Jun recoiled as if she’d been struck. “What? No!” She cried. “I’m not giving you that power over me!”

“So I figured.” Persephone quietly said with a nod. “Did you know that that is the first lesson we teach all new recruits?”

I frowned, but didn’t move. That seemed like one terrible lesson, especially since it ended up with Persephonia having complete control over her recruits. “What lesson?” I asked, keeping up the unknowing persona.

“I think you are already aware, but I will explain nonetheless. We instruct all of our recruits to grant us access to their interfaces, then once the instructor has control over each and every recruit, they remove all of their armor and show them how things are not as simple as they seem.” Persephone said severely, her words hard and laced with decades of experience. “Simply telling them led to situations I would prefer never to see again, but showing firsthand the terrifying loss of control led to a complete scouring of interface-related incidents.”

“You gave them control back, right?” Jun asked nervously, glancing between me and the closed door with fervor. “You aren’t keeping all of the control to yourself, right?”

Persephone didn’t move. “I gave back control for each and every interface I was given. It was a test and a lesson, not a punishment.” She stated plainly, but I could see her hands clasp tightly behind her back. There was a story there. “I can’t say the same for all of my fellows, though, as there is no way to see who has additional control over your interface until they make a change. I would like to think the best of my fellows, but it is my duty to keep you recruits alive and safe, so I can’t let myself fall into complacency.”

“All it takes is one bad morning.” I muttered.

“Yes, exactly.” Persephone nodded in agreement, then moved to sit down behind a desk carved out of lacquered coral that was covered in samples and paperwork. She turned to me, her four orange eyes locked on me without a hint of anger.

“You aren’t one of our people.” She plainly stated.

Jun sprung into motion, putting herself between me and Persephonia and summoning her sword. Both of her gauntlets unwound into masses of copper tendrils, forming a divider between the commander and me. “Run.” She ordered, her entire being as tense as it could be.

“Stand down, recruit. I don’t wish to harm your friend.” Persephone laughed, a small and harsh thing that barely counted as humorous. “A short while ago, we received information from on high that new contenders were introduced into the constant struggle for power that we strive to stay as far away from as possible.”

Persephone was suddenly between me and Jun, pressing the younger woman’s shoulders down until she sat in a chair that hadn’t been there a second ago. “New Embodiments have entered the fray, Juniper. Centuries-long alliances are growing tenuous at the prospect of new blood. Based on the records we’ve kept for millennia, new Embodiments only arrive along with a species’ introduction to the connected worldline.”

When Jun didn’t recoil with surprise, it told Persephonia all she needed to know. She turned back towards me and gently pressed a hand on my helmet, her expression unreadably blank.

“Seb’s not a bad guy!” Jun said in my defense, removing the last shreds of doubt Persephonia could have had. “He helped me survive the hazard, and didn’t take control of my interface when I gave him the chance!”

“A new species knows more about the hazards and system than you do.” Persephonia muttered, then shook her head. “That is my fault, I suppose, for adhering to our people’s traditions. Our outdated, asinine traditions. Seb–if I may call you that–how were you aware of the system’s intricacies?”

The cat was out of the bag, and it wasn’t being put down just yet. I had to try and get on the commander’s good side if I wanted to survive. “I had a built-in tutorial that told me everything I needed to know.”

“Had?” Persephonia interjected before I could continue. “Explain.”

“It went away when we left the hazard.” I lied, then bit my tongue. That was the wrong lie, since it would make Persephonia think all humans lost their tutorials when they left. “I had an option to keep the system or gain a different core, and I thought my old core was a little too weak, so I traded it. I’m not sure if it was a good trade or not, but that’s what I did.”

Persephone looked long and hard into my helmet, then snorted. “Of course. When you wish to tell me the entire truth, I will be ready to listen. Juniper; is this close enough to reality that I will not regret listening to this person?”

Jun jolted into a salute, even though Persephonia hadn’t turned to face her. “Yes! I mean–”

“Good enough, recruit.” Persephone said gently, and Jun relaxed again. “You and him are linked now. If he does anything, it will reflect equally on you. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Matria.” Jun said with a nod, still holding her salute.

“Very good. Armor off, the both of you.” Persephone ordered, stepping towards the back of the room and opening a set of mismatched purple and grey doors. “You will be staying in my quarters for the time being, until we can rule out foul play for Miss Keratily’s disappearance. But I must first check for any parasites you may have gathered during your time in the unknown hazard.”

Jun and I shared a look. How were there any unknown hazards left in this place, if people had been here for centuries? “Unknown hazard?” Jun asked as her helmet disappeared, but the rest of her armor stayed on. “You don’t know where we were?”

