Chapter Text
Drifter disembarked from the Terror and entered Stalker’s lair. Unsurprisingly, it was as red-lit and edgelord as the warframe himself.
Ordis, floating over his shoulder, politely tried to make conversation. “I love what you've done with the place. It’s very…you.”
It was black obsidian and deep-sea mining lamps. Sea lab struts and scavenged tracking equipment. Frankly, Drifter’s own forest camp was better equipped than this, and far more liveable. But to each their own. Nobody would come down here unless they already knew about the Stalker and really wanted to match blades with him.
Or, if they’d been asked to help. Drifter still didn’t know what to expect because Stalker was a man of few words. Rather than badger him with questions, Drifter followed him over catwalks and through caves until they arrived at, well, the first word that came to mind was a sickbay.
The woman lying on the makeshift bed of cargo crates was unmistakably a warframe. She was as stark white as Stalker was jet black. As emerald green as he was blood red. A “gown” of armored feathers covered her body like a shroud.
Drifter wondered, just who was she? According to the Operator, Stalker hated warframes. But here was one lying down with a puffy blanket between her and the cold cargo crate and a pillow tucked underneath her head.
In all their spirals together in Duviri, he'd never glimpsed anything inside Stalker’s mind except shades of hate, despair, and dread. So he asked, “Who is she?”
Stalker groaned out, “Jade.”
Okay, so maybe she was jade green. “What's the matter with her?”
Stalker shook his head. It was an oddly helpless motion for such a ruthless assassin.
Now, Drifter wasn’t going to claim to be a doctor, not even with Spirals’ worth of experience in curing poor sick little animals from void exposure. And he wasn’t going to claim to have the best bedside manner either. But he and Ordis had cared for a practically comatose patient before: the Lotus. Ordis kept her company with his chatter whenever he could. After the New War she’d confided that Ordis kept her sane and Drifter’s rare visits in between his missions against Narmer had kept her from feeling hopeless in her Eidolon daze. Just because Jade was unresponsive didn't necessarily mean she couldn't hear him.
“Uh. Hi, Jade. I’m Drifter. Stalker asked me to try to find out what’s got you feeling under the weather. I’m going to take your hand.”
Drifter carefully, cautiously reached for her hand.
Stalker shifted uneasily, but didn’t stop him.
‘Under the weather’ was an understatement. Her hand in his was as limp and cold and clammy as a dead fish. Her face was covered up by dingy white “feathers” that have seen better days, so he couldn’t measure the brightness of her eyelights. Judging by the rest of her green lights, she was dim indeed.
He set her hand back on her stomach and sighed. “Thanks, Jade.” He tried real hard to keep the tremor out of his voice. The warframes he knew were all brightly-colored and vibrant with life. Her condition was appalling by comparison.
If he didn't know that warframes were so damned hard to kill that they could go down up to six times and still get up again under their own power, he'd say she was standing with one foot in the grave already.
Worse, while he had an awful lot of void-powered healing at his fingertips, the Void was Power. Could her deteriorating systems even handle a health restore, much less Vazarin or Magus Repair? If it were that easy, surely Stalker would’ve saved her a long time ago.
He stepped away so he could give the poor prognosis to Stalker without distressing Jade if she could hear him after all. “Look, you don't need me to tell you she's pretty badly off. I don't think I can fix her.”
Stalker grabbed him by the shoulders, every inch a desperate man in a warframe's body. “Try!”
Drifter planted his hands on Stalker’s chest and pushed back. “I am.”
Ordis zipped over. “Don’t you dare hurt my Operator!” A small knife extended from his chassis, crackling with electricity.
Stalker let go of Drifter and grabbed his scythe instead, ready to swat Ordis from the air.
Drifter caught Stalker’s wrist - which was like a bar of corded steel. But he’d wrestled Archons. So he stepped between the two of them and said, “Both of you, chill out. Ordis, run your diagnostics. See if there’s something I missed.”
Stalker relaxed.
Ordis flew off to Jade’s bedside. He started up a cheerful prattle about which scans he was running on her deteriorating systems, degrading neuroptics, and apparently undamaged chassis.
If Jade was still awake in there, Drifter thought, she must be so happy the actual doctor arrived.
