He swiveled the chair to face away from the small desk in his quarters on the transport and stood. It was a conditioned response, and he knew it. Evan Litong didn't like to worry, and worry was caused by stressful situations, and he preferred to deal with stressful situations directly. He preferred to act, and that usually involved movement. This understanding did not keep him from pacing the small length of the room, but it did keep him moving slowly instead of tearing about as he might have done under less control.

What were they trying to tell him? He should have been able to figure it out. As it was, he was only able to discern that it was something they did not trust the system to tell him, and that meant it was something serious.

Donovan and Dominic had been his wards since they were six years old. When he was still in school, he had helped to supervise their design, making improvements on older plans and solving problems the older projects had run into. As a result, he had been first in line to receive Caretaker status when their training began, and he had jumped to take it. He wasn't sure what he had expected when he met them for the first time. He had pictures of them, of course, and DNA maps and blood types and EKG records, but those told him only facts. Those facts had just confirmed what he knew when he made them. Evan Litong had designed them to be phenomenal, superior to the normal human in every way, and everything the machines were telling him agreed.

The first ten minutes of live observation showed him immediately how wrong - or rather, how inaccurate - his conclusions had proven to be. They were remarkable, extremely so. His machines hadn't been incorrect, merely incomplete. They were phenomenal, superior, but unquestionably human. At that age, they were given nearly constant instruction, and he wasn't allowed to interrupt until the end of the session. It gave him time to watch them interact. They had already completed an extensive series of mathematics, and it became clear to him after a minute or so that they were toying with the computerized instructor. The instructor presented them with a sample problem and explained how to solve it, and then offered them a similar problem and asked them for a solution. Don and Dom were writing the answer - but each wrote only half. Dom would work the problem out halfway, and then Donovan would complete it on his own desk (or vice versa), and they each wrote the correct answer at the bottom. The instructor was suffering some noticeable lag time as it attempted to make sense of the method used to acquire the answer as a possible alternative to the method suggested, but it wasn't programmed well enough to put the contents of the two desks together.

The amusing part was that they never looked at each other's desks, never made a verbal or visual agreement to stop one place or start another. They were only writing the problems out for show. The problems, whatever they were, had been completed in their heads, and they had invented a game to help them pass the time. Their synchronized smiles when the instructor finally gave up and shut itself down for the afternoon added to the effect. He hadn't designed their sense of humor; that developed on its own, like their self-mimicry. All he had done was lay the field in order; now it was his job to cultivate what would grow.

Evan Litong had always been reserved around his colleagues and peers. His few close friends he kept entirely separate, and never discussed his work with them. He was, according to most accounts, a quiet and focused individual, and he enjoyed that image. He was disturbed to realize that only a few weeks into his new assignment he was growing attached to them. That disturbance changed to a deep-seated fear, and gradually to reluctant acceptance. It wasn't healthy to get attached to the Creche children. They were property, and while he was consulted and allowed to make suggestions concerning their placement, if someone chose to purchase them that would be entirely out of his hands.

He resigned himself to the fact that not all emotional decisions could be made by conscious human logic, just as the mysteries of the human body could not be left to conscious human logic to function. His heart took the step his mind was incapable of, and Evan Litong gradually accepted his attachment to the twins as an unchangeable fact, and did his best not to think too hard about what would happen if they were sold.

When they were sold.

The Creche was a research center, without doubt, but it was a business, like any other. They provided a very specialized and very, very expensive commodity to the highest bidder. Donovan and Dominic were the best of the very best the Creche had to offer, and more than a few prospective buyers had already been turned away. Not only were they trained in combat and gifted with the same interchangeable personalities that all the twin pairs were, they had Command School training as well. Paramilitary outfits had made several very generous offers through quiet companies for them and just as courteously been rejected, but it was getting more difficult.

Litong didn't want them working for the Wolves. Litong wanted the IF to buy them. If that happened, there was an excellent chance their Creche bonds could be removed, and that meant freedom, of a sort. They would still be stuck in IF service, but no more than the other people who contracted to serve in the IF. They wouldn't be sold. They wouldn't be separated. They would be safe.

He couldn't guarantee them happiness or wealth or companionship, but he wanted to keep them safe. Soldiers weren't always safe, but at least they wouldn't be assassins. Everything was relative.

The arrival announcement was followed by the quick familiar shudder-click of the docking mechanism, and he began to pace again quietly to pass the hour left to him before customs was done and they allowed the passengers to leave the vessel. After a few minutes he stopped and sat at his desk long enough to type out a brief message to Dominic, since that was the brother who had sent him the message in the first place, informing him of his arrival and telling him to meet him for dinner with Donovan.

