Xini had no trouble triggering the tube’s opening procedure. Immediately, the figure descended to ground level, the gravity compensators helping him stand as he regained consciousness. When the glass split to let him out, the former prisoner was wide awake.

He had once worn a fine black uniform with vermilion trim and a large, flowing red cape, in the style of the Homs. Yet, even in prison uniform, the figure had an undeniable charisma. His eyes glowed briefly before taking on a duller hue, and he calmly observed the people present.

When he spoke, his voice was deep, with a slight metallic sound. He had the tone of someone who had authority and was used to being obeyed, of someone who even when a prisoner in the midst of his enemies would fill them with fear while remaining perfectly master of himself.

“This is not the welcoming committee I imagined for my awakening. Either you are not authorized in this place, or the Administration has gone completely to hell since I no longer lead it.”

His piercing gaze made one feel uneasy, seeming to tear the darkest secrets from the depths of those he observed. He stopped for a moment on the two Homs, particularly observing their hair as if to check that they were not Vermilions using a dye, then ended up settling on the Hogloo, seeming to recognize him as the leader of this disparate troop. But it was the Cyclops who took the lead and stepped forward:

“Greetings to you, Emperor Vector. I am Pogastrapi, who once fought for a cause now defeated. I am now the representative of a large assembly representing many groups oppressed by the current power. Since your disappearance, the Administration has continued to deteriorate. Under the current government, freedoms are increasingly reduced to the point of forcing groups that hate each other to form alliances in this assembly that I represent...”

With his arms crossed, the former emperor listened without flinching, all his attention mercilessly focused on his interlocutor. Despite the latter's tall stature, which forced Vector to raise his head, it was the Cyclops who seemed uncomfortable as he continued his explanations.

“The Zcarbb threat is greater than ever, the Administration's finances have never been so poorly managed even as unemployment and taxes climb in tandem... Yet, the corrupt deputies and this so-called universal president only limit all speeches that stray from the standards they intend to impose. The Administration is in peril... But soon, our alliance will rise and sweep away all this corruption. We will restore an Administration as it should have been originally: a space for peaceful exchanges between the different nations and not a great universal nation imposing its standards on everyone! For this, our leaders need to have at their head a hero, someone that the people will follow with enthusiasm, someone who despite all the attacks has always remained upright and incorruptible, someone who has been able to organize in the worst conditions the defense against the Zcarbbs and the Titans. This hero is you! In the name of the Reform of the Administration… provisional name… come and take our head.”

The Cyclops took a breath after his impassioned speech. He seemed a little disturbed by the rigidity of the Vermilion's features which indicated no emotion.

The former emperor looked attentively at the different members of the group again then took a step back. His arms still crossed; he stood again in the stasis tube.

“I’ve heard enough. Put me back in stasis. I’ve always served the Administration and you’re asking me to serve as a leader in a civil war? If I take your head, it won’t be in the way you mean it. If I abdicated and surrendered, I did it in order to put an end to the civil war you intend to recreate.”

The Cyclops opened his eye even wider than one could have thought possible. The Hogloo scowled, astonished at the unexpected turn of events. The Ktn-Ktn scratched his head with a bewildered expression before giving up trying to think, taking a batch of leek leaves out of a satchel, he began to passively nibble on them.

Libre’s brain was boiling as he analyzed the situation. Emperor Vector was nothing like the violent and cruel character implied in the history books, even if his arrogance had not been exaggerated. Despite his coup in the past, he remained faithful to a certain ideal of the Administration.

On the other hand, his refusal drastically reduced the chances of survival of the two Homs: Khajraz would certainly not be inclined to spare them after such a disappointment.

Suddenly, an unexpected person spoke, attracting all the astonished glances in the room: Xini stepped forward, extending her hand in front of her to call out to the ex-emperor.

“Wait! You are a Vermilion.”

Vector looked at the Xerinean in astonishment. When she did not seem to continue, he let himself be taken in by a slight curiosity and answered:

“Exactly: the Vermilions protect the Administration. I have no weapons on me and I am no longer linked to the reconstruction system, so the best solution is to go back into stasis rather than to fight you.”

“I heard that your software has unmatched security, making you immune to the modifications that have been implanted in the other Vermilions. Did you know that most of your comrades have been deactivated?”

“If that is the will of the Administration. When the need arises, they will reactivate us and we will fight.”

