"On your left."

I snap around, unloading a few bullets into the scared man's face, which shreds into a fountain of blood and brain matter as the weapon drops from his limp hands.

I find my next target and immediately start firing in his direction, the man leaping beehind cover before my bullets can tag him.

"Krolik." I raise my voice slightly, and the blademaster gives me the side-eye. "Behind there."

She huffs, but takes off faster than a car down a drag strip.

"Something isn't right." Groza comments next to me, her weapon meticulously sweeping the battlefield and firing at anyone dumb enough to peek their head out.

"Yeah, Colphne was acting particularly weird."

"No, I meant with the Varjagers."

One of our enemies pokes his head over the barricade and unloads his gun wildly, bullets spraying all around. Nemesis takes off his head before I can get my weapon to bear.

"Yeah… they're acting like scared animals, not hardened thieves." I find a new target and squeeze a few rounds off. "Maybe this was an inexperienced unit?"

"The standards of their gear is too high for that. Perhaps they weren't looking for a fight?"

"I suppose they weren't counting on us." I watch as a spray of blood comes up from behind cover before Krolik emerges, flicking blood from her blade and scanning for her next target. Not that there's many left, we're more than sufficient enough for…

"What's the expected killcount?" I ask P90 internally.

"Well, you got ten, and the other dolls aren't slacking so… Maybe sixty? Seventy?" She shrugs.

"Hmm." I load in a fresh magazine. "Groza, do you know which way Colphne went?"

"She's chasing after the retreating Varjagers." Groza sends me a ping and my eyes immediately lock onto the medical doll currently attempting to rambo her way through the dwindling enemies.

"Krolik-"

The rabbit whirls on me. "Who do you think you are to order me around, huh?"

My eye twitches. "Suomi?"

"Yes?" The small doll's eyes light up.

"Use your reverse collapse thing. Freeze everyone in that area."

"Um." She pokes her fingers together. "But I might freeze Colphne too."

"Good."

Suomi nods and closes her eyes, lifting her lantern up to the sky. A freezing chill wafts through the underground village, and the rest of the enemies have been frozen in place along with our errant medical doll, and I swear I almost saw the aurora borealis flickering above them, but that would be absurd.

"No, I saw it too." P90 glumly appears to sit down on a barricade. "She really caused that."

"But we're underground, and nowhere near the arctic circle."

"Doesn't matter. These devices don't conform to reality."

I poke the one on my shoulder, where it glows with untapped potential. I need to learn to use it, obviously, but it seems a bit too… magical for my tastes.

"It's collapse tech." 90 rolls her eyes before hopping to her feet to join us walking up to Colphne as we pass her. "Remember, depending on how you configure it, you get Nytos, super regeneration like with you, ELIDs or M4. Collapse Radiation never made any sense."

"Alright sure, but now I can just cast spells." I wave my hand around. "Ooooo! I cast 'communicate with doll'!"

The other dolls around me give me odd looks as I gesture oddly, but go back to walking when 90 appears to them and rolls her eyes. Groza nods and stops paying attention soon followed by the others.

"Well, it might be able to do other things." 90 shrugs. "Kroliks managed to imbue her blade with fire more and more. Groza's increased the speed of her attacks by several times. Colphne's battlefield repair has expanded to juicing up as well as pure repair. It seems these devices are capable of granting a bunch of different abilities."

"Abilities. Like this is a fuckin' game." I mutter. "I wish it was that simple. I'd spec into armor crushing."

90 snickers. "Oh sure. Let's just add 'teleporting bullet' to your list of abilities. It just bypasses armor!"

We stop in front of the six frozen figures. Groza and Suomi start trying to gently break Colphne out of her ice prison, while Krolik and Nemesis keep their heads on a swivel. Vepley pushes one of the frozen Varjagers over and he shatters into the most disgusting meat puzzle.

I sidestep the mess and continue to talk to 90. "If we're going to allow teleportation, I want to just be able to teleport myself." I take a pose I might well have in high school. "Like this. HAH! TELEPORT!"

"Agent, what the hell-" Krolik spins around to face me-

Suddenly, there's a bright flash and then, my world is dark.

"...90?" I whisper after a moment.

"Shh." She harshly shuts me down. "I'm trying to figure out where we are."

I remain as still as possible, trying to categorize my surroundings. My eyes are currently useless, but my nose, ears and sense of touch haven't abandoned me.

It smells… like a garage? Oils, gasoline… My feet tell me I'm standing on concrete, boots sliding smoothly on the sealed surface. Vaguely, I can make out some voices so distant that it might as well have been the wind, but not much else.

