Seeker

by Keltoi

"No matter how far you travel, home is closer than you think." Cover art by the gifted Rookdaw!

67. Chapter 60: Brass and Roses

Chapter 60

"Brass and Roses"

Polihex was barely a city-state, with the surrounding frontiers dotted with shrinking townsteads and abandoned oil stations. The city itself used to be a massive industrial estate during the Quintesson era, but had since been renovated into a Cybertronian settlement. Dilapidated complexes pressed together at the northern side, creating huge blocks of constricting slums. Ancient mining installations, long since run dry, had been converted into factories, transport stations, even an Enforcer stronghold. The latter was where Hawkmoon was headed. She and Dreadwing soared in from high above the city, darting through brackish smog clouds. The flight over had taken half an orn - and most of that was spent registering their flight-path with the Vosian air control towers.

::Charming,:: she commented.

::A cesspit of filth,:: Dreadwing muttered. ::Be careful where you step here, Emirate.::

They dove. The twinkling city rushed up to meet them, fast. Just for the hell of it Hawkmoon pressed down on her thrusters until she shattered the sound barrier, then allowed herself to free fall. Only when the Enforcer landing pad was becoming dangerously close did she re-orientate her thrusters and begin to fight her own momentum. She transformed as she landed, her pedes hitting the reinforced steel pad with an audible crack. Dreadwing dropped in place behind her, bristling with suspicion. A trio of Enforcers had been waiting for them; one of them gingerly stepped forward, glancing between Dreadwing and herself. "Emirate Hawkmoon?"

"That would be me." Hawkmoon inclined her helm. "Commissioner Obsidian here?"

"Yes ma'am."

"You three locals?"

The Enforcers looked at each other. "Local enough," the foremost officer replied.

Hawkmoon hummed. "I see. They waiting for me?"

"Yes, ma'am. Commissioners Gravestone and Obsidian were in discussion last I checked. Shall we escort you to them?"

"If you will."

The Polihex commissioner's office was a little sparse - though Hawkmoon suspected Vos and Iacon's comparative luxury had spoiled her. As it was there was a single desk and a couple of chairs, though none of them were designed with a Seeker in mind. Hawkmoon elected to stand.

"So I hear we have him," she said.

Obsidian and Gravestone - a shorter, stockier mech with red and brown plate - looked at her. They'd been poring over a datapad when she'd entered. "Not quite," Gravestone told her apologetically. He shot Obsidian an annoyed look. "If we'd waited-"

"There was never any indication the suspect would return to his dwelling," Obsidian coldly interrupted. "My officers moved to seize valuable evidence."

Gravestone scowled. He leaned back in his seat and turned to Hawkmoon. "Obsidian authorised his Enforcers to enter Deadlock's property and take everything."

Hawkmoon frowned. "You didn't leave it as it was?"

Obsidian regarded her blankly. "My mecha are looking over everything as we speak."

"So you've tampered with the scene? What the frag were you thinking?"

"Outside his jurisdiction too," Gravestone said. His optics were narrowed. "Iacon's Enforcers don't have the authority to break and enter a Polihex property."

"The Senate provided me with a warrant."

"Polihex never agreed-"

"The Senate's authority supersedes that of Polihex," Obsidian snapped. "Time is of the essence. I don't intend on keeping the Senate waiting."

"How bad's the damage?" Hawkmoon glanced Gravestone's way.

"It's... bad," he said. "I'm sorry you've come all this way, Emirate, but Deadlock won't be coming back here. Enforcers entered his home in broad daylight. They broke the door down with a riot cannon. Word will travel fast."

"Think someone'll tell him?"

"I'm certain of it." Gravestone vented. "Polihex is... more delicate than Iacon. Or Vos for that matter. We don't have an Undercity and our borders are smaller, but we have a similar population. Mecha live in closer proximity."

"Must be hell to police," Hawkmoon observed.

Gravestone shrugged. "Yes. Yes, you could say that. But what I mean is that everyone knows everyone. These mecha - my mecha - never get along, except when outsiders are involved. Then every tracer-dealer, shanix-duplicator and scrap-thief bands together like they've got familial sparkbonds."

"It's cultural."

"It is. And Deadlock's one of them."

"And they've just seen a squad of Iacon Enforcers invade his home," Hawkmoon finished. She shot Obsidian a furious look. "What's your plan now? Rough up the neighbourhood?"

"Our next course of action," Obsidian said coolly, "is to bring in those closest to the suspect. My Enforcers will begin with Axelshift."

"No. They won't." Hawkmoon turned back to Gravestone. "Send your Enforcers to do it properly. I want to speak with her, but I don't want her to be dragged in kicking and screaming. Your officers will be cordial and they will not push her. Am I understood?"

"Yes madam." Gravestone looked relieved. "Should I send them now?"

"Do. Any longer and she might pull a runner. Axelshift's a bouncer, right?"

"Yes. For the Petroleum Nights."

"Inventive name."

Gravestone shrugged. His optics flickered. "Enforcers are en route. They'll visit her apartment and, if she's not there, investigate the club."

"Call her employer tonight. Send someone to have a look at the place."

"Why?"

"If Axelshift and Deadlock are involved," Hawkmoon explained, "then the club might be somewhere they meet. Obsidian? What's the word on Lockdown?"

Obsidian raised an optical ridge. "Ma'am?"

"Lockdown. Deadlock's former partner."

"I've sent instructions to-"

"The moment you get an answer, call me. Is there a picture of our mech on there?" Hawkmoon gestured to the datapad. Gravestone tapped the screen and slid it over. Hawkmoon took it up. The photo displayed was grainy, poor quality, but the mech captured was striking enough. He was a racer painted white and black with gold spoilers and red optics. Lithe but armoured. A fighter. "Where's he from originally?"

Gravestone paused. "We don't know. It's difficult trying to account for all the mecha here. We don't have the same infrastructure you're familiar with.

"Any hobbies?"

"Shooting. Deadlock's a marksman. You probably saw the Rust Sea as you flew over here; we're right on the edge of it. Sometimes things come crawling out, usually lost Insecticons. They're rarely benign. The city council hands out bounty payments to anyone who nails a critter. Small time for Deadlock, but he used to run with the occasional exterminator crew."

"Any regulars?"

"Not so far as I can tell," Gravestone admitted. "I think he just likes the thrill. Or maybe he just needs shanix quick. The debt collectors can be insistent."

"Think he was in debt?" Hawkmoon inquired.

"I'd be surprised if he wasn't. Power and energon hold higher value here. The planet-wide shortages? Those hit us hard. It got rough. Scalpers made a payday; now everyone owes them a fortune. Whole new trade empire appeared over night."

"Doesn't sound legal."

Gravestone shrugged. "This is Polihex," he said, as if it explained everything.

"Could we get accounts of Deadlock's debts?"

"From the scalpers? No. Not anymore. One of Zeta Prime's recent laws."

Hawkmoon perked up. "Really? What law?"

"Eh... Bill of Economical Defense?" Gravestone made a face. "Passed a couple of quartexes ago. Private corporations don't need to share their account history with governmental bodies. That extends to Enforcers. As I understand it's to protect company-client confidentiality."

"Zeta Prime passed it to protect the Vosian Weapons Division," Obsidian said. Hawkmoon's helm snapped around to him. He was reading from another datapad. "A demand was made regarding the Division by the Vosian Conclave of Speakers for their transactional history. The Division requested asylum in Iacon. The High Council granted it and petitioned Sentinel Zeta Prime for additional aid. He offered the blanket protection of global law."

"This is no coincidence," Augur whispered. He brushed against the back of her helm, climbing from one shoulder to the other.

"This Bill," Hawkmoon started to say. "How restrictive is it?"

Gravestone's expression turned grim. "Very."

"Even on the client's end?"

"Oh yes. Should the corporation in question want to keep it that way."

"So... if Deadlock was in serious debt," Hawkmoon said slowly, "and he needed help, but the Bill was preventing him... Could it be he snapped? Gave in to a fit of anger, took a shot at the mech responsible for passing it?"

Obsidian and Gravestone looked at her with renewed interest. "It's possible," Gravestone admitted.

"Right, yeah. Possible. Keep it that way for now; until we know the full story we keep our minds open." Hawkmoon put the datapad down. "These, uh... 'scalpers'. Where're they now?"

"Upper City. They operate out of an old hangar station. Transport shuttles come in with cargo, drop off, leave without."

"Shuttles from where?"

"Kaon, usually," Gravestone told her. "The energon mines there are still operable."

"This station - that's where I can find their offices?"

"Eh... no. No, they're in Kaon too."

"Ah." Hawkmoon grimaced. "I see. Well, could you ask them if they'd be willing to share Deadlock's details? Maybe we can catch them in a charitable mood."

"I'll try."

"Thank you."

"If there's nothing else..." Gravestone looked between them. "I have to report to the council. Thank you for coming, Emirate."

"It's nothing."

Gravestone made for the door, then stopped. "Welcome to Polihex." He left and the door slid shut behind him.

"I must report to the Senate," Obsidian muttered, but Hawkmoon caught his pauldron. Dreadwing inched closer, watching carefully.

"I said I'd watch that you did this properly," Hawkmoon whispered. "But you're mucking it up again."

"My apologies, ma'am," Obsidian stiffly replied.

Hawkmoon studied him closely. She let go. "You can leave."

"Thank you." Obsidian marched outside.

---

Gravestone's Enforcers returned with Axelshift some time after the beginning of the off-cycle. She came willingly; Hawkmoon watched from behind a reinforced one-way mirror as the officers invited her to sit. There were two of them, some Cybertronian equivalent of detectives, and one sat opposite Axelshift while the other leaned against the far wall.

"Thanks for coming in," said the Enforcer sitting down.

Axelshift shrugged. She was definitely bouncer material - tall, large, heavily armoured. There were a pair of wheels on her back and another two on each leg. A truck or military vehicle of some kind. "She an ex-soldier?" Hawkmoon asked.

"Close enough," Gravestone responded. "Local militia, illegally-founded. My predecessor broke it up decavorns back."

"Politically motivated?"

"Just criminal. Buncha slum-sparks with notions of glory. When extortion's the norm, vigilantism becomes the fix. Or that's what they thought."

"And was it?"

"No. Made things worse. They just replaced the extortionists. Gangs changed overnight. Their equipment was better. Military-grade."

"How'd they come by it?"

"Quintesson War depot, buried under ancient ruins. Most of the militia came from construction crews - just trying to make a pretty shanix." Gravestone lowered his voice. "So when they started excavating in preparation for new habitation-complexes and struck ammo cells... Well."

"Was Deadlock part of that group?"

"Might've been, yeah."

"You don't sound sure," Hawkmoon pointed out. "But you're certain about Axelshift?"

"She was one of the leaders."

"Uhuh." The Enforcers were making smalltalk. Hawkmoon watched as an expression of irritation crossed Axelshift's faceplates. "But now she's a bouncer."

"Employment's not easy for an ex-convict."

"She was arrested?"

"Yeah."

"How long was she in?"

"Couple of vorns," Gravestone said. "Fires of youth don't burn long. She lost her aspirations somewhere along the way. Same went for everyone else, inside or out."

"Rough."

"Is it?"

"Mistakes shouldn't define us." Hawkmoon moved for the door. "Tell your gruesome twosome I'm headed in."

Gravestone snorted. "Suit yourself."

She rounded to the other door and opened it. The Enforcer on the other side bowed his helm and stepped outside. The other followed quick enough. Room vacated, Hawkmoon swept in opposite Axelshift. She smiled. "Hey."

Axelshift squinted at her. "I know you from somewhere."

"Sure about that?"

"Yeah, saw ya on a broadcast. That one where the Prime dropped." Axelshift leaned back in her seat. "What's this about?"

"You don't know?"

"... Deadlock, yeah?"

"Yep." Hawkmoon crossed her arms. "Heard you two are close."

Axelshift shrugged.

"Don't have to tell you why we wanted you here, right?"

"Your gunners broke in his door."

"Not mine. Sorry about that. Some of these Iaconians can be a little... overzealous." Hawkmoon stepped closer. "Do you have any idea where Deadlock is right now?"

Axelshift shrugged again.

"Can you call him?"

"He ain't answerin'."

"Do you know where he might be?"

"What's this 'bout?" Axelshift demanded. "What d'ya think he did?"

Hawkmoon didn't reply.

"You think he did in the Prime, don'tcha?"

"It would be easier if he were here to clear his name."

"Clear his name?" Axelshift grinned crookedly. "I know how this game goes and never like tha'."

"No?"

"No. 'Forcers point and mecha do time. That's the biz."

"You've served yours."

"Sure."

"And Deadlock?"

Axelshift's faceplates hardened. "He's not your guy."

"We can't know unless he comes forward. Until then, we're going to have to put out a warrant for his arrest."

::Pushing it, ma'am,:: Obsidian warned. Hawkmoon ignored him.

"However, if he's innocent, then coming forward to corroborate that will go a long way in clearing his name," Hawkmoon finished. "Am I clear?"

"Clear enough."

"Great. You're free to go." Hawkmoon motioned to the door. Axelshift frowned.

"What?"

::No,:: Obsidian started to say. ::Ma'am, you cannot- ::

::Can and will,:: Hawkmoon coldly fired back. ::She's free to go. I insist.::

"Just like that?" Axelshift said incredulously.

"Just like that." Hawkmoon nodded. "I'm not going to have you locked up if that's what you're worried about. You haven't done anything wrong."

"Yer gonna plant trackers-"

"No. No trackers." Hawkmoon's optics pointedly flicked towards the door. "Really. You can leave right now if you want. Unless there's something you want to tell us?"

Axelshift's faceplates tightened. She stood up. "No."

"Alrighty then. Exit's that'a'way."

---

To say Obsidian was displeased was an understatement. His EM field rippled with anger. He wanted to have words, he really did, but he didn't say a thing. Even the look he gave her was guarded, distant. "Is there anything else you want us to look over?"

Any other time she might've pushed his buttons. Obsidian would have deserved it. Hawkmoon only held herself in reserve out of self-preservation; she wasn't entirely sure of the political ramifications that would come from meddling, but she didn't want to test them. No farther than she already had at least.

"That's that, I 'spose," Gravestone grunted. He peered up at her curiously. "Think she'll come back?"

"You don't?"

"Not a chance."

"She'll think about it at least," Hawkmoon said. "That's all we need."

"How do you reckon that?"

"Because if she's in contact with Deadlock, then she'll be just as desperate as he is."

"Maybe. We'll see. Is there anything else?"

"I'd like to have a look at Deadlock's place tomorrow," Hawkmoon said. "Is there anywhere I can catch a recharge?"

"City council've put you up in the Astra Conglare - a topside hotel. I'll have my mecha take you there." Gravestone inclined his helm. "Ma'am Emirate."

"Commissioner," she replied. A pair of Enforcers were waiting by the door of Gravestone's office. She and Dreadwing wordlessly fell in behind them and they left the precinct behind. An adjoining terminal lined with elevators brought them straight to the summit of the city, where the streets were cleaner and the architecture sharper. Though they took a short, quiet route via restricted magnetic lifts and a private tram, they still drew looks from strangers on the roads. By the time they arrived at the hotel there was a small smattering of reporters waiting in ambush. The Enforcers moved ahead to cut them off while Dreadwing moved to become her bodyshield, covering her from potential shooters with his own armoured frame all the way to the doors.

The lobby was no better. There were more Enforcers inside, corralling curious busybodies out of the way, but the press of voices and electromagnetic fields was much too uncomfortable. An attendant bearing the hotel's colours led them to a final elevator. "Madam," the mech said politely. "Welcome-"

"Take us up," Hawkmoon said impatiently.

He entered a series of access keys into the elevator's administrator terminal. "Of course."

