Part Three: Chapter 42 - 46

*Synopsis of Chapters 42-46 goes here]*

## **Chapter 42**

### Scene 1 - *New York City Slums*

* In a flashback, Theo leaves a letter for his mother saying that he’s done some bad things and needs to disappear for a while.  He leaves behind a mechanical sparrow that he built, knowing she will like it.
* Outside his small house in the slums, his friend Jax (also known as “Timer”) stops him.  Theo explains that “the Jersey job went bad,” and so he has to leave town.  He offers to let Jax come with him, but he turns it down.
* Theo asks him to take care of “the team” for him, including Frigg, Nova, Gisli, and JackTrap.  But Jax says they’ll be fine.  They say their goodbyes, and Theo heads down the street to the empty bus stop.

### Scene 2 - *Colonial Capitol*

* Next to the United Nations building, people flood into the Colonial Capitol building, as The Council is getting ready to meet concerning a potential partnership with Asketill Medical, a bio-tech research facility specializing in android body part manufacturing.  There is some dissent within The Council, as some of its members believe that OmniColony’s focus has become too focused on ships instead of other technology that the colonists can use once the colonies are built.
* On a nearby rooftop, Jax watches the crowd with a small drone as his team prepares to infiltrated the Colonial Capitol for a job.  As Nova enters the building, he informs her that the guards are chit-chatting, which he knows because he hacked their comm channel.
* Over their own comm units, Frigg calls for them to focus on the mission.  Using a device that Theo had invented before he left, Nova gains access to the building and heads toward the elevators under the ruse of meeting with a secretary.
* Meanwhile, JackTrap — dressed as a janitor — whistles through the halls and casually bumps into a secretary, managing to swipe his restricted keycard, slipping it into Nova’s hand as he passes her.
* In the elevator, Gisli opens the hatch in the ceiling and reaches down inside to grab the keycard from Nova, who then heads back down to the first floor and leaves the building, as she doesn’t normally like to be “out in the field.”
* Keycard in hand, Gisli exits a maintenance closet dressed as an electrician, and she manages to gain access to a conference room, where she is supposed to place a tracking device on someone’s briefcase.  Upon entering, however, she is shocked to find out the person they’re supposed to track is President Wayne Thomas.
* She gets the job done, but on the way out, the team is furious with Frigg for withholding pertinent information from them.  As they are packing up to leave, a bomb goes off on the floor where the President was, and they realize they were duped by their client.  It was never a tracker — the device was a bomb!
* In the chaos that ensues, Jax is spotted on the roof and he must flee for his life while the rest of the team scrambles toward safety after unknowingly assassinating the President of the Colonies.
* In the underground parking structure, JackTrap hides behind a stack of cardboard boxes when he hears a door open.  He listens to what the two voices are saying — one is an unknown man with a gravelly voice, and one is Frigg.
* Frigg repeats the instruction that he’s to tell the authorities that their client was “a commander on a starship,” and he’s to give them fabricated voice files that will insinuate that Kevin Clarke is the client.  And in return for securing Frigg’s freedom after the matter, the gravelly voiced man wants information on their former teammate, Grokkling, who he’d hired two years ago to perform a job.  A job which he’d failed to complete, forcing him to run.
* Still in hiding, JackTrap slips, making noise and giving away his position.  The gravelly voiced man finds him and shoots him.
* Outside in an alley, Jax overhears all of this through the comms, and he messages Nova and Gisli to run, because they’ve been double-crossed.  He now also knows that this mysterious man has a beef with Theo, and he sends another message to warn the remaining team members: “His eye is on the sparrow…”

