Prism awoke to the sound of strange birdsong and the rustling of leaves above him. He twisted and stretched in the bench seat of the truck he’d slept in, yawning loudly to let anyone around know that he was awake. He soon heard the familiar chatter of voices in his head that told him that everyone else had been up for awhile.

  “Glad you folks let me sleep in,” Prism shared through their telepathic link.

  “We’re packing up and heading out in a few. We were just going to let you be until the wheels started turning,” Ursun shared back.

  “Everyone sleep well?” Prism asked.

  “Like babes,” Leanna shared with a chuckle.

  “Our watch was uneventful. Just a few burrowing animals that scared Srell in the middle of the night,” Lorias explained.

  “I wasn’t scared! I just thought we were under attack!” Srell shared while looking furiously at Lorias as the two of them carried a rectangular black box over to the truck.

  Prism had been impressed when the bundle had inflated into a sizable tent last night, and would have been equally impressed by how quickly it had deflated into the long box the two men were carrying. “With stuff like that, who needs magic?” Prism thought to himself.

  The biggest surprise of the morning, however, was the matter of Wadaw’s face.

  “Your mask…it’s back…” Leanna had mentioned almost without breath when she saw him leave his tent after the sun had risen.

  “It grew back.” Wadaw had said before starting his morning stretching exercises on the flat patch of soft soil between the tents and the vehicles.

  Leanna had gotten close enough to the man to see that the general shape of his face beneath the mask had changed back to what it had been when she’d first met him. She tried to scan the mask with her smart-visor, but the readings were confusing to her. “Are they really nanites?” she’d finally asked after a frustrating few minutes of head scratching.

  “That they are. I have stores of them in the marrow of my bones in case the main colony on my face is damaged or removed,” Wadaw had said as he brought his nose to his knee from a standing position.

  “I guess this explains why you were unharmed back at the mountain base when all that stuff fell on top of you.”

  “They do make me quite a bit hardier than the base model human.”

  “Your “good friend” did a good job of hiding their true nature. They register as biological material when I scan your mask,” Leanna had said before being joined by her other teammates.

  As the morning progressed, everyone had similar questions for Wadaw, who revealed the secret of his mask as quickly as he’d done with Leanna. Srell had begged for a few of the nanites of his own while Ursun had scolded Wadaw for flaunting such risky technology.

  “You’re likely to get us all exterminated by the Queen herself,” the angry commander had said loudly enough to make Prism stir in his sleep.

  Wadaw wagged his fingers at Ursun and said, “Don’t worry, old friend; the nanites that are removed from my body degrade into a structure identical to dead skin cells.”

  Within the hour that Prism had woken up, everyone was riding the vehicles out of the subterranean alcove and through the lush green foliage of the rainforest. The plants looked completely normal compared the light show they’d put on last night, a fact that Srell mentioned more than once. Srell, the team's best marksman, sat in the minihowitzer’s bench seat, leaving Wadaw in the truck’s passenger seat beside Lorias.

  “Are we still on schedule?” Lorias asked Wadaw without looking at him. The ranger kept his eyes on the narrow dark tracks behind Ursun’s vehicle and on the trees that seemed to be closing in on them as they drove deeper within the Central Viga.

  “Should be. We’ll get into the fishing village of Toto by sunset, then take a boat down one of the Vines tomorrow morning that’ll bring us into Zazi.” Wadaw waved his hands to gesture the path they were taking.

  Leanna saw Ursun flinch when Wadaw mentioned Toto. She figured it was just a random muscle spasm and put the oddity out of her mind.

  “Just one more day,” Lorias shared. He could barely believe the trip had been so quick, even with their “detour”.

  “This patch of forest is a hotbed for military activity. I’d be surprised if we're able to completely avoid any firefights.” Wadaw shared with the larger team.

  “There’s a chance that we will. I modded these vehicles to register as Central Vigan patrol vehicles to any military tech we come across." Prism smugly shared.

  "There'll be a few bands of my brothers and sisters making their way to Zazi as well. There is also very real possibility that we'll run into scattered fighting between them and Gusa's military goons. We might be dragged into that fighting, even with the magic you've worked on our transponders." Wadaw shared.

  "And if we run into any True Twins? Won't they blow us away, thinking that we're the enemy?" Srell asked.

  "I'm passively scanning the area while we move. I should have some warning of any attack or trap set for us," Prism was once again quick to answer.

  "I hope you're this capable once we get to Zazi. Our army will need all the help it can get against all the kingdom tech Gusa has at his disposal," Wadaw shared.

  "I just hope that we aren't all headed into the biggest ambush in recorded history," shared Ursun as he drove. "If your forces really number in the tens of thousands, then that's a lot of targets amassing in one area. Easy pickings for any number of kingdom weaponry. Plasma fields, directed radiation, heck, even just a few plasma beasts or plasma soldiers would lead to mass casualties," he explained further.

  "There are safeguards in place.” Wadaw’s charming smile radiated through the link.

  “You keep saying that,” Lorias shared. “Like I said, we’re one day out from this major operation. Give us some details.”

