He was hunting.

He liked how that sounded.

Hunting, like he was some sort of predator, like he was human. Funny thing is he knew how people saw him, enjoyed how they reacted to his bone white skin and black coal eyes, the way they flinched when he grinned at them, the way their mouths opened in awe when he floated past. Yes, he did enjoy the way humans reacted to him, despite it being mostly a lie.

Conn was well aware that even the weakest human could pose a threat to him, all they would have to do is take off his gravity belt and he would be a gravity pancake. Starborn weren't predators despite how they looked. He lived off of sunlight and minerals, which he could grind up in the circular configuration of his teeth.

He floated through the sky with an expanse of night stars above him.

A jelly floated past, stopping to greet him before pulling away. The creature's mind was strange, closer to his own than other species, not like Jeffery or Waffles. Conn thought back to Jeffery and waffles, the dog's mind was hazy in some ways sharp in others, her sense of smell was pungent, and the way she understood humans was a haze of love and intense concentration as she tried to understand what was going on. She understood emotions the best, and reacted to changes in perspiration, temperature heartbeat and smell. Jeffery on the other hand was..... well if he had been any smarter he would have been sentient, almost right on the cusp of it.

Conn imagined that he was smarter than any earth animal, even Elephants or chimps. He understood speech in a way that other animals just couldn't. He could follow simple conversations about location and position, and identified new objects with great speed and accuracy, though he did struggle with abstract concepts.

Conn thought Jeffery understood love and hate or at least love and fear, but anything beyond that was too far outside his reach .

The Jelly was an odd mix. It could read minds in the way that he could, so it had an innate understanding of how people felt and what they were thinking, though it didn't fully understand. The one thing it was best at identifying was intentions, so it had the ability to be very friendly. That's why they liked humans so much, because humans liked them, and it was why they paused to let conn pat them before sending them on their way.

Conn floated past the spiral tower, Adam and the crew's new residence, it was like a permanent upscale apartment building with Adam's residence at the top.

Adam and Sunny.

Conn tried not to let his mind range too far here.

There was once upon a time where he would have enjoyed invading Adam's head and pestering him, but these days it felt.... Like an invasion of privacy in a way that it hadn't been before. He knew how odd that sounded coming from him, after all one of his favorite pastimes was invading people's privacy, but somehow this was different.

Unlike Starborn, humand and Drev minds were minds of extremes. The emotions were vivid and piercing and could easily worm their way into his own head, and sometimes he found it difficult to separate himself from the second hand emotions of others, so when, Sunny and Adam were together he was..... flooded with emotions that he knew weren't his pulling him inward.

He saw people in their worst light and their most flattering light.

He saw Adam through the eyes of Sunny, and he saw Adam through the eyes of the prisoners being held in the brig on the ships.

It was hard to keep himself separated from these emotions, sometimes difficult to figure out where they ended and he began.

It was only a pity that he couldn't deny that the jealousy belonged to him and him aloe.

Sunny the interloper.

Sunny the.... Magician.

Despite ripping off the man's leg at some point in the past she had managed to make him fall in love with her.

Conn was inside everyone's head and couldn't even manage to get people to like him very much, a cycle which he fought in endless circles, sometimes very pleased with the affect he had on people, and sometimes, oddly upset, lonely .

Everyone had someone.

Except him.

Perhaps this wouldn't not have mattered if he had stayed with his own kind, been decimated by the void with them, but instead he was here, filled with human emotions that were not his. He understood the humans, how they felt and how they reacted more than anyone, and at this point he didn't know the difference between him and them. He might as well have been a human trapped inside an alien body, so strong was his understanding.

And then there was Eris.

He missed his little girl so badly that he barely knew what to do with himself. It was dangerous to try and contact her, as they knew any conversation they were to have with the Vir family would likely be wire tapped, and the transmission hijacked. He hated it, and resorted to sending her notes and gifts through a third party not knowing if they would even reach her.

He wanted her back.

Though he knew she would be safer where she was.

He thought about her now as he floated over the city, hunting gear flapping in the wind about him.

Not like the way humans hunted of course.

This was a bit different.

He had liked the way Martha looked at things, how she knew just what someone needed to make them look a certain way. How she could keep his "dad" outfits without making him look like an idiot too, so he tried it out for himself matching the outfits he wore to his mood. With all the money he was making now, his room was practically a walk in closet now without a need for a bed or any other amenities.

Today he was wearing black, black slacks, black dress shoes, a black button up shirt, and, a long black coat that billowed impressively around him as he floated through the air.

He liked his hunting gear.

He knew it was good because it reminded Adam of the Matrix.

Conn liked it when he got outside approval for his creations, though he would never have admitted that to anyone.

He floated his way towards the ship, listening softly to the minds of everyone that passed.

There was a stirring in the air, a sort of excitement that had reverberated through Arcadia for the past few months with the announcement of the first naturally occurring hybrid. The poor Finnari woman was almost a minor celebrity everywhere she went, even impressive enough that Krill , the busiest doctor on this moon had taken her on as one of his clients. LFIL couples were flocking to clinics to get their own dose of the void vaccine despite never having been exposed to the disease.

It was the adaptid DNA of course, which had to be housed in both parties to work, and it needed to have been inside them long enough to change the makeup of the cells. Men were capable of passing on adapted genes almost immediately after infection, while women's bodies took longer for the adaptid DNA to restructure to its liking.

No one knew how well the hybrid would be integrated together.

In labs the hybrids had been specifically designed at a thirty seventy split so that they would survive after being born. There was no telling what the body would do naturally.

Conn landed in the dockyard his mind turned back to Eris as he thought about the hybrids.

How he wished she had had a childhood.