## **Chapter 43**

### Scene 1 - *Hermes: The Brig / Med Bay / Briefing Room*

* The Alpha and Bravo Teams from the *Dauntless* board the *Hermes* for transport.
* In the Brig, Kevin, John, Theo, and Andy endure interrogation by Star Commander Jiaying Zhao of the Colonial Defense Fleet with Admiral Phillip Davis watching from the back of the room.
* John interrupts the interrogation to demand where his wife, Cheryl, was taken.  Fischer, the security officer, informs him that she’s in the Med Bay being treated, but the soldier is quickly chastised by the admiral for speaking to the prisoner.
* Jiaying produces a recording device and plays an incriminating clip that sounds like Kevin ordering a group of hackers to place a device on the Colonial President’s briefcase.  He says he’s being framed, but he slowly starts to realize that without a solid alibi during all of his time on *Dauntless,* the star commander is right in questioning them.
* As Jiaying turns her attentions to Theo, the admiral leaves the room.
* In the Med Bay, Maia, Cheryl, and Ellen are receiving medical treatment while restrained, and Stock remains unconscious.  Chief Medical Officer Dr. Martina Jimenez inquires about what happened to Stock so she can be treated, but everyone is too hesitant to reveal the truth to someone they don’t trust.
* Soldiers Hisataka and Moretti stand guard as the doctor continues treating them, but when the admiral enters, he asks her if she’ll step out of the Med Bay.  Then, he approaches Maia for information.
* In the ship’s Briefing Room, Amelia, Patrick and Stu are being forced to remain by the guard known as Frankie.  They are not, however, restrained, as it was deemed that they were likely not in cahoots with Kevin’s plan, being as that they were colonists on the Washington Colony.
* As Amelia bursts forth with words, unable to remain quiet, Frankie hushes her up.  But she continues, claiming she has important information about the injured Stock, and that she needs to go tend to her.  In response, Frankie calls Dr. Jimenez into the Briefing Room.
* Despite Patrick’s warnings to be careful what she tells these new people, Amelia explains that Stock is under the effects of “a foreign toxin of sorts.”  She asks if she can have access to the lab to help find a cure for Stock.
* Back in the Brig, with Jiaying’s attentions still on Theo, she insinuates that she knows who he *really* is, and that Sparrow isn’t really his last name.  But Theo denies the claim.
* In the Briefing Room, Dr. Jimenez informs Amelia that she doesn’t have the power to simply let her stroll into the Med Bay when she’s a prisoner.  She says that she takes her job as a doctor very seriously, and she won’t let anyone die without a fight, so would she please just provide the necessary information.
* Trying to protect Theo’s identity, Kevin makes a scene in the Brig, begging for Jiaying to focus his interrogations on himself.  But she ignores, spouting a string of information regarding Grokkling being the hacker who designed the device that killed the Colonial President, and after some digging, they believe that Grokkling is a man named Delisle, who disappeared two years ago.  She mentions that she called the mother of Delisle, and she misses him terribly.  The star commander waits to see how Theo responds to this news.
* In the Med Bay, the admiral spouts facts about the esteemed record that Maia’s family has with protecting and working for the colonies.  But now, with so many members of her family deceased, he appeals to her sense of duty to keep the family name a proud one.  Finally, she relents and begins to tell him the story of the Clotho mission.
* Meanwhile, Amelia manages to stay strong and silent in the Briefing Room, not revealing the details she knew of Stock’s condition due to wanting to remain loyal to her current allies.  Irritated that her time was wasted, Dr. Jimenez leaves.
* Theo also refuses to crack under the pressure, admitting that Jiaying’s story is a sad one, but he can’t help her.  She announces that she has a meeting to get to, but she’ll be back.
* The guard in the Brig, Frankie, talks with Amelia about team camaraderie, noting that when you put your lives on the line together, a bond tends to form.  When he likens it to family, he grows sad and stops the conversation.
* The admiral doesn’t know what to believe after hearing Maia’s wild claims in the Med Bay.  She tells him of the colonists’ headaches, the search for Stu, the earthquake, finding Riser in the cave, the existence of the Genesis facility, Fitzcurtis’ true fate, the experiments in the central chamber of the facility…
* But he notices her hesitation when she gets to the part about fleeing from the cave.  She leaves out the part about Stock touching the orb.  The admiral asks if there’s any physical proof, and Maia laments, saying it all blew up with the planet — except for what the *Dauntless* AI might have.

