Boundless

Grey Zone

Sleeping by Lance's side, Sila was clearly unwell. Stress and previous and some malnutrition (forced to keep a figure to appease her previous owner's tastes), the slave was down with a cold.

Lance arranged another room for them, the one she had placed Sila last time the Yautjas left, willingly babysitting.

But truth to be told, she deserved some comfort: life had not been kind to the slave, who still fought the cravings of addiction (without the physical symptoms, thank God), and was now facing a chasm of uncertainty as a Predator's prisoner.

Would the slave jump? Would anyone push her into the abyss?

***

Lance, who still had a heart and could be kind, found out that she needed the company as much as Sila, as a way to keep herself from acting on impulse.

The Girl was used to solitude, enduring weeks (months even) of radio silence. Only to be caught by offguard by how anxious she felt only 60 hours after the Yautjas left for their hunt.

Being cupped up in the aliens' vessel was also boring Lance out of her mind. Yes, Ah'kaedh was ok with the Girl snooping the black market business, but you know what? Remote work was eating at her field-agent's nerves. Conducting a whole-ass investigation from afar was tons of repetitive and tedious work. Sure, working infiltrated still entailed a lot of monotonous tasks, but she was still there, on site, living it, you know?

Remote work gave Lance less flexibility, less short-cuts, less chances to easily foolproof information, which in turn meant more research. More hours analyze lots of data in minute detail.

Breacher had been an invaluable asset for this very reason: he was the best among them working remotely. Originally a Investigation specialist, he was then trained to be an intel magician of sorts. Once hooked into a network, there was non stopping the guy. He was also able to decide which sources of information - or even which type of data - would be helpful, and was involved with all-things investigation.

(Which is why Breacher went personally to talk with Lance when she called the police about Cecily. Asher was there only as support).

The once-Derrick worked quite close to the field-agents, who would at times work as his extensions in the real world.

Lance knew how to conduct investigations for this very reason, but she was no Breacher. A bright mind is nothing if you don't have the skills to compliment it.

The Girl burned half a brain trying to find a way to fuck with Thedus black market, but she could only draw blank after blank, unable to... well, to even start.

Obviously, lacking the proper skills to work on her current situation wasn't her only blocker, no. Far from that. Personal matters were also taking considerable RAM memory from her brain.

Afterall, one does no go for years without giving two fucks about having a partner, and just accepts like it's no big deal not being able to unfocus from the goddamn alien, who left a fucking skull by your bed (and was orchestrating manipulating you into abduction. Sorta).

Man... maybe his semen has some psychotropic properties? Yeah, I'm being literally hit in the mucosa...

You see, there is a lot going on her brain. First, Lance was never given to romance. Her uncle had seen one too many girls to get screwed over what he called romantic naivety (aka low self esteem plus lack of boundaries), and had done his best to beat any puppy love tendencies out of her system (with amazing success).

Lance had also been a nerd; a nerd with ambitions to become a veterinarian one day, biology was one of her passions. 'And how could this complicate things?', one would think. Well, sexual dimorphism was currently filling Lance's mind with a handful of twisted hypotheses.