Chapter 141 - Battle of Desham (3)

Author's Note: Grammar Edits later

Yona's face was aghast, her entire body was rooted in fear at the sight of the armored Kyle approaching her. I expected him to show up, but not like this! The surrounding Versian soldiers began to converge on Kyle, but it was as if tendrils of horror had entranced them, none of them daring to even shoot the first pellet despite the overwhelming threat. Their hands shivered, fragments of their military training kicking to prevent them from retreating in panic.

"The leader of the Ghosts is here! Kill him and we'll win!" She shouted as loud as she could to the Versian troops and on the arctech radio, rallying soldiers both near and afar. She frantically clasped her hands together, summoning four tornados again that began to circle and congregated around Kyle, the same attack pattern that she had used again Sasha.

Kyle clenched his armored fist tightly around his Spear of Defiance, the engravings tracing the length of his exosuit's arm before he wounded it back. His metal soles dug into the ground while his legs released an explosive force forward, accelerating forward at an alarming rate that caught Yona off-guard. The tip of the spear jabbed right into the center of the tornado as the shredding winds failed to even dent its surface, a surging ball of roaring flames expanding rapidly outwards from the spear.

The sudden airbust caused by the spear dispelled the tornado, Yona recoiling from the resulting shockwave that bowled her over on the ground, the flailing threads releasing Sasha. The threads flicked and snapped above cowering Versian soldiers, cutting apart loose debris that hung from demolished houses. Before she rolled to a stop, she hurriedly channeled a layer of air around her, allowing her to erratically roll out of the way as Kyle swung the spear downwards in a devastating smash.

Yona swirled the air around her tumbling body, spinning herself back into a standing posture before immediately bolting off towards the outer walls again, clearly trying to escape away from Kyle. Kyle immediately kicked off in preparation to give chase, but the Versian soldiers had finally found the courage to shoot at him.

"Hit him with everything!" A Versian sergeant turned over his shoulder. roared to his men, pointing at the armored figure in the distance from a nested position deep in an adjacent house. His squad began firing from behind the safety of standalone wooden walls, laying down a concentrated barrage in tandem with other nearby squads, some who were instinctively pulling the trigger. The sheer number of pellets filled the air as they whizzed and cracked.

Yet as the Versian sergeant looked back at the armored figure, it was no longer in the distance, but charging right to him, each stride closing the gap faster than humanely possible.

"Mov-" The Versian sergeant barely got the words out as his eyes took in the sight of his impending death just inches away from his face - a weathered metallic black armor where no compassion nor mercy could be found, the amber eyes of Kyle staring past him as if he was merely an ant to step over. Before the sergeant's brain could process the image, a spearhead wielded by Kyle crashed through the standalone wooden wall serving as the squad's cover, wooden fragments bursting outwards in a powerful burst.

The sharp splinters and fragments shot towards the sergeant, their pointy tips jabbing in between the seams of his sparse armor plating, one finding the very center of his neck and piercing deep. Within the next split second, Kyle's full body mass followed through, slamming into the sergeant with the broadside of his right arm. The force crushed the deadly wooden splinter even deeper into the neck of the sergeant, cutting off his windpipe and severing his spine. His body began to collapse immediately, his world still spinning as he could only register but not react.

He was the lucky one - members of his squad found themselves screaming in pain as the metal soles of Kyle's armor crushed their legs and arms, the entire sequence only taking five seconds. Kyle charged through position to position, annihilating the Versian squads one by one as he continue to catch up with Yona wrecking havoc with each strike of the spear that send fragments and debris exploding into the air.

Despite Yona's proficiency with the wind due to her new armor, she was still far too slow, Kyle easily catching up with each Versian squad being nothing more than a temporary hinderance. Yona could hear the explosive wreckage getting closer and closer to her even as she swerved and navigate through the streets, trying to throw Kyle off.

The moment Kyle appeared within range, she threw wind slice after wind slice, trying to hinder Kyle's movements but the wind slices were far too weak, merely a breeze to Kyle. Still, Yona's movements were not that easy for Kyle to lock down, her metal fabric armor allowing her to manuever across the field erractically. As Kyle was certain to maim her with a powerful swing of the spear, a thread shot forwards from the armor and latched onto the nearby roof of a half-demolished wooden house. The thread tugged her out of the way as she curled up along the thread, spinning rapidly till she landed on the roof, before the coiled up thread around her body unwound, lashing out back towards Kyle in a whipping motion.

