Rat entered the dimly lit room furnished almost exclusively with a large table at one end, with five people sitting behind it. The rest of the room was sparsely populated with a number of people, shrouded in darkness, sitting in folding chairs facing the front. As Rat entered, they all turned to look at her.

She was struck with a memory from her childhood at the complex. The overseers had brought in some vicious doglike animals, to flush out a rodent problem. All the slaves had gathered around the cages, pressing their faces against the windows, fogging the glass, and whispering as the trapped animals prowled back and forth, hackles raised but unable to escape.

Rat felt like one of those beasts right now. It was a familiar feeling, one that made Rat’s stomach clench. Some things just didn’t change, regardless of how nice this group acted.

The sharp eyed man sat behind the table. A few people sat at his side. To his left, was the red haired woman from the doctor’s room yesterday. Next to her sat a young man with dark skin and piercing eyes. On the right side of the man in charge sat another woman, much smaller and older, with narrow eyes and black hair piled up on her head. Seated beside her was another woman with cropped brown hair and a series of markings and piercings on her face.

On the other side of the table sat a vacant chair. The man gestured at it.

Rat didn’t like sitting there. She could feel the eyes of everyone else in the room on her back as she sat facing the table. It was all she could do to fight the urge to glance over her shoulder at them.

The man in charge shifted in his chair, straightening his broad shoulders. "Hello, Rat. We’re grateful for your presence here and your cooperation.” The pleasantry sounded foreign in his mouth and his tight lips betrayed none of the aforementioned gratitude. “I am Victor Ganim, chief officer of The Earth Preservation Force.”

He extended his hand towards Rat. She stared at it. It was too slow a gesture to be violent. She patted down her pockets, looking for something to give him, maybe as tribute or homage to the leader of this group, but her search came up empty.

After some silence he retracted his hand. "Right, right… Let me introduce you to the rest of the head officers, so you feel more welcome." Rat was still fairly certain he didn’t want her to feel welcome. Her seat was lower than theirs, forcing her to look up to them, and with her back exposed to the rest of the room, she was vulnerable. No, Victor wanted her to feel uncomfortable and he was succeeding.

He gestured to the red head. "This is Dainara, head of engineering."

Dainara nodded, without looking up from her tablet.

“Next to her is Masimba, head of espionage and intel.”

The dark man nodded his bald head. “It is good to meet you, Rat.”

“To my right,” Victor continued, “is Zhou Mei, our head of commerce and logistics.”

She smiled at Rat, her ancient face crinkling into a thousand wrinkles as she did. Hers was the friendliest face in the room and Rat breathed out some of the pent up air in her lungs.

“And finally, next to her, Naunet, in charge of tactics and combat oversight.”

The tattooed woman nodded a hard, sharp jerk.

Then Victor turned back to Rat. "The objective of this discussion is a trade of information, followed by, potentially, a partnership. We need to learn about you and I assume you have questions about us.” His jaw set hard. “We’ll start by discussing your… uniqueness. The Deathless. Miracles.”

If he expected Rat to demand they identify their little group’s purpose, he was going to be disappointed. Rat cared way more about learning about Deathless and whatever else Victor might know than their little rebellion.

He leaned back. “So… a proper and true deathless, yes? That’s what we’ve heard from Wyane."

Rat bristled, not expecting a question to be directed at her so quickly. With so many eyes on her, she defaulted to her tried and true tactic of navigating tense social situations. “You were literally there when he told me. Did you suffer random brain damage and forget? Pretty sure my brains were the ones blasted all over the floor, not yours.”

Victor ignored her. "Have you determined your miracle?"

Rat swallowed, pissed at him steamrolling over her. “Given I just learned I was a Deathless yesterday, I’m not entirely sure I’d have time to figure out whatever a miracle is."

He pressed his lips together. “I would imagine you’ve discovered your new abilities but haven’t yet attributed them to a miracle yet.”

“I literally do not even know what a flarging miracle is,” Rat said. “Is that an English word?”

Now Victor looked perturbed, which was the first real time Rat has seen his composure crack. “You do know why the Deathless are so powerful-”

“How about you stop fucking assuming I know things.” She gripped the arm of her chair to avoid clawing at her new pants. "Like how often do I have to answer no to your bullshit ‘well you do know why’ questions? I don’t fucking know. I don’t know. I don’t know how Deathless are powerful or how they’re made. Just because I am one doesn't mean I know bilge about them.”

There was a crack as her chair split and she fell to the ground hard. Rat blinked a few times, dazed for a second, before examining her hands to find them filled with sawdust. She hadn’t even realized she’d been gripping the arms tightly. She looked up, expecting to find guns trained on her. Instead, she found Dainara standing with a hand out, as if telling those in the room to stand down. Zhou Mei peered over the table at her, an inquisitive look on her face. Rat’s eyes darted between the two women, before glancing over the others in the room. Even with Dainara’s wordless command, their hands were twitching towards their weapons and Rat’s body tensed, ready to attack.

"Rat," Victor said in a low, even voice. "We need you to calm down. Don’t you want us to tell you more about the Deathless? About ourselves?"

Rat growled. Now he was playing nice, promising to answer the questions he’d just asked her. The eyes of everyone in the room were locked on her, a stupid, tiny woman crouching on the ground like the feral animal they all knew she was. Her body shook, adrenaline pushing her to do something rash. But no, not this time. Rat was in charge of herself here.

"Fine," she spat. She stood, her shoulders barely clearing the table they sat at. "Explain."

He nodded. "Each Deathless has a unique power, something above strength and durability. It’s something intrinsically tied to their being, something terrifying. A miracle. It’s not always clear how it works. For example, the Deaconess, who I hear you’re familiar with, has some kind of power over people’s personalities and minds. She makes people do things they never would do.” A sweat broke out on the back of Rat’s neck but she kept her lips shut. “The Butcher King… His miracle relates to fighting but more than just brute strength. None have survived combat with him, so we’re not entirely sure. Now, are you familiar with Eden or Gambler?”