## **Chapter 44**

### Scene 1 - *Eng. Main. / Halls / Server Room / Central Processing / Brig / Med Bay*

* Jiaying enters the *Dauntless* Engineering Maintenance room to find the whole engineering team standing at attention, waiting for her.  She acknowledges them and heads into the Engine Room, where a crime scene team is scanning for prints, along with trying to identify the corpse on the ground (Charlene.)  She orders them to notify her immediately once they find something.
* In the maintenance room, the crew presents her with George, who is still charging and in standby mode.  Angie Ferrazi wants it known that they aren’t turning against their chief — they just want all of the information out there in hopes that it will clear Maia’s name.  Jiaying thanks her for her loyalty and orders her crew to take George to engineering on *Hermes*, where Rhodes and Thorne will scrub his memory for info and then scrap it.
* In the *Dauntless* hallways, medic Scott Murphy catches up to the admiral and requests to go check on Kevin, as he is late for the next check up in his treatment cycle after the Battle for *Dauntless.*  The admiral agrees, notifying Jimenez that Scott will be meeting her on the *Hermes*.  He then asks Scott to give Kevin a message from him…
* Addison travels through the *Dauntless* Main Server Room, headed for the Central Processing Hub.  Knowing that the star commander is going to wipe the “faulty AI’s core” soon, she knows that it will be the end of her life, and she’s trying to put safeguards in place so she doesn’t die.
* Fearing for her life sends her into an existential crisis, where she wonders if she can possibly be truly *alive*, and she vows to finally talk to her father about the Afterlife Project, because not understanding her own condition is maddening.
* Before she can enter the CPH, the admiral catches her, and she pretends to be a recon robot.  He tells her that she needs to return to her home station, because she’s not allowed in the AI room during an investigation.  When she hesitates, he pulls rank, forcing her to leave.  On her way out, he asks for her model and serial numbers so he can check up on the “damaged” recon robot.  She tells the truth: AC-246.
* In the *Hermes* Brig, Scott arrives to check on Kevin, accompanied by Dr. Jimenez.  Kevin discovers that none of the other doctors believe he’s innocent, which is why Scott was the one that came to do his check up.  Dr. Jimenez allows John to see video footage from the Med Bay, so that he knows Cheryl is all right and resting.  During the check up, he passes on the admiral’s message: “Brighton won the bet.”  At this news, Kevin recognizes the message as the same secret message he’d given the admiral after the Battle for *Dauntless*.  Now, Kevin knows that the admiral is still on his side…
* The admiral searches the main console in the Central Processing Hub, looking for information about the mission that Maia suggested might be hidden in the AI’s files.  But what he finds instead is disturbing — he notices that the AI signal and ship-wide processes grows weak at the same time the Alpha Team had delved deep underground into the Genesis facility.  Which insinuates that the AI was somehow *with* the team.
* Also noting that now, after the mission, the processes still haven’t resumed normal function, he wonders if the AI has been damaged.  Searching back further to the day Arty was damaged and replaced, he notes that none of the spare AI modules were removed from storage or installed into the main console.
* Scanning the core himself, he sees that the module is listed as number AC-246, the same number given to him by the recon robot a few moments before.
* He dashes out of the room and into the Recon Robot Storage, asking the tech behind the desk to find the location of AC-246, but the tech says there’s no recon robot by that name in the system.  That’s when the admiral connects the dots and realizes that robot — the ship’s AI — is Addison.
* Rushing back toward the *Hermes*, he gets Jiaying on the comms to tell her to postpone the wiping of the *Dauntless* AI, but she says it can’t be done, due to the large amount of staff required, and the time having already been scheduled.  She assures him that any logs will be downloaded so they can go over them again later.
* He knows he can’t pull rank or tell her the truth, or the situation will be made worse.  He fears that Addison’s life — artificial or not — is about to come to an end.
* Back in the Med Bay, the women are resting comfortably, trying to catch some sleep.  But they’re suddenly startled awake by a loud gasp as Stock awakens…

## **Chapter 46**

### Scene 3 - *Hermes: CIC*

* here

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