“That’s not going to fit,” she finally told him.

He gave her a smirk.

“You think so?” He responded sarcastically. “All your Consortia knowledge tell you that.”

“I could help,” she offered.

He appeared to consider that for a moment, then reject the thought.

“A part that would fit could help.”

She sighed.

“I didn’t come here to get in the way,” Althea told him, already growing a little impatient.

“Then why are you here?” he responded calmly.

You want to get to the point? Good.

“I talked with Kyso,” she began, looking for the best way to begin. “He told me a few things.”

“Did he?” he offered dismissively.

“Traejan,” she started seriously. “I won’t tell you how you should feel about what happened to you. Or about who and what you’ve lost.”

Traejan glared at her sharply.

“But we are going south – at least I am – probably Kyso too,” Althea continued sternly. “You’re going to have to decide soon whether or not you can do it. I won’t think the worse of you if you can’t.”

She could imagine the fear that he felt, the grief and helplessness. She remembered hiding in a sewer when the First’s secret army quarantined and killed everyone in the ZAT – all her friends and then later her family. Either he’d be convinced to come or stay and be out of the way. She just needed to figure out which would be best.

“I’m coming,” he told her quietly, with no emotional inflection. She’d expected at least a challenge, the kind he showed her the night before.

“You’re sure?”

His expression darkened.

“Yes,” he told her, irritated, “I’m sure.”

She looked him over, noting his stubborn stance, pursed her lips. Her silence, attention, got a response.

“What did Kyso tell you?” he asked, voice rising, gesturing angrily. “That I’m a coward, a traitor?! That I abandoned all of them to their deaths? Or even killed them myself?”

She took a step back from the sudden fury, but as with Kyso, it was gone as soon as it had come. Traejan shook his head slowly.

“That’s not true,” he insisted. She could hear the pain in his voice – doubt and grief again. “If there was anything I could have possibly done…”

His expression of grief grew, and he put up a carbon-blackened hand to his face, covering his eyes, hiding them from her.

“Relax,” she said calmly, with as much sympathy as she could offer. She took at step towards him, palms up. He dropped his hand, dirty face looking pained.

“Please understand. We have to trust each other. “He looked back up at her, eyes wary.

“I have told you exactly why I am here, what I have to do – what I am capable of,” she continued. “I do understand your doubts. But you have to cast them aside. Can you?”

“You are Consortia,” he told her flatly. The statement sounded rehearsed.

“I think so… I have to…” he seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as her.

“Good,” she replied positively, turned serious, “Because we have a lot of work ahead of us. Kyso told me you know people in Panak, people who’ve gone south and come back.”

His expression turned derisive.

“Gregga’s,” he told her, contempt in his voice. “Scavengers. They can find tech, but they aren’t exactly trustworthy.”

Especially if they’ve been implanted.

“I don’t know how much you could trust them to do anything for you, Consortia or not,” he warned. “They’ll happily kill you, for a working piece, or a few grams of trilium – or just looking at them the wrong way. I wouldn’t even trust most of them north of the Ice Line, let alone south.”

She understood the sentiment. Where there were people, there was resentment, lies, manipulation, the hunger for wealth, power and control – however petty.

There lay the contradiction, the irony of her mission. Why fight for them? Why? Because they were human, because she was human, because what people did to each other paled in comparison to what the macros had done, still did – by many magnitudes. Althea reminded herself of that every day.

“Even so, you’re still going to help me find them, choose ones to take with us?”

He gave her a look she couldn’t read.

“Yes,” he told her lightly. “Sure.”

The dismissal in his tone irked her.

“Fine,” she told him. “Then you won’t mind telling me everything that happened to you – the last time you went south.”