The Mysteria system.
Hours after the team left, a man dressed in black entered the club after hours. His clothes were modest, and the only sound he seemed to make came from the spurs on his boots.
All Frem heard was some gunfire and then slow, methodical steps toward his office door. He watched as the door opened and a man stepped in, hooded and covered in black.
He knew who this man was.
"Frem Allerhine," the man in black called in a whisper. "Your name has appeared upon my list, and now I come for your head."
"Pl—"
Before the plea could leave his mouth, Frem was shot between the eyes.
The man in black opened his communicator and waited for contact. A young man with an easy smile answered with a jolly, "Is it done?"
"Yes. Frem Allerhine is dead, and this team, whoever they are, isn't far behind. But, Aron, this"—the man in black enunciated—"this is the last job."
"Of course!" agreed Aron. "Of course!"
Even at light speed, the Mysteria system was a long distance away, so the kids and Ace had lots of time to get to know and annoy one another.
In a room that resembled an egg, Ace and Asander sparred lightly. Asander was a skilled combatant but disliked brawling. Instead, he preferred to grapple. Ace hated grappling, mainly because he wasn't trained in many holds or submissions. He preferred landing a few well-timed and precise strikes to the weak points of his opponents.
This was why he felt for Asander's ribs closest to his lungs while Asander cinched the chokehold he currently had Ace in. Once he found them, he drove his elbow hard into Asander's ribs, causing Asander to loosen the hold. Ace slipped out, allowing him to land several more blows to Asander's ribs, keeping his younger opponent out of air. Ace then struck Asander's calves with a sweeping kick, causing him to fall on his back.
Ace pressed his knee to Asander's chest and raised his fist in preparation to strike.
"Yield?" he asked.
Asander nodded after a moment and was let up.
"You fight kinda dirty," Asander complained.
"So will your enemies. Not everyone is gonna play fair, and they are definitely not gonna care that you're still a kid," Ace explained.
An alert sounded, which caused everyone to gravitate toward the cockpit.
"Mysteria. It lives up to its name," Malreki remarked.
"That's one of its moons, Pulros," Ace corrected, then examined the coordinates again. "These don't actually lead to the planet, but to the moon. That's why Enzion sounded the alarm..."
The team gathered at his sides, peering at the scan readouts of the moon below.
Neira smiled confidently. "No noxious gas, no structures, and no life-forms bigger than my knee. Cakewalk."
Rip shook his head. "But where did the beam come from?"
Alessa furrowed her brows and took another look at the seismic readouts.
"It's not on the moon..." she said slowly. "It's inside the moon."
Asander stared at Alessa before responding. "How can you tell? I just see seismic quakes."
Alessa pointed to the most recent seismic readout.
"See that symbol? At the academy, they taught us about the war with the Venratu. The Tiberian army had trouble fighting Venratu forces because they would mine and create miles of tunnels. The Tiberian army would enter, get lost, then get picked off by the much smaller Venratu forces. However, the Tiberians adapted and developed technology that could tell the difference between mining and earthquakes. Using that technology, they were able to end the war with strategic bombardment, which caved in the tunnels."
Alessa pointed again at the readout right as seismic activity was recorded.
"That's not an earthquake. It's mining."
Ace sat in the pilot's chair and brought the ship into orbit around the moon under cloak. Upon landing, he and the team suited up and exited Enzion by twos.
Asander and Rip investigated to the right, walking as stealthily as they could while looking for signs of a base. They found a single small metal door that seemed to be automatic and opened by sliding up.
Asander and Rip stared at the door for a brief moment before searching for some kind of trigger to open it.
"You think it's voice-activated?" Asander asked out of frustration and sarcasm.
Right as Rip was about to answer, the door slid open to reveal two guards now standing opposite the two boys.
The guards reacted almost immediately. They both began to reach for their guns, but before either could grasp his weapon, Asander flitted and struck both in the jaw with enough force to knock them unconscious.
With a smirk, Asander half turned to Rip.
"The door was not voice-activated!" Rip retorted as he stepped over the unconscious men. "Why did you knock them out instead of eliminating them?"
