Threats from within.

[Emissary]

First comes the thought. Awareness of existence.

Far away echoed by irratic heartbeat.

Alive? Or dead?

One by one climbing from the cold abyss towards the shining light infinitely far above. A massive cave perhaps? It was impossible to tell. With no strength left and only held by sheer will she slowly but steadily kept moving upwards. It felt like eternity with each step made she began feeling the weight pulling her back stronger and stronger. Till she could move no further. This is it. Looking up brought no hope, her goal was still infinitely away. Below was the abyss. Empty void consuming everything.

Would jumping down end the suffering? But this isn't what he was taught. This isn't how it would end.

Between darkness and light. The moment of transition. The struggle was hopeless, the fall would be... so tempting, so easy.

Recalling known life, gazing into the abyss below... what was that she saw on the wall... the writings. One particular phrase. Something about memories and the abyss...

It was pulling harder, irresistible. The whole massive cave she was confined began falling apart slowly.

Descending from above a pair of swirling waves of pure energy came. Circling around her, as if waiting for something.

The stone she stood began to crack, pieces falling down into nothingness.

Memories... immaterial.

The abyss. It was pulling down material part. The weight. The burden.

To escape it's relentless pull is to give it away, to separate.

The energy waves were spinning closer and closer. The separation from material being. As she touched them... everything ever known was gone.



The sight quickly fades into bright haze, but in the last moment she saw own body from above, lifeless, falling down the abyss.

The first breath.

From this moment Lilly knew she was alive. Although she couldn't see or hear or feel anything apart from her own heartbeat. Thoughts decellerating, slowly descending into dreaming state, but knowing she has narrowly avoided falling into abyss... it was a relief, a rest ahead. Everything else can wait for now...

[Exile]

Above the Abyss. A flash of light, and into a field. A blue sky. A green tree line and an orange coloured wheat field. All she could feel was her own heartbeat, a feint pulse of life. With effort, she slowly raised her arms and opened her hands, feeling the light touch of the wheat on the tips of her fingers. Her body got terrified by the touch, a small shock of life flowing through her.



She wandered for what seemed eternity through the orange field, past the green tree line and under the blue sky. She felt the pulse of life course through her body with each step she took, with each blade of the wheat she touched with the tip of her fingers, soon after which thoughts filled her mind, voices echoed inside her head. "Completion". "Bring it all back."

A powerful force pulled her up and away from the field and the green tree line, up into the sky. She closed her eyes and embraced it.

---

[Exile]

She could see the field moving further and further away until it was nothing more than a speck in the distance. At this point a flash blinded her eyes and more voices filled her mind. She could hear full words, sentences. "She's coming by." "Already? Is it ready?" "Everything's in the green, heart rate normal, brain activity nominal."

She flickered with her eyes, looking at the world through a glassy haze. She could feel her arms, legs, face and hands again. Trying to get up she was quickly stopped by an unfamiliar woman with the blackest hair.



"Lily, keep still. We need to run a few more tests to make sure everything's fine."

I lowered my arms and lied still. Her voice was a conforming one, one you could easily trust. Questions later, rest now.


12 hours later

It's my face. But not my face as I knew it. It's missing a few small scars, some imperfections. I'm missing the broken nail on my left thumb, but my hair seems to look better than ever. More natural. She told me I had been put back in my own body, right as it was as they found me. I can't recall how I ended up here, how I "died". Last thing I remember is the blackness of that cell on New London.

They gave me a new ship, new equipment, and a new assignment. No rest for the wicked I suppose. I had questions, lots of questions, but right after I woke up the woman with the black hair told me she'd answer them all upon my return. Guess I'll have to go with the flow.

---

[Exile]

A breath, a feeling.
The metal, I'm bleeding.
A breath, a feeling.
The spirit, she's healing.

I'm terrible at poetry, I know. But for some reason this little verse keeps on repeating itself inside of my head ever since my.... Return. If only it was the only thing that kept repeating itself in my head.. Words, sentences, sometimes uttered by a set of voices in stead of one. They're not annoying or anything, not disturbing me in any way. I'm not waking up with sweat on my forehead in the middle of the night like in those Kusarian horror movies. But I do suppose it isn't the healthiest of things, psychologically. But then again, I did just.... Yeah, that. Funnily enough, (if you can call it funny), this isn't the strangest of things I've been noticing since my return. I've felt.. Really good. Absolutely amazing. No headaches, no snapping bones, no tiny shocks of chest pain. Nothing. For the first time in ages, I'm feeling absolutely..... Stunning.


