"Hey, hey! Calm down, you're okay!"

Kit.

I'm not dead.

Of course I'm not dead.

I force my mouth shut, stopping the screams. Some whimpers still escape, though, and I can't help but feel the loss of Cai Tanya, even though I'd already thought I'd lost her to the Formorian. There's no way I can pretend she didn't die this time, and it'll be a hundred years before I feel safe enough to use my own face again.

"Please tell me you didn't die again," Kit says.

I don't respond.

"You at least got the parts, right? You know, all those things that I need in order to stay in one piece?"

"They're with the ship. At a relay. The Perrin Sequence is probably going to appropriate it all as soon as they find out that Cai Tanya is dead. Which is going to happen within the next few hours, at most."

"What are you saying?" Kit asks. I think his voice is trembling, "You've lost your contacts, our Corpus ship, and everything we need to stay alive?"

"I can fix this," I reply, "Or, I can– I can stitch it back together. Just start growing a new clone. Different face, obviously."

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?"

"I mean I can't," Kit hisses, "I used all our plastids for the last one."

My fingers go cold. I can't make plastids. "All of them?"

"I have enough to make a foot. Can you do anything with a foot?"

No. I can't do anything with a foot.

"Okay," I say, trying to rub some warmth back into my arms, "That's fine. We're fine. We're not out of options. We still have… uh…"

Kit's eyes narrow, "If I had access to the vault–"

"No!" I snap, "We protect the vault, Kit. We do not open it. Ever."

"Do you have an alternative?"

"… The Grineer. They have plastids."

Kit lets out an exasperated sigh, "Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. If you're sure, then you'd better go right now – I think I can keep running long enough to build another clone, but with the travel time, it's going to be close."

No rest for the weary. I take a few deep breaths, then lie back down. I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to do this. This is always so much worse than–

I open my eyes. I'm floating.

I'm not Grineer.

Glowing liquid whirls around me, draining. I feel sick.

I'm not Grineer.

I'm standing on solid ground. I can't see.

"You have visual implants, right?" The kitty asks, "You're going to need them – I don't think I can spare the power to turn the lights on."

I twist a bolt in my skull, and the pitch dark world turns neon green. Pretty kitty.

I'm not Grineer.

(I have the skin, but I'm not the same on the inside. I should have combat training, but I don't. Grineer are supposed to all be exactly the same, but there's nobody like me anywhere.)

"Do you remember your name?" Kit asks.

"No. Not for a long time."

"The Grineer's name, not the Orokin's."

"I– I don't–"

"It's Glen Dekei – can you say that?"

"Glen Dekei," the sick feeling fades a little, as I remember what I need to do, "But it doesn't matter. I can use any name. I don't need to talk, I just need plastids."

"Good. Go!"

The trip is shorter this time. Distance is trivial once I've crossed the vast emptiness between Telisto and Neptune, so it doesn't much matter that I'm going deeper into the system – all the way to Mars – but still, Grineer ships tend to forego shields in favor of weapons and speed. We can't armor ships the way we armor people, so instead we board fast, break the Corpus' toys, and then break the Corpus.

(Get in. Get out. Don't be noticed.)

There should be a crew on this ship. Where–

(They're dead.)

Ah, right. I couldn't stand the sight of my fallen brothers and sisters, so I ejected them into space. There's no trace of them here now.

The Red Planet comes into view, quickly drawing closer. Phobos drifts nearby, little more than a tiny island in orbit. The intercom clicks, and the clone race's guttural language comes through, "Grineer, what is your ship's designation?"

(Deleted, once stories started spreading about the two-M-seven-ten, otherwise known as the ghost ship Kore Dim. Now all of the ship's information just looks like corrupted data, to anyone who cares to look.)

"I don't know, sir," I answer, "Everyone is dead. They're all dead."

"What is your name, sister?"

"Glen Dekei."

"Do you know how to dock, Glen Dekei?"