"Because..." Asander grunted as he picked one of the guards up and carried him to a nearby door, which turned out to lead to a storage closet. "I'm not a psychopath, and I'm not gonna—"
He pushed the man inside, but the man then began to fall forward onto Asander.
"Get back in there," Asander told the unconscious man, pushing him back into place. "I'm not gonna kill unless I have to," he finished his original comment as he picked up the second man and put him in the closet as well.
Rip examined the door controls, intent on jamming the door open so the rest of the team could enter. He called out to Darec.
"Darec, can you hear me?"
"Ow," came Darec's annoyed voice.
"Yeah... you don't have to yell, dude. It's telepathy," Devika answered.
"Sorry. We found an entrance," Rip explained in what he hoped was a softer voice.
"The door was voice-activated," Asander chimed in.
This was followed by the distinct sound of a blow landing and Asander exclaiming, "Ow!"
"Don't move. We are on our way," Ace commanded. It was rare to see him exert authority, given how phadorians felt about being commanded.
While the others made their way to the boys, Rip and Asander made themselves busy by prepping things. They jammed the door so it couldn't close on the others and, through some tampering with the security pad next to the door, disabled any alarms that jamming it might set off.
Next, they took positions on each side of the hallway and held them.
There were several things Aron knew. He was, by many different accounts, handsome; he was undeniably rich; and there was someone breaking into one of his facilities.
With the push of a few buttons, a haloscreen appeared, showing two boys. They were identical twins, with the exception of their tools and hair. One had black hair, while the other had white, as if someone had run out of ink.
As he looked on, more trespassers entered through the door they had apparently jammed, judging by the fact that he couldn't close it from his controls. With a sigh, Aron tapped a button, which caused another screen to appear. Before long, a man's face filled the screen.
Aron began speaking, cutting off the man's false flattery.
"There are intruders in your facility. They are to be eliminated. Deploy the guards, wipe the hard drives, and, Commander, get yourself out of there. Make sure you open the blast doors now so you can leave faster."
At that, Aron hung up and continued watching his screens.
The effect was immediate. The alarms sounded, and guards began mobilizing, taking up defensive positions.
"Maybe those are greeting alarms?" Ace quipped, which caused Neira to roll her eyes.
"Someone obviously knows we're here, which means—"
Alessa placed a small device with a haloscreen and keyboard against the wall and began typing. After a moment, she smiled.
"Someone was watching us through the cameras, but I cut them. Now, only we have access to the base's surveillance."
Rip peeked around the corner, checking for enemies. He was spotted and almost roasted by a laser. Luckily for him, Ace pulled him back and placed the boy behind him.
"Next time, peek, then hide. Lasers equal hide. No lasers equals no hide."
Ace reached into his bag and brought out a new sort of gun about as long as his arm, with hinges halfway along it that allowed it to bend around corners. The gun also came outfitted with a screen.
Ace held the gun out and flicked his wrist, causing it to bend around the corner. At that point, the screen blinked on, and Ace began poking at different points on it. Once he was satisfied, he grinned.
"Watch this!"
He pulled the trigger.
There was a loud bang followed by several thuds. The group peeked around the corner and saw that what was once a hallway crowded with guards was now a hallway crowded with their corpses.
"Huh," Malreki started. "And they say you can't shoot around corners."
"Shun the nonbelievers," Ace responded. "Later, though."
The group made their way to the control room, which they found empty. Alessa walked to the computers and began trying to pull up any evidence they could use.
Darec reached out with his mind and found that the crew had mostly abandoned the station and boarded a large vessel in the docking bay.
At this point, Alessa slammed her fist on the computer.
"They erased everything!"
Darec turned and met Alessa's eyes.
"Is it possible that they copied the information onto a datapad, then erased everything here?" he asked coolly.
Alessa nodded. "It's more than possible."
"Devika." Darec sent his sister the way to the hangar and the engine room. "Can you stall them? I cannot."
Devika nodded, reached into the engine room, and began to crush the engine.
Rip felt useless, so he turned to Ace to give an explanation.
"Darec can feel the ship and maybe stop it, but the last time he practiced doing something like that, he ended up crushing the whole ship."
