Another sigh. Orion knew the answer already, “I will, I have EVA training.” Pain spread throughout his side screamed as Orion tried to pull himself up.
Shaking her head, Tanya frowned, “You’re injured. The suits aren’t easy to move in even if you’re healthy.”
“I’ll be fine.” The wincing on his face proved otherwise.
Her hand gripped his side, stopping him from moving any further at the shock of pain from such a light touch. “Orin, you can’t. I’ll do it. I can remember… At least one of the people they used to make was an astronaut. I think… No, I do remember how to do this. Please.”
He saw an almost loving expression in her eyes, a pleasant thought perhaps. Orion was curious about that person. “Maybe if we both survive, you can tell me about her?” Doubt threatened to creep into his words, but it was a lie they both needed to hear.
“I’d like that, she feels like a grandmother to me. I’ll… tell you about her later.” One more bitter smile, as they turned to the nearby airlock.
The suits on the station came in three sizes, a small, medium and large variant. Inside was a polymer material that would expand or contract, allowing a suit to fit against each person’s own variable physiology. However, none were designed with extra biology in mind, as Tanya and Orion quickly discovered.
“Ow…” Her body didn’t quite fit in the suit, as its fabric constricted it too much. The smaller size was close to her own, but the problem was her tail. The suit’s internal logic wouldn’t compensate for the extra size. Gritting her teeth, she forced the furry appendage along her leg as she pulled the suit up. It was not comfortable, and the slight tingling sensation let her know the circulation in it was restricted. But she was confident it wouldn’t cause physical damage. At least, she hoped it wouldn’t. In truth, she didn’t even know if it would matter.
“Tanya-” Orion’s words were cut off as she leaned in to kiss him and took the helmet he offered her. Whatever he was going to say, it was better that he didn’t. Her eyes stared into him as they each said nothing for a moment. The sounds of the groaning station, and blaring alarms shrieking a final message of doom.
Orion swallowed, “When we see each other again, I’ll owe you an apology for how I acted.” He forced his words out with a smile, but inside he felt they were hallowed. The chance of either surviving this was remote. Asher would no doubt come for him first, being the reactor core it was closer. Once the station was damaged enough, there wouldn’t be any real hope of evacuating from the EVA. Not that there would be anywhere to escape too.
Tanya refused to say it. Refused to believe and admit what she knew was probably the truth. “We will.” She smiled as the helmet came down overhead. The feeling of her ears being squashed down was unpleasant, but unlike her tail at least this didn’t hurt.
Suddenly, she was grateful Asher made her with a mostly human face, there was no way a muzzle would have fit. Picking an extra blue cylinder off the wall, she took it to the airlock. The idea was simple enough. They didn’t have any kind of explosives, but a pressurized O2 canister might have just enough force to rip open a magnetic pipe. At the very least, the oxygen would react with the hot ceramic material and cut a hole in the piping. Either way would work. She have to figure out a way to rupture it when she got there.
Opening the airlock door, she walked outside.
As much as Orion wanted to stay and watch her leave, to make sure she was safe he couldn’t. They both had to assume Asher would noticed the airlock opening. He had to hurry; they both did.
Orion did his best jog toward the reactor controls, but in the microgravity it was like jogging underwater. The controls were less than a hundred meters away, but it felt like a marathon distance with his injuries and the low gravity. He had to hurry, but physically just couldn’t.
Outside, Tanya stood in front of the exterior airlock as it silently sealed behind her. Her glazed eyes tried to take in the massive surface of the cylinder she stood on. In her mind, she knew how big the station was, her sensors had told her as much before. Yet, seeing it with her own eyes, her real physical eyes and it was different. She began to walk slowly, and with shaky legs. Inside the suffocating suit she could hear the click of the boot’s magnets as they engaged and disengaged with each step. Her quickening breath, the only other sound.
Everything else around her was silent. Just the click, and then a breath, a click and a breath, a click and then two breaths, a click and then three breaths. Her head was starting to spin, she couldn’t stop inhaling. Her feet stumbled and she fell to the surface. Pulling back up, was a mistake as her head felt it was put in a blender.
This should have been easy. Just walk out, put the cylinder by the magpipe and blow it open, somehow. Easy.
Yet, she was stuck, not even 20 meters from the air lock. Her body crumpled under her as she balled up, trying to shake off the dizziness. Tanya knew she didn’t have time for this. Why couldn’t she control her body? It was never like this when she was inside the computer.
