completely certain either.

I produce a codex scanner and quickly skim it over the hull of the proxy. It beeps in acknowledgement once or twice and then fades, it's battery used up by transmitting the data to my Liset's data-banks via a void transfer. I send a querying grunt in Beta's direction within my mind.

The scanners are one-use. We'll learn what it found out once we get back to the Liset. For now, focus, Loki is still out there somewhere.

I move to catch up with the others when I notice something else is downloading itself to my onboard computers… I quickly check it and find, to my surprise, that I've somehow managed to download a few blueprints for some sort of weapon called a 'Detron'. Every time I pass the Hull of a destroyed proxy – a Zanuka – I see a new download start. I have roughly enough of the one-use blueprints to make about thirty of these 'Detrons' already… I wonder if they're worth anything.

We advance deeper into the now-deserted city. There's no sign of any living thing except the odd blood splatter on a wall. Some are still dripping, so presumably someone was here recently. I also notice, that actually, the city's automatic recycling systems either cannot reach out to the platform… or cannot recycle the proxies due to their Warframe technology. I suspect it to be the latter, seeing as there were no other corpses except for the quadrupeds on the platform. I hope that the cause of the recent blood splatters was the occupant of the cryopod, and that he or she went to find Loki. Or perhaps he came back to help the slumbering Tenno….

We keep walking, completely unaffected by the increasing amounts of smoke thanks to our Warframes. That was another brilliant feature of the armor, it allowed the occupant to breath in more or less any atmosphere, be it the gas-rich stratosphere of Jupiter or the corrosive atmosphere of Ceres. There were a few things that a Warframe could not process, but unfortunately the different factions all had access to one or the other of them. The Corpus used the original Orokin gas, and the Grineer had produced some sort of cheap replica that they couldn't afford to put in all of their outposts. The Infested of course, used their own spores, those things could chew through metal, and digest more or less anything. The smoke would probably not be of any concern to a crewman either, for a short while at least, but they had very limited life support – being of little worth to The Company. The proxies on the other hand… Their optics got coated with soot, their thermal sensors went haywire, and they mistook every shadow for an enemy. This of course, led to a rather amusing situation whenever someone set fire to a Corpus base, but did make it a lot harder to infiltrate one as well, since the whole base was in a state of high alert because the proxies were collectively reporting hundreds of thousands of intruders every minute.

Antonio was leading our group, and presumably had some idea of where to go, since he hadn't stopped to ask us for directions or advice. He was probably heading to the reactor actually… Since the whole city was on fire, either Loki had released an Ember Warframe user, or he'd messed up the main reactor. Based on the frightening levels of radiation – it was probably the latter. Ember users were apparently quite fun to be around, but they tended to adopt a slightly pyromaniac approach to life. "If its flammable, it should burn. If it isn't flammable, make it flammable and then make it burn." Was the way Isaac had described their attitude. From what I'd heard, he probably wasn't far off...

I find myself wishing I'd gotten a look at what Warframe the Tenno inside the cryo-pod was wearing, since it would give us clues of what to look for. It was actually more or less impossible to track a Tenno due to our design, but since we were fighting a war against impossible odds most Tenno had been ordered to leave 'tracks'. They were, essentially, a terror tactic – a 'look who was here' for the most lethal and undetectable assassins in the known universe. It would, in time, cause the other factions to fear us enough to inconvenience them. Tracks usually consisted of Rhino footprints in solid steel floors, crescent shaped slashes in walls from an Exalted Blade, or just something simple like no functioning electronics in an ENTIRE city. Apparently Loki tended to leave a base more or less intact, the only exception being a minor re-arrangement of the buttons on the reactor or a slight reprogramming of the automated defenses. He always told us when some poor soldier had pressed the button to power up the reactor and almost died of shock when the self-destruct sequence announced it had begun (they usually died minutes later anyway, either due to the reactor going off, or just simply by being executed by some superior somewhere who had a low tolerance for 'those idiots that just press buttons without checking what they do'. So far it had happened three times, but if we rescued Loki now, then it would likely become a trend.

