The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 15, 2398

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Marie gets out of the shower with a yawn. She looks around to make sure that no one saw it. Fortunately there’s no one else in the room, except for one person making some noise in the locker area. She wraps her towels around herself, and heads that direction, where her locker is anyway. Esmé is going through a lock-and-load montage. “Officer Sharrow, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m gearing up.”

“Gearing up for what, war?”

“We don’t know what we’re going into. I like to be prepared,” Esmé reasons.

“You’re our diplomat, did no one tell you that?”

Esmé sighs, annoyed. “You haven’t been with the division in a while. I don’t trust Nero anymore. He’s lost his edge.”

“Specialist Cleary has passed all of his recent evaluations. I asked him to tone down the weaponry. Perhaps that’s what you’re picking up on.”

She shakes her head. “It’s more than that. It’s before you came back. ”

“He was—forgive me—cleared by his superiors, and that’s good enough for me. It should be good enough for you too. Respect the chain of command.”

“Like I said, you weren’t there. He made a bad call in the field, almost got his partner killed. I don’t expect you to understand since you’ve obviously gone soft as well.”

That was out of line. She’s the team leader here, and the expert on their targets. Esmé can’t talk to her like that. She slams Esmé’s face against the locker in front of her, denting the metal. Esmé tries to elbow Marie back, but she sees this coming, and ducks. They continue to fight for the next minute, Esmé trying to pull all of her weapons back out, only to be disarmed immediately. Finally, Marie slams Esmé’s back against the bench, and knocks the wind out of her with a heavy blow to the chest. She puts her lips right next to Esmé’s ear as she’s trying to regain her breath. “You wanna go work as a disposable in the Military Authority, I’ll put in the transfer papers myself. You wanna do something that matters, you’ll follow my orders. This is my team, this is my mission, these are my people we’re approaching. Some of them are bad, but most of them are good, and if you go in there guns blazing, they will freak out! You may find yourself sitting next to your internal organs if one of them has the power to teleport them there, so don’t give them a reason. You’re the diplomat, so be diplomatic. Am I understood, Officer?” Disposable is an offensive term for an enlisted officer in any military branch, particularly someone who fights in the infantry.

Esmé continues to struggle with her breath, but she manages to eke out the affirmative. She stands up, and starts to gather the scattered weapons for armory return.

“I’ll see you in the briefing room.” Marie puts on her clothes, and then leaves shortly after Esmé.

Specialist Cleary is already waiting for them in there, as is Kivi, who Marie goes up to. “You’re not joining us, are you?”

“No, but sort of,” Kivi answers. She takes out a tablet that’s showing a map of the world, indicating all the last known location of the errors from Ramses’ global brain scanner. “Winona wants us to always be nearby, in case you need backup. I’ll be using my psychic power to find whoever it is my mind wants to find, but if you need me, we’ll be there. All you have to do is decide where we’re going first.”

Marie doesn’t look at the map. She’s unsure about all of this.

“I won’t be there to babysit you. It really is just a contingency. My team’s mandate is to find people. The orders don’t say anything about who to find. People go missing everywhere, so they figured we might as well work in the same city at the same time. We won’t even be sharing a safehouse.”

“Okay.” Marie looks down at the map. Any destination seems fine, they have little reason to choose one place over another. Someone appears to be in Giza, which makes sense, given what they know of the pyramids. There’s a whole diplomatic issue with Egypt, though, especially if they’re going to be shadowed by a tack team. One target appears to be on an island in the Philippines, while another is just in the middle of the water. Unless, is that...? It is, it’s the Mariana Trench. That makes sense as well, but unless they’re at or near the surface, it’s a no-go at the moment. They just recently asked for a submarine, and it didn’t work out so great for the people who loaned it to them, so asking again would seem heartless. It would probably be met with a belly laugh, and a resounding NO. Perhaps they could ask someone else.

Their investigator, Agent Doric Filipowski comes in. “Where are we headed? I may need to prep field assets.”

Marie looks up with a stalling smile. She quickly takes one more glance at the map, feeling the need to make a decision before it starts to look like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. “Paris. We’re going to Paris.”

“Mais bien sûr!” Doric declares. He pats Esmé playfully on the shoulder.

Esmé winces.

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

“It’s fine, I slept on it wrong,” Esmé answers. “J’ai toujours du mal à dormir avant une mission.”