Up they went. The door hissed open. The hallway beyond was wide, elaborate, lushly opulent to a gaudy degree. Alien flora sat potted and petrified along marble pedestals, ossified into pale forms. Clear, pure crystals wrapped around the ceiling lights to paint the corridor in an assortment of rich colours. At the end of it, waiting before the lone doorway, was a femme with a recording bot hovering over her shoulder.

The hotel attendant stepped forth, his EM field fluctuating between alarm and indignation. "Excuse me! What do you think you're doing here?"

"Emirate Hawkmoon," the femme greeted. She was small, a grounder if the wheels at her shoulders were anything to judge, and so slight Hawkmoon could have closed her servo around her. "I'm from the Axiom News Network-"

Dreadwing's arm transformed into a blaster. "Servos up!" he barked. "State your designation!"

The femme faltered. "I don't mean to-"

Hawkmoon groaned and shoved past them all. The suite's doors automatically opened at her approach. "Just get her out."

"Are you sure about that?" the femme called after her.

"Don't move!" Dreadwing snarled.

"Emirate Hawkmoon, I can help you!"

Hawkmoon paused. She turned, raising an optical ridge. "How's that?"

The femme shot Dreadwing a wary look before lowering her arms. "I want to help you tell your story."

"Already told it."

"That was a debriefing, not a report. The world wants to know about you."

"Maybe I don't want it to," Hawkmoon said.

"Sure, but it's going to get out anyways. Information sells. Drama goes for double. Someone will chip in, whether their sources are reliable or not."

"That what you want?"

The femme shrugged. "I'd prefer to get it from the source."

"And twist it to suit your own agenda."

"Other reporters, sure, but I like the truth more."

"Why's that?"

"Because it means my sources don't push me out."

Hawkmoon eyed her carefully. "You're ballsy."

"I'm... pardon?"

"Bold." Hawkmoon tilted her helm. "What's your designation?"

"Arcee."

She glanced at Dreadwing. ::What do you think?::

Dreadwing's gaze never shifted from Arcee. ::She shouldn't have access.::

::Yeah. But what about her offer?::

::That's not for me to say. My scans aren't picking up on any weapons.::

Hawkmoon hummed. "Fine," she said, "but I gotta wash up first."

"Thank you-"

"In the meantime you're Dreadwing's. He gets to decide what happens next. Good luck. You," she pointed to the attendant. "Where's the washracks?"

"Left wing," he told her. He stepped away. "Utmost apologies, but I have to report this."

Hawkmoon waved him off. "Go ahead. Dreadwing - show's yours."

---

She returned to the main lounge freshened up, plate scrubbed to a gleam. Arcee was sat on one of the couches. Dreadwing stood on the opposite side of a low table. ::I've inquired to the Enforcer Network after her,:: he reported the moment he caught sight of her. ::She's known for breaking rules, but no criminal record.::

::So a harmless busybody?:: Hawkmoon passed them by for a fuel counter and pulled a pair of energon cubes out. They had a nice pinkish hue.

::It appears so. Local management wants her to leave as soon as your business is concluded.::

::Granted.:: Hawkmoon found an armchair by the end of the table, grimaced for the grounder-based spine that pressed her wings against her back, and slid an energon cube across the table. "So..."

"Thank you." Arcee took the cube in hand. She made a show of looking around the room. "This is a nice place."

"'Spose it is."

"You don't agree?"

"Seen one luxury suite, you've seen them all."

"The horror."

Hawkmoon cracked a grin. "But if you want real luxury, I suggest you head off-world. Aliens make it exotic."

"That's what I want to talk with you about." Arcee placed the cube back down and pulled a device out of internal storage. It took to the air and turned to stare at Hawkmoon with a black optic. "Do you mind if I record this?"

"We're jumping into it now?"

"Whenever you're ready."

"And no script?" Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "Goodness me."

"I prefer to share real stories," Arcee defended. "I've a reputation to keep."

"I didn't mean anything by it."

"Is this alright with you?"

"Don't see why not." Hawkmoon crossed her legs and propped her elbow on the chair's arm, resting her chin over her knuckles. "What bases do you want to cover?"

"Your alien encounters, but the, ah... the assassination first, if you would."

"I see." Hawkmoon pulled her EM field in. "I'm not opposed. We can begin."

"Okay..." Arcee pressed something on the rear of the automated camera. "So - Emirate Hawkmoon. Thank you for having me."

For a split-second Hawkmoon paused; she had that feeling of jitters again. Of being seen out in the open by hundreds, thousands, millions of mecha. "Focus," Augur murmured. He manifested on her shoulder - providing a comforting weight, a secret support. The feeling passed.

"You're very welcome," Hawkmoon said pleasantly. She assumed a smile.

"Congratulations are in order regarding your recent appointment. It's well-deserved."

"The circumstances were less than ideal."

"Of course. The Prime's passing was a tragedy. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"

"Feel free."

"When I watched the footage, it looked like you caught sight of the assassin. Is this true?"

"I did. The killer utilised an energy weapon. After the force shield went down I saw the glare of an energy build-up."

"And you attempted to move Sentinel Zeta Prime out of the way." Arcee watched her. Hawkmoon struggled to keep the frown from her faceplates - she hadn't tried anything of the sort. As far as she could remember, the Prime simply got in her way.

"Aha, clever," Augur cackled. "She intends to sway the mob to sympathy. She desires your favour."

"For all the good it did," Hawkmoon lied. She could play along, if this was the game they were playing.

"I understand you've taken an interest in apprehending his murderer?"

"Haven't we all?" Hawkmoon's smile faded. "Yes, that's right."

"Could I ask how that's going?"

"Sure, but I can't give you an answer."

"I understand." Arcee dipped her helm. "You've been through a lot."

"It has been... testing," Hawkmoon admitted.

"I can only imagine." Arcee paused. "You were interviewed a little time after you arrived - by Off-switch, right?"

"I was, yeah," Hawkmoon said warily.

"You explained that your formation was murdered.

... Ah. Hawkmoon felt a flicker of annoyance. "Yes."

"By an alien scourge?"

"Indeed." Her optics brightened. She tried to fight off a scowl, allowing a cold mask to settle over her faceplates.

Arcee vented. "I don't want to pry-"

"You can ask."

"Most of the mecha of Cybertron don't interact with aliens, you see. I know Vos has its trade routes and contacts across the sector, but you've ranged farther afield than most Seekers. I suppose I'm curious: what are they like?"

"Aliens?"

"Yes."

Hawkmoon took a moment to form an answer. "They're... not uniform. That should be obvious."

"Of course."

"There's plenty of intelligent species out there. More than you'd ever guess. Some are hospitable, charitable, sympathetic. Others... aren't."

"Could you elaborate?"

"After the beastformers of Clan Krensha pulled me out of the Cyst Stars I... I found safe harbour with the Eimin-Tin. Silk-serpents. Their world, Penchant, is a former Cybertronian colony. Their technology is derived from our own."

"What are they like?"

"... Clever. Very clever."

"I understand they're now at war with the Drezhari Acquiestical-"

"My experience with the Drezhari is limited," Hawkmoon cut in. "I encountered some at Freeport Azal and Penchant before that, but I haven't had much chance to engage them in conversation."

Arcee paused. Her optical ridges furrowed. "Freeport Azal."

"Yes."

"Wasn't it seized by the Drezhari?"

"It was." Hawkmoon grimaced. "And not gently."

A beat passed. "I see," Arcee said carefully. "This was after the incident resulting in your formations' murder, yes?"

"It was."

"Would you mind telling us what attacked you?"

"Here it is," Augur said softly. "Here's your chance. Give them an enemy. Give them the Foe."

"That would be the Hive," Hawkmoon said, and the mere word made her EM field tremble. "The Hive killed them."

"The Hive?"

"A highly aggressive organic-based bipedal species. They're clever too, just... cruel." Hawkmoon vented hard. "They attacked us. Killed everyone. Tried to kill me."

"Do you know why?"

"Because they're physically and culturally driven to commit genocide - xenocide - on every alien civilization they encounter. They believe that by doing so they'll remove the facet of suffering from the face of the universe."

"I... see."

"Do you?" Hawkmoon leaned back in her chair. She welcomed the discomfort. "They weren't the only people we encountered in the Cyst Stars. There were other species capable of interstellar travel. They received us, heard our pleas for energon and offered to help Cybertron. The Hive wiped them out."

Arcee blinked.

"That's who killed my formation," Hawkmoon continued. "An alien kind set on rendering every star system devoid of life."

"Why?"

"It's their religion. The Hive are in symbiosis with a species of sapient parasites known as Worms. The Worms provided the Hive the means to cross space and wage war. They do so without question."

"How do you know this?"

"Because I studied them," Hawkmoon said. "When it became clear to us what they were doing, I shared my findings with another resident species of the Cyst Stars - the Taishibethi. We judged them to be a threat to everyone - to the Tai and their client species and everyone else on either side of the Brachian Divide."

"And these Tai-"

"The Hive conducted an ambush on the Taishibethi homeworld by hijacking their spacebridge. My formation lost its recon shuttle; they'd cut us off." She grimaced. The lie came too easily.

"I'm sorry."

Hawkmoon didn't immediately reply. "So am I," she muttered, distracted.

"Would you mind telling us what these aliens were like?"

"... Alright." Hawkmoon proceeded to elaborate on Hive and Taishibethi culture - a rudimentary explanation, and entirely avoiding the more outlandish aspects, but one she hoped left an impact. With the Hive she detailed their savagery, their monstrous dispositions, and regarding the Tai she focused on the small, innocently cordial encounters that had marked her stay in the capital. She briefly glossed over the list of species who had membership within the Tai Protectorate, though she entirely avoided the topic of the Tenerjiin and Verunlix both. Demons and phantom foxes were a little too farfetched, she thought, even real as they were. Nor did she feel like testing Alpha Trion's patience regarding mention of Kharad-Tan.

When she finished the off-cycle was in full swing. Their energon cubes sat empty on the table. Hawkmoon felt drained - as if it had taken a physical toll to recount everything she'd seen, heard, felt, and it wasn't even close to the truth. The real difficulty of preparing people for war with the Hive, she mused, was convincing them they were real.

"I think that'll do us," Arcee said at last. She offered Hawkmoon a wan smile. "Thank you Emirate."

"You're welcome."

Arcee deactivated the recording drone and returned it to storage. "I'll see what I can do to make it more palatable to the regular mecha."

"Thought you wanted to depict something real."

"Sure, but that doesn't mean I can't portion it out."

Hawkmoon huffed, cracking a half-smile. It was hard to pull off when the memories were so raw, but she powered through it. "Suit yourself."

"This really is helpful, I'm telling you." Arcee stood and stepped close. Her servo landed on Hawkmoon's pauldron. Dreadwing stiffened but Hawkmoon gave him a warning look. "For you too."

"Maybe," she replied noncommittally.

"If you want to talk, my channel's always open."

"Angling for a second interview?"

"If I can!" Arcee chuckled. "No, seriously. Emirate-"

"Just Hawkmoon. Everyone's talking to me like I'm some kind of..." Hawkmoon trailed off. "Well, something I'm not."

"Alright, Hawkmoon." Her servo fell away. "Here's my comm codes."

Hawkmoon's comms systems pinged. She filed it away as an additional contact. "Won't ask for mine?"

"That'd be unprofessional."

"Like breaking into a hotel?"

Arcee's expression fell. "Yeah. I should go-"

"You're not local, are you?"

"No. I'm just here to cover the investigation."

"How'd you know I was in town?"

Arcee winced. "Can't reveal my sources."

"Some mechs down at the station, right?"

"Sorry, won't answer that."

"That's fine." Hawkmoon sent Dreadwing a message. ::Find out who.::

"I should go."

"Good luck."

"Thank you again." Arcee turned and walked to the door. Dreadwing followed her out, returning only when she was gone and the door locked behind her.

---

A grey smog settled over Polihex by morning - all thanks to the factory exhaust ports kicking up, or so Gravestone put it. "Now's when the production lines get rolling," he told her. They'd met at a discreet topside location and took to the backstreets to reach the lower habitation levels. An entourage of armed Enforcers marched with them. "City council passed a law a couple of Vorns back, reducing work hours. Most factories would be happy to run their workers to stasis lock, but now they're legally obligated to set certain work hours."

"But why during the day?" Hawkmoon asked.

"Solar energy. The corporations plant fields of panels all around Polihex. The power's cabled in; it's the only reason this place is still thriving." They stopped at a brown habi-block distinguished only by the graffiti on the walls. Daylight streamed in through cracks in the city levels, aided by flickering yellow streetlights. There were plenty of mecha about, grubby grounders all, but they kept a cautious distance. Many of them watched her - she may have been the first Seeker they'd ever seen. The typical Polihexian frame-type looked to be a lanky one, long limbs with thin bodies and hard optics. Their wheels were outfitted with massive tracks.

"Second level," Gravestone said. They entered the habi-block's lobby and strode up a wide set of stairs to the next floor, then followed along a hallway littered with waste and scrap. Unlike the streets it was abandoned by all save another pair of Enforcers, stationed outside an apartment with a broken door.

"This is it?" Hawkmoon inquired. Gravestone nodded. She pushed the door in and stepped inside. The place was a mess - all the furniture had been torn up and every item thrown around. A holo-monitor hung haphazardly on the far wall, its screen viciously cracked, while the berth at the other end of the place leaned on its side. There were energon stains on the floor - the unprocessed kind, littered with shattered glass from a broken cube. "Well," she said, "Obsidian does not like to clean up after himself."

Gravestone snorted. "His mecha swept the place for contraband, records, everything. Dunno what you think you might find; they were thorough."

"That they were." Hawkmoon discreetly rolled her shoulder. Augur leapt down and sniffed the air. His tails danced as he paced around, star-eyes turning this way and that.

"No," he murmured. "No. I sense little. There's little feeling to this place. The walls between realities hold strong. The Drezhari isn't here. Nor your assassin."

"Shame." Hawkmoon turned. "'Fraid you might be right. There's nothing here for us."

"Sorry 'bout that."

"Don't be." She glanced around one last time. "Look, if Axelshift makes contact, call me."

"Ma'am-"

"I'm not asking you to keep quiet about it to the Senate. Just... maybe tell me before you do Obsidian."

"I'll... I'll see what I can do," Gravestone said carefully, "but it won't happen. Axelshift won't change her mind."

"Maybe, but the ball's still rolling." Hawkmoon nodded to Dreadwing. "We'll take our leave now."

"Already?"

"Until Deadlock pops his helm up there's not much I can do here. 'Sides, I've business back in Vos. Thanks for having us."

"The honour was mine, ma'am Emirate."

Hawkmoon dipped her helm and took her leave. A couple of Enforcers escorted her to the front, but from there she and Dreadwing transformed, taking to the air and rising up through the gaps in the city's architecture. They swooped through arches and ports, over raised motorways and along the piers of independent tower-blocks until at last they emerged from Polihex's stern. The city huffed and puffed at their back, spewing chemicals high into the air. It was little wonder why organic life refused to propagate on Cybertron. The atmosphere must have been intensely toxic.

---

They burned a straight flight to the Vosian borders and turned to the wilds, homing in on Contrail's compound. Surveillance sensors and weapons tracers ran over their frames; Hawkmoon allowed the security systems to pull her access codes to the surface. At the last moment she pulled up and transformed, kicking up dust as her thrusters fought her momentum. The tension was rough, almost painful; she found it exhilarating.

Contrail's creations were out in the gardens and Rook with them. The symbiote threw himself towards her the moment she'd settled and Hawkmoon barked a laugh as steel feathers raked over her plate. He settled in on her shoulder, provoking a huff from a displaced Augur, and pecked at her cheek.

"Hey, hey, none of that," she chided.

Rook croaked unhappily.

"Yeah, yeah, my bad. Can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll try." Hawkmoon turned her helm. "How was he?"

