“So, I’m assuming you have some inkling of who I am, but allow me to elaborate, annoyances.” There was a surprising amount of glee in the founder’s voice. Well, maybe not that surprising, considering the circumstances.

“I am the sole reason you primitive imbeciles exited the stone age. The discovery of ether as an energy source, the creation of the ether engine, CVs, etherships? All me! And yet this backward society could not recognize the fruit of my genius. They simply took my designs and paid me no credit for their theft, because I was born an unshrouded. Can you even begin to imagine how ridiculous that is? I have revolutionized society, and you don’t even know who I am.”

Caeden held back from rolling his eyes. For all that the founder was definitely a genius, he doubted the man invented ethertech as if it came from the void. After all, that technology existed long, long ago when the CMS stations were remade. Considering his manipulation of a CMS chain for teleportation, Caeden thought it far more likely that the founder had stumbled his way into a station somehow, and was simply smart enough to make use of what he found. Which was an accomplishment in and of itself, but the founder was claiming far greater accolades for himself.

“Now, understanding the depth of my greatness, I wish to pay you a compliment.” The founder’s gaze focused on Caeden. “This-” He gestured toward the Entrance Blade on the wall. “-Is something I’ve never seen before, and I find myself unwilling to invest the time necessary to peel apart its secrets.”

To that, Caeden had to resist his urge to laugh. After all, there was no way that the founder would ever get anything worthwhile from the Entrance Blade without him, since Blade Forge filled in critical gaps in the ethertech infrastructure. Right now, unconnected as it was, the Entrance Blade looked like an incomprehensible mess to someone like the founder.

It was pretty funny, thinking about how it must seem to the man. He’d seen the Entrance Blades working, but once he got his hands on it, he couldn’t understand. It would be akin to someone looking at a puzzle only to discover that it was meant to be three dimensional, rather than flat. Missing a fundamental aspect of the rules by which it functioned.

“Are we going to kill this guy yet? I’m sick and tired of waiting around.” Erik complained through the communicators.

“Hold on a moment, I’m actually a little curious about a few things, and I want some answers. If I can get him talking in the right direction, it might be helpful down the line. Be patient. I know that’s hard for you, Erik, but bear with me.” Caeden responded.

“Wow, call me out, why don’t you?” Erik grumbled.

“Well? I’m not a patient man. Answer.” The founder butted in to the conversation he wasn’t aware of. His voice grew hard at the end. No doubt he was used to a rapid response.

“How about this,” Caeden responded out loud. “A trade of information. I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”

“I hardly think you’re in a position to offer trade. I have you at my mercy.” The founder said condescendingly. “I have no reason to humor you.”

“True.” Caeden acknowledged, again preventing himself from rolling his eyes. “But I can lie. And you’ll have to test every piece of information I give you, wasting your time. And I’m sure you’ll attempt to punish me somehow, but that’ll also take time. And then you still won’t know if the punishment was effective until you test my new information, wasting more time.”

“Or,” Caeden spread his palms. “You could answer some questions, and get what you want immediately. Without any time wasted, aside from that spent assuaging my curiosity. And what’s the potential loss on your part? As you said, I’m at your mercy. I can hardly hand the information off to someone else. It’s a more expedient solution.”

“Hmm,” The founder merely stared at Caeden as he contemplated. “I suppose there’s no harm, as you say. You ask out of pure intellectual curiosity?”

“You’ve done a lot that I’ve seen. I’d like to know a little more about you overall goals and how this all happened.” Caeden answered honestly.

“Oh? You’re not probing me for my technical knowledge, but asking about me personally?” The founder perked up. Obviously a narcissist would appreciate being asked questions about themselves.

“They’re questions I can only get answers to from the source.” Caeden shrugged.

“Very well, I shall go first.” Again, Caeden had to hold back his derision. No doubt the founder was hoping to avoid answering any questions by getting all his information in the first answer. “What exactly is the purpose of the second and third causality fuses and match points in the upper right quadrant of the circle?”

At that Caeden actually did chuckle. Because of course that would be the first question. “That’s the portion of the assembly that stabilizes the temporal frequency of the origin and destination points.”

“But why-”

“My question, I believe.” Caeden interrupted. At this point, he was past being nice. He could have these questions answered or not and he didn’t particularly care. But he figured the founder was interested enough to put up with less ass-kissing.

“Have you had access to a CMS?”

“...” The founder was totally silent.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Caeden smiled. “Go ahead and ask your question.”

“How do you know about that?” The founder snapped out of his silence, yelling at Caeden with fists clenched.

“Ah, when I was first picked up to go to the Academy, there were some Revolutionaries messing around with a CMS and turned it into a massive death beam that messed up the ethership I was on. Me and my friend here ended up landing on the facility and breaking in to stop the Revolutionaries.” Caeden explained. He wasn’t going to talk about the researcher with this man.

“That idiot! I knew that I shouldn’t have let some amateurs mess around with such powerful technology.” The founder sighed. “I’ll apologize for that. I placed untrustworthy people in charge of something they obviously couldn’t handle to run some experiments for me. They went rogue and started foolishly trying to use the heat sink of the CMS as a weapon. I can’t believe I almost lost the source of such wonderful ethertech to such a stupid excuse for a minion.”

Caeden was surprised that the founder sounded genuinely apologetic. Then it clicked. He wasn’t regretful about Caeden almost dying, he was lamenting the idea of never seeing the Entrance Blade. His sorrow was as selfish as the rest of his motivations.

