Trinkets were scattered all over the place, with a frankensteined-together aetherwave terminal taking up much of what she presumed to be the Recluse’s room, the door sitting wide open. Her nostrils filled with the smell of oil, stale air, metal shavings, and body odor. Paint flaking off the walls, water damage stains on the ceiling, several broken floor tiles - all sorts of unkemptness.

And yet, that terminal was the most meticulously put-together thing she’d ever seen. It stood out to a comical degree amongst the disarray surrounding it.

“Y’got a map of the city?” he asked, clearing dirty dishes off the kitchen table. Upon their affirmation and retrieval of said map, he stretched it out and walked into his room, hauling a smaller, but still bulky terminal in his arms. It was the shell of a typewriter, filled by parts recognizable as having been taken from a cabinet-type attribute reader, though it lacked Fog nozzles. After plugging a pair of thick black cables into its side, flipping a few switches, and whacking it once or twice for good measure, the device sputtered to life.

A rough and flickery projection sprung up above it, displaying a number of text messages in small boxes lined up one above the other, each numbered. Some messages had the numbers of previous messages within their text, as if replying.

Alcerys had no clue what the hell this thing was or what it was for, and so, she asked: “How is that intended to help us reach our goal?”

“Well unless y’wanna go lookin’ for him on your own I figured it’d be good to ask Burgess for directions through a secure channel,” he answered, typing on the loudly click-clacking keyboard and operating other parts of the terminal as the projection scrolled on by.

“Hold on, you can talk directly to Burgess? How have they not found you yet?” Alcerys asked.

“It’s not open-channel aetherwave,” he explained readily. Excitedly, even. “We hijacked the city’s lightgem wirin’ for signal transfer an’ the network will only connect you if you have a whitelisted soul-signature. Each of us hosts a uh… A partial copy of the network, an’ the records are pretty much gibberish without someone with the right soul-signature t’act as a living decryption key. Even the intensity of our signals is so comparatively small that they can’t be reasonably detected among the already quite weak flow of Ignis to the lightgems… When they’re on, at least.”

“That sounds… Like your signals are immune to interception through aetherwave skimming. Too good to be true, if such technology were available, why didn’t the Ikesian military use it in the war?”

“Who’s to say they didn’t?” the Recluse winked with a sly grin. “Don’t take my word, I ain’t got proof. If anythin’ it was probably one of many projects in development that weren’t far enough along to ever see deployment, so it’s only now we’re reaping the fruits of it…”

For a few seconds he returned to typing, then looked back up at Alcerys and added, “Or Burgess might just be a genius, that would explain how he knew to do it as well. Alright, I’ve got the message through, now we wait.”

The terminal in the other room began to emit a loud clacking and whirring, wisps of Fog rising from its mechanisms as the Recluse leaned back in his seat, waiting. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. Forty seconds.

“How long’s this usually take?” Strake piped up.

“Sending a message? Not this long, even with full encryption. Burgess is probably just typing his directions in code, he’s paranoid like that,” answered the Recluse.

A few seconds more and the kitchen’s third door creaked open, the bloated figure of an out-of-shape middle-aged man stumbling through, reeking of cheap grain spirits, sweat, and urine, his eyes closed. He listlessly stumbled over to the sink, filling an old sheet-metal mess cup with water, drinking it, and repeating the process twice more before he turned his head.

He wore only a pair of filthy, patchwork pants, his arms and torso covered in various nautical tattoos, as well as a few that Alcerys didn’t recognize.

“I told you to keep that shit off in the morning,” he growled. “One of these days I’ll call the guards and have them haul your ass off, that’ll teach you and your friends to play revolutionary.”

The Recluse seemed visibly annoyed, like he wanted to snap back at the older man, but Strake let out a bitter cackling laugh first, “That’s fuckin’ funny coming from a Brass-eyed Pirate.”

“Wh- What the fuck did I tell you about letting me know when you bring someone new! I swear to the Sage, you just don’t know when to-” the older man started going off as rage gripped him, his eyes shooting open to reveal that he did, indeed, have two brass ornaments in place of eyes…

...And his rage dissolved into a mix of confusion, fear, and awe. The lifeless ornaments pivoted subtly in their sockets, pointing at Strake, then at Alcerys, then back at Strake again.

“You… I remember you,” he uttered in a haze, as if he himself didn’t believe this was real.

“The perfect soldier, they called you, and still you’re doomed to failure. You couldn’t defend the homeland with the feds at your back, what good can you do with a bunch of dipshit essentech kiddies? Get the fuck out of Rigport before you make it even worse for us… Things were alright with the Greks in charge, but since that idiotic attack two weeks back we’ve got zips shippin’ in, setting up checkpoints, beating people in broad daylight, and now you fuckers’ve come to make things even worse for us small folk, for your misbegotten ambitions! Can you not see that Ikesia is doomed? We’re a fish on the hook, struggling will only bring us more pain.”

“You think resisting the Empire and having your eyes gouged out for it gives you the perspective to say that resistance is doomed, don’t you?” Strake spat, his words carrying such disdain and venom as Alcerys had not heard from him since the encounter at the checkpoint.