Astralis

Episode Six

Moore was not pleased. "Dammit Vaughn, we found it, we almost had it!" she railed as she paced.

Vaughn's face was carefully schooled into non-expression. He didn't want to become a casualty of Moore's notorious temper. "Well, ma'am, we do know exactly what it...what she looks like now. If we can locate the new Aries Project's HQ again we can-"

"I know," she cut in, teeth clenched, "it's the goddamn Aries Project...they obviously tapped our equipment and somehow identified her before we did. And took her."

"I'll get our best people on tracking down their location."

"You do that Vaughn, and do it fast. We can't afford to let her be reprogrammed again. Though I must say, whoever got a hold of her before seems to have done an excellent job of it. She now appears to be completely unaware of what she is, double edged sword that that is."

Vaughn nodded, tapping out the tracking order on his tablet. "It appears that she's either been programmed to act, splendidly I might add, or is genuinely unaware. Can you imagine her self-defense sequence being activated while she's being influenced by the mentality of an eleven year old girl?" He shuddered.

"This is why we have to find her Vaughn, the stakes are unbearably high..."

"The response team is tracking their HQ," he replied soothingly, "we should have a location within 24 hours."

Moore turned and looked out the floor to ceiling windows in her office. "It's crucial to bring her in without incident. We've got to shut down the Aries Project before they cause massive casualties, and we need to know who reprogrammed her before. If we don't reel in all these lines, we're going to have a potentially global problem on our hands."

"We'll get her ma'am, I have faith in our team."

"We're going to need more than faith Vaughn..." Moore replied morosely. "A lot more..."