Erin carefully extricated herself from her tiny seat. It had been a cramped, uncomfortable ride, but she had kept herself occupied by reading reports on her feed.

Thanks to the sprawling mess of a war the Rete had engaged in, most of her resources were devoted towards military research and development. Once, she would have spent her time reading case studies that explored the cultural evolution of a planet pre and post-Awakening, or the psychological profile of Planatae that choose to actively participate in human affairs.

But now, all her time was spent on Factor research - enhancing it, amplifying it, controlling it. Edin shook her head at the thought. Those in power always sought power in its grandest form, and the current incarnation of the Senate was no different.

They believed that the key to winning was some yet-unknown, hugely destructive Faactor. A super-soldier with the capability to rival even that strange Avatar that the Saiseki seemed to revere. But any one of her scholars would have said the same thing as her: wouldn't it be easier - cheaper - to simply improve the ships, and the guns? Build bigger weapons that would have more than enough of that destructive potential? But no, those weren't symbols. Not in the way a person could be.

Edin waited patiently for the passengers who had sat in front of her to get up and leave before making her way down the aisle. The people that surrounded her were day-workers, clothed in simple, study clothing. Every day, shuttles from a half-dozen surrounding stations would touch down on Ferrus and disgorge its flood of laborers.

Agriculturalists, welders, mechanics, custodians - these were people that kept the settlements of Ferrus functioning. In her military uniform, Erin stuck out like a sore thumb, but she was largely ignored by the others.

As Erin threaded her way through the crowd, she wondered about them. These millions upon millions of people just living their lives - did they have a passion for the war? Did it matter to them? This standoff between the Rete and Saiseki was a battle of resources, or so they claimed. But Erin saw the conflict as a challenge of wills, of ideologies.

The strict laws and coding of the Rete, pitched against the passion and aristocracy of the Saiseki, a nation railing against that idea. It would make sense then, that the importance of a figurehead - a bearer for such ideas - would be paramount.

After one final push, Erin managed to emerge from the shuttle. She stepped out onto the station platform, that was just as flooded with people. Erin could have taken a private transport down for her meeting, but she preferred taking a public route. It lent her a refreshing sense of anonymity, being part of the crowd.

She began to chart a path through the people, ignoring the blaring shouts from the street vendors, the bright, tantalizing visuals from adscreens.

She stepped through the turnstile check and made her way down a cavernous hallway. Scores of people moved in the same direction, and so it felt as though she were being dragged along by some massive, living tide.

The hall opened up to the Hub's central chamber, where offworld passengers could find surface transport, or vice versa. Spaceports like this dotted Ferrus, but the Hub, which served the planet's capital, was larger and grander than the rest.

As she always did when approaching, Erin paused for a moment to admire the chamber's hgh, domed ceiling. Unlike other spaces in the port, this place was bereft of hawkers and aggressive technology. It was built of solid, light-colored stone, blocks and blocks of it layered atop each other to form the room's looming ceilings. The dome itself was a mosaic of metal and glass, the latter casting a dizzying array of colors. Light streamed through these colorful panels, throwing patterns across the space.

They were few and far between, but Erin always took a moment to appreciate spaces like this whenever she traveled to Aretus. The capital was the pinnacle of Rete progress and modernity, but these places that hinted at something ancient, eternal - they appealed to her in a way she didn't quite understand.

After a moment, Erin allowed herself to be swept back into the crowd again, and continued on her way. She did have an appointment after all, regardless of her own feelings about it. It wouldn't be a good look if she were late - and Erin Ademas was never late.

The crush of people had thinned by now, and so it didn't take long for Erin to reach the terminal exit, located directly across from her, at the other end of the central chamber.

She stepped through one of the high, ornamental doors, already contacting a transport over her feed. Her overlays switched on, graphics floating across her vision to direct her to the correct vehicle. Fortunately, the sleek, metallic pod she had been assigned was near to the front in a long line of vehicles waiting for passengers.