The older kid, Greychart, shrugged sullenly. His EM field retracted. The other, his younger sister who Hawkmoon dimly recalled being named... Argentis?, cast him a wary look. "He's been great," she said. "But he missed you."

"I can tell." Hawkmoon raised a talon and pushed Rook's poking beak away from her faceplates. "Thanks for looking after him. Is Contrail here?"

"Naw," Greychart grunted. He turned away to stare at a datapad. His wings stood on end behind him. "He's still gone."

"And Dystrexin?"

She received naught but a shrug in response.

"Alright," Hawkmoon said. She waved Dreadwing off. "I'll be in my quarters if anyone's looking for me." She left the gardens behind, found her room and took to a quick rinse in the washracks. After that she found herself on the end of her berth with a datapad of her own in hand. Rook prodded her a couple of times but when she didn't respond he took off to mess with something else.

"What are you doing?" Augur asked. He lazily stretched out beside her.

"Looking up the Vosian Weapons Division and cross-referencing it with Drezhari."

"And?"

"Nah, nothing."

"What did you expect?"

"Expecting and hoping are two different things." Hawkmoon swept her digits across the screen.

"This is a waste of our time."

"Hush."

"You're truly desperate," Augur mused. "You know what we have to do next."

"No harm in trying-"

"There's no point in trying." He pressed his snout against her side and phased through, emerging with the datakey locked between his fangs. He dropped it on her lap. The sensations were... not welcome.

"Don't do that," Hawkmoon groaned. She felt like she needed to shiver but her body was entirely incapable of it. "Fucking hell, Augur."

"Hawkmoon. Read it."

"Augur-"

"The more time we waste the longer the corpse-machines have to dig their claws in."

"We don't know for sure that the Weapons Division and the Drezhari are linked."

"We know. We do. Don't make a fool of yourself."

Hawkmoon reluctantly took up the datakey. "I can't."

"You must."

"This is someone else's life."

"Latent memories. Power through them."

"Augur, please-"

"I take no joy in this," Augur said, "but I will not leave it be. We do not have the luxury of time. I will be with you, Hawkmoon. I will not abandon you in this."

"... Fine." Hawkmoon retracted a panel on her arm and, after a moment's hesitation, she inserted the datakey into an entry port. She braced - armour closing around her body, wings flattening against her back - and waited.

Heat scaled her faceplates. Her wings ached. She stared down at the fallen hulk, down at the smoking end of her blaster, and reeled with the reality of what she'd done

The memory was vividly, viciously real. Hawkmoon's optics shuttered; her vision swam as images flashed before her mind. Her heat-shields activated on reflex and she had to force them back offline. One of her servos transformed halfway into a plasma blaster. Hawkmoon instead reconfigured it into a shard carbine - just for that small measure of defiance, to anchor her in the present.

It flooded her with someone else's emotions, someone else's regrets, and it almost swept her away. She held firm - if for no other reason than she never wanted to do this again. It tugged and tugged at her thoughts, urging to shift, to twist into someone else, but she fought it with all she had. Hawkmoon grabbed a hold of her own core memories - her fireteam, her family, her trine - and clutched them tight as the storm raged by.

"Easy," Augur whispered. He was somewhere close. She saw him - a whirling vortex of dark energy, small and fragile. He prowled close and she reached out; his presence wrapped around her own and pulled her free of the tide.

Hawkmoon onlined her optics and vented hard. She gasped curses in Kurmanji-English, Cybertronian, even Taishibethi. An age passed before she found the strength again to gather herself and sit up straight. The datakey remained in her wrist and its files were still open to her processor, sans the vestiges of Cloudbreaker's trauma. They were still there, but on this side of the gauntlet she was free of their influence.

"Hawkmoon-"

"I have it," she grunted. Hawkmoon opened the files within and began parsing through the documents within. "These are transactional logs. The Division's been selling hardware."

"Weapons?"

"Hell if I know. Just shipment codes."

"To whom?"

"It doesn't say." Hawkmoon paused. "This one's outlined. I think... it's something due to be delivered. Something called 'broken river'. Hold on, there's... there's an attachment. Voice recording. I'll-"

The message played. Within her processor Hawkmoon heard her own stolen voice. "It's not for us," Cloudbreaker whispered. "They're sending it away. They're selling the world."

Hawkmoon blinked.

"What is it?" Augur pressed.

"I don't know. It's something." She rose to her pedes. "I can't make sense of this."

"Hawkmoon-"

"Augur, I've already extracted everything useful." Hawkmoon pulled the datakey free and crushed it between her digits. "The rest can stay dead."

Augur watched her throw the remains aside. "So what next?"

"... Soundwave. Soundwave can decode this. If we find out where the Division's been shipping this stuff out, then maybe we'll find who they've been dealing with. It sounds like someone off-world."

"The Drezhari."

"Yeah, but we've nothing concrete to pin them with. We need something substantial. Contrail was right; a hunch doesn't convince anyone." Hawkmoon activated her comms system and input Soundwave's codes. It connected almost instantly.

::Hi,:: Soundwave said in her voice.

Hawkmoon made a face. ::Hey. Do me a favour?::

::Negative.::

::I'm sorry?::

::Remain.:: He disconnected.

Hawkmoon looked at Augur worriedly. "Uh... he said to stay?"

Augur tilted his head. "Why?"

"No idea." She moved down the stairs to the main room and called to Rook. He landed on her shoulder just as she reached the door - and it pinged before she could even touch it. Frowning, Hawkmoon motioned for it to open, revealing Dreadwing on the other side. "Blue?"

"Senator Contrail is en route," Dreadwing explained. "He wants you to remain here."

"Why?"

"It's urgent that you comply." Dreadwing stepped away. "Please follow me."

---

They settled into Contrail's study. Hawkmoon took a seat near the door and waited in silence. Augur and Rook took to each of her pauldrons. Dreadwing stood to attention nearby, and when Contrail and his entourage arrived Skyquake took a position opposite his brother. Dystrexin, Soundwave, and Contrail himself followed in closely behind.

"So?" Hawkmoon asked.

Contrail vented. He and Dystrexin sat down while Soundwave stood by the end of the table. "Before anything," Contrail said, "I want your word that you'll not act rashly."

Hawkmoon's optical ridges furrowed. "Uh oh. What's happened now?"

"Tell me, does the designation Lockdown mean anything to you?"

She leaned forward. "Yeah. He's Deadlock's former partner - the mech who killed the Prime."

"He just sent you a message," Contrail said.

"But... I haven't received anything?" Hawkmoon narrowed her optics. "What did you do?"

"We've secured your comm lines."

"You tapped my comms?"

"Hawkmoon-"

"What the frag?!" Her wings flared up with indignation.

"It was to protect you-" Dystrexin started to stay

"I never asked for it!"

"Please, Hawkmoon-"

"Contrail, I swear I'll..." Hawkmoon fell silent, raging. "You tapped my fraggin comms?"

"Soundwave ensured no one unregistered with your personal systems could contact you," Contrail said calmly. "Not without his permission."

"I never asked for this."

"We didn't have a choice. Your comms codes have been leaked."

"Leaked?"

"Before the Prime's death," Contrail clarified. "We believe it's because of Iacon. I'm not sure how it fell through the cracks."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't see the need to. Soundwave had already installed the block."

"A valid reason, if disrespectful," Augur murmured. "But your pride can't take it, can it?""

Hawkmoon ground her denta. She struggled to rein in her anger. "I should have been made aware."

Contrail gave a shrug. "You have been."

"Contrail..." She turned to Soundwave. "Remove the block. Now."

Soundwave blankly looked between them.

"You'll need to change your codes," Contrail warned her.

"Soundwave: will demonstrate," Soundwave said.

Hawkmoon glared at them both. "I know how to do it."

"Do you?" Contrail asked.

"I'm not inept."

"You'll need additional firewalls-"

"Yes, I know." She vented hard. "What's this scrap about Lockdown?"

"He messaged you-"

"I'm aware. How'd he get my codes."

"Iacon," Contrail said. "That should be answer enough."

"Why?"

"Because the city's corrupt. And that's where he is."

"He gave away his location?"

"Soundwave, play the recording."

Soundwave nodded. "Emirate," a deep, baritone voice growled, emanating from his helm-mounted speakers. "You're chasing the wrong mech. I can confirm. Meet me at the attached coordinates. Come alone. Lockdown out."

Hawkmoon looked at Contrail. "That's it?"

"There's more," he promised grimly.

Soundwave's screen shifted. The visual was dark but Hawkmoon could dimly make out the silhouette of a frame set against a soft blue glow. Spilled energon. "Your name," Lockdown demanded harshly.

"My... my designation is Gearbox," the frame groaned. They were in pain. "I... I need-"

"Where are you from, Gearbox?"

"Praxus."

"What brought you to Iacon?"

"... The Prime."

"Found this Ascenticon scrapper in the undercity," Lockdown revealed. The display shifted to his own faceplates - and they were horrific. Ugly, savage scars ran across his helm in deep messy grooves, each of them poorly soldered back together. He looked like a Frankenstein's monster of a mech, illuminated only by the glare of his red optics. "Remember: alone. Or I deliver the Prime's justice and neither of us walk away satisfied."

The recording cut off. "Who the frag is Gearbox?" Hawkmoon asked.

Contrail grimaced. "We don't know. Soundwave looked through Enforcer networks-"

"Of course he did."

"-and all we could find was that Gearbox applied for an Enforcer position but resigned almost immediately."

"Any idea why?"

"Officially? An inability to acclimate to proper procedure. Unofficially, he tried to report corruption in the ranks."

"That's the Praxian Enforcers?"

"No. He resided in Crystal City at the time. Praxus is too proud to break the rules."

"Like Vos."

Contrail made a face. "I wouldn't say that."

"No, you're right, Seekers love breaking rules." Hawkmoon sat back. "So there's no way of knowing if Gearbox is an Ascenticon?"

"No, but it's possible."

"Because the Ascenticons are anarchists, right? Disillusioned with the establishment." She shook her helm. "That doesn't confirm anything."

"Indeed."

"So are you going to report this? He has a hostage."

Contrail hesitated.

"You're not." Hawkmoon observed. "You think we should do as Lockdown says."

"I do not. But I know regardless of my own feelings on the matter, you'll try to meet him. My advice never survives your recklessness."

"The assassin almost killed me," she protested. "If Deadlock's the wrong mech..."

"All the evidence points to Deadlock being the shooter."

"Sure, but it's circumstantial. Don't like that." Hawkmoon stood. "When was the message sent?"

"Three joors ago," Contrail told her. "What are you doing?"

"Preparing to leave."

"Not alone."

"Contrail, we can't call this in."

Dystrexin leaned forwards. "The Enforcers-"

"Iacon's?" Hawkmoon shook her. "Obsidian's making a mess of this investigation. He's looking for a scapegoat, not a culprit. He'll run interference and sweep it under the rug."

"Soundwave: will go." Soundwave turned to Contrail. "Proposition: acceptable?"

Contrail regarded him dubiously. "Are you sure?"

"Soundwave: can extract Hawkmoon at will."

"Dreadwing should-"

"I have a fractal shroud," Hawkmoon cut in. "It's fit for one person. I'll give it Soundwave and - yeah, if it goes south he can bridge us out."

"And what if Lockdown tries to kill you?"

Hawkmoon tapped her frame. "My shield'll hold."

"Not if he has a disruptor."

"The more mecha we involve the greater the chance Lockdown sees through us. He's a bounty hunter. It's in his nature to be suspicious."

"We can't trust him." Contrail grimaced. "But nor can we ignore him."

"You're scared," Hawkmoon pointed out.

"This has been an ugly business from start to finish. Cybertron's tearing itself apart."

"It was always like this. Vos just caught up like all the rest."

"I still can't let you two leave on your own."

"Contrail-"

He raised a servo. "Dreadwing and Skyquake will join you as far as Iacon. They'll remain in reserve. Should Lockdown attempt to harm your person, call them."

"Alright," Hawkmoon sighed. "Yeah. You boys okay with that?"

Skyquake gave her the barest of nods. Dreadwing simply stared at her.

"'Kay then." She spared Soundwave a strained look. "And you?"

"Affirmative."

"And about my comms..." Hawkmoon glanced at everyone in turn. "Nevermind."

"It was for your safety," Contrail murmured.

"Look, enough. Just..." She huffed and shoved open the door. "Forget it. Let's get this over with."

---

When they arrived at Iacon it was still dark. Soundwave had wired their groundbridge to a secure location in the city's southern district - a safehouse near ground level, from whence they could come and go as they pleased. It was there Hawkmoon decoupled the fractal shroud projector from beneath her chassis and passed it over to Soundwave. While he set towards installing it, she began the arduous task of changing her comms codes and shifting the access permissions. She purged every unknown contact in her system - just to give herself that little bit more security.

Once readied, the pair of them took to the roof of the safehouse and discreetly launched into the air. Soundwave's alt-form was a strange airborne construct, all lanky framework and no armour. It flew near silently. The fractal shroud rippled down his shape, obscuring him from the world. Hawkmoon couldn't even detect his EM field. He'd hidden himself admirably.

::Location marked.:: He beamed her a set of coordinates.

::Got it.:: Hawkmoon altered her course. ::Is the city still on... I was about to say lockdown.::

::Affirmative,:: Soundwave said tonelessly.

::So odds are he's been stuck here since the Prime croaked.::

::Likely.::

::So what's to say this isn't an act of sheer desperation?:: Hawkmoon swooped low, slipping through an opening into a lower level. The guild-blocks and trade-complexes of the city's mercantile district fell behind them. Their landscape shifted to smoke and glass; the industrial sector all but swallowed them whole, blanketing their approach with smog and noise. The night sky disappeared behind a continuous slab of steel with the rare exhaust port.

Much like Polihex, Iacon favoured stacking dozens of factories on top of each other, all the better to corral the uglier parts of their city into one crowded spot. The architecture was brilliant and the scheme flawless, but there was only so much they could do to make the place pretty - and even that notion was fast overwhelmed by the filth and depression. Sprawling highways ran in and out of the black-spired monoliths, choked with a tide of mecha desperate enough for pay to risk life and limb in the smelters and refineries.

Their heading took them further west, where the landscape became even more desolate and far less populated. The skeletons of ancient buildings lay abandoned in the shadows, flanked by dazzling little citadels where the local corporations and native gangers roosted in deceptive harmony. Warehouses lined the broken streets, hollowed out and empty, and everything of worth had long since been picked clean. Their target was a half-finished habitation block, surrounded with ancient cranes and scaffolding. Hawkmoon transformed as she neared it, slowed, and hovered just beyond the open floor of the fifty-first level. No one waited beyond. None that she could see. She flitted forwards, touched down and pulled her hood over her helm.

"Lockdown?" she called out.

Something moved in the dark. "Thought you would've sent someone else."

Hawkmoon squinted and increased the flare of her optics. When that didn't work, she shifted to nightvision and finally saw him, leaning against a pillar. Lockdown's plating was painted a non-reflective black from helm to pede. Even his optics were dimmed to such a degree they were indistinguishable in the shadows. He was shorter than her but not by much, with the top of his helm on level with her shoulders. She had the advantage of mass too, but he was armed to the teeth. Weapons and modifications dotted his chassis, rendering him into something more than a tool of war. His scars weren't limited to his faceplates either; deep gouges ran over his chassis, his right pauldron was slagged to bits, and he bore scorch marks along one of his legs. The latter looked to be new.

"You called, so here I am," Hawkmoon warily said. She held out her servos but the transformation sequences were bright on her mind. "Where's Gearbox?"

"Why?"

"Because a living Ascenticon is damning proof all on his own."

"Then I guess you're lucky."

"He's alive?"

"He's... functional." Lockdown shrugged. "Can't say the same for the rest of his cell."

"There were others?"

"Some. They made their choices."

"You killed them?"

