Doctor Halif could feel the disrespect the moment he walked in the room. The self-important riff-raff he'd assembled today had little regard for N.I.C.E., or the numerous ways in which the organization made their lives easier and better. His audience was muttering to each other, trading quips and jokes and doubt about the worthiness of this event even taking up their "valuable" time. Still, the doctor maintained a professional face as he crossed to the podium at the front of the conference room, showing no sign that their attitude bothered him.

"Ladies and gentlement," he addressed the room politely, "thank you for coming." Slavers, warlords, overseers and scientists from a dozen different systems turned their attention to him, though few adjusted their posture to show anything other than bored disregard. "I know your time is valuable, so I won't waste any of it with pleasantries. You are here because you represent some of NICE's most valuable and consistent customers. More specifically, you are all primary employers of our Raktar bio-weapon system."

"Bio-weapon," a blue haired feline alien scoffed from the side of the room. "You found a bunch of horny tentacle rapists on some backwoods planet a 'bio-weapon'?"

"The Raktar were perfectly engineered by nature for the purposes we commissioned them for," Halif continued with a patient smile, "and required no further modification on our part. Or, so we initially believed. I have called you here today because nature has been continuing the engineering of the Raktar species in our abstinence, and a new strain of Raktar has emerged."

That certainly caught the room's attention. Backs began to straighten and butts shifted in seats as the listeners began to pay attention.

"NICE has been 'reproducing' this strain, propagating it through our supplies. We're now entering the late stages of testing. Initial reports are promising, and indicate that we'll be ready for distribution by the end of the Standard year. In short, ladies and gentlemen, we've called you here to take your bids on the next generation of Raktar defense systems."

"What kind of new strain?" a thickly built reptilian asked. "What's so special about it that I'm going to spend my organization's money replacing every Raktar in our service?"

Halif picked up his presentation remote and pressed a button. The room dimmed, and a hologram bloomed to life in the front of the room. "We first discovered this strain on our Shokushu slave preparation facility," the doctor explained, as a series of diagrams and images of a Raktar appeared before the crowd. "Once we noticed some of our Raktar behaving unusually, we quickly came to the conclusion that they were exhibiting signs of coordination, when dealing with human females. They had developed no signs of verbal communication, yet they were undoubtedly acting in tandem. After further investigation and experimentation, our researchers concluded that these Raktar had developed a form of telepathic communication."

The room rumbled with chuckles and jeers. "You made psychic Raktars?" a humanoid man with pointed ears asked with dry disregard. "How quaint. Can they bend spoons, too, or are you saving that for next year's model?"

"How exactly does this help us, Doctor?" another patron agreed. "Three Raktar in a room with a woman are going to do the same thing to her whether they can talk to each other about it or not."

Halif waved his remote as he spoke. "Ah, but there is no 'each other'. This development, we discovered, was an isolated incident, though it refused to remain isolated. A single one of our Raktar developed psyonic capabilities, but quickly inserted its cells into its peers, effectively assimilating them into its consciousness. They move as one, because effectively, they are one."

The room suddenly seemed less flippant. Several attendants shifted uncomfortably in their chairs as people muttered to each other about the implications of this information.

"Fine," one audience member said finally. "So this Raktar has been... body-snatching its friends. You still haven't told us how it helps us, or why we're going to pay you to get our hands on it."

"Nor am I," Halif said, folding his hands. "Certainly, I could drone on about the statistics of increased coordination, aggressiveness, and projected effectiveness estimates. But we here at NICE believe that seeing... is believing."

The doctor pressed his remote again, and the hologram folded and reappeared. This time, it showed the face of a young human woman, short brown hair framing her smiling face and shining brown eyes.

"This is Juniper Modnar, one of our 'students' at Shokushu. She's a particularly troublesome girl, frequently probing for answers and sticking her nose into dangerous places. She's nothing we can't handle, of course, but she has given us more consternation than most of her peers."

With the press of a button, the hologram again changed, to display a three-dimensional still-image of Juniper, walking near the mouth of a cave.