  “We've got men and women on the inside who are preventing the use of coordinated tactics against us. Widespread sabotage and interference operations are going on as we speak. This will be the end of Gusa's rule." Wadaw was firm in his conviction.

  “We’ll see.” Lorias cooled the fiery passion with which Wadaw communicated with.

  "I thought Central Viga was temperate like back home on the Peninsula. This rainforest is still as muggy as ever." Srell complained as he wiped some moisture from his cheek. He liked Wadaw and wanted to take some pressure off of him.

  "We're in a thin section of jungle that runs along the southern band of this region. If we'd been able to take that boat back in Spibo then we would have arrived further north, avoiding this clime entirely." Leanna explained. She'd extensively researched the geography of Sguvi over the past several months in anticipation of their current mission.

  “Don’t worry; Zazi is in the temperate region you’re talking about.” Wadaw shared.

  “Do the evergreens there glow at night like the plants do here?” Prism asked.

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  “Yes.” Ursun shared with a glance at Prism through the rearview mirror.

  “This central region of the Sguvan continent is one big bowl that concentrates large amounts of mana, like mist in a cup of dry ice.” Prism shared. “I’m worried that I might drown in all of it.”

  “Speaking of glowing plants, you’ve been glowing slightly all morning. Is that going to get worse as we approach Zazi, which happens to be at the center of this region?” Leanna asked.

  She was looking straight at him from the passenger seat while Ursun drove with caution. Her torso was twisted while she held herself in place using the back of her seat. Prism was reminded of her significant flexibility, one of the perks of her particular gene-line.

  “It can’t get worse. You’ll get us all caught, looking like that.” Ursun said harshly. His eyes narrowed as he glanced at Prism again through the mirror. The indirect look did little to make Prism feel any better about his leader’s irritation with him.

  “Just a byproduct of my body naturally metabolizing free-flowing mana.” Prism shared with a nervous laugh. He dimmed the gleam coming from his dark skin. “Thanks for letting me know about that. I’ll be more mindful of it in the future.”

  He nodded to Leanna and she nodded worriedly back to him before she turned around in her seat. He could feel the mana dancing across his skin like electricity, tracing random patterns across it. It was a pleasurable sensation, for now.

  “Are you ready to tell us about your previous mission here in Sguvi, boss?” Lorias shared as he grew bored of merely driving.

  Ursun cleared his throat and looked at the truck behind him through the side mirror to his left. He could see Lorias smirking at him, daring him to deny the request. Ursun gripped the steering wheel hard until his knuckles became white. “Might as well; we’ve got a few hours to kill,” shared the commander.

  “How serendipitous,” Leanna said aloud while she leaned back against the passenger-side door to watch Ursun from a more relaxed position.

  Ursun coughed again despite not using his mouth to communicate with the others. “As you all know, I and the rest of my original RED-1 team came here seven years ago. We were joined by a Thorns team led by Theda Lymm, who's now also known as the Peacekeeper. We snuck into the country with the help of Wadaw and the True Twins." shared Ursun as he watched Wadaw in the side mirror. "I knew him as Jiwadi back then. I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting this version of him until recently."

  "We smuggled them in and out of the country aboard two separate merchant ships, one for the Thorns and one for RED-1. It took some creative thinking since the Royalists deploy the very best scanners to stop the transport of various contraband into and out of Sguvi," Wadaw shared in reply.

  "Our two teams arrived a month apart. My team team arrived first. We had the connections with the True Twins as well as the adaptability and agility to get a better lay of the land. We had an edge that the Thorns didn't," Ursun continued to share.

  "He had a Sguvan defector on his team. That's what really gave his team their "edge"," Wadaw shook his head as he made air quotes with his fingers.

  "Are you going to tell the story or am I!?" Ursun shouted through the link.

  "Apologies, apologies. Please, continue. I won't interrupt again," shared Wadaw with a sigh.

  "Spurfo wasn’t just a defector; he was my best friend. We came up through training together. He was a year younger than me, and half my height, but he always managed to keep up with me. He might have been born into the True Twins, but he was one of us Red Wolves; from his hair to his PAWs.”

  Everyone felt the complexity of Ursun’s many emotions bleed through their shared psychic connection. Their intensity made it challenging for Prism to moderate their transmission while he continued scanning their surroundings. It was clear to them all that Ursun had loved Spurfo dearly and missed him terribly.

  Ursun took a hand off the steering wheel to wipe his eyes before continuing. “We’d planned the operation for months with the True Twins. They say that they don’t have leaders, but they definitely have experts that divvy up responsibilities. Jiwadi, or Jiwa as I call him, was one of those experts. He was the one voice on their planning committee that dissented. He ended up helping to make the best mission plan possible when he realized that the operation was going ahead regardless of how he felt about it.”

  “And what was the mission, exactly?” Leanna asked after there was a long pause in Ursun’s sharing. Her impatient curiosity got the best of her.

  “To infiltrate the Ewada and kill the Council of Elders that meets there each morning,” shared Ursun. His austere demeanor was returning to him.

  “So it wasn’t just Monarchist propaganda…” Leanna mumbled to herself.