"Yeah."

Hawkmoon vented. "Prime's dead. Unless his staff are paying his debts, there's nothing for you to gain here."

"Isn't that what you are?"

"Excuse me?"

"You. You're the Prime's staff. Or part of it." Lockdown pushed away from the pillar. "Wasn't pay I was after. This was personal."

"That fond of Zeta?"

"Not a chance." He looked past her. "You're alone?"

"I am," Hawkmoon lied. "But that could change in a moment."

"Really? From what I can hear Enforcer chatter's been real low lately. Can't be them, surely."

Hawkmoon smiled humourlessly. Lockdown huffed.

"Fine," he growled. "Here are my terms-"

"Clearing Deadlock's name isn't enough?"

Lockdown waved impatiently. "That's a given."

"You expect me to pay extra?"

"I do."

"Thought he was your friend?"

He grunted. "There aren't any friends in this business."

Not with that attitude, Hawkmoon thought. "Name your price."

"Free passage out of Iacon."

"Really? I hear this is the cultural capital of the world."

"Then why do you keep running back to Vos?" Lockdown snorted. "Everyone knows you can't stand it here. None of you Seekers can."

"Careful," Augur whispered.

"Alright. Clearance to leave Iacon," Hawkmoon said slowly. "That can be arranged. Is that all?"

"That's all." Lockdown looked at her for a moment, then turned on his heel. "Follow me."

He led her down a couple of floors where some of the windows were boarded up and soldered shut. The first thing Hawkmoon saw was the glow of energon, pooled around a limp frame. Lockdown nudged it with his pede. Optics flickered online and the hunk of beaten metal fearfully glanced up at the pair of them.

"This is Gearbox?" Hawkmoon inquired.

"Yeah." Lockdown scoffed and walked away. To an open window, where an elaborate rifle stood perched on a massive tripod. "Come here."

Hawkmoon cautiously followed him over. Lockdown fell to a knee, braced the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, and began to take aim. "What are... what are you doing?"

"Time's money," Lockdown said tersely, "and I need insurance."

"Lockdown-"

He projected a feed. Hawkmoon warily accepted it. Her vision warped; she stared out the scope of the rifle, and with a start she realized it was settling on a building across the sector. The vantage point was incredible - it peeked through a myriad of crumbling factories and unfinished construction projects, landing on a window in one of the reconverted fortresses somewhere to the north. She spied a mech at the other end, cast in shifting shades of purple, pink, and blue muted by the night. He was talking. To a hologram. Nursing an energon cube.

"His designation's Ramshackle," Lockdown murmured, "and he's murdered seven mecha."

"A ganger," Hawkmoon whispered.

"No. Maybe. He's got a different coat of paint, but the job boils down to the same. He's a security chief. Works for the recycler foundry - veritable empire in this here dead land. Nice gig, pays well, and he's cut of a plate too high and mighty for the struggles on the streets. He went to trial for those murders, I hope you know, but corporate shanix is the only justice in this city."

"Lockdown-"

"This isn't just, I'm aware." Lockdown vented softly. "But it's business."

He pulled the trigger. The rifle discharged with a little hiss - so quiet, so utterly, terrifyingly quiet. The mech beneath the scope shuddered and dropped. No physical round, no superheated plasma beam; an electrical whizz, that was it. The cube shattered. Energon splashed everywhere.

Lockdown shoved her out of the rifle's feed and stood up. He turned to her. "Ramshackle was in the pocket of several senators. They'll be displeased to hear about his death."

"I get it," Hawkmoon growled.

"Good."

"I could still report this."

"You could." Lockdown tilted his helm. "But you won't."

"How do you reckon that?"

"Because the Prime ranks higher than industrial filth. Your reputation rides on it." He walked around her. "By the time you've got your assassin, it'll be too late to tell 'em. Because they'll know you stood by. They'll know you let me kill him. And that'll be it for you."

Hawkmoon swivelled, a retort building on her lips, but she froze. Standing over Gearbox was another mech - sharper, built for speed and power both. The stranger was matte black with elements of white at the edges of his plating and his optics were, like Lockdown's, a bloody red.

"Deadlock," Hawkmoon said.

"Emirate Hawkmoon," Deadlock said stiffly. A sword hung loose from one of his servos. Attached to his back was a long-barreled linear fusion rifle. "You talked with Axelshift?"

"She contacted you?"

"Yeah. You let her go."

"We had no reason to keep her."

"Yeah you did. Spite."

"I reserve my spite for those who personally tick me off. And those who deserve it. She was neither."

Deadlock nodded. "Thanks."

Hawkmoon dipped her helm.

"I didn't kill him. I want you to know that."

"Zeta? You've killed plenty of other mecha."

"Yeah. Legal bounties."

Hawkmoon spared Lockdown a scathing look. "There was nothing legal about Ramshackle."

Lockdown said nothing.

"My jobs are legal," Deadlock argued. "It's why we split."

"But now here you are."

"Yeah."

"How'd that happen?"

Deadlock shrugged. "I needed help."

"And you lost your morals along the way?"

"Entire city's been turned upside down for him," Lockdown interjected. "He didn't have a choice."

"I didn't kill the Prime," Deadlock said again. "I didn't."

"Have a way to prove that?" Hawkmoon asked.

Deadlock kicked Gearbox. "Tell us."

Gearbox groaned. He said nothing.

"Tell. Us." Deadlock pressed his sword against Gearbox's neck. "Now."

"C-can't!" Gearbox gasped.

"He's been holding back since we found him," Lockdown supplied.

Hawkmoon frowned. "So he hasn't said anything?"

"Oh he's said lots. Just nothing we want to hear."

"How can you be sure-"

"He visited Complex 112 several decaorns ago," Deadlock huffed. "And not just the one time either."

"Repeated visits," Lockdown continued, "to a certain floor."

"How'd you figure this out?"

"Guest list. Witnesses."

Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "Wasn't a guest list when I checked out the place."

"They were smart. Covered their tracks."

"How'd you get it then?"

"Chief administrator," Deadlock said.

Hawkmoon scowled. "Azimuth."

"Yeah, that's the one."

"She never said anything about it to me. Why?"

Lockdown shrugged. "No idea."

"They must have gotten to her," Deadlock said.

"The Ascenticons?" Hawkmoon ventured.

"Or whoever's supplying them." He paused. "We found their cell somewhere south. They were..."

"Well-equipped," Lockdown finished. "I'll send you the details later. You can have the Enforcers sweep the area if you want."

"They'll know you were involved," Hawkmoon pointed out.

"Our names'll be clear by then. For the Prime at least." Lockdown chuckled. "No one cares about dead Ascenticons. Not after the grief they put the planet through."

Hawkmoon looked at the two of them in turn. "What's to stop me leaving with Gearbox right now? If he's the killer all I need is a cortical patch-"

"He's not," Deadlock interrupted.

"Not what?"

"Not the shooter. He wasn't alone. Not on his second visit."

"What do you mean?"

"He had an accomplice," Lockdown drawled. "And they didn't leave."

"Azimuth saw this?"

"She took note. That's it."

"Why'd she share all this with you?"

"For a pretty sum of shanix. What else? She's got young 'uns to raise. Gotta put some fuel in their tanks."

"Did she give you a good description?"

"Blue grounder, yellow optics."

"Little taller than you, right?" Hawkmoon glanced at Deadlock.

He frowned. "Yeah. How'd you-"

"You're too short. I saw the room. Saw where the assassin was perched. The angle was wrong for someone of your stature."

Deadlock blinked. "What are you saying?"

"She's saying you're clear," Lockdown grunted.

"So you believe me?"

Hawkmoon shrugged. "What does it matter?"

"Emirate-"

"If I come out of here without a name, your neck's still on the chopping block. I need evidence." She looked at Gearbox. "How can I be sure this mech really is an Ascenticon?"

"This." Lockdown tossed her something. It was a signet, not unlike those worn by Enforcers and government officials - a mold of glittering steel in the stylized image of a mech's helm. It was spiked, sharp, and crowned with a pair of backswept horns: the icon of Liege Maximo, one of the original Thirteen Primes. She recognized it instantly. Those mecha Zeta Prime had executed on public broadcast bore the same marks. "He had it pinned to the underside of his chassis. CNA scans'll reveal that it's his."

"I'll need him in my custody for that - alive."

"You can take him," Lockdown told her.

Deadlock gave him a sharp look. "That's how we leave it?"

"I can call for a cortical patch," Hawkmoon said.

"I'd rather work him over here and now."

"I'm not letting you torture him."

"His kind ruined my life," Deadlock snapped. "You're not taking him."

Hawkmoon set her mouth in a thin line. "I need his confession to prove your innocence."

"You'll get it."

"Deadlock-"

"I don't trust you," Deadlock snarled. "You've got nothing to lose. I do. We're doing this my way."

Hawkmoon's comms buzzed. ::Outside,:: Soundwave reported. ::Extract?::

::No,:: she replied. ::Let me defuse this. If things go sideways we're pulling Gearbox out. Understood?::

::Affirmative.::

Hawkmoon held out her servos. "Alright, alright, we'll do this here."

Deadlock relaxed. His sword fell from Gearbox's intake pipe.

"But we'll compromise."

"How?"

"Let me try first. If we can extract a confession here and now without resorting to torture, all the better. It's cleaner, leaves all of us in the clear."

"Ascenticons are legal outcasts," Lockdown said. "Technically we can do whatever we want to him."

Hawkmoon shot him a warning look. "I'm telling you I want this clean. It's my cooperation you want, and I don't deal in butchery."

"Fine," Deadlock grated out. "Have at him."

Hawkmoon nodded her thanks and crouched in front of Gearbox. He stared at her fearfully. "I'm going to say this once," she vented, "and only once. If you want to live, you need to work with me. You want to get out of here?"

Gearbox weakly nodded.

"Then I'll need you to tell me what happened."

"I... I can't."

"Can't or won't?"

Gearbox didn't respond.

"I see." Hawkmoon reached for his helm. He flinched, but she only felt around for wounds. "Have you taken any damage to your memory cores?"

"No."

Augur ran down her arm and landed on Gearbox's chest. He sniffed close to the mech's spark. "Terror," he reported. "Of you. Of them. And... something else." Augur tilted his head quizzically. "A fear of disappointing someone."

"Your friend - the one who stayed in that room in Complex 112. Who are they?"

Gearbox shook his helm. "No."

"I'm trying to help you here."

"I can't tell you-" He froze up and winced. Whispers of agony flared across his EM field.

"Something is tearing him apart," Augur said suddenly. "It's inside him. It's not Cybertronain - like Bitstream!"

"Alright, alright," Hawkmoon said quickly. "Let's stay calm."

Gearbox eased. The flicker of pain receded.

::Soundwave,:: Hawkmoon transmitted. ::We'll have to take that exit. Can you administer a forced stasis lock?::

::Affirmative.::

::Gearbox won't survive an interrogation. I think there's active malware in his system.:: Hawkmoon stood. "Scrap."

"What is it?" Deadlock demanded.

"Virus."

The reaction was visceral. Both Deadlock and Lockdown recoiled, their EM fields flaring with unease, and they instinctively stepped away. The latter loaded his rifle. "How can you tell?"

"Because I've seen this before," Hawkmoon replied. "'Nother mech, tried to hit the Vosian Palace."

"Is it contagious?"

"Have either of you linked with Gearbox?"

Deadlock shuffled. "I deactivated his weapon configurations," he admitted.

"I don't know if it spreads like that," Hawkmoon said. "Questioning Gearbox like this won't work."

"You're not leaving with him."

"Then I can't clear your name! Until we can fix him, Gearbox is a dead end-"

Lockdown suddenly shifted to the side and raised his rifle, pointing it at her.

"What the frag do you think you're doing?" Hawkmoon barked.

"I told you to come alone," Lockdown coldly fired back.

"I am!" ::Soundwave. Soundwave, have they detected you?::

::Negative.:: Soundwave paused. ::Activity detected in adjacent building.::

Augur crept back over to her. "We're not alone," he warned her. "I can sense... something."

"Were you followed?" Lockdown pressed.

Hawkmoon shook her helm. "That's impossible. I took a secure route."

"Emirate-"

Gearbox's signet, dropped to the floor, whined. Pale light flickered from Liege Maximo's false optics, ticking like a clock.

"Gun!" Augur shouted.

Hawkmoon heard a distant whine, saw the flash of red light that illuminated the room, and felt the impact as a fusion bolt crashed against her absorption shield. The force of it sent her stumbling; Hawkmoon landed on one servo and took aim with the other, spraying out the window with a burst of shards. A cannon formed on her shoulder and through it she picked through the building across the street. She saw movement and fired, was rewarded with a burst of energon blue, but the silhouette of the sniper ducked away.

She righted herself up. Lockdown was braced against one of the window boards and Deadlock had rolled behind a pillar, but Gearbox-

Gearbox was dead. His faceplates were a smoking ruin.

"Stygian!" Deadlock called out. "Get down!"

Hawkmoon sent a ping to Dreadwing and Skyquake and connected them to her and Soundwave's channel. ::Killer's here,:: she said quickly. ::Moving to engage.:: Without waiting for a reply, Hawkmoon ran for the window and threw herself out. Her thrusters roared, firing her across the chasm and into the other building. Her pedes skidded across unfinished flooring. There was a splash of energon near the gaping elevator shaft, but no body. With a shudder Hawkmoon transformed into a dragon and dove down into the dark.

Sparks kicked up from near the bottom; the shooter was using claws or a blade to dig into the wall and slow their descent. She had no such qualms; Hawkmoon pulled in her limbs and wings and rocketed after them, flaring them out just as the base of the tower rushed to meet her. The landing was harsh, jarring, and cost her a second of valuable time, but Hawkmoon burst out the nearest doorway and flared out her EM field. It crashed against that of a stranger already out on the streets. They'd taken the front door.

She aimed her jaws and let loose a torrent of flame and Arc, melting her way out onto the roads. Tires screeched somewhere to her left and she moved on automatic, lunging forth and snapping her teeth down on a rear spoiler. The kibble tore away and the automobile accelerated fast out of reach.

Hawkmoon raised her wings and surged after it, claws scrabbling on rubble and rusted metal as her prey made a sharp turn. The sound of it may as well have been a squeal of fear because ancient, alien subroutines activated in her subconscious and homed in on the source - propelling her after the shooter in great bounding flaps of her wings. She was faster than it and they both knew it. As her head closed in on the automobile with open jaws, a cannon sprouted from its back - and fired ahead. The supports for a mass of forgotten scaffolding were torn apart; Hawkmoon tried to slow down but her momentum dragged her right into the path of collapsing architecture. Great boards of steel fell over her, making her shield fizzle and smashing her down against the road, effectively pinning her in place. She heard the clanking of a transformation sequence, then felt the cool touch of a barrel tip under her jaws. She growled and wriggled helplessly. Somewhere, a part of the pile was beginning to give way.

"For you," the assassin whispered.

Hawkmoon froze. The voice... was familiar. She couldn't place it but she'd heard it before.

The barrel fell away. The sniper drove off; Hawkmoon struggled against the press of iron bars holding her down and pushed with all her might. Slowly but surely the weight it all began to slide away - until at last she slipped free, incandescent with bestial rage. She swung her head left and right, but she saw naught but more ruin - no vehicle, no sniper waiting to shoot, nothing.

Shadows passed overhead. Skyquake landed beside her and fell to a knee, faceplates contorted with concern. "Ma'am-"

"I had him!" Hawkmoon snarled. She shook loose pieces of leftover rubble. "Find him!"

"Emirate Hawkmoon-"

"He was right here!" Hawkmoon swept her wings out and launched herself into the sky. She rose and rose until the ground shrunk far beneath her-

But of the assassin there was no sign.

