Waking up with a mild headache Lisa slowly rose from the sheets, she had long since kicked off her covers from overheating as she slept so she quickly rose to her somewhat steady feet
'Water…'
Walking out towards the hotel toilet, Lisa soon found herself with her mouth to the tap as she downed cool water which seemed to settle her headache and overheating enough for her to think clearly enough to question her surrounds
'When did we get to the hotel?'
Lisa distinctly remembered the different bars they had been too over… However long they had been drinking
'...I can still taste that 2nd drink'
Lisa remembered it clearly, a yellow colored drink made up of some sort of tropical fruit juice and spirits served in a tall glass with ice, when Mark had seen it he had yelled/sang something like 'getting caught in the rain' before ordering 2 for them. Shortly there after they had gone dancing
'...Right, the dancing'
Lisa squadded down and covered her face as it turned crimson, she remembered far more than she had expected she would
'And here returns my headache… Ugh…'
Returning to the room Lisa laid back down in bed and closed her eyes before she laid her arm over her face, a small smile formed on her face, despite the embracement another feeling shone though in her mind
'It was really fun…'
Never in her wildest dreams had she expected she would be living so freely after escaping from her old man, every day was an adventure with Luna and Mark. Thinking back on the night before for a while long she rolled over on her side and was about to go back to sleep when her arm touched something, or rather someone
'Mark!?'
As she opened her eyes, she saw his face laying only an arm's length from hers. She gazed at Mark for a long while, she thought back to when he had rescued her about when she had met him for the first 'official' time, about the attack that had sundered the Creh-2 trade hub
'Well, he's not exactly prince material… Still…'
Reaching her hand out, she carefully traced the side of Mark's face with her finger as he breathed with a slow and steady rhythm, until she suddenly realized something and muttered
"Wait, Mark is sleeping? Mark?"
The 2nd time Lisa called his name, Mark's eyes burst open as he sat up taking in a deep desperate breath and yelled
"FUCKING RECESSIVE GENES!"
-
Going back in time a little, Lisa had unknowingly mirrored Mark's actions form the previous night, after a bar crawl of 3 different bars and a solid 6 hours of drinking and dancing Lisa had blacked out and soon after passed out which had resulted in Mark carrying her back to the hotel where he had laid her down on the bed
'She really is pretty when she's quiet…'
Mark studied her face as she snored and drooled on her pillow in the most undignified way possible for a noble daughter, he carefully traded the edge of her cheek with the edge of his finger finding enjoyment in watching her nose squirm when he teased her
'Cute'
Watching her sleeping face for a bit Mark's thoughts eventually started diffing as he mirrored her breathing unconsciously he slowly fell in a light trance, as the trance deepened every single thing he had done since they arrived at the Zir-1 trade station starting from the tone of voice of the flight controller that had granted them permission to dock to the feel of the prefab dock panel he had stepped out as they stepped out of the Sparrow
'...Deeper… Sink deeper…'
Faces flashed through his mind's eye, what had been said, not only to him but everything he had overheard. Soon a large spiderweb of people formed inside Mark's mind, people were linked to people and people were linked to their employer and other locations on the giant board as Mark's mind's eye went over the board several hundred times a pattern soon emerged
'...You… You and you… Also you 2… And you…'
Now that he had seen the pattern, it was clear to him. Several hundred people were soon linked into several cells, they weren't all watching them, it was more like general surveillance over the entire station
'Your build and gait suggest military training…'
Mark soon grouped the several cells into different alignments, 2 appeared to be state actors mostly keeping taps on each other, while one appeared to be a group of Bolshevik revolutionaries. However, a whooping 6 different cells appeared to be of a unified form and most likely contained the people Mark and Lisa had come from
'...Deeper still… I, I need more…'
However at this point Mark's instincts once again showed their ugly half as he obsessively dove deeper into social connections between the different people he had seen.
By the time he was tracing 871 different genetic markers though his sample group, based only on his senses as detections something suddenly poked his bubble of tranquility, at first it held, however at the 2nd poke it shattered instantly and Mark was pulled out violently, like a 1800s diver he was yanked up by his connection to the surface and sat up straight as he sucked in a deep breath before he yelled
"FUCKING RECESSIVE GENES!"