Altair Research complex. Iota nebula. Five weeks after the assignment's start.
It was a success. And what a success it was. I did not know to what end my assignment lead, but it would seem that I singlehandedly collected the equipment needed to build a warship. A warship so beautiful and graceful it caught the breath of every single Human arriving on the station. They called it a "Togo". I had never seen one before in my life, nor do I think I ever will again. But of one thing all of us were certain ; it felt as if this ship, the so called "Mandate of heaven", was meant for greatness.



Nomad and Human vessels alike circled the massive hulk, I assume for construction purposes. I watched them dance around it as I stood behind a window in the upper section of a tower on Altair research station, calmly circling the ice in my glass. The room I was in seemed to have been copied directly from a Liberty "lounge bar", if you will. Four low sofa's with corners placed in a square with a small glass table in the middle. Some dimmed red and purple lights in the corners, and smooth, relaxing music coming from behind a small bar in the back. Something they must have done to make us feel more comfortable. Yes, us. There were a bunch of us sitting up here. Three women, two men. There was a man and a woman standing a few meters to my left, gazing out of the window and pointing. I could overhear them talking about "The Mandate"(how I liked to call it). I looked down and smiled a bit before finishing my drink. I helped make her (I decided that the Mandate was a girl. I mean, come on, she's gorgeous!) possible. A little pride is never a mistake, right?

I swirled the ice in my drink one last time and sat down on one of the empty sofa's in the middle of the room. Two of the women were sitting across from me and the man on the one with his back to the door. They were talking about past assignments, I think. It didn't really matter to me. I felt I had earned the right to be a little arrogant, so I kicked off my shoes and lay down on the couch. I reached into my pocket for my PDA (I was reading "Confesiones de un amante de la pirateria". A book which came highly recommended from one of the Corsair colleagues.) but couldn't find it. I remembered I left it on the table and reached for it, when I almost had it, it just seemed to fly straight into my hand without me actually touching it physically. The feeling that rushed through my body when it happened was... Indescribable. Not pain, not pleasure but.. Awareness? Luckily, my colleagues were all too occupied with each other to notice my little.. Act. I pretended as if nothing had happened and continued reading, but tomorrow? Tomorrow I would seek out the one they call the "Emissary". She had some answers to give me. Voices, moving objects, a body that is mine but not mine and that (I'm not complaining) happens to function without any defects wasn't something every Human could claim to have or do.

---

[Ryummel]

“Ewing? We’ve arrived.” I looked at the view-screen, which was showing a clear image of that huge facility called ‘Altair’. When I was a child, I always felt awed by the colossal works built by man, the megaliths, pyramids ... Wonders which extolled the greatness of the human race during the Earth era. But this place could not be described with words. The man itself couldn't have done this.
Another specter greeted me when I was in the docking pad inside Altair. [color=#CCCCCC]“You’re the one who defected from The Order, right?… I’m glad to see you finally opened your eyes. Follow me, please.” After walking for five minutes through many corridors, we stepped into a small room, almost dark. There was a beautiful view outside a big window in the other corner of the room. The specter left me alone in the room, so I moved towards the window.



I felt calm as I watched the mess of blue and purple gases which were creating dancing silhouettes around the nebula. Then, I began to meditate about the recent events. I know I made the wisest decision, because I know I didn't betray humanity. 'Coexistence' ... That's the word that defines my goal, my will. Probably I'll have to make a great sacrifice to achieve such goal... But that sacrifice would be nothing compared to what I'd earn.

Suddenly, a voice voice broke the silence. "Welcome, K-371".

---

[Emissary]

Over the years Altair became a city floating in space, carved inside three asteroids connected to each other. A lot has changed since the last time.

The person holding the answers to Lily’s questions was someone called the "emissary". Emissary... Suddenly the name came up in her mind: Angela Corino. Somehow Lily knew that and knew her looks despite never seeing in person nor in picture nor anywhere else. The map on PDA sprung up showing the emissary's rooms were located far off on the third asteroid. To reach that part of the station she'd need to take monorail tram, a transportation system that connected all main areas of this facility.

Lily walked outside the bar and headed straight to closest station. She remembered very little of the place since her first visit here when she and other trainees were rather forcefully dragged into some kind of tests. Over the years Altair became a rather crowded place. Inside the massive asteroids there was a vast network of tunnels, corridors and halls one after another. Although initially an ingenious human construction some areas were oddly decorated with shapes normally not associated with any human architecture, while others seem retained original industrial utilitarian looks. While she was waiting for the tram a cargo train passed by, carrying what she could identify as cryopods, similar to those used in sleeper ships but slightly different and having unreadable markings.

