Noctus stared down the tip of Sunny's spear, cold steel glinting not a few inches away from his face. Adam could hear the little coward's thoughts as they ran circles inside his head. Could he escape, could he trick them, could he lie? Is there someone he could call for help. He didn't know what Adam had meant about sending his maker friend to deal with the guards but the bastard was sure to get a nasty surprise once he learned...

Adam keyed his mic, "Celex, how are you holding up."

The mic went to static for a moment, and for a second he worried something had happened to his old friend until, "Right peachy, you don't happen to be calling me to tell me that these bastards got void creatures inside of them?'

Adam paused, "Uh, yeah."

"Don't bother."

"You okay."

"Like you have to ask."

Adam shrugged to himself, he supposed he shouldn't have been worried about the universe's most bloodthirsty warlord, now with opposable thumbs and a pair of legs, coming to a theater near you in ultra 4k.

Noctus didn't seem pleased about the side of the conversation he had heard, and had probably managed to guess what was going on.

Adam shook him by the scruff of his neck, "Go on, we are all dying to hear what you have to say."

"Fine!." The tesraki snapped, "W-"

"And make it entertaining." Adamsaid, I want to hear everything. Paint me a picture with words.

The Tesraki barred his teeth again, but this time he slumped downwards with defeat written in the lines of his body.

Adam held up the vial, "Is that where." he motioned generally in Noctus's direction, "Where all that came from."

Noctus pulled his ears back flat against his skull, but a stern look from Adam kept him from causing much more trouble. Instead he dangled helplessly by the scruff of his neck from Adam's hand, legs curled up to his chest like a kitten in his mother's mouth.

Start from the beginning, "How did you start working with Kazna."

The Tesraki was unwilling to speak, but Sunny gave him all the encouragement she could, through the open threat of violence. No one in the room seemed eager to stop her either. Even Adam knew that, when it came to Sunny's mother, there was no argument to be made.

"We were in prison together as you recall. I escaped and she didn't, well at least not at the same time. I've been working to keep a low profile these past few years, got myself involved in the metal refinery industry, all very low profile, mostly metal sheeting for space ships and that sort of thing. Pays pretty well." he said, motioning to the room around him for emphasis, and all of its lavish decorations.

"Still did some smuggling on the side of course, nothing big, mostly cheap knockoffs going against copyright laws, all the easy kind of stuff places don't really care about. Human knock off brand items sell for really well on the Tesraki homeworld, and with so many of them, the bastards can't get enough. Throw Noctopolis into the mix, and its good pickings."

"Is this the part where I start to give a shit?" Red asked finally having recovered from his fall, and the subsequent attack, now leaning against one of the black glass pillars as he listened.

The Tesraki glowered at him, "Wasn't talking to you." he spat on the floor, as much as a tesraki can spit, which isn't particularly well.

"Anyway there I was, living my life and doing things the way I do. Then you got the GA come in, make Noctopolis a part of their system, take all the border planets, begin their patrols, they are eddeling more than they ever have. My business starts to struggle, parts of my business anyway. More policing more checkpoints more more more, We weren't doing them any real harm, just the cooperations, it shouldn't have mattered, but they had to come in and ruin everything for those of us who weren't smart enough to be stable in the first place." he patted his chest in congratulations, "Couple of us got together and formed a little group of.... Entrepreneurs so you might say. We work to get the goods where they need to go while only the people who need to see the have to be involved. He glowered at Adam again, "No one gets hurt, no one has any problems."

"I think you mean had." Adam said shaking the vial in front of the Tesraki's face.

Noctus shrugged, "Okay then, had, if you insist. When Kazna got out of her prison, maybe a year or so after she killed that kelly woman, she came to me." he raised his hands, "now I am going to be honest, I didn't really want to help the bitch but she drives a hard bargain and in the end I just couldn't say no."

"Tell us about the bargain, rat." Sunny said, jamming her spear forward until it nicked the skin at the base of the Tesraki's throat.