Marie almost feels bad about their fight. Almost. Before she can dwell on it, her phone rings. She looks at it. “Holocall from the AOC.”

“Let’s go in here,” Kivi suggests, pointing to the executive office.

As Kivi is closing the door behind them, Marie magnetizes her device to the wall, and answers. She steps back to get in frame. “Leona, what’s going on?”

“Have you spoken with Mateo?” Leona asks.

“Not since he told me about Fairpoint’s transfer. Why, haven’t you?”

“You have the map of the errors handy?”

“Right here,” Kivi says, stepping forward.

“Zoom into the Mariana Trench, go back two days in the data timeline, then step through the history.”

“Okay.” Kivi does as she’s asked, letting Marie see the screen. They watch as the error appears, disappears, stays gone, and then reappears. The AOC passes over the spot every ninety minutes. Sometimes it detects this specific error, and sometimes it doesn’t.

“This error wasn’t there before,” Leona says after they step through history a few times, “back with that first scanner. It only showed up two days ago.”

“Is this a pattern?” Kivi questions. “It’s not every other orbital pass, or...”

Marie looks away to think. “It’s morse code. Every time the error appears means a dot and every time it’s gone means a dash.”

“What does it say?” Kivi asks.

“Were I you,” Leona replies. Mateo is the error.

Sic Transit...Vox (Part III)

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This was it. This was exactly what her parents were so worried would happen to her. She was shot, and bleeding out on the floor of an unfamiliar universe. If her father was going to find her here, he would have to do it quickly. Azura grabbed the medkit from the wall, and started wrapping gauze around Treasure’s neck, but this wasn’t a hospital, and she wasn’t a doctor. There was no guarantee of survival. Worst of all, without a throat, she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t escape. Something was pounding on the door.

“Can you leave?” Azura asked. “Can you jump from here?”

Treasure shook her head, but obviously couldn’t answer. She started pantomiming again. She pointed to her throat.

Something pounded on the door again.

“You have to be able to talk?”

She mimicked air coming out of her mouth.

More pounding.

“You have to sing?”

She shook her head again, and widened both her mouth, and her eyes.

Something struck the door so hard, dust flew in from the edges.

“You have to scream.”

Treasure nodded.

The door dented inwards.

“Okay. That’s okay. I just need time to program it.” Azura just as carefully as before removed the grenade from her bag, and placed it on the floor. “I don’t know the coordinates to voldisilaverse. That’s loci non grata for us. Where else do you feel safe? Where should we go?”

Treasure removed one hand from her neck, keeping the other in place. She waved her finger down, into a curve, then back up, and into a complementary curve, before finishing off the tail.

The dent in the door grew deeper.

“That looked like a fish. Salmoverse, really?”

Treasure nodded.

Light from the hallway peeked in through a little hole in the dent.

“All right, well, I definitely have those coordinates.” She started messing with the gears and tiny buttons, and whatever, on the grenade. When she was done, it opened itself up, releasing a glow. The door broke open too. Just as the enemy soldiers were coming in to kill them, the whole room filled with technicolors, and spirited them away. It spirited all of them away.

Luckily, Azura knew what had just happened, so she wasn’t as confused as the soldiers. As she lay there dying, Treasure watched Azura make the first move. She started fighting the enemies on her own, switching opponents easily, always knowing which one was the greatest threat that second. She got shot herself a couple times, but just kept going. In the end, they were all on the floor, and she was left standing. “Hold tight,” she said to Treasure. Not only had all the people come through the transport grenade, but the weapons and other gear did too. She found cuffs and chains, and used them to bind the soldiers to the seats. Yes, seats. This looked like a really big train car.

Now that the enemies were disarmed and no longer a significant threat, Azura felt she could drag Treasure to the next car up, and start getting back to treating her neck. Treasure tried to speak, but still couldn’t.

“Just rest. I’ll get you patched up.” Azura removed a syringe from the medkit. “This...is gonna hurt.” She jammed it into Treasure’s neck, and knocked her unconscious.

