"Abandonment."

The hermetic chamber's surroundings faded into kaleidoscopic obscurity, the various augmented reality instrumentation panels whirling through his mind as senses melded. Tartalo accessed Spencer’s surveillance logs, and perspective shifted in a dissociative manner. He found himself looking at his, or rather Spencer’s, reflection in a polished observation portal as he was forcefully pushed into the private cabin by two exasperated stewards. Spencer appeared to be unconscious as he was unceremoniously deposited face-first on lush ultrasuede. The warm sensation of urine pooling coupled with the sickening undulations at the periphery of his consciousness forced Tartalo out of the memory and back to the chamber as Merse spoke of his scientists.

<< Ekhi, what was that? I was expecting an intelligence dossier, not something from some mozkorra. >>

<< I’m finding degradation on a majority of the covalent bonds from the carbon-aerogel pads on his surveillance device. The reports are heavily impacted from asset Tras’ dependency on psychotropics and psychedelics. >>

<< Is there anything you can do? >>

<< Not within a reasonable timeframe. >>

<< Arraio. >>

“You seem confident that their research and assets wouldn’t be seized immediately.”

Consciousness once more plunged into dissociation as he skipped ahead in the voluminous report. His vision focused as best it could on what appeared to be a half-eaten chicken’s drumstick. He felt himself moving as if through molasses as Spencer raised his sidearm and atomized the incoming projectile. 

Tartalo scoffed internally as he increased the report’s playback speed. Hounds rose from infernal gashes in reality as old women rained from the artificial sky above the last few members of what Tartalo intuited as a wedding party. Frustrated, he skipped further ahead and picked up the report several hours after the doomed ceremony.

He looked into Spencer’s face through the lenses of his signature shades. They were leaning against a mirror over a running sink, forehead flat against the cool glass. Sweaty strands of ratty blonde hair clung to his skin as he dry-heaved, fighting the urge to purge himself of an ungodly amount of alcohol. A solitary bloodshot eye danced around the washroom, before stopping on a not-wholly unfamiliar sight to Tartalo.

A planet, very much like Earth, filled the majority of the vista through the wide, horizontal panels along one of the room’s walls. At that moment, the mozkorra mumbled a single word. Fortis. As the planet rotated, there was another moment of recognition as the outline of the Iberian Peninsula grew in prominence. But the familiarity ended there, as a technological brilliance grew against the rugged peaks of a range Tartalo determined to be the Pyrenees.

After a few minutes of near silence, Tartalo’s voice cut through the room. 

“Tell me about Fortis.”