"I do, sir."

"Good. We're opening the hangar. Proceed."

I can see it. I guide the ship down, watching the hangar doors as they rise to meet me. I barely feel the touchdown – the artificial gravity must have been turned down to make the landing easier.

The gravity is back up when I disembark, however, and a heavily-spliced Grineer commander is waiting on the landing pad, with an attendant on either side – a lancer and a heavy gunner. I wonder if they're lieutenants, or just muscle?

(The scorpion uniform feels so vulnerable when looking at those reinforced armor suits, but freedom of movement is more important than armor. If I get in a fight, my only hope is to run.)

"Glen Dekei," the commander says, "What was your mission?"

(This one is too controlling. Get rid of him.)

"They're all dead," I reply. I don't have to fake my shaking voice.

"How did they die?"

"They're all dead."

"Why did you come here?"

"They're all dead."

The Grineer growls, and turns on his heel, "Defective in the head. Resh, keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn't break anything."

"Yes, sir!" One of the attendants salutes, and I admire her enthusiasm.

(This one will do.)

Once the commander and lancer have left, and we're out of earshot of the other Grineer in the hangar, I look Resh straight in the eyes – a bit difficult, given her helmet, and how she towers over me, "Where are the plastids?"

Resh blinks down at me, "What?"

"Show me, now."

"O-okay. This way."

The other Grineer give us long looks as we leave. I know that I'm not walking right, but any behavioral anomaly can be explained away with 'defective in the head'. I'm only in danger of being caught if I stay long enough for my small abnormalities to accumulate. Then they'll want me to go to a Grineer fixer, and the first thing that fixer will want to do is see what's gone wrong with me internally.

(Bad bad bad news.)

Resh leads me to a storage room a distressing distance from the hangar, "Were plastids involved in your mission?"

I pause, then answer, "Yes."

"How?"

I don't say anything.

"You know," Resh says, "I find that most mental blocks have a way around. People like to use 'head defect' to write off anyone that they don't want to deal with, but those are often the most interesting to talk to."

"So you like–" um. Hmm, I don't think the Grineer have a word for 'psychology'.

"I like the wrong ones, yes."

That's an odd mentality for a Grineer to have. I wonder if she's thought about the side she's fighting for, or if she's merely following the life she was born to?

"How many plastids do you need, Glen Dekei?"

"How many do you have?"

Resh taps a couple of lockers, "We've got a few in here, but most of them are in those crates over there."

"Hey…"

"What?"

I know I'm going to regret saying this, but, "What do you think of the Red Veil?"

Resh tenses.

"I mean, a lot of 'wrong' Grineer go there, right? Why do you think they do that?"

(Interesting to think about, isn't it? What would you do, if you were one of them?)

Resh shakes her head, "I think they have the wrong idea about corruption. They're convinced that there's something wrong with the Empire, and that there's something redeemable among the Orokin-descended. I can understand the first point, but not the second."

(Oh, pity. You could do well with them.)

"These are for a cloning facility, right?"

I nod, and she effortlessly lifts two giant crates, "Well then, we'd better make sure you're not delayed any–"

Alarms blare.

I freeze.

(No no no–)

Resh is gone. She just dropped the crates and ran. Which means the cause is elsewhere, which means it's not me. Given how fast Resh reacted, there must be battle somewhere. But then who–

I would have seen Corpus on the way in.

… No.

I shut the door, my hands fumbling as I lock it. I'm trying to remember how to breathe. The soft ventilation is a roar in my ears, and I have to discard the idea to squeeze into one of the lockers. I wouldn't fit.

I hide behind them, instead.

The seconds tick by. I hunker between the lockers and the wall, forcing air through my lungs.

(They can't get in here. I… I don't think they can get in here.)

The alarms stop.

I don't move.

It's quiet for a long moment, and I wonder if maybe–

Muffled screams from outside. The slice of a blade through armor. Again and again. I squeeze my eyes shut, choking on tears. Don't think about it. Don't remember.