Then again, the computer was different. Death in the digital realm meant something much different than here. Her body wasn’t like her avatar, it had biology, chemical signals and even nerve clusters. Biological data passed around her body in ways that it never could in her digital form. She could control almost everything about her holographic body and herself when she was an AI, but as a humanoid, everything about this body seemed to control her instead.
Adrenalin built up, spiking her heart rate. The stars began to spin, and with them the station. Inside her gut, a large collection of neurons large enough to almost be a second brain began to protest what she was doing. Her stomach threatened to turn itself inside out. An unpleasant feeling she had never experienced before, and never wanted too again. Yet, that wasn’t completely true and a part of her could remember feeling like this.
“Please stop” Tanya whispered to her own biology; she wasn’t expecting a response.
"I know how it feels…” A voice caused her breathing to stop as heart skipped a beat. “How you feel right now. I was always afraid any time I walked outside…” It was a whisper, in the back of her mind. An old thought that wasn’t completely hers. The hyperventilating was causing her to hallucinate. The former AI knew the term, the concept, but had never experienced it before. It was terrifying and made her breathing even worse. But that voice seemed so familiar and soft.
“Every time I put that suit on, I knew I was walking into an environment no human was meant to exist in. Shade that would freeze you to death, light that would boil you alive. And a vacuum all around you that would pull you apart if given the chance.” The words flowed forth from her mind, and her breathing slowed. In this isolated and claustrophobic suit, she no longer felt alone.
“Tanya, my sweet Tanya. You may not be related by blood or even biology. But a part of me is still inside of you, my grand-daughter.” In her mind, she could see her, that face that would smile at her in her dreams. “Now, you have to get up.”
Her head turned up to look at the station again, and for a moment, a brief moment she thought she could still see someone there. With a blink though, it was gone. Merely an echo of the thoughts that made her. She closed her eyes and took one deep breath, holding it. Whispers of feelings and thoughts and less of words told her what she should do.
Getting up she needed to hurry, she already lost time they didn’t have.
Inside the station, down the long hallway, Orion gripped the wall next to him as he steadied his bounding jog. Every step hurt, and he could feel the metallic taste of blood in his mouth.
A deep vibration rocked the station causing him to fall backwards. The speed he fell was slow, maddeningly so. The impact on the floor was quite gentle due to the low gravity, but he would have traded the extra time for more pain.
Warning lights flashed on the walls around him, reminding him how precarious the station was right now. It did give him a sliver of hope, even if they failed, maybe Asher would destroy this place before he finished whatever he was trying to do.
The flashing lights made it hard to keep his focus, his mind was spinning inside his skull. He had to close his eyes, and swallow back his lunch. The mixture of pain, low gravity and stress had his stomach protesting every move. If his stomach could truly think, it might have said to just let Asher win. A quick shake took some of the dizziness away as he continued his hopping job towards the rector control room.
There, behind the heavy sliding bulkhead was the control interface, and on it, the same flashing red bar. Before he did that, he turned and shut the door. With a quick motion, Orion ripped open the control panel and there was a sudden shower of sparks as Orion’s fist destroyed the control circuits. Effectively, sealing the door shut. Asher would still be able to open it, but he’d have to work for it now, at least.
The screen seemed inoperative, as it had long ago. Pressing it brought up the same error he had seen when he first arrived. He tapped at various parts of the screen, trying to mimic what he remembered Adiana doing. Nothing.
He tried again, still nothing. Was he doing something wrong? No, maybe he had the sequence wrong. “Press the top twice…” he mumbled to himself, “Then the bottom once, left three, right four…” Nothing.
His first hit the screen, leaving a small streak of red from a cut he hadn’t noticed. What was he doing wrong? The sound of distant bulk heads opening caused his mind to panic. Tapping the top he noticed, a small white pixel in the lower left would light up, it stayed lit when he tapped a second time, but went out when he tapped the bottom. Maybe an indicator?
“Top one, two, three…” It was still lit. “Four” then off. Ok, so his counts were off. Try again, three at the top, then to the bottom: one, two, three… no there were only two at the bottom. A loud bang at the bulkhead, and he could just make out the machine outside the door. The horrible Vistage of Asher as its powerful limbs began ripping at the sides of the door, threatening to open it like a thin tin can.
