"You're a good boy, be sweet ok. I promise I will come back for you."

Rogue whimpered and scooted forward on his four paws, tail thumping sadly against the floor as the Marshal stood back up, and looked at the green mohawked bartender behind the counter, "Thanks for watching him. I know it's a bit of a hassle with your new baby and-"

His friend raised a hand and smiled, "Don't worry about it, we love Rogue, he's a big old softie, aren't you boy." He reached down to pat the dog's head, and Rogue licked his hand once before turning to look back at the Marshal, his glowing blue eyes wide and sand.

"Don't look at me like that." He muttered, "I shouldn't be gone long." Though a part of him..... knew.

And that part of him knew that Rogue knew.

If this all worked out, even if this didn't work out. It was unlikely he would ever see Rogue again. He waved one more time at the human and Finnari behind the bar, reached down to stroke Rogue's big velvety ears and made his way out of what had been his workplace for the last two years. At his shoulder NEMO bobbed quietly but said nothing. He looked up at the sky, wishing for rain that might match his dour mood, but despite the low ceiling of clouds hanging overhead, there was no rain.

It was dark out, and the sun orbs had been dulled to a deep blue.

He had read something in the papers abut the color choice. It was only used in public spaces and only at night, but supposedly it decreased the rate of violent crime happening after dark by a whopping 60%. It helped that Arcadia had the lecture of being very selective who they allowed on their planet, and were very liberal in who they kicked off.

On Arcadia, there were no second chances for things. Any sort of domestic violence, harming children, all of it would result in you being exiled off planet. The thought process followed that, if you could live on a planet where formal dueling, Spartan training, drev training, and martial arts were actually a religion, and you STILL couldn't control your temper, then you didn't belong planeside.

Drugs might have been a problem if the Director of Intelligence Conn didn't know exactly who was smuggling them, and had subsequently crippled whatever drug trade there might have been on arcadia. The man was a real danger, and the Marshal had done his best to avoid the creepy floating alien at all costs knowing that his cover would be blown if they ever came in telepathic range of each other. He wasn't sure if it had worked, but since he had yet to be arrested, he assumed he had managed to fly under the radar.

It helped when you actively avoided thinking about what you actually were.

He had had a job once, a legitimate one. He had been a detective in the UNSC's first interplanetary division, loaned out to law enforcement agencies across the galaxy, fighting crime in the understreets of Noctopolis, or over the sands of Irus.

He had been good at his job, had enjoyed his job mostly, had managed to claw his way up in the competitive ranks on the strength of his own merit, but it was that drive, and that skill that had caused his downfall. At one point he had been head detective of the UNSC's interplanetary investigative division, and he had enjoyed his job. It was then that Senator Hunt had come to him with a proposition.

It was a job offer that included a massive pay raise, benefits, and a promise to see even more of the galaxy.

At the time he had not expected to be groomed into a pet assassin.

But here he was, and no matter how much he wanted to leave, or how much he wished he could turn back, he knew that the potential collateral wasn't worth his freedom. He would rather exist as a servant to tyrants for a thousand years before he would let the collateral get out of hand.

Up ahead the spiral tower glowed hazy in the darkness.

The lights in the upper penthouse were off, and all was still.

He turned his head quietly towards NEMO and nodded towards the tower, "Disable the cameras."

The little AI bobbed with the glee of a challenge, and shot off towards the spiral tower, quickly shrinking into a speck before vanishing in the darkness. He remained where he was, slowly walking over to sit on a nearby bench, acting like a man just out for some midnight air.

He didn't have to wait long before his implants pinged, and he didn't bother to look down, rising to his feet and making his quick way over the moss and towards the base of the tower. Once there, he quickly tapped the heels of his boots together, bringing them to life with a sharp whirr.

Gravity boots.

They weren't expensive as the ones he had seen Admiral Vir using, and they weren't nearly powerful enough to reverse pull, but the advertisements said they could get him down to at least one tenth of his normal weight, which was basically around twenty pounds

He could lift twenty pounds in his sleep standing on his head.

NEMO appeared out of the darkness just then, snatching the small cable he offered to her before shooting up into he air and vanishing up the side of the tower. The thin wire spun upwards into the dark. The wire was no bigger round than the average piece of yarn, but it was made using Burg designed fibers taken from the silk making insects of their planet.

The tensile strength of the fibers were stronger than spider silk pound by pound, completely flexible, and relatively cheap to manufacture.

He felt a tug on the line, and threated the end of the line through the small spool with handles on both sides.

The light on the spool blinked green, and he pressed the trigger.