Finally she arrived to the third asteroid station. This place was completely unlike any other area she previously seen before at Altair. This time prominently featuring alien architecture, the walls were made of materials she never saw before, part crystalline, part what looked like liquid but upon touching were solid and strong, yet... warm, distinctively different from the cold metal surfaces. Floors were made of curved panels and tiles creating a odd mosaic where no element is repeated, each is unique. There were no displays hanging on the walls, no pads, no wires, no tubes going above on the ceiling. It all looked amazingly pristine and clean, making other stations look like a junkyard compared to this (and junkyards in space they probably were among other things). Lily turned on PDA to check on further directions but the device strangely couldn't find it's own location. She let out a deep sigh and had to walk on through bizarre alien looking corridors and halls relying on memorized path she saw before on the screen. Walking though she noticed there was not a living soul around, no humans, nobody at all.

Lily slowly entered into emissary’s apartments, looking around carefully, mixed with surprise and awe. The room was pretty much fitting the whole alien-looking area, and yet it was clearly designed for humans, fitting human proportions and feeling rather comfortable but aesthetically striking as otherworldly place.

“You look good... for a dead person.”

Lily turned around...

[Boss]

I stood there for a while, just...looking...at the stars that were now my home. I'd come a long way from the SWAT agent I'd been. Remembering my past is hard. You just can't understand what it's like until you become one of us. It stretches you. You become yourself, expanded. I-i-it's hard to explain. It's hard thinking about it. When you need it, though, that power is there.

My last mission was simple enough. Locate a few artifacts. I had all the location data. I knew who had them or what had them. I just didn't know how big they were.

Most artifacts are small, handheld. Most of the ones people deal with, anyways. These were not handheld. They were large enough that I felt like I was trying to shove four small children into my hold. Size-wise, that is. Compunctions, no. If the mission demanded it, I would.

We're dedicated like that.

Dedication...My kid brother was my boss, kind of. Fate's evil like that. I said I was SWAT. Jim wasn't directly over me, but seeing as he was a Deputy Chief of the LPI, I had to keep him in line. It took a lot of effort, a lot of waking up in the morning and finding a reason to care. Most of the Deputies weren't exactly mentally sound. The stress of the job gets to a guy. The fact that he kept that position until he vanished along with the...the...I can't remember. Sometimes that happens. You can't remember things you don't need to. It makes us focus on the mission, and if we were to get captured, well, we can't tell what we don't know.



My name is Jeff Markey. My number is L-024. What I am is a Spectre.

---

Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Exile]

I turned around to face the voice that just spoke from behind me, gazing upon my own face in the reflection of the odd mosaic. It reminded me of why I had traveled across the entire station to get here. I looked up to discover from who that voice came and saw a woman. She had long, black curly hair and was dressed in a suit that had a pattern not unlike the one you could find on the walls and floors of this particular sector of Altair. Somehow, I recognized her right away. Angela Corino. "The Emissary".

I looked straight at her in a bit of scared way, she did just sneak up on me after all. Plus.. A dead woman? What? I wanted to speak but before I could fully open my mouth she beat me to it. "Looking good indeed.." she began. She smacked her hand against my shoulder and legs as if I was some sort of victim of a shrapnel explosion recently released from the hospital. "Firm legs, arms and shoulders looking good... Excellent." I tried to speak, say something sensible. But the words ; Uhm, and ok, were the only that left my lips. Angela stood in front of me with her arms crossed, smiling. "An excellent point. Come, sit." She said as she guided me into a room decorated like a living room. I stopped when we crossed the threshold and gazed into the room. It was built from the same "crystal" as the rest of the section seemed to me with, surprisingly, Human furniture. Almost like an apartment belonging to a rich, influential woman. "It's Maltian," she spoke. "A little bit of home." She pointed at one of the sofa's that seemed to fit in perfectly with the mosaic texture of the walls and floor and told me to sit down. "Make yourself comfortable, I'll go and fetch us something to drink"

Angela walked into another room adjacent to the one I was currently in and disappeared out of my field of view. I sat down in the (surprisingly comfortable) sofa standing across from a rather large, glass table. I looked into the glass to once again see my own reflection. It was a strange feeling. Like a few weeks ago, I felt.. Strange upon seeing it. When I first looked at myself I had noticed that a scar that had been on my right cheek since I was about a year of seven had disappeared. The same goes for the one on my left upper leg inflicted to me by a rather charming mugger with a dagger before my current.. Occupation. It just didn't make sense. Why would they fix that?

Angela came back into the room with a glass in each one of her hands. Still smiling. She sat down in a chair positioned on the head of the table and put the glass down, shoving one towards me. "Go on" she said. "It's from Rheinland, Hamburg I think. Never tried it myself, but it should be good." She smelled at the contents of the glass and drank a sip. "I'll give you one thing, Rheinland might not be much of an empire anymore, but it still knows it's liqour." I smiled and looked down a bit, knowing not whether that was a compliment, a normal remark or an insult. "Go on" she continued. "Try it. You'll love it."

