The sight of Stewards offloading equipment from an armoured car and a tense Robert froze Dorian in his tracks. Roberts's demeanour and the high alert the Stewards were on made the situation all the more worse— he had to know what was going on.

Any other day and Dorian would have kept his head down and simply gone about his day, not today though, he just had to know. Going against every ingrained instinct he'd learned over the years and his better judgement, Dorian began to walk towards Robert— to ask what was going on only for the man's head to snap in his direction and vigorously shake. Impossibly his stress levels ratcheted up.

‘Shit' he thought.

With wooden steps Dorian moved his feet towards the plant's entrance, the eyes of the Stewards burning a hole in his back. That had been a monumentally stupid thing to do and he'd still gone ahead and done it, with nothing to show for it. It was not a good start to the day.

He descended the elevator to find an especially hectic core room and the welcoming feel of so much echo. The core room was always busy but this was especially so, he moved to ask what was going on only to be steered towards the changing room and upon his exit assigned to carrying and welding giant siphoning cords to the core housing.

His first thought upon seeing the modifications being done to the core room was that the buildings in Kowloon needed more power but that didn't make sense. He'd seen the relay stations that the core fed which in turn powered the homes of Kowloon, these modifications though were carrying raw unfiltered echo directly to whatever it was they were powering. What could possibly require that much power?

At break time, Dorian stumbled into the cafeteria and expected the place to be filled with hunters asking him how he'd survived the monster surge and generally being happy they were alive. He instead walked into a silent hall filled only with the sound of cutlery on trays, the cause was apparent from the Stewards standing in the corner of the room. Head down he forced himself to the serving lines and heaped food on his tray which he somehow managed to choke down.

As he got back to work, the stress and discomfort he was feeling began to reach worrying levels when he spotted the armoured forms of Stewards moving around the core room. The thought of Stewards braving one of the places they'd die without their armour was worrying, alarmingly so. What was infinitely worse to Dorian was being unable to refill the cores and having to go home empty-handed. The hidden looks of disappointment from his friends and his yet unsolved core problems would be a weight worse than the crack marring his core.

“Yo, Dorian! Announcement.”

Like a diver surfacing, Dorian came to the sight of a very concerned Rosemarie shaking him awake. Awake would be the wrong word as he hadn't been asleep, only mechanically going about his duties with his mind occupied by thoughts of the very stressful situation he was currently in.

A whispered; “Are you alright?” from Rosemarie had Dorian coming fully aware and finally registering her earlier words.

“Yeah, I'm fine what's it about an announcement?”

“Come on and let's find out together. ”

With a hand on his arm, Rosemarie led him into the cafeteria followed by a throng of hunters to find all the chairs and tables pushed back and the daunting forms of the Stewards taking centre stage. What was even worse was a frazzled Robert between the pair with a resigned look on his face that said he wished he was elsewhere.

As more hunters arrived and milled about, Dorian noticed the elevator working and the mysterious packages from before being carted into the core room. By more stewards. The cafeteria finally filled up, with murmurs breaking out when the elevator descended for the final time and 'it' got off.

A hunter.

In Steward armour.

There was instantaneous silence and not a few clenched teeth and fists. A lot of friends and family had died to monsters like that. The monster, for that was what it was, marched to the front of the small crowd, the hunters parting for him and some having to be pulled back by their neighbours. This monster was popular, very much so evident from its scarred face which told a story— a story Dorian and every hunter was very familiar with.

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When the hunters finally discovered the insidious plot behind the ART program, they moved quickly and hid the unfortunate victims of the plot. For that was what those poor hunters were, victims of misplaced trust who had their frail mentality used to commit heinous crimes. Most hunters saw their fellow humans needing protection, the worst of them saw an opportunity and they seized it.

Barely functioning hunters— cut off from the life-saving and simultaneously damning ART project were dragged insensate and drooling or crying and confused onto live broadcasts and asked to confess their sins by their former brethren. Sins they had committed under the commands of people they'd trusted their minds to. These former hunters were loved everywhere and hated with a passion by their own. To break the bonds forged in death and bloodshed all for an easier life was a crime that most paid with their lives.