How he wished that he could have watched her grow up, held her hand when she was little, taken her to fun places, lavished her with gifts, been able to actually be a father to her.

But no, someone had robbed her of that, the men who had stolen their DNA and made her against her will into a woman rather than a child.

His bitter thoughts made him bristle in annoyance as he floated onto their newly acquired ship. Many of the people who had been abord the ship when it was taken were being shipped back to Europa, since Adam didn't take prisoners, but of course, as always Adam had offered the ability to stay for anyone who wanted to join their cause.

Many people had taken him up on the offer.

And that was all well and good of course, but he didn't take into account the fact that someone might see this as a perfect opportunity to start backstabbing, or to act as a double agent for the GA. Someone could easily send off a transmission to let the GA or the UNSC know where they were and what they were doing.

As usual Adam had been too trusting.

But that was alright

Let the man be who he was, let him think people were good and honest like him. That is what Conn was here for.

He was better than any polygraph.

He floated onto the ship with great confidence causing the first few crew members to shrink back nervously at the site of him. He enjoyed the fear and unease he heard in their minds. They thought him strange, beautiful, ethereal and horrific all at once. He liked the image their minds conjured of him, an eldritch entity with burning black eyes plunging into their memories like a hunter.

They weren't far off.

He stopped in the middle of the room, using his new voice to clear his throat.

He liked the way his voice sounded, liked the way that Adam had always heard Conn inside his head .

The voice was masculine in nature, but not particularly deep. The quality it had was... almost bone chilling, sort of dry and just so slightly raspy like the rattle of dry leaves. When he wanted it the voice like a classic movie villain, smooth but somehow raspy at the same time.

It was a perfect representation of who he was.

Adam's mind must have been able to recreate it by seeing conn's thoughts.

"So which one of you plans on stabbing Captain Vir in the back?'

He found that the direct questions were always best. Humans didn't control their thoughts well, and even if they did, they generally controlled their thoughts by thinking of soemthing else. So if anyone suddenly started reciting poetry he knew that he had them.

And they all kenw who and what he was of course.

He could hear it in their heads.

That's the admiral's starborn.

He can read minds.

Shit, I.... no I have nothing to worry about, as long as he doesn't tell my girlfriend that....

Conn grinned at the wide eyed man and filed away his sins for further use.

Blackmail was always a fun opportunity.

He continued forward looking at the eyes of everyone he passed, wary of him.

He asked the next group, and the next sifting through their minds, picking out their secrets, flashing his teeth, and occasionally tapping one of the humans gently on the side of the head as if trying to shake loose some of their memories.

No one ever opposed him.

He proceeded through the whole of the ship following the distant pulsing of people's minds. His presence aboard the ship had been noticed quickly and was being passed around by everyone aboard the ship, some tried desperately to avoid him, though he didn't allow that to happen.

He sauntered lazily after them enjoying the looks of fear on their aces when he found them in their hiding spots.

He found one men in engineering tucked behind some pipes.

He floated over listening to the man's head.

He wont be able to find me here.

Conn snorted derisively and the man jolted upright eyes widening as he saw Conn.

Conn tapped the side of his head, "I CAN find you anywhere," The man's face went red, "Now tell me are you intending to betray Adam Vir to the UNSC."

The man's thoughts were, odd for a human . He didn't react to social interaction the way that most people did, and conn found that instead of hiding because he was worried he would get caught, he was hiding because he simply didn't want to interact with Conn. His inner thoughts were, repetitive and structured in a way that didn't entirely make sense for a human.

Conn knew this kind of mind well enough.

Simon was very similar.

Conn imagined that she and this man were a similar sort of person.

When he figured that out he backed away out of the room. Conn liked tormenting people, but there were certain groups that he tended to avoid, people who didn't understand that his interactions with them, while mean were meant as a sort of joke. He did not like interacting with people who couldn't understanding that he was testing, that he just wanted to have a bit of fun. Simon took everything he said very seriously and very personally, which was a habit that could get your feeling hurt pretty easily if you didn't know what was going on.

He found the last mind hiding in her quarters pretending to be asleep.

Conn scoffed at the ploy as he threw open the doors.

"Alright traitor, rise and shine!"

How does he know!

The inner exclamation got Conn's attention and he leaned over the prone figure on the bed, "How do I know what."

She flinched and he cackled.

"Plan on ratting us out?"

Don't think about it. She thought desperately

Conn grinned again as she sat up looking at him warily, "I'm no traitor."

That's true enough at least. I would never betray the UNSC.

And there it was, how easy it was to root them out.

Conn grinned at her, "The UNSC thanks you for your service though, it seems that there has been a mistake." He saw her blanch, and he grinned wider, "It seems that you should have gone home to Europa with the others instead of staying aboard this ship spying.'

Her face contorted into a frown, "I don't know what you're talking about," She was desperately trying to throw up walls in her head so he couldn't get to her, but he jabbed at her with well timed questions, playing with her like a child prods at a particularly juicy slug.

"I can read minds, darling, so don't try your excuses."

I could Kill him, she thought desperately.

Conn laughed again, "You couldn't not when I know your every move even before you make it. Besides," he patted his skin, "I can withstand the vacuum of space the full heat of star, and travel at thousands of miles per hour if I want, you have no chance against me."

She sort of did, but that was assuming she could take his gravity belt off, though he had disguised it as a regular leather belt, so the chances of her figuring it out were slim.

She thought about running and he laughed in her face.

"Run run run as fast as you can." He taunted , and by the time she had decided on taking a chance it was already to late. He had called other members of the ship who escorted her off and to the bri.

Conn was proud of himself.

Arcadia had the most effective police force in the entire galaxy.

And it consisted almost entirely of one lone man.

Conn.