Then she was inside, and the transport was quickly off, pulling away from the Hub, heading deeper into the city.

Erin leaned back against the padded seating and lightly brushed the transport's interior wall, which complied to her request, becoming transparent.

Orslow, capital of Ferrus and seat of the entire Rete Coalition, was a cool, airy place. The Hub was an anomaly of a landmark, rather than the standard - most of the buildings that Erin passed were tall, willowy constructions of carbon-steel and glass. Heavy building materials like brick or stone were rare.

It was still quite early, and so the dawn mists, so common in this part of Ferrus, had yet to be fully burned away by the sun. If she tilted her head upward, Erin would be able to see the shrouds of vapor that stubbornly clung to the tall, silvery structures and the bright splashes of color that the vertical farms and sky gardens imposed upon their facades.

Just as bright as the flora were the crowds of people that crowded the walkways, and it was this view that interested Erin the most. A dizzying array of people hurried through the streets; many wore simple, sleek outfits of gray, charcoal, and rusty-red - colors that reminded Erin of raw metal ore.

But interspersed between these tall, pale natives of Ferrus were tourists and workers from all over the coalition. She could make out the bright, patterned robes and tunics often worn by those from Veynus. Their dark, curly hair was more often than not covered by a hat of similar extravagance. There were other groups of people that were particularly familiar to her; those with the tall, willowy stature so common to station-borns, a silhouette that Erin herself shared.

Orslow was a mecca, a place that represented the Rete's greatest transition. It had gone from an ancient, shambling mess of planets into something modern, well-organized and strong. The city - and Ferrus itself - hadn't been the original center of the coalition, but when Ferrus had been discovered, centuries ago, and rose to prominence, the choice must have been very fitting.

They found a Factor to go with the name, Erin thought to herself. The ability to wield metal - to turn something hard and unyielding into a tool. It was a sentiment that Erin believed encapsulated the current government well.

She turned away from the view and returned to her feed. It was important that she take what little time she had left to go over her notes one last time.

It had been about half a decade since the Senate had called for Erin's department to look into Factor applications. When the Knight of Saiseki - a strange soldier with Factor-enhanced powers - had been confirmed dead, they saw it as an opportunity. Certain Factors had always been useful in conflict, but human technology, for the longest time, allowed for far more control and flexibility. Factors were provided by the Planatae, and shaped by the environment. Why limit yourself to a roll of the die when it was possible to manufacture or create the same asset anyway?

A figure is power, came that same, familiar thought. Erin had little interest in politics, but she thrilled in the complexities of culture. The fall of the Knight had created a vacuum, a hole in the Saisekans' established hierarchy and way of belief. If the Rete could move fast enough to take advantage, push their own counterpart onto the scene -

The transport beeped softly, pulling to a stop. Erin glanced out of the window, mildly surprised to see she'd already arrived at the Rete's seat of power. She stepped out of the transport, craning her neck to survey the huge, glass monolith that loomed above her.

Glassica - the Tower of Glass - stood out from the typical Orslow construction. It boasted no greenery, no sleek, metallic ornamentation. It was large, and tall, and stark, composed of staggering planes of opaque glass.

Glassica was where the Senate gathered; it was where the most important bureaucrats and lawmakers made decisions for the dozens of worlds within the Rete.

Of course, this was just the very tip of the iceberg - it would have been impossible to fit the Rete government in any single building. It was spread out - responsibilities divided and doled out to each settlement in Ferrus, or even beyond, on other worlds.

Still, the view was impressive.

Erin strode forward, joining the bustle that flowed in and out of the building.

Unlike the Hub, however, the systems here were efficient, and it took no time at all for Erin to make her way through the severe, unornamented lobby and approach the desk.

Before her sat a beauracrobot: a spindly, delicate thing with a rotating carousel of dexterous arms. Like any bot, these constructions were more algorithm than any true form of sentience, but it was more than capable of keeping track of appointments and meetings for the Senate and other bodies.