A moment passed before Mark received a pillow to his face, a few moments of gabbling later Mark found himself on his back with the same pillow stuffed over his face as Lisa had locked her legs around his torso and pushed the pillow into his face
'...Right, she's hung over'
Mark patted her leg twice after he calmed down, a few moments later Lisa removed the pillow from his face. Looking up at her disgruntled expression where tears already had gathered in the corner of her half closed eyes, Mark could only say one thing
"Sorry about that"
Lisa didn't respond, instead she just laid down and tried to get some more sleep
'Well… I guess I deserve that…'
Having woken up from his trance, Mark began browsing his tablet and quickly followed up on the analysis following up with the feelers he had put out on the SubNet earlier
'Oh… There they are…'
Having found the first target already, Mark looked over towards Lisa that was still tiring to get some sleep
'Guess I'll go out alone…'
Before Mark left the hotel room his face shifted and changed until he looked like someone else, next his build became a little shorter and then he put on a jacket Lisa had brought for him before he headed out of the hotel
'Alright let's see… There we are…'
Finding a person he had identified as general surveillance during his trance rather quickly, Mark trailed them from a distance. Unsurprisingly being a sun adverse predatory creature feasting on the negative emotions of people, stalking prey came quite naturally to Mark
-
Walking down a narrow alley Mark's figure was hunched over, he was wearing a filthy jacket and coughing while walking at a seemingly unsteady gait, stopping halfway down he placed his hand on the wall as his coughing fit increased until he fell to his knees. A few moments later someone walked over to him
"Hey, are you alright? Should I get a med—"
The kind-hearted stranger's voice stopped mid-sentence as Mark suddenly moved and plunged a knife into her throat, Mark looked up and studied her face as the light quickly faced from her eyes as he held her right hand in an iron grip, keeping the radio on her belt just out of reach until she slipped into darkness
"No, I am quite alright, thank you"
Letting her down gently Mark swiped the radio on her belt along with the key card before he cut off her right hand
'Didn't your mother tell you to wear a jacket when you are outside?'
Mark placed the large dirty jacket over the body before walking further down the alley Mark placed her hand on the side of a dumpster which was silently scanned by a hidden biometric scanner, a moment later a block of the metal wall popped out and Mark pressed the key card to it
'Open sesame…'
A moment passed before a hidden door opened on the wall, Mark quickly walked in with quiet steps as he pulled his pistol out from his hip holster and checked the chamber before he continued down the short hallway that ended in a stairway
'Now then… There should be 21 people in this hide, well I've already taken care of one to get this location and the gate guard so 19 in total'
Creeping down the stairs, Mark arrived in a repurposed section of the stations' cargo transport rail system. Given the decay this section of rail system had been out of order for quite some time, sheet metal and prefabricated well sections had been put up and welded to make a somewhat proper bunker
'...Alright, time for some stealthy shit'
Mark creeped through the common room that he arrived in immediately after descending the stairs, he listened for a few moments before he walked down the left-hand hallway, passing a simple kitchen Mark stopped at a door which he carefully pushed open
'6 people, barrack bunk beds too? Man, these terrorists sure don't have it easy…'
On the right-hand side, left-hand side and directly ahead were bunk beds with 2 beds above and below, starting at his left hand side Mark covered the man's mouth before he stabbed a knife into the side of his neck before swiftly cutting it out through his neck
'...Well, that was quick'
Being slightly surprised on how quickly the man stopped struggling, Mark took care of the top bunk similarly before he moved to the right side bunk bed where he stabbed the guy sleeping on the bottom bed when he noticed the guy on the top bed waking
'Nope, zip it'
Acting quickly, Mark grabbed the guy by the neck and squeezed it until a low pop echoed out, slitting his throat for good measure Mark heard a sound from the top of the final bunk bed and quickly threw his knife which sailed across the room before it sank into the chest of the guy on the top bed that had just switched the safety off his pistol
"ARGH!"
Mark rushed over and kneed the newly awakened woman on the bottom bed in the face as he quickly snapped the wrist of the top bunk guy to keep him from firing before Mark grabbed the hilt of his knife and slit open the entire chest of top bunk guy while he grabbed the frame of the top bunk and stomped the neck of the bottom bunk woman until she stopped struggling
"Well, 4 out of 6 is still good?"
Retrieving the pistol from the top bunk guy Mark quickly checked the magazine before he turned towards the door and listened for a moment before he fired towards the wall right of the door where a thin section of sheet metal did little to stop the bullet
"ARGH, FUCK!"
Following up the first shot with another two Mark rushed towards the door and kicked it off its hinges crushing another person with it before he finished off the wounded guy he had wall banged
"Well, that's that for stealth"
-
As Lisa woke up for a 2nd time, she was delighted to find her headache had disappeared almost completely, kicking the covers off she got out of bed and found a glass of water on the end table which she drank before doing anything else
'...I feel alive again'
Looking around the room Lisa felt a pang of anxiety when she didn't find Mark, after checking the bathroom and finding it empty the pang of anxiety quickly grew as she felt her heart hammer loud enough to block her thoughts
'He wouldn't… Please say he didn't just leave because I slapped him with the pillow…'
Crouching down Lisa felt her vision darken as she hyperventilated, moments stretched out as her system flooded with adrenaline, suddenly a musical note echoed out in the room which sounded deafening to her heightened senses that were running on overdrive. She rushed over to the end table and picked up her console where she saw a series of messages from Mark with the most recent one still displayed
[I've finished up, I'll be back in a few]
Calming her breathing down Lisa laid her head down flat on the bed and just breathed for a few moments before she checked the rest of the messages from Mark in the order they were sent
'What? He found the cell of separatist we're looking for?'
Scrolling down further through the messages, Lisa was treated to a grim play by play of how Mark had over the course of an afternoon infiltrated a cell of separatist terrorist and picked them off one by one
"Ew… I thought I had grown used to the gore by now"
Closing the message chain down as she saw the 14 or so severed heads Mark had stuffed into a backpack and taken a picture with a corner of his face in it wearing a dumb grin while he made a weird looking 'V' with his index and middle finger in it, Lisa felt her nausea return as she muttered
"What did I miss while I slept off my hangover..?"