Alexandra placed her hand on the hardened steel plating of Scolia. The sensation was familiar to her, while it felt utterly alien. It was the same with trying to remember what she and Commodore Investigator Infera had discussed over the last week. The memory was there, but the more she tried to access it, the more it faded and it only made her head hurt.

“Mistress!” Markus’s surprised voiced rang from behind her. What the hell is she doing here so late?

“I came to check on the Scolia. You and your team are doing a commendable job.” She turned to face the lead mechanic, deciding to forgive his outburst.

It was the middle of the night according to the mining complex’s day and night cycle. Though she had to admit her internal clock was yet to adjust itself. Alexandra knew she was tired, by that little fact alone. Situations such as this were rare and she would have adjusted within a day or two. But everything, from her implants to her gut told her that it was still noon.

“Thank you, Mistress.” The man bowed slightly and looked at her, worry written on what was left of his face. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes.” Alexandra imagined she looked as bad as she felt. “The last few days with Investigator Infera must have drained me more than I care to admit.”

I would bet. Most likely you’ve not stepped off his bed for days. The remark was barely audible, but it did not make it any less outrageous. Even insinuating something like that was grounds enough for Alexandra to skin the man alive. Yet, to her astonishment, she once more ignored the comment and continued as if nothing had happened. She placed her hand back on the Solia, the hardness of the battle-frame’s shell made her feel grounded. The coolness of the material, sapping the pain from her head as she pressed her forehead to the metal.

As usual, the auto-link activated and the machine’s AI greeted her with a list of system checks. Most of the mech’s systems were offline, but that was to be expected. After all, Markus and his team were in the middle of slimming it down so that she could use it within the mining complex. Not that Alexandra foresaw such a situation occurring. With someone like Lucas Infera on her side, she no longer needed to worry about Chief Rex and his gang of thigs posing as security.

That’s right, make a link. Waste bloody days of hard work with your selfishness. This time she was sure she heard Markus mumble under his breath. For him to have made so many lapses, it had to be of overworking.

“I’m sorry Markus.” Alexandra removed her hand and disconnected from the Scolia. “I know you are doing your best to meet my demanding timelines.” She turned to look at the man. “You and your team can take a couple of days to rest.”

“Are you feeling ok, Mistress?” There was no need for her to look at his face to know Markus was confused. “This is very… I beg your pardon, but… Well, this is not like you at all.”

“As I mentioned, I’ve had plenty of time to discuss the current situation with Commodore Interrogator Infera.” It was a lie.

She could barely remember any form of conversation; however, she felt the urge to say so. “There will be no need for the Scolia to walk in this forsaken place. At least not in the near future.”

As usual, you push and push, until you meet a pretty boy. No skin off my teeth. Drunk is a good idea. Alexandra heard the mechanic whisper as he bowed down and moved out of her way. She must have misheard him, there was no chance Markus would risk everything he had worked so hard for, to insult her in such a childish way. There were too many signs that something was wrong with her. If she had to guess, it had to be her memory implant.

“Markus, can you perform a system check on my implants?” Alexandra knew that it was a great risk to ask this of the mechanic, but she really wanted to avoid visiting the local physician.

“Mistress, I am sorry. Though I could check some basics, regarding the pathways of the circuitries, I am bound to cause further harm by doing so.” The man shook his head sparing her the snarky comment.

It only further confirmed her suspicion that it had to be the implant. The battle-frame had recognised her signature and the connection had been established and confirmed, which ruled out the processing unit. Alexandra did a quick check on her eyes, a double cycle through the pre-set visual tests confirmed they were working fine. That confirmed it.

The chance of suffering a fault in the sturdiest of all implants was close to zero, but it was still there. And here she was thinking her luck had turned. On top of all that, there was this constant drone in her ear, that was close to driving her insane. Ignoring Markus’s bewildered face, Alexandra left the repair bay.

Did you manage to connect with the mech? Lucas asked her in place of a greeting as soon as the door closed behind her.

Damn him, Alexandra wanted to scream when he stepped out of the shadows covering the dim-lit corridor. They had agreed for him to wait for her in her office and not to stalk her throughout the complex. However, she was slightly glad to have him around, mainly because she did not trust herself to not get lost in her current state.

“Well?” He arched an eyebrow as he stood a couple of steps from her.

“What?” Alexandra cursed herself for allowing her mind to wander so much, that she had almost missed his question. “Ah… Yes. A connection was established without any problems.”

She was surprised by her words. There was no need to inform him of what went between her and the battle-frame. But she felt compelled to do it. Alexandra couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, however, she could not put her finger to what exactly it was. Every time she tried to focus on it, her head began to throb as if someone was slamming a hammer directly on her grey matter. To make matters worse, Helix just stood there looking at her quizzically.

“Is there something else?” She decided to break the uncomfortable silence.

“No.” The man shook his head and smiled. This is very interesting as it is.

There it was, she finally noticed it. Alexandra was sure Lucas spoke, but she was not sure she saw him do it. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that something was wrong with her cerebral implants – all of them.