"We detected Miss Modnar near one of our shuttle ports. As that area is under heavy surveillance, the entire incident was captured on video. A copy of that recording will be provided to each of you, as a token for attending, for your... later perusal. For now, please observe."

Halif pressed a button, and the video began to play.

Not for the first time, Juniper thought to herself that the nights on Shokushu Island were eerily silent. Normally, she have expected a tropical island to be filled with the sounds of life. The buzz of tiny insects, the shuffling of beasts hunting through the tall grass, the shrill cries of birds punctuating the night, that was what she’d expected. Instead, she looked up at a sky of black velvet, dotted with countless brilliant white stars arranged in unfamiliar constellations. Other than the sounds of trees and grass waving in the insistent sea breeze, the only thing she could hear was her own shallow breathing. The air was heavy with a sense of transgression, like traipsing through a graveyard at night; she could feel the weight of unseen eyes on her back no matter which way she turned.

There was a flutter in her heart as she looked across the open ground towards the gaping maw of the cave entrance ahead of her. Trepidation mingled freely with anticipation and exhilaration. She’d be lying if she claimed there wasn’t a bit of a thrill whenever she started one of these expeditions. The lure of the unknown never seemed to lose its promise.

It was the night of the second day since she’d left the school grounds, but then, she’d known she’d be gone a while this time. She’d had to fake an illness to make the opening in her schedule to come out here, and she didn’t doubt that some of the staff suspected she was up to something. Still, given that Vera seemed content to let her dig her own grave, she didn’t expect any visitors to check in on her and reveal the lump of clothes curled up in her bed to be a decoy. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t vanished for longer periods of time under the “care” of one of the island’s “visitors” after all.

Unlike the hologram currently spinning to the side of the screen with her vital statistics arrayed (including some numbers she’d be mortified to learn they were tracking), Juniper wasn’t wearing her uniform. It was painfully obvious to anyone that she was looking to sneak in some place, a zip-up hoodie pulled over her shoulders with the hood up to hide her mouse brown hair, a black pleated skirt with dark hose obscuring the shape of her small, firm backside and long toned legs. It was apparent that she was wearing a pair of black gloves and boots as well, a fabric mask covering the bottom half of her face helping her seem as much like a shadow as she could manage while still dressing lightly enough for the island’s heat. Strapped across her back was a simple messenger’s bag, loaded with the kinds of things she’d expected she’d need moving forward.

She moved carefully, soundlessly towards the gap in the mountain that dominated the center of the island, straining her ears against the silent night for a sign that she might have been detected. Hugging the wall, she glanced one way and then the other, her soft brown eyes looking directly at one of the security cameras without ever actually seeing it. Then, bending forward to keep her body low and extending her arms for balance, she turned into the cave and started making her way across the uneven stone floor.

She stayed near the wall as long as she was framed by the mouth of the cavern, running a hand along the stone to guide her forward as she slipped out from light of the moon. She let the darkness settle over her, her eyes adjusting little by little, listening for the faintest sound to indicate that she wasn’t alone. Once it was too dark for even her eyes to make out, she fished around in the pocket of her hoodie. Finally, she came away with a small device about the side of a keychain. Pressing a button with her thumb, a red LED lit up to provide her a dim light source. She didn’t want to accidentally give herself away by having a brighter light reflect off the stone walls of the cave.

As caves tend to do, the caverns beneath the mountain seemed larger and more elaborate than should have been possible. With a sense of scale, space, and direction impeded by the dark and the echos of the enclosed tunnels, Juniper had little indication about where she was and where she was going. Following the wall ensured that she wouldn't end up going in circles, but beyond that, where she was going was hard to determine. The caverns went up and down, left and right, opening into massive chasms and tightening into passages she practically had to crawl through. She came across forks and branches, and even the tunnel she did follow sometimes merged with others. The cave was a true labyrinth, and without careful consideration, she could easily become stuck down here for who knew how long.

Several times, cracks in the stone high above showed the starry sky, but the small amounts of starlight that filtered through were quickly lost. Once, she even came across an underground waterfall. A modest stream of water fell ten feet from a crevice above to splash playfully into a crystal-clear pool. Clearly, the lake drained off somewhere, but where the water was coming from or where it went, she couldn't know.