With a roar fueled by sheer fury she twisted about and returned to Lockdown's tower. Deadlock and Lockdown met her with raised rifles, but Dreadwing and Skyquake swooped in behind her, bristling with weapons. She landed between them. Her talons scored grooves in the floor. Hawkmoon stalked over to Gearbox's body and with a winged forelimb turned his body over. The bolt had pierced his helm all the way through. His processor, and more importantly his memory cores, were gone.

"Emirate-" Lockdown started to say, but Hawkmoon craned her neck around and bared her teeth.

"No," she snarled. "Not another word." She turned to Deadlock. "You have to go."

Deadlock glanced at Lockdown.

Hawkmoon transformed back into her bipedal form. She pointed at him. "I said go! You need to leave."

"Where?"

"Anywhere! I have to report this."

"It's just an Ascenticon," Lockdown chided. "Enforcers won't care."

Hawkmoon glared at him. "I said enough."

"Lower your weapons, hunter," Dreadwing ordered.

Lockdown scowled. "Seekers." With a huff he put the rifle away, folding it sideways and attaching it along his arm, joining it with his frame. Deadlock reluctantly followed his lead.

"Skyquake," Hawkmoon said, "take the body. Where's..." She switched to private comms. ::Soundwave, report.::

::Returning.:: A low hum emanated from the other building across the street and Soundwave dropped his stealth field, touching down in front of Hawkmoon. He presented a canister with a shred of gathered energon.

Hawkmoon's anger faded. "Can you identify it?"

"Affirmative. Additional function: Soundwave can locate source."

"Let's not waste any more time then. Fragger almost got me."

"Hawkmoon," Augur said. He manifested coiled around her neck - a noose of cool, weightless sensation. "That shot was not meant for you."

Hawkmoon vented hard. She ignored him. "Deadlock, can you fly?"

"No." Deadlock holstered his rifle across his back. "That was the assassin, wasn't it?"

"Dreadwing, take him back to the safehouse."

Dreadwing shifted. "Emirate-"

"Just fragging do it. Soundwave?"

Soundwave's chassis yawned open. Steam and heat billowed out. He placed the canister within and closed it after him. His screen flickered. "Soundwave: scanning. Progress: 7.84%."

"C'mon." Hawkmoon transformed into her fighter-form and threw herself out into the open. Soundwave followed close behind. They circled around the tower's summit. ::How long'll this take?::

::Estimation: one and a half breems.::

::Be quick about it.:: Impatience made her frame vibrate with anxiousness. The Cybertronian equivalent of adrenaline ran rampaent down her cable lines. Each second was an eternity, stretching the limits of her self-control, it was everything she could do not to fly away and tear the entire industrial sector apart in her haste.

::Progress: Complete,:: Soundwave droned. ::Retrieving ident-codes.::

::From where?::

::Enforcer database. Ident-codes: located. Designation: unknown. Ident-codes... acquired. Soundwave: tracing Teletraan network.::

Understanding dawned on her quickly. He was sweeping the entire network for mention of the assassin's codes. ::Well?::

Soundwave didn't immediately reply. Suddenly he jerked and twisted around. His thrusters fired him away. ::Target: located.::

::Where?!::Hawkmoon tore after him.

::Iacon Spaceport North. Target: purchased passage to Moon Alpha Spaceport.::

::He's headed off-world,:: she realized. ::But no one's allowed to leave Iacon!::

::Required permissions: submitted.::

::What do... frag this.:: Hawkmoon swept the Teletraan for Spaceport North's emergency comms line and raised a channel. She was forced to wait an entire breem before someone answered.

::Hello, how can I be of s- ::

::Hold every ship outward to Luna 1 right now!:: She and Soundwave broke free of the industrial sector's borders and rose up to the open city.

The clerk on the other end of the call spluttered. ::I'm sorry, if this is a joke...::

::This is Emirate Hawkmoon speaking. Zeta Prime's murderer is going to board one of your docked ships. Put those flights on hold NOW!::

::... A moment please.::

They burned a path through Iacon's skies, shattering the sound barrier in their haste. The spaceport, she saw, wasn't far. Then Soundwave inexplicably ground to a halt. ::Additional ticket purchased: Spaceport South.::

::He's covering his exit with decoys,:: Hawkmoon said. ::Frag it. I'll take North. Go!::

Soundwave veered away. Dreadwing connected with her not a moment later. ::Ma'am, we should accompany you- ::

::Keep Deadlock safe and secure Gearbox's remains!:: Hawkmoon ordered. ::Call for back-up if you have to, but that's your job.::

::Madam Emirate!::

::I don't have time for this.:: Hawkmoon cut the call short - only the one with Spaceport North to crackle back to life.

::Excuse me, is this Emirate Hawkmoon?:: a mech's voice asked.

::Yes!::

::I'm sorry, madam, but I'll need confirmation- ::

::I've already ordered that you hold every flight to Luna 1!:: Hawkmoon uploaded her Emirate permissions to the channel. ::How's that?::

::Madam Emirate? My utmost apolo- ::

::HOLD THE FRAGGING FLIGHTS!:: Hawkmoon dove down and skidded across the plaza in front of the station's primary terminal. The front entrance opened automatically and she darted inside. Mecha leapt out of her way, shouting with alarm, and when she arrived at the security gates she almost barreled through a local Enforcer.

"Hey!" they shouted after her. "Come back-"

Hawkmoon activated her thrusters and flung herself towards one of the help desks. The femme behind it stared at her. "Where's the control tower?" Hawkmoon demanded.

The Enforcer caught up, grabbed her shoulder and tried to pull her away - only to get a look at her faceplates and shrink back. "Emirate-"

"That way!" the clerk all but squeaked. She transmitted a route with waypoints Hawkmoon automatically applied to her internal map. Without another word she took off, crashing through swinging doors and all but flying up a set of stairs. There was another security point locked tight and manned by a pair of armed Enforcers, but at the sight of her they first looked at each other with visible confusion before saluting.

"Open those doors, now!" Hawkmoon roared.

The farthest Enforcer dialled in an access code to the gate's control node. The doors slid open. Hawkmoon thundered through - and arrived in a massive chamber dotted with countless computer terminals and holoprojectors. Each and every of the two dozen mecha within looked at her with surprise.

"Who's in charge?" she demanded.

A mech painted red and gold stepped forth. "Madam-"

"Hold those Luna 1 flights this instant!" Hawkmoon stopped in place. ::Soundwave, which shuttle is it?::

Soundwave wordlessly beamed her the ticket details.

Hawkmoon pointed at the red and gold mech. "The Utopia! Keep the Utopia grounded!"

"The Utopia?" The mech glanced around. "Who has the Utopia?!"

Silence. Then-

"Sir." Another mech, small and slim, raised his servo. "The Utopia is lifting off."

"Then stop them!" The red mech ran over. "Contact them this moment."

"Yes sir. Ground control to Utopia, come in Utopia."

They waited. The radio didn't so much as crackle.

"Utopia," the small mech said again. "This is ground control, please respond."

Not a word.

"Sir, they aren't responding. What should we-"

"Track them for me," Hawkmoon ordered. "Keep me connected."

The red mech turned with alarm. "Ma'am, what are you doing?"

Hawkmoon left the air control behind her and raced down to the bottom floor. From there she hurried to the nearest hangar, bypassing Enforcer after Enforcer with but a word each, and when at last she saw the open skies she transformed and darted out. ::Ground control, this is Emirate Hawkmoon. Where are they?::

::Marking for you now,:: the red mech told her. A yellow blip appeared on Hawkmoon's radar. ::Ma'am Emirate, they're accelerating.::

::Understood.:: Hawkmoon folded her wings back and focused power to her thrusters. They carried her quickly up to the edge of the stratosphere and then beyond. The Utopia was ahead of her, closing, closing-

::Ma'am Emirate, they're engaging in a micro-jump.::

::Warn Luna 1 to hold them for me.:: Hawkmoon dialed the location of Moon Alpha Spaceport into her own warp drive and forced her systems to align. The stars overhead seemed to pause, to shiver, then flashed as she slingshotted herself across massive swathes of empty space - appearing over the pale white landscape of Cybertron's largest moon. The surface of it was scarred where ancient colonists had attempted to extract energon from the rock, pockmarked drill-pits, and towards its polar cap was a small, squat little station abuzz with air traffic.

::This is Emirate Hawkmoon,:: she broadcasted. ::Alpha Spaceport, please respond.::

::This is Moon Alpha Spaceport, we read you Emirate Hawkmoon.::

::Shuttle Utopia is due to dock, hold it in place and do not allow anyone onboard to disembark. Applying permissions now. Am I understood?::

::Permissions received. Orders are clear and security is en route to bay 113.::

::Do you see them?::

::Affirmative, Utopia is proceeding towards designated area. Wait... disregard, disregard, Utopia is shifting course!::

::Understood. Moving to intercept.:: Hawkmoon homed in on the Utopia's distant form and cut towards it. She altered her broadcast to blare across all local channels. ::Utopia, this is Emirate Hawkmoon, cease your deviation and continue to Moon Alpha Spaceport. I repeat, continue to Moon Alpha Spaceport. Utopia, do you- ::

::I can't do that.:: It was the same voice as earlier. Her assailant.

::Where's the pilot?:: Hawkmoon pressed. ::Utopia, I am ordering you to cease deviating.::

::You have to stop following me.::

::Who is this? State your designation.::

::He said you have to live, so I won't kill you,:: the killer continued. ::But I can't protect you. Not where I'm going. Stay here. Stay. Please.::

Hawkmoon froze up. She knew that voice, and all too well, but it had been so long. ::Nightbeat?::

::Emirate Hawkmoon!:: Alpha Spaceport's correspondent sounded panicked. ::Utopia is engaging warp drive.::

She increased her velocity. Hawkmoon aligned her targeting matrix with the Utopia's rear engine compartments and loaded an armour-piercing missile. ::Utopia, stop!::

There was a sigh from the other end. ::Goodbye.::

::Nightbeat, STOP!:: Hawkmoon fired. The missile soared ahead - and the Utopia blinked out of its active pathing. It swirled in empty space, over and over until she deactivated it, at which point it hurtled out into the deep black.

::Madam Emirate,:: Alpha Spaceport air control said, ::Utopia is gone.::

::Track its heading.:: Hawkmoon paused as another call grazed her comms node. It came from planetside. ::What is it?::

::Hawkmoon?::

::Contrail.::

::Skyquake reported you were attacked?::

::Zeta's killer interceded. He bounced a shot off my shield to kill Gearbox.:: Hawkmoon paused. ::Contrail, it's Nightbeat.::

::What?::

::The assassin is Nightbeat. He has a Stygian with him; Deadlock was with me when he fired on us. He just spoke with me.::

::Nightbeat is dead.::

Hawkmoon responded by replaying a clip of Nightbeat's transmission. ::Does it sound like he's dead?::

::He can't... no.:: Contrail fell silent. ::Where are you?::

::Luna 1. He just hijacked a shuttle. I- Hold on, I need to take this.:: Hawkmoon switched channels. It was Moon Alpha. ::Yes?::

::Madam, Utopia's predicted heading is the Caminus system.::

::Another star system? It has the fuel for that?::

::Roughly. It won't be able to jump again.::

::Understood. Emirate Hawkmoon out.:: Hawkmoon switched back to Contrail's call. ::He's headed for the Caminus system. Anything I should know?::

::It's a former colony- No, Hawkmoon, don't do it.:: Contrail's tone turned sharp, stern. ::Hawkmoon- ::

::I'm not letting this go.::

::Hawkmoon, allow me to- ::

Hawkmoon disconnected the call. She felt the urge to breathe and it was a living torture. "Augur," she grunted. "You hear any of that?"

"Enough," he replied, formless as mist - a shapeless presence anchored to her own. "Do we go?"

"This is the second time he's almost killed me."

"So this is personal?"

Hawkmoon vented. The excess air dissipated in the open vacuum. "Hell yeah it's personal."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"To see if I have anyone in my corner."

Augur huffed with amusement. "Against both our wishes - always."

"Alright." Hawkmoon reached out for the edge of the Teletraan network and scraped out the coordinates of the Caminus system from a quick search. "Setting a course. We jump in three... two... one."

Space itself seemed to distort as the warp drive charged, becoming brighter, brighter, brighter until her world was a miasma of colours flushing past.

---

Five orns passed in the blink of an eye, both quickened and prolonged by single-minded drive. Find him. Find him. Find. Him. It was Nightbeat. The killer was Nightbeat. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be gone. The only mech to look into her mind and see the madness that lurked within. He'd seen something, he'd set her on the path to Vos, and he'd killed for her - without her input, without her blessings, without an inkling of warning. Murderer, liar, forsaken savant; he'd used her again and again. Killswitch, Zeta Prime, Gearbox. All gone. All shot dead before her very optics.

Hawkmoon radiated rage. The moment they burst out of warp-speed she twisted violently through the open void, searching in vain for a slip of friction, of resistance. The lack of opposition infuriated her for reasons she couldn't understand. She needed something to fight. Anything.

"We've arrived," Augur stated.

"I'm aware," Hawkmoon growled. Her long-range sensors activated, sweeping the area for networks, celestial objects, everything. She entered orbit around a blue dwarf star and turned to catch its glinting light on her wing. They waited in silence until her maps filled out: four planets, the farthest one out a colossal gas giant. There was a whisper radio activity around it, too frantic to be natural.

Hawkmoon swerved about and commenced a micro-jump. The whisper soon became a roar. The gas giant's deafening reproach washed over her, dashing phantom signals against her hull, but there was method in its madness. Moons, too many to count, swirled around it in erratic orbits. One of them, larger than the rest, was home to a nest of chatter. Cybertronian chatter. An active colony. She turned for it and burned a path around the planet until it came into view. Hawkmoon maximized the image until it became coherent, and she slowed to a stop as it did. The moon itself had its own fair share of satellites in the form of colossal hulks of steel and scrap. A graveyard of warships, floating around what could have been Cybertron's more diminutive twin.

A directed broadcast hit her. The denizens had sensed her approach. ::Unknown vessel, this is Camien Command. State your name, origins, and purpose.::

::Colony Caminus,:: Hawkmoon replied, ::This is Emirate Hawkmoon of Vos speaking. I'm here pursuing a fugitive of Cybertron.::

For a moment there was naught but silence.

::Please repeat designation with appropriate permissions.::

Hawkmoon transmitted her codes. ::I am Hawkmoon, Emirate of Cybertron.::

::Emirate Hawkmoon, please hold- ::

::Camien Control, this fugitive is responsible for the murders of several mecha, including Sentinel Zeta Prime. Do not leave me waiting.::

::Please repeat? Zeta Prime is dead?::

::If you've received any visitors in the past couple of orns, I request you inform me immediately. I'm attaching the details of the shuttle stolen by the fugitive.::

::Madam, my utmost apologies but I have to transfer this call. Please hold.::

Hawkmoon impatiently folded her wings back against her hull as she waited.

::Madam Emirate?:: A new contact entered the call and Camien Control disconnected. ::This is Pyra Magna, Hand of the Mistress of Flame. Welcome to Caminus. I am to understand that Zeta Prime, venerated by all, has passed back into the Well of Sparks?::

::His killer's here. Has anyone reported sightings of an off-world shuttle?::

::Yes.:: Pyra Magna's voice grew tense. ::We received a distress signal from Mederi only a joor before we detected you, citing an unregistered vessel closing on our research station there. I am gathering a squadron to investigate. We would be honoured if you would join us.::

::Where's Mederi?::

::Another moon.:: Pyra Magna sent her a datapacket. Hawkmoond decoded it into a set of coordinates. ::If your fugitive has trespassed on Camien grounds, they will be seized and taken into custody. This I v- ::

Hawkmoon disconnected the call, changed route and performed another microjump - this time aimed at a different moon with a closer orbit. It was almost on the other side of the planet. Without waiting for Caminus to call her again she closed in on the grey rock. More signals washed over her frame, a few of them still Cybertronian but the rest... the rest was strange.

