Leru jerked out of her meditative state as the APC was thrown violently end-over-end. Jacq's body ricocheted back and forth in her vacuum bag like an egg yolk, ending closer to one side of the frame than she had started by the time they ceased spinning to land upside down. Her shoulders pressed against the magnetic restraints as her blood began to rush to her head, weight tilting them painfully into her chin.
A moment later, the latch on the rear door was shredded by a small explosion, filling their tiny compartment with thin, white smoke, and a single spear of white city lights. Black-gloved hands lifted the ramp overhead as another pair of silhouettes rushed in, briefly shorting-out their collars with a small remote -- a tactical electromagnet. They didn't short the cuffs presumedly to save the tac-mag's battery, and they defaulted to connect to each other as the collars detached from the wall.
The silhouettes -- black clad in tight tactical gear and segmented helmets -- caught each of them by the shoulders as they fell, placing them upright and ushering them out of the vehicle. Leru reached out with her empathy to try and judge their saviors' motives, but found each of them empty as dolls. There was the briefest of sensations as her empathy ran over each one, a quick retraction that almost felt… shameful?
She ducked out of the APC, catching the briefest glimpse of a modern city before a thick black bag was shoved over her head. She was hoisted onto a pair of shoulders well suited to the task, broad and padded to resemble organic muscle. They locked an arm around one leg and through her cuffed arms, holding her firmly on their back as they made their way down a ladder, sliding her sideways to fit through a manhole.
Their footsteps echoed off of cavern walls, making no effort to be silent as they focused purely on speed. There were at least four of them that she could sense empathically, but she felt it safe to assume there was at least one silhouette for each of them. The footsteps didn't sound numerous enough to include Behr and the others.
They were carried for a surprisingly long time, running with her on their back for over twenty minutes before they began to slow, finally coming to a halt in a group. Leru felt the shoulders beneath her rise and fall with heavy but controlled breaths as the rest of the feet came to a stop around them.
There was jerk, and the squeaking sound of gears turning as the floor began to rise beneath them in short, uneven waves. They were unmistakably riding a man-powered emergency elevator. It took another ten minutes of steady, rising jerks for them to reach the top, pausing twice to shift around the unstable platform. She still couldn't sense any individual emotions from them, but the overarching sense of shame she'd felt the entire time was beginning to condense.
Their chauffeurs' footsteps fell on carpet now as she was carried a short distance, then dropped on something… exceedingly comfortable. The others were dropped alongside her, and finally their blinds were removed:
They had been placed on a smooth, black couch made of thick, firm cushions. They faced floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a hundred or so skyscrapers surrounding a towering pillar reflecting the city's white lights back at it, its height impossible to determine beyond the reflections as it disappeared into the night sky. One by one, the black-clad figures behind them reached over their shoulders and undid their cuffs with the tac-mag, confiscating the devices as they popped open before they could reset.
A feminine figure stood before the windows, her back to them on the thick, blue carpet. She wore a low-collared, silver blazer beneath lightly curled, shoulder length hair, the left half of which was matte black, while the right half shone a natural auburn. She stood with her hands behind her back, black shoes shoulder-width apart beneath slacks like crease-less silver beams.
The woman's hands tightened around each other as her head angled to the floor, and leru realized that when the emotions of their carriers had retracted, they had retracted here.
Leru folded her own hands in her lap, shoulder to shoulder with Jarett and Hep. At the very least, she could be relatively certain this was who had sent the second tractor beam at their ship. Her eyes widened -- if that were the case, had she been the one who'd sent Nick the message that told him to go to Estermere? That would make her…
"Hello, Aurora."
The woman's head angled further towards the floor as Nick spoke. She took a breath, and finally turned to face them. "Nick. It's been too long." She looked at him with a relaxed expression, professionally neutral though her eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly.
Nick's flash of indignant rage nearly caused Leru to jump, but he doused it as quickly as it had appeared. "So it was you, 'Morning Glow'."
She nodded. "You were the only person I knew who might actually go through with it."
"You really made the most out of the desperate situation you put me in." Nick's voice was steel, a rapid 3d-print from a long-held design. Leru couldn't see him from where she sat, but she felt Jarett slide away from him.
Aurora's eyes darted to the floor. "Yes. I did. But I don't think an apology is enough at this point." She glanced back at Nick. "But now you're here, and now I can help. Or, well…" She turned back to the windows. "In the interest of honesty, we can help each other."
"You destroyed my life." Nick laughed, a dry sound like synthwood scraps falling from a collapsing building, "you orchestrated the murder of thousands -- my friends." He grew silent, but Aurora didn't interject. "You lied to me. Why would I ever help you?"
"Because we want the same thing." Aurora looked over her shoulder, a single eye visible over the thin line of her mouth. "I want RDI taken down. I want my father dead."