Orion didn’t have time to mess with this. He took a painful breath and tapped at the screen once more.
Outside the station, several thick and large tubes glowed a faint red. The magnetic pipes, carrying the high energy plasma to the singularity.
The magnetic pipes were so overloaded that they were actually glowing. It wouldn’t take much to damage one of them. This air canister could very well do it. A metal strap holding the pipe down had just enough of a gap to shove the can under. Even through the suit’s exotic ceramic-polymer weave she could feel the heat when she brushed against it.
As she backed away, nothing happened. The canister sat there, slowly warming from the heat, but doing nothing more. Tanya stared at the pipes and their improvised bomb, for a moment. “What now?” She whispered and looked around for something, some way to make this work.
She needed to do something more. Feeling around, her suit had a small tool kit on its side. A patch kit for both the suit and station. Inside of it there wasn’t much to work with, but a small rivet gun barely bigger than her hand looked promising, maybe. It wasn’t designed for anything more than a patch though, on thin metal skin and the polymer suit. She doubted it would work on the thick canister but it was worth trying.
Small popping sounds echoed in her suit as each rivet impacted the thick metal and bounced harmlessly off, floating away into the void. She tried several times, each attempt, leading to the same subtle popping sound in her suit. Each impact left a small dent, a tiny mark, but didn’t seem to work. She needed something else, there wasn’t any time to wait for the canister to explode on its own if it even would. But what?
A hammer might work, but she didn’t have one. A large wrench, but all the suit had was something barely 5 inches long. There was nothing else in the kit. She looked around as the station shook under her feet. Maybe she could pull a pipe or conduit and hit? She tried, and tried, but it was no use. Even in its weakened state the station was still holding on to itself.
She stopped. In the distance, something small machines began slowly crawling towards her.
Tanya was grateful it didn’t look like Asher, but still. Those machines would be enough if they caught her. Holding the rivet gun in her hand she squeezed its empty mag. What more could she do? In frustration, and desperation, she threw the gun as hard as she could at the cylinder. It impacted, right along where she tried to rivet. And, just like the rivets bounced harmlessly off as it floated away.
It was hard to see, but a tiny, tiny stream of Oxygen flowed from a puncture in the heat soften metal…
In the fusion core, Orion faced his own timetable as the door began to rip apart. The screen beeped and shook as he finally brought up that command window he saw years ago. What now?
Orion didn't know any commands for the interface. He knew what to do, just drop the magnetic confinement. But the commands he typed in did nothing but throw up errors.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He typed, "Shutdown magclamp 1" on the screen, only to see an error.
"Command 'shutdown' not understood"
"Reduce magclamp power to 0"
"Command 'Reduce' found unknown arguments 'magclamp', 'power', 'to', '0'"
Maybe 'help' would help? The screen was suddenly flooded with text after he hit enter.
"You have to be kidding me." He whispered to no one. "There!" He shouted! A single command he understood.
"Reduce output label 'mageclamp'"-
There was no time to finish.
The machine pulled the door down and rushed at him. Snarling, the metal frame grabbed his shoulder and pinched hard enough to draw blood, but it seemed like it wanted to wait to really hurt him. The expressionless polymer face plate drew closer to his. Behind it, a small speaker spoke in slow, enunciated words: “Where. Is. The. Fox?”
It was going to kill him. Orion knew that much, but if he could just draw this out maybe there'd be enough time for Tanta to finish.
"Ahhhh!" He screamed as the machine tightened its grip.
"My machines just found her by the magpipes. What is she going to do. Answer and I'll make this quick."
His mouth opened, exposing redden teeth. Orion, smiled as he waited for more pain, and the end.
Yet, before the machine could finish, before the end could come, a small rumble echoed through the station’s housing. Small and quiet compared to the earlier one. But this one continued to grow. Alarms began to sound, and Asher tossed Orion to the ground. The pain in his diaphragm made breathing difficult, but at least his shoulder didn't feel broken. It was hard to tell through the painful, numbness though.
The Machine seemed to study the fusion output panel, as the series of small bangs and clangs grew steadily into a deep rumbling sound.
“No!” it growled.
The machine turned slowly and stared down at Orion, it's clawed hand raised, as the human steeled himself for what was coming. Except, it never came. For what felt like an eternity, the hulking frame stared at him. The machine as unflinching, unmoving as it's face. Carefully Orion stood up. Nothing. He moved closer to it. Still, nothing. By all accounts, the robot was deactivated. Dead.