(It's just a dream.)

The sounds of combat move on, and I shakily get to my feet. I have to run. The Grineer will definitely lock me up when they find out I hid from a fight, and that's if the Tenno isn't here to kill everyone anyway. My station will fail if I don't get out of here. No matter what happens now, I will die if I don't move right now.

I can't lift two crates like Resh could, but my implants are enough to carry one without too much trouble. I unlock the door, shaking as I check the hallway outside. There are plenty of Grineer corpses, but no warframe.

I heft my crate, and then run.

This is what this body is optimized for. The ground flies beneath my feet, special reserves pouring power into my legs. The dead lie around every corner. I pass the bodies of two heavy gunners. One of them is probably Resh.

There's the hangar. And there's the Kore Dim. The bay has closed, but the ship's doors are still open. I run inside, dropping the crate and immediately turning to close the–

There's a shadow at one of the hangar's entrances. A twisted version of Valkyr is staring at me.

I slam the control panel, and dash for the bridge. Sensors beep a warning as I seal the ship – the warframe is trying to punch a hole through the door that I slammed in her face. Her rifle isn't up to the task, however. I may not have much in the way of shielding, but it's more than enough to hold against a weapon designed for ground fighting.

I return fire, and the blasts force her to retreat out of range. Then two shots to destroy the ceiling, and I fire thrusters.

I'm back in open space. Home fr–

My sensors beep another warning. Interplanetary propulsion isn't responding, and the shields are taking damage from something – not much, but it'll wear through given time.

I do a sensor sweep, and find a Liset and something very small.

Oh. The Valkyr has an archwing. Of course.

"We made you too well," I growl, transferring controls so I can run to the engine room. I could theoretically destroy the Liset, but that wouldn't get rid of the warframe, and my weapons can't target much of anything smaller than that landing craft. Nor can I outrun it, if the Tenno decides to give chase.

Well, I can't outrun it with the Kore Dim's current configuration, at least.

There's still a way out, though, and it lies in the fact that almost all technology in the system can traces its roots directly back to the Orokin Empire. In most cases, that doesn't mean much. With interplanetary ships, however, there are certain artifacts left over in the design of the propulsion engines that can be exploited. With luck, there will be enough there to do what I need.

This is going to be trickier than just directing more power to propulsion, though. The things I need are buried within centuries of redesign by an increasingly unstable population of clones. I still have better chances with this than I would with a Corpus vessel, though – the Grineer, at least, were made to build. And since they are clones, much of what they originally learned to create has carried over the years.

(Old knowledge, dragged from its grave to make the Formorians.)

There's a panel connected to the wall here, displaying the status of various systems. Interplanetary propulsion is completely red, and shields are still slowly dropping. At the rate they're going, I estimate no more than ten minutes before the archwing can start cutting through the hull. That is not a lot of time to re-engineer.

There's the interplanetary systems.

I retrieve a laser from the tool closet, and rip them apart.

(The Grineer never understood. They cast away their power, and didn't even know it.)

Eight more minutes. I pull the core from the molten steel, and jump over to the monitor. I direct each of the Kore Dim's guns to point directly away from the ship. As they start to move into position, I hop back to open the orbital propulsion systems.

Seven more minutes. Here's the hard part. I need to splice this core with the orbital one, but one wrong move will render one or both of them inert. Or just destroy the orbital propulsion, leaving me with no way left to move the ship.

(Well, the weapons could provide some thrust. Nothing that'll do me any good, though.)

I take a deep breath, and try to ignore the countdown in my head.

The seconds feel like shallow cuts as I work. Stripped of their gold casings, the two cores glow with life, seeming almost eager to be joined, but I have to go slow. Careful, methodical.

I'm not used to being careful. I'm better at ripping things apart and smashing them together in just the right way to make them function. Speed and precision are what have kept me alive until now, not… care.

There.

