"Help! Help us! Is someone there? HELP!"

William was screaming at the top of his voice, attracting as much attention as possible. Kaito was leaning heavily on his shoulder, face blackened from the smoke still billowing from the damaged drone behind them.

"Don't move!" someone shouted. "What are you doing here?"

"We were coming over on the drone, and it blew up! We're new Ascent candidates; we don't know what happened."

They heard a tired sigh.

As the light moved closer, they could make out the shape of an Ascenter approaching them. This one was more humanoid, though tall and with elongated limbs, and (once he was close enough to discern colour in the dark) rather more orange than the typical earthling.

***

"Getting into the hospital," Kaito was saying, back in the conference room in R&D, "Can be assumed to be possible for an injured Ascent candidate, or one wonders why they called it that.

"For the sake of expediency, I propose we damage whatever craft is sent to admit us onto the island. I'm afraid, Darya, you will have to be prepared to hack it en route, and simulate a convincing accident."

***

"What happened?" the Ascenter asked, in a neutral tone.

"I… I don't know," replied William, masterfully simulating anxious distress. "There was an explosion. Maybe looked like a plasma conduit? The drone nearly went down, I suppose we must have been close enough to land. Are we in the Ascenter farm? Did we make it?"

"You did," the Ascenter replied, looking them over. "Can you speak?" he asked Kaito, directly.

"…Yes," replied Kaito heavily.

"He's badly injured," interjected William. "He keeps passing out, and he has some rather serious burns on his chest. Please, he needs medical attention."

***

"What happens next depends on how they respond. We may need to improvise."

***

"He'll live another five minutes," the Ascenter said. "I have to investigate the drone, this might be an attack."

"An attack?" William said incredulously. "What, like the Movement or something? Surely they're not capable of taking down a Meitagenan vessel."

The Ascenter looked round at him with a mixture of approval, condescension and a hint of scepticism. "You'd be surprised the things they try," is what he settled on saying.

Kaito started coughing, pained and laboured; William wasn't entirely sure if it was feigned or not, but he decided to roll with it, and tripped him, catching him before he hit the ground.

"Please…" William said. "Whatever the security implications, there's a life on the line here. An Ascenter, or one who will be soon. Can't you get someone else to come down to look it over?"

The Ascenter rolled his eyes. "You're all so damned emotional on this planet. I tell you, I am this close to quitting. I've had it up to here with this minimum wage bullshit. Do you know they charge us rent to live here? I can barely even afford a ticket off this stupid rock."

William gave a sympathetic shrug, followed by another pleading glance at Kaito.

"Alright fine, what the hell," the Ascenter acquiesced.

***

"As soon as you're able," Kaito was saying to Ikaroa, Rui and Darya, "You guys will need to find an Ascenter access port somewhere out of sight in the hospital. This will be the difficult part. At all costs you must avoid being seen."

***

"I can't fucking believe he said he needed his 'most able scientist' and I'm literally just here looking through a pair of fucking binoculars," moaned Rui.

"What can you see?" Ikaroa asked, patiently.

"Looks like a supply entrance round the back. There's an access port, but there's some shithead guard there as well. Must be an Ascenter, looks like a Didelphian, going by the snout. Do you still have another holo projector, Kook?"

"You want to kill him?" Darya said surprised.

"He's a fucking Ascenter," Rui snapped. "But no. If we project an image of a delphic owl, he'll go into involuntary tonic immobility. Should give us a few hours, and when he wakes up, he might just think he imagined it."

"You're kidding," said Darya. "Yeah, I can do that."

"And that's why you're the one with the binoculars," chuckled Ikaroa.

***

"We're alone," came Kaito's voice over the comms. "Tell me you've got access to the hospital systems."

"Yeah, I see you Dino," said Rui. "The encryption on the safe is fucking insane, but Kook's working on it. They patch you up okay? No robot bits?"

"Thankfully not," said Kaito. "But we don't have long. Ikaroa, can you take a look at the maps, find us a way to stay out of sight?"

"There's an air vent in the ceiling. Lift the third panel from the right on the door side and climb up."

Fumbling sounds over the comms for the next thirty seconds or so.

"Okay, we're in."

"Okay, twenty metres forward, then turn right and you'll hit a lift shaft. I'm going to need you to hitch a ride on that as it's going down to the basement."

"Noted."

It was much too warm in the air duct, and they had to take great care to keep quiet, but they made it as instructed, and waited for Ikaroa to indicate when they should jump.

"It's quite close quarters in here," William complained. It was indeed; Kaito was relatively short and slim, but William much less so, and with both of them needing to be close enough to the exit to jump at a moment's notice, they were very much in each other's space.

"I'm sure you can cope," chastised Ikaroa.

