Hands clasped in the small of her back, grey eyes focused on Sean and then Alec as they spoke, the woman -- Abigail Czeremin, Czar -- listened with rapt attention.  She leaned forward slightly, but otherwise did not move from her position in the corner of the observation area.<br/><br/><em>"Why have I seen you before but couldn't remember it until a few minutes ago?  Why were we held back from the others at the airlock?"</em><br/><br/>Her head tilted slightly, another curl of hair drifting out from beneath the heavy hood of her suit.  One corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been the start of a confused grimace, but she smothered it immediately.  The floor trembled beneath them as they hit a pocket of minor turbulence.  Czar reached out a thin arm and pushed her fingers spiderlike against the one-way mirror to stabilize herself, but Gerry and Kai only swayed slightly, their black-clad figures difficult to discern in the dim lighting.<br/><br/><em>"It would seem that your little buggers have become a bit more dangerous than if you eat one... I saw one kill a man very efficiently. Your weapons didn't seem particular effective beyond whatever kenetic force that they provided."</em><br/><br/>Kai flinched ever so slightly at this, a bare flicker of her wrist as she suppressed the clenching of a fist, the ghostly movement of shadowed skin beneath the crack in her visor as she looked away.  Czar frowned solemnly and looked down before looking back at Sean.<br/><br/><em>"you said below and above, Do you mean space?"</em><br/><br/>Czar nodded slowly, her expression shrewd and calculated.  "Yes... space," she said quietly.<br/><br/><em>"I recieved a warning shortly after being contacted about augers, and just before we all got dragged from our cabins, another warning about them. Is someone trying to help us, or playing a saddistic game?"</em><br/><br/>"That is one of the things I am trying to find out Dr. Gallegar," she said, her voice smooth and patient.  Humid, too.  Where your breath and others was a barely visible mist, hers spilled out in a thick plume.  "Fourteen MONA's aboard the<em>Aegis</em>received a narrow-band transmission that we were unable to intercept.  Eight of them went unnoticed before being automatically expunged, two others are unaccounted for, and the remainder were read by you and yours.  Ten seconds later, the Augurs pierced our hull.  The two events are undoubtedly connected."<br/><br/>She looked evenly at Sean, as if expecting him to say something else, when Alec spoke up.  Her eyes shifted to him evenly, and she took her hand off of the one-way-mirror.<br/><br/><em>"I received a similar warning, that we were to turn back because the 'augurs were stirring'. I assumed it was a prank, until we were attacked, and now you're telling us that you <strong>knew </strong>about those things?  My first clue about these things came when one ripped its way into the compartment and chewed through three of your soldiers. I imagine for the rest of us, it's the same. And you want our information?"</em><br/><br/>Gerry tensed at Alec's movement: a barely discernible hunch of the shoulders, a slight repositioning of weight to his right foot, and the crinkle of his gloves as his fingers curled, as if sensing the butt of the pistol three centimeters away.  Kai's reaction was more obvious, a twitch of her arm as she half-reached for her holster.  Czar did not notice.  The muster of her attention was focused on Alec, her eyes suddenly blazing with emotion.<br/><br/>"'The Augurs were stirring.'  Is that what it said?  Word for word?" she said quickly, like a teacher confirming a muttered answer from the back of the classroom.  Her gaze shifted to the others, but before she could speak Alec was holding his MONA up in front of her.<br/><br/><em>"We are still receiving messages from the Seeker. I know less about this than you probably do." </em><br/><br/>"In some ways, you are correct...  In others, you have a decided head start," she said quietly, almost absentmindedly, her eyes scanning the document.   When she finished reading, she leaned back and put her left wrist to her mouth.  "Confirm: MONA is compromised.  Refer to 'In the House of Dust,' Conrad Aiken 1920."  There was a pause, and then she lowered her wrist.  Behind her, in the holding area, a trio of Peacekeepers appeared.  Their voices were muted by the glass, but the bob of their heads and their gestures indicated that they were speaking to the people inside.<br/><br/>When Czar looked back at Alec, her face was drawn taut in a queer mix of excitement and anxiety.  She looked at each of them in turn as she spoke.  "We don't have much time, and I'll need to see the rest of what you've received, but you should know this first: whatever this Seeker is, it has gained access to our networks, and it is trying to crash this airplane.  If we're going to be able to fight back against it, land safely, and do our jobs, then we need to find some chink in its armor.  Else we'll just be a flash in the gloaming sky above Sirra, do you ken?"<br/><br/>Something about that last part itched inside your ear.  Czar had not said "flash" or "Sirra" or "ken."  She had said, "...we'll just be a crater in the ice, do you understand?"  You knew those where her words, the words her lips had shaped, but that was not what you had heard.  You had perceived words spoken in her voice but not from her tongue, somehow parallel to her's and yet dominant.  It was an indefinable sense of knowing, halfway between intuition and déjà vu.<br/><br/>Czar forced eye contact with Alec, then Sean, Zoey, and Bekah last.  "You have many questions, I understand.  There will be time for answers soon.  But please, for now, tell me everything you can about the Seeker; what it's said, what it's done, anything out of place."