Shishone sat in the white cell in the hospital on Eris for what felt like the hundredth day in a row. It was maddening. There was nothing to do, nobody to talk to, only medications to take and sleep to be had. His whole team had died. At least, that’s what he remembered. It differed from what the doctors said, which was that he and his team had made it home and he’d had a psychotic PTSD episode. It didn’t sound right to him, but at this point, he wasn’t sure which way was up or down anymore, and so it didn’t not sound right to him.

His straight jacket buckled at the hips. He was a "danger to himself", they'd said, and after multiple doses of drugs and therapy, during which the guards had impressed forcefully upon his mind that he’d had a “psychotic break”, he wasn't sure he wasn’t losing it. So, he sat, unthinking, in the empty room, waiting for food, maybe, or death, and trying to sleep. At least the walls were padded. When he'd arrived the first night, they'd strapped him to a bed and injected him with several drugs that had him woozy for days. At least that part was over, it seemed.

There wasn't really much to think about anymore either. He thought of Penelopi and Tay for hours on end, of the mission to MK2, if it'd even happened, to Cpl. Yarns, and how the kid might wonder where Shishone went. He'd thought it all through over and over and he had to admit that he was going a little mad. Talking to himself, hearing whispering from behind him, like a demon had crawled onto his back and was chattering just behind his ear. He shivered every time it spoke.

Worse off, he'd developed a cough. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. It hurt to breathe at times.

Sick, he slept a lot. On the floor, of course, there was no bed here, which he was oddly grateful for - being tied to a bed and drugged was traumatic enough one time around - and so when he woke up he was always a little more sore than the time before. Today, he sat, as usual, staring at the door, waiting for either the doctors or nurses or food.

Only today, after a time, it opened to reveal someone he'd never seen before. She was Asian, with stunning, clever brown eyes and short black hair that folded over her head into a pink tip that draped down by her cheek. She wore a white and blue jumpsuit, and walked up to Shishone, followed by two black and green clad guards.

She looked down at him with something in her gaze.

Hope, maybe.

"Corporal Joshua Shinshone, am I correct?"

He looked up at her. The medications filled his mind with fog, buy he strung himself together and nodded, saying, with parched lips, "Yes. I am. You are."

The woman turned around and nodded to her guards. "Wait outside. And close the door."

They saluted, and then rushed out to stand guard, closing the door being them. The room fell quiet again. Shishone stared up at her, somewhat out of it, as she sat beside him, leaning her back on the wall.

"Quite a place you've found yourself in Corporal," she said, staring up. "Locked up in the psych ward on Eris. Not a place I'd like to be."

"Who are you?" he asked, looking at her as sharply as he could.

She smiled at him. "I am Yu Solarum, Director of Communications in the Kuiper Belt. Xiao Solarum is my father."

Xiao. Commander Xiao. The name rung Shishone’s head like a gong. "The Commander?"

She nodded. "And I think I can help you."

His heart skipped a beat as he fidgeted. "Help?" he asked, cautious.

"What did you see, on MK2?"

The question made him freeze, images of darkness and death filling his mind. "We found a lot of things."

"M-hm," Yu said, pulling out her PDA. "Your whole team was labeled MIA. You are the only survivor, on and off paper. What happened?"

He frowned. "Why should I trust you?"

"Because, Corporal Shishone, I may be your only ticket out of here," she said, looking down at him from the corner of her eye. Then, turning to face him, reading the understanding on his face, she said, "I want to know everything you can remember. I know they've got you doped out of your mind right now but please, anything."

Shishone thought for a moment, and then began to speak, at first of his trips to MK2, of the vine and the strange happenings. He told her their story, how they'd disappeared or died one by one, how they'd commandeered the tram, about the arrest and execution. Yu listened intently, her sharp eyes locked on Shishone as though she were evaluating his every word.

"How did you get reassigned? I didn't even know about that until I went to your CO, Major Thobias. You read something classified in a flight log?” she asked.

He nodded and tried to settle more comfortably into the straight jacket, before coughing. Yu noticed he was sick, and said: "Are you alright? Do you feel ill?"

"Yeah," he said, sniffling. "I'm cold."

He turned to look at Yu with tired, heavy eyes. They exchanged glances for a moment, before she looked away. Then, she said, "What do you think the purpose of reassigning you was?"

"I don't know. I asked something I shouldn’t have and got moved to infantry," Shishone said with a bitter chuckle. "Called it a third chance."

"I see," said Yu, pulling her knees to her chest. "It really is cold in here, isn't it?"

Shishone nodded. Yu pushed herself up and began to pace, rubbing her chin in thought. "Shishone."

Her gaze darted down at him as she walked. "You spoke to Allister McCullinay. What about?"

Shishone paused, and stared up at her. "My time on MK2. And Ceres."

She stopped, and stared down at him. "Why? What did Ceres have to do with MK2?"

