Pom burst into the safe house like a storm, mask in hand, face twisted with fury. Two Faceless soldiers followed, carrying Arik by the feet and shoulders. Her other squad mates shuffled in afterward, slumped with exhaustion and defeat. Fahon's squad was the same, sitting against the wall, heads hanging low.

The safe house was located on the western side of Lowtown, in a sector called the Grotto. Like most of Lowtown, the area was stricken by poverty. Six large tenement towers, packed with hundreds of families, stood sentinel over dilapidated businesses and decaying houses. The location was a second-story apartment above an old boarded-up deli. The area seemed abandoned mainly, except for the occasional wandering street nomad, big backpacks stuffed with all they owned.

Fahon stood from his seat at the table. Vivana sat across, thumbs tapping away on her comm as she wrote a message. A haunted expression etched her face upon seeing Arik. Divinity sped over to him, red laser lines scanning his body, as the soldiers towed him into the other room and set him on a cot. Fahon followed them.

Lying on the cot, his cousin was unconscious and breathing shallowly. His shirt and lower half were darkened with blood. A single hole in the fabric indicated he had been shot in the abdomen. Such a wound could be life-threatening. What could they do? They wouldn't take him to the hospital. The staff would alert the authorities and raise too many questions.

He swallowed hard and ran a hand through his hair.

Pom entered and stood beside him. "I called our surgeon, a friend of the cause. She should be here soon. Arik was the only one I found alive. He's hanging by a thread. Those slimes knew about our escape passage. Mowed our people down after they got out."

Bile swelled in the back of his throat. Both of his fists were clenched at his sides. He was hot and trembling.

"Who's the Bonded?" Pom finally asked.

"Her name is Vivana. She's an Argent Knight. We were trapped at the Golden Ponds. She and her team rescued us."

"Can we trust her?"

"Yes. She won't betray my location. She agreed to help."

Ten minutes later, the surgeon arrived. She was a tall, middle-aged woman with short blonde hair sprinkled with gray. She wore street clothes and had a large bag of medical equipment slung over her shoulder. She said nothing as she triaged Arik's current state, eyebrows furrowing with deep concern. Pom and Fahon left her to do her work, stepping back out into the main room.

Vivana drummed her fingers on the table, looking anxiously into the other room as the surgeon worked. Fahon grunted as he removed his heavy armor, his shoulder smarting. There would be a nice bruise, even after his armored pauldron stopped the bullet. With the weight off him, he could breathe better and slumped back in his chair.

Pom grabbed another chair from the back room and sat the wrong way, arms resting on the back of the chair. Her brown eyes were distant, but she looked to have calmed. Fahon wished he could say the same, but the ball of anger in his gut burned white hot.

Fahon broke the long minutes of silence. "We need to hit them back."

"Locating the Big Three will be nearly impossible now." Pom glared at the table, eyes filled with rage and sorrow. "They will have gone underground, maybe even fled the country."

Fahon could see her pain. So many of her soldiers were dead. "We're no closer to finding Kormel either. He's their big enforcer. Maybe if we hit the Syndicate hard enough, he'll have no choice but to come out of hiding to protect their assets."

Pom chewed at her nails. "Taking out their production facility might be enough. It would cripple the Syndicate for months and cost them millions of marks. We are close to figuring out where the facility is located with the data from our seeker-drones. We backed it up to an off-site location."

Fahon glanced at Vivana. "Could we use the chemical shipping data the Faceless acquired in conjunction with live data from Ophani satellites to pinpoint the location?"

"I don't see why not," Vivana said, "send me the analysis, and we can feed it to our cyberminds and see what they come up with."

Pom nodded to Vivana. "Thanks. Now let's bring this war where it hurts the most, their wallets."

"It's settled," Fahon said. "Once we have the location, we'll attack."

Vivana raised a hesitant finger. "I should remind you: attacking a facility on the foreign ground will be considered an act of war."

"We're all at war with the Syndicate, whether we like it or not." Pom brushed a lock of turquoise hair away from her face. "They destroy lives all over this moon for profit. Even in the pristine 'utopia' of Ophan."

"I joined the Faceless," Fahon said. "Pom took us in and gave her word to help retrieve Kormel. In return, I promised to help the cause. I will honor my word and deal with any political ramifications later if they even figure out Ophan was involved."

"I understand, Your Excellence." Vivana gave a short bow of respect from her seat. "Since you insist on keeping your current status a secret from Ophani command, we won't be able to requisition any support for this operation. We will have to make do with what limited resources we have."

Pom grunted. "I'm not too worried. The Syndicate has tons of flammable chemicals in that place. It won't be hard to torch."

---

The surgeon saved Arik's life. She removed the pistol bullet, injected regen-gel into the wound, and sutured it.

She gave him a blood transfusion and loaded him with pain medication. Two days later, he woke.