It sounded like... song?

"We shouldn't be here," Augur whispered. Needling claws closed on the fabric of her mind. "Hawkmoon-"

"I heard you," Hawkmoon interrupted.

"This is wrong. This... there is something wrong here."

"I don't care."

---

She broke through Mederi's thin atmosphere and dove down towards the lone structure on its barren surface - a series of prefabs sheltered in a crater-valley beneath a mountain pockmarked with patches of brass plate. There was a ring at its summit. A massive ring of alien metal corroded with faded green. Hawkmoon knew what it was. She did her best to ignore it for the moment - that final act of defiance, delaying the horrifying inevitable.

A couple of mecha were standing outside, watching her approach. Her scans revealed them to be unarmed. Hawkmoon transformed and landed nearby, turning to face them. In person the Camiens were a strange sort. Each of them looked like a cross between grounder and Seeker, Praxian and Iaconian; there was no order to their plate or kibble, and their paints were the wildest, brightest colours imaginable, scored across their hides with flowing patterns. One of them, who resembled a half-blooded Vosian, nervously stepped towards her. "Hello?"

"Emirate Hawkmoon, Cybertron." Hawkmoon met her halfway. "You?"

"Windblade." The femme blinked with surprise. Her faceplates were porcelain white dashed with red around her optics and mouth. "You're an Emirate? From Cybertron?"

"That's what I said. What are you doing here?"

"We're cityspeakin'," a blue, yellow and white mech supplied. He offered her a smile.

Hawkmoon frowned. "Cityspeaking?"

"We're here to communicate with... with that." Windblade gestured up the hill. "The Radial Orator."

"That's not... Has it killed anyone?"

"What?"

"Has. It. Killed. Anyone?"

"No! It just..." Windblade glanced at it worriedly.

Hawkmoon grunted. "Forget it. I'm tracking a mech - you reported a shuttle?"

"Ye-es, but-"

"Where is he? Where did he go?"

Windblade helplessly gestured towards the ring. "He disembarked and ran through."

Hawkmoon vented hard. "You've got to be fragging kidding me."

"Madam-"

"Gather your things and prepare to evacuate." Hawkmoon pulled her Nullblade free of storage. She stepped back. "When your people arrive, make sure everyone gets back to Caminus."

"What are you... what are you doing?"

Hawkmoon ignored her. She hiked up the hill. Someone called after her. She didn't care to listen. Her world shrunk around her, becoming nothing more than the distance between herself and it - the ring, the door, the Gate.

"Oh the foolishness of mortals," Augur groaned.

She stopped in front of it and stared. Bronze metal threaded into raw stone at its base, stained with lichens and mosses that, by all rights, shouldn't have survived in Mederi's atmosphere. Tools and equipment of Cybertronian make were scattered about just shy of the Gate's threshold. It stood inactive, dead; a pretence of dormancy.

"You know these things, don't you?"

"I do," Hawkmoon whispered. "I think... I think I am one."

"You're Cybertronian," Augur reminded her. "There's a difference."

"I mean before. I dream about harvesting them. I dream..." Hawkmoon raised a servo. Something in the air shifted. "Once you'd need a key for this."

"Once?"

"It was a different time, a different place, but we changed things. The three of us. We cut a way in through unmitigated violence. We destroyed the bonds that separated it from the universe. I... I remember hearing them sing. I remember..." Hawkmoon tried to inhale but her chassis wouldn't expand. She tried to exhale but there was no air to release. "I remember what I am."

Energy gathered within the ring. Pale lightning danced between brass spires. Golden light washed over her faceplates.

"This is an unholy place," Augur hissed.

"It's the reason they exist."

"Hawkmoon. That which enters always dies."

"No. Not always." Hawkmoon knelt and held out her arm. Augur climbed down onto the ground. "The dead can pass through. We've always had that going for us."

"I'm not like you. I'm not... I'm not immune." Augur shivered. He looked at her worriedly. "He will die in there."

"I need to know why. Augur, I have to." Hawkmoon felt her spark harden - with fury, with grief, with every which emotion she hadn't the patience to understand. "I have to make sure this ends."

"Who is he?"

"A sycophant I never asked for."

"You don't have to go."

"You say that like I want to."

"Walk away with me." His eyes shone.

"What's wrong?"

"We're close. We're so close."

"Augur, I don't know what you mean."

"Leave the blade. Entrust it to me. You must."

Hawkmoon recoiled. "You'd leave me defenceless?"

"There is nothing in there where it would be necessary. You know this."

"Augur-"

"Please. I cannot follow you inside. Neither can the blade."

"I want it with me."

"Please."

"... Alright." Hawkmoon reluctantly held out the Nullblade's hilt. Augur took it into his jaws and stepped away. "I'll be back," she promised. "Wait for me."

"Always."

Hawkmoon stood up and turned to face the Gate. Geometric webbing shimmered before her in promise of places best left unspoken. With a deep vent she glanced back at Augur.

And stepped through.

---

For a brief moment time stalled/stalls/would stall but she hadn't lied to Augur when she'd said the bonds were broken. Vex-space was forced to fit the cohesive shape decided by the victors - by those who'd purged the Heart. Temporal potential became linear, and in the passageways between the real universe and the true origin point of life itself it laid waste to countless eons of work. Smooth-cut tunnels of dead limestone, formed by the crushing press of once-living Vex cells, remained devoid of sophisticated infrastructure. This was a backdoor. An unintended consequence of her actions to come. Actions that might never occur again.

Wasn't that a scary paradox?

Though the existence of such passages weren't to the Vex's liking, it did not mean they left them unguarded. As Hawkmoon marched her way down the tunnel she met with a construct forged in the fires of distant suns, built for the singular purpose of opposing her entry. She looked upon it and it stared back - and for a moment they peered into one another's optics for lack of understanding before both settled on the hypothesis of war.

The Hydra roared, it shrieked, it brought to bear Aeon cannons flickering with wicked antimatter rounds. Hawkmoon dodged and weaved, moving as she always had, with no discernible pattern and all the grace of a fleet-footed cage-fighter. Around and around the bewildered weapon platform she danced, harrying at every turn with bursts of her carbine and needling flicks of her wristblade. It bristled and retaliated as any common beast would, as any common thug, but she knew it was multi-tasking - because it was smart, it was smart, it was trying to calculate how best to neutralize her and how to keep itself from dying in the process.

It roared and that roar was code, a code which sang to Hawkmoon, which sang in harmony with the blood that used to run in her veins - the blessed Alkahest which used to feed her subconsciousness the illusion of I AM HUMAN I AM HUMAN I AM HUMAN.

/insinuate|subvert|replicate/

To complete the theorem it needed to understand her. To the Vex understanding was synonymous with simulation, so the Hydra took her form, her shape, her soul and the gradient on which she existed and jammed it all together into something manageable, something computable, something realistic and predictable.

/observe|imitate|replicate/

Hawkmoon snarled. "I can hear you."

She resisted its unknowing taunts; she broke its barbed orchestra with gunfire and clawed at its silvered hull. Her talons tore through Vex-ium like wet paper, sluicing through channels of insidious radiolaria and denying them, denying them, resisting their every argument to join, join, join this ultimate pattern. The Hydra wailed, pitifully, shrill in that way only terrified Vex could be - faced with something they couldn't understand, confronted with that crushing weight of helplessness they could never truly comprehend.

/simulate|simulate|simulate/

The program ran through, it manifested as best it could, a last ditch grasp at feeble continuation - and then Hawkmoon pulled the Hydra's shield generators out of its systems, tearing the cabling from within its spine like thread-thin strands of webbed sinew and ripped them apart. She grabbed its head, its many-eyed skull, and she tore it from its spindle-ribbed shoulders in a shower of bright sparks and sizzling Vex milk. The construct's remains fell by the wayside, savaged beyond repair, and Hawkmoon basked in the feeling of righteousness.

Cold amœboid mind-fluid deserved no less. It needed to die.

Yet the Hydra still sang.

Hawkmoon scowled and crushed its skull into metal pulp, white radiolaria bubbling up at the broken seams. Its voice cut off, silenced forever - or at least until the Network decided to make a new one.

But its song persisted in other ways.

Hawkmoon turned around, looked down and blinked.

The thing she saw there, some small two-armed two-legged two-eyed thing in clean black SOLSECCENT uniform, stared back, horror lining its soft flesh face. What she'd once come to expect swathed in bloody red was now real, physical, well and truly solid.

...

Well.

This was a surprise.

"What..." it started to say, speaking with a language Hawkmoon had yearned everyday to hear. "What the... fuck?!"

It was weird, hearing that voice. Familiar, but not familiar enough. Downright unsettling overall.

"Scrap," Hawkmoon swore.

The simulation flinched. The human flinched. Bronze features scrunched up in disbelief, denial, a refusal to accept that yes, standing in front of her was a golem of metal - that it had spoken. She wasn't obvious about it, no, she tried to hide it like a brave little warrior but Hawkmoon could read her easily enough.

Wasn't difficult when the person in question was, well... her.

Dark olive skin, green eyes, ash-brown hair pulled back in a strict bun in case she needed to don a helmet - yeah, it was like looking in a mirror from a couple of centuries back. It was how she was supposed to look. Maybe a tad more frightened than Hawkmoon was used to expressing, but that was fine. That was understandable. She would've been bewildered too. She was, in fact - and on both counts. It was... it was her, after all, so... yeah.

Her - simulated in her causal state. Simulated. Remade, recreated, realised all over again. An unreal reflection of her most real form.

She didn't know what to do. Hawkmoon settled for starting off with a "shh, it's... it's okay," and slowly crouched down. She was painfully aware of how loud it was, the clanking and whirring of her joints moving, of her frame shifting to give her the leeway she needed to go through with the motion. Even that might've been too much, though, or maybe the itty bitty human (a genuine human, as a real as a human could have been at this point in time) was just that on-edge, because little Adria's hand flashed to her hip and she drew a matte-black handgun.

Hawkmoon paused, froze, gave it a wary look. It resembled nothing more than a measly sidearm, one with either kinetic or classic Solar-energy rounds, but - there was that slightest, slightest chance that… Yeah, maltech. Golden Age maltech. The precursor to beautifully efficient, beautifully deadly fusion rifles everywhere. Disintegration in handheld form.

"What the fuck," Adria Lennox said again but quieter, more controlled, "is this?!"

A proper question, one with potential to be given a feasible answer. That was an invitation if Hawkmoon had ever heard one. "Oh this?" she said, helm perking up. Her optics darted up and down the tunnel. "This is a fuck-up of monumental proportions. On their part, though, just to clarify. Not mine. No, I'm making it their fuck-up. They've crossed a line here and I'm going to punish them for the audacity. You can be sure of that."

"... What?!"

"I thought we were... nevermind." Hawkmoon tilted her helm. "This is weird. Never thought something like this would happen. Don't know why; it's always been possible. Just glad it's you as you are and not... I don't know, some dark reflection of me as I am now. Had enough of that."

That little black gun, that little fusion-sidearm lifted up and aligned with Hawkmoon's helm. She activated her overshield in response - silently, invisibly, cautiously because while she didn't for a moment believe even the best of maltech could pierce a Taishibethi-forged energy shield, she wasn't going to leave it to chance. Nor did she want to incite the little Mini Me to violence. That would've been messed up.

Hawkmoon held up her servos in surrender. Adria's eyes darted to her talons, scrutinising, analysing; Hawkmoon knew because she was her and they shared the same instincts, the same intuition, hell they even had the expression: a mask of cool impassivity to hide whatever lay beneath.

"I'm not your enemy, captain," Hawkmoon said, gathering herself. "I'd appreciate it if you lowered your weapon."

Adria Lennox didn't immediately reply. She was shooting quick glances around them, shuffling back step by step - trying to be discreet and failing miserably.

"This isn't the place to get lost," Hawkmoon warned.

Adria looked up at her with a fierce little face, eyes so human it hurt. Those eyes used to be hers in another life. Hawkmoon could hear her breathing too. A stab of envy pierced her spark before she quashed the feeling. There was no use grieving a body lost to her. That part of her was gone and now that it was alive and well before her, without her, like one final taunt by the universe, she needed to rid herself of that needless mortal facet. This was a time for her to be strong. Nostalgia was a mourner's game.

"Craftmind?" Adria questioned. She was a fencer, needling the inquiry forth like a rapier - wielding her curiosity on the offensive. Almost immediately Hawkmoon began to understand Contrail's frustrations. Not share, but understand; even newly manifested she was an aggressive soul, taking the fight forward. If a fight was what it could be called in the first place.

She hoped to change that.

"Exomind," Hawkmoon corrected.

"No."

"I am. Just... modified." It was the truth too. The truth had ever been her shield. She never liked to lie. In her happier years, crusading against Devils and vagabonds, she'd always carried herself as an open book. Things had been simpler then.

"... Bray," Adra spat.

And she shot.

Hawkmoon's shield fizzled. It danced somewhere below the fifty percent durability mark, but the flare of the weapon splashing against her helm was the more immediate concern. Hawkmoon flinched, then staggered back with fear that any wrong move would smush herself. As the twinkling lights faded from her optics, though, she caught sight of Adria pelting down the corridor - down the way where the vines and flowers propagated amidst cracks in grey stone.

"Wait," Hawkmoon called after her. She stormed forth with panic. "Wait!" She tried swiping for Adria - limiting the power she put into the motion for fearing of hurting her - but the soldier was quick, she was canny, she rolled out the way and hurtled into the brush, the thicket, the yawning entrance to a place that never should have been.

Hawkmoon cursed/curses/will curse and powered/powers/will power through the warning ebb in time-space-

---

-and she stumbled into the Garden, slid on her knees, and dove forth to snatch Adria up in a steel-fingered cell. The maltech discharged again but the shot went wide and annihilated a colony of creeping vines. Hawkmoon rolled onto her back as they slid to a stop, grimacing at the feel of stone on her wings, but she clutched Adria to her chest.

"Hey, hey!" she whispered-shouted. "Enough!"

"Let go!" Adra shoved at one of her fingers, cursing as she cut her palm on Hawkmoon's claw. "This is an unlawful-"

"Shush!" Hawkmoon sat up and swivelled her helm about. The Garden was... quiet. She couldn't see nor hear any Vex - but she could sense discordant whispers echoing down from somewhere close. Sunlight fell against her face; it was alien and wrong, but the tropical warmth was pleasing. The sky was framed by tall quarry walls of yellow-brown stone intermixed with elements of silver and bronze.

She looked down and opened her hand. Adria struggled for balance, fell to a knee, and raised her sidearm again - but the moment she pulled the trigger it whined for want of a charged powered cell.

"Don't suppose you've got a fresh 'pack in your back pocket?" Hawkmoon asked. She cracked a smile, touched by the outlandish irony of the situation.

Adria lowered her sidearm. "If this is old man's doing-"

"It isn't."

"Ishtar Academy? Hyperion Shipments?" Adria jutted out her chin, glaring.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd kept your voice down," Hawkmoon urged her. "Unless you'd prefer to see a Vex patrol come barreling down on top of us."

That caught her attention. Of course it did; humanity knew about aliens during the Golden Age. They had the Traveler, they studied dragons, they prodded at the Vex structures on Venus and almost too late realised the scope of danger they'd subjected themselves to. Adra looked around with a new understanding and studied their surroundings with alarm. Her gaze wandered back to Hawkmoon.

"You're no Exo."

"Maybe not."

"Where are we?"

"The Black Garden." Hawkmoon stood up. Adria shifted and grabbed her thumb for balance- "Not there."

"What?"

"Not there," Hawkmoon warned. "That's the joint. You'll lose your fingers if I so much as twitch. Higher."

Adria adjusted her grip.

"There you go." She straightened the rest of the way. "You get vertigo?"

