((OOC:  No problemo, Feign!  I know how that feels.))<br/><br/>The man with the meat cleaver bristled, but shied away from the aim of Dreamer's gun.  "I'm not in charge.  Shark is the prophet of the Five Gods," he muttered.  Some sounds of assent rose from the crowd.  "He's in charge.  He let Lanner see the power of the Gods, and told him what to do.  Lanner told us, and we did it.  You killed Lanner, and now you're threatening me.  You can't be on our side."<br/><br/>"Lanner shot first!" one of the men from the earlier confrontation broke in.  "He didn't trust this guy!  Shot him right in his chest!"  He pointed -- the humans gawked at the integrity of Dreamer's skin there.  Gasps and mutters shuffled about the room.<br/><br/>"You say you're from Shark - sent to trick the cow into trusting you," the man with the cleaver said, agape.  "But you're not human!"<br/><br/>"He is human!" Geena suddenly said, moving forward into the room.  "I know he's human!"<br/><br/>"He can't be!" the man shouted.  "First he survives being shredded in a harvester, now this?  He's the spawn of the Outcast, sent to trick us to defy Shark's will!"  Angry murmurs began to spread over the crowd.<br/><br/>"That's ridiculous!" Geena screamed.  "Shark isn't a prophet!  The Outcast doesn't exist!  There are no Five Gods!"<br/><br/>Silence.  The man with the cleaver eyed Geena across the room.  "You fucked this demon.  His seed has ruined your mind."<br/><br/>"There are no such things as demons!" a young man joined in, standing beside Geena.  It was Arden, a handsome young buck Dreamer had seen Geena with before.  "Shark's just twisting the Divine Writings around!"<br/><br/>"Arden, you're lucky you didn't get killed when you stood up to Lanner before!" the man growled.<br/><br/>"We used to be fighting for freedom, Caleb," Arden said.  "What happened to that?  Remember when we were the Resistance?  All those peaceful co-existence plans we were making?  Even you would agree that the Gods would approve of that!"<br/><br/>"I was with Lanner when he went to see Shark!" the man, now identified as Caleb, shouted.  "I saw the power of the Gods with my own eyes, Arden.  You can't question their will!"<br/><br/>Arden was at a loss, unable to reply to Caleb's certainty.<br/><br/>"Maybe THIS is how we will know if you're telling the truth," Caleb went on, turning to Dreamer, now undaunted by the SMG.  "You can still kill me, but before you do, see if you know the answer to this: what exactly does Shark have that is proof of his holiness?"<br/><br/>The room went silent, eyes on Dreamer.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Raice, the First Sergeant, Jenten, Marice, and the group of soldiers reached the darkened building quickly.  Raice could see the door inside, and he could remember that beyond it was a small, partially-lit loading area.  He remembered where the room he'd been attacked with the surgical scissors was.  What else was there?<br/><br/>The First Sergeant kicked open the door.  "Come on!" he called.  The Resistance soldiers fanned out into the loading area.  Now Raice remembered: stairs led up from a disused corner of the loading area to parts unknown.  Merelli could be up there, or in another room beyond the storage room where he'd been attacked.<br/><br/>"Spread out, spread out!" the First Sergeant ordered, himself leading Jenten and Marice, along with a couple of privates, to the stairs, starting to ascend.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Merelli heard a muted thud from through the floor on which he lay.  His captor, still invisible in the darkness, made a noise like something between a sniff and a click of the tongue.  Despite the dozens of needles piercing his body, Merelli managed a smirk.  Iln had come for him.  The kin-sense all of her kind felt had alerted her to his presence.<br/><br/>A new needle jabbed into his chest, thrusting between two of his ribs and piercing his chest plate.  The pain was indescribable, but between his convulsions he felt something sickening - his heart, as it raced, was brushing against the tip of the needle, which was lodged just shy of piercing it.<br/><br/>"My time is up," came his captor's raspy voice.  "Yours is also.  I can't wait to see the expression on your friends' faces when I kill you."<br/><br/>Merelli tried desperately to slow his heart, to lengthen the time between its pulses so he couldn't feel the needle so much.  He met with little success.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>From where he sat, Heretic could see Janus and Fenson laid out in the grass, just beginning to awaken from their healing slumber.  Janus groaned, rubbing his eyes.  Fenson shifted a hand to his throat, feeling the scale where there once was a hole.  Neither of them could see Heretic from where they lay.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Arget was out of the air handler, and could see now that he was inside a darkened utilities room, perhaps ten feet by fifteen.  Dim, multicolored lighting emanated from various LEDs and gauges on a few scattered panels, difficult to tell what they were unless he saw them up close.  The ceiling was a mess of conduits, pipes, and ductwork.  A metal door stood in the nearby front wall, light streaming in from the crack beneath it, and the floor was cold stone.<br/><br/>On closer inspection, he could tell that most of the lit panels controlled the HVAC system for the floor, but he did find a breaker box, closed and locked.<br/><br/>Heavy footsteps passed the door, running away down the hall outside.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Halvorson glanced at Mad with a slight grin, but said to Baz, "Waste it, Baz.  Let's see some more nice kabooms."  He shuffled well away, keeping the hallway covered.<br/><br/>All clear for now, but the blaring alarms told them all that wasn't going to last...<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The howl of the She-Wolf resounded throughout the stairwell, echoing up and down into the farthest reaches of her Palace.  Her pain seared through her emotional reserve and she writhed, the stump of her severed tail oozing thick blood onto the metal floor plating.<br/><br/>Chiro was halfway down the hall when the door at the far end ahead of him sprung open, belching a dozen Palace Guards into the narrow corridor.  These guards carried guns, and they quickly spread into a staggered firing-squad formation to effectively shoot Chiro down if he continued his retreat.<br/><br/>More guards ascended the stairs occupied by their Lady, fanning out into a similar formation far behind Chiro.  The hallway itself was solid stone, with only two strong, solid metal hatches situated directly across from each other in the dead-center of the corridor.  The doors glowed with a strange blue light, something Chiro had never seen before, and each one had a keypad embedded in the wall next to them.<br/><br/>Alhanda got shakily to her feet, clutching her tail's stump in her off-hand to staunch the flow of blood.  She growled, ignoring the pain in her forehead.  "Another step in any direction, lizard, and you will die an ignoble death," she called, her voice strained with agony.  "I see how it truly is now.  Rather than kill me yourself, you would leave that glory to your master, Eric Lentan, as if he is deserving of such an honor.  Humans have no honor."  She winced, letting out the slightest of whimpers from the pain.  "Here is your choice: my guards can destroy you, or you can go through the hatch on your right.  Do that, and I will show you what your... 'friends...' call honor."  She gave him the code to the hatch.