(General Fiction) "UHC: Foundation" Season 1; Episode 10 -- Know Thine Enemy

[halcyonlioness]

[Edit: September 19th, 2014 -- This is an older iteration of the story.  It's highly recommended that you read the googledoc as that is the most recent and most updated version of the series.]


Whoop.  Just in time this week.  Chewing through my buffer a little faster than I'd like, though.  (That's why we have a buffer, right? *cheezy grin*) 

Now the housekeeping: as a refresher for long-time followers of the series and a reference for those who are new, "UHC: Foundation" is a long-running series set in the expansive 'Severance' alternate universe and follows the fates of that universe's incarnations of the Minecrafters we've come to love and respect. As per protocol, for further information and reading, refer to the World Dossier (here) and thecompiled story/serial document (here; alternatively, one can follow the story through here.)

"Knowledge is power...   and I'm not giving you any."

=====

Know Thine Enemy

==Viewing Chamber, Undisclosed Location; Game Start in T-minus 30 seconds==

A quiet, resigned, and distinctly exasperated sigh cut through the deathly silence of the darkened viewing chamber.  Zero, barely visible in the faint light the holographic screens were emitting, dropped his gloved hand from the headset attached to his head.  Glowing violet eyes narrowed at the equally (and more visibly so) exasperated and weary image of General Boulderfist on the largest screen, the de facto leader of the Mindcrack Protectorate putting good use into the last few available seconds of peace to prepare.

Pensive silence permeated the chamber for a few heartbeats before Zero finally muttered to himself flatly: “… he’ll come around …”

“As he should, love.”

Zero paused imperceptibly, as if though he had almost forgotten that she was in the room with him.

The demure yet confident clicking of high heels on stainless steel confirmed Diana’s presence in the chamber with him.  Her delicate fingers, brushing across the back of his shoulders, signaled him to stand aside as she took her rightful place of authority in front of the screens.  Without effort and seemingly without thought, he craned his tall and slender form forwards slightly in a respectful bow.  Zero’s gesture of respect was rewarded with that familiar hand on his cheek, inviting him to rest in the palm of her hand … right where he belonged.

“You handled that brute marvelously,” the comparatively minute woman commended her companion.  There was no hiding the almost maternal pride in her voice.

Zero smiled as slightly as he would allow himself, showing that he had graciously accepted Diana’s genuine compliment.  “I aim to please,” he responded with equal parts pride and meekness.

“You haven’t failed me yet, love.”  Diana respectfully pulled her hand away and resumed her usual all-business demeanor; the power she commanded could be felt emanating from her like a tangible aura.

In the dark where Zero stood, it wasn’t immediately apparent whether or not he was in awe of her, but the faint smile lingering, barely visible, on his face seemed to indicate that was the case.  “Fail you?  I never will.”

“Ma’am.  Sir.”  A dark armored warrior, his rank denoted by the gold markings pulsing steadily in beat with his words, spoke from his station near the vault’s door.  “Word from Elite Dash Four Zero Four.  Collector Units Four Zero One through Four One Three are awaiting extraction.”

There was a sincere look of anticipation on Diana’s face as she turned from the screens and strode back to her seat and her glass of bourbon.  “It’s showtime, love,” she chirruped in a sing-song tone, looking very much like a well-fed cat as she relaxed into the richly embossed cushions.

Zero only nodded in acknowledgement as he stepped back in front of the screens with an air of equal parts showmanship and business as he pressed his fingers into the headset again to relay the final order.

“Game Start in T-minus 5 …

“4 …

“3 …

“2 …

“1 …

“… execute.”

~||~

==Mindcrack Territory; Game Time Elapsed: 40 minutes==

There was simply no wiping that cheesy, smug, and somewhat sinister-looking grin off the man’s face.

“How the fsk did you get here?”  “… and get past our guards?!”  “I’m still smarting from hitting that wall, by the way …”  “Do you realise the kind of torment you’re causing—”  “— could’ve helped us sooner, dammit …”

Even the hail of interrogative questions being fired at him didn’t seem to faze him one bit.  … and judging by his expression, he wasn’t just going to answer them.  Not yet anyway.

“Are we going to keep playing 20 questions, guys?  … or do you want me to help you?”

The storm of queries screeched to a begrudging halt.

