Jane eyed the cow just as warily as the beast was eyeing her. She didn't trust it and she most definitely did not agree with Cassy's constant insistence that it was harmless. 'It could bite my hand clean off it if wanted!'

Cassy sighed. 'First of all, that's a she and she has a name, she's Nicolle. Secondly, she quite likely could but she won't. Cows are herbivores.' Jane saw how Cassy threw her that special look that countryfolk reserved for city-slickers and put her hand in the cow's mouth. 'See?' she said, uncaring that the beast gave her a mildly annoyed look and huffed loudly. 'No canines. And she doesn't bite. She's just a harmless, fluffy giant, aren't you girl?' she asked, turning her attention to Nicolle, scratching the massive animal between its ears. The moment Cassy's hand no longer was between its frighteningly large teeth, the animal resumed its chewing.

Jane stared at it in disgust and felt a fair bit of relief when she heard Leonne's voice call her out, giving her an excuse to exit the stalls.

'Jane!' shouted her friend, waving wildly as she was running towards the stall. Jane paused at that, realising her friend, for some reason, was looking a lot happier than before, then decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

'Leonne!' she shouted back as her friend slowly came to a stop, strands of hair clinging to the woman's sweaty forehead.

'Hi,' she grinned, panting. 'Stars, that was a lot further than I thought.' She pushed the rogue strands of hairs away from her face. 'So, had a good day?'

'She's a city-slicker through and through!' screamed Cassy, leaning out of the door to the stable. 'She's even scared of Nicolle!

'Shut it, lowborn peasant!' Jane shot back with a smile, earning her a raspberry. 'Seriously though, you named the cow Nicolle?'

'Yeah, lacking a female dog I had to find some way to commemorate our former classmate,' her friend laughed, before turning to her younger sister. 'Are you managing with the animals then, Cassy?'

The girl rolled out over the stable door and landed nimbly on her feet. She ran up to her sister and gave her a hug, earning some tender hair ruffling in turn. 'Of course! Still not done though. Most of their feed is stacked really high and I keep having to move stuff to climb to it.'

Leonne eyed Cassy, clearly not believing a word of it. 'In other words,' she stated. 'You keep playing with the animals rather than doing your tasks.'

'Yes,' the girl immediately admitted, grinning broadly. 'I mean, not like you wanted me to return anytime soon, right?'

It was Leonne's turn to grin. 'You caught me. You think you'll be able to stay out here a bit longer?'

'Yeah, I already figured. I moved the tent here during the day as well. Jane helped me with it. So you're free to do your adult stuff.' Cassy laughed as Leonne immediately pulled her sister into a crushing hug and ribbed her knuckles on the girl's head, lecturing her.

Jane watched the exchange carefully, learning a lot about the relationship between the two. She didn't have any siblings of her own, aside an estranged step-brother whom she had no contact with, so to see the pair of them like that was heart warming. Then Leonne gave Cassy a gentle push and the girl disappeared into the stables again.

'Right. I'm assuming that he's back to normal then?' Jane asked, keeping her voice low.

Leonne's face instantly contorted. 'Yeah,' she said after a short while, turning around and walking back towards the house. 'He's home now.'

Jane ran her hands across the little black box, which had gone silent the moment she had left the house. 'That wasn't anything like normal PTSD, was it?' she ventured, taking care to keep any emotion out of her voice.

'No. It wasn't,' Leonne replied and Jane could hear that her friend was growing defensive over it. Understandable.

'I won't ask further. I'm sure you'll tell me when you can,' she sighed, shaking her head. She nearly bumped into her friend when she came to a sudden stop.

'You won't?' she asked, eyes lighting up with a mixture of relief and curiosity.

'No.' She rubbed her forehead and sighed again, more deeply this time. 'I'll admit that I'm curious, but I've had a fair bit of time to think it all through. Tie threads together, so to speak. You wouldn't lie to me, not after I caught you with the first one, and given your insistence that Mentuc doesn't lie either, that gives me a fairly solid base to work from, although I'll admit that's based on trust, so I may be completely wrong if it turns out you are lying to me.' She raised up a hand to pre-empt Leonne's defence and continued. 'So what I know is that Mentuc is suffering from a very strange case of PTSD, does not have Imperial ancestry,' she gave her friend a look. 'And that his strength, weight, reaction speed and senses aren't within human levels. Further on, I've been brainwashed...' She shook her head, finding the concept to be abhorrently disgusting. 'To hate the Empire beyond any rational thought. I don't buy that I'm that special, so I'm assuming there's a broader conspiracy at work. Which leads to the implication that someone has been altering the truth. And lots of it too.'

She couldn't keep the raw vitriol out of her voice when she said that. Studying the Empire had been her life and to discover that she might have been fed nothing but lies and deceit infuriated her beyond what words could express. She felt Leonne's hand touch hers and only then realised that her hands were balled up in fists, tight enough for her knuckles to turn white. She nodded at her friend, giving her a weak smile, before continuing on. 'Then there are the Kra'lagh. Given how they've been brought up several times and how your husband insists that they were the main enemy of the Empire, I've been thinking about them. It doesn't make sense for them to not appear in any note of history if he is so insistent that they were a thing. You don't need to be a genius to tie them having disappeared from history and me being brainwashed together.'

