The interior zone was slated to consist of permanent housing, office space, and domestic fabrication facilities focused on food, clothing and furniture. Construction had started, but would not go into full swing until the second and third stages of research were completed. Few visited the interior. There was nothing to see except carved out foundations and erected frames for apartment buildings. The support beams for the sky scrapers were already in place, reaching from the ground to the two hundred foot high ceiling above.

As the hostage had surmised, the sky was devoid of drones and, aside from a handful of maintenance clones, there was no one around. Construction vehicles lined the wide streets, flanked by crates of construction nano and piles of raw building materials.

The pair rested in a prefabricated rest hall. She sat against the far wall, beside a nutrient dispenser. A bowl of the thick porridge resting in her lap. Chillard sat by the exit, giving himself a clear view of her and the street. His own bowl of nutrients sat on the floor, untouched. The thought of eating with dizziness in his head made his stomach do backflips. He wouldn't be able to eat until he dealt with the psy-shock.

Chillard watched her with a small part of his consciousness while the rest of his focus walked through the third phase of the Five Steps of Quiet. Fully in tune with every inch of his body his nerves had become virtual synapses for his greater mind-self. Every breath filtered his thoughts, his memories, his expectations. In with cleansing new sensations. Out with toxic reservations and fear. With four sharp intakes of breath, he moved into the fourth phase.

Jake Vis stared with cold detachment as he swung the waste receptacle. Too confused to react, too surprised to scream. Bones cracked and shattered, eyes filled with spots and lights. Knocked to the floor, hands raised in defense. Jake attacked again and again. Each blow sending pain lancing through every nerve. Each broken bone a new agony. Darkness, but the pain, the confusion doesn't end.

The last thoughts of Jake Vis's victims lived in Chillards head, stuck in a repeating loop, poisoning his mind. In the Steps of Quiet, he could take stock of his mind and the damage his own empathic gift was doing to it. The constant replay caused micro-trauma, his empathy had become a curse. Chillard fought against the involuntary tensing of his nerves as more memories cycled through his mind's eye.

Closing his eyes, he created mental walls around the first memory and then the second. Sealed away, it would be harder for them to trigger. A psy-therapist would need to repair the existing damage, but the patch would allow Chillard to use mind-work in moderate bursts.

Five sharp breaths and he moved into the fifth phase, remolding his thoughts and realigning his mental pathways. This was the moment of vulnerability, the moment where his body entered a dreamlike state. As his mind repaired and refreshed, Chillard could watch the world and do nothing.

This was the moment the hostage would make her move.

"I'm glad the Five Steps were able to help. The tension between your eyes has already faded," she said as she opened the paneling of the nutrient dispenser. She yanked cables free, disabling the device. "I was afraid you would collapse."

She crossed the room, coiling the cables together. Kneeling beside him, she took his limp wrists and bound them to the sides of his chair.

"It surprised me to find a Xnean Special Diplomat here on the edge of human space." She sat in the chair across from him, in her hands were his pistol and the taser he'd taken from the security guard. "It's rare to run into a true secret agent."

Chillard hadn't even noticed she'd disarmed him. She was good.

"The chance of coincidence was so low, I calculated for other possibilities. Were you sent by the Armada to spy on me or freelanced out by Earth Conglomerate? Was I even the target? Were you sent for another agent or were you sent for CTRL? I wasn't sure and I needed data."

So she arranged to observe me and be at the right place at the right time. While the majority of his cognitive powers focused on a mental restart, a small portion mulled over her words.

"I cracked your datapads and compared your digital footprint to the station's records of your physical activity. Extrapolating the data, I calculated the most likely route you'd take to reach the docks." She placed the weapons on the table behind her. "I'd nearly missed you, but my math was correct all things considered."

One minute more. The paralysis would slip away in less than sixty seconds when his mind finished the last phase of the Five Steps of Quiet.

"You have a little less than a minute before you complete the Five Steps."