Kyle raised his forearm to block the incoming attack. Unexpectedly, the metal thread managed to cut through the exosuit armor, even with the Resist engravings triggering. What? The chipping spark off Kyle's exosuit did not go unnoticed by Yona, who immediately let out a knowing smile. She immediately twirled to a halt and placed her finger and thumb in her mouth, biting down hard.

The blood flowed freely as she twisted the dozens of metal threads together into five braided bunches, flicking her bloodied thumb along the length of the strengthened bunches in a sort of battle ritual. Kyle wasn't about to let her finish whatever she was doing, immediately striking forward with the spear in a straight lunge.

As he shot through the air, he noticed the strengthened threads were drinking the blood greedily, the blood turning into a eerie purplish fluid that bounded the individual threads into their respective braids. The transformation was far quicker than Kyle's movement, as if the braids were enlarged straws sucking up the spilt blood. In the blink of an eye, three of the braids converged and put themselves between Kyle and Yona, blocking the spear tip from reaching her.

Kyle followed through, slamming the Spear of Defiance with as much force as he could into the braids that now were practically flexible pillars of hardened metal. He activated the acceleration motion on the spear with certainty, but instead of pushing forward, he launched himself up backwards away from Yona, flipping in mid-air.

As he was still mid-twist, the delayed explosion effect erupted from one of the blocking flexible pillars, engulfing Yona in a roaring gust of flames, smoke and dust. Still, even before Kyle landed, Kyle felt something wasn't right. She should have seen how my spear works. His instincts were on high alert even as he landed neatly onto the road below, his sabatons dragging through concrete.

Sure enough, from the billowing smoke of the explosion, three of the flexible pillars shot forwards towards him, aiming to crush him. He readily dodged them, narrowly avoiding their purplish blood-coated surface as he leapt and ducked, the pillars creating craters in the ground in his wake.

"Don't think I wasn't expecting this!" Yona regained a bit of confidence as she saw Kyle dodging the enhanced pillar, but her false bravado soon began to fade away rapidly as she noticed none of the pillars were able to hit Kyle despite her best efforts. Kyle attempted to retaliate against the pillars, inflicting explosion after explosion onto the pillar itself to no apparent effect. What kind of material is this? Still, he was wary of touching the surface directly, especially when it was covered with an unknown transformed liquid.

Yona gritted her teeth in frustration, but soon enough she spotted her fellow Nest members all moving towards her. She did not care for the standard common-fodder, instead quickly motioning with secret handsigns towards a trio of Nest Tigers, the best soldiers she had in her arsenal.

The trio immediately began to surround Kyle from various angles, each perching on an elevated surface. Kyle was more than aware of their presence, though the battlefield was clearly unfavorable to him with their positioning. He side-stepped the pillars with increasing ease, Yona's attack pattern with the three enhanced flexible pillars far too easy to read. She's still holding onto two metal pillars as defense.

Still, from the corner of his vision, he could see each of the Tiger draw out a sword from a strange oriental sheath, seemingly made out of the same metal as the flexible pillars. They ran their thumbs along the sharp edge, spilling blood onto the metal to the same effect, a dark purple hue encroaching along the previously slivery metallic surface.

Before they could launch their attack, Kyle acted first, rushing straight at one of the Tigers on the roof in three strides and giving him nor Yona no time to stop his motions. He shifted his movement mid-air with the Spear of Defiance, avoiding a direct hit from Yona's pillars while jabbing out at the first Tiger. The Tiger hastily raised the enhanced sword to block the jab of the spear, parrying the hit and absorbing the impact with his body in a controlled rolling tumble off the inclined roof.

Yet, the Tiger had no metal pillars to protect him from the ensuing explosion, the thunderous shock engulfing him far worse than it did Yona. The air pressure from the delayed burst blew out his eardrums in an instant, blood leaking out from his ears as his controlled tumble was thrown off balance. The explosion cratered the roof beneath him as he rolled off onto the ground, gripping his enhanced sword tightly as he struggled to stand up. He was far too disorientated to avoid the follow-up downward strike by Kyle, which impaled his ribs in one fell swoop. Kyle easily lifted him up and flicked him towards Yona along with the still intact enhanced sword.

Yona was about to attempt to grab the enhanced sword of the clearly dying Tiger, before her eyes widened in realization. She quickly controlled a metal pillar to smack the dying Tiger away from her, her prediction coming true as the dying Tiger's body began to bloat and explode outwards.