Instead of acknowledging the apology, he just asked his next question. “Did you derive all your knowledge from studying the CMS facilities?”

“Hmpf.” The founder huffed. “I find your lack of belief in my genius insulting, and I’m tempted to simply respond with a ‘no’ to your open-ended and non-specific question, but I won’t. This is an excellent chance to enlighten you.”

By the end, his words were almost a growl. “I did, in fact, encounter a CMS in my youth. But I did not learn from it as you suppose. Rather, I was an ignominious youth of little intellect and even less will. I was shunned from my tiny speck of a village for attacking another boy when he started talking to the girl I liked. Needless to say, I was also somewhat lacking in morals.”

“Nothing about the me of that time would have allowed me to surpass the defenses preventing entry to a CMS facility. Lucky for me, or unlucky in some ways, I did not have to break through those blocks, as they’d already been opened. I wandered in, saw all the wondrous technology, and was filled with base avarice. Nowhere in my pea-sized brain was there an appreciation for what I’d found. The beauty of it.”

As he spoke, the founder started to press at pieces of his armor. It hissed as air escaped from the suit, coming off piece by piece. The flesh underneath was withered with age, marked with liver spots and practically hairless.

“In that place, I found an Outsider. One of exceeding age and intellect. Of course, All I saw was a weak old man, not appreciating his genius in entering such a rigorously secured edifice. I thought to kill him and take all his riches. Luckily, the man had as few morals as myself. He had allowed me to enter so that he could enact his own plan.”

More armor came off revealing more sickly flesh. He was so skinny and bent with age that Caeden wondered how he was still alive. Then he started to see the ethertech infused into his flesh. The founder had applied Etherman principles to maintain his life.

“Hey guys, there’s something really weird going on with his soul.” Cat chimed in as the armor came off. “I couldn’t see it when he had the armor on, but…He looks…wrong. Like, seriously messed up.”

“The Outsider carried knowledge from a far brighter, more advanced universe with him into this dull and unenlightened place. But he was not blessed with a shroud, so his lifespan was savagely limited. He was looking for a way to reach immortality. But he was running out of time, so he settled.” The founder continued.

“Rather than attempt to fix his ailing flesh, he intended to steal mine. Sever the soul from my body and replace it with his own. It…Did not go as he intended. Rather than cutting my soul cleanly for his to slide into the gap, the process he enacted savaged us both. The result was…Unfortunate.”

Finally, the founder reached up and removed his helmet. Underneath was a face that looked like melted wax that had been sculpted by two different artists with very different visions for the end product. The end result was a mishmash of features that made little sense. Half a mouth, part of a second nose, four eye sockets with only one eye. A forehead that was too small and a chin that was too big. It was grotesque.

The sight was punctuated by the sound of Cat throwing up. “Oh god, his soul is just as fucked as his face. It’s awful!”

“This is the result. A product that is not wholly either of its base components, but mixed unevenly. Somehow, the process did succeed at extending my lifespan, but with certain…Caveats. I have the knowledge and intellect of the Outsider, but the will and drive of a less than exceptional wastrel. It has been trying, reaching this point. I dared not attempt another such procedure due to the state of my soul.” The founder didn’t even acknowledge Cat’s reaction, his gaze purely focused on Caeden.

“My research since then has trended in another direction entirely. I made inroads into maintaining this corrupted and warped flesh, the fruit of which you call Ethermen. The principles used to keep me barely alive could also be used to enhance other unshrouded. But that wasn’t my main goal.”

“One of your people indicated that your real plan was war profiteering. But everything you’ve said now makes that seem…less than accurate.” Caeden said carefully.

“Ha! Travis, I’m assuming. Such an impressionable boy of lacking moral fiber. He reminded me of myself, in a way. So easy to convince. I just had to make him feel special, like he was being elevated above all others. And then I had an unquestioning soldier who acted without compunction for sacrificing his fellows. A rare thing, truly.” The founder laughed. It was obvious, watching him now, that the voice did not come from his twisted mouth. The armor he wore produced it for him.

“No, that was not my plan.”

Then, a CV screen among the wall of them blinked red, and started chirping. The founder’s attention shifted. “Hmm. How unexpected.”

“What was that?” Caeden asked.

“It’s not your turn, but I’ll humor you. I was being less than honest in my questioning. I do want my answers. But mostly I wanted to scan the lot of you without a fuss. And it seems that was a prudent decision.” The founder’s face could not smile, but it tried. “To elaborate on my true goal, I wanted something very simple. To restore my body and achieve the Outsider’s original goal. Immortality. And that required one thing.”

“So I set about experimenting. Decades passed with so many failures. A relevant topic, since you-” He pointed at Caeden. “And you-” He pointed to Erik. “Seem to be some of the results I threw away. Both in different ways, but relevant.”

Caeden’s blood ran cold. “You didn’t answer.”

“And I have no obligation to. But I will, since it seems you’ve likely reached the same conclusion.”

Caeden had. There was only one thing he and Erik had in common. Weird, unexplained anomalies. Erik’s luck was nonsensical. It defied reason. And Caeden had somehow, magically gained a second shroud after a traumatic incident. Both defied everything he knew about the world. And there was only one thing that could accomplish that.

And the founder’s answer confirmed it.

“I am making my own shroud.”