This time, Wildwing did not bother to stand, and merely watched from the dark of his cell. The four prisoners had collectively failed to accomplish anything in their captivity, and it was starting to dawn on him that they were going to be here much longer than any of them cared to be. He had not completely given up his idea of ripping apart the paneling, but he was still not yet willing to reveal that he had a blade.

The extremely rude duck had eventually introduced herself as Tank. Just ‘Tank’, thank you. The one that had been brought in with her had refused to engage in any conversation, so she dubbed him Grumpy, and that’s just what he was called from then on. Tank had gifted them with what may have been an hour, or may have been several hours, of saucy bar songs, but had lost some enthusiasm as time wore on for lack of a bar, alcohol, or willing participants. Or, perhaps it was because Grumpy finally came to the end of his wits and awkwardly threw a shoe at her through his bars. It missed her cell entirely, and was now sitting against the far wall, in the well-lit section of the room that adjoined the hallway.

A new prisoner was dragged in. They didn’t struggle or complain in Siege’s grip, were likely male from the build, and were still clearly not one of Widlwing’s teammates. The color and styling of their uniforms was so distinct, even in the low light, that it would have been obvious immediately.

Tank, perhaps now that she had become disenchanted with the rest of her roommates, decided to renew her previous conversation with Siege, picking up exactly where she had left off, with some colorful language that was either profound or embarrassing.

Siege ignored her, threw the new body into an empty cell, and locked it from the central console. That task complete, he gave a long, inscrutable look to Wildwing, leaning on the controls as he did so.

Eventually, Tank’s storm of offense penetrated the lizard’s skull, and he turned to her, wiping fatigue from his face and growling, “I’m going to enjoy ripping your arms off.” It was not an elaborate threat, but it did seem sincere.

Tank seemed entirely unphased, perhaps a little too confident in the integrity of the bars between them, or perhaps having received too many similar promises in the past. “Hurry, before I die of boredom.”

“Soon,” he agreed, and then walked away, giving a small pause at the shoe laying against the wall, but leaving once he decided he did not care to investigate.

With their jailer gone, Tank caught her breath and her attention shifted, focusing on the newly occupied cell. They waited, but there was no sound, or response to attempts at greeting. Annoyed with everyone and everything, Grumpy banged on the wall he shared with the newcomer to shut them all up.

The newcomer went from silent to wide awake and alert in the space of a few seconds, and immediately decided to raise a fuss about it, calling for someone, incessantly, until finally Grumpy decided he had heard enough to shout back: “Whoever you’re after, they can’t hear you and they aren’t coming for you.”

Tank took the moment of silence to give a jovial wave that was completely inappropriate for the setting.

“What is this place?” the new voice asked, completely baffled.

Tank leaned against the bars and rolled her eyes. “I feel like that doesn't need a lot of explaining.”

“It does, though.”

Wildwing sighed, because he remained the only one that could provide context, and it was becoming repetitive. “You’re on the escape ship belonging to the last descendant of the Saurian Empire.”

There was a pause before the new voice in the dark stated, with about as much enthusiasm as Wildwing felt: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Wildwing himself would have said much the same, some time ago. He did not argue. He thought perhaps he imagined a whisper emanating from the dark. It grew, steadily, into an outright cacophony of panic. It was a string of nonsense that ran together, but eventually resolved itself into “Shit shit shit shit SHIT SHIT SHIT”, complemented by a lot of banging.

“Come on, that’s not going to do anything,” Tank said. “You’ll break your foot before you even get the bar loose.”

“Will you please-” the newcomer stopped himself short. He made an aggravated noise, and then pleaded “Just let me try.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

He ignored her.

Wildwing interjected “She’s right. We can work a way out of this-”

“How long you been in here?” the newcomer demanded.

He could not supply a satisfactory answer.

“Then mind your own business,” the voice concluded.

The banging did finally come to an end. Wildwing didn’t know how long it took, but it did take longer than he expected. It was not any one of them who stopped the newcomer, either. No amount of shouting or entreaty or saucy limerick was given reply. No, it was a noise from above that stilled him, a great echoing crash of something heavy dislodged and falling in the broken spaces of the Raptor. The shockwave of it clattering reverberated in the compartment, could be felt through the metal plates of the walls and ceiling, and was so loud and unmistakably large, that they held their collective breath, expecting some catastrophe as the ships bulkheads came down on top of them.

They waited, and waited, and no rush of ceiling or structure crushed them, but just the same, the newcomer lost all interest in agitating the structure any more. It was unlikely that anything he could have done would have influenced something so far above, but the superstition remained, and the cell block was motionless as everyone within it maintained wary watch on the ceiling.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” the newcomer broke the vigil, apparently directing his attention to Tank.

She leaned lazily against her bars, her arms dangling out beyond them. “Oh, fuck, you’re like, the first person who’s wanted to talk, ask me whatever you like.”

“Why the eyes?”

Remarkably, she did not seem to have an immediate answer, and Wildwing thought for a moment that she simply didn’t understand the question, but when he looked to her, that smug smile was gone, and instead she squinting those strange ice-blue eyes to peer into the dark with suspicion.

“Why?” she asked.

“That’s a mod, right? That makes them glow like that? What makes you do something like that instead of like, a tattoo?” a pause. “Quiet one over there has it, too.”

But Tank, for perhaps the first time in her life, did not seem willing to say anything.

It was Ariana instead, who finally answered him. “It’s not.”

“What?”

“It’s not a mod.” Grumpy agreed.

Wildwing had not been able to see Ariana’s face, given the wall between them. Grumpy had never deigned himself social enough to show his face to any of them. Wildwing had only seen Tank, and assumed the color choice was just a quirk that went with the blue hair and overall attitude.

He stood up, inserting himself into the conversation. “What is it, then?”

She maintained her silence, defiant, but must have realized that her reticence made the topic that much harder to dismiss. “There was sickness in those camps,” she spat back at him.

“Yes. But, I’ve never seen an illness do that.”

She shrugged, “Sickest I’ve ever been in my life, I don’t know what else to tell you. I thought I was going to die. A lot of people did die. Most of them.”

“It was awful.” Ariana agreed, in her usual whisper.

And there it was, the thing that linked his new companions together. It did not quite explain the Saurian’s plan, but narrowed it down quite a deal. Sickness. Maybe weaponized? Biological warfare was not quite the brand of destruction that Dragaunus seemed to like, yet maybe he was willing to try. Wildwing had absolutely no resources at his disposal that could have done anything to stop a released contagion, even if he weren’t trapped on the Raptor.

“What kind of sickness?” Wildwing was pushing his luck by asking, but this was perhaps the first piece of useful information he had gained since being placed in the cell.

“There’s not exactly a clinic I can walk into for it, is there?” Tank responded. “All anyone can tell me is the Saurians did something, they can’t tell me what. Haven’t dropped dead yet though, so.”

“What are they going to do with Emily?” the newcomer asked.

“With who?” Tank asked.

“They separated us. What are they going to do with her?” the newcomer repeated. “She has those eyes, too.”

It was almost too easy to speculate. Dragaunus had expended a great deal of effort on pulling people across divisions in space itself to find one person. All his scheming, no matter how elaborate and inscrutable it became, only ever came down to the need to be the unquestioned dictator. If he had finally found the person he needed to continue, even if the purpose was not clear, no good would come of it.

“We need to get out of here,” Wildwing said, turning his attention once again to the seams in the walls of his cell.