SmileMan sat in the darkness of a small living room. The TV was on in the far corner casting dim blue light out onto the floor, spilling over the carpet like a pool of luminescent water. Shadows congregated at the edges of the room, clustering behind chairs and under coffee tables , waiting for the moment the light would fade and they could fill the emptiness left behind.

SmileMan didn't like the dark, much less after everything had come out about the void, but even before that they had never really felt comfortable , which is why the TV was on. Smileman always felt better when there was a screen on somewhere in the house. It made things feel less lonely.

Perhaps, that was due to their upbringing, spending their younger years sitting in government basements in dark rooms surrounded by monitors.

The house was quiet, and lonely at that moment, all the other occupants asleep or at least pretending to be.

SmileMan leaned back in their favorite chair, comfortable in the familiar embrace. Their back ached gently as it always did, and they sighed reaching down to rub at their stiff right knee,

Smileman was waiting, waiting for news of Eris . They should have been more careful with how they deployed her but she was just such an asset, and Eris had WANTED to help. SmileMan knew what that was like, wanting to be involved, wanting to be part of soemthing that was bigger than oneself. They had been once, once upon a time they had pledged themselves to the UNSC in exchange for avoiding a long and drawn out stint in federal prison. The details were fuzzy after so many years, but the government doesn't generally like it when you hack them, especially not when you somehow manage to hack classified information.

Smileman hadn't intended on doing anything with it, not really, they just wanted to see how things worked, and so they ended up in a basement in a south Mericanda government building supplied with all of the newest technology and toys one could desire. When you were as good at what you did as smile man, the government was willing to do a lot of things to keep you happy. Smileman had supported the effort through the Pan-Asian war, and was integral in the eventual takedown of the opposition leader, but during the course of their career they had also been the target of more than a few assassination attempts, due to someone leaking their location to enemy forces.

Not to mention they had seen a lot of horrible things in their days online, and so when the opportunity came to retire, they had taken it. SmileMan hadn't touched a computer in a very long time, or perhaps that was a lie. Smile man had not OWNED a computer in a very long time. After all that had happened, they had vowed never to touch a keyboard so long as they lived, but that had lasted maybe a week.

Thank goodness for children, they always wanted the newest sort of gadgets, and besides Smileman could benefit them by giving them the best that online security had to offer without them knowing it. Did they feel bad for potentially breaching the younger generation's privacy>

No not really.

Smileman didn't care about the weird kinky things family members were into.

Whatever got you off was not SmileMan's business

Things had cooled down for some years in there. They had finished raising their children, forgotten about the life for some time. Eventually their spouse had died and they had moved in with family members as was customary.

And now the grandkids were subject to confiscation of laptops and handheld devices at SmileMan's whim.

No one had ever found them out, in fact, Smileman was sure that none of the family even knew about their sorted history with the UN

SmileMan reached a hand down into the cushions and slowly withdrew the bright pink laptop from it's hiding place. Smileman had nabbed it earlier that day, and hidden it until the rest of the family went to sleep. The back of the laptop was covered in girly stickers and decals, which didn't at all bother Smileman as they opened the laptop and logged on.

Passwords weren't really a problem for SmileMan, but they knew this password well enough, so it wasn't a problem.

The screen turned on and blue light spilled out onto their face.

Fingers flew across the keyboard in a way that only practiced hands could do. There were a lot fo people in the community that were using neuro-interfacing to do the hacking. People said it was a lot faster, and if you could get good at it, there were no end to the amazing sorts of things that you could do. Smileman was not so sure about that. You would have to have a godlike focus to keep your brain on track, and even if that was the case they didn't trust their brain not to betray them at a critical moment.

With a typing speed of over 100 wmp, they were not worried about the speed of their abilities.

Nervously they tapped their foot against the floor.

Eris was in danger. The SOS had been sent to SmileMan towards the beginning of the night, and they had done al they could to get the ball rolling, and they had called the only person they knew that would be both willing and eager to help.

One of the only people SmileMan would trust with their life.

ChaplainsAngel

....

Jim shivered feeling the cold ice stinging his skin as they pressed on through nearly thigh high snow. Martha had traded him control over Eris, who was dangling listlessly in Martha's arms, and Jim was now in command of the shotgun, which he held at the low ready . During Jim's deployment in the Pan Asian war, he had never once preformed a winter ground op. He had done plenty of work in the jungles of south Asia, and a few select amphibious assaults from sea to some of the nearby islands, but he had never had the opportunity, or perhaps, punishment of participating in a winter operation.

He hated every moment of it.

He could clearly remember hating crawling through the mud, and pulling leaches off places where there certainly shouldn't have been leaches, but something about this was worse. Perhaps it was his growing age, but trudging through the snow like this had his back and legs screaming. A chunk of snow had fallen into his boot, burning the skin of his leg, and the bottom of his pajamas were soaked straight through.

His hands were freezing cold despite the small knit gloves that Martha had snagged on her way out the door.

