One crisis avoided, and one usage of the damper down. I may have conquered my fear of the device and come to terms with myself as a divided consciousness, but that didn't mean I could go in and out of computational time haphazardly. Despite being psychologically prepared for it, the device did put a physical strain on my brain, and activating it too many times without rest or utilizing it for too long could have unpredictable effects. I wasn't fond of the idea of scrambling my mind any more than it already had been.

I tapped the intercom at my heart and reported, "Damper activated. All systems normal."

"I saw," Doc muttered, staring down at my monitors with a mug of coffee in hand. "Are things already going south?"

"No, no detection thanks to Alpha and Omega. I didn't have a choice. I ran into a machine core, and I had to keep it from raising alarms. Needed Izzy's help, too."

"A machine core?" Doc raised an eyebrow. "Did you try to break into a factory or a starship or something?"

"No, it was the convention center."

Doc furrowed his brow and balked at the intercom for a moment. "What? That's... abnormal. Isabelle helped? I thought you couldn't get through to it."

"It took a little prodding... and yeah, that's what I thought, too!" Something was wrong. We hadn't heard anything at all about the convention center being a machine structure. It made no logistical sense for it to be one, either. This felt very wrong. This was a bad sign. "I've gotta tell Aisling."

I turned my attention back to the ground crew. It was kind of hard to divide my attention between the ship and the relay down on the ground; they were so far apart. But nothing that interesting was going to be happening on Theseus for a couple hours, anyway. I zipped back to Aisling's terminal, now rapidly descending the staircase. I followed her on the live feed of the security cameras before pinging her. 'Aisling, something's wrong. I can't get into the convention center. It's a machine structure. I still can't interact with a bioprocessor.'

Aisling picked up the terminal and read over my message, signaling everyone following her to stop, and they all came to a halt several floors up from ground. "What now?" Joel asked sharply.

Aisling shook her head. "I don't... know. That doesn't make any sense," she muttered to herself, stepping to the side and leaning against a wall as she stared down at my words. "Give me a minute."

It wasn't often I'd seen Aisling caught this far off guard. I could tell she had the same feeling of wrongness from this that I had. Suddenly, this whole operation felt very off. "Shaw. Did you find out anything about the convention center's security systems?"

Shaw nodded. "Of course. State of the art. Upgraded on Foundation's dime for this event, in fact. But nothing our little miracle hacker can't handle."

"Apparently it is," Aisling sighed. "It's got a core in it."

Joel, Shaw, and Ray all looked shocked for a moment. "That, I hadn't heard of..." Shaw mumbled, composing himself and putting a thoughtful hand to his chin.

"I take it that's not normal?" Joel asked next.

"Not at all." Aisling shook her head. "Cores are great for handling large machine structures made of lots of smaller systems that need tight cohesion. To have that for a glorified theater is... unnecessary for even the most robust security system I'm aware of. It doesn't benefit them."

"It's overkill for sure," Shaw added. "Another of Meryll's sisters is present, perhaps? Do they plan to reveal the Arthausen program after all?"

I pinged again. 'No, it was a standard core. There was no personality behind it, it was all function. I can reason with a person and I can manipulate a machine, but I can't do anything with a mindless core. And if one of my sisters was here, they would have used the direct video link after I tried to connect. It's not awakened. But it also means I can't get in there at all.'

Aisling nodded down at the terminal. "Meryll says it's not, and I'm inclined to believe her. Alright, we might not have as much assistance as we thought once we're inside."

"We're still doing this?" Ray asked, a little bit of apprehension in her voice.

Aisling nodded. "It's not ideal, but the plan was never for Meryll to provide constant overwatch anyway. While she'll be a welcome assistance getting there, we already planned to infiltrate the place more physically than electronically."

If I was spooked about this mission before, now I was terrified. This was too convenient, wasn't it? They couldn't have just thrown a machine core into the convention center just for the hell of it, to make it more secure. That only made sense if they were accounting for me. 'Aisling, this is a trap.' I declared plainly.

Aisling grimaced down at my message. "It makes no sense for this to be a trap..." she mumbled.

"Unless we're compromised," Shaw offered. Aisling glared up at him. "What? It's possible. Do you really think nobody on your team is even capable of selling out?"

"I don't." Aisling growled defiantly.

I let out a thoughtful hum as well. It was hard to imagine any one of us playing traitor here. And even less so that Foundation wouldn't have just come for us on Io if they had known how far into the outer colonies we were. But the crew was practically as much family to me as Lily was. And if anyone was informing on us, it made the most sense for it to be Shaw. If that were the case, why would he be the one to bring it up?

None of that mattered. It was still too big of a coincidence. People didn't just shove bioprocessors into security systems for no reason. 'This is way too suspicious. We should retreat now, Aisling. I don't like this.'

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Aisling swore under her breath, letting her arm hang down as she contemplated it, an irritated, almost pained, expression on her face.

Shaw crossed his arms and let out a sigh. "You really trust everyone that much? I thought you were better than that, Aisling. What about your newly roused captain friend?"

Aisling closed her eyes and shook her head. "The conference was announced before Collins would have had an opportunity to communicate, and an event like this was likely planned internally for months, when she was comatose." She sounded angry about something. Probably Shaw poking at the crew's loyalty.

"Can it, Shaw." Joel growled loudly. "Everyone on this crew's been wronged by corps more than any payoff could ever make right." Joel walked right up to Shaw and loomed over him. "I'm looking at the only one here that hasn't had their life ripped apart by Foundation or scumbags like them."

Shaw, unintimidated by Joel's posturing, let out a quick chortle, then smirked right up at him. "You lot are so secretive about your pasts. Are you sure absolutely everyone shares your vitriol?"