It upset Gabe, the very thought of it. In their two years in the Special Ops AIT, they had suffered much, Sol and he. They'd had to give up their energy, their sleep, their security, their sanctuary, their chess. They'd borne everything Hale could inflict upon them, and they had overcome it all. But the one thing that Hale hadn't taken from them, the one thing that he could have taken but didn't, was their proximity. Through everything else he'd done to them, they had been together. Hale had pushed them in every way but one: he never, once, tried to separate them.

They'd not slept a single night apart, not since Gabe had climbed down into Sol's bunk to comfort Sol while she was having a nightmare, that first morning in Command School. Every night since, they had slept in the same bed. They had not always been able to sleep at the same time, and they had not always had the time or energy to do any more than sleep, but they had always shared the same bed, always slept in each other's arms.

And so the very thought of sleeping in a cold, unfamiliar bed, alone, upset Gabe. They had sacrificed so much for this program; so much, just to beat Hale. They would be going their own way after graduation, and whether or not they completed Hale's program meant, from an objective viewpoint, nothing. They already had all the training they were going to get; all that remained was the title. And they didn't even intend to use it, after graduation. They just wanted to disappear into that crowded blue orb they'd been absent from for so long, and stay out of history's way. The IF and the Wolves could fight their stupid, self-destructive war, but Gabe and Sol wanted none of it.

No, this was about pride. This was about besting Hale at his own game. Gabe had questioned, many times, whether that pride was worth the price they paid each day, wearing their bodies down and allowing so little time to replenish them. Even now, he questioned it. But if they gave up now, then every sacrifice that had come before was wasted. It would all have been for nothing. And they had sacrificed too much to throw it all away now, even if the cause was stupid. Their course was chosen; to stray would only negate all their sufferings thus far, and leave Hale the victor.

And that could not be allowed.

So they would play this game Hale had set for them, and they would endure this final sacrifice. When they arrived at the Central Command Post, they would execute the plan they had formed back on the first shuttle, and interact only as Warren and Harrison would be expected to. At no time would they say or do anything to suggest that they were anyone but whom they claimed, whether they were alone or in company. They would be their aliases, until it was time to act, and then it would be too late for security or anyone else to stop them.

They sat in their room, on the lower bunk, their fingers intertwined in Sol's lap. The shuttle had finished docking, and soon the customs crew would be through the ship. Their dossier had been destroyed before they had left the first shuttle, and each of the documents was carefully recorded inside Gabe's mind. When the customs crew searched this compartment, there would be nothing for them to find that would suggest they were not Warren and Harrison.

The only object in the room that was not a part of their disguise, in fact, was hidden carefully upon Gabe's person, and because it contained no metals, no electronics, and no radioactive elements, their sensors wouldn't even detect it.

Once the customs crew was finished, they were led off the shuttle and processed. They were welcomed, and assigned a guide to show them to their quarters. Their introduction to the "Razor" team, they were informed, was scheduled for two hours from now, allowing them time to unpack and eat if they so chose, and that a guide would come fetch them.

They were led to the guest quarters section of the base, all four of them, and shown to their individual rooms. Gabe's came before Sol's so he met her eyes just briefly before stepping inside, and listened to them all the way down the corridor.

Standing just inside the doorway of his little room, Gabe had not felt so very alone since he and Sol parted ways at the start of their Earthside leave.

He busied himself with unpacking his alias's personal items, and concentrated on thinking as little as little as possible, or when that didn't work -- and it didn't -- thinking about the mission.

They'd planned it all out already; Sol was going to get in touch with their contact, because she was better at covering her tracks on the computer, while Gabe went scouting. He had all the schematics, deck maps, wiring maps, and other such documents that had been in the dossier filed away neatly in his memory; now it was time to go see which of the points of interest he'd mentally flagged would be useful to them.

So once he'd unpacked, Gabe set out from his room. He wanted to go see Sol; his mind started running through excuses for why Nicholas Warren might go see Melissa Harrison less than half an hour after last seeing her.

The mission, Gabriel. Think of the sacrifices. Think of the long days and longer nights. Think of the room. Thing of the chess set. And do not ruin this.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bunk and swept the blanket from off of herself in one fluid motion, her booted feet hitting the floor the same moment her hand snaked under the pillow and retrieved the fletchette pistol. It only took a movement to slip the weapon into the waistband of her trousers, straightening the jacket over to hide the bulge, and her fingers snapped the high collar of the stolen technician uniform closed as her lips quirked at the corners, and Riya stood in the middle of her quarters and smiled.

It was time.

The only things left to do were pick up the packet she had left on her bedside table and pat her wrists to make sure the sheaths there were secure, and then she palmed into the corridor. It was silent, and deserted, and even her steps made no sound as she strode calmly down the hallway and paused outside of a neighboring door. The desire to get to her real task was nearly overwhelming, but she ignored the excitement and slipped into the room, her eyes narrowing in the dim light and her features set in resolution as she stared at the girl asleep on the bed and frowned.