The rumble quickly turned into another loud explosion. Warnings began to flash and he was suddenly thrown against the command panel of the reactor. It sounded like Tanya has succeeded, but just for good measure, Orion finished the command and hit enter.
A new blaring alarm filled the room, as the console exploded in a shower of sparks. No, not just the console, the entire core began to rupture. A sudden wind picked up as a breach began pulling the air from the compartment.
Orion pushed himself forward, shutting bulkheads as his instincts moved ever further towards the shuttle bay. It was the only chance he had, even if it was a bad one.
On the surface of the station Tanya watched as the pipe exploded in a cloud of bright colored plasma. The radiation alarm began to sound in her suit. The suit’s face visor automatically dimmed at the extreme light as she backed away.
Her footsteps grew ever unsteady. Under her feet the hull of the station began to warp and distort. Massive forces began pushing and tearing at it, shearing it apart. First from the plasma discharge, but then from the singularity, which was suddenly free of its confinement. Streams of gas and atmosphere began to pour out of growing cracks and breaches. The larger supper structure and outer rings began to twist and rip away from the center core as it spun faster.
The station was done for. Tanya knew it would take a miracle for her to survive. With her best effort she ran to the air lock, only, it was gone. In its place, a glowing plasma fire from the ruptured fusion core. Rumbling under her feet, she could see the hull dropping downward, pull towards something. A hole in the very fabric of space.
Tanya did the only thing she could, run. But it was hard. Moving in mag boots was challenging to begin with, but running. That was a different level entirely. One she wasn't ready for. Her feet moved her well, for several hundred meters in fact. Until she missed a single step. Which is all it took.
Perhaps it was the station falling apart. A ripple at the surface that made her misjudge the distance. Whatever the reason, both her feet left the surface of the relic station. She floated slowly away. Maybe, she'd get close enough to one of the rings to grab on, but behind her, the monster at the heart of the station began to jut free to the surface.
At this distance, tt didn't have a lot of force, but it was enough to pull at the nearby parts, which pulled at the connected parts. Things flew past her, as the bright glow of the event horizon came into view. The place her body came from and now seemed destined to return to. She looked around and there was nothing she could do, but wait for the end.
In the shuttle bay, Orion became aware of how difficult breathing was becoming. The station was losing atmosphere too fast. He didn't have time to process that there was only one shuttle left. All he knew was that he had to get to it. His mind grew fuzzy as the hypoxia grew. His thoughts became more disorganized as he thought about sitting down and waiting for help. Surely one of the crew would come, he thought.
Why did that thought feel wrong? Around his vision a black halo grew closer. A velvet darkness. The pains in his body began to tingle rather than hurt, he couldn't help but giggle as he was dying. It felt like… A single spark fired in his oxygen starved mind. He was dying. He needed to move.
Each step felt wrong. His body didn't move like it should. Everything sensation felt like pins and needles. His feet tingled and tickled as he made his way along the docking connector. The vibration of the station disintegrating just made it worse, or better? He wasn't sure. Somewhere along the length of the ship, he realized he couldn't see anymore. Was that bad?
A beep he could barely hear, a door opening that he couldn't see. His body slumped inside as he crawled the rest of the way in. He wanted to laugh but couldn't remember how. His eyes closed, and a sudden wave of air passed over his clothes.
His lungs took in a breath, then another. His head began to pound. Light flooded his vision. Where was he? An airlock?
"Cycle complete." An AI voice from the shuttle spoke as the door to the crew compartment opened.
Orion laid on the floor, pain returning, with interest. The shuttle vibrated and shook. A new warning alarm began to sound. It was different sounding. Orion had almost grown deaf to them, only this one was from the shuttle not the station.
It all came back to him.If he didn't get out from the bay this would be for nothing. His hands pushed him up, filling him with pain as his shoulder finally gave up with a cracking sound.
The surge of numbing pain, and it certainly felt like it was broken now. Maybe it was just the fall or oxygen deprivation causing his muscles to spasm too hard. It didn't matter, he had to get up, had to get to the controls.
It hurt but still he crawled and limped his way to pilot seat. The controls didn't respond. A single message on the command window said the same thing it had years ago "Controls locked out". What was he supposed to do? His mind was still covered in a red fog of pain, and desperation.