I looked down to the glass, and as I did this, Angela looked down at my hand that was starting to reach for it. I approached it, and again the glass got "pulled" into my hand as the PDA did almost half an hour ago. It startled me, and I dropped the glass on the crystalline floor. Strangely, it didn't break, merely spill some of its contents. "Excellent.." Angela spoke. "I'll have that cleaned up later". Excellent? Excellent when I -pull- something with my -hand- whilst not having it -in- the hand? I was an open minded person, but not a super woman.

"Excellent?" "Why is this excellent?" I asked rather assertively. "Because yo-" Angela tried to say, but I interrupted her and stood up. "No! No! I came here to get some answers, not be observed like some form of lab rat.. Angela. " This wasn't like me. I never jumped up and raised my voice. I'm a waiter, an observer, some one who watches and listens, then acts. Not like this. Angela sat back into the chair and finished her drink in one go, allowing me more time to speak. "Ever since I awoke with you at my side, those weird.. Machines, things, I don't know what the hell they were.. I've not been my-" "But you have been", she interrupted me. "Of course I'm myself." I continued. "I'm me.. But.. Different. I feel better, healthier, stronger, faster.." "And that's a bad thing?" She asked. "Bad? No, no. Not bad.. But that's not all. Ever since I woke up I've been hearing.. Things.. Voices in my head.. They don't always make sense, and some of them are too distant to hear. " "So?" She spoke. "Perhaps you just need some time off. You've been doing a lot of them lately, haven't you. " She said with a small smile on her face. "Then how do you explain that?" I asked her pointing down to the content previously held by the glass pulled into my hand. "You can't, can you? Not by blaming it on stress!" I almost shouted at her.

She looked me in the eyes and I said "I want answers, Angela."

---

[Boss]

I'm on edge here. Everything is scaled wrong. I'm too tall, or I'm too short, or too wide, too skinny. I feel like there are thousands of eyes watching me wherever I go. I crave open space. I can't stand being confined, and though I'm here of my own free will, it feels like a prison cell. My window offers me escape in its view. I can gaze out into the mists of Omicron Iota and lose myself among the stars. I live for this, these moments between training and learning. The moments I remember that I can fly free.

The song of need burns in my soul, galvanizes my movements, focuses my thoughts. I spar with K-371, our bodies locked in a frenzied dance of blurred motion. We are matched, unable to touch each other. Unable to be touched.

When at last we finish, it's from utter exhaustion. I stagger to one side and collapse, laughing, as Myles does the same.

---

Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Emissary]

Answers... Always the answers. Always impatient. Anxious to get something quick and simple to get satisfied, even if it's merely a small part...

"You might want to remember things that happened to you before. Got caught and thrown into prison, counting days and months. Eventually you ran out of luck and could not avoid the bullet going straight into your head." - Angela made a pistol hand gesture pointing at Lilly. "Poof!"

"And you died." - Angela concluded in a cold tone. "For all intents and purposes to the world outside you are dead."

After a little pause, giving some time for Lilly to recollect her thoughts, she continued: “I think they decided to give you a second chance, but I do not know what they have planned for you."

Anje turned on display panel on the wall, switching to security camera view that shows some sort of medical laboratory. In the center of it was operations table and a lifeless body lying on it. Lilly. The sight of herself lying dead there was a shocking experience to say the least.

"Now that you know what happened how does it feel to be alive again?"

But Lilly remained speechless, still staring at the display of her "former" dead body. No one could have prepared her for this, never she imagined this. Memories flew past before her. Assignments in Rheinland. Getting caught. Thrown into prison. Grey walls surrounding her all the time. Put down on the knees and having gun pointed. Blast. Endless fall into abyss. Crawling up to the wall. Up to the light. There was something there, something that plunged her from the abyss, but Lilly could not remember what it was, only the feeling she wasn’t alone. And then the sight of herself falling into blackness of the abyss.

"Take a rest. You'll need it. The memories will slowly return filling the missing gaps."

Lilly slowly stood up, still trying to comprehend what happened to her. Perhaps it was best to take a rest. Just before leaving the room Anje called her.

"There is no way back anymore. Your past life is over, just like . Take a few days to collect your... former thoughts. You’ll need everything for what is to come. Now go, we’ll meet again soon.”

Shortly after Lilly left the room Anje spoke as if there was someone else in the room: “She will handle it.”

“Perhaps...” - the invisible observer materialized revealing self to look like a human, but with noticeable mutations on the skin and head. With a quick gesture he put the dropped glass back on the table in a similar way Lilly did. “We'll see in a few days provided she will... adapt.”