MG404: [System Message | You killed Nest Tiger, +250 EXP]

While she had been distracted by the corpse explosion, the other two Tigers began to leap from roof to roof, trying to find the best angle to strike Kyle from. Kyle spotted the movement and suddenly grabbed two small pebbles off the floor in a continous motion even as he dodged pillar attacks. He tossed the two pebbles up the air, the stones peaking in height before falling with seemingly no rhyme or reason. The moment the pebbles fell right between Kyle and the two Tigers, the blue and green engravings beneath the exosuit surged with increasing brightness, his enhanced arm jabbing forward with two rapid jabs right on the pebbles.

Yona saw the pebbles too late, their visage shooting past her, only able to watch as the Tigers failed to prepare for the delayed explosion that hit them head-on, knocking them out of the fight for a good while. Kyle continued to move on the road, angling to find a weak spot on Yona when the pillars attack pattern suddenly changed.

Instead of just three flexible pillars, all five pillars were now in play, slamming down around Kyle and cornering him. Yona motioned with her fingers and clasped her palms together in a praying motion, the five pillars cracking the concrete as they converged onto him from all angles in a pentagram.

Kyle wasn't about to let himself be trapped, immediately attempting to lunge out through the gap between pillars. However, he suddenly spotted individual threads shooting out perpendicularly to the pillars, connecting all of them together in a surrounding net and forcing him back into the center.

"You're dead!" Yona grunted as the pillars surged towards him.

This is My Turf! Penchant for Violence!

Before the pillars could reach him, an invisible barrier suddenly emerged from nowhere, blocking the pillars exactly in a one-meter radius around him. Still, Yona was confident as ever. Kyle was about to push through when his instincts sensed something dangerous.

Metal threads shot out between the pillars in a criss-cross fashion, threatening to impale him. It was only in the nick of time that the tip of the blood-coated threads stopped just centimeters away from his armor, Kyle updating the barrier to account for the new threats. In the blink of an eye, the metal threads were forced back out of the barrier into the pillars, creating gaps in the once impervious surface

Nocking back his arm for a heavy hit, he channeled the Spear of Defiance for maximum impact, slamming the tip of the spearhead into the gaps of one of the pillars. The explosion occurred immediately, but it failed to affect Kyle's invisible barrier, the full brunt of the explosion redirected by reflection onto the pillar. The explosion surged through the length of the pillar, but before it could reach Yona, it was suddenly detached from its source point on the armor. The detached metal pillar suddenly spun rapidly, as if it was unwinding in the opposite direction. The high rotation scratched against the barrier with impunity, but most of the damage were instead done onto the surroundings as the threads lashed against anything in range.

As the barrier dissipated, Kyle immediately launched himself out with full force, now boosted by both the Penchant of Violence's effect and the acceleration effect of the Spear of Defiance. Yona hardly had the time to blink before Kyle was already in front of her between the metal pillars, his hand grabbing Yona by the neck and slamming her down onto the roof she stood on hard.

The force was enough to break through the roof support, Kyle using his entire weight to slam Yona down onto the ground with full impunity through two floors. As the house collapsed around them, Yona still weakly tried to use one of the bloodied metal pillars to hit Kyle, but a straight punch from Kyle knocked her out cold with a bloodied nose and broken teeth. With Yona being unconscious, the braided threads began to unravel, forcing Kyle to quickly move out of the way.

Unfortunately, due to his proximity with Yona, he took a few hits on his armor from the threads, the strange purplish blood coating somehow easily melting through his armor in an exothermic reaction, causing boils on the metallic black surface. As he ducked out of the way, he spotted an entire platoon of Nest soldiers charging towards him.

However, he did not need to act at all, with the attacking Ghosts now also converging on his location. Under the cover of the fierce firefighting, Kyle nonchalantly hauled Yona and handed her to a squad of veteran Ghosts, some of who had been with him at the catacombs and recognized her. "What the hell is she doing here? I thought Dekar had a tight leash on her!" A veteran Ghost exclaimed.

"The leash wasn't tight enough. Chain her up fully, you know what to do." Kyle ordered.

"Yes, sir!"

With Yona captured, the organization of the remaining Versian soldiers was in complete shambles. Even though they still outnumbered the Ghosts by a significant margin, most of the divisions could hardly work together any longer, each of their leadership making different choices as they argued over the radios. "We should retreat, retreat back to Tenar and get more reinforcements!"