Another rumble in the station. Maybe he could wait for the station to fall apart and fly out then. No, the controls wouldn't be released from the clamp, and it would just float in the debris field till its power reserves ran out.
"Damn it." Orion shouted as he began pressing random controls, hoping something anything would work. Nothing, in frustration, he slammed his fist into the controls, and quickly wished he didn't as the pain radiated up to his shoulder. The screen flickered. A single word replaced the lock out message:
"Error"
It began to fill up the screen. Over and over again. He heard a noise, a sort of rhythmic pulsating sound, that echoed in his chest. His eyes began to water as he realized it was coming from him, something between a laugh and a cry, this absurd. What was he supposed to do?
The screen finally cleared. More vibrations, and what sounded like pops outside the shuttle. It was over as quick as it began, along with the rest of the vibrations and noise. The shuttle was suddenly isolated from the station, and deathly quiet.
The screen blinked a few times, and a few more words showed up.
"I know, you're upset. I mean, how are you going to fly this without the best pilot?" The message at the top of the screen was strange. He rubbed at his eyes, uncertain if he was hallucinating or not, Then, more text appeared, "Sorry I can't fly you home personally, but these shuttles are pretty good at flying themselves. Not much time, and this is all I can do. Thanks for watching over our bodies, good luck out there."
With that, all the controls lit up. The screen cleared, erasing any evidence of the conversation with a ghost. A new status message appeared "Ready for flight".
His fingers gripped the smaller joystick like handle next to him. The controls felt strange to him, Orion had only the most basic of training. Just enough to not crash it and set the autopilot. Which wasn't available in the destroyed hanger. The reaction control system was simple in theory. There was a button at the top of the stick. A small push fired the long dormant micro rockets, and the long stationary hulk crept slowly, backwards.
Pangs of debris echoed inside as it slowly moved toward the hanger exit. The hanger was nearly destroyed, and Orion had all he could do to avoid the larger debris, the smaller one just weren’t possible. Caution alarms lit the control panel as the displays showed a cloud material behind him. It was going to be hard, but possible to pull out without damage, he just had to go slow.
Only, there was still one last thing that fate would throw at him. The hanger bay began to twist and distort. Pulled inward towards a gravitational demon. Deeper in the station.
His eyes went wide as the front of the hanger was disappearing. Swallowed by the now free singularity. Without thinking, Orion pressed the thrust button on the control stick, the forces strong enough to be felt, generated a sudden cacophony of dissonant alarms. The earlier pangs on the hull turned to outright bangs as the shuttle began to tear through the remains of the station behind it.
A sudden jolt knocked him backwards, sending a reactionary jolt to his muscles as shoulder and ribs lite up in pain. A larger bit of debris, possibly part of the superstructure itself blocked the way, and looking at the flight screen the impact had damaged one of the thruster arrays.
A rapid diagnostics show the array was still working, just with limited thrust. "Ok, it's ok. Just got go careful, but fast…" Orion breathed and muttered to himself as he continued to watch two things, the radar monitor and outside the window at the monster before him. "I wish you were still here Ross."
The controls suddenly felt sluggish when he tried to turn, but that was fine. "It's ok" He muttered again. They still worked. Vibrations and reverberations echoed as he passed the last of the station's hangers.
For the first time in nearly five years, Orion was free. In shock, he began to laugh, and even cry. He was free, but there was no time to celebrate.
It wasn't just about him. Tanya was still out there. He could see that on one of the monitors, her transponder was still sending out pings. She was alive. He just, needed to get to her before that thing did.
Outside the window he could see it was going to be dangerously close to the singularity. It didn't matter though, he had to try. Pushing forward, he lowered the shuttle's attitude controls to match her location and pressed forward. Again, he had to be quick, and ever more careful.
Warning lights lit up as he approached the deadly void in space-time. The shuttle had no idea what a singularity was, but it knew something was wrong. If the AI was sentient it might have tried to argue with him. As it was, it just through up warnings.
Tanya floated in the void and considered her fate. It wasn’t that she wanted to give up, she just didn’t see a way out of this.
In the distance, the debrie appeared to move in a strange direction. She thought maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe the radiation was getting to her. It was like it was coming directly for her.
Out in the distance, a large object floated towards her. It almost looked like a shuttle, but that was impossible because Orion didn't know how to release them. Even she wasn't sure she could do it.