In the sudden onset of silence, he leaned back in his chair at the far end of the table—business suit, casually unbuttoned dress shirt, green welding goggles and all—cool, calm, and collected, giving no effort whatsoever to stifle the discreet but wholly infuriating body language that indicated quite loudly how acutely aware the man was that he had effectively gotten under everyone’s skin … and inside their heads.

What was arguably even worse for the other eight men in the Situation Room standing at their seats was how abundantly clear it also were that this self-satisfied sonuvab*ch enjoyed every minute these warriors squirmed in his presence—along with the stinging knowledge that they were currently too desperate for any sort of help to bodily kick him out their territory in the kind of righteous retribution he so duly deserved.

“Tick tock, gentlemen.”  The infuriatingly cheery, sing-song tone broke the tense atmosphere much like a discharging lightning rod, causing the others in the room to flinch slightly.  “I’m here now, and I want to lend you all a hand.  All I need to know is … do you guys still want my help?”

Pyrao was quick to snap back: “D’ya think we ‘ave much of a choice, ya f’n c—”

“Language, Pyrao,” Vechs interrupted all too cheerily as he fiddled with a silver zippo lighter in his left hand.  “Don’t think I’m going to talk if you’re going to defer to me with such a colorful vocabulary.”

Generik did his best to be a touch more diplomatic before Pyrao could work himself further into a berserk rage.  “I guess what Pyrao’s tryin’ t’ say is that we kinda do, but we don’t quite trust you … yet.”

“Interesting.”  The tiny silver lighter flicked and spun around Vechs’s left-hand fingers like one would idly juggle a pen as he casually pulled his iconic green welding goggles away from his eyes with his other hand and dropped them to his neck, allowing the eyewear to hang over his collarbones by the headstrap and rendering his face that much more readable—if there ever was anything to read from that constant, cat-like smirk.

“I have all the information you need, I’m willing to help, your friends are all fighting for their lives god-knows-where, and you still want me to prove my fidelity.”  He grinned a little wider, adding just a little more smarm to the ever-present unnerving glint in his innocuously blue eyes.  “Ah … how things stay the same, huh?”  The hand restlessly playing with the lighter vanished into a pocket below the table’s edge while he leaned the opposite elbow onto the Situation Room’s table and rested his chin in his right palm.  “… how would you suggest I prove myself, hm?”

“We know you aren’t all talk,” Baj growled, his burly arms folded across his chest.  “You were very good at backing up your threats in the past, Vechs.  Why not show us that you can back up your apparent offer of goodwill?”

Vechs only arched a bemused eyebrow in response and acknowledgement, then leaned back in his chair again, the silver zippo lighter now gyrating between the fingers of both of his hands as he casually scanned the room.  After several moments of tense silence, Vechs’s attentions landed on Paul Soares’s workstation where the part-time adventurer had been hard at work chipping away at the mysterious encryption on the broadcast data that had been intercepted hours before.  He sat eerily still for a moment, almost as if though he were transfixed by the purple glow of the lovecraftian-ly animated alphabetical characters and symbols blipping and shifting across the black field of the command terminal … and then he stood up to wander over to the computer, apparently to take a closer look.

A simple ‘hm’ was heard from Vechs as he studied the purple spaz text on the screen.  “… looks like you guys managed to get a chunk of the broadcast data …”  Whether or not he was genuinely impressed or just intrigued was hard to tell.  “… and you’ve made some progress deciphering the modus.”

“… uh … thanks?” Paul Soares spoke up, doing his best not to appear confrontational as he wandered over to the workstation as well, with the ulterior intent of protecting the work he had completed on the decryption thus far.  “It hasn’t been easy, I can tell you that; especially when every letter and symbol tends to change into something new every three microseconds …”

“Doing all the decoding by yourself?”  Vechs’s tone was infuriatingly cordial; that alone was unnerving to Paul, judging by the way his shoulders tensed involuntarily and visibly.  The sentiment was shared by the other men in the room—they were accustomed to Vechs being far more ruthless than buddy-buddy.

The tone in Paul’s response indicated that he wasn’t all too fond of Vechs’s sudden demonstration of friendliness.  “… yeah.”

Vechs was still smiling that smarmy smile, as if the cocky young man were blatantly ignoring all of the territorial signals the older hacker kept flashing.  “Niiice … especially with all the progress you’ve made so far.  Wouldn’t expect any less from one of my favorite rivals.”

Whatever Vechs was selling, Paul was clearly not buying it.  “… what are you getting at, Vechs.”  It wasn’t a question.