A single core radiates murky orange light in my hands, a needle-like hole piercing its center, framed by sharp metal wires arranged in a rough hexagonal configuration. Almost done.

I take the discarded casing and the laser, and jab the one into the other, holding them above the core. The gold melts quickly, and I adjust my hold so that the liquid drips down at just the right angle to hit the needle-thin hole. The core's glow starts to fluctuate, shifting between shades of rust and wildfire.

I pick up a spare bit of scrap metal, and slash it across my hand. Biting down on a hiss, I drip my blood into the molten gold.

The core flashes brilliant yellow, pulsing like a heart.

I smile, just a little. Then jump back to my feet, going for the systems. My bleeding hand is in a fist, pressed against my stomach. It's been more than seven minutes – the shields are completely gone, and hull breach is imminent.

That's fine. I close my eyes and turn on the thrusters.

Blinding light stabs against my eyelids. The energy is looking for somewhere to go, it needs channels to disperse. This ship isn't built with towers, but ultimately it's not the finer points of construction that are important.

The light fades.

I open my eyes. The warm metal-and-earth tones of the Grineer ship have paled, the engines' hum muted as they glow with the iridescence of sunlight on snow. The air is cooling. The damage has ceased, but isn't repairing, and the weapons are offline and throwing dozens of errors, though the system can't identify what's wrong with them. It doesn't recognize the power that's being channeled through those guns, stuck like spikes away from the main body of the Kore Dim.

I've entered the Void.

Tension melts away from my muscles, and my knees collapse. My heart is pounding in my throat, and I'm laughing, giddy with the knowledge that a Tenno came for me, but I'm still alive!

When my legs stop feeling like water, I climb to my feet, still gasping and chuckling at once. On the way back to the bridge, I take a moment to admire the pure white emptiness outside the windows. My footsteps are muffled against the steel floor, the only disturbance to this perfect silence. If I close my eyes, I can almost remember–

(No.)

I shake that thought off, reaching for navigation. Most of the ship's systems are completely unresponsive – the Void's energies aren't friendly to technology that hasn't been specifically designed to flow with them. The Kore Dim should be able to withstand it for a short time, however, and I don't need to be here for very long at all. If I can just find one landmark – some defunct tower on Mercury, perhaps, that's been lost in here…

Huh. I'm getting weak signals from both Mercury and Earth. I didn't realize there were any towers left on humanity's home planet.

Well, it's fortuitous for me in any case. Having two points of reference makes it easier to triangulate my position, which allows me to quickly set a course for Telisto. I reach my home within minutes.

The victory is hollow, however. It feels like lifting a heavy weight just to shut off the engine, returning me to a night where the Sun is little more than another star. The Kore Dim is dark, its Void-choked systems struggling back to life. Telisto is a blank spot in the sky, and I can't see my station, but I know where it is.

I'm ahead of schedule, at least. The hours that I saved by going through the Void will certainly be helpful in keeping my station alive.

Kit's voice clicks over a new channel, "How long have you been there?"

"I just arrived, Kit."

"Oh, no. We're dead, aren't we? There's no way you could have gotten back this fast if–"

"I went through the Void. I have the plastids, but this ship is dead in the water – it doesn't have any way to travel through normal space anymore. I need you to break the transference."

"Got it."

I blink, and I'm waking up in a pod. No implants embedded in my flesh, and my head feels clearer.

Kit sits on the floor, tail shifting behind him, "How do you plan to get that ship back in the hangar? I'm guessing whatever you did to its propulsion isn't an easy fix."

"I'll just push it into a collision course," I reply, retrieving my wings, "After I get the plastids out, of course. What's its current heading?"

"It'll fall into a rapidly decaying orbit in a couple of days. I suggest you wait until… about three in the morning tomorrow, to make any adjustments. We'll be close to alignment then, and you shouldn't have to do much more than slow it down so it doesn't break anything when we catch it."