Ace nodded. "Wouldn't want that. That could destroy our evidence. We should probably make our way to the hangar. They might be able to repair the damage."
Once the group reached the hangar, two things became apparent almost immediately. The first was that the base commander was stranded in the hangar and could not escape. The second was that there was a man standing directly opposite them.
This man, if he could be described that way, was a tall, slender shape dressed in gray and black. His eyes never left the group as he began to speak.
"Commander, I have been sent to retrieve the information you currently have in your possession. It would behoove you to hand me the information so our employer knows it is safe."
The commander exited the ship from the rear and approached the new entity.
"I was so worried I would be unable to make it out," he began, but was cut off by a single gesture from the entity. He gasped, then fell to the floor in two pieces.
"My employer insists there be no witnesses," the entity stated, his eyes never leaving Ace.
Almost in synchronization, the two men removed their coats from their shoulders and let them fall to the ground at their feet.
No time was wasted. Both men drew their guns and began firing. As Ace suspected, the man he was facing also had a healing factor much like his own.
The entity was faster than Ace in terms of firing more rounds, but Ace was surgical with his shots. While the entity had fired more rounds initially, causing more damage, Ace aimed for the shoulder, elbow, or eyes. As the damage built, Ace lowered his left gun to his side and pushed a button on the side of the barrel.
He probed mentally, which felt strange given that he wasn't a telepath, for the link established earlier.
"What's up?" came Darec's voice.
"I need you to scan the floor for an object that fell while I was being shot repeatedly. It would look like a black ingot."
Darec scanned the floor and started to edge out from his cover to grab it. A blast from the entity's gun caught his shoulder. He quickly moved back to cover.
"I can't get it. He can adjust his aim too quickly! He clipped me, but luckily, I had my shield just over my skin," Darec reported.
A small chirp alerted Ace that his left gun was ready. A strategic shot to the eyes gave him the distraction he needed to raise his left gun, aim at center mass, and fire.
A green laser shot across the room and hit the entity, causing his upper body to explode and leaving only his lower body.
As soon as Ace fired his gun, Darec slid into place to grab the device. He saw Ace's plan and threw the small device into the entity's healing upper body.
The entity growled as his mouth reformed.
"Foolish little insects, you cannot kill me! I am of higher blood!"
Because he had been blown apart before, the entity had installed small metal plates in his hands to make finding his guns easier. The plates were designed to be specially magnetic to his guns and nothing else. The entity flexed his hands, and both guns flew into them.
As the entity raised his guns to fire at the group, Ace opened the hangar doors. Everybody hung on as space tried to rip them away forever. The entity laughed, and while everyone else struggled to hang on, he began walking toward the group.
Ace pointed his gun at the entity and pulled the trigger. That very second, the entity exploded, and his pieces flew out of the airlock. Once every piece of him was out, Ace closed the hangar doors.
"Enzion," he whispered into the comm. "Pickup needed."
"Why is your boss interested in my soul engine?" Aron demanded of the shadow that had seated itself in the chair opposite him.
The Shadow chuckled. "You and I both know what souls are worth, and my master is interested in what you'll do with all of this... spiritual energy."
Aron smiled more to himself than at the Shadow.
"That's for me to know and for you and your master to be amazed by."
"I'm sure we will be."
The Shadow chuckled, rose from the chair, and dissipated.
Aron was left alone now. He leaned back in his chair and entered a code into his computer, which brought up a halo of a blue man who stood with his hands clasped behind his back. The blue skin and interconnected designs of silver indicated the man was Cravian. Aron spoke his name as a greeting.
"Ecthor. I can tell by your demeanor that the experiments are not going well."
"Sir," Ecthor began, "the spiritual energy is bonding with the magicite. However, they are forming a new metaphysical element. Experiments on creatures are going well; however, the animals are showing increased aggressive behavior. This suggests frightening results with human experimentation."
Aron leaned forward and stared at no particular thing.
"Sometimes," he said, cutting Ecthor off from whatever he was droning on about, "we must do terrible things in the name of discovery to truly know anything."