Persephonia shook her head. “There are no documented hazard entrances for where you emerged. The assumption is that it was created due to the incursion of a new species,” She gestured at me, “and that the fabric of the world is being re-knit to support them. Keep that knowledge between the three of us, as others are not aware of the new species as of yet.”

“Does Okeria know?” I asked, feeling oddly shy at the prospect of removing my helmet. “He didn’t act like it, but he could have been hiding it.”

“He is aware.” Persephonia answered. “Please doff your armor, Seb. I cannot clear you until you do.”

I grimaced, but removed all of my armor at once. My clothes were pretty badly singed, and the scars on my hands hadn’t fully healed yet, but the part of me that I was most ashamed of was my gut. Getting rid of that was going to be really difficult if I had to walk around in my armor all the time.

“A… prosperous species.” Persephonia noted after looking me up and down, and a slight delay upon seeing my midsection. “Descended from a species of mammal, if I would hazard a guess.” A window notifying me that Persephonia was attempting to use a function on me popped up for a half second, then disappeared without me being able to intervene. She nodded at me, then turned to Jun who still hadn’t removed more than her helmet.

“Uh, I don’t have any clothes on under this.” Jun shyly admitted.

Persephonia sighed and waved for me to leave. “You’re clear. Go wait in my quarters while I scan Miss Keratily.”

I nodded and stepped into the other room, the doors behind me slamming shut the moment I was through. It wasn’t anywhere near as messy here; a table and four chairs sat in the center of the room, along with a bookcase on the far end near a glass door that had a view of a massive courtyard. It had to be where all the recruits trained, as it had been beaten flat and marked with countless designs in Jun’s language, but it was completely empty at the moment.

Close to a minute later, I began to get worried for Jun. It had only taken Persephonia a moment to scan me, so what was taking her so long with Jun? Were there other questions she had to ask that she didn’t want me to hear, or was Jun being chewed out for going missing?

I shook my head and sighed. I couldn’t get caught up in that train of thought. I trusted Jun, and Persephonia knew far too much. If she wanted me dead, she could have done it without even trying. So I had no choice but to trust her, since not trusting her was far more dangerous. That left me with absolutely nothing to do, so I started wandering around the rather small living quarters.

The living room which I was standing in barely held more than the table and bookcase, just a few pictures and paintings on the walls of people and landscapes I’d never seen before. One looked like a tropical-themed waterpark made into a city, but the context of it made it look extremely religious. I remembered that Jun had said water was sacred to her people, so this had to be one of the worst wastes of a precious resource I’d ever seen.

Not that humans were much better, so I shook my head and kept looking. The other photos were of Persephonia and people I’d never seen before, between three and eight of them in each one, and everyone wore their armor with their helmet resting under one arm. It reminded me of the graduation photos I’d seen back on earth, and I recognized the courtyard they were taken in as the one right outside the back door of Persephonia’s living quarters.

With that, my observation of Persephonia’s living room was done. All the landscapes were of the same waterpark-temple-city, and when I went to check the books, I found that none of them had pictures on their covers. Only foreign words over a monocolour background. I pressed the fifth book back into its nock with a shake of my head and looked around, trying to find anything else to look at that didn’t require me opening up one of the two doors on either side of the room.

After another handful of minutes, my curiosity died out under the threat of Persephonia’s anger. I sat down at the table and leaned back in the chair, summoned my armor and thumbed through my interface to see if anything had changed.

There were quite a few notifications that hadn’t been there a few hours ago, and one ongoing effect that brought a confused look to my face as I read it aloud.

“Staura training grounds: effects of all unarmored and low-level armored training increased. For anyone other than a Staura, permission must be granted to partake in these bonuses.” I frowned. “Staura? Is that what Jun’s species is, or is that what they call their soldiers?”

A hand pressed down on my shoulder, and when I looked up at its owner, Persephonia was staring down at me. “That is the mass name given to our species. A Staurean is the singular version of that name.” She explained, sitting down across from me as Jun took a seat to my left. “Which begets the question: what is the designation for your species, Sebastian?”

She used my full name, which meant she had been asking Jun more questions. I shot her a look, only her face visible above the rest of her armor, and she had the decency to blush and look away.

“I’m a human.” I said, figuring that Jun had already spilled everything I’d told her. “And together we’re humanity.”

“Humanity.” Persephonia mused, tasting the words for a long moment. She tapped her finger against the table, a square of glass suddenly between her flesh and the coral-wood. “Here I have a list of the cores designated to the new Embodiments’ vassals in our world. I need you to tell me if you recognize the untranslated language.”