Other than the natural splendor of subterranean exploration, she wouldn't find much of note for several hours. But as she came to a fork, she would find signs that other people had been through, and not long ago, using the two paths that now lay before her. They were faint - prints in the dirt or signs of shoes rubbing on stones - but for a practiced investigator, they'd be visible.

Softly, Juniper counted her steps as she moved through the darkness, keeping a mental count as she tried to judge her distance. This wasn’t quite like the other times she’d managed to get herself caught in some twisty maze, after all. She both had a goal in mind, and had taken a few precautions. Unzipping a thin pocket on the side of her bag, she produced a short length of white chalk. Each time she reached an intersection, she knelt down to jot a quick slash at about knee height. Whenever she had to double back and take the other route, she paused to slash another mark through the tally creating an “X”. Low to the ground as they were, she doubted anyone would notice them before she’d slipped out again, but they were right where she knew to look if she had to leave in a hurry.

The going was slow. Several times, the path in front of her opened up into a narrow gorge, requiring her to jump across the gap. Other times, she’d had to shimmy carefully across a narrow shelf that followed the wall where a gap too large for her to cross on foot appeared. There was a reason that one of the central tenants of spelunking was never to go alone. A few times, as she dangled precariously, Juniper wondered if whatever the administration used to protect their “product” would be able to find her if she had an accident down here.

“Probably.” She answered her own question lowly with a roll of her eyes. It wasn’t as though any of the times she’d tried to give them the slip had worked. Of course, on the other hand, she only had to get away once, and she’d hate for this to be the time.

The minutes crawled on interminably, turning into hours. Peeks of the night sky appeared overhead here and there, reassuring her that it was still the dead of night. More importantly, they kept the air fresh, and comfortable despite the rocky confines. Distantly, she heard the dull roar of running water crashing into stone, though it must have echoed off the stone walls for miles. She stopped at an outcropping overlooking the water for a moment, breathing a sigh of relief. Finally, a sign that she was still on target.

She reached into her bag and produced a length of black nylon cord, wrapping it around a stalagmite and giving it a hard pull to make sure the knot was secure and the stone would support her weight. Backing up, she walked down the rise a good twenty feet, her boots splashing in a shallow tributary of the flowing water. Unfolding a utility blade she’d swiped from the grounds keeper’s shack, she cut the cord and left it against the stone for her to climb back up on her way out, tucking the rest of the coiled line back in her bag.

She stepped carefully across the shallows of the river, hopping from rock to rock with almost casual ease in an effort to stay dry, though here and there splashes of icy water soaked into her leggings. Finally, she reached solid ground again, finding a bit of damp earth that must have fallen down into the caves from above to cover the rocky floor. She knelt down, cocking her head slightly to the side. The impression of horizontal grooves pressed into the dirt suggesting the tread of a shoe to her. Sure enough, as she looked up, she saw scuffs where rocks had been kicked aside as well.

She smiled thinly behind her dark mask. Anyone who was going to set up down here would be hard pressed not to take advantage of the water from the fall behind her, after all. It looked like whoever had left the tracks had done so recently. It wouldn’t take long for the water to wash away tracks like these. Turning off her dim portable light, she tucked it back in her pocket and began creeping down the hall after the tracks. Unless she missed her guess, there’d be artificial lighting up ahead that she could take advantage of.

It was still a decent distance before Juniper would see any sign of what she was expecting. If someone had set up down here, they'd made sure to do it far from where anyone would easily stumble across it. The trail led her down, down, until at last there was a gentle glow in the distance. As she approached, the glow grew brighter, and less gentle. The distance allowed her eyes to adjust as she came to an outlet, lit from the ceiling by halogen lights - or at least, what looked like them. The area she found herself in was much less cramped, and less natural, clearly widened and expanded artificially, with the ground smoothed into a floor. Wires ran between the lights above, leading her further down the hall, as the path gently sloped downward, and wound back and forth

Finally, the path opened up into a large alcove. The mouth of the cave here was so big that Juniper could see the night sky even around the large steel building that stood before her now. It looked to be roughly three stories tall, and twice as long. Judging by the sound of it, the opening was right on the water, and waves crashed lightly against the shore. The building must have extended all the way to the water's edge, maybe even farther out.

