[I]“There might be at least two. The thing to the west. Or, at the very least, it has two different kinds of units; we were ordered to fall back in either case. They stressed the importance of not letting anyone take hostages. It reads minds. Before – my first four years out of twelve – there were cyborgs. Half-human, half-machine. They fought hard, but they were already few by that point. As far as I know, they're all gone. That land is now divided between Trenians and Anderekians to the north.”[/I]
	“That confirms our own intel,” Gramps declared, proving that he was still paying attention even if he was outwardly occupying himself with preparing water for tea. “Truth be told I'm relieved to hear that there haven't been any more sightings of cyborgs. Ever since what happened to Kay-Gee...”
	Though Gramps trailed off on that, Kay thought she noticed a faint shiver of his elderly, if muscular, frame even with his back turned, and was taken aback by just how unusual a sight that was. Gramps was one of the most stable, reliable and most fearless people she had ever met, and seeing him shaken by something – even as subtly as he was now – spoke volumes of how fearsome that thing must have been.
	It did bring up some interesting, if rather disturbing, questions regarding Gramps' thoughts on Kay herself if he found cyborgs that unnerving. There had never been any doubt that Gramps had had no part in integrating the Interface in Kay's head and that he had been furious when he had discovered what had happened, but she had never really contemplated [I]why[/I] he had been so angry.
	“Read minds...” Kay repeated Enn's words quietly, biting her lip and running her fingers along the side of the device on her skull. Part of her would have liked to meet a cyborg – someone who was, in a sense, like her – and was disappointed to hear that they were not around anymore. Another part was relieved. A third part wondered what would happen if she actually met a machine mind.

	[I]“Kay-Gee told me some things about life is here usually. At best I could have managed on my own until I ran out of bullets and a direstalker figured it out. I would be fine living as a civilian or soldier in a different faction. I wouldn't know how to begin asking questions. Besides one, anyway. I'm here - [/I]now what?[I]”[/I]
	“Now what, indeed.” Gramps turned back towards Enn and Kay and leaned against his back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. He looked from one to the other, and Kay could have sworn it looked as if he was aging before her very eyes as the tension started fading from his posture and expression, only to be replaced with fatigue and worry. “I don't know the machines well enough to predict what they might do. They might leave us alone, or they might wipe us out as soon as they deem it to be practical. Similarly, if we tried to flee through their lands they might let us pass, or they might destroy us, based on logic we have no chance to ever understand or predict.” He shook his head ruefully. “It's too risky.”
	“We can't slip past the Anderekians and Trenians, and they absolutely wouldn't let us pass when they found us,” he continued after a moment, uncrossing his arms to raise a hand and rub his his eyes. “At best we would be captured, interrogated and [I]maybe[/I] absorbed by them. At worst they would just get rid of us.”
	He sighed. “We need to go south. It's our only chance.”