Fahon lie on the cot beside him, staring at the ceiling, his mind and heart numb. Divinity floated nearby, quietly chirping. Noticing his cousin rising, he sat on the cot's edge, reaching into his pocket. He produced the smushed bullet formerly lodged in Arik's abdomen.

Arik blinked and propped up on his elbows, looking around the room. He went a little too far. Grunting with pain, he slumped. Arik noticed Fahon and turned his head, studying him with glassy eyes.

"I killed people."

Fahon placed the bullet in Arik's palm and smiled. "You're a survivor, might as well join the Warrior Sect. Even I haven't been shot."

Arik studied the projectile for a long moment. "How many of us survived?"

"Too few, perhaps a handful. It was a slaughter."

"Was Golden Ponds a trap?"

Fahon explained what happened at Golden Ponds. Vivana entered a moment later, her Caster bobbing along behind her. It met Divinity in the center of the room and the two orbs rotated around each other in a strange ritual-like dance.

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She wore her curly black hair loose, falling along her shoulders. She dressed in the rough clothing of a street-nomad looked third or fourth-hand by how faded the fabric was. A good disguise, she fit in well in the Grotto or Zele proper. Uncertain eyes set on Fahon whenever he set outside. His clothes were too new, too clean. And they weren't the flashy, colorful garb of Uptown.

Truth be told, Fahon missed his Warrior Sect uniform. It gave him confidence and helped him walk with his back straight and chin held high. It was pride in his chosen lifestyle.

"Arik, you're awake," Vivana said. She crossed her arms, standing at the end of his bed. "You're looking better, not pale and sickly. I'm glad the regen-gel is working. You should be in fighting shape within a week."

"I've had my share of fighting for a lifetime." Arik winced as he struggled to rise. "Oh, Vivana… I'm sorry for not contacting you for a week. I make no excuses for myself. It was rude and inconsiderate of me. I… was trying to hustle and get the marks necessary for the Syndicate back."

"Apology accepted. By hustling the marks, do you mean more gambling?" The disapproval was evident in her voice.

Arik sighed. "Yeah…I almost had enough to pay them back. Not that it matters anymore."

"After all this, you finally learned your lesson. Right, Arik?" Fahon fixed expectant eyes on him.

"Right," Arik gave a sheepish grin and rubbed the back of his head. "I suppose it's time for me to find a new, more productive hobby. Like trying to help the Faceless bring down the Syndicate. That seems like a good place to start."

"Well, we should let Arik get his rest," Fahon said," besides, there's something I've been meaning to ask you about Vivana. Do you have time?"

"I am your subject, Your Excellence. If you need me, you need only to ask."

"Come on, let's step outside for some air." Fahon hopped off the bed. Outside the back door to the second-level apartment, it opened to a deck with a staircase in the back alley.

Fahon Phase-jumped straight into the air in a flash of blue, landing gingerly on the ballasted roof above. Divinity flitted past him to explore the area. Vivana followed with a jump of her own. They stood beside each other at the low wall at the edge of the building, gazing out over a sea of rooftops. A layer of clouds dimmed the radiance of the Twins, their reddish light bleeding through the clouds overhead in a fiery haze. The air was less stagnant above, and the scent of rain drifted into his nostrils.

"So, what's on your mind?"

"It's my Caster," Fahon said, "since I first Bonded, it's been protecting me on its own, without my command. It Phase-crafts these quickly dissipating shields to deflect attacks when I'm vulnerable. It's even protected itself once. I know Casters can be quirky, but this is different… it's deliberate. I never read anything like this during my research on Casters."

Vivana furrowed a thoughtful brow. "Explains your miracle defenses during our tourney match. I thought it was a fluke or a stroke of luck. Especially after sparring with you so many times, it never happened again. You were never in real danger training with me. Are you saying this behavior has happened often?"

"It saved me during my fight against Kormel, the raid on the dockyards, and at Golden Ponds. I wouldn't be standing here if I didn't have this Caster."

Without a word, Vivana called her Caster over to her. It floated above her outstretched index finger, spinning slowly.

"The Bond between human and Caster is a progression. As you practice your abilities, you'll get faster. My ability to tap Bond-sense is instinctual at this point. While you need to concentrate on it, even for a little bit. Your fighting skills are decent. You have good form and are especially adept with the sword. You could beat me in the occasional spar if we fought without our Casters. Right now, through my Bond-sense, you always react slower, keeps me a few steps ahead of you."

Fahon had noticed Bond-sensing was getting easier as he practiced being mindful. Not too long ago, during the Knight's Tourney, he remembered focusing on the fights leading to his, practicing his Bond-sense intentionally. "Even with a newer Bond, this is happening."

"Your Caster could be extremely experienced in combat. It would make sense. House Drakk has always produced some of the most powerful Bonded to ever grace this moon. Yours has belonged to a line of skilled warriors, learning from the Bond every generation. After millennia of war, it might have developed protective instincts."