"We already have the bulk of the Ghosts encircled in the north! We just have to finish them off!"

Unable to agree on a specific course of action, it was a simple matter for the Ghosts to exploit the confusion. The encircled Ghost strike force in the north wing suddenly made a big push towards the west, pincering any troops that were caught within. The east division that was holding the Ghost strike force found their enemies missing, but they did not react fast enough to save the north and west division from total collapse.

Many tried to flee, some already sensing that the battle might as well have been lost. However, it was a trivial affair for Kyle to prevent anyone from leaving through the West gate, himself spearheading a charge to retake the gate control and trapping the remaining west division soldiers in the outer ring. Surrender and fierce fighting had the west division capitulate in a mere matter of hours.

Those in the north who had escaped through the breach back onto the plains found themselves confronted by Sasha, who captured them one by one along with the other pursuing Ghosts. Bright spotlights shone from the Aurtla planes above marked their positions with alarming accuracy, with almost nowhere to hide.

Still, the east division and south divisions were still generally intact, still besieging the city under previous orders. With the numerical advantage now gone however, Kyle continued his onslaught, racking up kills and decimating entire platoons. The overwhelming power and seeming invulnerability striked fear into the soldiers, especially when word of the north and west division's capitulation reached them. Soon, the east division had been pushed back towards the south, the remnants of both merging together to form what was left of Yona's army.

The panicking officers tried to find a way out, none of them wanting to be captives. As if luck would have had it, the south gate towards the Keru Forest was still open, and left untouched. "Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?" An desperate officer questioned a scout.

"Yes, sir, there's no Ghosts encircling us from beyond the southern wall. We have an escape route!"

"Then retreat! Retreat into the Keru Forest!" The officer hurriedly ordered, sparking a frantic chaotic retreat. Supplies and artillery cannons were left behind in the utter panic as the Versian soldiers fled for their lives, pinning their hopes on escaping through the Keru Forest. They grabbed whatever they could hold on to personally, sprinting as fast as they could through the southern gate.

Surprisingly, the Ghosts made no effort to cut off the gate, letting them move into the Keru Forest. Within two hours, any soldier who could escape from the city was out, rejoining the rest of the army deeper in the Keru Forest. "We'll head towards Raktor, but then loop around back upwards towards Tenar!" The officer planned. They only had one and a third of a division remaining, but it was still a significant force. Many of the soldiers were still exhausted from the previous twenty-four hours of non-stop battle, some in complete disarray due to the sudden retreat. Still the officer saw hope that they could still at least return and regroup with the main Versian field army.

Instead, as they began to move towards the west away from Desham, they found themselves harassed by Ghost squads. Unaware soldiers were picked off one by one as the sounds of pellets cracked through the ancient red oak trees. "We can't go this way! We have to go deeper!"

To prevent a complete rout, the officers knew he had to find somewhere safe first to stabilize. "To the southeast! To the southeast! We'll hide in the border between Raktor, Perlis and Versia!" The frantic soldiers readily agreed with the orders, moving hurriedly and avoiding the harassing Ghost squads. As they trudged along their retreat path, they soon found that the Ghosts were no longer chasing their tails, giving a sigh of relief.

Still, navigating the forest was difficult for the remaining troops. Many of them had been recruited from other cities like Tenar, Crueliz and Ulut, all of which did not feature a dense ancient forest like this. The officers acted like they knew where they were going, relying on old maps that hardly plotted out the forest routes between.

As they trudged through the overwhelming foilage, the soldiers had to contend with aggressive wildlife, some even encountering a mammoth hog that almost killed an entire squad, their return fire barely maiming the hog. The trek took another three hours, worsening the conditions of the troops to the point where some of them were walking with their eyes closed, trying to rest their eyes.

They soon found a safer spot, though it was still densely packed with trees and ensnaring roots. "We may still be within range of Desham, but we'll be ready if they come. We'll set up camp here, while our forward scouts will survey the area." The officers ordered, but they knew this wouldn't last for long - they had abandoned most of their supplies in the battle, leaving them with little rations to go on.

However, just ten minutes after the division had finally begun to rest properly, the sound of rustling trees and movement among the branches alerted the Versian scouts. One of the scouts trawling the forest floor soon found himself suddenly ensnared by a well-placed trap, the metallic bear trap jaws clamping onto him with full force. "ARGH!" He yelled out, frightening the nearby soldiers into action, their hearts running at full anxiety as the soldiers panicked.