For a fleeting moment, Chillard feared she was reading his mind. There had never been a documented felarnian or canamarian capable of mind-work. She was well trained, but she could not have been reading his mind. She was merely well informed.

She leaned back, and stretched. "You gave yourself away earlier when I mentioned CTRL. You're good. If you weren't suffering from psy-shock, I might have missed it." She took a deep breath. "We're here for the same reason, their experimental Core AI. If you're willing, we would benefit from working together."

Chillard's muscles twitched in sudden bursts as his body shook off its paralysis. He hung his head, staring down at the bowl at his feet. His mind raced. The felarnian government had no real clandestine entities. They were a militaristic people who relied on the strength of arms over subterfuge. The canamarian government was nearly nonexistent. The raiel operated out in the open with their fingers in everything. That left Earth Conglomerate. She was an EC operative... yet even that made little sense.

"How did you find me?" he asked, his voice hoarse from the trance.

"We crossed paths, cracking the same terminals at the same time. After I noticed you, I set a couple scrying programs to monitor your movements. Once I realized we were attacking the same nodes, it became clear to me we would either be allies or adversaries."

"I didn't realize I'd been so sloppy."

"More like my habit of recording my own cracks paid off in an unexpected way."

Chillard nodded.

"What now?" he eventually asked.

"You're left to make a decision. Either we work together, share what we know and find a way off this station or I leave you here to your own devices." She yawned and closed her eyes. "Statistically speaking, our combined skill sets produce the highest chance of escape."

Chillard slipped his wrists out of the restraints and lunged for the pistol. The woman reacted impossibly fast, grabbing for his collar and the gun at the same time. Catching his clothes, she whipped him around and tossed him into the wall. Air escaped his lungs in a loud gasp. She was not only fast but strong.

"How did you do that," she asked, putting space between them.

"You're not the only one with tricks up their sleeves."

"Suggestion. You must have slipped one past me while I ate." She managed to look both embarrassed and annoyed. "You knew I was up to something."

"Not at first, but there were too many little things. You were always too calm and you only tried to run once. I had my suspicions."

He raised his pistol. She'd been fast enough to grab him, but she'd split her focus and gave him the advantage.

"Lower the weapon, Mr. Zwilk."

Calm, cool, collected. Her emotions were still under control. Chillard probed her mind. Her thoughts were orderly, quickly rushing from one idea to the other. It was too fast for him to keep up. The moment she felt his presence, she closed herself off. Again she made a series of long blinks.

"You've been trained by a mind-worker," he stated. It explained her knowledge and discipline.

She nodded.

"This won't end the way you think it will. Lower your weapon."

"I need answers."

"As do I. Think logically about this, Chillard."

"I have no way of knowing I can trust you."

"You do. I'm the one at a disadvantage."

"Miss, I sincerely doubt you are ever at a disadv-"

She kicked the chair in front of her, sending it sailing towards his head. Trained reflexes made him fire, his energy pistol trained on her chest. The thought of killing her was just as distasteful as the thought of losing a potential ally. Regret filled his head.

To Chillard's surprise, she spun aside with impossible speed, the bolt of energy cutting a groove across her shoulder. She fired from the hip, the pilfered taser firing prongs that hit him in the stomach. The jolt of electricity frayed his nerves and dropped him to the floor. Though conscious, he couldn't move.

Quickly, she reclaimed his weapon and restrained him. She moved towards his pack then stopped and shook her head.

"I still can't bind you properly. You're mind-work is pretty good." She flipped Chillard onto his stomach and worked with cables tied around his wrist. "I'm in an interesting predicament."

She flipped him onto his back.

"You've left me with very few op... options."

Her left eye flashed, tinting her sclera red then orange then red again.

"Station security is here. I have no intention of submitting to questioning and interrogation." She grabbed his duffel bag and both guns. "Am I leaving you here or are we working together?"

Chillard felt the effects of the taser waning. He could speak, but it would still be a few minutes before he could wriggle out of her poorly tied knots.

"Wh... who are you?" he croaked.