"No."

"If you throw up on me I'm going to be pissed." Hawkmoon cradled Adria close and transformed her offhand into a carbine. It didn't go unnoticed.

"What are you?" Adria demanded.

"Me?"

"Yeah."

"A Seeker."

"Who built you?"

Hawkmoon chuckled. "I'm not a Frame."

"What?"

"I'm not an AI. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

"Something like it."

"I'm a post-Exomind," Hawkmoon continued. "You know what an Exo is?"

"Clovis' pet project."

"You don't like him?"

Adria said nothing.

"Don't remember him myself."

"Exos can't look like you."

"Hm?"

"You're not an Exomind," Adria asserted. "The human mind can't acclimate to a body like yours."

"I'm a special case," Hawkmoon said. She began walking forth. "Plus, it's not that different. Not where it counts."

"You have wings. Why?"

"To fly."

Adra inhaled sharply. "You're a post-Exomind?"

"I've been subjected to a body transference. Got new systems in place." Hawkmoon stopped. They'd reached a crossroads. No tracks as far as she could tell, but one of the corridors looked to slope up into the open. She wasn't yet so confident to try and take flight in the Garden, but she needed a vantage point if she wanted to pick up on Nightbeat's trail. She started walking again. "Can I ask you a question?"

"What?" Adria said irritably. She was falling back on her anger to cover for her confusion. It's what Hawkmoon would have done.

"What's the last thing you remember? Before you appeared in front of me?"

Adra went silent for a moment. "I appeared?"

"You... yeah, sure. Something like that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You first."

"I... I remember Venus," Adria begrudgingly admitted. "Hiking-"

"Tracking a shipment of dragon bones?"

Adria looked up at her sharply. "That's SOLSECCENT business. Who are you?"

"Someone reasonably informed, I suppose."

"No. Your name. Now."

"You're very demanding, captain."

Adria's eyes narrowed. "I never introduced myself."

"I know." Hawkmoon paused. "My name is Hawkmoon."

"That's no name."

"It's mine. Trust in that."

Adria exhaled slowly. She lowered her gaze. "I don't have any power here, do I?"

"Very astute. But I'm not kidnapping you, just keeping you alive."

"This is a Vex installation. We're not in Sol?"

"No. This is the Black Garden."

"I don't know what that is."

"It's place removed from history and realspace, entirely acausal in nature."

"The Vex are acausal."

"Naw, they're causal, they've just studied physics harder. This place is different."

"But they're here?"

"Yeah. Some of them. I don't know how to describe it; there's a subtype here that's... aggressively territorial. They're zealots." She paused. "The whole place is."

"I'm sorry?"

"The Garden's dangerous all on its own. It's the idea of evolution, adaptation, persistence. Don't trust anything alive here. Not even the flowers."

Adria stared at her.

"Seriously."

"Where are we going?"

"There's someone in here I have to find."

"Another Exo?"

"Yeah."

"Why don't you point me towards the nearest exit?"

"Because the Vex will catch you there. The Garden-Vex and the rest don't get along. Normal Vex try to keep the Black Garden's entrances under wraps. Odds are you'll run into a Gate Lord - and it'll kill you. There won't be anything you can do about it."

"Can you?"

"Sure." Hawkmoon glanced down. "I'll get you out if I can. If you could stop trying to shoot me it would make my job easier."

"I'm... I'm sorry."

"It's fine. Really."

Adria's grip tightened on her thumb. "Who sent you-"

"I'll need you to hold on that." Hawkmoon raised her carbine and strode out into the open. The walls of the maze stretched on in every direction except the north, where, in the shadow of a mountain range, the stonework gave way to great columns of stone stacked like stairs and the unkempt wilderness sprouting around them. Above it rested a plateau painted entirely in green. Lines of flowers followed along the stone walls leading up to it, evening out into sprawling fields. The skies were just as fantastic, warped by swirling clouds of glittering dust high above. Hawkmoon spied five separate moons of differing sizes in slow orbit above their heads. Beyond them lurked a pair of pale suns trailing glowing tails.

"This isn't Venus," Adria breathed, awestruck.

"Sure isn't." Hawkmoon's optics fell back to the earth. She scraped the very image of the Garden for something, anything, cycling every iota of visual information through a Vosian cognito-cortex - an element of her processor dedicated to highlighting objects and patterns not keeping with their surroundings, entirely devoid of entropic phenomena. It was meant for catching signs of energon deposits, but it performed just as well as a hunting tool.

There were faint wisps of vapour in the far distance. Too faint for organic eyes to pick out; Hawkmoon altered between thermal and infrared to check for heat. Her scanners told her it was smoke. It was coming from a valley to the northwest, or at least what her internal compass said was northwest, on approach to the fields of flowers. She marked out a route between the maze walls and walked to the nearest one.

"What are you doing?" Adria asked nervously.

Hawkmoon stepped out and fell the rest of the way to the floor of the canyon below, slowing her descent with a quick burst of her thrusters. Adria gave a yelp as they landed. "Smoke," Hawkmoon told her. "Someone's here."

"Could be Vex."

"Vex don't start smoke. Certainly not here. This place is sacred to them."

"They're cold machines," Adria argued. "They don't have religion."

"They do here. 'Sides, that's no good reason."

"Isn't it?"

"Anyone can have religion. Smart, ignorant, rich, poor, flesh or steel; real, genuine atheists are in short supply."

"Are you an atheist?"

Hawkmoon considered the question. "I'm... well, I'd like to be. Same as you."

Adria made a face. "You seem to know a lot about me."

"Sure do."

"How? Have we met?"

"Not quite. But we're familiar."

"That doesn't make any sense."

Hawkmoon vented. The sound took Adria by surprise.

"Are you damaged?"

"Huh? No, I'm just... contemplating."

"About which excuse will shut me up?"

"Thought about it, sure." Hawkmoon hesitated. "I could tell you the truth too, but you won't like it. So I'm not going to."

"That's no good reason at all."

"It is to me. I know what you're like. You won't take it well."

"You know about my assignment, you know my rank, do you know my name?"

"Adria Abdallah Lennox." Hawkmoon peered down at her. "But you go by Adria Lennox because you really want to be an atheist."

Adria's suspicion refused to fade, but she allowed the change in topic to pass. "Abdallah was my dad's choice."

"Mean's 'servant of God', doesn't it?"

"Yeah. He was Sunni. Not a strong believer, but he believed." She looked away.

"A good man?"

"The best. But mom..." Adria took a breath. Her tone turned acidic. "Mom was Catholic, but she wasn't devout either. Not until it suited her."

"No love lost?"

"None. What about yours?"

"Mine?"

"You're an Exo. That means you're either human or used to be. Do you have any family?"

"I've had... something close. Twice over." Hawkmoon's spark ached with the memories. "But those are luxuries I can't afford. Not with this job."

"And what's that?"

"Hm? I suppose it's not unlike yours."

"A troubleshooter? You're not SOLSECCENT, and you say you're not Bray, so..."

"I'm freelance," Hawkmoon supplied. "I run interference with the bad guys."

"Like the Vex?"

"Somewhere in that range, yeah."

"Who are you tracking?"

"Another... well, another person like me." Hawkmoon's faceplates hardened. "I think he came here to die."

"So this is a rescue operation?"

"Not exactly. I'd be happy to leave him to it but I want answers. And I need to be sure the job is done this time 'round."

Tense silence filled in the gulf made by that answer. Adria broke it with a cleared throat. "Why am I here? I was nowhere near the Vex ruins-"

"You're here because a Vex wanted you to be," Hawkmoon revealed. "Because they thought they could get you through in time."

"In time for what?"

"To stop me from killing them."

"How does that-"

A sharp, solid sound cracked through the air and echoed down the maze's corridors. Hawkmoon flinched, considered ducking, but it was too distant. Too removed.

"That was a gunshot," Adria observed.

The bang was followed by a low, muffled hiss compounded by a rattling boom.

"And that's a grenade," Hawkmoon recognized. "Hold on tight." She cradled Adria close and ran.

---

The valley, when they arrived, had been warped into a small warzone. Tiny craters dotted around the sloptes. The focal point had been the east side, where a ridge of boulders had taken a beating - splintered and smoking from several different types of firearms, and none of them Vex. Or Cybertronian. Near the lip of the valley they found the perpetrators. Or rather, their remains.

There was a human woman and an Exomind man. They wore the armour of Guardians, cut and stitched from the salvaged remains of local Vex. Their helmets had been removed and their hands placed on their chests. Of their Ghosts there was no sign. Weapons lay by their side, forgotten. Hawkmoon tacked on thermal but the pair of them were cooling off. The Exo had been killed by an explosion and it had torn out his flank. Someone had taken a knife to his ribs afterwards to finish him off. The woman, though, was marked only by a ugly black welt over her breastplate where her heart would be. Both of the bodies emanated low auras of Darkness. Their killer, whoever it was, was gone.

"Friends of yours?" Adria whispered.

"Don't know him, but... she looks... sorta familiar?" Hawkmoon swept the local area with her optics. Only when she was sure they were alone did she step forward, kneel by their side and allow Adria to disembark. "They've been here a while."

"Their armour's Vex."

"Weapons too, just... better." Hawkmoon prodded at the woman's auto rifle with the tip of a finger. It was formed of Vex brass but tamed by human gunsmithing techniques. It had what she first thought was a drum magazine but a quick scan revealed to be a zero-point energy cell. A weapon with antimatter rounds. Someone had taken the design of an Aeon Maul and condensed it down into something fit for more reliable personal use. "What do you think?"

"I think... I think they were pursuing someone," Adria said. She pointed down the slope. "Tracks there. They belong to the Exo. Someone cut him off by that bush with a grenade. But the woman - she came from there, circled around. She wasn't who he was shooting at."

"Killer stuck around to arrange their bodies."

"Whoever it was, they knew them."

"Cared for them."

"Not enough to spare them." Adria knelt by the woman's side. "This was on purpose."

"The shot?"

"Torso's a bigger target than the head or neck, but this is too direct."

"Heart kills."

"Sure does, but not instantly. Victim's still got upwards of a few hundred milliseconds of brain activity. Enough to shoot back if they've got a mark. Pro like this could've ended it on the spot."

"Maybe they didn't want to touch her face," Hawkmoon said.

Adria nodded. "Sure. But this is her heart. This was an act of retribution."

"To ensure she saw the end coming?"

"Also true, but I was thinking more like: 'you took what I love, so I'll take yours', if that makes any sense."

"And the Exo?"

"That was desperation. He died first. Grenade did him in on the spot. Knife was just for insurance. He and the killer weren't as close."

"Still some affection."

"Still some. And it hurt them like hell."

"What makes you figure that?"

"They dropped their gun over there." Adria stood up and pointed. Hawkmoon glanced over and saw an object all but shoved beneath one of the boulders. She picked it out and held it between her claws; it was nothing like the other weapons. The work was still Vex, but... it appeared more like one of their buildings than a firearm, despite the trigger and stock. It consisted of a pipe leading down to a container filled with pale geometric lightning - Vex energy - framed in scratched-up black stone. Curiously, it was made for human hands, but human hands had not forged it.

"Left by the scene of the crime," Hawkmoon darkly mused. "Why?"

"Shame. Couldn't take it with them. Tried to hide the evidence." Adria craned her head around. "But they could be back for it, if they work through that feeling."

"You need to grab those before we go." Hawkmoon pointed to the dead woman.

Adria gave her an incredulous look. "I already have armour."

"Not that; her gun. She might have a shield projector too. Look under her cuirass, maybe around her collar."

"Alright." Adria set to work. Hawkmoon filed the Vex weapon away, then stood up and kept watch until her human self finished. "Got it. Attaching now." A pale kinetic absorption shield project projected around Adria from head to toe. She bent to pick up the auto rifle-

-and gave a cry as the body moved. Hawkmoon aimed her carbine, but the woman remained dead; a living vine had wrapped around her ankle and tugged her across the grass. Others slithered across the ground to join it. They gave another pull and the body disappeared into the brush. Ugly wet sounds could be heard as the Garden subsumed the remains, followed by the clink of metal and sizzle of radiolaria as conversion quickly set in.

"We need to go." Hawkmoon dropped to a knee and held out a servo. Adria looked as if she wanted to argue before thinking better of it and stepping onboard, clutching Hawkmoon's index finger for support. Another brace of vines had caught hold of the Exo's arm and were in the process of lugging them. Hawkmoon left quickly, heading north of the valley as fast as she could without rushing.

"Where now?" Adria questioned.

Hawkmoon pointed with her carbine towards the mountains. "There. It overlooks everything. If we still can't see anything I'll take to the skies."

"Why don't you fly now?"

"Because then every Vex for tens of miles around will be able to see us. They'll want to catch us. You ever see a flying Vex?"

"I haven't. You're telling me Goblins can rise up like fucking Jesus?"

"Like who- No. Harpies."

"Harpies?"

"Aerial Vex caste. They look like inverted squid." Hawkmoon vented a sigh. "You're weird."

"I'm weird," Adria drily echoed. "Okay. What about-"

A sharp cry split the air behind them. Hawkmoon turned, carbine at the ready. Emerging from the underbrush was a massive Vex construct the size of her chassis, its armour covered entirely in the stain of verdegrass and moss, and it trailed behind it tendrils tipped with glowing radiolaria. Even for a Vex it had too many optics to count.

"I suppose that's a Harpy?" Adria whispered.

"Uhuh."

It saw them and flared out its fins, shaking them like a provoked animal. Then, faster than Hawkmoon anticipated, it shot towards them. Hawkmoon twisted to keep Adria out of the way and fired point blank, tearing out some of the Mind's optics before it hit them. Her carbine transformed back into claws as it collided and Hawkmoon drove them into its core as its tentacles lashed around her shield. It gave another cry and pulled away, freely bleeding Vex milk, circling around while whining like a wounded dog. Hawkmoon moved with it, trying to keep its eyes on her rather than Adria. "Hey," she growled. "You'll move on if you know what's good for you."

An feeling of heavy Darkness rolled in waves from the Mind. The same as from the bodies, but multiplied several times over. This was the woman - or whatever had emerged from her reconstituted flesh. A Vex Mind, but not a logical one. There was no logic in the Garden. Only survival.

"Shoot it!" Adria shouted.

The Harpy's optics twitched. Before it could lunge again Hawkmoon transformed her shoulder cannon and fired. The round split the Mind's central optic and burst out from behind it. The construct spluttered, wavered, then collapsed in a sparking heap on the ground.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine," Adria evenly replied. She peered between Hawkmoon's fingers. "But you have to go. Go, go!"

Hawkmoon turned, saw something utterly colossal stand up above the brush near the lip of the valley, and she ran.

---

It caught them on the approach to the mountains. The Exo's progeny, a colossal Minotaur formed from warped stony metal, cracked glass, and raw Vex energy, cut them off with a translation by a radiolaria waterfall. Its flat hand manifested out of the air in a distortion of spacetime and closed around Hawkmoon's bicep. It tried to shove its massive Void cannon into her helm but she pulled free, aimed a kick at its knee. It didn't give. The Minotaur cracked the back of its hand against her shield with enough force to shatter it and send her hurtling back, half-submerging her in a Vex river. Hawkmoon raised Adria far overhead to spare her. She tried to pick herself up but the Minotaur all but teleported on top of her, pressing a foot onto her shoulder. Hawkmoon's helm went under until all she could see was sizzling Vex milk. A whole host of angry signals pressed against her EM field - as if every disturbed radiolarian cell was personally picking up a phone and speed dialling her to give her a piece of their mind.

Then, inexplicably, the Minotaur's weight tumbled to the side. Hawkmoon sat up spluttering and locked optics on Nightbeat, perched on the other side of the river with his Stygian in hand. The minotaur lay beside her, a smoking hole where its personal radiolarian pack should be. Adria, thank all that was good, remained untouched by all the Vex brain-liquid.