"Initial scans made. Overlaying wireframe."

90 lays fake white lines over the area, and I take a long, slow breath to prepare myself. 90 can only use my senses, but she can use them more efficiently. Through a combination of echolocation, recording what little light reaches my eyes, and whatever else she can do, she's laid out a map of the place. It's not particularly good, mind you, but it's way better for a monkey like me that relies on his sight over anything else.

"Sitrep." 90 appears next to a door she's outlined. "We're nowhere near the Elmo anymore. Impossible to get an exact fix, but the ambient temperature's too low, only twelve degrees C. We're inside a garage. The large doors are almost guaranteed to be load enough that attempting to escape that way would be suicide."

"You know, maybe they're friendly?" I creep slowly toward the door. "Tell them 'I magically teleported into your garage, I'm sorry, can you point me toward the exit door?"

"Normally, that would be worth a shot." 90 grimaces. "Hit the lights."

I move my hand over to the exposed switch next to the door and blink against the sudden harsh fluorescent light.

When my eyes finally adjust, I turn around to see the vehicles that are being serviced in this garage.

Tanks.

Not just any tanks. Uhlans.

"Paradeus?" I hiss, the hated compass symbol emblazoned on the side.

"Or someone who has access to their tech." 90 turns back to the door. "Kill the lights for a moment, alright? Let's not cue them in faster than we have to."

I hit the lights once more, and this time the grid overlay is a lot more detailed as 90 had a chance to get more details with the light on.

"Alright. Your Pattern Remoldeing Device is currently dead. We need to recharge it as fast as possible and get back to the Elmo."

"Right." I carefully check my weapons. "How do we do that?"

"Well, it charges via collapse radiation." 90 peeks at the door I'm stacked up next to. "So, maybe if we go outside and find a collapse storm?"

"This is a Paradeus facility." I finish my weapons check. "I'm sure we can find something. Can you monitor for collapse radiation?"

"No, I haven't spontaneously gained that ability since the last time you asked." She rolls her eyes. "If I could, you would know."

"Right, sorry."

"But I can monitor the state of charge of the PRD. If I notice any changes, I'll let you know."

"Good enough." I reach out for the doorknob.

"Hadwin?"

"Yeah, 90?"

"Let's do this one quietly if possible."

I nod. "Not a one man army."

"Nope."

I open the door quietly, the lessons instilled in me from a year with Team 404, DEFY, and Mk23 keeping my footsteps light despite the several kilos of gears strapped all around me.

Through the door, there's a hallway. There's glass on both sides, and the rooms on the sides can be seen through that glass since the lights are on. To the left, there's what appears to be an operating room, an all too common sight at Paradeus facilities. To the right, there's a breakroom with half a dozen people inside, all in either scrubs or Paradeus security uniforms, all looking at a TV in the corner.

So, not a Nyto-based facility then.

I can't see what's on, but I'd recognize that glassy stare anywhere.

"Looks like they're busy." 90 confirms my thoughts. "Now would be a good time to move."

"Agreed."

I press myself against the wall and awkwardly crouch walk under the view of the window sill. The relative light differences between the hall and the break room should be enough to disguise my presence, but fuck taking chances.

Once past, I peek my head around the L-bend in the hallway to see what's next.

Well, aside from the guy currently playing on his phone next to one of the doors, much of the same. There's a hallway branching off to the right before a T-junction at the far end, and suddenly my path isn't as obvious.

I stand up and press myself into the darkest shadow I can find, letting my legs rest from the crouch-walking as I take stock of my options.

"There's no writing over anything." I muse to myself.

"I saw some cyrillic characters in the operating room, but not enough to pattern match to a language."

"So anywhere east of Ukraine, then."

"Actually, if not for the absurd temperature gradient, I'd say we weren't that far away from where we started." 90 frowns. "Maybe the doors leading out of the garage were cold for some other reason than exposure to cold air?"

"Well, unless we can figure out where we are, we need to focus on getting out first." I carefully, slowly stretch my legs once more to make sure they don't lock up. "We need to get past mr. cell phone back there."

"I have an idea." 90 announces. "Peek into those two closer rooms, would you?"

I nod and carefully walk forward with my silenced Mk23, eyes glued to the bored man's face as he watches his dumb video on his phone. He looks up, he's dead.

"Peer into the window, Hadwin. I can't see what you're not looking at."

