Unfortunately, one of the things you learn fairly quickly when dealing with Stata is her sense of time is somewhat… skewed. She will say things like "five minutes," and what she means is 'anytime within the next half hour.' An hour is usually closer to two, and three hours is really sometime tomorrow. So I am beyond surprised when she appears in the fairy ring exactly five minutes later, looking like a warrior queen.

She strides out of the fairy circle to stop right in front of me. I always feel like she is taller than me. Her presence fills the room to make lesser beings tremble, where I am more reserved—an assassin in the night. But when she is close like this, I remember she is a full head shorter than me.

We lock eyes and she gives me her best mischievous smile. "Where is he?" It is an order more than a question. Her tone brooks no arguments or disobedience.

I move my hand in a flourish towards the door and tilt my head in a mockery of a bow. A reference to times long past where she posed as a queen and I her bodyguard. "Right this way, m'lady."

I can see the delight in her eyes, even though her expression doesn't change. She charges ahead, allowing me to lead from behind. Dragons are elemental beings. Fire, ice, and water. They need oxygen to thrive, but not to live. I lead her to the airlock designed to be a cell. The oxygen has been greatly depleted in the space and Vulcan looks emaciated for it.

I'm not one for torture, but I'm a little glad he is experiencing a fraction of the pain that took those sixteen souls.

But Stata looks stricken. She glares at me. "Was that strictly necessary?"

"Was it strictly necessary to weaken the strongest fire dragon on the earth? The one literal volcanoes are named after? When he betrayed us and killed at least sixteen of the people we are collectively sworn to protect?"

She deflates a little. "You have a point. You are sure he did this?"

I know he can not see us from here. The window in the airlock hatch is designed to be one-way, so I turn to her and ask, "Are you sure you want to confront him now, or would you like to see the evidence against him first?"

She stares at him for a moment. We have both been prisoners of war, and she knows I would not have done this unless he had done something heinous. Eventually she speaks, "I would see the evidence against him."

"Would you prefer to view it somewhere private?"

Stolen story; please report.

"Please."

I lead her through the halls. The lack of oxygen is weighing on her, but not enough to dim her presence. We stop by the lab, where I collect a memory card with a copy of the Vulcan footage, and then proceed to my room. Once there, I pull a small canister of oxygen attached to a clear plastic medical face mask and hand it to her. She thanks me and puts it on.

Even with the mask on and the oxygen flowing, this is still my domain. She is weakened by being here. Enough that if she isn't as innocent as I think she is, I could easily take her in a fight that would otherwise be fair. She knows this is why I brought her into the vampire only sections of New Eden, and she went willingly. Either she is trying to prove her innocence, she has some kind of ace up her sleeve, or she is much dumber than I remember.

I plug the memory card into my TV screen, and we watch the footage. There is a lot. Over thirty hours of him selling us out. Name after name, location after location. An hour in, she is crying. Two and a half hours in, they demand a dragon for study, and he gives her name. Her location. She asks me to shut it off.

No one can fake the distress she feels now. There is a smell to genuine anger, fear, hate, and surprise. While many can fake the body language or the facial expressions, no one can fake the smell. And he would not have given her up if she were complicit.

She takes her time processing this distressing news. I hand her a bottle of water from the conference room, place a box of tissues gently on the table, and pour us both a healthy glass of eleven wine. She takes it with a wet chuckle.

"He betrayed us. All of us." She takes a gulp of wine and two tissues to swipe angrily at her tears with. "He gave me up to be dissected."

"Yeah, he did."

We both sit with that knowledge for a moment. Both of us are strategists, and I can't help but wonder if he gave her name hoping she would kill her would be captors and escape. Given how much information he gave on everyone else, and how much he gave on her, that hope is vanishingly thin.

Eventually, she downs her drink, and stands. I follow suite and follow her out the door of my quarters to the airlock where Vulcan is contained.

She storms up to the door and pushes the button that clears the glass so he can see us. "You traitors bastard!"

He stumbles to his feet. "Stata, I can explain."

"That's Elder Stata to you. How could you do this to us?"

"The humans found us. I didn't have a choice."

"Bullshit. You had a choice. You could have asked for help, you could have tricked the humans. Why didn't you?"

Vulcan's eyes turn from pleading to hard. "We are the past. The humans deserve to win," he opens his arms wide, "let them win! Let them destroy the earth, let the whole galaxy burn! What's the point of it anymore? Nothing we do works, so I saved as many dragons as I could and everyone else can burn."

Stata punches the button that turns the window opaque on his side. "He has lost his mind. I told him getting a new and kids every fifty years was going to cause problems, but I didn't think he would go this far."

"I'm sorry. You were friends a long time."

She looks thunderous, "A friend wouldn't betray their kind like this." She sighs and runs a hand through her hair, "I assume this isn't the only reason you brought me here?"

"Unfortunately no, we need your help."