Rat blinked at this question. There were more than just the Butcher King and the Deaconess on Earth? “Can’t say that I am.”

He nodded. “As we expected. I don’t think Gambler has ever been sighted. We just know of his existence and his miracle, command over luck and chance. And Eden’s our local terror. He doesn’t leave the middle east much. He doesn’t have to. His miracle creates rampant growth with his blood. We’re pretty sure it’s just plant life but he experiments so frequently on human beings, harvested by his Drones, that we aren’t sure if his powers may extend to us.”

Rat’s skin crawled at that, remembering the Drone attack. So that’s what it meant when it said it wanted to bring her to Eden. “What kind of experiments?”

Victor’s face went dark. “We’ve only ever recovered a couple… well I’m not even sure you could call them corpses anymore.” He waved a hand. “This isn’t the time or place to discuss that. We will share what we know with you, if you join us, along with pictures. Pictures that will say more than words ever could.” His voice broke just a hair and for a moment the controlled set to his eyes wavered. Then he was back in control. “Besides, the real point of this discussion is to discern your miracle.”

They were assuming she knew. All the eagerly anticipating eyes that fixed her now were all waiting for her to drop some amazing power that she now had. No matter how much she said she didn’t know, no matter how much she protested, they didn’t believe her. It annoyed Rat, but at least she understood their curiosity and confusion. If every Deathless ever did, then Rat really was breaking tradition by not having any. Boy did that make them unlucky.

"Yeah, so, I’m gonna disappoint you here, but you got stuck with the only Deathless that doesn't have any powers.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Sorry.”

Victor raised an eyebrow and looked down the table to his left. “Is that right? Can she truly not have a miracle?”

Masimba whispered something to Dainra, who responded quietly in his ear.

Masimba nodded. “It is possible hers haven’t developed yet. Or that it has had no need to trigger. It sometimes can take something truly traumatic to bring the power forward.”

“Your guards reduced my body to a smudge of blood and some goop.” Rat rolled her eyes. “If I was gonna have some crazy powers pop up, that’d have probably been a good time for them to rear their ugly heads. Instead I got all your ugly heads, butting in my face.”

A few people laughed at this, including Zhou Mei, who watched Rat with the most delighted expression. Clearly most of the tension in the room hung between Rat and Victor. Everyone else seemed to treat this as a performance or lecture.

Victor waved the laughs off. “Alright, arlight, real cute. We’ll monitor your situation closely, see if anything develops. That is, of course, assuming you want to help our cause.”

Rat waited a moment. Then another. Five seconds. Ten. Her irritation grew at yet another open ended statement. This guy really expected her to beg for more information.

“Nope,” she said. “Figure any group that tries this hard to keep me in the dark, barely giving me half a response to a single question, just so I can fucking beg for more information isn’t the kind I want to associate with.”

Victor blinked several times, taken aback, and Rat’s lip curled into a smile.

“Woman has a point.” The tattooed lady on the end, Naunet, spoke up, her voice a rough bark. “You’ve put her in a compromised position from start and it’s really a fucking miracle itself that she’s still standing there⁠—fucking standing cause no one offered her a new chair⁠—still taking your crap.”

Victor bristled, turning to the woman. He forced a smile. “Would you like to explain our mission directive then?”

Naunet stood up and motioned to someone behind Rat. “Get her a damned chair.” Then she fixed Rat with hard, burning eyes. “We’re the Earth Preservation Force. Rumor has it that Galela told you that our goal was to boot the Deathless of the planet. Galela sees a lotta crap out there and feels strongly that we aren’t doing enough. That’s her MO and not the discussion of this meeting.”

Behind her, Rat heard the scrape of a chair as someone placed a new one before scurrying off. This one was already better, higher and more protected in the back. She sat down, keeping her chin level at Naunet.

“So what do you do?” Rat asked.

The woman brushed a hand. “Getting there. We fight the threat of the Deathless.”

“How is that different-”

“You want your damn answers or not?” The woman sat back in her seat, staring Rat down. “If I get to the end and you still got those questions, then fucking ask. Otherwise, keep your piehole shut while I give you the DL, yeah?”

Rat clipped her mouth shut, momentarily stunned at someone dishing back to her. Zhou Mei laughed at this, Masimba grinned broadly, and even Dainara snorted. Victor remained stony. Rat crossed her arms, silent. She could wait with her questions.

“We fight their threat, their presence,” Naunet continued. “They send out Drones or bomb a city or decide to move a mountain that was blocking the view from their little summer homes. We rescue Drone victims, provide resources to citizens of destroyed towns, and evac cities in harm’s way. We can sabotage their efforts, misdirect their drones. Or, I suppose kill their drones now that you're here. Killing the Deathless isn’t really on the table, so we do what we can and we think you might be able to give us some backup.” Naunet leaned back in her chair, just a hair more relaxed than before, so Rat spoke.

“You want me to help by… not defeating Deathless.” It seemed kinda stupid that they might finally have the chance to do something but only wanted Rat to play recovery. “Why can’t I kill the Deathless?”

"It’s literally in their name," Dianara interjected, speaking for the first time. "They’re called Deathless for a reason."

"Well its a stupid name.” Rat fidgeted in her chair, resisting the urge to jump to her feet. ”Wyane said they could die plenty. I sure as fuck did!"

“And how well did that stick?” Dainra asked back.

"That's enough." Victor's voice brokered no argument. "Rat, I didn't call you in here to argue semantics, or about our mission statement. That is what we do. You know what you need to know about our goals and efforts. You can either help us, or you can leave. Your choice."