Joel wrapped both his hands around the collar of Shaw's shirt, and in a flash, lifted him up and pushed him against the wall of the stairwell hard enough to make a loud thud and a surprised grunt from the smaller man. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't-"

"Cool it! Both of you!" Aisling snapped. Shaw smiled at Joel, clearly trying not to look unnerved by the assault. Joel let him drop a few inches to the floor with a dismissive grunt, and backed away from him. "I've been keeping a close eye on Shaw since we came to Io, and Meryll's been monitoring all communications since we lifted the embargo. Nobody, not even Shaw, even had the opportunity to make a move against us, so quit talking like this idea has any merit to it."

"Maybe we should back out now, though." Ray offered, passively stepping between Joel and Shaw to prevent another mishap. "I'm starting to get that bad gut feeling Meryll had myself now."

Shaw sighed, brushing off his shirt. "You can leave if you like. I may not have a fire team to force my way toward the big secrets, but I'm confident I can worm my way into that conference and find something of value, even just mingling among the elites. And if you're leaving, I know enough people on Europa to take care of myself."

Aisling held her hand up at Shaw. "We're not retreating. Not yet."

'Why not?!' I demanded, watching Aisling lift her terminal for just a moment to read my protest, then let it hang loosely at her side again.

"This is an unexpected variable," Aisling admits. "I don't even know what it means, if anything. But it doesn't present any problems we haven't already prepared for. We're going to approach the convention center more cautiously and scope things out from closer before we infiltrate. It's possible that this machine core was necessary for them to set up for whatever this big reveal is, which would mean there is something of real value there, and it has nothing to do with us."

Was I the one being irrational about this? I opened my eyes and floated in the void for a moment, trying to piece together why I was seeing danger that Aisling wasn't. She was usually so hypervigilant, but she was so transfixed on this mission she couldn't see it. I couldn't be the only one picking up on this, right? Or maybe it was just as obvious as I thought, and she was ignoring the risk, which was unlike her. I closed my eyes and sent, 'Aisling, is something wrong?'

She looked down at her terminal again and let out a long sigh, her shoulders slumping. "Look... I need to come clean about something. For the sake of morale, I've been trying to avoid saying this." She closed her eyes again and stepped away from the wall, beginning to slowly pace the landing as she pieced her words together on the spot. "The general state of things back home is... bad. The blockade on Luna has all the pirate gangs nervous. They pulled it off way too easy, and the gangs barely had a chance to mount a meaningful resistance to it. If they decided to just stay there, we have no idea if, even collectively, we could have stopped them."

Everyone went quiet, Shaw and Aisling both looking down at the ground. She continued, "They're getting suspicious of each other. That the other gangs will sell them out for leniency. There isn't in-fighting yet, but there could be a catastrophe brewing under the surface, and if things keep going as they are, it's only a matter of time. If we lose our organization, the corpos lose all doubt they can just take the inner colonies."

She let that hang in the air for a few moments, avoiding eye contact with everyone. "Didn't know things were that dire..." Joel grumbled. "But what's that got to do with us here? We're not a member of any of the gangs, and we don't really have much say over Lunar politics, do we?"

"I'm well aware that what we're doing here is... dangerous. Insane. And we usually reserve those types of things for when we're desperate. I've done everything I can to prevent this being a suicide mission. I don't blame you if you want to go back up there and leave right now. But we need a win. Luna needs a win. A big win. If someone doesn't show everyone very publicly that these assholes are vulnerable, and that we can gain an edge on them, then Luna might not be such a safe haven by the time we get there. Nowhere will be. So we either take a chance on this op, or we leave and hope someone else makes a play. The truth is, we are desperate, even if the danger isn't as transparent as it usually is."

The stairwell went quiet again. The weight of what we were doing hadn't been so heavy before. Sure, it was speculation; she could be wrong. But Aisling knew how to read people, and if she saw it coming, that wasn't nothing.

I'd been right. This was unusually reckless for Aisling. And she'd been hiding her motives behind this operation. But I somewhat understood. I couldn't even really be mad about it, because I couldn't disagree. Hearing the truth of it made my stomach turn, and judging by the uneasiness on everyone's faces, I wasn't alone.

No one really knew what to say. Aisling was basically signing us up to be some kind of pirate heroes behind our backs, downplaying the severity of this mission. "So it's not as simple as retreating at the first sign of something going wrong after all, is it?" Ray spoke up first.

Aisling frowned. "I didn't lie about that. Everything about the infiltration plan is exactly as I told you all. If we get in over our head, our evacuation contingencies are real, and if we leave with nothing, we can at least say we caused a scene. That might be enough to stir some hope back in folks back home, especially if we get away with it." She took a deep breath and motioned down the stairs. "But if we can steal something of actual value, or get our eyes on specs for advanced tech... a tangible edge to hand over to Luna at large... That's the ideal. That could turn things around."

"'Could' doing a lot of heavy lifting there, Captain." Joel grumbled quietly, giving her a glare. "Don't appreciate being lied to. Supposed to trust each other."

"Yeah, Aisling. You know I'd have been by your side for this if you told us from the beginning." Ray looked at the ground, disappointment written clear on her face.

Aisling reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I know. The stakes have never been higher. I didn't want to bring all this subterfuge into this. I figured it wouldn't matter after the fact, and I considered telling you lot before. There was the chance of psyching you all out about this. It's a heavy burden, and not knowing about it might have helped make things easier."

"Bullshit." Joel growled. "You know I work better under pressure. I'd have been all in if I knew these were the stakes."

Aisling sighed, leaning against the wall again and throwing her arms out to the side, as if in surrender. "Not everyone's you, Joel. And making you all tense about the situation alone wouldn't have been enough for me to keep it from you on its own. But then Lily asked me not to tell you."

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