The younger man only gestured casually at the workstation.  “Mind if I take a crack at it?” he asked with an infuriating level of respect and a chilling politeness.  “… I promise I won’t break anything other than that cipher.”

Paul stood in silent consideration for several moments, glancing back and forth between his computer monitor and the expressions of the other seven members of the cadre in the room in an attempt to divine some alternative to allowing this career pain-in-the-backside access to not only all that sensitive equipment, but also the preciously sparse information he had managed to painstakingly mine out of the cipher thus far … which arguably wasn’t much, but that was the last thing he was going to admit to this guy.

As it was, even the disillusioned Mindcrack hacker had to relent in the face of reality.  There were simply no other options, and it didn’t seem like an alternative was about to show its face in a timely manner.  He let out an exasperated exhale.

“Alright, fine,” Paul muttered, grudgingly granting Vechs permission with a resigned shrug.  “Give it a shot … don’t think it’ll be much easier for you.”

That cocky grin seemed to get even wider.  “Hmmhmm … we’ll see.”  With that, Vechs pulled up a chair, set down his zippo lighter, and began clattering away at the keyboard in earnest.

Slightly confounded and concerned expressions were traded across the room between the other men for a moment, then curiosity slowly began to overwhelm their misgivings.  One by one, starting with Baj, they wandered over to Paul Soares’s workstation and gathered around to watch Vechs chip away at the obfuscated lines of code.

For all their collective grievances with the man, watching Vechs at work was a sight to see.  Every now and then, he’d pick up his lighter with one hand and flick it around his fingers while his other hand continued striking the keyboard with ease, and sometimes the lighter would fluently exchange hands without the keyboard ever falling silent, as if Vechs was intentionally showing off his ambidexterity.  All the while, he either hummed idly to himself or talked unashamedly to the air, giggling randomly at his own words (at which a few of the onlookers traded expressions that quietly agreed that this man should be committed to the local loony bin at the earliest possible notice).

It seemed to take forever, and no time at all.  Between one mumbled phrase and the next, Vechs exhaled a quick ‘ooh!’ before hurriedly biting down on and holding his silver lighter in between his teeth as he focused both hands onto the keyboard in a rightly staggering flurry of keystrokes.  At last, with a theatrical flourish, Vechs finished the final salvo with a dramatical tap on the return key and pulled his hands away in quiet and self-satisfied triumph.  “Done!” he chirruped gleefully, the lighter now freed from his teeth and dancing between his fingers once again.

The other men in the room ignored Vechs’s announcement of success as they watched the computer screen with dumbfounded amazement.  Before their eyes, the twisting lines of purple-glowing code that had been an utter mystery to them for the past several hours began to unravel into coherent and readable lines of information; freed from the alien obfuscation were dozens of IP addresses, timestamps, coordinates, and equally many lines of executable protocols flagged for each address listed.

Paul stood there equal parts defeated, suspicious, confused, and impressed, while Pyrao—himself a hacker—was clearly not quite as awestruck as his older counterpart.  The dragon-skulled warrior wasted no effort pushing Vechs aside to verify the deobfuscation himself … several calculated keystrokes later, all Pyrao was left with was genuine data and the overpowering impulse to flash an incensed glare at the smirking man playing with his cigarette lighter.

“‘ow th’ fsk did ye manage ta do that!” Pyrao blurted out, still staring at the neatly ordered decrypted code in front of him.

Vechs flicked open his lighter, sparked the tiny flame the device had been made to contain, and then flicked the lighter closed again with a practiced click.  “… do what?” he responded innocently, his tone of voice not unlike that of a proud child having made a surprise for its parents.

Even as Pyrao was about to snap something decidedly inappropriate in return, he was mollified—if barely—by Paul Soares stepping in.  The older hacker, noticeably commanding a greater degree of respect from his younger colleague, nodded accordingly to the Irish berserker before gesturing toward the computer screen.  “That.”  The look that Paul fixed back onto Vechs was a lot less accommodating, however.  “… ‘cause I wanna know how you did it, too.  We’ve been trying to figure that cipher out for hours before you waltzed in here and cracked it open in under three minutes.”

“Oh!”  A semi-mocking expression of realization edged its way into Vechs’s already massively infuriating demeanor.  “… you guys wanted to know how I cracked that encryption modus?”  He grinned almost maniacally at the smattering of earnest nods of acknowledgement from the other gentlemen in the room.  “That’s easy.  I didn’t.”