And yet standing before them now was one such former hunter who had managed to survive but not without literal scars it seemed. Standing in the seething crowd, Dorian would bet it all on there being more scars on the monster's body before the traitor had slipped into their new armour. It only hurt that the heroes responsible for the scars hadn't managed to finish the job.

Maybe Dorian could fix that.

Against his better judgment, something he noticed he was doing a lot of lately, Dorian closed his eyes and tried to coax the small amount of echo in the air into his core. It was something he had avoided doing even when his rounds had taken him to the unit housing the core and the physical waves of echo it released. Unless he was in a seated and in a specific pose with his mind clear, it was almost impossible to move echo. At least that was what the other hunters had told him and he aimed to prove them wrong.

They were right and what a depressing way to find out. It started as a niggling sensation then to a full-blown certainty, something was in his personal space. Dorian opened his eyes and found a scarred face staring right into his. Any other time Dorian would have swung a fist or attacked physically, and yet his recent discoveries had him reaching for a black hole that existed in his mind's eye to crush the offending head.

In hindsight, it was the right and wrong reaction, right because punching the monster would have most likely seen him dead and wrong because he still had a cracked core. Pain lanced from Dorian's midsection causing him to stumble backwards and lean forward to hide his grimace.

“Pathetic,” the scarred voice said.

When the pain finally abated and Dorian could think again, he realised how it might have looked to everybody else and the traitor's words finally made sense. A scarred Steward had made a hunter stumble back and bow in apology, a pretty-faced hunter at that. Dorian clenched his fists and joined the other hunters in grinding their teeth in impotent anger.

Once he would have said his anger was very much potent but he just didn't know anymore with all the damage he'd most recently done to his core. With a mighty effort of will, Dorian dragged his attention to the scarred traitor who had started speaking. The words further crushed his spirit.

“Most of you will not be needed anymore after this particular job. I'm sure you've all noticed the extra equipment that has been delivered into the core room, that is for upgrading this facility from one requiring constant supervision to a self-sustaining one that can harvest every single iota of echo produced. You have the rest of the day to finish installing the upgrades, it is possible within that time frame. Failure will not be tolerated. There will be a hefty severance pay on your terminals once this job is over. That is all.”

With that world-ending speech, the traitor and the other Stewards piled onto the elevator and headed upwards leaving a very frazzled Robert to resolve the mess they'd made. Almost instantly the hunters swarmed the man, each asking a different question and others just venting their anger at the entire situation.

Dorian immediately felt sorry for the man and tried to help calm the agitated crowd when he himself felt anything but calm. A loud shrill whistle cut through the noise and the hunters quitted down.

“Much appreciated Rosemarie,” Robert said, “We've been dealt a pretty shitty hand, but what's new about that?” There was some scattered laughter, he continued “ All we can do is put our heads down and just do the job, they didn't say it but it's death if we fail. And for those wondering what brought on the change, the monster surge scared some people high up on the food chain. Now, we're on a time crunch so listen to your assignments. ”

Dorian tuned Robert out and thought through what he'd just heard, it was true the monster surge had scared a lot of people but the upgrade to the power plant was too sudden. Humanity without the system had barely just begun to understand what all the resources they had at their disposal could be used for, case in point his new echo-powered engine and the Stewards giant flying ship. Not to ignore the Stewards own armour itself.

A conversation Dorian had had with Robert came back to him then, the man had used the word 'cannibalise' to describe the work he was doing in some separate secret facility designed to hold a core that was never delivered. And just like that the new equipment took on a different light, if it was true, it meant the Stewards had stripped the second plant to upgrade the first, which meant only one thing.

They'd given up on reclaiming humanity's second dragon core.

It was crazy just thinking about doing what he was thinking. Dorian's head snapped up when he heard his name being called and his assignment. He sighed and got back to work.

It was going to be a very long day.