Yet, that is exactly what it was! Slowly it crept towards he positions, closer, closer… To close! The craft impacted her suit pushing her away. On the plus side, she was now drifting away from the singularity. On the bad side, she was now spinning. It wasn't fast, but it was enough to make her sick to her stomach.
Even if Orion had figured out how to pull the shuttle out, he clearly didn't know how to fly it. Small flashes erupted from along the shuttle's edges as Orion tried to pilot it towards her again. Closer, and closer. Tanya's heart nearly skipped a beat in fear as she braced for another hard impact that didn't come. Instead, she felt her boots drawn to the surface of the craft before they clicked. Her twisting ended abruptly, and she probably twisted her ankle in the suit. But that didn't matter, she was safe or would be if they could get away from the disintegrating mass next to them.
Once inside, Tanya quickly removed the suit and the sudden blood flow back to her tail was both a welcome and painful feeling. Made a little worse as she sat on it while taking a seat next to him.
Thinking of the right words, the only thing that came to her were purely functional, "Do you know how to fly this?" She glared at him.
Orion shrugged with a half-smile, "Well, Ross seems to think it can fly itself."
She blinked once, not quite sure she heard that right, "What?"
"I'll explain latter, we need to get away from this mess first."
Outside the window, the event-horizon grew brighter as the singularity starved and died as it continued to eat at the station. Orion moved the shuttle away from the mass, as radiation alarms began sounding. However, with a flick, Tanya was able to silence them.
A laugh escaped Orion as his shoulder and ribs complained. "My ears could have used you a half hour ago." The laugh was infectious as the two began roaring with laughter as the adrenalin began to wear down. Endorphin pumped through their heads as they pulled away from their old prison.
They were free, and they knew it. Their laughter came to an abrupt halt though. The light on the radio began to blink, a message from somewhere.
"Don't-" Tanya protested before Orion pressed the button.
He shrugged, “It could be someone else from the crew.”
There was just static. Clicks and pops, and faint hum, that grew. It began to form words. Terrifying words.
"I will… find my… way back to… you my… toys… and… then… y… o…." Static ate the rest of the transmission before the connection was cut off.
The shuttle moved away from the former station. The two watched from a distance as the station continued ripping itself apart. The singularity continued to tear through the station much like a cannon ball might tear through paper. As it ripped and shredded, it grew both smaller, hotter, and hotter. The heat began boiling the materials of the station as the singularity shrank. Even the dense metal of the station wasn't enough to keep it alive. Hawking radiation poured from it as the station collapsed onto its surface until, with a sudden flash, the singularity was gone along with most of the station. Vaporized, into a cloud of a now dead dream, and memory.
With that, it was over. The station, whatever was left of the crew or at least their bodies, the quantum array that linked to the singularity, even Asher, it was all gone. Tanya grabbed Orion's hand as she helped punch in the commands for the shuttle's autopilot. A sudden force pushed them both back in their seats as the orbital control engines fired and the shuttle began its automated transit back to Earth orbit. It would take a few days, but they were finally and truly free.
Neither knew the reality of what awaited them on Earth.
Once they reached orbit, they could see the damage from space. Chunks of the planet had been ripped out, replaced with material from other worlds, other realities. It was like a patch work quilt of terrain.
There were signals from the surface still. Many in fact. Humanity had survived, but what was the end damage?
Orion looked over the maps on the screen. They were confusing and the computer couldn’t compensate for the difference in stored data and reality. Except for a few places that were mostly unaffected. "I think we can try landing around the Florida Islands, it looks like it was untouched and there should be a few runways long enough."
Tanya nodded as she manned the controls, having a bit more ability than Orion and more physical mobility. His shoulder remained swollen, perhaps not actually broken, but clearly damaged.
Orion considered the maps on the shuttle's screen. His face must have seemed lost in thought.
Tanya was focused on plotting the descent, but was still able to ask, "Something wrong?"
"No, I just vaguely remember seeing a message from Yun a while back. I think it came from here.” He tapped at the screen. “I think she had family down there. Maybe… I hope she's alright. I don't think we would have won without her."
The fox nodded. This story really did start with her, if she hadn't poked and prodded neither of them would have made moves against Asher. She hoped to maybe thank Yun in person. In many ways, it was thanks to her she even had this body.