The bot was silent as it requested a comms link with Erin's feed, to which she complied. In moments, the bot as asked for and verified the message the Senate had sent to Erin, cross referencing it with its own internal accounts of the day's schedule.

Satisfied, Erin was provided with a pass, and directed towards the massive bank of lifts that crowded the rear of the lobby. She walked over, selected one at random, and scanned her pass. Then the floor dropped away from her as her little pod rose up into the air.

...

Erin was not taken to the pinnacle floor of the Glassica, but she was expecting this. Her meeting with the Senate was not fit for a grand affair in the antechamber. Instead, her pass guided her to a nondescript meeting room in the mid-levels of the tower. Without the navigational aid, Erin was sure she would have never found it; there were a thousand carbon-copies of the room in Glassica, and the one selected for her meeting was like a single grain in a mound of pebble-rice.

The two Senators were already there when she arrived. They sat beside each other at one end of a small table. Their muttered whispering cut off at her approach, and the two of them sat up straight.

"Senators Lorski and Pontin," she said, greeting them with an inclination of her head, "it's good to see you again."

"Come sit," Lorski said, his voice its usual guttural croak. "Let's discuss."

Erin settled herself, sitting opposite from the two men, but declined to speak further. Instead he studied the pair, noting the tension in their shoulders, the quick glances they shot each other.

Lorksi, a wide, dark-skinned man, was the Senator of Technology, and Erin's most senior boss. He was the pinnacle of a galaxy-spanning department, the man who dictated funding allocation and federal interests when it came to research. Although his voice and mannerisms were rough, anyone with a lick of common sense would spot the glimmer in his eyes and take note of his sharp, powerfully subtle use of words.

Pontin, like his fellow Senator, was a powerfully built man, but there was something harder about his presence. With his olive-toned skin and light-colored hair, he was unmistakably Veynusian - and yet he managed to exist as a staggering rejection of his homeworld's stereotype. There was not a dreamy, creative bone in this man's body; as Senator of the Military, the man had spent much of the last decade trying his best to kill as many Saisekans as humanly possible.

Development and Military together - Erin was repelled by the idea. And yet, here she was, bound by law and duty as much as the most traditional Ferran. Still, Erin knew she was doing a poor job of hiding her disapproval. Then again, subtlety had never been her strong suit.

While Lorski watched her with narrow eyes, Pontin smirked. "I must say, once again," he said, breaking the silence, "how impressed I've been with the performance of your Fac-boosts. You've done a great service to our forces. Why, I'd even venture to call you one of our strongest military assets."

Erin raised a brow. "Jealous, Pontin? I'd hate to take the glory from our Commander in Chief."

Pontin's smile turned cold. "All I care about are results, Adamas - and it seems like your capacity to help hasn't run dry quite yet."

"Yes, about that," Lorski cut in before Erin could respond. "I thought it prudent to include Dr. Adamas in this discussion, considering her expertise."

"That's right, Pontin," Erin said. "Senator Lorski approached me right before the news about Valle went public."

"Quite a thing, eh?" Pontin leaned forward. "Those damn stoneheads lost their figurehead when they were least expecting it. That's the difference between them and us, you know - Saisekans don't have the laws we do, the discipline."

"Taking out the Knight is impressive," she answered cooly. "But I'm not sure what I have to offer here."

Lorski tilted his head, lips curving up. His bumbling exterior had splintered a little, revealing the desire beneath.

"Pontin won't admit this, but the victory was much more hollow than we were expecting. Killing the Knight should have been a terrible emotional blow to the Saisekans, and yet they continue to fight. Research into their culture and attitude towards Planatae - led by you - predicted a collapse of morale. And yet, they continue to fight just as hard."

"So is that what this is?" Erin asked dryly. "A disciplinary meeting? Are you planing to demote me after using my research for unintended purposes?"

"Relax, doctor," Pontin sniffed. "Intelligence reports are revealing some kind of turmoil within their aristocracy. There's something going on, and it started when the Knight was killed. We just can't seem to get close enough to figure out the details."

