Vreta’s implant had stamped out the final traces of the virus in his mind, outside of the records in the quarantined partition. Though, it had stopped fighting back after the room had gone dark. The simulation might have ended inconclusively, to the confusion of most of those involved, but Vreta could be satisfied with the fact that he had a record of everything that happened within his mind. He realized that he was going to have to schedule some minor surgery to deal with this, but hopefully, what was within his storage drive now would be a gift well-worth the trouble.

In the spectator’s booth, there was another guest to the Barbarossa. She stood near the window, looking out over the now-featureless arena. Rareth was unarmored and unarmed, or at least did not carry any [i]external[/i] weapons. She had not originally come for any official purpose as a Datius, but rather simply to speak with the members of the Sacred Band. She had not expected anything more complicated than a conversation, but she was nothing if not adaptable. It had been easy to notice when something strange started to happen with Vreta, so she had been in a position to observe everything that was observable when the room shut down. “Interesting.”

On his part, Vreta did not show any signs of distress, nor did he have any intention of letting on to what happened on his own. It was in his interest to keep the details quiet for now, if at all possible. In fact, the more ignorance he could believably feign towards 595, the better. Though, he could not be sure what the simulation’s observers already knew. After all, the room would not have shut down without reason, so either the virus forced the simulation into shutdown for some reason, or there was something that the ship could detect, which it reacted to. “Is everything fine? No one is hurt, are they?” Vreta asked loudly.