-Matthew Reaper P.O.V.-

“It’s good that you’ve found some family,” I congratulated Alice in spite of the clearly discomfited look that Arthur and his team were giving me. Not that I can blame them, I wasn’t wearing my helmet, and even if I was, my power armor was intimidating.

I turned my attention to the group, pretending I didn’t see the way the man in the back didn’t flinch, “so, I take it you’re all here to receive us, is that the case?”

“Uh, yeah, something like that.” Arthur shook off some of the shock, “we’re from Mack Thompson’s group.”

I didn’t say anything, letting him continue. He realized that I was waiting for him to fill in the gaps.

“He’s one of the three leaders,” he continued, “probably the most stable of them, but we’re not really doing too great overall. You’ve seen these cat things, they’re a pain in the ass to deal with.”

“That they are,” I nodded, “we’re too armored overall for them to harm us at all. By the way,” I gestured to their equipment, “are they not outfitting you guys?”

He looked mildly defensive at that, “they do what they can, but most of the matter energy gets spent on looking after people. We’re just getting by.”

Alice stepped in, “not everyone’s going to have the same start we did.”

I turned my gaze to Alice, “it doesn’t take much matter energy to feed people, or arm them properly. Unless everyone wasted it on non-renewables, there should be a better standard for equipment.”

“Well, we don’t know the circumstances,” she crossed her arms, “for all we know, things were much worse.”

I could see the others shoot her a grateful look, and the mild animosity directed towards me. As much as I didn’t want to grill Alice’s family, that was besides the fact. I needed to know the state of the three factions, and why they weren’t better off.

“A basic exo-suit costs around thirty-five M.E.” I ignored their looks, “were you aware of that?”

There were a few long seconds of disbelief on their faces, “what? No it’s not.”

Now I could see Alice frown and look at them with renewed focus, “Yes, it is. Why do you think it isn’t?”

The certainty Arthur had suddenly vanished, “uh… because that’s what it costs?”

“Would it have a different cost depending on the area?” I heard Adam say aloud, then shake his head, “but that wouldn’t make sense, and our second Obelisk doesn’t have anything like that.”

“You guys have a second Obelisk?” One of the others in the back immediately spoke up, “how the hell did you guys get lucky enough to have two?”

A sinking feeling clung to my gut, “what? We had the second one created. Sis should have told you about that if you just asked?”

They exchanged looks of confusion before Arthur asked, “who the hell is Sis?”

Alice and I slowly met the others eyes, “we’re going to ask some very general questions, here. Just to confirm some basics, alright?”

“You don’t have to baby me,” Arthur scoffed as he looked to Alice, “lay it on me.”

She sighed, “well, let’s start with some prices that you’re aware of.”

For the next thirty minutes we Legion members listened with increasing exasperation the prices that they were forced to endure. Specifically, most basic resources, including food, was kept at nearly eight times the price that it should have been. Ammunition was ten to twenty times, with weapons variable, but all obnoxious. Forget exo-suits, mesh suits alone were ridiculously overpriced, to the extent that I felt blood vessels throb in anger.

“Why in the bowels of hell,” Jeremy seethed, “is it like that?”

I shook my head, Arthur’s group now having become acutely aware that something was very wrong. “I don’t know, distance is irrelevant to the Obelisks, these prices are universal. You guys have never heard Sis communicate to you?”

“No, that system thing only said something when it first landed.” The man in the back spoke up, Gabe, his expression dark, “most everyone was kept away from it. At the time Mack Thompson and Benjamin Hart were already pretty much in power. Mack’s always been toting about being on the people’s side and tried to make sure everyone was looked after. Benjamin Hart,” he spat the name with disdain, “has always been about pandering to the wealthy, keeping a bit of their fanciful living intact.”

“After the Obelisk landed, Mack and Benjamin took their most trusted and surrounded it, having a standoff.” Arthur said slowly, seeming suspicious of something, “they kept everyone away from the Obelisk for several days, until they managed to break into one of the biotic dens and kill everything in it. They celebrated by giving access to everyone.”

“What did they do with the core?” I asked, “and did they say anything unusual at that time?”

Arthur frowned, “I don't know what this core you’re talking about is. But they were saying that the more people purchased from the Obelisks, they more expensive things would get. We couldn’t get agriculture off the ground on account of the defensive stuff getting more expensive. Just barely had enough to keep our bases safe, really. Why?”

“Hold up,” Alice paused, “you don’t know what a core is?”

His brows furrowed in annoyance, “yeah, I said that.”

She ignored his tone, bringing up an image of one of the biotic cores, “you’ve never seen one of these, then?”

The group looked at it for a few moments, unanimously shaking their heads, “nope, never seen anything like it.”

A prevailing sense of wrongness and rage was boiling within me. I kept it under control for now, though the intensity of my voice rose a few notches, “what about this third group, then?”

“They’re from further up north, Gerry Brueter is their leader, ex-con biker guy, or something. From what I hear, they were driven out of the town there without getting access to the Obelisk for long, just barely long enough to get some weapons. There weren’t a lot of them at that point, though, so they couldn’t hold them off. They had some pretty creepy sounding biotics, not that it matters now.” He shrugged, “they came down here, by then our Obelisk was available to the public, but it was also too expensive for them to get a lot of things on their own. They started stealing stuff to get by.”

“Assholes, mostly,” Gabe supplemented, “they’ll catch people and steal their stuff. But, at least, they don’t ransom them like Benjamin. They can be pretty violent, but they do have some code of conduct, I guess.”

“Like what?” Jeremy posited.

Gabe waved his hand nonchalantly, “like the whole ‘you pay us protection money’ or ‘do some work for us’ and they’ll supposedly look after you. They have a pretty big group themselves, not as large as ours, but bigger than Benjamins. Not a lot of firepower, but it’s concentrated on a few people who go out and kill biotics and bring it back.”