Inner strife? Erin wondered. It was possible - even likely - that losing such an eternal, even religious figure would cause problems, but from the way Pontin had described it, the Saisekans' reaction had been suppressed or subdued in some way-

Wait.

"I get it," Erin spoke slowly, carefully. "You're trying to push them over the edge, aren't you. Flood the dam, so to speak."

"Psychological warfare has been a staple for millennia," Lorski nodded towards Pontin. "He reached out to me, thought we'd be able to compound the stress of losing the Knight-"

"-by creating our own." Erin cut him off. Although her posture was straight and her body still, she was churning inside. "You want me to go even further? There's nothing that would suggest we have the capacity to... custom-make Factors."

"Ademas," Pontin sighed, as though she were missing some obvious point, "You managed to overcome one of the three Laws of how Factors work! If you could do this - make a Knight - a while squadron of them, the Saiseki would see it as a sign of their inferiority. They would give in."

"You don't know that," Erin responded.

"Don't we?" Pontin shrugged. "We know how their society is structured - their aristocratic hierarchy, their obsession with tradition and their 'passions.' If we can crush that belief, then we've won this war."

Erin looked away from the pair of men. She stared at the blank, white-washed walls, trying to avoid those bright, eager gazes.

Erin had no great love for the Saiseki, and she appreciated - thrived - in the highly structured world of the Ferrum Rete. But there was something unpleasant about the idea they were proposing. The idea that her work - unweaving the mysteries around the Planatae - was best used for warfare and victory - didn't sit right with her. She'd thrown herself into her work with a desire to connect people to each other; help them understand the very planets they called home. Subverting that, using that knowledge to destroy a peoples' faith in something sacred, made a part of her deeply sad.

And yet... this is what is meant to be of the Rete. To put duty first, above personal preference. To devote yourself to something, knowing that if the day ever came that it could be of use to the Senate, the collective people of the Rete, that it would be expected to offer it.

"It would take time," she said, eventually. "I would need to isolate and understand the source of Factor-borns, be it genetic or otherwise."

Pontin scoffs. "We've mapped the human body inside and out. You're telling me we don't know which gene to tweak?"

To Erin's surprise, Lorski cut in before she could.

"It's not so simple," he said curtly. "We've yet to find a meaningful genetic difference between a human with a Factor and one without. That's why a human with a Body-type factor can't simply pass it down to their children. Breeding programs, genetic therapy - none of it would work!"

"Alright. Alright." Pontin threw his hands up. "So it'll be a challenge. But we've got time. This is simply another insurance policy we'd like to set up in case things go off the rails."

"Yes, time." Erin said. "But isn't there a scientist in the department with more of an interest-"

"Erin," Lorski's voice was hard. "This was not a suggestion- you were brought here to be given orders and to then see them out. You are a scholar second, and a civil servant first."

Erin stared right back at him. Lorski had been a colleague of hers for a long time; as the decades had gone by, he'd veered towards the allure of politics, while she had stuck fast to her research. Like many of her oldest friends, he'd become someone unfamiliar to her in the present day.

She knew what would happen if she said no: her funding pulled, potential demotion, a tarnished reputation. But worse, there could be retribution towards Lukas.

As if reading her mind, Lorski suddenly switched tack.

"Congratulations on your newborn, I might add," he said. "I know this may be a tumultuous time for you, especially with no partner for support. But if you think about it, the work we do - all of us - is to keep the next generation strong - to guarantee that there's a home for them." He gave her a thin smile.

He knows, she thought to herself. The gamble she'd taken, smuggling herself to Ferrus' surface, manually timing her birth with a c-section. Her choice of artificial insemination shouldn't have raised any eyebrows, but it was a clue. One, if noted by anyone who had been paying close attention, would suggest she wanted a suspicious amount of control over the birth of her child. It would be a disaster if Lorski discovered her illegal Factor-planting into Lukas.

"I haven't even expressed any reluctance yet, Senators," she said. "And yet you seem to be searching for any possible way to convince me."