Obviously, standing right next to the bright light from a window would have given me away, so I had strategically plastered myself to the opposite wall. I quickly glance into the brightly lit room-

My attention is wrenched from the man only a few paces away from me in the dark to the contents of the room across from me.

Inside are two men and a woman, all three of them in lab coats. They have some sort of medical instrument in their hands, and they are picking at something on the table in front of them.

Another of their blood curdling experiments. I wish I could just murder them all right now.

"A computer is inside there." 90 points out. "I bet that's hooked up to all sorts of juicy information."

"Sure, but it's also got a bunch of people in there." I point out.

"Well, yes, but there was another operating theatre behind us, right?"

"...Fair point." I turn around and carefully start to slink away from the Paradeus guy playing on his phone.

I successfully get into the other operating room and briefly consider killing the lights until I decide that not disturbing the environment is a better idea than being hidden.

I plug into the computer 90 requests and she disappears as the heat headache once more spins up, the OGAS instance borrowing as much of my brain as she can to speed up the operations she's performing.

Which leaves me to glance at the glass that's almost acting as a mirror due to the light levels. What was once a friend is now an enemy. I can only hope nobody's looking back at us.

"Done." 90 reappears. "Get to the wall, now!"

I don't hesitate, using the fact my boots slide on the tile to help get across the room as swiftly and silently as possible, pressing myself into the wall. Only once I'm situated do I question my resident specter. "What's going on?"

"Security alert in the garage. Seems like your RPD set something off." She peers out the window. "I got control of the security cameras in this section, so I can see the security team coming this way."

"Okay. Keep me updated." I once more check my so-far unused pistol, noting that it is indeed full, clean, and ready to rumble. "Did you get anything else?"

"Yes, a bunch of very distressing things." A video feed appears out of thin air in front of me. "FIrstly, we're in Siberia."

"...You mean Serbia?"

"No. We're deep into Siberia, formerly part of Russia, now just another aspect of the URNC. We're about two thousand kilometers from where we were."

"What the fuck."

"Next, this place is in the middle of nowhere. You try heading outside, you're going to freeze to death before we get anywhere. In light of that we need to get your teleportation back up and running. We can't afford to wait around."

"Right."

"Lastly, this facility seems to have data on some 'Helenas'."

I pause for a moment. "Plural?"

"Yes. It doesn't seem like ours, number 43, came from here, but there's a few here." I can feel my hands curl into fists, but 90 doesn't allow me to dwell on that for much longer. "Watch, security is coming."

I nod and ready my handgun.

As they get closer, my ears start to pick out words.

"...false alarm. What else could it be way out here? A thorn that decided to eat a car?"

"Who knows?" A second, scratchier voice asks rhetorically. "But if the boss tells us to check it out, we check it out."

"I guess. At least we don't have to go outside."

"Shut up before you jinx us."

I wait for the voices to start to fade before carefully moving over to the door and rotating the doorknob. Yep, they're going into the garage.

I take the opportunity to exit and head down the hall. "90, please tell me you know a way out of here?"

"I did tell you we're in Siberia, didn't I?"

"Well, it's not like these Paradeus people never leave here." I snark back at her. "We can steal a car or something."

"Like the Uhlans?"

I shake my head. "Last time I tried to interface I almost died."

"The first time you tried to interface you also almost died. As well as every time in between."

"Not harming my point here."

She sighs dramatically. "Fine. There's a supply route we can use until you get enough charge on your RPD."

I look down at where I've clipped the damned thing to my plate carrier, and it's indeed completely dormant from what I can tell. Fucking… Persica. Give me a user manual, just once, okay?!

"Fortunately, this is a lightly manned facility. Only about three dozen on the roster, at least according to the food intake." 90 continues to talk as I slink through the shadows, approaching the corner as before. "It's not that big either. The primary garage where the supply trucks are kept is only another few dozen meters that way."

"Great. Sounds like we'll be on the move again in no time." I press myself against the wall. "Well, maybe we should wait for the vehicle to leave naturally to avoid suspicion?"

"Maybe."

I get right up close to the guy who had been focused on his cell phone last time, but is now banging his head on the wall with soft thumps. Bored out of his mind, I bet.

"We need to get past him somehow." 90 whispers, despite the fact nobody but me can hear her without special equipment. "Cause a distraction."

"If you hadn't said this was such a small crew, I'd have gone back and knocked out the security guards and dressed up as one of them." I think over my options without relaxing my posture, remaining as still and silent as possible, eyes locked on the man's face. One fraction of recognition or confusion and his brains are going to be forfeit along the wall.