“I’m sorry, Investigator Infera…” Admitting something was wrong was difficult on its own. “I must see the local medic… My implants are…”

“That’s all fine Miss von Eisstahl.” Lucas interrupted her. “You’ve talked with the good doctor a few hours ago. This is the reason why I am here.” He waved the auto-injector he had in his hand.

“I don’t…” Alexandra felt frightened. Her condition was far worse than she had thought.

“Just a mild case of Cyber-dystrophy.” He smiled and ran his hand through her hear and placed the injector in the port at the back of her head. “You forgot this at Dr Saiko’s lab.”

There was slight pain as the fluid spread through her brain. It all made sense now; the absentmindedness, the oddness of her behaviour, the audio-visual hallucinations and the constant headache which accompanied her. To think the medics at Katovar had missed something like that was abhorrent. Once she felt better, Alexandra swore she would have their hearts shipped to her fort putting her life in danger. Also, she made a note to thank Dr Saiko for catching the disease before it became life-threatening.

“Thank you for…” Alexandra froze in shock as she realised the two of them were no longer in the dim-lit corridor.

Instead, they were walking along one of the suspended bridges crossing the inactive fabrication bay 4RB. Sprawled beneath her feet were the dormant titanic machines, which produced elements for numerous types of vessels. Or at least, it said so on the info-brief the Council had provided her with. But the problem was, that the bloody thing was an hour and a half walk from the repair bay where Markus and his team worked on the Scolia. Alexandra couldn’t remember how or why they had gotten here, and it was a somewhat roundabout way to reaching the shantytown below her office.

“I see you are back.” Lucas gave her a warm smile that made her feel uncomfortable. “I must admit, the side effects are peculiar.”

“I don’t understand.” Alexandra felt a coldness envelope her heart; she was afraid of him.

“The drug, developed by the ordained scientists, is supposed to keep you dormant and suppress psionic activity. That was the theory behind it.” The Investigator stood a step away from her as he spoke softly. “Although it was never tested on an active psi-witch.”

The Knight Protector understood the words, but nonetheless, they felt odd and strange, as if she had heard them through a translation unit. Was Helix telling her she was a psionic? But how was that possible? She was not a screaming lunatic nor were things and people around her turned inside out. And yet, she just stood there, watching him and waiting for him to speak.

“I must admit, I did not think the indoctrination would work so well.” Lucas smiled at her. “You are wondering why I am telling you this.”

He came closer and placed his hand on her shoulder. Alexandra wanted to push him away, to scream at him, to do anything at all, but her body refused to move. All she could do was stand with hands pressed to her sides and listen, while she yelled internally.

I took a gamble, something I’ve been doing a lot lately. This time she was sure his mouth did not move. “You were having trouble coping with the lack of information, which put everything I did at risk.” Lucas walked behind her and she could feel him pushing her hair away from the connection port.

“While under the effects of the serum, I gave you specific orders, which you clearly do not remember, yet obey. By telling you the truth, you will no longer try to figure out what is going on and by injecting you with the serum…” Alexandra wanted to twitch as she felt the needle pierce the soft membrane between the port and her brain, but her body stood as still as a statue.

“You don’t need to worry because you won’t remember this conversation, however, it will provide your mind with all it needs to stop questioning your current reality.” He moved in front of her and removed the gun from the holster on his hip – her gun!

Her mind raced as she tried to comprehend everything that was happening to her. Alexandra wanted to resist and deny she was a psionic, but the evidence was piling up. She knew, no, she felt Helix was telling the truth. Images of fighting, destruction and chaos flooded her mind. It was a war, the likes of which she had never experienced before. The Knight Protector realised that what she was doing for the Council so far was just an imitation of the real thing. A safe game which humanity played while waiting for the real horror to begin once again. Alexandra understood this as the universal truth, there was always going to be war, it was a cycle which was a part of life and neither she nor anyone else for that matter could do anything to change it.

The dread and emptiness she felt, threatened to consume her. This knowledge was too much for any person to bear. Just as she had reached the deepest point of despair a new image flashed before her eyes. Instinctively Alexandra knew it to be a memory buried within Helix’s subconscious. She was on her knees looking at a man sitting on a throne. He was the epitome of a regal ruler and yet so very human. He looked at her and smiled, the same smile she had seen every time she looked in the mirror, and his purple eyes bore into her soul. All sensation was gone as the Blessed Saint’s eyes fixed to the point where she no longer could hear his words. The sadness in that gaze tore her and she screamed.

Through tearful eyes, Alexandra saw Helix take a step back when the psionic shockwave hit him. Incredibly fast he reached for her and grabbed her head with both his arms. Gently he pushed her to his chest and whispered in her ear.

“Sango de la fideluloj.”

His words drowned the screams which came through the doorway a few meters away. as soon as her mind registered them, Alexandra felt like a puppet with its strings cut. Gladly she surrendered herself to the darkness of unconsciousness.

