“I was worried you wouldn’t get my message,” Chal said as soon as the door to his office closed behind us.

I looked around the cluttered office. Screens were scattered everywhere, a pile of scrubs in the corner of the room and coffee cups were stacked on his desk.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Chal hesitated and looked at me with something close to regret.

“Have a seat,” he said finally.

I glanced at the rest of my crew, fear starting to build within me, before moving a screen off of one of the chairs and sitting down.

The others did the same, watching Chal with concern.

“Okay, good. Do you need coffees or anything?” he asked.

“No, we’re fine. What’s going on?” I asked, needing him to just get to the point.

He sighed and dropped into the seat behind his desk.

“I need to talk to you all about something,” he said, his tone reluctant.

“Okay,” I prompted.

“I really didn’t want to tell you. You’re kids and you shouldn’t have to know about it or make any decisions about it and I hate that you’re the only people who I think can actually do something but, of course I will help every step of the way,” he said, rambling uncharacteristically.

The more he spoke, the more worried I got. He was normally much more to the point and it scared me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Chal sighed.

“Something bad is happening on the Council ship. I know that much is obvious, the briefing made it very clear, but… it’s worse than it seems,” he said.

There was a moment of silence in the room as it sunk in before I spoke again.

“Do you know what’s happening?”

Chal hesitated before nodding.

“I was pulled in to advise about it because I’m not sure if you were aware but we picked up some Guardians who were fleeing the ship the other day? They were heavily injured, some unable to talk for various reasons, but Aquila, Elliot and Andy wanted my advice on what they said.”

“What did they say?” Cas asked.

I sent a small supportive smile at him before looking back to Chal.

“Well, some of them had had their tongues cut out so they were unable to talk but they used a screen to communicate. It’s… bad. Harvey’s pretty much taken over now that he’s killed off all of the other Councillors who argued with him at all and I assume the final Councillor will be murdered soon too because Harvey was never going to be happy with anything other than total control. The way he is running the ship is honestly scary. He’s punishing any signs of dissent horrifically. One of the Guardians I spoke with had his tongue cut out because Harvey thought he didn’t respond to one of his orders quickly enough and that’s not even the worst of it,” Chal said quickly.

My stomach turned and my hands slowly clenched into fists.

“Andy knows about that?” Peggy asked.

Chal nodded silently.

“What is he planning to do about it? They have a plan, right?” she continued.

Chal’s eyes darted towards mine before he looked back at Peggy.

“They do, apparently. At the moment, they are planning on gathering more information and evidence and then they want to storm the ship but…” Chal hesitated again. “I fear it’ll be too late by then. The longer they wait, the more dangerous this becomes for everyone left on the ship. From what I’ve heard, most of the Guardians have stopped supporting the Council. A lot of them did a long time ago but they murdered enough Guardians trying to flee that they felt they had to stay. I mean, they even made an example out of some of them and murdered whole families. It was safer for them to stay, even with everything that was going on happening.”

“Okay, but now what?” I demanded. “How many Guardians are left on the ship?”

Chal shrugged sadly.

“I honestly don’t know. The recovered Guardians that I’ve spoken to said that they’re kept separated the majority of the time so they just don’t know. They work in shifts and are locked in their rooms the rest of the time, generally without food. I’m not sure if Harvey is doing it intentionally but he is killing them.” There was a pause before Chal reluctantly said, “I worry he has a more immediate plan in mind too.”

“What do you mean?” Cas asked quickly.

Chal shook his head and looked down.

“I really didn’t want to burden you with this. I hoped that Aquila would do something about it. I know that Andy and Elliot want to but… there is only so much they can do without her support and she’s not willing to rush into anything.” Chal stopped and took a deep breath before speaking once more. “Apparently, there was a rumour going around the ship that he might be planning to kill all of the Guardians who he suspects aren’t supporting him. I’m not sure how many that will be but one of the people I spoke to found evidence of enough substances to poison over two hundred people. Now, I don’t know if there are two hundred Guardians left on the ship or what he plans to do with what’s left but… I’ve heard some concerning reports.”

I waited for him to continue, my mind racing.

Really, it shouldn’t have surprised me that Harvey was willing to kill so many people but it still did. I wanted to stop him and stop the Guardians from being killed.

It would be a fight. I knew that some of the Guardians still supported him, obviously, and I understood why. Most of the people there weren’t much older than we are. They are just kids, recruited and brainwashed from a young age. The Council was all they knew and they’d had all other information blocked from them so how were they even meant to know differently?

“What else did you hear?” I asked, almost not wanting to know.

Chal’s eyes flicked towards Peggy before he spoke slowly.

“I don’t know how long he’s been doing it but… Harvey has been sending drugs down to some of the planets that have been dissenting or on the verge of dissent. He’s… having Guardians, the ones who are still supporting him, spike water supplies and food.”

There was a pause and I realised that my mouth was open.

“He’s… what?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, I know that. He’d drugged Peggy with the very substance her parents had overdosed on, and yet I still was.

“We need to stop him,” Peggy said, her tone intense.

I nodded.

“But, where do we start?” Cory asked.

“We need to speak to Andy. If you tell him about all of it, he has to listen, right?” Peggy said, looking at me. “But we need to make it seem like Chal didn’t tell us, I don’t want to get you in trouble, obviously. I can probably find all the information I need online, right? I mean, I assume it’s somewhere there. I have a shift in the war room later with Orion. I bet I can find it all then. Yeah, I’ll do that and then I can ping you, Aries, and pretend to brief you in the side room or something and then you can speak to Andy.”

She finally stopped speaking and looked up at me in expectation.

“Yeah, that works. How much of a rush are we in, Chal?” I asked. “Do we need to go now or can we wait until later today?”

He cocked his head.

“I’m sure you can wait until later today,” he said but there was something about his tone that made me doubt it.

The plan was a good one but after that, we needed to hurry.