Treasure woke up after a good night’s rest. She was no longer on the floor, but in a bed that looked like a sleeper car. It didn’t just look like a train. It legit was a train. The windows were weird, though, and it was far too big to fit on a regular set of tracks. Was this—? No, it couldn’t be. What were the chances...? She sat on the edge, and started testing her throat. She could swallow, and she could cough, but she couldn’t speak. Well, she could eke out some really pathetic sounds, but not enough to convey information, and she absolutely couldn’t scream. Was this permanent? It was then that she realized that there was something on her head. It kind of felt like a tiara. She accidentally tapped the jewel in the center of it, which apparently powered it up. “What the hell is this thing?” a voice came from the tiara. “Who said that? Was that me? That sounds like me.” It was her own voice, but instead of coming out of her mouth, it was through a little speaker. The tiara was evidently converting her brain signals to an audible voice. She didn’t even have to move her lips.

Treasure left the sleeper car, which was actually just one section in a whole car of other sleeper rooms. While looking for Azura, she ended up finding the first car instead. The soldiers were still chained up to the seats, but their arms were now free, so they could eat. They regarded her with fairly noticeable indifference, probably having realized that she didn’t know anything about them, and had no stake in their war. One man didn’t have any food yet. Azura was just coming in from the other side to hand it to him. She changed tactics, and handed Treasure the food instead. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like a robot,” Treasure’s brain answered.

“Oh, good, the tiara is working. I’ve yet to find an exit,” she began to explain, “or a control room. We may be floating in space, for all I know. I know what this is, though.”

“The Transit,” Treasure said first. “The missing bulk travel ship.”

“That’s right,” Azura confirmed. “My people made it, but never used it, and then it disappeared. They always suspected it ended up in Salmonverse, but I don’t think they spent much time looking. It, uhh...never worked that well. Elegant design, but half-assed engineering. If we want to use it to get you back home, we’ll need someone smart enough to get it running.”

“Can’t we just use your grenade thing?” Treasure presumed.

“It was a one-time thing,” Azura said. “That’s why I was being so careful with it. I was trying to figure out how to reprogram it for multiple crossing, but only ever figured out how to change the destination. It kind of...exploded after we used it.”

“My true voice. Will it ever come back? I doubt this thing will let me...”

Azura hesitated to answer. “Medically speaking, it’s possible for your vocal cords to repair themselves. With anyone else, I would be hopeful. Realistically, historically, futuristically, probably not. You might heal, but I think you probably aren’t destined to. It would explain why you weren’t on our list of people and machines capable of crossing over. You only did it once, so...it wasn’t in our records.”

“It happened more than once, but that wasn’t the point. Now her only hope of getting back home was this machine, and no one here would know how to fix it.”

Azura turtles her head forwards. “You just said that out loud. And you said it in Vertean. Why did you use third person past tense?”

“What’s Vertean?”

“That’s their language.” She indicated the soldiers.

Treasure looked down to find the soldiers looking at her funny. “I think I need to practice using this thing. Alone.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Azura said. “The ship is pretty big.”

Treasure went back to her sleeper car, and started talking to herself. She complained about her parents, and how this was their fault. They should have taken her on trips early on, so she could get used to being on other worlds, and better understand how to use her powers. Perhaps there was a workaround. Maybe she didn’t really need her voice after all, but now she couldn’t test that theory. Now she was stuck. They should have let her learn. But it wasn’t their fault. They laid out the rules, and they were clear, and they were reasonable. This whole thing was exactly why those rules existed, and she should have respected that. She should have trusted them, and honored them. They were going to help her learn when she was an adult, and that should have been good enough for her. She should have been patient. This was her fault, she was such an asshole.

“I don’t think you’re an asshole.” Azura was at the door with one of the soldiers.

“What do you want?” Treasure asked.

“Treasure,” Azura said from behind him. “Siphon would like to say something to you. Go ahead, Siphon.”

“I’m sorry for shooting you.” The tiara was both translating her thoughts into his language, and his voice, into her tongue. It wasn’t that hard to use, now that she knew the difference between a stray thought, and one that she wished to vocalize. “I realize now that you were never my enemy, and...we should have been more careful. We should have kept our war to ourselves. I apologize. I know what it’s like to be silenced.”

Treasure stared at the man with a blank expression. Then she reached over to the sliding door handle. “Get the fuck out of my car.” She slammed the door shut. Hopefully that word translated well, so he would fully grasp how angry she was. She half-expected Azura to come in, and try to talk to her, but she didn’t. They both left, and Treasure went back to hating herself for getting her into this mess.