The path she was on sloped down, right up to the building's metal facade. There didn't seem to be any fences or barriers around the facility, but bright lights illuminated the trail where it led up to a heavy-looking door built into the wall. Several protrusions nearby looked suspiciously like security cameras, although not like any she'd ever seen before. Beside the door, she could barely make out a faintly-glowing keypad. Getting in the front door without being detected would clearly require some effort, if she decided to go that route, but there might have been other ways. It would be possible to slip around the side of the building, and various pipes and vents fed into the walls. Like any building, things other than people needed to move in and out.

Juniper tugged her hood forward slightly to keep her eyes shadowed as she crept her way down the slope. While moving through the wilds at night, or creeping through the darkness of the cave system for that matter, her dark clothes were ideal for moving about undetected. With the bright white glow of the halogens hanging overhead, however, she stood out as starkly as an ink blot on a white blouse. At first, it was easy enough to stay close to the wall, to note the deep natural crevices in the stone that she could squeeze into if she heard the telltale sounds of someone approaching. The bright lights, after all, only made the shadows darker by comparison.

As her soft footfalls brought her closer to the light, however, the irregular shapes of the natural wall became smoother. Where once she’d have been able to touch both walls if she reached for it, now she was pressed against one of the walls, trying to keep her profile narrow. It felt like she was traipsing through a storage or receiving area, the wide flat floor more than capable of holding all manner of material and leading back to the fresh water of the river behind her. Still, there was no sound of voices, no rumble of machinery echoing off the stone walls. She’d been down in the dark for hours now, constantly moving forward. The vague sense of impending doom and exhilaration at the discovery of the unknown had become an emotional numbness settled on her shoulders.

Then, with the smell of salt water air, and the gentle rush of sea water lapping against volcanic rock, she could feel the excitement beginning to win out. She paused at the edge of the alcove, an old instinct holding her feet in place as the ceiling rose beyond what she could track with her peripheral vision. She squinted, shielding her eyes with one gloved hand as she tried to look beyond the glare of the halogens into the darkness of the ceiling beyond. This wasn’t her first exploratory venture, she’d encountered her fair share of “guardian creatures” in the past. Things like the slithering ooze, or the sentient fog; ambush predators that would lurk just out of sight until they could pounce on her all at once. She’d been lucky and fast a few times before … she was hoping to be ready and fast this time.

“…Tsk.” She clucked her tongue slightly. She couldn’t see anything amiss, but she also knew that didn’t mean that nothing was there. As ever, it seemed like she was going to need to have a little faith. Either way, she had an approach to plan out. She sank slowly to her knees, rubbing her chin as she considered the steel structure at the end of the incline. She’d been expecting something a little more open, something that could be broken down and moved quickly if need be. Fencing, some stand-alone structures, something more like a camp overall. Apparently this dock was seeing more use than the tiny points of reconstructed data she’d been able to dig up suggested … the widening of the tunnel access, the enclosed structure. This thing looked more like an outpost than a smuggler’s cove.

Finally, she settled on her route, scampering forward in a short burst before sliding behind a cluster of stalagmites that reached up towards the ceiling. She lingered for a moment, waiting for some kind of indication that she’d been seen, a bit of activity from the building. Then, she darted away again, circling around to the outside of the alcove. She hustled across the open ground, keeping her body huddled low and duck-walking along the fringes of the overhead lighting until there was a dip in the floor she could slide into. She waited a bit longer, using a mirror to check about the lip of the hole she was huddled in while she dug carefully through the bag on her back. Finally, she rose up enough to get her head and arms above the lip of the hole, focusing a laser pointer at the lens of one of the strange camera pods set up along the outside of the building. She counted the seconds before hopping out of the hole and making a straight dash for the corner of the building, years of track and her personal training allowing her to close the gap in a handful of seconds while the camera feed should still have been distorted.