"Well, too late for that anyway, the other two are coming back."

"Shit." I crouch down and plaster myself to the wall, eyes moving from the guy in the hall to where I had come from.

The two security guards can be heard talking as they come back.

"See, false alarm! Nothing to worry about."

"And no going outside. My fingers hurt just thinking about it." The scratchy-voiced one nods. "Hey, Vasili."

Vasili, the man next to me, looks up. "Hey. What was it?"

"False alarm, as always." The two security guards stop walking mere meters away and I realize I'm trapped.

"Of course. Who the hell would come all the way out here?"

"Aside from us?" Vasili snorts. "Alright, fine. Wanna go grab something to eat? I'm starving."

"I thought you were waiting for Dr. Maier?"

"Fuck her. She's too tied up with her dumb experiment."

"I do wanna fuck her, which is why-"

I glance at 90, who rolls her eyes. "Just wait for them to go."

I nod and continue to watch the trio as they walk away. Only once they're out of sight do I allow myself to move slightly, getting back up to my feet. I need to get in better shape, that long crouch session hurt what's left of my organics-

My eyes alight on the table where the three doctors are working on their patient inside the operating room.

Lying bare on the table, a little girl with pink hair, stomach flayed open by the scalpels of the three standing above her. Her eyes are dead as she is, an expression of excruciating pain frozen on her features.

"Hadwin, don't! That's not Helena-"

The door slams open, all three doctors turning to see who dares to interrupt their work.

Three bullets later, and the number of corpses in the room grows to four.

"Dammit Hadwin." 90 grumbles.

"They vivisected a child, 90."

"Yes. It's Paradeus. This is only a three on the what-the-fuck meter."

"They… they…" I can't pull my eyes away from the corpse. She looks just like Helena. Her eyes, so… so distant.

"Well, what's done is done, unfortunately." 90 steps in front of my view of the small girl. "Unless you plan on razing this entire place to the ground, we'd better get a move on."

I turn to the door. "You said there's thirty six people here?"

"Uh…" She hesitates. "Well, there was enough food for about that many people brought in. Given we also have a test subject and those three are dead, let's say thirty people left."

"Uh huh." I spy something that I can use and grab it with my free hand, tucking it under my arm. "There were seven in the break room."

"Three guards are going to grab food."

"We can assume about a fifty-fifty mix of security to scientists based on previous Paradeus operations."

"Only one Nyto listed on staff, not a name from our list."

That one gives me pause. "Strong?"

"Unknown. She's not on the list, but given where she is…"

I look back the way we came. "I have an idea."

She sighs. "You know, I thought a decade out of the game would have made you less suicidal."

"Nah." I reload my pistol. "Let's make a stop by the breakroom first, alright?"

"With you, as always."

I take one last glance at the girl and burn the corpse into my memories. If only I got here sooner…

My eyes flick open, and I marvel at how large I feel, yet how entirely alien. This isn't my first time in an Uhlan. It's not even only my fourth or fifth. It will, hopefully at least, be my last.

I hate it in here. It's nice while I'm inside, but I always feel half blind when I get out, robbed of the sensor suite that the Uhlan provides directly to my spinal cord. At the same time, all my body sensations are muted, including signals sent from 90. It'll take her a moment to get through the noise.

Anyway, back to my surroundings. A garage that suddenly feels much too small, another Uhlan beside me, and a facility I want destroyed behind me.

Mmm, the alarm is already blaring. They must have found the bodies.

I swing my turret around, a powerful shot charging up in the cannon.

"Haddy, wait." 90 finally digs through the mud that is everything not being fed to me by the Uhlan. "Think for a second."

"...Thinking."

"You want to crush the entire facility, but you also don't want to crush it on top of your head. We should head outside, circle around, and blow up the trucks."

"..."

"That way, they can't escape." 90's eyes narrow. "Once they're trapped, we can destroy anyone foolish enough to show their face. Once their numbers dwindle, we'll go back inside and flush them out."

"...That sounds good, but what if they call for backup?"

"You plugged me into their computer system already." 90 looks at her nails. "Who do you think I am?"

"Right." I swivel my turret back toward the large garage door. "Anything else?"

"Nope. Execute."

I slam on the accelerator, and the Uhlan punches through the metal door with ease, the sparks and scrapes from the metal feeling like their clawing at my soul.

I swivel my turret and fire at the other Uhlan, which instantly detonates without a shield active.