Hours later, a simple knock on the door indicated that there was another food tray waiting for her on the table outside the bedroom. This was how they started doing things. Treasure would stay in her personal train car alone, mostly in the bedroom. Azura would come by every once in a while to switch out her food trays, and update her on the goingson. She and the enemy soldiers drew up a truce, and then came to an understanding, and then became friends. They weren’t so different after all. It was only Treasure who didn’t belong, even though she was the only one actually born to this universe. Of course, she crossed over to volidisilaverse within seconds of her birth, but her mother was from here, and spoke of it often. If they ever figured out how to get this train back down to Earth, she would know who to contact.

Yes, the train ship was in space, probably in some kind of lava tube on Pluto, in order to keep it out of the hands of those who would exploit its power. Based on gravitational readings, that was as much as Azura could determine, but even that didn’t seem right, based on what she thought she knew about Pluto. The windows were there, but they were opaque, so it felt like living in an underground bunker. There was plenty of space for the small group of them, and they spent the entire time trying to power it up completely, if only to send a message to Earth. Treasure spent three weeks almost completely alone before something happened that forced her to leave. There was a jolt, and a surge of energy throughout the walls. It didn’t hurt much, but she definitely felt something, and she had to go out to ask about it.

Azura and the rest of this brand new crew were in an auxiliary control room. She was pounding on the inputs, trying to get them to work. “Come on, you were doing something before. You’re alive sometimes.”

“What happened? I don’t mean to interrupt, just curious,” Treasure added.

“I believe we went back in time,” Azura replied.

“Why?”

“I can only get any screen to give me any information for a moment. My guess is that the ship is quantum locked. It exists exclusively during a fixed period of time, probably according to the orbital period of whatever rock we’re on. That narrows down the list of suspects, but I still don’t know where we are, because I don’t have that data, because I can’t turn on most of these damn interfaces!” She was frustrated with all the time it was taking to work on this, but not mad at any person. The crew understood.

Treasure stepped forward to comfort her, and maybe apologize for being such an insolent little child this whole time. As she did so, the nearest computer booted itself up, as if responding to her presence. They were all very surprised.

“What did you just do?” Azura questioned.

“Nothing,” Treasure claimed. “I’m just standing here.”

“Walk over towards that computer over there.” Azura jerked her head farther down the car.

Treasure did as she was asked. That computer turned on as well.

“Oh my God, it’s you,” Azura complained. “This ship senses your power. I can’t believe you were the key to our salvation all along. Come with me. I need you to activate the engine room.”

< > Entire Story

Sic Transit...Lar Familiaris (Part II)

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Treasure had never traveled the bulk on purpose before. In fact, she had no recollection of ever having done it. She didn’t even have proof growing up that she was capable of such a thing. Perhaps the time she transported her family to this world, and the time she accidentally transported to some random dangerous world by herself, were all lies her parents made up. Why would they do this? Why would they force her to wear a collar, and claim it was so she didn’t end up getting lost in the multiverse? What could possibly be weirder—or worse— than that? Nothing, apparently, because as she was proving now, it was all true. Her scream really could resonate at the right frequency to break a temporary hole in the membrane of the universe, and allow her to jump to other worlds. Unfortunately, her father had promised to teach her how to use her powers once she turned eighteen. They were planning a family vacation on that day to celebrate. Since she was leaving early, she didn’t know what she was doing, or where she was going. She could figure it out eventually, though, as long as she survived long enough. Once she did, she would be able to return home at the very same moment she left, and unless she said something, her parents would never know exactly how long the trip was from her perspective. But again, she had to survive.

Alarms were blaring, and she could hear gunfire outside the door. It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low lighting. This room appeared to be an advanced futuristic laboratory, but what did she know? If this really was a different universe, their history could be unlike anything she had ever studied before in Miss Collins’ class. There were an infinite number of branes in the bulk, and this could be pretty much any one of them. The furniture and instruments looked somewhat familiar, though, so it probably wasn’t the version of Earth where dinosaurs evolved planet-dominating intelligence instead of humans. She wanted to escape, fearing for her life, but she couldn’t just leave without doing something. One time, when she was younger, she took a train to visit Chicago. It stopped to pick up a few more passengers in Iowa, so she took that opportunity to step off the train, just so she could say she once went to Iowa. But she hadn’t really. She was out there for all of thirty seconds, and had never returned for real. This could not be a repeat of that. She needed to explore, to make some mark—however small—so someone could corroborate her claim that she was here.