When she had decided on her course of action, it had finally given her the opportunity to ignore all the restraints that had previously hindered her actions. Without a master, she could go wherever she chose, do whatever she wanted, kill whomever she disliked... and now, she could reveal the secrets she had withheld from the only friend she'd ever found. Thoth was sleeping deeply when Riya lay the packet she'd been carrying onto the floor beside the bed, and with one final glance, she turned and stalked out once more.

Sayoonara, Thoth, and thank you.

As she entered the section of the station that held the engineering bays and adjoining technician rooms, she moved with more stealth, looking around her warily. She was in no hurry, not yet; the true rush wouldn't begin until she had the plans in hand. She checked her watch. Oh-two-hundred hours. The medical assistant wasn't scheduled to meet her in the infirmary for another half hour, but Riya would prefer to arrive there as early as possible; with this in mind, she pulled from her pocket a stolen keycard, and surreptiously slinked inside the nearest bay.

A light was on in the room furthest from her position, and she hissed between her teeth. No one should have been here this time at night. If she was caught, it was certain death... but Riya had no plans of dying, and the pistol was out and in her hands before she moved another step. Without a sound she crossed the bay, her steps sure and confident as she walked straight up to the open doorway and stopped. The technician inside turned from the display of computers to stare at her in confusion, his voice loud in the silence. "Hey, who're you, what're you doi--"

Riya smiled, and raised her pistol, and calmly shot him three times in the face.

The body slumped to the floor, and she nudged it aside with her boot as she took a seat at the terminal and placed the weapon next to the keyboard. Her fingers moved nimbly, and commands flitted across the screens as she searched. Thank Hale the SO AIT had taught them all rudimentary hacking skills; she'd known the basics, even back in Battleschool, but there were many IF-specific codes and security devices to bypass, and Hale had made certain they were well-versed in these. Minutes passed as she snuck her way deeper into the system, and finally, when the schematics for the corvette class Excalibur stood proudly on the screen as a testament to her skills, Riya plugged in a discette and watched the little bars tick away as the plans copied and transferred.

Done.

She was up and moving as soon as the terminal beeped, the discette back in her pocket and fletchette pistol tucked away once more as she ran across the empty bay. Into the hallways she jogged, keeping a careful eye on every shadow and every noise, but no one was around and nothing intercepted her, and four minutes later she found herself in one of the infirmaries. A figure merged from the dark, and raised a hand, and Riya nodded and waved back and stripped the jacket from her torso as she breathed deeply to calm herself.

"EMP wave, then cut the chip out. I don't need anesthetic. Hurry." She lay on one of the bunks, and the medical assistant she'd hired through the network approached with a handheld EMP device and a scalpel. Riya had been quite ready before to grab the plans and run, but one night random curiousity had prompted her to find information about the little chip the Command School doctor had inserted under her skin. Hale had said it was only a means to monitor their bodily condition, but as with all things where Hale and the IF were concerned, Riya was suspicious. He could just as easily tell how they were managing, without a chip, and research had revealed the insert to be a tracking device. Just like the International Fleet. Riya did not know what it might do to her, or what the SOTF could use it for, but did know there was no way she would allow it to remain.

The EMP beeped, and then she winced as she felt the blade slice through the skin on the back of her neck. Fingers probed the wound, and she bit her lip until the pain receded and a hand was held before her face. A tiny, bloody piece of metal was in the palm, and she picked it up and studied it for a moment before rolling from the bed and dropping the chip on the floor. It made a crunch as her boot ground it to dust, and for the first time in twelve long years, Riya finally felt free.

She shot the assistant, dragged his body behind a curtained partition, and then left.

Ten minutes later and she was in one of the docking bays, conversing quietly with the pilot of the little shuttle that would be carrying her to the nearest spaceport. There, she would board a larger vessel, and to Earth they would go. Back home. Riya wondered what Japan looked like now. She almost couldn't remember what real air smelled like, what real gravity felt like.

"Ready to go, miss?"

Riya took one last look around the docking bay, nodded, and boarded the shuttle. As the bay doors slid open, and the expanse of stars came into view, she stared out the little window of the main compartment, and smiled.

"They're boarding now. You should go." Mode's voice was nothing friendly, but it shook Jor from his reverie, and he nodded and picked up the hastily-packed bag that lay at his feet. He started toward the ship, a few hesitant steps, and then paused. The other man gave him a flat stare when Jor looked back, but it didn't stop him from speaking.

"Thanks."

He squared his shoulders, hefted his bag, and walked onto the ship.