It made sense. Cyberminds learned through iteration. Feed a cybermind thousands of samples, and you could train it to recognize patterns and make predictions in a way the human mind wasn't capable of. Such abilities worked fine in analyzing data or navigating. War was chaos incarnate. His Caster must have 'sampled' a ridiculous amount of war during his lifespan to develop such an ability.

He hadn't been relying on his Caster's protective instincts, only on his own. His own lack of battle experience had cost him a few times. By trusting his Caster to protect him, he could take calculated risks. Use it to his advantage. It offered many new possibilities, his brain surging with ideas.

"That look in your eyes is dangerous," Vivana said. "Yes, this is an advantage for you. But don't let it make you lazy. Rely on it only during emergency situations."

"You're right. I'm fortunate to have such a valuable heirloom." Fahon watched a pigeon land on the roof beside him. It cooed, and Divinity floated over to examine it.

"Yes, being born the Inheritor of Ophan, the most powerful House on the moon, with Caster protecting you on its own, is lucky. But I've also seen how hard you're willing to work. Your actions alone in these grave times have given me a newfound respect for you."

The pigeon fluttered and took off, sailing over the tops of the buildings.

Fahon clenched his fist. "I'm ready to take on Kormel."

---

Pom zoomed the map projected on the wall of the safe house apartment. The white paint on the wall was peeling in places, making the image bumpy and uneven.

Fahon leaned against the wall, and Vivana sat with one leg over the other, studying the image in front of them. It was a satellite photo of the Syndicate's 'secret' production facility in the mountains north of the ruins of Serenity. The grounds were a rectangle carved out of the rainforest, paved with asphalt, and bordered by a tall chain-link fence. The image could be zoomed in to look at a pebble on the ground. It was taken at this moment by the National Intelligence's spy satellites.

Fahon didn't notice any fortifications or automated security measures in place. Even the dockyard they attacked had been better defended. The site looked…ordinary, like a legitimate business instead of a lair of criminals.

"It's too easy," Fahon said.

"Golden Ponds looked easy, and we know how that turned out," Pom said with a dark expression. "I've been observing the progression of the satellite images throughout the day. The traffic comes from here." She zoomed out and pointed to a gray cluster of civilization adjacent to a river in the valley below. "The village is called Emerald. Its population is perhaps three thousand people at most. I was able to pull census data from the Repository. There are fifty people with the occupation of private military contractors living there. I doubt all of them work the same shift. If we divide it by three, we get roughly fifteen guards on duty at any time."

"Also, the shell company in charge, Bixby Chemical, employs at least twenty-five percent of the village's population," Vivana explained. "They produce legitimate chemical products, such as cleaners and solvents. Our Shade agents are confident the real Razzle production happens underground."

"There could be many civilian casualties if we're not careful. Also, we don't know what automated security measures are in place."

Fahon sympathized with Pom's anxiety. She had been holding off making a move for a few days now as she wanted more intelligence.

Vivana and her Shades had been providing intelligence. They wouldn't know what they were dealing with without a spy inside. The Faceless couldn't afford another trap with all their casualties. He figured he should shoulder the risk to protect them, as a Knight should.

He wasn't convinced the Syndicate would see this attack coming. For all they knew, this facility was their best secret. Now Fahon understood his Caster's unique ability. The Syndicate's arrogance would explode in their faces.

Fahon scratched at the whiskers on his cheek. "Well, most places like this have safety protocols and measures to keep employees safe. Working with chemicals is dangerous. We can always trigger a fire alarm to start an evacuation if we're worried about civilians. Cut through the defenses, plant explosives, and get out of there before it turns into an inferno. I could get this done quick and quietly."

Pom snorted in amusement. "You would think the Sovereign wouldn't be fast to put his life in danger all the time."

"Let's be honest, Pom, if you had a Caster, you would do the same."

"If I had a Caster, the Syndicate would have been destroyed ages ago."

Fahon didn't argue. From what the Faceless soldiers said, Pom was a vicious fighter and expert marksman.

Pom continued, "Why not bring Vivana along? They wouldn't stand a chance with two Agent Knights teaming up, even with good security."

Fahon considered the suggestion for a moment. It would be a tactical advantage but could lead to a strategic loss. "If the Syndicate discovers we have two Bonded. Kormel will never come out of hiding. Facing two of us would be too big of a risk. He will run. Especially without another Bonded to back him up and level the playing field."

"There's always a risk during any operation," Vivana said, putting her hands flat on the table. "We can't account for everything. The Syndicate escalated this conflict when they trapped you. We can't give them time to prepare for us. It wouldn't hurt to have Pom's soldiers and myself on standby."

Fahon nodded in agreement. "Very well. We attack tonight."