Everything about this was hell, but then again, no one had ever had to preform a ground operation in a knit beanie and pink gloves while wearing pajamas, so perhaps this was not a true representative of what the situation could be like.

All around them the forest was simultaneously dark, and unusually bright. Overhead the impetus star cast light down from the night sky, illuminating the snow to a field of glittering white, but against that feel, all non-snow material was simply a black void against a white sheet.

He turned back to look at Martha and could see that she was shivering.

His wife had always hated the cold, and he couldn't blame her. Martha did not have the heavy layer of fat that many people her age had for insulation. She was thin and she was small, and since the day he had first met her, she had been his little ice cube. Now he worried that her natural proclivity to being cold wouldn't allow her to last long.

Jim on the other hand was practically a human furnace, though he assumed that was a man thing. He didn't have the requisite insulation either, and he was sure that, sooner or later the cold was going to get to him too.

"You alright." He whispered back to his wife.

She nodded to him, her lips pulled tight.

Martha would never dare complain during a situation like this. When they had gotten married she had vowed never to slow him down. He was a partner not a protector, and she didn't need him swooping in to save the day . That woman would keep going until she conquered the world or died trying . He loved her for that, but architect knew dying was a real possibility right now.

He worried about the light of the Impetus star and the tracks they were leaving in the snow, but he had taken his time and used his training to lead them through snow that was chewed up by the movement of animals, and then under the bowls of trees were snow was sparce and pine needles littered the ground. They were being hunted, but there was nothing they could do other than keep going.

It was then.

That Jim heard the dogs.

They were distant now, way back in the direction of the house more than a few miles off but, it was then that he knew they were done for. A good dog was almost impossible to fool, and even if they could try, the methods he would have used during the Pan Asian war were not options now. Fording shallow streams and rivers would be a death sentence.

"We have to go," He ordered, and the two of them picked up the pace, half jogging through the snow huffing and breathing hard.

Martha stopped shivering as the exertion of their jog reached her.

Inside his jacket he was sweating.

The barking of the dogs grew steadily louder over the intervening minutes, and Eris would not wake up. Jim ordered Martha in front, ordered her to run if something were to happen. Martha didn't like the sound of that, but she had to protect Eris, so she didn't argue.

Jim kept glancing over his shoulder as they ran

Not just one dog but dozens of them.

He could probably take them. If he was a good enough shot, he could dispatch the dogs easily enough, though the sound would surely draw the hunters to them. He expected the dogs to come out of the trees behind him, and was both surprised and dismayed when the barking cut to their left and their righ.

The dogs were flanking them, curling them.

Martha would have no time to run.

They both stopped, knowing what was going to happen. Martha backed into him and Jim held up the gun huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. He could feel water seeping into his boots, "Well come on your four-legged bastards." He said to himself. These dogs weren't acting like regular police dogs, these ones were acting like hunting dogs, the kind that you might take with you to hunt wild boar.

And if Jim knew anything bout hunting dogs, it was that they didn't stop.

And if he would wager to guess, these weren't just pointers.

The first dog came from their right, a big hulking brute as big as a mastiff. Jim raised his gun

And then the world lit up with sharp blue light.

A high pitched noise started to squeal from somewhere above and the dog leapt back howling in distress and rubbing its head against the snow to try and get rid of the sound. The other dog's barking turned to sharp squealing . Jim winced at the sound too, but kept his hand on the gun looking up and squinting against the bright blue light. Wind whipped at the tops of the trees causing the branches to rattle overhead.

And then.

A sudden sensation of weightlessness.

Jim flailed as his feet rose up off the ground. Martha curled herself into a ball around Eris as Jim floundered, and together they were lifted off the ground in a beam of blue light.

Alien abduction?

It was entirely possible.

If only his youngest son could see him now.

He heard voices now, calling through the woods, shouting from all directions. He thought he saw dark silhouettes against the snow, and then he was in the trees, branches and twigs snapping off against him as he was pulled up through the canopy. Wood scraped his skin, ripping at his coat, but then, they were free, floating over the trees .

The sound of engines roared above him, and then.

Darkness.

Soemthing popped and he dropped to the floor, landing awkwardly and rolling sideways, keeping the shotgun to his chest.

Below him hard metal rumbled and then he jolted to the side as they began to move. He turned to check on Martha and Eris, and found Martha kneeling, still holding Eris in her arms in the dim light.

"Are you ok?"

"I'm ok, but what....."

The door at the end of the room opened.

"Mr. and Ms. Vir, you two are looking lovely this fine winters evening. Snow-monster is a good look on you."

The two of them glanced up and Jim raised an eyebrow. He recognized this man. He was young, to Jim anyway, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, with sun kissed skin and a five o clock shadow. Jim recognized him immediately as one of Adam's army friends.

"Angel..... Ramirez is it."

The young man grinned at him, "Or your magnanimous savior, either will do."

"How did you find us/" Martha asked, teeth chattering now that she had gone back to shivering.

"SmileMan sent me."