Not that we ever complained. It was always refreshing to hear that reinforcements had arrived at such and such a base, powered the reactor up higher to keep the place running with so much more demand on it, and blown themselves sky high. Some of the reactors were nuclear, and they weren't much fun, but the void reactors were great. They tended to take out the base, and the surrounding few miles of whatever environment they were in. Loki had shown us the one time, when a void reactor had gone off, how it had actually melted most of the neighboring galleon at the shipyards. There was literally nothing left except the front hundred meters or so of the ship that was just hanging there on the only remaining crane. The catch was that the reactor had been almost 2km away!

We trudged on, if we knew where Loki might be, we would've run. But as was, we had no idea where to go, and so we walked. Eventually, we arrived at the reactor, swore a bit, and announced that Loki had not done this. Antonio examined a console and then said something about phasic energy transfers and wormholes - that went completely over my head - and Issac nodded and agreed that Loki couldn't have done this. That meant that the other Tenno was free, and presumably knew enough about reactors to know how they worked – and how to stop them working without vaporizing half the city…. This was one of the prototype Oxium reactors the Corpus were building, and since none of us knew anything about them – other than that they were volatile (and apparently involved radiation somehow - based on the extremely high radiation levels nearby), we would be glad to have someone who did.

We kept searching, eventually splitting up. We'd checked what seemed like the whole city over, every corridor, every control room, the foundries, even the living quarters. Nothing. No sign of Loki or the other Tenno. When I say no sign, I mean we hadn't seen them. We'd seen plenty of evidence of their recent presence. There were still sparking pieces of machinery that had been ripped from the walls, and claw marks melted into the ceilings, floors and every other available surface. Presumably the new Tenno had a pair of Venka, since nothing else could leave claw marks like that… It looked like a crazy person had been through here, attacking everything like a Moa in smoke!

We had split up by now, so I was following the almost-comically overdone 'tracks' left by the Venka wielding Tenno, Antonio was checking out the control rooms again, and Isaac had gone to destroy something to relive stress. We still hadn't seen any life signs. I had encountered one proxy, a Moa that was hopping its way futilely along the corridor on one leg, the other one nowhere to be seen. I had ended it quickly, wondering half amused, half afraid, about what one Earth could rip the leg off a Moa. Because it had not been a clean cut, there had been wires trailing behind the robot…

I flinched. What was that? The sudden silence was deafeningly loud, now that the alarms that had been constantly blaring had been shut off. I realized after a few seconds that actually, it wasn't silence. There was the gently sound of fire crackling nearby, and off in the distance there was something… something else. I decided to investigate and broke into a run, navigating through the convoluted mess of corridors to try and reach the place the sound had originated from. As I got closer I rejoined the 'tracks' left by the Venka wielding Tenno, and noticed with satisfaction that some of the gashes in the walls and floor were still red hot. I was close. And whoever this Tenno was, they clearly had enough energy to be channeling through their Venka the whole time, which was quite impressive…

I sprint along the corridor, not struggling in the slightest to follow the ridiculously overdone trail. The smoke here is much thinner, almost a mist rather than smoke. I can hear only the sounds of the fires and the dulled thudding of my own feet, and then from somewhere nearby I hear a scream. Not a surprised scream, or even a scared scream. This is a scream of pure, unadulterated rage. And it is way too close for comfort. I listen and realize that I can hear what sounds like an army of Supras, chattering out plasma. And then one by one they stop. I accelerate again, leaping over a collapsed section of ceiling which is so riddled with plasma burns that it's more like a ventilation grate than a solid surface… I sprint on, anything that is killing corpus Techs in those quantities is worth investigating!