"Who's attacking us! Who's attacking us!"

"It must be the Ghosts, it must be!"

"I heard the scream from the front, its coming from the front!"

The division struggled to get together, the officer barely able to even use his authority to calm the soldiers down while he attempted to figure out what was happening. Though, it was far too late, as a nervous soldier instinctively shot at a tree branch, the various pellet whizzing through the canopy.

"What the hell are you shooting at?"

"I swear there are Ghosts there, in the branch!" The nervous soldier tried to explain, but sure enough, a body fell out of the tree, clutching a bow as it tumbled to the ground.

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!"

The division was now in an unbridled chaos unlike any other, as some fled while others held their ground. The fleeing soldiers ran in all directions, triggering countless traps planted along the way. An explosive trap was ignited, sending a large shockwave through the forest that shook the very ground.

Within seconds of the explosions, a full firefight had ensued between the division and the enemy, casualties mounting rapidly as both sides fought along a veritable minefield, the bodies stacking up on either side in a brutal skirmish. The Versian soldiers were barely cohesive, but they still had significant firepower, able to go toe to toe with their enemies.

As one Versian soldier was locked in a brutal struggle with an enemy soldier, he soon noticed that the outfit and uniform of their foes were far different from the Ghosts they had been fighting. Still, they did not give up, stabbing each other lethally before they could tell the others. It took nearly an hour before the word that they had been fighting Count Perlis's force began to spread through the soldiers.

The news broke the division entirely, knowing that they had Ghosts behind them, and Count Perlis ahead. "What the hell is Count Perlis even doing this far up into Desham's territory!?" An officer exclaimed with shock. "Our observation planes had their camp set more than 300 kilometers away from here!" None of them had expected Count Perlis to send his forces towards Desham. Now that they were being pincered on both sides, many began to make the choice to run back to Desham. Every Versian knew just how bad being a prisoner of war under the Yual Dominion was, and being under a Versian rebel force would be a far better fate.

Still, the damage had been done, with more than half of the Versian division killed by the planted Ghost traps and Count Perlis's soldiers. Count Perlis's forces did not get off scott-free either, suffering heavy losses for the same reasons. As the report of the casualties began to reach General Kalka back at the forward camp, he was flabbergasted by the scale of the battle. "How do the Ghosts have so many trained soldiers? Was Count Leon's information about Desham being under attack false? They should have been occupied for at least another three days!"

Count Perlis only had a grim expression as he looked through the numbers himself behind a desk. "Count Leon knew. They fucking knew! They knew we would be decimated by the Ghosts and the damn Versians! This entire war is a fucking farce!" He slammed his fist angrily on the table. "Get the men back to camp, now! I will no longer entertain any more invasion requests from that fucking backstabbing Count!"

Back at Desham, the fleeing soldiers from the Keru Forest were now all streaming back, waving a white flag. The surrendering Versians were all imprisoned, temporarily held in makeshift cages used to capture the upper-class and former Desham garrison that had tried to flee. Feldon and Diya breathed a sigh of relief, though Diya was still unable to understand why the escaped Versian division had returned in full. "They could have hunkered down in the Keru Forest and it would take us weeks or even months to root them out."

"Count Perlis did the job for us." Kyle explained as they gathered again in the govenor's office for a debriefing. "He was already on the march towards us, intending to attack us."

"What?!" Feldon exclaimed. "But we had a deal!"

"Count Perlis is a hunter - he acts weak to lure a prey, and strikes when he thinks his prey is the weakest. Unfortunately for him, his information was misguided, and he now thinks that we have a force much larger than we currently have."

"But how did he get the information?" Diya asked. "We were under siege!"

"It was a simple matter of leaking a few 'encrypted' code messages into Ocra that were coincidentally intercepted just before the siege. Even if that didn't work, Count Leon's information network would have informed him of the Versian movement. Count Perlis would not be able to resist the temptation, especially after he had seen just how strong our arctech armor and weapons are."

"Then we got away lucky this time... If Count Perlis wasn't in the picture-"

"Not luck. There is no luck in the universe." Kyle interrupted sternly. "It is preparation. The players are all on the table, it is simply a matter of setting broad strokes. What you call luck is merely a combination of observation, and stringent preparation. Never forget that."