90 helpfully throws up a map around the side of the base, and I steer the tank around the side as fast as the treads will take me, which is pretty fast actually.

When I poke around the side, I can already see a dozen people getting into a truck, a bunch of scientist types.

The missile battery of the Uhlan I'm controlling is empty; it wouldn't be reasonable to store it fully loaded, after all. It's a shame, since the missiles are really effective at carpet bombing, at least in my limited experience on both sides of the weapon.

Oh well. Laser cannon it is.

The turret fires a blast directly at the engine of the truck, taking the entire engine block with the blast. For a moment, everything stands still before the truck detonates with the people still on board. The gasoline explosion carries into the garage behind the truck, and the rest of the garage is rocked by secondary explosions.

Nobody outside survived that, but just in case-

I fire a few more blasts, first at the only fuel container that had survived the initial detonation and then at each of the vehicles in turn to make sure they are really well and truly dead.

"Stage one complete." 90 comments. "There are no vehicles around to provide escape on record."

"Great." I swivel my turret around to scan the dense forest around us, noting the single set of tracks leading away, presumably toward wherever the supplies come from. "Well, aside from this tank."

"We still might need it, so let's not blow it up yet, alright?"

"Understood." I look back down at the smouldering entrance to the compound. "So, three dead in the operating room, seven from the break room, another dozen just now."

"Fifteen. We only have about five to eight people left alive, as long as none of those charred bodies are still alive."

At one time, I would have felt sympathy for the multitude of burned corpses. At one time, I would have wanted to save them pain because they are humans and all humans deserve a chance.

Paradeus lost those chances years ago.

I make sure to crush one of the less charred corpses under my tank treads before stopping and reaching back to unplug myself from the Uhlan. It's always an unpleasant experience trying to control my real limbs instead of my new turret but-

I blink back to the darkened interior of the Uhlan and struggle against the immense feeling of being trapped in a small bubble that's muting the world.

"We'd best get a move on." 90 suggests. "We don't want to give them time to do anything clever."

"No, we don't." I climb out of the Uhlan, eyes still feeling cloudy despite my vision actually being pretty good. "Any suggestions on where they might be hiding?"

"No." 90 turns to me as I ready my rifle. "Fair warning, Hadwin, the Nyto wasn't detected in the pile of corpses so far."

I hesitate, glancing around at the charred remains. "We'll… deal with her once we find her."

"Understood."

I finish re-arming myself and start moving toward the door to what I can now identify as a bunker. It's been left half open, scorched with someone desperately clinging to it before their back burnt out. Gonna need to go through there… Yuck.

The door slams open, and a young girl with black hair steps out, yellow eyes wide and a large gunlance in one hand. She's dressed in excessively weird clothes, especially for the weather-

Welp, there's our Nyto.

Her eyes lock onto mine, and I fire before she can cry out.

She leaps away from my bullets, levitating into the sky and bringing her weapon to bear.

90 starts tracking the energy state of the weapon as it starts to glow pink, and provides a warning right before it fires. I dodge away as she gives the warning, and the chill of Siberia's wildness is briefly replaced with the heat of summer as the beam chars the particulate in the air.

Ah, I missed fighting these.

Wait, no I don't.

"Slow." I growl.

The Nyto's brow furrows. She looks just like M4 used to, so she's one of the Lunasia series. Not a very important one though, judging by her location.

I fire back at her, and she floats away, but not by that much. Then she immediately starts charging another shot.

"Stupid."

I take two steps back and watch as the beam sears the ground in front of me.

"Sloppy." I raise my gun and fire a burst to her left, only to suddenly snap to her right and fire.

She predictably floats right into the gunfire, the bullets slamming into her torso and sending her falling to the ground.

"Sad." I conclude, walking up to the Nyto struggling to get to her feet. She must have been a reject, possibly even unnamed and sent to this backwater as security. The Nytos had sucky lives.

"Doesn't give you a license to hurt others, though." I place my rifle against her head and fire before she can grab her gunlance.

"That's the Nyto dealt with." 90 comes back into the conversation. "The rest should be easy."

"Especially with this." I heft the canister in my hands. "I have an idea, actually."

90 grimaces. "I can read your mind, and no, that's… Haddy, these aren't William's closest associates, these are random Paradeus researchers. No, they're not saints and we know they're doing human experimentation-"

My eyes cloud over with red as I recall Helena's face-

"-but we should just kill them. Anything more is cruelty, and I don't think you want to go down that route."

"No torture, huh?" I sneer.

"No. What would Aleah think of you?"

