||Location: [CLASSIFIED]
||Time: 1015 MST

Harrison’s kindness was refreshing. Normally Chef was only of the only friendly people around. He wasn’t willfully ignorant, or at least not blind to the unfairness of her situation. She let out a mirthless laugh, “I’m hardly dangerous – I don’t have a violent nature nor any interest in harming innocent life forms. You know they have an entire bound rulebook for this place? They make all the newbies read it before their first day. The commanding officer usually gives them a pop quiz during the tour. Rule number 1 is no physical contact because they figured out a way to cut my powers here so I can only make a psychic link though touch. Something about the soil here, I think. It’s why I haven’t seen the sky in fifty-three years.” Kir surprised herself with how easily the worlds just tumbled out. She realized how long it had been since she’d had a real conversation with anyone. 

Shaking her head as if to dispel the thoughts, Kir’ion leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees to get a better look at the bracelet. It was sleek and beautiful, and to the untrained eye it could easily be mistaken for a fine piece of jewelry.  She wasn’t untrained, though. She’d know the symbol carved into the band anywhere. That was an [i]Imperial[/i] control armor, no doubt about it. It was modified from something else, probably some kind of local relic. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously and her mouth went dry immediately. 

Just the presence of that bracelet was enough to make Kir rethink the purpose of this exercise. An internal debate raged – was he doing this on purpose to get to her? If he was part of the first wave, it would be much easier to just steal her from the humans than to have to import another X’hondrian. Then again, he was missing the normal attitude of the enforcers – cocky, self-righteous, and still somehow bland thanks to the mind control. She couldn’t feel the same psychic waves that typically rolled off an enforcer, either. Even without a proper link, she should have felt [i]something.[/i] The bracelet obviously wasn’t broken since it was permanently bonded and he had access to at least some of the features, but something was wrong with it because every indicator said he had no idea what it was or what it was capable of. She pursed her lips, then pressed them together in a thin line as she turned over the possibility in her head. As far as she knew, there was no such thing as a free enforcer or a faulty gauntlet. But…there’s a first time for everything.

Kir’ion met Harrison’s gaze with a serious expression. Without a psychic link and so many eyes on them, she needed to choose her next words carefully. “Our word for the device doesn’t translate,” she lied. It translated just fine, but from what she knew of the humans she didn’t want to give them any ideas. “Its gifts come at a price. The only way your planet survives is if that thing is destroyed.” That was not a lie, that was a warning.