She stepped over to the door, and cracked it open carefully. The gunfire was farther away now, so she hoped the hallway would be empty. It wasn’t. Someone pulled the door open all the way, and forced himself in, nearly knocking Treasure down to the floor. He shut the door behind him, and pressed his ear against it. Treasure straightened up her clothes, and cleared her throat. “What’s going on?” Treasure whispered.

The man hissed at her in a language she didn’t know.

“I’m whispering,” she explained, even quieter this time.

He hissed at her again, and tightened the suction of his ear on the metal. They waited for a good five minutes. Once he was convinced they were safe for now, he breathed a sigh of relief, and started trying to talk to her. Language was the weirdest thing about the bulkverse, according to her studies. All these different worlds, some not even just alternate versions of Earth, but unrelated planets. And they all pretty much spoke English. It was the dominant language everywhere. Of course, other languages existed, but Miss Collins spoke of only a few planets that developed completely without it. The evolved dinosaur one was an example. This was a human, and she didn’t know what language he was speaking. It didn’t sound like anything she had ever heard before, except maybe...Ancient Egyptian?

They continued to try to communicate with each other, using hand gestures and facial expressions. He pretended to hold a gun, presumably asking whether she was armed. When she shook her head, he got really offended, and tried to frisk her, which she promptly put an end to. He put up his hands, somewhat apologetically, but not sincerely, and started pantomiming again. He held up an invisible gun, pointed to the door, and turned his fingers into legs. He opened a hypothetical door, and entered what he seemed to think was a glorious room. Something was lining the walls. Paintings? No. More finger guns. All different kinds. He threw a grenade. An armory. He wanted them to go search for an armory. Treasure wanted to shake her head again, but she didn’t know what to do. Was this guy a terrorist who deserved to be caught by the authorities? Was he an innocent accountant for this place who was just trying to escape? There was no way to know which side of this conflict she had stumbled upon. The only way she was going to understand it is if somebody here happened to speak English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, or Maramon.

Treasure relented, and followed the man out the door. They crept down the dim hallways, sticking to the walls as much as possible. They could still hear gunfire, but it was even fainter now. That certainly suggested an attack, rather than an authoritative raid. She would think cops would leave agents scattered throughout, instead of just moving through the whole thing together. But maybe not. There was no telling how large this facility was. She didn’t know what they did here, or why there was both a lab and an armory. They kept going until they could no longer hear the bullets. They were replaced with humming. It didn’t sound ominous or evil, but pleasant and comfortable. She almost sounded...bored. The man wanted to get away from it, but Treasure insisted they go check it out. If she was another survivor, they had to know, and if she wasn’t, Treasure could always scream.

They slipped through the door, and into what looked like a hock. The woman was alone, locked up, and didn’t stop humming when she saw them. Her arm was lying on the floor, which looked quite uncomfortable. She appeared to be stuck there. The two of them started speaking to each other in their language, so Treasure just stood there patiently. The conversation became heated, though, and he grew angry. It almost looked like he was blaming her for something. Finally, he took Treasure by the shoulder, and tried to pull her out. “No,” she responded, pushing his hand off of her. “What’s going on?”

“I couldn’t give him the answers he was looking for, so he’s abandoning me here,” the woman explained.

“Wait, you speak English?” Treasure questioned.

“I do, yes. I’m from Ansutah.” That was one of the bad universes. Miss Collins would never use such a word, because she was a kind and understanding person, but all the students got the idea. It was populated by monsters, who broke off of the universe that Treasure’s mother was from. They caused a lot of problems all over the bulk. They weren’t as bad as the Ochivari, but it was dangerous to trust them.

“You’re one of the human refugees,” Treasure guessed.

The man started complaining again, forcing the prisoner to get back into the argument. She dismissed him, and he finally gave up, deciding to leave Treasure behind, and go look for his precious armory.

“Sorry about that. I’m half human, half Maramon. They call us hybrids. My name is Azura, and I was sent to this universe to neutralize one Missy Atterberry as a threat.”

“So you are bad?” Treasure said.

Azura scoffed and laughed at the same time. “No, I never had any intention of doing that. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Missy won’t show up here for another several billion years. I purposely screwed with the algorithm, so my creator would send me to the wrong time period.”