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head. "But she was on Ceres during the Battle of Karvingrad. Like me."

Yu's eyes widened slightly, but she maintained her composure. She made a tsk noise with her tongue, and cocked her head. "She's missing too."

"What?" he said, staring up at her with shocked, if empty eyes.

"She vanished a month and some change ago. On, oddly, MK2. Her team wore white spacesuits with gold insignia. Did you see any of them? It would be unlikely… you were at the second QPF, not the third. But tell me you saw something?"

Shishone thought for a moment, before an image of him shining a light down at a figure in just such a spacesuit flashed through his mind. "Yes, I did, actually."

Yu seemed to perk up at this. "You did? Where?"

Shishone proceeded to tell her of what he saw atop the catwalks on MK2. The person, standing in silence, there one moment and gone the next. Yu listened like a cat watching a mouse.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"So there were survivors."

Shishone blew out a sad laugh. "Doubt it. Those were seasoned soldiers I was with. If they didn't make it out, she didn't either."

One of Yu's eyebrows crept up. "Is that so, Corporal?" She laughed softly. "You underestimate the cunning nature of a desperate woman."

"Whatever's on MK2, it's not fucking around."

She smiled bitterly. "Neither am I, corporal."

The determination in Yu’s voice gave him pause. He looked up at her suspiciously. "Who’s helping you? It can't be Xiao. I have a gut feeling he was on MK2 that night."

Yu frowned and looked away. "He may have been. I'm not sure. But it wouldn't surprise me at this point."

"So he is up to something," Shishone said, sniffling and leaning forward. "What do you know?"

"I don't know much," she confessed. "My father has been incredibly aloof lately. I can't even get into his office anymore. Well, not without a fight, at least."

Shishone hummed in thought. "What else?"

Yu clicked her tongue, and looked down at Shishone. "He's hearing voices. Whispers. I don't know much more than that. Most of my informants that get close to him go missing, and I'm running out of people willing to take the job."

"What about these voices?" Shishone asked, his eyes falling. “What are they telling him?”

She sighed. "As I said, I don’t know much. Really, I know about as much as you know, now."

Frowning, Shishone bit and chewed on his lip, fidgeting uncomfortably. "So why go against him like this?"

"You're perceptive, corporal," Yu said, folding her arms. "I do this because I love him. And us. He is my father, and I remember the good times. Something has happened to the man I knew, and I want to know what exactly that thing is, especially… especially before more people go missing. It's a miracle I found you, you know. My father is scrubbing you from personnel records and databases and listing you as MIA. Just to get in here I had to pretend to come on his orders and even threaten the head nurse. Lesson being, trust nobody."

He thought for a moment. "And what do you need me for?"

"I need allies," she said with a flip of her hair. "You are a pilot, are you not?"

"Yes.”

"Then fly me a ship."

Yu leaned on the padded wall, and looked down at him, almost with pity. "You've been torn down too many times, Corporal Shishone. It's time to get you back on your feet, and in the seat. I need a pilot."

"You can't fly?"

"Oh I can. But not a gunship. And that's what I have. For that, I need one of the best pilots the Corps ever had the gaul to throw away."

He huffed and shook his hair. "You're blowing smoke up my ass," he then said, laughing quietly. Yu went to protest, but Shishone continued on, " If it gets me home, I'm in. I just want to get out of here."

"Then stand up. And hurry. We're going to MK2."

Shishone pushed himself up with his legs, shaking though they were, and stepped forward, righting himself. He looked at Yu, and said, "I'm not going back there."

"You don't have a choice," Yu said, sneering. "Unless, of course, you'd rather stay here."

Shishone swallowed. There was no way in hell he’d stay here, he thought. Slowly, he shook his head.

"Good," said Yu, her tone a little softer. "Then come on, we need to get out of here like, yesterday."

"Fine," he said, walking toward the door. There, he stopped and turned around. "But there's someone I need to see first."

Yu cocked her head and squinted. "Oh? And who is that?"

----------------------------------------

Shishone, clad in an older model blue and white armor suit, with an elite guard helmet on, its blue visor shining in the light, strode through TGFB Make-Indu confidently, even if he was faking it. Truth was, he was shaken. His only weapon was a sidearm pistol, and his only ally stood directly to his right as they waited for the train.

Yu stood in the same armor. Her accesses, she said, should get them where they needed to go, and the armor was bioconfigured to have an ID for someone else. In other words, today, Shishone took the name Captain Brandon Cullers, and Yu became Major Lina Sellshark. At least, that was how the biometric scanners would pick them up. A gift, Yu had said. From someone with that kind of power, Shishone had inferred. He felt in over his head by a mile.

As the train approached, Yu said into the encrypted comms line, "And where is he again?"

Shinshone checked his tablet. "My PDA says he's near the parade grounds."