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Leonne squeezed her hand reassuringly and Jane forced herself to calm down, taking a bit to do so. It wasn't easy to move past discovering that someone had infiltrated your brain and toyed with your beliefs, up to the point you nearly ended up murdering your best friend. She knew Jane would be struggling that for a good long while.

'Now, this little thing here,' she began, holding up the black box, 'leads me to believe that there's a lot more to you and your husband than you're letting on. What that might be, I don't know yet. At this point I'm convinced that you're somehow aligned with some Imperial remnant, but given how much I don't know, I'll hold off on an actual opinion. I have come to accept, and this wasn't easy, that whomever is controlling this box and whatever your husband's affiliations might be, they're not related to the actual Empire of six, seven centuries ago. Like you said, that's all in the past.'

The black box chose that moment to flash to life again, distracting Jane enough to keep the sudden flash of guilt that washed over Leonne's from being discovered.

'You have done quite a bit of thinking. Quite commendable,' came Nightmare's humanised voice.

'I am a professional. So I hope for your sake that whatever it is you planned to show me is going to be worth it.' Jane turned to look at her friend. 'And this thing showing up so quickly after everything else?' she told her friend, shaking the box while giving her a grin. 'Girl, I'm not buying for a second that you're not personally connected with this group.'

'It could have been a coincidence,' Leonne countered weakly, but the smile she gave was a clear admission of guilt.

'Could have been, yeah. Right,' Jane smiled back. 'Still, I'm surprised that your husband isn't here with you,' she said, changing the subject. 'Given everything that transpired.'

Leonne's face didn't change in the slightest, but there was the tiniest hick up in her gait that spoke volumes. 'He's not worried about you attacking me anymore.'

She looked down at the gentle blue light that emanated from the black box. 'Imperial shock device?'

'Yes,' came the surprisingly honest answer. 'I believe it was a more pleasant solution than having Mentuc hover over your shoulder all the time.'

She blinked, slowly. 'That is... Fair. I didn't expect you to admit it just like that though.'

Somehow the box transferred an image of it shrugging. 'Being open makes things easier. I did not contact you to lie to you. I did so to show you the truth, about the Empire in general and Genesis in specific.'

'Right.' She rubbed her temples, before a new, worrisome thought popped up in her head. 'Leonne, did they put one in you as well?'

'What?'

'The shock device. Little bit of machinery, akin to a pacemaker, that the Imperials used to install in the back of the neck of their prisoners. Allowed them to deliver shocks directly into the nerves and render people catatonic without physically harming them.'

'Oh. No, I don't. I'm sorry Jane,' her friend began, clearly not happy with the situation. 'I didn't want it, but—'

'But I suspect you were overruled on the matter?' Jane asked, arching an eyebrow.

It took a moment, but in the end Leonne admitted it with a soft spoken yes.

'That's good though. Means you're not a prisoner,' Jane continued, relieved. She had been concerned that her friend had been held captive here, the one worry she still had. She still didn't like the Empire, nor anything related to it, but Leonne had brought up valid points and she couldn't believe how she hadn't been able to accept them earlier. It made no sense to blindly hate a nation that has ceased to exist six centuries prior.

'All that I am is a prisoner of love,' her friend replied, lacing her face with all the innocence of a pure maiden in love.

'Oh you sappy, sentimental sop! 'she laughed, punching her friend on the shoulder.

The two bantered a bit more, the subject of the Empire carefully ignored, as they restored a semblance of mutual trust between one another. She was grateful for the shock device as it, in a very twisted turn of fate, allowed Leonne to be at ease around her without fearing another attack. It also revealed that whoever she was working with had access to a lot of Imperial technology. Technology that was in working condition. She was trying not to let it surface, but the Historian in her was positively drooling over it. She was willing to put up with a lot of crap in order to further her knowledge in that regard and it definitely helped ease her worries that Leonne was there with her.

Then she pushed open the no longer broken door and entered a changed house, causing her eyes to turn to saucers and her mouth to fall wide open.

'Mentuc? Did we have a surround stereo system before?' her friend asked, just before she disappeared in the arms of her husband as he took her in a tight embrace.

'No. I thought it would be useful however.'

Jane could swear she heard her friend curse someone, but Mentuc's arms muffled the noise, so instead she focused at the sudden appearance of an incredibly modern stereo system along with a ceiling mounted projector that would have been more at home in a movie theatre than the rustic cottage that Leonne had made her home. The walls, all of them, were covered with reflective sheets that allowed for advanced 3D projecting, which meant she'd be in for one hell of a ride when the footage was played. 'Man,' she whispered. 'If I ever get to go back home again, I'm going to need the number of your contractor.'

'Mentuc?' came Leonne's voice, laced with annoyance.

'Yes?' her husband answered, taking a few steps back in the typical fashion that husbands all over the galaxy did when facing an angry wife.

'Can you warn me next time before you decide to remodel the entire house?'