  “My team came in through the far-northern shipping routes. The Royalists don’t monitor that region as much since it’s so underpopulated. It took us two weeks to make our way down to Zazi undetected. It took a lot of coordination on the True Twins’ part, but we made it. Spent a lot of time in boxes, that’s for sure.” Ursun started to smile. “Once we were in Zazi, we were out in the open more. We used this powdery brown biopolymer makeup that Gnapp and Liam had created. Made us look a bit more like your average Sguvan while also tricking the biomed scanners that were on every street corner,” he shared while rubbing the newly enchanted comm-clasp on his ear. “Simpler times. Two weeks of intel gathering went by without incident. We were busy little bees gathering as much as we could for the big day. And then the Thorns arrived. Same route as us, but they ended up getting stuck 200 kilometers north of Zazi. I went to help them, me and Kamy. I couldn’t leave that man-child in the city, not without my oversight.”

  “Kamy was a real troublemaker. He tried to start a coup within the Mercenary Division back when Lorias and I worked for Security.” Srell shared.

  “And you let him stay on your team!?” Prism asked Ursun in disbelief.

  “He was on RED-1 before me. He felt that he was unfairly passed over to become the team’s leader so he did his best to reverse the division’s decision.” Ursun shared. He remained calm, but the others could faintly sense his defensiveness. Prism was slowly getting better at keeping the man's emotions out of the link.

  “With all due respect, sir; the guy undermined your authority any chance he got and nearly had a third of your division’s leadership kill another third of it.” Lorias shared more sternly than Prism was used to him being with Ursun.

  “Yes, yes, all of that is true. Kamy was a good merc; one of our best. Finisome locked him up for the attempted coup and I felt he’d been rehabilitated there. Kamy taught me not to be such a soft-headed over-trusting git. Theda and him both taught me that.”

  The memory of Ursun and Theda lying in bed together came to the forefront of Prism’s mind. “What happened when you and Kamy met up with the Thorns team?” Prism asked aloud.

  “I spent a day in a cabin with her deep in the Zaviga, which the rest of the world calls the Upper Viga. She and I were lovers at the time, so we were happy to spend time in each other’s arms before returning to a mission that might be our last." Ursun paused to pinch the bridge of his nose, then continued. "Her team, myself, and Kamy headed into Zazi that night after using what was left of our biopolymer makeup on the Thorns. We snuck into the Ewada a week later using intel Theda had gathered on her own that contradicted the intel me and my team had spent weeks getting. Kamy..." Ursun cursed aloud and slapped his steering wheel hard enough to make the vehicle swerve a bit. "That idiot backed her even when I told them to wait on confirmation. The two of them then convinced Spur and Theda's team to go down there, to the Ewada. She was so sure that the entirety of the council would be there without Gusa. Our original plan only placed five of the crusty old freaks in the Ewada at any given time, but she was certain that we’d have a golden opportunity to take out all nine of them without worrying about being vaporized by the cyborgized freak Singular himself. The fact that she wouldn’t wait for the True Twins to confirm her intel was what really pissed me off.”

  “How did you, Ruz, and Theda survive?” Leanna asked. She was on the edge of her seat, leaning closely to Ursun while he drove beside her.

  “I let the six of them go on ahead. I was so angry! It pisses me off even now!” Ursun squeezed the steering wheel until Leanna thought the veins in his massive hands would burst. He took in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled before he continued sharing. “We didn't have comms during the mission, so I had no way of knowing what was going on after they left. After about thirty minutes of no word from them, I made the decision to head down the secret route we'd planned to use to enter and exit the Ewada. I wanted Ruz to stay back, but he went with me. We ended up finding Theda slashed up and bloody halfway through the tunnel. We got her out of there before we were all discovered and just barely made it back to our safehouse before the city was locked down. It took us two weeks before we were able to sneak out of Zazi and get on a boat back to the Peninsula."

  "How'd you know that the others were killed and not captured?" Prism was the next to ask.

  "Theda saw everything. Her two Thorns were cooked alive by Gusa's cyborg bodyguards' millimeter wave guns, along with Kamy. Spur...he was vaporized by Gusa himself. That evil son-of-a-bitch called him a "race traitor" before somehow creating an arc-flash that probably destroyed any remnants of the others' bodies as well. She led them all to their deaths then watched them be executed while she cowered behind a corner. She was only injured because she caught some of the shrapnel from the arc flash."

  Ursun quietly shook his head as he imagined what Theda must have seen for the hundredth time. He'd thought that he could forgive her after their mission at Getla Base last year, but retelling the events that led to the dissolution of their relationship only reminded Ursun of how impossible it seemed to ever absolve her of the deaths that he still believed were on her hands. She'd been convinced by a Royalist spy as easily as a child would be convinced by a stranger with candy.

  "Wow..." was all that Leanna could manage to say.

  Prism bowed his head and wiped a tear from his eye without anyone else seeing. He'd somehow moderated the extreme emotions that Ursun had experienced while telling them of one of the most traumatic failures of his past, but at the cost of Prism's own emotional stability.

  "I have to hang on! Just a bit further...!" Prism told himself as he squeezed his thighs and maintained his expanded perception of the forest all around them through gritted teeth.