But as I draw nearer I hear the scream again, much further away this time. I'm sprinting, so what on Earth is the source of the screams? It must be very agile to be able to outrun a Tenno, especially an Excalibur… I'm closing on where I heard the second scream from when I almost trip over something on the floor. I realize that my optics didn't even pick it up… and that's when Loki's invisibility fades…

There is such a thing as an attractive scar, but only one or two. Loki, on the other hand, is going to have about a billion of them, and they won't be attractive, assuming he survives this. I immediately stretch out my hand and begin to revive him, hoping I'm not too late. It takes longer than usual, but after almost a minute Loki moves, it's more of a twitch, but it's progress. I continue to heal him, and slowly he regains articulation of his limbs. I can see the healing nanites slowly trying to repair the burns that coat Loki's warframe, more like a solid sheet than a set of separate marks caused by individual plasmas. He tests each finger, one at a time. After almost 2 minutes he finally speaks, it's more of a telepathic croak than actual speech;

"Alpha…. save her…"

"Save who?"

"The Tenno we woke up; the Corpus are trying to take her…"

"Ok, stay here."

I quickly telepath Isaac and Antonio to see if they can get here to help, or maybe even cut off the retreating kidnappers, unfortunately they're both miles away – literally, this city is huge. I can't hear any sounds of conflict anymore, although whether that's because the Corpus are all dead, or because the Tenno is dead, remains to be seen. I sprint off, simply following the claw marks that still decorate the walls.

This other Tenno must have really awful hand to eye coordination if they manage to do so much damage to the walls… Or maybe they're just venting, when I woke up it was just confusion, but I didn't wake up surrounded by the bodies of several hundred proxies made of mutilated Tenno... I'm no expert, but that could probably stress someone a bit, right? I mean, I'm sure some people wake up with no memory of where they are and surrounded by the mutilated parts of the bodies of people who were once their family – but have now been turned into killing machines - and are completely fine, but I suspect the majority aren't quite sane after such an experience. Not that I'm saying anyone who isn't fazed by such is sane to begin with, but the point still stands…

I looked up from my ruminations and realized I was nearing the end of this corridor, and it opened to the outside. I must be getting close, and since I hadn't yet bumped into the other Tenno, I could only assume the Corpus had captured her and were taking her somewhere. The constant claw marks had stopped too…

I skid around the corner, pulling out my Vectis Prime and scoping in on the first sign of movement. I'm spot on, the movement is some sort of heavily armored MOA-like proxy. I pull the trigger and see it's shields flicker out of existence. I fire again, even while marveling at the shield strength required to protect against a round from my Vectis, and this time an entire leg is blown off. That's better. I reload and scope in, and this time I search for any sort of Tenno like thing. I scan over the now alerted crewmen who are staring around wildly as the now-one legged MOA thing flounders around trying to locate a target. That's when I see her, I have no idea what Warframe she's wearing, but it is a majestic looking blue sort of thing with a tail, and it's completely covered in blood and burns. I get the feeling that most of the blood is not hers. She's currently being dragged, semi-conscious by two soldiers. The rifle in my hand barks twice, almost of its own accord, and both crewmen hit the deck – their heads now more or less nonexistent. I think quickly, and then do the only thing I can; I frisbee-throw a team energy restore, the only one I have, in that general direction. It's a good throw, and despite the fact that it falls short, she's still within the radius when the burst of void energy lights up the platform. I see her stand up, still injured. Does she have any healing abilities? I had hoped she would have, since I didn't have any health restores… It looks like she doesn't, but she staggers over to one of the crewmen – one who seems to have been blinded for a second by the flash of void energy, a second too long. I watch as the energy claws form themselves around the Warframe's fingers, and then as she punches straight through the dazed crewman's chest. He falls soundlessly to the ground, and I watch in awe as I realize that not only has she literally ripped his heart out, but that doing so seems to have healed her. This is going to be messy…

Then she becomes a blur, almost teleporting between the crewmen and the fountains of blood and oil…

Wait, what?

The second blow connects with the base of my skull, knocking me out cleanly. The last thing I hear before I black out – for what seems like the hundredth time this week – is Beta demanding I pass out with my eye open. The screams and slaughter intensifies on the other side of the docking platform, but I hear none of it as I slide into unconsciousness. Again.

