Catherine sat cross-legged on the floor of her apartment, a small data pad the size of an envelope sat in front of her, displaying hundreds of flashing images, files, videos in the air via tiny holograms waiting to be selected, each unlocked for her eyes only, each one containing enough information to likely start a war within minutes if leaked to the internet if she so chose, not that the thought actually crossed her mind, but it amused her something so small could contain such vital information and it was just given to her by the Deacon himself.

She’d spent the last few days combing over information she saw as important to her cause, or something that’d caught her eye, a helpful tool was the filter option to suss out key words or terms she was looking for, and even after days of searching, she was no closer to her end goal, nor did she feel like she’d even scratched the surface of the information on this tiny device. She stretched out her arms and heard a satisfying popping sound, she’d been sitting way too long, and part of her ached for sleep, her brain was fuzzy and her eyes were burning, likely from her lack of blinking. Another part of her brain told her to keep going, push through, and that what she was looking for was in the next file she would open, don’t give up now.

She sighed, not wanting to cave to either half of her waring brain, contemplated just turning off the device and talking a walk to clear her mind, maybe tell the Brotherhood what’s been happening, but the thought crossed her mind that she really had nothing to give them outside of “Hey I got a fuck ton of information.” She groaned and collapsed on the floor rubbing her tired eyes. For the first time in days, she noticed the pounding pain from her brain had ceased, a feeling of calmness washed over her and she focused on healing… Which was interrupted by a pounding on her door. Catherine sighed, kipped up onto her feet and summoned a gun into her hand, ready to attack. Pressing a key on the video monitor, she was greeted by an image of Maya in street wear waiting outside.

Catherine rolled her eyes, “Screw today…” she mumbled to herself as she opened the door, not even pretending to smile, “What?”

Maya gave a fake, joyful smile back at her, “Is that anyway to greet a friend?”

Catherine turned around, waving the gun at the ceiling, “Almost blasted you to Kingdom Come.”

“Uh huh.” Maya said, unimpressed as she closed the door behind her, “We’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Been busy.”

“Locking yourself away again?”

“Working.”

“Don’t be short with me, Catherine.”

“Don’t try to order me around like a child,” she shot back, “I’m not ten, you’re not my superior.”

Maya glared at her statement, “And you are not the Mentor of our sect, Catherine.”

Catherine spread her hands, “And what makes you think I want to be? Never asked to, but what were you doing in the last five years outside of hiding in a cave?”

Maya threw her bag to the ground, Catherine looked at her still unimpressed, “I was keeping our Brotherhood together while you were off in exile for something you did!”

“By…hiding. In Athens. The one place on this planet that doesn’t despise us, musta been real hard, right?”

“Why are you like this!?”

“Why are you acting like you had to hold the gates from thousands of angry protestors, or had to watch as a buncha innocents died? You and what, five people hid in a cave while the east tore itself apart.” Catherine said, pointing at her, “Did you even bother to check up on half the damn planet, read the news, anything on what was happening? Or was your nose buried in books?”

“How dare you?”

“And there it is. You try to act all high and mighty about protecting the world from itself, when you were too chickenshit to do anything about it.”

“And what were you doing in the last five years? Drinking yourself into a stupor over your failure?”

Catherine let out a laugh that sounded more sinister than anticipated, “I spent my time protecting people, making amends, gathering the belongings of our Order from around Hades, and killing any bastard who thought it’d be a good idea to try and attack someone with a fucking magic science-sword thing!”

Maya leaned against the island in the kitchen, “So your bloodlust is a-okay, but me protecting the foundation of our Brotherhood makes me a monster?”

“At least I was actually doing something besides protecting fucking books.”

“So in your mind, murder trumps preservation.”

Catherine pointed, “Protection of the innocent,” she corrected

“Saving your bottle of whiskey doesn’t count.”

“Fuck you.”

“Uh huh.”

Catherine sighed, “Why are you even here?”

“Again, we haven’t heard from you in days, wanted to make sure you didn’t rabbit on us again.”

Catherine pointed to the tablet, and swiped in the air, the machine activated, sending the thousands of holographic files into the air once again, “Working, Maya. I’ve been working.”

Maya gawked at all of it, enraptured by the plethora of information in front of her, “On what…?”

Catherine grinned, “Well, I took the Valkyrie job with the Deacon…” she started, Maya shot her an accusatory look, “It was my choice, and I didn’t tell them everything. They have no idea what our numbers are, or where we are.”

“What do they know?”

“That we’re open to an alliance, to go back to what we used to be.”

“And you didn’t feel the need to discuss this with us…why.”

It wasn’t an actual question, Catherine could tell Maya was pissed, she was probably thinking right now that Catherine was acting no different than Aiden did in his prime, but back then he had the prospect of being the Mentor of the Brotherhood.

“Again, it was my decision, my burden, if it blows up in my face, I won’t take anyone with me, unless they follow me that is.”

Maya sighed, “Well what’s done is done can’t talk you out of it… what have you found?”

“Lot of fucked up stuff in here… but, first, I told the spy network to start looking out for potential Abnormals, but domestic…and abroad.”

“Why?”

“We need to rebuild the Brotherhood somehow. Bag ‘em and tag ‘em.”

“And if they don’t want to come?”

“Try to convince them, if not, leave ‘em be.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“We’ve been doing it for thousands of generations. Now, we have technology to help us.”

Maya nodded, “I get it… what else?”

Catherine selected a few files from the bunch and passed them her way, “The government was keeping tabs on most of us, Jarro slipped by somehow, despite being in the military during the Spartan Conflicts, and they started watching the Judge after he got stabbed.”

“Anything on me?”

Catherine shrugged, “Not much, just that you rarely leave your book store.”

“Funny.” Maya mumbled

“Ain’t funny, it’s true.”

“Says the woman who doesn’t leave her apartment.”

Catherine side eyed her, “Shut up.”

“Anything else?”

“I’m gonna book a trip to Tardis.”

“The hell’s that?”

Catherine siphoned through some files, and some images of a rock face between Hades and Athens appeared, “It’s a prison station, war criminals, crime lords, inescapable, gets one shipment of supplies a week, rains like a bitch all the time. Break out of your cage, you still got nowhere to go, no ships come aside from the supply ones, rocks are too sharp if you try to swim, you’ll be skewered on ‘em. And the guards are all guys who are there as punishment, anger issues, violent streaks, most of them are there as some sort of therapy if they refuse Hypno.”

“Sounds terrible. Why are you going?”

“Got rumors of an Abnormal being kept there.”

“You’re gonna break in?”

“No, gonna fly in.”