The train pulled up to the Hangar Bay Station, and they boarded, drawing a few looks but nothing overly suspicious. The train jerked lightly as it departed. They grabbed the rails on the ceiling and looked at each other, their eyes obscured by their helmets. Down the central hall of Make-Indu they went. Next stop, the administrative sector.

As they train arrived at the admin sector, they could see through the windows that security had been amped up. Guards crawled all over this section of the base, elite guards at that, and as they departed together, Shishone looking around nervously. Yu strode up to the doors in the great wall, urging him to follow. She nodded to the guards, who nodded back, and with her fingerprint she opened the door and waved Shishone through.

Together they entered into the labyrinth of the base, making their way past several guards and officers clad in white-gold and blue. Shishone felt hot in the armor, uncomfortable, but that may have just been his nerves. He stepped in line behind Yu as they marched deeper into the building. Soon, they came upon a set of double doors in a great wall that stretched out to either side, a room within a room, one half of a large oval. There were several sets of doors, but they walked up to the middle ones, and stood there.

Yu turned to Shishone. "Remember the plan?"

He nodded.

"Good. March in there like you mean it, let's get him, and let's go. On my count."

She held up three fingers, then two, and Shishone clenched and unclenched his fists. Then, she held up one, before Yu opened the double doors and strode onto the parade grounds with all the pride of a lioness. Shishone followed, doing his best to look serious.

The grounds were massive: white stadium seats ringed them like an auditorium high above them; a massive field of green grass stood before them; a huge blue running track ran around the edges; and on the field itself, a platoon of men in white finery were doing drill practice with spinning rifles. Yu locked onto them immediately, her visor shimmering in the great white ceiling lights that hung from the domed roof, and started her way toward them with long strides.

Shishone followed, and they soon had the group's full attention, the tossing rifles either caught or fallen, all eyes on them. There was a sudden stillness to the room. Yu approached and looked through them. Then, over their one-on-one comms line, said to Shishone, "Point him out to me."

Shishone looked through the crowd, and found him. Cpl. Yarns looked at Shishone warily, maybe even in fear, as Shishone pointed at him. Yu looked, and nodded, before marching up to Yarns and loudly proclaiming, "Corporal Yarns, you are under arrest."

Both she and Shishone took Yarns’s arms and folded them behind his back. The poor kid looked terrified, eyes watering, lips quivering, voice shaken and stuttering. He tried to ask something, but the moment he made a noise, Yu snapped at him to be quiet.

"You have violated article 17, subarticle 4 of the Terra Gov Space Corps' Code of Justice," she said, cuffing him. "You'll proceed with us."

Yarns looked at her, then Shishone, then to the other men on the field, who stared back at him, shocked. "That's…" he muttered, tears starting to stream down his face. "That's treason."

Neither Yu nor Shishone said anything more, and Yu instead pushed Yarns’s shoulder to get him walking. Silently, Cpl. Yarns in tears and Shishone sick to his stomach, the three of them walked off the field and through the double doors, letting them close behind them.

They were once more in the belly of Make-Indu, and this time, they took the back way out. Weaving their way through the trams and the hallways, carefully avoiding close contact with other guards, they made their way back to the Hangar Bay with minimal issues.

Once there, they ushered Yarns aboard a waiting gunship, the words TGGS Harbinger painted on its side. The gunship was large, and old too, Shishone knew from the first time he saw it. It was so old, in fact, that it appeared to have predated the Battle of Karvingrad. It had a big bubble under-turret on the bottom front, wings with drop-down munition holders, a bay door and a side door for drop troopers, and a long angular cockpit that sloped up the front. Thrusters sat at every corner of the frame, an old VTOL layout. By all accounts, the ship probably should've been scrapped a while ago. Thankfully, however, it hadn't been, and someone up the ladder had been kind enough to arm it for them.

They hurried aboard the back of the ship, and Shishone made his way to the cockpit, where he revved up the ship's throttles and without even asking for clearance to depart, shot out of the hangar and into the night, leaving onlookers watching in horror as the social rules of the Kuiper Belt melted before them.

The gunship roared for a time as they ascended from Makemake and toward the stars, humanity’s destiny written once more. Once they were about three miles out from the base, Shishone finally let himself breathe. He took off his helmet and set it beside him, the cool air hitting his sticky, sweaty hair and helping him calm down.

Yu and Yarns soon appeared from the back, and when Yarns saw Shishone, he froze, staring at him with an open mouth.

"Sh-Shishone?" he exclaimed, blinking as though he were hallucinating. "What? I thought you were MIA. How…?"

Yu took her helmet off too and shook her hair out. "Hey kid, calm down," she said, sitting in the co-pilot's seat. "Shishone? Would you care to explain?"

Shishone coughed and shivered, before turning around to face Yarns. "Hey," he said, offering as best a reassuring smile as he could muster. "Sit down. We need to talk."