“Tha’ makes no fskin’ sense!” Pyrao snarled immediately.  “We jus’ watched ye deobfuscate several dozen lines o’ code right in front of us—”

Even in the middle of the young berserker’s tirade, Vechs flicked open his lighter and watched its tiny flame dance again.  “—you can’t ‘crack’ something you’re already familiar with, Pyrao.”  He flicked the lighter closed to punctuate the cryptic statement.

The Irishman caught his breath from the strange interruption, and then his eyes narrowed dangerously.  He was only held in check by Baj’s firm hand on his shoulder.

“What is that supposed to mean, Vechs?” the massive Englishman spoke in place of every Mindcracker in the room.  The tone of his voice clearly indicated that he was slowly losing what little patience he had allowed himself with the quietly manic computer whiz sitting in their midst—and there had been precious little to start with.

Vechs only grinned in the face of Baj’s stiff demeanor.

The Colonel’s eyes hardened, as did his features; but his words never rose, and his timbre remained stoic and unyielding.  “We don’t have time to beat around the bush like this, Vechs.  Time is ticking—you said so yourself.”

“Hmmmm … so I did.”  A calculated pause.  “Let me show you guys something.”  Vechs shuffled his seat back in front of the workstation, opened up a browser, and pulled up a very specific website.

How specific the website was, was quickly made apparent by the way the assembled Mindcrackers did a collective and visible double-take at the magnificent company logo proudly emblazoned in the top left corner of the browser window.

The now eerily focused engineer gave them little pause to ponder this strange course.  He pulled up the website’s IP address in a separate window that he deftly put to one side, and then returned his attention to the thickly-packed list of IP addresses that had been hiding behind the foreign, unnerving decryption modus.  Wholly without his usual extraneous flourishes, he highlighted the very first IP address, timestamp, and executable prompt on the litany of information that he had decrypted no more than a few minutes earlier.  “Take a gander at that, guys.”

Pyrao was quick to state the obvious: “They’re th’ same IP.”

“It’s also the first IP on that list.  And the only IP that doesn’t have a destination flag like the others.”  Vechs snapped his fingers; the silver lighter somersaulted into the air in a flash of light before he caught it again, expertly.  “In the fewest of words … the origin.”

Paul Soares was the first man to regain his wits.  “… that’s the SBK Foundation’s website,” he enunciated, almost with a palpable effort.  His eyes wandered from the computer screen to Vechs, slowly, as if his own mind refused to acknowledge what was being shown in plain sight.  “… are you suggesting that whoever’s doing this—”

“—is usin’ tha’ SBK ta cover their tracks?!” Pyrao hissed on cue, hands balling into fists with a creak of grinding bones.

“Ohhh, it’s worse than that.”  Vechs’s voice had regained its infuriating sing-song tone.  He flicked his lighter into the air and caught it again, before pointing a thumb towards the screen, indicating the decrypted IP list.  “That encryption modus all that information was hidden under?  … was developed by the SBK Foundation itself.”

The silence that fell was deafening.

“Wait.”

Everyone turned their heads at the tinboxed voice that had piped up, and watched Pungence push his way through to the now partially crowded workstation, headed straight toward the same man that had several minutes earlier thrown up a forcefield that had rendered the Moderan expatriate incapacitated for all of a handful of heartbeats.  Generik took a slight step towards the fully armored supersoldier, who quickly held up a hand in reply.  Even then, the wizened Hermit noticed the near infinitesimal tremble in the younger man’s armor-plated fingers, and knew beyond a doubt that it was taking every ounce of the Assyrian’s self-control to keep himself from lunging at the quietly manic engineer and shake Vechs half to death by his shoulders.

Pungence retracted his helmet’s visor slightly so his voice could be heard clearer, but he still kept his face mosty concealed.  Even so, his timbre resonated with a combination of overtones that rang painfully true to the thoughts being shared by every Mindcracker in the room.  “Are you sayin’ that the jerkasses that kidnapped our friends and family are using the Foundation’s tech?”

The seated man only flicked his lighter around his fingers for a beat before responding plainly: “Yes.”

Another beat of stunned silence.

