A young man wearing the Imptuus silver-and-grey met Edom at the door. The cybersoldier automatically sized up this new individual for threat assessment; all other, more complex thoughts still denied him from higher up because-- blocked.

Dark hair, pale skin, midnight-blue eyes, narrow and pointed ears... and a half-dozen faintly glowing identification codes visibly gleaming beneath his skin. Vampire. And yet his smile seemed sincere. A friendly.

That thought, at least, They allowed him.

"Hello, sir," said the vampire greeter when Edom reached the door, nodding his head politely. "My name is Aven, one of Miss Avanay's assistants. May I ask for your designation, Unit, and Core?"

Edom rattled off the information again, the exact same way he had a thousand times before. It was only after he finished that he thought to ask himself if it was still all accurate. Lance Unit was very far away, and he wasn't going back...

They will tell me when something changes, he told himself, and realized as he did that the restrictions were loosening. Whatever They hadn't wanted him feeling must be receding. Pay attention.

"Alright, this all matches up," said Aven brightly after checking his clipboard (the old-school kind, Edom noticed curiously). "Right this way then, sir."

A notion, a question, occurred to Edom, and he eagerly took the non-offensive conversation topic as distraction from the --blocked-- holes in his brain. "You don't have to call me sir," he offered as they walked into the white-walled hallway. "I'm not an officer, so everyone just calls me by my CS designation."

"It doesn't matter to me if you're officer or not, or living or dead, sir," replied Aven immediately and seriously. "You're human, so it's only proper to be respectful."

That triggered a Protocol Two concern - Alliance Living must always take priority over Alliance Undead - but Edom didn't actually see any need to correct the misconception and They weren't concerned, so he let it slide.

The back hallways of the Imptuus building were barebones and utilitarian, clean more due to their relatively recent construction and disuse then from an actual need to make it presentable to the public. Edom tried to keep his curiosity in check, but he did inevitably notice the Necromancy Department sign over the stairs before they descended. After that, there was no helping it, not without intervention.

This building, and this specific department, was as close to a home as Edom had. He had been brought back to a shadow of life here, and yet he barely remembered anything about it. Memories faded quickly in an unliving mind.

Loading bays, off to the right. Cold Storage, directly opposite; that door was heavy, metal, and clearly locked tight. Aven took a turn further down towards Necromancer Labs, leaving Edom no choice but to turn with him away from halls marked "Cyber Storage" and "Armory".

"Those end up back above ground," Aven commented when he noticed Edom's lingering looks back the way they had come. "Miss Avanay is supposed to have access to all stages at all hours, but she rarely leaves our floor."

Avanay...

Edom knew they were getting close. The dragonwoman's presence was almost like a vibration in his bones, or a sound inside his head. Not distracting, not a summons or a pointed thought, but just... there. And he had to consciously stop himself from quickening his step.

Then Aven pushed open a pair of swinging doors, and as they opened, Edom spotted her.

There was no mistaking the necromancer who held his life in her hands. The dragonfolk woman was examining some list on her digital Clip-board, pacing back and forth while her heavy, black-tufted tail flicked in time behind her. The only other visible remnant of her draconic nature were the pale antlers that rose from her jet-black hair, branching into seven points between the two of them.

Edom straightened immediately, coming to attention on sheer instinct. There were no rules for this - according to the Alliance, she was just a temp-civ of little importance - but some things went beyond even Them.

Perhaps it was a delayed reaction to the door opening, or the tiny ahem that Aven the assistant gave, but the moment the thought crossed Edom's mind the dragonwoman whirled around, fixing large, black eyes on Edom's mismatched ones without even hesitation.

"I remember you!" she said at once, enthusiastically. "Edom R., the nineteenth Ocearius. You look the same as the day I raised you... well, barring a few replacement parts, but aside from that, you've held up well. My Impares, I miss working on the Ocearius..."

"I await your command, sir." Edom fell back on habit to save him from the confusion of how to respond, though the fading of the Necromancer's smile did make him feel a twinge bad.

"Ah, yes, straight to business," she replied, bringing her enthusiasm back down to normal levels. "That is how they wanted you made. Alright, Aven, go ahead and give our friend the reassignment briefing, if you would?"

That one word shot artificial adrenaline through Edom's slow veins. "Reassignment?" he interrupted before the vampire could say anything. "But I was recalled. For decommissioning?"

"You most certainly were not," snapped Avanay, and her tail tuft poofed slightly in agitation. "Ocearius does not need to be decommissioned. These new cheap Cores may only last a year or two, but you..."

Her assistant cleared his throat politely, and took the conversation over from what looked to be the beginning of an indignant rant. "A new agreement has been proposed, between Alliance leadership and Imptuus, that would permit Alliance Military Cybersoldiers to be retired back to Imptuus if they pass their estimated decay-by date on the battlefield without becoming mentally or physically unfit for continued existence. The idea is to prolong the usefulness of extraordinarily endurant cybers by giving them new, less demanding jobs in the Alliance private sector while gradually replacing out-dated military models for newer Cores in the military."

"Civilians pay the Alliance, the Alliance pays us, we make new cybers for the Alliance, civilians walk around with cybernetic soldiers." Miss Avanay's tail twitched again, but her face and tone betrayed nothing.

Edom couldn't process the new information. His approved, military-oriented thought-set stalled somewhere along the line, so he just... stood by. He listened as the vampire and the dragonfolk explained, in detail, concepts he had no reference for, and quietly waited for someone to let him understand it all.

Until that happened...

I'm not about to die.

The end of one mission... and the start of another. That, at least, he understood perfectly.