Noctus waved away the tip of her spear, "Simple, my blue friend, I did what she wanted or she would kill me, plain as that. Wasn't too thrilled about it at first, but the longer I worked with her the more I realized that this was actually a very great business opportunity for me. A great opportunity for all of us, me and my colleagues and the hundreds of others who became invested in the plan the longer we looked into it. Personally, I am in it for the money, always have been always will be, but the others..... There is a strange religious fervor to them."

Adam shook his head, more out of confusion than any sort of disagreement. Distantly the sound of the fires and the metal refinery could still be heard as a low and indistinct rumble that echoed through the facility and bounced off the stone, "That doesn't make sense, why would people WILLINGLY join the void. They do understand that those bastards are looking to terminate life as far as we understand it?"

Noctus laughed, "Poor Naieve STUPID boy. This isn't about the end of the world as we know it, this is about them, their own selfish wants and desires." he brushed a hand through the front of his fur, "People want to belong, they want to matter, some of them don't care what they belong to or what matters as long as they can leave something Our organization is giving a voice to those who have never had a voice before, a purpose to the purposeless, companionship for all of those that have been forsaken by your precious makers."

Maverick shook her head in disgust.

Noctus snorted, "Don't be a hypocrite, I've seen your shadow, human. Besides, think about it, the makers take their own children, throw them down into these constructed bodies to suffer and die. Think of all the horrible things that the makers could prevent if they simply took care of their own children, all of the suffering that might be prevented. But instead they just threw us down here and don't even bother to pay attention, never bothered to do anything to help us. "

"They did that to protect us FROM the void." Adam said, shaking the tesraki, "They put us away to avoid THIS." He held up the vial, "this is the exact reason why they couldn't keep us around because they knew we could be corrupted. Look as a father I don't want my son to get hurt, but I might have to let him suffer pain in order to protect him from something worse."

"That's not how the people see it,"

"Your people are stupid."

Noctus shrugged, "Stupid maybe, misguided, perhaps, but angry and willing to do whatever it takes, they most certainly are. Thousands of them have already eagerly taken the power provided to them by our general, and thousands more will take it in the near future, even now our network has spread all over the galaxy infecting even the highest levels of government, When this is all over..... No one will be safe."

Adam shook his head.

"At the end of the day you all are still a minority terrorist organization. And if I have to, I will weed you out one by one."

Noctus just laughed.

Just then Adam's radio crackled.

"Uh, Adam. yo uare going to want to come take a look at this."

With a growl Adam pulled up, keeping Noctus caught tight by the scruff of his neck as he turned and headed towards the doors doing his best to skirt around the center of the floor where he knew the trapdoor lay concealed. Noctus continued to cackle lightly to himself, while the looks on the faces of the others were hard and cold.

They were just as worried as he was.

Celex's call lead them down through the facility, away from the glass and marble palace and back into the steel refinery. There were no guards to be seen, but plenty of the workers still milled about. Most of them didn't do much work, but a few of them glanced nervously in Adam's direction, others cowered on the floor.

It seemed as if Celex had been by this way,

And recently.

They headed down a few more flights, through a series of dark hallways and as they went the rooms began to slowly grow in heat, until Adam was sweating even despite his partial armor.

Inside his helmet. Fealty was growing with agitation displeased at the growing heat,

Red panted like a dog

Maverick looked miserable, and only Ramirez and Sunny seemed unbothered by the heat, which was almost to be expected.

Luckily there was only one more set of stairs downward before they found themselves walking onto another large factory floor. They all stopped at the top of the catwalk looking out onto the floor with a mixture of awe and growing horror.

Celex was waiting for them at the top of the catwalk holding a struggling worker in one of his hands.

It was a man, surprisingly, almost all human except for the shattered bone shards protruding from his chest. Celex himself looked none the worse for wear, even the heat didn't bother the Ex Celzex , whose technicolor hair rolled around his shoulders in loose waves which undulated gently with the heat of the fire.

"Celex, what is this." Adam asked, eyes still riveted on the floor,

"This, is the means of distribution."

Down on the floor lines of glowing orange vials were being pumped into industrial sized canisters of insecticide, massive tanks in all shapes and sizes with different company logos and origins headed to different destinations.

The void was banking on the one thing that everyone had in common to spread the infection.

Everyone had to eat.