“Who the fsk would do that?” Nebris whispered hoarsely.  He caught himself quickly enough when the other men turned their eyes to him, and began to explain.  “… they’re the ones that backed the development of the trans-temporal technology that made it possible to travel to this world in the first place.  They funded the majority of the First Colonization Campaign—provided medical tech, supplies, and services to every colony that decided to settle here—both Vanali and Moderan.”  At this, Pyrao muttered offhandedly under his breath; Baj mollified the opinionated young berserker once again with a firm hand on a scale-armored shoulder.

Nebris simply went on.  “They’re peaceful, powerful, and have nothing but the strongest positive political influence in the MRP, the VPF, even as far up as the UN.  They’re literally the most prestigious neutral organization on both ends of the Novis portal cluster.”  He gestured suddenly, errantly.  “Who in their right mind would even think about trying to shoplift SBK tech?!”

Vechs kept his eyes on his lighter, letting it spin into the air with another bright silver gleam.  “No-one did.”

Nebris stared with purple-glowing eyes at the engineer.  “The hell?”

“Once again, you heard me correctly.”

This time it was Generik who spoke up, noticing the color beginning to rise on Baj’s complexion.  “Whaddya mean with that?” the Hermit inquired carefully but with every ounce of authority his scrawny appearance could command.  He gathered his wits further as Vechs’s piercingly blue gaze landed on him, and he drew a light breath before he went on.  “If the Foundation ain’t bein’ used like everyone else, then … that means …”

Vechs stared back at Generik with a strange, conflicting mixture of cold indifference and stark pity on his face.  He flicked the lighter open and closed again.  “… that your last and greatest hope—the SBK Foundation—is the origin of all your troubles at this very moment.”

The silence that now fell was not only deafening, but stifling, strangling.  Several of the assembled Mindcrackers visibly stumbled back onto their heels, not even a gasp escaping their throats, which had all closed in agonized disbelief.

It was Pyrao who reacted first; he lunged forward, seized Vechs by the collar of the engineer’s dress shirt and yanked the other man out of the workstation chair, dragging Vechs’s feet along the floor.  “I knew it!!” the young Irishman snarled furiously, practically spitting into the much taller man’s face.  “I knew we shouldn’t’ve been trustin’ ye so-called-neutral traitor sunuvab—”

Vechs’s features never so much as twitched; in a sudden display of physical agility, he grabbed Pyrao’s arm with one hand, twisted his legs about to regain his footing, and flicked open his lighter with his other hand with additional force—this time, instead of the ubiquitous lighting mechanism, revealing small metal tines that looked suspiciously like those of a taser.

Their design and intent became apparent within the next fraction of a second, when a blue-white arc of livid electricity sprang up from the prongs and Vechs promptly applied them to Pyrao’s other arm in icily calm retaliation.

Pyrao flinched away hard, releasing the other man with a stumble and slight lurch and a loud and vehement invective.  Catching himself within the next moment, he balled one fist and pulled back to throw a punch into Vechs’s face … only to be stopped by Baj’s iron grasp, the far larger man stepping forward to intervene in the impending fisticuffs.

By the look on the Colonel’s face, it was clear that he probably wouldn’t have minded the commotion too much.

“Stand down, Captain,” Baj ordered, knowing that such a formal address would be the only way to get the Gaelic berserker’s flying temper to relent.  The Englishman trained narrowed and distrustful eyes toward Vechs.  “… let the man explain.”

Vechs smirked cooly, straightening his shirt and sportcoat with a smug flourish before clicking his combined taser/zippo lighter closed.  “Thank you kindly, Baj.”

There was no hiding the growl in Baj’s voice.  “Don’t mention it.  Ever.”

As Pyrao yanked his arm away from Baj’s grip in a terse huff, Vechs sauntered over to the Situation Room’s central table and plonked himself down on its edge with all the calculated elegance and self-awareness of a black cat.  “As has been concluded … yes, the SBK Foundation is behind not only the kidnappings, but also the political and technological chaos, that invasive broadcast … and that ‘game’ your friends are ‘playing’ on those screens.”  He casually pointed with a thumb over his shoulder at the main screen, where the broadcast in question was still being played back in all its gruesome spectacle.

“Then why help us?!” Nebris blurted out incredulously.  “We contacted you because you work for the Foundation—”

“Correction.”  Vechs raised a finger.  “I worked for the Foundation.  Past tense.”  He sighed almost theatrically.  “Seriously, I wonder if you guys are even listening to me sometimes—”

“—still, I find it hard to believe that the same people who have been supplying our protectorate with medical supplies and even fitting some of our best warriors with replacement cybernetic limbs are the ones running this circus,” Nebris countered crossly.  “Besides, you’re missing something important.”