At only twenty pounds, neither the spool, nor the Burg silk had any difficulty pulling him upwards, working quickly so as not to be noticed by any lay person out walking at night.

This plan wasn't full-proof, there was no guarantee that no one would see him, but it was the best plan that he had.

He had originally been planning to lure the man away through a polite request for help out on the street one day. Maybe ask him to hep with some boxes, knowing that his naturally helpful nature would make him easy to lead away.

However, recently they had beefed up security, and now Adam didn't go anywhere without at least two Spartan or Drev guards watching his back.

It was all very inconvenient.

With a sharp purr, the spool wound down, and he found himself at the top of the tower, using one hand to grab the railing of the balcony and haul himself over the edge. He crouched there in the dark, on the roof, next to an outdoor patio table, and waited as NEMO worked on the door. She had already disabled the camera, but the lock was going to take a bit more work.

The Marshal had been feeding her information about the tower since they got here two years ago. Any blueprints he could steel, and any information about the technology that they used. His digging had eventually brought up the patented design for the locks they used on the tower, tucked away in a dusty corner of some sort of mechanical archive.

This turned out to be the most important part, as he listened to the door click softly open.

That was the most important part when it came to getting into the building, the second part was getting past their biological security,.

The dogs.

He inched inside, knowing that Waffles and Pancake would have heard him from across the house, and indeed it didn't take long before a low growl reached him from the darkness, followed by the blinking of glowing blue eyes not dissimilar to that of his own dog rogue.

"Hey sweet girl." He whispered into the darkness, slowly wafting his scent in her direction.

The scent that carried with it the smell of Rogue.

In the dim lighting of a hallway nightlight he saw the two dogs pause, sniffing at the air.

Lit from underneath, by the soft glow of the nightlight, they looked like two hounds of hell come to steal the bones of a sinner.

"You know me." He whispered, "We're friends."

He had let Rogue sleep on his bed last night, so the familiar scent was all over him. Pancake lifted her head and her tail began to wag, recognizing her father's scent and the man who had, hand raised the puppies before handing them off to their eventual new owners.

Just like he had planned.

They recognized him, and while pancake trotted over to greet him Waffles held back.

She didn't growl or bark, but she eyed him with a distrust that he could hardly blame her for.

She was right not to trust him after all .

He wasn't here for anything good.

He patted pancake on the head and continued in the dark house, shadowed by the two dogs as he moved inside. He did his best to walk like he belonged there, exuding confidence so the two dogs would not sense something was wrong.

He passed an open doorway, glancing in to see a small room with glowing star stickers o the ceiling, and another nightlight by the crib. Waffles gave a low growl in her throat and positioned herself between him and the door.

She may have trusted him to come into the house, but she was not going to trust him near the aby.

That was fine.

He had no intentions of bothering the child.

Though, he paused and craned his neck to look into the room.

And found a stroke of good luck.

There was a rocking chair in the far corner of the room, and in the near darkness he had almost missed the dark silhouette of a sleeping figure, wrapped in a blanket and breathing softly in the near darkness. Based on size, he knew it was the saint of Anin, having fallen asleep after putting her son to bed, or having returned out of nervous worry that something might happen to him.

That was good,

It meant he didn't have to deal with her.

He continued his way up the hall and into the main living room. It was mostly dark, but he could still sense the branches of the indoor tree stretching out overhead, and listened to the gentle sound of running water from the water feature on the far left side of the room opposite the windows. He didn't need to pause to look around, knowing where he was going.

The door to the master bedroom was open, and he stepped softly inside closing the door behind him with a soft, swish, locking the dogs out in the living room, another problem dealt with. The room itself was dark, but his night vision had adjusted, and he could easily see the bed, the circular carpet, the side tables, and the two climate controlled glass cases, one of which held a set of pearly white armor.

The saint of Anin's armor.

The other case held Adam's Fealty SE armor, a technology he had studied out of curiosity, but information he had filed away with the non-critical information. The suit stood in the darkness, a hulking menace inside its glass case, the mirrored visor staring at him in the darkness.

He shivered. It was an intimidating piece of equipment, and he turned his head back towards the room.

The bed itself was empty on one side, the covers thrown back, but the other end of the bed was marked by a rather large lump, covered by blankets.

The Marshal crept forward, reaching into his pocket , reading the nerve block and the silencing module. He crept closer to find that Admiral Vir slept with the covers over his head.

Somehow that did not surprise him.

Another step forward, and he raised his hand, the nerve block ready.

With his free hand, he quietly reached down, wrapping his fingers through the fabric of the comforter getting a good grip before pulling it aside in one fell swoop to reveal-

A paper white face marred by a leering grin.

And two wide, obsidian black eyes.