"I know you," Lorski said, "you probably saw the Knight's demise as the loss of a culture that could have been studied."

Erin shrugged. "What's that loss to our victory?"

Pontin nodded along. "That's right. I'm glad we're on the same page here..." his eyes went distant as he trailed off. "Custom made soldiers, designed for any terrain or scenario. Cracking this would change everything. You could, I don't know, make projectile-resistant fighters! The energy-based kinds, at least."

"Effective immediately, you'll be shifting all your resources towards figuring out a way to fully control the Factor process."

"Fine," Erin said, "but what are you going to do about the Avatars?"

Both men looked at her with furrowed brows, and she sighed.

"Do you really think the Planatae will take kindly to this? We're circumventing them, trying to figure out how they function."

Pontin looked unconvinced, but Lorski leaned back, face thoughtful.

"We've planned to keep this classified. The rest of the Senate will not know about this until we have results to show; This will be the last time the project is discussed on Ferrus or any other world. All work on this will be done on stations."

"And if they find out? Veynus? Or Calladan?"

Lorski waved a hand. "When have we ever understood how the Planatae think? Just stay out of their way - even the most active ones won't interfere."

Erin frowned, but nodded. He was correct - even the most aware of the Planatae were, at most, legally-recognized judges. They were observers, advisors rarely. But never had they truly interfered in human affairs, or advocated for a specific cause. They simply seemed content to spectate the churning mass that was humanity.

Hopefully, even if one did discover what they were doing, their neutrality would remain.

"You're free to go," Lorski said, waving her off. "I'll be in touch about the details. For now, you'll direct all your resources towards inducing Factors into existing humans - I'll be expecting weekly updates, at the very least."

Pontin turned away from her, and his glazed expression told her he was likely messaging someone on the feed. Lorski, however, continued to watch her as Erin got to her feed and backed away towards the door.

"This war's gone on for too long," Lorski said quietly from his seat at the table. "Saiseki stopped grabbing for our territory years ago, and yet they still grasp for the Independent worlds in a stubborn thirst for power. Wouldn't it be better to end this with a single blow, finally?"

"I'm not going to counter you with a moral standpoint," Erin answered, "because it's clear that you're both dead-set on this plan. I could go to the full Senate, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many of them would support this allocation of development resources anyway. So I'll do my job."

"I'm no Purist," Pontin called out as she turned and passed through the office entryway, "but what's wrong with a little more control over ourselves? Isn't freedom a good thing?"

She didn't humor him with a response, but the man's words lingered as she made her way through the building. Would giving control over Factor ability be a freedom? The Senators were focused on weaponizing it, but imagine if the Rete could create healing-Factor doctors without relying on Valle? Or even mimic the Saiseki themselves, and their stone manipulation for construction?

There was something about this, however, that seemed so unbalanced. Weren't limits a good thing, sometimes?

Erin tried to smother the scholar in her, trying to dismiss these thoughts. The truth was, it didn't matter. She had a job, and was expected to follow through with it. Erin just hoped it wasn't a colossal mistake.

Finally, she stepped through the front entrance of the Glassica, taking in a lungful of the crisp morning air. It was still morning, and the breeze carried a lingering touch of sweetness. Looking upwards, she could spot the clustered berry farms that topped the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Even as she watched, the waves of green rustled in the wind.

It was typically an unpleasant affair to try and catch a transport in the mess of people surrounding the Glassica, so Erin had entered a habit of walking a few blocks away to let the crowd thin before returning to the Hub.

She dodged a group of somber-looking Ferran bureaucrats and began to walk. The direction didn't matter much to her - simply getting away from the crush of human activity was enough.

She weaved her way down the sidewalk, pace languid and unhurried. The bright sunlight, compounded by the mirrored buildings around her, felt pleasant against her skin. She closed her eyes for a moment, taking an uncharacteristic moment to simply enjoy the opportunity to be planetside for a few hours before returning to Santiago.

It was then that she felt a tug on the metals pinned to her chest.