“Sounds a bit like the Legion and Bulwark, only in one group,” Jackson hummed, “but, I guess they’re violent since the Matter Energy prices are so much higher.”

“Because of them, the prices are even worse,” Gabe spat, “and the fancy bastards in Benjamins group make it so that all the really good stuff are just way too expensive to buy.”

“None of that is how that works.” I stopped him, “the only limited things are alien technologies, and even that’s not as bad as it sounds like it is here. Our city pretty much lived off of matter generated food, and in spite of the fact that your population is almost double ours, it shouldn’t have risen. Ours hasn’t budged a point.”

They gawked at me as I said that, “How the hell is that fair?”

Alice seemed to consider trying to phrase it gently.

“You guys are getting hardcore conned, and falling for it really bad, too.” Richard told them flat-out, “my guess is that they used the core to set permissions for access to the Obelisk, before anybody could even know what the prices were.”

There was a very cold silence in the next few seconds.

“Well, it’s fixable,” I stated, drawing attention back to me, “the main thing is that we’ll need to get to the Obelisk, probably with a core, and then create a new permissions to give everyone equal access. We might be able to do it without a core, but better to be safe.”

“But,” Arthur stuttered to a stop, clearly disturbed by the concept, “that can’t be possible, right? I mean, why would Mack send us out here? You guys would definitely know if that was the case.”

I frowned at that, turning my attention to Alice who seemed confused. My gaze met Jeremy and Richard’s eyes, and we seemed to have come to the same, grim, conclusion.

“You were sent out with minimal equipment into an area known to be very dangerous,” I said slowly, “the biotics would have potentially killed you if we weren’t as quick on the uptake as we were. Beyond that, if I was them, I’d have a second, absolutely loyal, group come to be sure.”

“Be sure of what?” Alice asked before her eyes widened in realization, then contorted to an incredibly uncharacteristically wrathful expression.

I could understand the sentiment, “that they’d have died before we could meet them.”

“What the fu-why the fuck?” Gabe shouted, “why would that even be a consideration?”

“Our brave and hopeful team,” Richard began in a mocking tone, “died while attempting to establish peaceable and positive relations with our neighbors, who ruthlessly cut them down. It is clear that these people are our enemies, and cannot be trusted.”

A cold wind seemed to sweep the color out of Arthur and his team, “but that can’t be it…”

“Who knows,” I shrugged, “maybe this whole thing got derailed. The third group could have thrown everything out of balance, hell, you guys might all have people willing to war against each other at the drop of a hat. The situation is either spiraling out of control-” at that I paused, “-or is exactly what they want it to be. I don’t know if Gerry is in on it, but unifying against a common enemy is fairly common to bring disparate people together. I’m guessing here, I have no idea exactly what their motivations might be, if they’re misguided attempts at control, for power, or whatever. But, my guess is that we’ll know for sure if we’re right soon.”

“What do you mean?” Arthur said after a contemplative look fell upon his features.

Alice answered, fists clenched tightly, “if there’s someone suspicious that comes soon, that’ll be our indicator.”

The lot of us sat in our seats, the now abandoned structure on the outskirts of town our base of operations. From the outside, the only real indicators that we were here were the Ogre’s and the turrets that were fully operational. Depending on what we were working against, though, there was a chance that Arthur and his team were of secondary importance. If they were able to attack and capture us, they could potentially hold us hostage against Gilramore, seeking to keep us away while they aligned themselves in-house. Once they were unified, it would be costly for either side, Gilramore or Sunvilla, to wage open war.

It was all guess work, but movement on the outer ring of our sensors brought me out of my considerations.

I let out a long, annoyed breath, “and it begins.”

“Company?” Jeremy queried with a raised eyebrow.

I nodded, “one of the Determinator’s eyes are bringing in a feed now.”

The video display alighted in the center of the room from a small holographic display. A group of ten people, kitted in impressive looking exo-suit and power armor and coated in all black, crossed over the threshold around us quietly, guns up and at the ready. They had a wide assortment of weapons, much of it alien-level technology that had to have cost a great deal of Matter Energy.

Noticing the gear, Arthur’s mouth hung open slightly, “that’s ridiculous.”

“Kind of like looking at a tank made of gold coming to kill you,” Gabe said sadly, now apparently firmly believing what we were saying previously, “that’s really sad, actually.”

“You guys sit tight,” I said to Alice’s brother, “we’re going to greet our guests, just to be sure. Sammy, Richard, Alice, you all stay here. If things go fubar, take them and retreat out of the city. I doubt it’ll come to that, but better not to underestimate their weapons, just in case.”

“Understood,” Alice didn’t argue, but looked torn, “you guys be careful, alright?”

“Of course. I’ve died plenty of times, I don’t need another,” I chuckled, amused at the perplexed look Arthur’s group gave me.

“Let the Determinator’s lead, if they’re hostile, respond in kind. If they want to play these games, we’ll show them the distance they have to travel to catch up.” I spoke to the others, Jeremy coming up next to me.

“We’ll try diplomacy first,” he reiterated to the team, “but remember that these people might be here to kill us. If you’re not comfortable shooting them, then don’t. But stay here if that’s the case.”

As he panned his gaze around his team, none of them stood down, though Adam seemed unhappy with the turn of events. I couldn’t blame him, from what I’d heard he’d actually taken up an oath of sorts not to harm people. But, in self-defense, I had to assume he’d make an exception.

“Let’s say ‘hello,’ people. The Legion way.” I grinned, my helmet pulling itself back up to cover my head, red flaring to life across my armor before dimming.