Vechs’s eyebrows shot up into his forehead in innocent wonder.  “Oh?  And what might that be?”

“The Director of the Foundation,” Nebris shot back.  “Dr. Diana Isis.  She’s been in charge of the SBK since the close of the Severance Wars, overseeing their every action for the past five years.  How could any of this madness have gotten past her?”

Vechs’s expression shifted back into that peculiar contrast of emotionless sympathy.  “Simple.  She is the one who personally oversaw every detail of it.”

Every other man currently standing in the room rounded on the smartly-dressed engineer.  “WHAT?!”

Whatever firestorm of incensed question was about to levered onto the man in their midst died almost instantly, however; the other men parted, almost on an awkward cue, as the somewhat gangly gestalt belonging to Millbee slowly came wandering into their midst, an uncharacteristically quiet Wolfie plodding along at the man’s heels.

The Vanalian shepherd fixed a strangely intent gaze onto Vechs, speaking in a peculiar, low tone: “How do ye know fhis?”

Vechs met the probing look plainly.  “I was on the Foundation’s Board of Directors.  VP and Director of Research and Development, to be precise.”

“You were what?” Baj barked, spinning around to stare at the engineer.

Vechs shot back a cocky smirk.  “... what did you think I was?  … the janitor?  How else would I have gotten access to this level of knowledge?”  The Colonel seethed visibly, but stepped back nonetheless.

Millbee went on, still in that odd, quiet timbre.  “D’ ye know what happen’d to our ofh’r contacts?”

Vechs turned back, his face flicking into a petulant resignation.  “Who do you think was in charge of all those people?”

The shepherd simply continued to look at him.

“What actually happened to them?”  Vechs paused, his expression turning genuinely grim, solemn and, somehow, remorseful … if it were at all possible that the man possessed even a single remorseful atom in his body.  The display was surprisingly unnerving to watch.  “… I … I have a few educated guesses as to what might’ve happened to them all.  None of those guesses are pretty.”

Millbee seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then nodded quietly, letting his gaze fall and stepping back again while Wolfie let out a little whine of concern.  A pensive silence settled over the assembly.

“So.”  Baj’s dour tone broke the momentary standstill.  “Where do we stand?”

“I’ll help you.”

The other men present turned to stare incredulously at Vechs.  In turn, the engineer let out a loud, theatrical sigh and rolled his eyes dramatically.  “Oh please.  There’s just no way I’m convincing you stubborn lot, is there?”

“There’s something in it for you, Vechs,” Paul Soares pointed out crossly.  “There always is.”

“Well, fine.”  Vechs let show a cold smirk.  “I said I was the Director of Research and Development, right?  Let’s just say I left a lot behind when I had to hightail outta the SBK’s headquarters.”

Generik shot the engineer a glance.  “… you were actually on the run,” the Hermit mused, halfway to the air, halfway to himself.

“Hmhm.”  The silver lighter jumped in the air, spun and was caught.  “Had to disguise myself as a janitor to at least be able to nab some of the light-weight content … like that encryption modus.”  He shot a piercing glance at the Hermitage leader, who did his best not to squirm visibly.  “And that is, obviously, why I couldn’t be as … forthright with you guys as you might have wanted me to.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” Baj quipped sourly.  Vechs merely gave him a toothy smirk in return.

“And that brings us to our current situation!”  The smartly-dressed man hopped off the table edge, his tone back to its original grating cheer.  He straightened his jacket, put the green-lensed goggles back over his eyes, and put his hands into his pockets, all in one, casually smooth sequence of motion.  “Help me reclaim what is mine, and I’ll help you reclaim what is yours.”

Even behind the goggles, his eyes could be seen glinting one more time.  “… deal?”

 

~||~

(Author's Note)
[curiously blank this week] 

...

=====

Author's Box (FAQ): 
"What is the Severance Universe?" -- The Severance Universe is the setting for the 'UHC: Foundation' serial. Read all the previous chaptersodes here or here and read more info and lore click here.

Severance Universe One Shots:
SUOS 001 - Hat
SUOS 002 - Descent and Denial
SUOS 003 - Into This World 
SUOS 004 - Hostility