"I thought I told you to stay away," Night said softly in Cybertronian.

Hawkmoon watched the barrel of the Stygian warily. "You knew that was never going to happen."

"I thought you were smarter than this."

"You owe me answers, Nightbeat."

"I've already given you everything."

"You killed the Prime. I never wanted that."

"It paved your way. I knew you'd come back. You have to. To save us." He was cradling his shoulder. A pit of vines had found root there beneath the plate, bulging at the seams. The Garden already had him.

"Vector Prime didn't bring me here to save anyone," Hawkmoon said slowly. "He did it to spite everyone else involved."

"The Dragon. The Worm. They tried to kill you."

"Tried, yes-"

"In the Cyst Stars."

Hawkmoon vented slowly. "Nightbeat, put that down."

The Stygian lowered to the ground. Relieved, Hawkmoon stood up. The river was almost up to her knees. "Are you alright?" she asked Adria.

Adria nodded numbly, but she was staring at Nightbeat. "That your guy?"

"That's him." Switching to Cybertronian, Hawkmoon announced: "We're coming over."

Nightbeat retreated from the banks. Hawkmoon made her way over and gingerly set Adria down. Then she burst into action, closing the distance between her and Nightbeat with a roar of her thrusters. She caught hold of the Stygian, held it at bay and slammed a closed fist against Nightbeat's helm. He blinked and staggered back but didn't let go. Not until she rained a few more blows down onto him. Hawkmoon tossed the Stygian behind her and moved in. When Nightbeat raised his arms to defend himself she set about dismantling his feeble attempts at defending himself, reducing his fight to null. Her claws scored wounds, her fists left dents, and in the end he had not the strength to strike her back. It was inevitable that she drove him to his knees, leaking from a dozen injuries. Hawkmoon held his chin in her servo and aimed at his faceplates with a carbine.

"You killed the Prime," she said. "You killed Gearbox. Why?"

"To protect you," Nightbeat gasped.

"That's utter scrap."

"It's the truth."

"Who told you?"

Nightbeat hesitated.

"Fine. Who supplied you the Stygian?"

"The Vosian Weapons Division."

"Why? They benefited from the Prime's protection."

"It wasn't their call."

"Whose was it?"

More silence.

"Nightbeat, I swear I'll make this painful for you."

"I don't care," he retorted. "Do as you will."

"I need to know."

"Hawkmoon-"

"Who gave you the order?"

Nightbeat gestured weakly up the hill, beyond the waterfall. "There," he said. "You'll find your answers there."

"Nightbeat-"

"I came here to rest."

"This isn't a place for that."

"I know that now."

"Where'd you learn about the Black Garden?"

"The old stories. The ones they don't tell anymore. That's the truth." He grabbed her wrist and pressed the carbine against his cheek. "Do it."

"You really want that?"

"I'm tired."

"... No." Hawkmoon pulled her arm free and transformed it back into a servo. "Not yet." She looked over her shoulder. "Come on."

"Where?" Adria said.

"Up. He says there's something there. Well, I think I'll make him show it to me." Hawkmoon grabbed Nightbeat by the collar and pulled him to his pedes. "Let's go." She turned him around, braced one of his arms behind his back and pushed him onwards.

---

They reached the summit. The grassy approach sloped down again and gave way to a vast radiolarian pool. In the middle of the lake was a dark island made from a material that was both stone and metal and neither. It wasn't of Vex design. Hawkmoon stopped Nightbeat by the shore and closed her talons on his pauldron. "Now what?"

"Wait," he croaked.

The island shifted. It shattered, pieces of it flickering up into the air to reconstitute as... as a ship. A prism ship with an underfin. In that shape it wasn't unlike a fleet of others much larger Hawkmoon had seen once more. Those received by Oryx and His siblings on the extinction of the Taishibethi. A dark armada, welling with fell power. This one was no different. It regarded her with sightless spite, a cold reproach for all the universe's life.

"What is this?" Hawkmoon demanded.

"A visitor," Nightbeat grunted. "But there's something inside." He pointed to the sudden void beneath the ship where once the island had stood. "An icon."

Hawkmoon turned to Adria. "Stay here. I'll be back." She grabbed Nightbeat's neck and took the air, dragging him after her as she dove into the newly excavated tunnel. There was life below, more vegetation. At the bottom of the tunnel, framed by a yellow un-light, was a statue. It was an exact copy of that in the reliquary on Penchant. Hawkmoon heard it whisper. The one on Penchant had been swathed and served by red shadow; this one knew only cold fire, warming the air with its imperious delirium.

She set Nightbeat aside and approached it. The shrouded woman seemed to look down on her. It breathed. The statue breathed - rasping through solid obsidian and glazed glass. A living sculpture, home to an alien essence. "What is this?"

"It's the answer you're looking for," Nightbeat gasped. He leaned against the vine-covered wall of the chamber.

Hawkmoon turned. "This? This answers nothing."

"Everything I've done has been for you. She told me so."

"Nightbeat-"

"It has."

"Is that what you tell yourself?" She returned to his side. "You've killed mecha. You've destabilised Cybertron."

"Zeta Prime would have killed you."

"The only attempts on my life have been from the Weapons Division. They sent Bitstream, didn't they?"

Nightbeat gave her a bewildered look. "That... that attack had nothing to do with us."

"Nothing? Who sent you to kill the Prime? Who instructed you to eliminate Gearbox?"

Nightbeat shook his helm. His EM field tensed with pain.

"There's something inside you that's keeping you from saying it," Hawkmoon said. "It was the same with Bitstream. You used a Drezhari drone to make the Prime vulnerable. The Drezhari probably gave Bitstream the means to smuggle his agents into the Vosian Palace."

"Hawkmoon-"

"Nightbeat, why did you go to the Weapons Division for help?"

Nightbeat grimaced. "They found me."

"They did?"

"They looked for you. You found protection. They wanted to understand why I let you go."

Hawkmoon stood up. "Your framed death. That wasn't your doing, was it?"

Nightbeat shook his helm.

"What did they do?"

"Cortical... patch."

Hawkmoon's spark surged. "They know? They know what I am, where I come from?"

Nightbeat shrugged weakly. "No... no choice."

"You... rat!" She snatched him up and slammed him against the wall. Vines slithered around his arms. "You scrap-headed coward. You hunt me like a fragging dog, you kill people in my name, and you give away my secrets?"

"It... IT said it was for you," Nightbeat slurred. Whatever was inside him, it was degrading his systems.

"What is IT? For frag's sake, Nightbeat, WHAT IS IT?"

"It's... it's... Gr-" A snap rebounded from inside him. In a blink Nightbeat's EM field disappeared and his optics winked out. Hawkmoon dropped him and stumbled back. He was dead.

Then a strange light emanated from his chest. The vines hissed and burned as energy sprouted from his broken pauldrons. Nightbeat's mortal shell righted itself, flaming eyes roving until they found Hawkmoon. "There," the Sybarite of the Drezhari purred, wearing Nightbeat's voice and overlaying its own. "I found you. I have you."

Hawkmoon snarled and drove her claws through its chest, ripping through Nightbeat's vacant sparkchamber. "Like hell you do." She pulled away. Nightbeat's body collapsed. The delirious fire of his new wings dissipated, and the fire in his optics cooled off. The angel laughed as its puppet died - voice fading into oblivion, mocking her until the end.

She stared at it. Stared at Nightbeat. Raged. Without so much as a second glance at the living statue Hawkmoon shot up into the air and out of the tunnel, emerging above the lake. When she turned to look for Adria, however, she found her nowhere in sight. She'd pulled a runner. Hawkmoon landed on the shore and seethed, steaming hot air cycling out of her vents. "Adria?" she called out, taking care to keep the anger out of her voice. It was hard. "Adria, are you there?"

No reply came to her.

"Adria-"

"She's gone."

Hawkmoon twisted, her weapons at the ready. Behind her stood something neither Vex nor Cybertronian nor Drezhari. It wasn't a machine at all, but it was half again Hawkmoon's own size - a towering thing of black porcelain clothed in midnight robes and a hooded shawl, with a gilded mask pulled over its face. Long pale hair ran down its neck. In one hand it manipulated a length of red string, but the other rested on its knee. Veins of muted fire ran beneath glassy black skin in its exposed arms. The creature was in the distinctive shape of a human woman and it was endlessly uncanny.

With a start Hawkmoon knew she had seen it before. She'd glimpsed this thing in the same visions as she'd seen Greshar - standing in unison with the angel, with the Subjugator and a dozen others when Rampage had begged them for power. A creature of the Darkness incarnate. With a roar she opened fire with cannons and carbine and a barrage of missiles, but the entity waved its hand and each projectile turned to sparkling dust.

"You need not bother," it said, and Hawkmoon heard its voice in her head, muffled by its mask. "Disarm."

Her body moved against her will. She fought it with all her resolve but its control was absolute, forcing her combat protocols and weapons configurations to cycle offline. Hawkmoon gave a final defiant yell as her knees touched down on the sands before the accursed thing, but the death blow never came. Its hold released. With a start she staggered back, fingers sinking into sand, and held out a servo to keep it at bay. It didn't so much as twitch.

"I am not here to kill you," the thing said.

"Where," Hawkmoon growled, "is she?!" She rose back to her pedes.

"She ran." It had a beautiful voice. An almost... human voice. Everything about it was 'almost human'. All but its size. "I revealed her true nature to her and told her where she might quit this place."

Hawkmoon raised her wings. The thing held out a hand. "That will not be necessary. We have time yet."

"The Vex-"

"Will not harm her without provocation. She is, to their eyes, one of their own. There are others yet who have their attentions. The Undying Mind is awakening, just as it has always been awake, and always will be."

"I killed it already."

"And will do again." The thing gracefully knelt down. It patted the ground beside it. "Please. Stay. Join me."

Hawkmoon didn't move. There was no force in this command. Just a promise.

"I will not harm you."

"I find that hard to believe. I know what you are."

The thing looked at her. Hawkmoon suspected it was smiling. "Do you truly? I don't think so, but you might have an idea of it. Would you care to share those guesses?"

"You're Dark," Hawkmoon snarled. "A monster."

It studied her. "Almost," it whispered. "Almost right. Half and half."

"There's no such thing as half Dark or half a monster. You just are."

"In your eyes, perhaps. But these ideas held different meanings in a different time. I embody them as they were. Not as they are."

"You are Dark."

"But I know well the soft pleasures of the Light. I know the arrogance of its benevolence. The recklessness of its mercy. You are a byproduct of that. It lives still within you."

She wanted to draw a carbine. She wanted to extend a wristblade and plunge it into the thing's throat. Power, thick and suffocating, clogged the space between her desire and her reality - until the idea and the act were as foreign to each other as oil and water. Hawkmoon considered running, but she wasn't sure how far the creature's range was. She settled for a display of enmity. That, at least, felt natural. "You know nothing about me."

"I know you've garnered Greshar's burning eye."

Hawkmoon bristled. "You know it?"

"Him," the thing corrected, "and I do. I did."

"You say that like you aren't one of them."

"Once. A mistake. One driven by personal vice and petty vengeance."

"Why are you here?"

"To find you. To know you. Much has been invested in your survival. Many want you to thrive. Your progress thus far has proven... explosive." The creature braced one of its arms against its knees. "I am Invicta, the Half-Breed, and I have come to know you by way of a forsaken people."

"Lotta folks out there who fit that bill. Who told you about me?"

"Their queen blessed you with an instrument of war. They want it back."

When understanding finally hit her it almost knocked Hawkmoon off her pedes. She swayed, touched by relief, and the anger dissipated on the spot. "The Taishibethi. They survived?"

"A fraction. A splinter. Your defiance immortalized them. Such was the uproar over your desecration that the net set to encircle their worlds fell lax. I was tasked with rectifying that mistake, but their thirst for life inspired me. I had to know why."

"Now here you are. In the fucking Black Garden." Hawkmoon held out her servos. "In paradise."

Invicta made a show of looking around. "This is no paradise. This is a blueprint for errant ends."

"Are they alive? The Tai? Are they still alive?"

"Yes."

"Fuck… yes!" Hawkmoon gasped. She resisted the urge to dance with joy; it would've been unbecoming. "Where?"

Invicta made a flippant motion. "They'll find you. Provided the angel's agents don't do it first."

Hawkmoon sobered in an instant. "What does Greshar want?"

"To serve. Your question requires refinement."

"Alright, what does he plan to do next?"

"The same as ever: to whisper His honeyed words into mortal ears and embrace young worlds beneath His wing. Yours, adopted as it is, will follow."

"He's been leaving mind-bombs inside mecha and straight up killing others. What's His game there?"

"His sermons demand focus. He is a jealous god; He suffers no straying from His adherents."

"Nightbeat wasn't an adherent. He was just... misguided." Hawkmoon glanced back to the island. The Dark ship was settling down in its place, disassembling to fill in the crypt. "Greshar's twisting people's thoughts into His own."

"A Lexiphage," Invicta said softly. "The ideal virus."

"A what?"

"Words are powerful. Dreams are stronger. Desire is greater than either. It is from this ambrosia the dragons sup. You know it well."

"He's a dragon?"

"No. But he envisions himself something similar - everlasting, ever-present. A manifestation of love to transcend the binds of life and death. The only affection his barrowborn admirers will ever know."

"Why are you telling me this?" Hawkmoon frowned. "Who are you? Really?"

"A seeker of impossible outcomes."

"Am I one of those outcomes?"

"Who can say? Not I. But my father thinks otherwise. He slaked your thirst for retribution, did He not? An offering on the altar of Crux."

Crux. That blasted moon of eternal night, rent with the cries of the dead and the dying. "Kharad-Tan," Hawkmoon murmured. "You're saying Kharad-Tan's-"

Invicta stood. The motion was flawlessly fluid but achingly slow, and Hawkmoon was transfixed by no volition of her own. "He humours you," Invicta said. "I care little for His favours but this fixation ill-suits Him. You have His blessings, empty as they are. I can only hope my own will prove more substantial." She approached and Hawkmoon froze. A string-crossed hand laid upon her pauldron. The air around the alien creature was chillingly cold, to such a degree it affected even her Cybertronian sensors, but her very touch was scaldingly hot - like being grasped by living flame.

"When the Undying Mind awakens, and the gates open, do not scurry through for escape. Wait, wayfarer, for the whisper of Light. You are not the only one to lose your way. There are others ostracised by time, and they yearn for salvation. Be the one to offer it." Invicta released her and stepped away. "You should not tarry. You broke time here; the Garden will not soon forget it. Find yourself. Find the others. Return to the woodland king and the cradle you left in his care, before the angel's carcasses find him first."

"The what-"

"Go."

"I can't just..." Hawkmoon hesitated. "Where is she? Where did Adria go?"

Invicta gestured south. Back the way Hawkmoon had come. "She suffers for those already lost. Love is our undoing; it will soon be hers. Go."

"Wait." Hawkmoon pointed. "I still don't know who you are."

"I've shared my name."

"Yeah, and apparently you're Kharad-Tan's whelp, so that doesn't inspire trust. He's a bastard."

Invicta laughed. The sound was a melody. "He is."

"Whose side are you on?"

"The side of my mother's vision, darkened only by my father's ambition."

"That... that literally means nothing to me."

"No. But it will." Invicta stepped back, her shrouded feet falling upon the surface of the radiolaria lake. There wasn't so much as a ripple. "Fortune smile on you."

Hawkmoon watched her leave. "... Okay?"

---

AN: Greatest thanks to Nomad Blue for daring to touch this monster of a chapter.

As big a chonker as this is, it was meant to be bigger. Got eyes bigger than my stomach. On the positive side, finally we've reached the Garden. Been sitting on some of these scenes for months, if not a year. It's a relief to finally put them into play.