"But you have to take me with you," he insisted. "I'm as good as dead if you don't."
"We'll help you get off this ship and into the hands of our friends, but that's it. We don't need any more tag-alongs," the male prisoner replied.
"Fine, fine. The control room is in the center of the ship. It's heavily guarded, even more so since you two triggered the alarms."
"Show us," the male said, releasing his grip. The guard screamed as his fractured bones tried and failed to hold his weight, and he slumped to the ground, a bone stabbing its way through his skin and poking out. "Ooh, that's gotta hurt."
He continued screaming as the two escaped convicts conversed with each other. "Think you can heal that?" The man asked the woman.
"I can't 'heal' anything. I can only encourage his body to heal itself."
"Who's nitpicking now?"
"Shut up." The woman knelt and placed her hand around the guard's wound as the male kept a lookout. "This is going to sting," she warned, clamping a hand over his mouth so he could hear her.
The guard gritted his teeth and nodded, screaming into her hand as his veins seemed to light on fire. His heart hammered in his chest, pumping the steaming blood through his system as the bone slowly receded into his leg.
As he watched, he lost more and more weight, the excess fat his body stored being broken down into energy and genetic material to patch up the damage. When the process was done, he found himself looking down at his knee, much paler than the rest of him and oddly bumpy, but otherwise fine.
He stopped screaming as he ran a hand over his knee, marveling at the result. "How did you do this?" he asked. "Your file didn't say anything about this. This looks like something a Health Embodiment would do."
"I've heard a certain saying quite a lot in my time as an Embodiment. 'Anything is possible with a Manifestation, as long as you know how to use it.' I spent an achingly high number of weeks learning to do this once I heard that saying, partly to see if there was any truth to it."
"You're saying you made a Concept from scratch? Within months?" the guard asked, bewildered.
"I don't know what a 'Concept' is," Cait frowned, "but yes, I learned how to do so within around three months. Why?"
"Concepts usually take years to make from nothing," the guard asked, looking at Cait like she had grown a second head. "Most of the time, Embodiments just take already existing ones and modify those."
"But what's a Concept?" Cait asked.
"We can talk about this later," Fate interjected. "In case you two forgot, we're in the middle of a ship owned by the worst people in existence, and you're sitting here chatting like two teenage girls."
"Don't get snippy with me," Cait snapped. "This might be important."
"Then let him keep the information so we have some incentive to get him through this hellhole alive."
"Fine." She helped the guard to stand, letting him lean on her as tested putting weight on his new knee. "What's your name?"
"Romero," the guard said, averting his eyes from the corpses of his friends, taking extra care not to look at Rebecca's glassy, lifeless eyes, poking through the shattered visor of her helmet.
"Welcome to the team, Romero. Now, take us to the data room, or the library, or whatever you call it," Fate said.
Romero nodded, taking point as he lead the way.
"You weren't kidding," Fate whispered, peaking around the corner. "There are at least twenty people there, all armed with guns."
"Why do they have guns while everyone else had batons?" Cait whispered back.
"They don't trust us lower-rung guards with guns," Romero explained. "Even with chips in our necks that explode our heads if we even think of disloyalty, they still think we'll betray them. Which, I suppose, they were right to think, seeing as I'm here."
"Any ideas on how to get in there?" Fate asked.
"What are their Levels?" Cait replied.
"Four Avatars, seven Exemplars, and at least a dozen Prodigies. But if they were weak, they wouldn't be guarding the most important place here."
"Actually, they are pretty weak," Romero said. "But what they lack in power, they make up for it in spades with loyalty. I can promise not a single one of them will stop trying to kill you until they're dead."
'I say we give them the chance, then," Fate said. "If Romero's words are true, then they're more of a bunch of pushovers than the other five or six groups we took out, and all of those were Exemplars at the least."
"It's not like we have any other options," Cait agreed. "We don't have bombs or anything to toss down."
Fate grimaced. "We could've saved Romero's chip."
"That wouldn't have done much," Romero told him. "It barely has the power to blow up a head from inside, much less twenty-something men and women armored to the teeth."
"Then we charge in on the count of three. We all agree this is the best way?" Cait asked, scanning their face.
"As you said, we don't have any other choice if we want to get in there," Fate shrugged.
"I kind of have to do whatever you two do if I want to get out of here alive," Romero said.
"Alright, then," Cait said. "On three. One… Two…"
"What are you three doing?" asked a voice from behind them. They whirled around, pointing their batons at the new arrival. It was another guard, close enough for them to see his eyes widen behind the reflective visor.
"Woah, take it easy. Where's your helmet, Romero? And why are you with two… Jumpsuit-wearing…"
He backed away, turning and sprinting down the hall as he screamed "Intruders over here! I need backup! I need-!"
His words were cut short in a gurgle as Fate caught the guard's neck with his Divine Grasp and snapped it. Around the corner, coming from the direction of the data room, came the sound of boots marching along the ground, along with the angry shouts of the guards.