She jumped as she reached the edge of the building, gloved hands grabbing hold of a pipe running along the outside of the building and into the stone wall to her side. A plumbing line of some kind, she assumed. Bracing her boots against the side of the building, she worked her way up along the pipe, reaching over to grab hold of another line when the first ran out. She scampered surely up along the web of piping and ventilation like an over-sized black spider, until she finally grabbed ahold of the edge of the roof and hauled herself up and over. Rolling onto the cool metal surface, she lay tucked in the corner for a few moments, huffing slightly as her heart kicked against her ribs. She’d definitely spent more time exposed than she’d have liked, and she’d been worried the mounting bracket of that pipe half-way up was going to pull free with her weight … but so far things looked good.

“…Okay…” she muttered to herself, “Need an in.” she said, considering the HVAC unit set in the roof for a moment. Something turned over in her brain, a faint smile lighting on her lips. Shifting the bag that was slung over her shoulder to the front of her, she produced a black roll of cloth, unrolling it on the roof to reveal an array of simple hand tools. If she was lucky, there’d be a vertical shaft running all the way down to the first floor. She could arrest her fall by pressing against the sides of the duct on the way down, but she wasn’t foolish enough to expect to climb through the building however she liked. The branches going off into the office space would be far too narrow for her to use.

“Might as well cross this off my bucket list…” she said to herself, starting the business of prying the ventilation cover free. The nerves must have been setting in, normally she was better at keeping quiet while she worked.

The shadows reached out like welcoming arms as she dashed from one point of cover to the next. And with each patch of darkness she achieved, nothing in the light seemed to change. There were no blaring sirens, no flashing lights, no hundred-foot steel walls bursting out of the ground to seal off her target. Nothing stirred to betray a hint of a creature waiting for her. As she got closer and closer, all remained quiet, as if it were inviting, even daring her to take another move closer, and another. Even disrupting the security cameras seemed to go smoothly, though it wasn't clear how exactly one might know if her laser trick had worked or not on these devices. But if they had been disrupted, it certainly wasn't raising any flags - at least, none outside.

The inside, however, was much more of an opaque issue. Even as she climbed the building, there were no signs to indicate what kind of activity might have been going on inside. There were no windows, and the only door she could see never budged. The facility seemed determined to remain a mystery. On the upside, her ascent up the side of the building went totally unplagued by malicious, sex-hungry monsters.

Nearby, Juniper found what she was looking for. Strangely, though, there didn't seem to be any temperature control unit, just a large vent covered a secotion of the roof, large enough for her to fit into, but not so large that she'd simply plummet down it to her capture and/or demise. Judging by the way the air swirled past her, this seemed to be an intake vent. Unfortunately, the salt in the air had not been kind to the metal grating. Though the facility looked new enough, rust had already caked over the bolts holding the vent closed. In addition, said bolts were surprisingly large. It took an incredible amount of cajoling, tweaking, and occasional blunt force trauma to even loosen them. But, however slowly and whiningly, they did turn, and eventually, she was able to unscrew all four bolts. With a bit more force, the vent popped free.

The walls of the shaft were the kind of slick, smooth metal that a few materials adhere well to, and most others slide right off of. Natural light didn't reach very far into the pit, but a light beam would reveal a drop of about twenty feet before it curved off. Once down the chimney, the track would flatten out into a duct that ran through the ceiling of the interior. The wind would blow past her as she crawled, funneling forward. The track would stretch on for almost fifty yards before she reached the end - and came face-to-face with a large turbine, spinning much to fast for her to even approach without being broken to pieces. It seemed that whatever this place was, the owners had opted for an internal environmental control unit, and the intake chamber was staring Juni down with a set of spinning steel blades.

This path wasn't looking promising. There were no other holes or exits in the ventilation shaft, and forward was certain doom. However, if she drew close enough to the fan, a metal plate would suddenly slam shut in front of her, blocking her off from the fan. White lights would fill the vent, and a panel would slide open to her right. An eight-foot drop led into a dimly lit room, filled with pipes, hoses, and large terminals. A buzzer was going off somewhere nearby. At the far end of the room was a thick metal door, in which a porthole looked out to the hallway beyond.