After Ordis sacrificed his original remote body to save Drifter from the Eidolon Lotus’ raging, at the end of the New War Drifter sat down with Ordis and rebuilt it to his Cephalon’s specifications. Ordis wanted to be a proper mission control and more options to protect his Operator than self-sacrifice. He got a miniature Rumblejack, a modified Sentinel Verglas beam rifle, and a full sensor upgrade put together from stolen Narmer tech. There was something satisfying about ripping apart Executor Ballas’ handiwork to empower the little guy he’d glassed. Even better, Ordis still had access to Ballas’ memory glyphs and Vitruvian. As far as hacking and data acquisition went, Ordis practically had an Executor’s own authority.
If anyone could ferret out the secrets of a warframe Ballas made, it was Ordis.
Then Drifter braced Stalker for the hard news. “I’m sorry. Vazarin healing or my arcane Magus Repair can bring a warframe back from the brink of death in about 5 seconds flat.”
They both looked back at her.
Stalker shook his head.
“That’s what I was afraid of. Now, I can try transference if you want. If she’s…” He struggled to word it kindly.. If she’s awake? If she’s not braindead? Duviri did not leave him with a good bedside manner. He settled on, “If she's still in there, maybe I can reach her.”
Stalker hesitated.
Drifter waited. Transference could be forced on an unwilling warframe with enough mental focus, but he’d really rather not.
Ordis finished his scan. “Operator, this is Jade. A warframe who disappeared around the time of the fall of the Orokin - SLAUGHTER - fall. Documentation is scarce. Almost…redacted.”
In short, someone with sufficient authority hid her traces. “What's wrong with her?”
“Something is draining her power reserves.”
Drifter asked the obvious question. “What is it?”
Ordis fluttered nervously. “I think it is a part of her. But I don't understand. That shouldn't be possible. Warframes are immune to most parasites.”
Stalker pushed Drifter towards Jade.
That was about as much permission as he was going to get. “Hey, Jade, if you can hear us, I'm going to try to transference with you. See if we can't figure out what's draining your power.”
He took her limp, cold, clammy hand in his. Then he closed his eyes and surrendered to transference, to the pull of another body drawing in his mind.
When he opened them, he was alone in the darkness of Jade's body.
Well, almost alone. Jade was there after all, in the dimly glowing green motes of her spirit that just barely lit up the darkness.
“Jade?”
She answered in a low, warm voice. “Sorren?”
“Sorry. I’m Drifter and I’m here to help.”
As soon as he said he wasn’t Sorren, her light dimmed until he could only barely see his hand in front of his face.
He ended transference himself rather than add to her distress. He reported, “She’s weak. Really weak. I couldn't get much from her aside from a name. Sorren?”
Stalker bowed his head.
Huh. He’d never, ever heard that name in Stalker’ mind during transference in Duviri. “So that's your name? Do you want me to call you Sorren?”
Stalker shrugged, like it had no special meaning to him anymore. Then he looked down at Jade, and nodded.
“Alright, Sorren. Now I’m sorry, but I’ve got to ask all the awkward questions if I’m going to serve as your go-between. Once I understand where she's coming from, it’ll boost our transference synchronicity. Who was she to you?”
Sorren was a yes-or-no sort of guy, so he shook his head all the way through the list: Mother? Sister? Daughter? Wife?
At the last, Sorren flinched. Eventually he nodded.
Drifter remembered enough of life under the Orokin Empire to hazard a guess about what that hesitation meant. “Would she have been your wife if your castes allowed you to marry?”
Sorren nodded and nodded.
“I'm sorry,” Drifter said. It was the only thing he could say and yet it felt wholly inadequate to the situation. Jade's suffering was a form of slow torture no less than the Eidolon Lotus’. He’d only been the Lotus’ friend and he’d risked everything to end it. Sorren was Jade’s husband (in truth, if not in name), and he didn’t have an easy solution. Or even an impossible one. No Archon shards. Not even a lead. Not even a clue. Just pure suffering as Jade died and her loved one sat helpless by her bedside.
Then Ordis delicately coughed. “Operator, is it possible that she's…”
Oh.
Drifter stepped back and took a wider view of her body. She lay flat on her back. Her white feather dress puffed out over her hips.
He’d assumed that was just her warframe design, not too dissimilar to Equinox’s night form gown or Yareli’s flouncy skirts.
Her hands crossed over her belly, over the slit where the wings folded over her.
Dread pooled in his own belly.
“Jade, if you can hear me, I'm going to open your dress for a moment. Just to check that everything's okay down there.”
Carefully, cautiously, he moved her hands aside. He lifted the front flap of the skirt just far enough to see.
Green light blazed like a star. Everything else was cast in stark shadows.
Oh.
Oh no.
He laid her skirt back down over her glass womb. It glowed brightly with jade light. It was positively vibrant with life.
