The Bear's Cave - Sedona Station, Baffin (Formerly Freeport 14, Yukon)

[Blighter]

The reply came as swift as her stare was empty.

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#FF9944]"Vodka."

But the question had already taken its toll, letting her mind wander. Wander back home.

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#FF9944]"Sorry, comrade Colonel. I'm thinking about where this is going. Barely two days and now I'm sitting in a bar on this Freeport, far away from 52, far away from everything I know and I'm trying to tell myself to get drunk, as if it could wash away all the things I've seen and heard today, because I don't like the things going through my head. The things you've said."

She finished her cigarette, wasting no time and downing another glass before lighting a new one. The smoke felt good, that beloved neurotoxin Nicotine calming her.

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#FF9944]"I don't even know what the hell you meant with "nerve-stapled". I've come back so recently, I've seen faces I'd never heard of before, and you tell me that my, my comrades will try to kill me, under orders by a man I've not heard of 'til yesterday, a man I don't know."

The cigarette didn't last long. She put it off in the ashtray, downed the next glass, and then looked her comrade in the eye.

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#FF9944]"There has to be another way. I don't care if it's about power or anything else in this universe, but there has to be another way. This shouldn't be happening, and we shouldn't be sitting here, marked as traitors, waiting for the day where we march back to 52, our weapons aimed at our brothers and sisters. There has to be a way we can bring this to an end without harming our own. Or at least without harming those who can't even speak for themselves, those who might not even know what happened."

Her gaze was filled with a hint of desperation, those eyes of hers pleading Rhade to tell her she was right, to tell her there was a different way to the one she had seen coming in her mind for the last hours. But before he could answer, Alissa's stare was interrupted as a waitress approached their table in this dark corner. She eyed the girl for a moment as the latter spoke with an innocent smile.

[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#FFFFFF]"One round on the house?"

Alissa's eyes wandered back to Rhade. Whatever he would say might decide way more than just whether Lieutenant Kalinin would decline the girl's offer or not.