“But they did not deactivate themselves of their own free will! They were implanted with this idea! Like all new generations: the SECURA-01 chip that was implanted in them contains something called the ‘Patriot Program’, which rewrites their thoughts to make them conform to the implanted doctrine! You cannot let that pass!”

However, the prisoner shrugged:

“We live to serve the Administration. After I took power, it's understandable that they implemented new security measures so that this would never happen again. The universe is safer this way... Even if my decisions have always been made with the best interests of the Universal Administration in mind!”

Libre's lips twitched in an amused grin that he quickly made disappear. Even cyborg and conditioned, the emperor remained a Hom with his pride.

“Ah?” Xini asked furiously. “So, it suits you that your comrades are brainwashed? Okay. But what about civilians then?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“The SECURA-02 chip contains the ‘Patriot’ program and is widely distributed... well, I suppose it's been widely distributed since I was imprisoned... in short, it's being distributed to the population in order to subtly modify their ability to think for themselves. If you are truly a guardian of the universe, if you truly care about protecting the citizens, it is not only against the Zcarbbs, the Hogloos or the rebels that you should fight, but also those who… who… who threaten the citizens of the universe… I am not telling you to join this… this group to which these people belong, but do not return to your cell: do something. Fight for… for people to remain free to think within the Administration!”

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Xini was breathing heavily. No one here had ever seen her so excited before. She was like a person who, in the middle of a depressing and arid desert, finally sees an oasis and runs there without thinking about the expense.

The Cyclops and the Hogloo seemed satisfied, delighted with this unexpected ally. The two Homs did not know what to hope for and were surprised by the revelations of the Xerinean, wondering what it meant. The Ktn-Ktn thought the leek leaves were delicious and might be even better mixed with some artificial grass.

The Emperor raised his hand to his chin, thoughtful.

All but one of the attendants held their breath.

“I see. But, it’s not my place to deal with that anymore. Take care of it yourself and don’t wake me up again if you haven’t become the Official Administration.”

With a quick gesture, he stepped forward, touched the tube’s control console, then stepped back. This simple touch seemed to have allowed him to send instructions to the machine and, immediately, the window closed. A jet of gravity lifted the Emperor into the air, arms crossed in an imposing posture, then he remained frozen there, in timeless stasis.

The Hogloo struck the wall with his fist and the wall, made of reinforced neo-steel, shattered.

“Rhaaa!” he shouted. “We came all this way to try to free a fool! Did they waste all my time for this? Oh, it won’t happen like that. Whether he likes it or not, his image will serve us well. Take the stasis tube: we’ll just create a double and use his disappearance from prison to justify the identity of our puppet. Come on! Get moving, Homs!”

The stasis tube was floating in the air, making it easy for one person to carry. However, neither Hom wanted to point it out for fear that the Hogloo would use it as an excuse to kill one of them. At the head of the group, they walked in the opposite direction of the journey, passing the zombies of the guards who continued their patrols, their glassy eyes the only sign of their true state.

The metal protections of the tube had been closed, hiding the fallen emperor. Xini straddled the tube, apparently too angry to want to walk. Her outburst earlier had fully awakened her from the mental lethargy she had been in, much more than her moments of intellectual activity or her encounter with a member of her species.

Libre looked annoyed too, his fingers tapping nervously on the tube he was pushing. Sava found his pace stressful and wanted to ask him to stop. Yet, this rhythm also reminded her of something…

Suddenly, an armored door closed behind them, cutting them off from the rest of the group.

“Quick!” shouted the Hom. “Run!”

What was happening? Without thinking any further, the Ham obeyed. Still pushing the floating tube, they moved quickly, skidding through the corridors and regularly hitting the walls with their load. The doors systematically closed behind them.

Then, the zombies’ behavior changed. The weapons were aimed in their direction and fingers that were slowly taking on a mortal rigor squeezed the triggers…

The weapons did not fire. After a moment, as if there was a delay in the instructions they were receiving, the animated dead in their path dropped their weapons and rushed into close combat. Libre jumped onto the tube, and shot down the closest monsters with his enormous pistol.

“Keep pushing Sava!” he shouted.

And she continued to push. Now alone, she had to position herself in the center of the tube and no longer at the edges, reducing her field of vision from the front to zero. She obeyed at the drop of a hat each time Libre shouted an instruction. “Right!” “Left!” “Go down!”

