He stared at her, eyes wide, mouth open – then started shaking his head.

“I don’t really know what happened down there,” he told her.

“Sure you do,” she refused his answer. “Kyso told me a little of what you told him – your friends attacking each other – the constructs coming – you escaping… somehow.”

Easily implant behavior – just like a new friend suddenly stabbing you in the back when his cybernetic master was threatened with destruction. Traejan leaned back against the lifter chassis.

“Sounds like Kyso told you lots,” he responded sharply. “Why don’t you go back, ask him for more.”

She stood her ground, crossed her arms, refused to play the game.

“Traejan,” she began. “I’m not here to play the two of you against each other.”

She took in a deep breath.

“I want to hear it from you,” she told him plainly, straight, “because you were there. Kyso wasn’t.”

He didn’t respond immediately, kept glaring at her.

“Do you want more needless deaths?!” she asked, exasperated. “I don’t.”

That brought him out from his shell.

“What wisdom do you imagine you are going to dig out of my memory,” he challenged her, raising his voice again. “I don’t know the why or the how of what happened back there!”

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She let him vent, trying to look as sympathetic as possible.

“I only know what I saw,” he finished, despondent. She nodded.

“That’s all I’m asking Traejan,” she told him gently, not looking away. “What did you see?”

He looked away from her.

“It’s hard,” he said, “I’ve been spending the last three anna trying to forget.”

“Of course,” she said softly. She often preferred not to think of her own painful regrets, tragedies, horrors of the past. “But it’s necessary.”

She tried offering a hopeful turn.

“Tell me… tell me everything. And things can be different this time. They can be better.”

“That’s right,” his response was thick with sarcasm. “You’re going to destroy the Macro, its corpore and free the whole world.”

“Yes, yes I will,” she told him flatly. “I will. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

She waited again. He didn’t respond.

“Is it going to be a long story,” she wanted to know, holding her hands out, gesturing. “Should we sit down? All this standing is making my feet hurt.”

He scowled at her, shrugged, pointed across the work area; Althea saw a rickety looking chair and a wide bench covered in bits of tech and tools. She started over.

“You’re aware…” he told her following her. She chose the chair, not certain if would handle his weight. It barely held hers, squeaking – straining – even under her reduced weight. “That we don’t have much trilium left.”

He cleared a spot on the bench, absently brushing away tools and tech alike. Leaning over his knees, he looked her over her warily. His smell was much stronger, being this close: his sweat, the mingling of chemicals, soot and lubricants – strong – but not unpleasant.

Trilium, the universal source of energy, the universal currency. They didn’t have much; she was running out. Elysium, the world, the dream – her goal – returned to her thoughts. If she could get there, struggling through all of this would be worth it.

“I know,” she replied. “You’re not alone in that.”

He seemed to appreciate her statement, and his focus changed – he was suddenly looking past her, past the piles of mechanical parts – into the past.