They trooped down SG-413’s loading ramp in tight formation, nearly two dozen delegates and the same number of guards. Torrents of rain swept across the landing pad and the platform leading to the main building. The wind was rough, pulling at Freyr’s rapidly soaking hair and coat.

They’d made it halfway between the cutter and the entrance when Vreta broke the anxious silence. Freyr looked up from the floor she’d been focusing on in these unpleasant conditions. 

“Looks can be deceiving, Vreta’Sori.” An unfamiliar, slow, artificially loud drawl answered his question to Thrace. The group stopped immediately and all of the CraSec operators raised their guns with a chorus of metallic clicks.

A needle-thin blue light projected in from far away off to their right, up high across Babylon’s cityscape somewhere. It rapidly digistructed the hologram of a slim [url=https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/6db1c918-480c-4c6a-b493-99d392fd5afe.jpg]man[/url], swaggering toward them. He wore a well-tailored linen suit with a bowtie, and a crumpled white hat with a wide brim. The man’s lips curled back in a sneer, showing off a full complement of gold teeth.

“That’s close enough!” Thrace boomed, aiming down the wet sights of his gun at the man, just the same as the rest of the guards in front. “Everybody back to the ship, now!”

“I wouldn’t do that, if i were you.” The man warned casually, stuffing one hand in his coat pocket and raising the other, which was holding a compact hatchet, to scratch the scythe tattoo on his cheek.

The front row of their escort all opened fire immediately. A salvo of bright energy tore through the man, splattering across the platform behind him. The hologram flared up, turning bright blue before returning to true colour. The man smiled again, and kept creeping forward. The CraSec guards began pushing everyone backwards, away from the hologram.

“If we wanted you dead, Xīyì, they’d still be picking chunks off the grass now.” The man drawled. Freyr recognised his accent - he probably spoke Cantonese, one of the few prestige languages that’d stayed separate from the conglomerated mass people spoke now. 595 had moved in front of her already, but Freyr peeked out from behind her arm, transfixed by what this man might do next.