"This is a bizarrely nostalgic experience," remarked Kaito. "I'm almost enjoying myself."

"I'm not sure we ever got quite this close back in London, did we?" joked William.

"I was referring," said Kaito, blushing. "To my days in Special Ops. Ikaroa on the comms, breaking into secure Meitagenan facilities. I spend too much time in meetings these days; it is nice to get back to proper frontline terrorism."

"There's something fucking wrong with you," said Rui.

"Okay, this coming lift is going all the way down, so get ready," interjected Ikaroa. "There's another air duct in an equivalent position down there, but you'll have to be quick."

They leapt on, successfully, and scrambled across as directed to where Ikaroa was telling them the safe was.

"Can we descend?" Kaito asked.

Ikaroa replied. "Best not yet, Darya's still struggling to break the encryption."

"What's the problem?" Kaito asked.

"It's not like I can't do it," Darya replied, "But it's way gnarly. It's like there's this opening, almost like a backdoor, I keep coming back to it. But it's way too obvious. Seems like a trap, I don't want to risk it."

"Take it," said Kaito, immediately.

"What? Boss-dude, I'm telling you, this can only be because…"

"That's an order, Darya, take the exploit. Rui, are we safe to go down?"

"Looks that way."

They removed another ceiling panel, and descended into the corridor. The basement of the hospital was lit far too brightly in too precise of a white. Before them was a relatively ordinary-looking door, with an Ascenter port for access.

"Just a second, boss," came Darya's voice over the comms. "Okay, got it."

A light on the control panel switched to green, and the door opened. The nanites, they discovered after a little hunting, were stored in a small vial, which Kaito pocketed immediately. "Half way home," he remarked.

"Let's get out of here," William said.

"There's a back entrance, we've got it covered outside," said Ikaroa. "If you can make it that far, we should be fine. Go the other way down the corridor and use the stairs. You're just going to have to bluff, there's too many people on the ground floor to get by without being seen."

Kaito nodded; William puffed his cheeks. They made their way swiftly down the corridor, and bounced up the stairs.

"Look as natural as possible," Kaito said. "Don't give them a reason to be suspicious, don't speak unless spoken to."

William nodded, as they entered the lobby.

"Hey, what the… who are you?!" exclaimed someone, immediately. They looked over; an Ascenter doctor was approaching them.

"Kaito Shimizu," answered Kaito. "I was admitted earlier, but now I'm leaving."

"I didn't see any authorisation for that."

"It was fairly routine for your medicine as it turned out," supplied William. "A few burns and some smoke inhalation. We're new arrivals; now he's better we're supposed to report to some Ascenter with a name I can't pronounce…"

"Do you mean ┐┼s┳╛?"

"That's the one," affirmed William, effortlessly.

"You're going the wrong way," the doctor said, apparently buying this. "The main entrance is over there. Wait there and I'm sure she'll be on her way."

"Ah, no worries, of course. Thank you for your help."

They proceeded in the direction he indicated, and left the building. Kaito whispered into his communicator, "When I say go, everyone just run straight to the rendezvous. There is no need to worry about remaining secret now beyond the immediate danger to life."

"INTRUDER ALERT. CODE 18. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

"Fuck," said several of them simultaneously.

"Run!" shouted Kaito. "Just run!"

"Hey, you there!"

"Stop!"

Kaito and William were leaping over railings and darting between vegetation. Shots were fired, but there was enough cover in the hospital complex for them to duck and weave beyond what was practically possible to aim at, but they wouldn't manage that for much longer, even in the dark.

***

"In the worst case scenario…" Kaito was saying, "Darya, I believe you've been doing some interesting work on jet packs?"

***

When the other three arrived to save them, it was absolute chaos. Ikaroa was shooting wildly and recklessly, flying around like she'd been doing it all her life. Rui was sharp, focused and deeply angry. Darya ducked under to actually solve the problem, and get Kaito and William their escape equipment.

Blasting off was a thoroughly nauseating experience; Darya had done excellent work on the preprogramed evasive manoeuvres, but she clearly had been treating the limits of human tolerance for extreme G forces rather too literally. By the time they reached the submarine, almost all of them felt like they were going to be sick. Rui and Kaito got immediately into the cockpit.

"Bangladesh," Kaito said, "And step on it."

***

Filibub put down his empty glass, and switched off the monitor. That hadn't been nearly as entertaining as he'd hoped. Hardly a drop of blood, except those ridiculous injuries the short one had inflicted on himself.

Still, watching had whiled away an evening, but time to get back to work. A few hours had already passed since they'd 'escaped' the South Island, and he needed to move on to the next phase of his plan. He checked on the trackers he had on them.

But they weren't working.