“Oh. My name is Treasure. I’m from voldisilaverse,” she felt compelled to reveal.

“I see. You don’t seem like a pretentious asshole.”

“I wouldn’t call them that. They’re just...proud of themselves.”

“What did I say?” she joked.

“Umm. Are you, like, bolted to the floor?”

“Kinda, yeah. These people hacked into our medical implants, and pushed the gravity up to eleven. I only survived because of my Maramon side. It won’t last forever, though. If you could kindly hand me that cuff right there, I would be eternally grateful.”

Treasure looked over at the object on the table. “What does it do?”

“It will disable my chip, putting my gravity back to normal. You don’t have to unlock the gate, I just don’t want to die on the floor.”

Miss Collins taught them about the adventures of The Newtonian Expats, and The Hybrids. The latter were sent to remove the time powers of the former. Each ended up in a different universe when The Crossover exploded, and started impacting history from there. Most of the hybrids switched sides, and became friends with the Expats, but not all of them, and this Azura person was never mentioned. Still, if Treasure was going to make her own difference, she had to start by giving Azura the benefit of the doubt. That was what Miss Collins would do. Treasure grabbed the implant disabling device, and slipped it through the bars. Azura pushed the buttons on the screen, which were displaying what looked like hieroglyphs. She wrapped the cuff around her arm as well as she could, and activated it. Then she was able to stand back up after however long. She stretched, and massaged the implant site.

“Why are you in here?” Treasure asked.

“I built this device,” Azura said, holding up the cuff. “The implant tracks every single member of the Astral Military Force. I really just wanted to be able to go off-world without my superiors knowing about it. I didn’t know it could have saved lives. As it stands, other than me, it only saved two.”

“Where are the other two?”

“Off fighting against the invasion, I imagine, surely presuming me dead. I did pass out for a while. Anyway, thank you for your help—”

“I’ll let you out,” Treasure assured her. “You don’t have to be weird about it.”

“Okay, thanks, because...I don’t belong in here. As punishment, they would have made me clean the restrooms for a few weeks at worst.” She guided Treasure towards the keycard, which unlocked the hock gate. She repeated herself, “Thank you for your help, but we should get you to safety. This is no place for a youngling. Where is the door to the Crossover?”

“I didn’t come in the Crossover.”

“Hm. The Prototype?”

Treasure shook her head. “It’s just this thing I can do.”

“Hmm. You weren’t on the list.”

“The list of what?” Treasure questioned, worried.

“The list of people who can travel the bulkverse,” Azura clarified. “You’re not on that list. With a name like that, I would have remembered.”

“I’ll use that to my advantage.”

“That would be wise. Though...because of time travel, once the secret gets out, it was always out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Two questions, did that guy know where the armory is, and do you?”

“Not really, and yes. He was just a visitor who wishes he had come yesterday instead. The armory is just next door.”

“That seems stupid.”

Azura smiled. “This hock is meant for insubordinate soldiers who they don’t plan on kicking out of the military. If I were a traitor, or deserter, or something, they would have put me somewhere much more secure. This is mostly my commanding officer’s office. What does it matter, though, aren’t you just going home?”

“I have to help you. It’s why I’m here. Let me get you to wherever it is you need to be.”

The two of them stepped out of the hock office, and down to the next door. Treasure kept watch while Azura punched in the code. They walked in, and started gathering supplies. Azura took weapons and tactical gear, but Treasure just fitted herself with a bullet proof vest, and a helmet. Her father taught her how to defend herself, but no one trained her on weapons, and she grew up in a fairly peaceful world. All she wanted to do was protect herself, not hurt anybody. Azura, meanwhile, was carefully removing a grenade from a lockbox, placing it into a smaller box, and lowering it into her bag.

“You really need a grenade?” she asked.

“This is not a grenade,” Azura answered. “Are you ready to go?”

“Where are we going?”

“The Condensed Command Center. There will be very few survivors, and they will all convene there.”

“Okay.”

They opened the door, and tried to leave the room, but were immediately spotted by the enemy. Before she could react, Treasure heard a shot, and felt a choking pain on her neck. Something wet rolled down her chest, and she fell to her back. Azura returned fire only briefly, before dragging Treasure back into the armory, and locking it.

< > Entire Story