It had been too long since Constance had been awakened by sunlight on her face and opening her eyes, she found the Duke had not lied about the magnificent view. Through the rays streaming in the open window, the entire valley was spread out in idyllic greens, browns and blues to rival the poetry the Battle Sister had become fond of over the course of her career.
Abigail Winters sat at her desk and contemplated the frozen image of the Palatine she had dispatched against her better judgment, standing ghostly, and transparent in holographic pause before her desk. There had been many fears to cloud her mind that she had ignored in an effort to save the careers of two sisters she felt had been dealt unjust hands at the game of life.
Constance floated, nude, in the recovery gel, listening to her breathing in the respirator strapped to her face, and remembered. The nutrient rich, not quite non-Newtonian fluid supported her as it fed the synth-skin that had been applied over eighty percent of her body. It covered seven holes in her torso that traitor small arms had managed to penetrate the ceramite of her armor, due to it's weakened state. Both legs, that had been badly burned in the explosion that had weakened her armor enough for small arms to penetrate it, were now as shapely and fulsome as they had been before she'd started the battle.
Tyler was ruefully grateful that she woke up in an infirmary bed, and not a Red Silo cell. But the fact that she was strapped to the bed with ultra-strong restraints spoiled that gratitude.
When Tyler got up the next day, there was a fresh laptop waiting for her, and the recovery disk she’d burned. She looked at the DVD like it was Pandora’s Box, and if she inserted it into the laptop, she’d unleash a whole new raft of woes into a world that was already packed with them.
“Miss Diabolik, WHY are you here?” the Colonel asked. “My name is Frost,” she replied in a tone that said that he wasn’t scoring any points off her, “Jadis Frost. I am here to see Tyler Collier. You knew that. My statement of intent was filed a week before I stepped on the plane for Anchorage. Why are you asking me questions you already know the answers to?”
“Hello friends, how are we this fine lunch-hour?” Max set his tray down on the usual table he and his friends shared. They were all there. His roommate, and best friend, Toolbox. The group’s second techie, a Devisor named Electrics. The handsome and charming Exemplar with his prosthetic arm, Fused. The scrappy warper, Zeno, the freshman, Bawumba, towering over them all, even seated, the almost seven-foot-tall pyromancer, Firestriker, and lastly, despite him technically belonging to the enemy faction, a PDP named Chant had joined them.
Neala ran from the wooden shack that was her family home at the edge of the reservation, and was at the old portable which was jokingly called a school a minute later. Normally, running as fast as she could down the icy snow covered road it would have taken five minutes, especially in her winter clothes, but that was before she manifested. Now she was so fast it sometimes seemed like everything was moving in slow motion.
Whew, what a day. This Fourth of July had been light on the explosions, but oh man, what fireworks! Once the buzz over his adopted broth... er, Ches's big exit from his incubator had subsided, Dr. Dork had made Ches repeat that sneeze cannon trick over and over in the testing lab, until nothing more than sparks erupted from that arched nose. He'd helped out with the scanning equipment, which was the coolest part, and technically it'd been him who found the extra lump behind Ches's nasal arch. Dr. Dork said that it must be what allowed Ches to stock up electricity in there, but Myra said it just made him -- her -- look like a Bajoran, and then the whole thing turned into a "What Marcus needs to watch next" conversation for a while. Deep Space Nine sounded cool.
>Dr. Derek Speers entered the chamber several minutes ahead of schedule, well before anyone else. He had a natural nervousness about new places, and that this one was an official government meeting hall did not calm him for an instant. A few minutes to familiarize himself, that was all he needed, and he took advantage of post-lunch tardiness to come to terms with his surroundings. The room was quiet, austere, with none of the grandeur or even largesse he'd come to expect of Congressional architecture. There was a wide arc of comfortable chairs placed behind a series of long tables. Those were for the committee members; he wouldn't have the luxury of sitting for the next few hours. His place was front and center, standing on display like some horrible parody of a university professor set to serve as a warning for all.