Diya nodded slowly, her face acting as if she could process it. But deep down, Kyle's maneuvering of what seemed to be very much random events frightened her to her very core, even though she had spent close to four months working with him. In one fell swoop, Kyle had used both the battle to capture weaponry and equipment from the surrendering divisions, while also forcing Count Perlis back away and reducing Count Perlis's influence.

Even if the Count thinks that I engineered the whole plan, it would still cause him to think twice about betraying the deal. With this, the Desham front had been brought fully under control: the Versian field army wouldn't dare to attack again, and Count Perlis's forces were far too wounded to even attempt a proper siege. The only army capable of threatening him was still Count Leon, but as long as Ocra and the Versian field army remained in proximity, Desham was basically out of the picture in its entierty. It was this tightrope balance that Kyle planned to exploit by smuggling goods to and fro across the Perlis border back to Raktor, further entrenching his financial hoard.

"We've have captured one entire division worth of soldiers. We're still tallying up the numbers and flushing out any Versian soldiers hiding out there, but this should be the rough state of the prisoners." Feldon explained. "As for the weapons, we have accumulated about thirty artillery cannons, though we only managed to secure half of the ammunition, the rest having been detonated as a failsafe by the Versians."

"The artillery cannons will be good enough for us. Have the Ghosts trained in using the artillery, we will need them for the future battles." Kyle didn't have a current factory in Desham that could produce such weapons, limited to small arms, armor and infantry equipment in general. Reverse engineering the artillery guns that were limited on the battlefield could help him improve his troops' firepower. However, before he got to that, there were a few more pressing things to settle. "Bring me to the prisoners." Kyle ordered Feldon, who complied.

The makeshift cages that were now situated in bombed-out streets were a sight to see. Half naked stripped Versian soldiers clutched to the rusted bars as they shouted jeers and taunts at the guarding Ghosts, only to earn a retaliatory strike from the butt of a Ghost's rifle. "Sir, judging by my calculations, we won't be able to feed them all with our current production. This combined with the cost of rebuilding will cause people to suffer. We might have to implement rationing." A Ghost reported as he saluted Kyle.

"Have you told the prisoners the option of joining the Ghosts?" Kyle pressed.

"Yes, sir, but as you can see, they were originally seriously considering, but as more and more of the soldiers came in, I think its starting to have a ripple effect on their morale. They seem to think they can work together to break out." The Ghost continued.

"We shouldn't have put them all together in the first place, this was a mistake!" Feldon sighed. "How the hell are we going to get them apart now?"

"It is not a mistake, they are exactly where I want them. Hand me a stick and a rifle." Kyle stretched out his hand. The Ghost and Feldon looked at Kyle in confusion, but Feldon eventually searched nearby for a wooden stick, passing it over to Kyle. The Ghost handed his rifle to Kyle, who then walked over to one of the cages, where there were at least twenty soldiers inside.

He tossed the wooden stick in through the cage, the soldiers' expression utterly perplexed by what was happening. "Whoever is the last one holding that stick in one minute will stay alive. The rest of you will die. Understood? Begin."

"What? Holding a stick?" A burly half-naked soldier got up from his sitting position, moving closer to the bars. "You think we're circus monkeys? We're true Versians, not your fuckin-"

The other soldiers flinched as they heard the distinct sound of a pellet blowing the soldier's head apart like a crushed watermelon, his headless body collapsing with a sickening thud and squish. They stared in horror at the barrel of Kyle's rifle, the pellet's friction visible through trails of residual smoke

"Fifty seconds."

The remaining soldiers shared a glance, before two immediately lunged forward to grab the stick in the middle. As the once cohesive soldiers devolved into a brutal brawl, Kyle handed the rifle back to the Ghost. "For every cage, only one survivor. Understood? And if you don't do it properly..."

The Ghost nodded grimly as he clutched the rifle nervously, understanding the implications of Kyle's trailing sentence. Kyle and Feldon left the guarding Ghosts to carry out the filtering, leaving a throng of pellet shots and screams in their wake as the pair returned back to Desham. However, instead of returning to the governor's office, they instead headed to its cellar, where Yona was thoroughly chained up.

She was already awake and on the floor by the time Kyle entered her new prison cell, a grimy old arctech boiler room that had been cleared out of everything but a chair. The chair's legs scratched across stains of greases and sludge nested between the floor tiles as Kyle pulled up the chair opposite her. "Let's not waste the few minutes that remains of your life." Kyle spoke calmly as ever as if he was merely reciting a recipe for tea. "You are going to tell me exactly where Dekar is."