Lucas let go of the Knight Protectors limp body and turned to face the door. The thugs had chosen a good place for their ambush and if not for the psi-witch’s sudden scream, they would have caught him by surprise. Quickly he pulled the knife from his belt and sent it flying. The blade went inside one of the screaming miners’ necks. One look was enough to inform him there were a total of six of them. All big and strong men with a varying degree of crude augmentations which further improved their strength.

Unlike him, they were not trained to deal with a psionic blast, nor did they have the proper enhancements which would allow them to recover as quickly as he did. Not wanting to waste time, Lucas sprinted, foregoing the gun he had dropped on the bridge. It would have taken him a second to retrieve it, but there was no telling if the thugs could be back on their feet and with the sturdy door frame to use as cover it would make his position uncomfortable.

The improvised weapons the miners carried looked impractical but were quite deadly. A single hit from the hand-held boring laser would be enough to kill him. And though he could dodge it for a time, there was no dodging the heat-wave cannon Lucas could see strapped to one of the miners’ hands. Although technically it was not a weapon, the thing was capable of melting him skin and boiling his blood, should he be caught in the blast area and on the open bridge, there was nowhere for Lucas to hide or take cover.

He jumped the last few steps and barrelled his feet into the chest on the man who showed signs of getting up. Doing that placed him in the middle of the group, where the improvised weapons would be useless. Lucas allowed his training to take control and welcomed the emotionless coldness which filled him, as he swung his foot around and crushed his heal into the face of another of the thugs. The sound of crunching bones was accompanied by a gurgle and the man stopped moving.

Helix grabbed the handle of his knife and pulled it from the dead miner’s neck and stabbed the fourth thug into the augmented eye. The blade pierced the crystal lens and the small stream of blood mixed with blackened antiseptic gel indicated it had reached the contaminated flesh underneath. Still, on the ground, Lucas grabbed the exposed cables on the outside of the fifth miner’s arm and tore them, turning the limb and the rotary cutter at its end completely useless. He then used his elbow to crush the man’s windpipe.

It only left the large guy; Lucas had pushed away when he jumped into the group. He was a strong man with a heat vent on the right side of his chest, indicating that at least some portion of his internal organs had been replaced with cybernetics. Usually, someone like that would have five to ten years before his body was cooked from the inside, but by crossing Helix’s path, the man had made sure his life was measured in seconds. The blades of the vent of vent had bent after the kick and the heat was building up.

The Demon watched as the thug struggle for a moment and pulled him by the hair and delivered a punch into his cheek. Lucas felt the jaw crack and was rather surprised the miner managed to look at him with so much anger and hate.

“Monic, right?” Helix spoke softly as he looked back into the man’s eyes. “I know you can hear me through the feed link you have with this wretch. I hoped you would have been smarter than this and listened to Donovan’s warnings.”

With that, Lucas broke the miner’s neck and tore feeble device attached to the side of the poor man’s head. He had expected the woman to make a move. The Chief had pestered her for days about there was nothing he could do about the Knight Protector and the people on her side. This woman had to be an idiot not to get the hints, however, based on the few conversations he had Zeti playback, Lucas had hoped Monic was smarter than doing something rash. At best the Demon thought he had another week or two before the gang leader gathered the courage to try and assassinate him or the Alexandra.

That was why he had taken precautions and moved Zoë into one of the auxiliary autopsy rooms, Dr Werner’s team had cleared. While he and the psi-witch could protect themselves, the girl was in no state to fight back and Lucas could not be everywhere at once. Perhaps that was why Monic chose this time and place. He needed the privacy to conduct the last tests to make sure he had control over the psi-witch and that the mnemonic trigger would work. Should it had failed Lucas was prepared to use the kill switch he had installed in the Knight Protector’s head.

Both the control serum and the booster had worked just fine. Well, for the most part, at least. The psi-witch heard his thoughts only when he directed them at her and obeyed the commands, he gave her while under the influence of the TZX compound. However, the booster had overwhelmed her. Helix knew Alexandra had brushed to the surface of his memories while he tried to return her gun to her. What and how much she had seen was a mystery for now.

Luckily for him, the psionic blast happened just in time to save him. However, that was also the problem. Lucas could not rely on luck. He had to be more careful and stop underestimating his opponents. He had grown too confident that he understood the rules of this new game he was playing, but Helix was just a soldier, not an infiltrator. And by the looks of things, Donovan, Monic and the enigmatic Commodore Neverok had a lot more of experience.

Come to think of it, Lucas thought, it was about time he faced the Commodore. But there was always something to distract him or keep him occupied. Like now. How did the thugs know he was here with the Knight Protector? The only ones who knew were himself, Zeti and Markus. The mechanic had seen Lucas and Alexandra head in this direction when he exited the repair bay.

Helix stood there wondering if he had been too late in securing the psi-witch’s team. As he turned around, he dropped in the ground and crushed it beneath his foot. Lucas then repeated the same task with the bodies of the other dead thugs. All except the one who with the broken nose. After taking a closer look, Helix noted that the man was nearing his sixties, meaning he had to be the leader of this group since there was no way he could much in strength or speed with the others. The old-timer was not yet dead, which made him a perfect candidate for testing the exact nature of Miss von Eisstahl’s psionic powers.