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I really hope the irony of this isn't lost on you.

[ But he can't turn him away without being a hypocrite for being angry with him, can he? There's a quiet noise as he swallows down whatever's lodged itself in his throat. ]

What do you need?

Look I'll pay you an obscene amount if that'll make it better. [ It won't, that might just be five kinds of insulting, but it's all the capital he's got to spend here. They don't care about his guilt or his grief or anything other than the fact that he'd hid and lied. ]

Help tracking them down. I don't know how they keep finding us or where they're set up. They might be jumping from point to point but- they have to be housed somewhere. Find the server farm, nuke it from orbit. We can keep running until we run out of space but I can't hide us from them and track them at the same time.

No. It won't.

[ And true to York's suspicions, Wash doesn't look at all happy about the offer. If he needed any more confirmation that York had never really seen the team the way he had, that was it. Right there.

These new people and Delta, they were his family. The one he was willing to fight for, anyway. ]

Yeah, well. It'd be a lot easier if we still had Epsilon. Which we don't.

Deal with the criminal element long enough and you forget how relatively normal people price their favors.

[ He's not proud of what he's done to keep his head down and still abovewater. But it needed doing, he needed to live, people got gone and for the longest time? No one was shooting at him.

Until they were. Until Sam.

Details. ]

What did I use to- fresh fruit from the mess? I think that was it. First pick because Maine kept grabbing it all. [ Something something needing the bulk or- whatever. God it's all so fuzzy sometimes when he sits to think about it. ]

...I- actually I don't know if I can help with that. It's as good a place to meet as any; pretty sure all we did was lock it down and kill the signal- Remember when they'd back themselves up? Regularly. That's why D's not gone he- uh. The Delta I have came from. After. Me 'dying.' We found him in an old PFL archival site. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been accessed. The rest might be there too.

I can take a look, see what's left.

...Carolina will probably want to come.

We light that place up the commune will come running. I think we've got a registry of what they had there, somewhere. I wasn't the one that found D- Sam was. He'll know.

Uh.

He's my- um. [ He waves a hand, fumbling for words. ] Husband.

[ Well that's not gonna be awkward to explain later. ]

I guess I should congratulate you. Or warn him. Either way.

[ Bitter Wash is still bitter, thanks. ]

Alright. Patch him through, we'll come up with some kind of plan. Maybe a decoy signal to keep them from rushing the place right away.

He is well aware that I'm a mess. We were soldiers, we're all messes.

[ Yet another chip on the 'fuck no never calling' pile. And here he is. Calling. ]

Lemme just- Sam? Sam! [ He leans back in the chair, calling back over his shoulder. ] I need that registry from the job where we got D back.

[ Wash just folds his arms, waiting. He sees movement in the back, hears someone murmuring, but that's it.

Nothing to clue him in, just yet. ]

Thanks- alright I'll send this through to you. What we took is already marked off but there was a shit ton of data there. Archival footage, personnel files- nonessential shit, it's the only reason Hargrove didn't raid it.

But you said Delta was stored there as well?

We were on a very narrow timeframe to get in and out- D wasn't something we expected to find. He doesn't know if the others are there but- it wouldn't be a stretch. It was an archive for backups of data.

I don't think Theta ever backed himself up.

He trusted North wouldn't let anything happen to him.

I- some of them were scheduled. AI are expensive, even fragments.

God I didn't want to think about leaving him behind. They're in stasis if they were like Delta so it's not- it wouldn't be terrible.

Sure.

[ It's fine that he seems to care more about leaving the AI behind than them. Really. It's just peachy. See how he's not remarking on it right now? ]

So we go in, see if anything can be recovered. If not, we do a wipe of the facility to make sure they can't get their hands on anything.

That's what we usually did but- finding them kind of tripped me up. We went for a blackout and lockdown instead. [ He scrubs at his eyes. ] I fucked up, alright?

I acted on incomplete intel and trusted Tex because-

I fucked up.

[ There's stony silence for a moment. ]

...there's another option. We need to find out where they're going back to. If there's anything left at the facility, we could use it draw them out. Follow them back.

[ Right. Focus forward, Taylor Murray. Nothing behind you now but ghosts. ]

If sigma is there I whole hardheartedly endorse using him as bait.

That makes two of us.

[ What he did to Maine...

Don't. Don't do that to yourself. He steels himself anew. ]

Once we get a lockdown on where they're headed, what then?

Salt and burn. I still have a stupidly large cache of concentrated EMPs. We find where they're set up and wipe the whole server. I'd rather not but-

They won't stop. D's tried reasoning with them- but they won't stop. I didn't know AI could get cultlike but...here we are.

Well that's pretty much what Sigma was attempting to do on a smaller scale. It makes a weird sort of sense.

But I don't want to think about what that many AI all hooked up to one another could do, honestly.

...you don't suppose they'd be going after all AI? Alien, too?

He wanted to be human. This collective doesn't much care for humanity. Calls' Delta's growth and human traits 'flawed' and it is really, really unsettling to listen to them talk. He's. Shook up.

Probably. Anything that's not locked up tight by the UNSC; and even then? I figure it's a matter of time.

I might be able to work something out on our end, then. I'll need to see if he'll agree to it, but I'd rather we had all the help on deck that we can get.

Tell him to keep an eye out for this signature- it's what they've used to 'announce' themselves every time they've made contact with Delta.

I'll pass it along.

Looks like we've both got homework to do.

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