Heart pounding, Sava looked up as the heat beam from Lhom’s weapon had just passed overhead, shredding the head of a zombie that was coming up behind her. Although the light combat armor she wore amplified her movements and reduced fatigue, the situation was worse than during training.

In her years of service, the young Ham had already faced firefights, but she had always clearly had the advantage. She had never found herself pushing a cart containing a Universal-class criminal, pursued by a monstrous Hogloo that noisily tore the doors off behind her, while hordes of living-looking zombies threw themselves at her.

She jumped as a humanoid creature, twisted at an impossible angle, lunged at her before being pushed away by a shot. No: not always such a living appearance. Moreover, behind her, above the din of the Hogloo exploding doors and walls, she could hear the sound of footsteps, of running, of the multiple and mute animated corpses that followed her. She knew that if she turned around, not only would they catch up with her, but most of them, disfigured by Libre's shots, would no longer have such a lifelike appearance.

Suddenly, she felt her hand pulled upwards, gripped. It was Libre: his pistol firing at the attackers in one hand, he used the power of his armor to lift her with the other. Quickly, he brought her onto the tube that continued to move and took the turns of its own accord.

“Forward! Forward!”

Xini's hysterical cry attracted Lhom's attention, who began to machine-gun the mass of zombies in front of them before they had time to throw themselves on the tube. Sava assisted him with her own rifle. As she did so, she saw that the small creature had glued a strange device to the tube, seemingly made of spare parts. A homemade antigravity system? No: there was no way anyone could build something like that from that pile of spare parts, right?

The improbable vehicle shot up into the air abruptly into the middle of a hangar full of zombies where alarms sounded. Apparently, the animated dead had murdered many other guardians themselves, swelling the ranks of their army. However, the sounding alarm meant that someone had finally realized the situation, or that Xini had allowed the surveillance systems to work again.

The ship's cannons then went into action, reducing the mass of monsters to shreds. Some, those murdered without their shields having been destroyed first, resisted the attack. However, the path to the bridge accessing the spaceship was clear.

The unlikely trio scrambled inside, still on their strange vehicle, and the opening closed.

The inside of the ship looked like it had been through a fierce battle and the walls were all cracked. Robots were busy erasing these traces by reprinting matter on the cracks… cracks that reminded Sava of a horrible memory.

“The… the Hogloo parasite!” she shouted. “The one he used to control the ship?”

“Purged,” Lhom replied, turning to Xini, “right?”

“Exactly: I forced the application of the anti-hogloo protocol that his bioweapon had blocked. By the time we got to the ship, everything had been eliminated.”

As the ship took off, the robots brought the tube into the hold and the trio went to the control room, Sava cast a suspicious look at the other two.

“How long have you been working together?”

“Not long,” Libre explained, “I communicated with her by typing a secret code against the wall of the tube. She agreed to help us.”

Okay: she felt a little more reassured as ridiculous ideas of complex plots had begun to invade her thoughts. However, ...

“How did she know this code?”

“She deciphered it... I don't even know how it's possible, but I suspected she was capable of it.”

“And for what payment is she helping us?”

“Next to nothing: we're just going to free Vector...”

“WHAT?”

She stopped abruptly, forcing Lhom to do the same by grabbing his arm. He pulled away with annoyance but explained himself:

“Stop worrying. Think about it: if these guys win, whether they release him or not, they will use him to cause a terrible civil war...”

“Yes... if they get out of this fortress alive now that the alarm has been raised and they no longer have Xini to hack into security.”

“But you've seen Vector's character, too. Do you think that if he were released, he would be a danger to our society?”

“N… No… But that would be illegal…”

“We’ve been past the threshold of legality for a while now: all that matters is that we do what’s right. Do you think that once he’s freed, he’ll start a new war? No.”

“No…”

“But it could be that he could actually help Xini in this business of stopping attack on the free will of citizens. That’s what we agreed. Maybe this investigation will even bring us a presidential pardon and that, killing two birds with one stone, we’ll save the Administration from this terrible corruption.”

Yes… it all made sense. There was one small detail that was bothering her, but since she couldn’t find it, it probably wasn’t very important. Besides, with her migraine coming back, she preferred to simply leave it to Libre.

“Okay. What’s the plan now?”

Lhom sat in his command chair and grimaced as he looked at the control screens.

“Now? Let’s get out of this new mess…”