I nod, "Can the clone last that long?"

"Without an operator, she'll die within minutes, but I can repair her with the plastids we already have."

"Ah, good. I'd hate to have to make another one."

"I have a question."

"What is that?"

"That ship is the only one we have now. How do you expect to reach civilization, as Corpus, in a Grineer ghost ship that can only move through the Void? More importantly, how do you plan to get back?"

I pause, then say, "Let's worry about that later. First things first – I'm going to go pick up those plastids."

I was half-afraid the crate wouldn't have what we need. Wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake, if I went through all this trouble just to come back empty-handed?

But no, Resh was correct about the crate's contents. A new Corpus clone is growing in the tubes now, with a new face and a new name. We have plenty of plastids to spare, and I have some time to relax. Or, try to relax, at least. The station is growing ever closer to collapse, so the clone is going to be young, to shave several hours off the growing time. It's going to make some things more complicated, socially, but I think I can work around that.

I press my hand against glass, looking through a small porthole into the Kore Dim's bridge. Inside, a lightly-armored Grineer woman lies dead on the floor, her eyes blank and staring. There's a queasy feeling twisting through my stomach.

(It's unnerving to see myself like this.)

It's not like she was ever me, though. She was just a dream. I push away from the ship, angling back toward the station. I've taken as much time as I dare to sleep, but it's not enough. There's a special kind of tension that burns across my nerves after a violent death like Cai Tanya's, and it's not helped at all by that close call with the Tenno. I can barely close my eyes.

I want to break something. But everything is already broken.

When I return to the station, Kit is waiting.

"You were out for a while," he notes, "Reconsidering your options, perhaps?"

"No," I unhook canisters full of steel ball bearings and coiled wire – fresh from Telisto – from my belt, setting them on a shelf. Those won't be worth a great deal, but they also won't draw too much attention to a girl without a past.

What will draw attention, however, is the sizeable diamond that I crushed together from the gas giant's atmosphere. Unfortunately, I need something very valuable to afford what I need, but just carrying this thing would be dangerous to an established trader, let alone a child with no connections. I can only pray that it doesn't shove me straight into another violent death.

"Wow," Kit says when I pull the diamond out, "So, should I just start building the next clone, then? Because this one clearly isn't going to last a day."

"I can make it work. Just trust me."

"I find that difficult, given your recent track record."

I slam the diamond down on the shelf, "What do you want from me, Kit?"

"Access to my own memory would be a start. Or how about something smaller, like my real name?"

"I don't remember your real name!"

"Yeah, I figured, since you don't even remember your own!"

"Then what's the problem? Who needs a past, anyway?"

"I get why you'd want to bury your own past," Kit hisses, his fur spiking outward, "But what right does that give you to keep mine away from me?"

I freeze, "I… told you about…?"

"Oh, come on, it's been centuries! Of course I've put some of the pieces together!"

(Don't wonder about the pieces he's talking about. Don't remember what I might've said in the past. It's all just sleep-talking.)

I snap, "The data that you want is in the vault. We do not open the vault!"

"Then at least bring me with you! Why do you keep me locked in here, when I could help you? I could talk to other Cephalons–"

"Because you're a prototype, Kit! You can barely manage half the systems on this ship! If you met another Cephalon, they wouldn't just be able to override your mind, they would be embarrassed by how easy it is! The only reason I keep you around is so I have something like a person to talk to!"

Kit's eyes are wide. My heart pounds against my ribs. I can't feel my fingers.

"I–" I stutter, "I'm sorry. I–"

"No," Kit says. His voice is cold, "I understand. And I think it would have been better for the whole system if you'd gone with your family on the Ten-Zero."

… Where did the floor go?

("I'll meet you there.")

Wait. No. Stop.

(All the adults were gone.)

The past doesn't exist.

("Two of my children are adults–")

The past is nothing but a dream.

(The capital has fallen! The Ten-O–)

(I'm screaming.)