I open my eye. And do not like what I see. The majestic blue Warframe is being dragged by two more crewmen, again coated in a thick layer of blood. Very little of it being hers. I realize I'm on the floor a lot closer to some sort of transport, a transport she's being dragged into by her captors. I try to move and find that I'm unable to, although why I can't move I can't tell yet. I see some executive or something yelling orders as smoke belches from some part of the city below us.

"… don't care if we lose him, if we put both on the same ship then they'll be impossible to contain."

That sounds promising for me, but not for her. That means the transport is going to leave soon…

I black out again.

When I awake, I see carnage. The first transport has already lifted off, and is struggling away from the platform belching smoke as it goes. A second transport, this one intended for me no doubt, is in the process of being ripped apart by explosions on the landing pad. Good. But the blue Warframe wearing Tenno, she must be on the first one. I try to get up, and feel some sort of binding snap as I stand. I stretch quickly, feeling several more bindings snap satisfyingly loudly. Antonio blurs past in front of me – this time because he's moving fast with his speed ability, not because I'm being knocked out – and I stagger forwards, drawing my exalted blade. I aim roughly for the departing transport and fire three quick slashes. With some degree of grim satisfaction, I see that I opened a triangular hole in the hull – quite good bearing in mind it must already be a good 100 meters or so from the platform I'm on.

I draw back to swing another energy slash at the departing transport when a volley of missiles lands nearby and knocks me off my feet. I turn to see what the target was and see Isaac firing at one of those armored MOA-like proxies, which is spewing more missiles towards him – he's protected by his Iron Skin though. I'm not. I stand shakily, and move to raise my blade again; only to be knocked off my feet by the charge of a different coloured one of those mega MOAs. I stand again and vengefully bring the glowing blade down, cutting through its armour and shields and cleaving it cleanly in two. I'm starting to get thoroughly peeved off...

I turn, looking for the transport and see it moving off quite some distance away, then I realize it's going to be out of range! I sprint towards the edge, ducking under another barrage of missiles from another one of those MOAs and slash desperately in the vague direction of the transport. My energy waves almost all miss; the only one that hits slices into a wall and doesn't seem to damage anything of importance. Damn!

"Isaac? Was she on the transport?"

"I don't know. We'll see in a minute; we still have these tin cans to deal with! Come help"

I realize he's right, there's nothing I can do. So I launch myself whole-heartedly into the one-sided battle. The armored MOAs are annoying, but they don't actually do enough damage to get through our shields. Our weapons on the other hand…

The slaughter is over. Everything on the platform is now very much dead. Unfortunately, there isn't an amazing claw-wielding Tenno on the platform. And that's not because Loki disarmed everything that moved, its simply because she isn't here. They took her. And we have no idea where they took her to... That's when the realization sinks in; the Corpus lost a whole load of Tenno based proxies on this city, and they will need to replace them…. We have to find her!

End of Chapter 10

Author's Note:

I've managed to locate myself a proofreader, which means that there will likely be a slightly longer delay between chapters than before. She's awesome though, and between the two of us we should be able to iron out almost every grammatical error. So in actual fact, chapters will come out much more legible and hopefully more fun to read – which I think is a fair balance.

Other than that, if you've ever stopped and looked around on the Corpus Gas City tileset, you would've noticed that the cities are absolutely colossal. I have – for the purposes of the story and to accentuate the search – made them even bigger, but it would not surprise me at all to find that they could be of a similar size to what I wrote them as if players could actually access all of the city… And as for the reason why the city is on fire and falling apart; it's a combination of the fact that the new Tenno sabotaged the reactor, and that Loki set all the turrets to fire at the other cities – which no doubt would've returned fire after a while.

And the 'Heavily Armoured MOAs' are Bursas. You can't just leave the alarms going on a Corpus tileset and not have several of those show up to make your mission more difficult.