That stops me in my tracks. "The fuck did you say?"

"Aleah. Your precious wife, Hadwin." 90 stands there, hands on hips, ready to be shot between the eyes.

"You dare use her memory against me?!"

"I'm not using her against you, Hadwin. She always loved that you were the gentle man, the one that would laugh and let bygones be bygones with your bully. You're the guy that helped someone who tried to kill you just because they needed it. You're a good person. Don't let Paradeus take you back to being little more than a doll without a neural cloud."

I look down at my hand, the container with the epiphyllum flowers almost ready to bloom and the reflection of my face in the glass.

"It took us a year to get you out of that frame of mind when you left Griffin, and now we don't have a backup. Let's remember how hard she tried to get you back to normal."

"Right." I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. "You're right, of course."

"Always am." She grumbles. "I wish I hadn't promised you I wouldn't tamper with your mood. I could just-" she reaches out and twists her wrist like a knob. "-and you wouldn't be angry anymore, but no. I'm a nice, friendly OGAS. I don't step on my host's toes."

"Never too late to go back on your promise."

"What, and ruin my only source of entertainment?"

I load a new magazine into my weapon. "Alright, so let's perform the cleanup."

"No torture."

I shake my head and drop the epiphyllum canister to the ground.

"Great." 90 relaxes.

I smash the container with my foot, crushing the flowers underfoot.

Inhaling, I can feel the collapse radiation unwinding knots in my muscles, repairing small cuts and burns, and even making my back feel better.

Also, the RPD on my chest begins to glow, fully charged from being bathed in the radiation.

"Let's go kill those last few people here, and then we'll get going." I tap the device on my chest. "I don't want to be here any longer than I need to."

"Agreed."

Since I expected it this time, the teleport wasn't nearly as disorienting.

Well, no. That was a lie. Still very disorienting. One minute I'm putting a blanket over the deceased Helena clone, and the next I'm in a hot environment, the sun still up if fading with brown replacing the cool off-white of the Paradeus colors.

It doesn't help that I'm currently standing on a derelict highway in the middle of the wasteland with no landmarks to speak of.

I eye 90, who looks around frantically. "Shit, this is nowhere near the Elmo."

"You can control it, my ass."

"Look, it's not like it came with a user manual!" She snaps back. "Look around, so I can get an idea of where we are, okay?!"

I oblige, passively noting that there's a bunch of dead ELIDs around, a purification wall in the distance to the south, and many shiny bullet casings.

"Looks like there was a recent battle here." 90 comments.

"Yeah. Military too, or else they would have recovered the corpses."

"Wanna scavenge them for collapse crystals?" 90 raises an eyebrow. "Might need them to pay for passage back to where the Elmo is parked."

"Maybe." I grumble, putting away my gun and pulling out a large knife. "How far away are we?"

"I don't know yet." 90 huffs. "Give me a bit to calculate the angle of the sun and time of day, alright?"

"Fine, fine." I crouch down in front of a dead Obshare and roll it over onto its side.

It takes me a good five minutes to get through the silificated hide and pull out a small chunk of crystalized collapse radiation that had built up in its stomach. In that time, 90 had predictably disappeared to run her calculations. At least she isn't borrowing my brain at the moment, since the headache I already had from the day's events is taking quite a toll on me.

"Well, we're in luck." 90 appears as I roll over the next Obshare, avoiding the Thorn collapsed off to the side. "We're actually not that far. You can probably contact Gentaine with your RPD at its current charge level."

I glance down at the device on my chest and indeed it's already spinning up. "Well, that's nice. How far away?"

"Only about thirty kilometers. Looks like I was able to guide it a bit after all."

"Or it works completely randomly." I point out, hand coming up to cover the RPD. "Until we know, no more teleporting."

"How can we figure it out without testing it, though?"

"I dunno." I close my eyes. "Contact Gentaine."

Immediately, Gentianes face fills my head. "Hadwin…? Where the fuck are you?!" She grabs the sides of the screen I'm being projected on, causing me to stumble back a step. "WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!"

"Gentiane, calm down. I'm alright, I just found out my stupid RPD allows me to teleport." I tap the device on my chest. "90, send her the coordinates of where we are before the connection drops."

"Roger."

"Hadwin, stay where you are, we'll pick you up-"

The connection drops.

"She's going to be so mad at you when she gets here." 90 pokes my cheek.

"Yep."

"You think it's a good idea to have a present for her, like say, collapse pieces?"

I look around me at the field of corpses. "Probably…"