The purple haired woman fled throughout the facility, and the Reaper followed. She bounded a corner, knocking over some loose shelves and trays containing pencils and office supplies. It was an attempt, albeit a desperate one, to buy herself some time.

For what, he wondered. It was only a matter of time before the radiation got her. Not long after that, if it hadn't happened already, everyone within the kilometer will have succumbed to a lethal dose of pytherium radiation. Their skin would fall off, as would their hair and teeth. They would burn alive from the inside, slowly, piece by piece on the molecular level. It was inevitable.

So why was she running?

The nearest space station with a known, populated medical unit was a whole starskip away from Aegis II. By the time the dissenters arrived, the symptoms would have set in. It would be too late. Even if the best surgeons from the Inner Rim were somehow on that space station, the rebels would still be quarantined. Left to rot away from the inside. It was truly, inevitable.

So why were they fighting so hard?

As the bullets pierced his suit, penetrated and shattered his bones to insignificant fragments, Bonechill survived. He would always "survive", of course. His soul died long before his body did. He would regenerate, quickly, any damage done to him. The dissenters knew this, of course. To them, he was the Reaper. To them, he was Death. To them, he was inevitable.

So why were they screaming?

He couldn't remember the faces of the dissenters. He barely heard their cries for help. He locked eyes with one of the children being guided into one of the starskippers by his mother. Two seas of green, fixated on Bonechill, tracking his every move. Two seas of green that followed him when his mother was torn from his hands and shot dead on the ground. Two seas of green that widened as a soggy clump of pytherium dripped from a hole in Bonechill's suit.

But it wasn't a child. It was a dissenter. It would have disrupted the peace of the galaxy, probably killed millions of innocents, harvested planets and asteroids for their resources so that they might further challenge the System Collective. He had to do it. He had to.

So why was he hesitating?

Bonechill hadn't killed all of the non-combatants right then. He stood right in their midst as he watched the woman with the purple hair get onboard one of the starskippers and take off. He waved to her, his arm wrapped around one of the twenty-something year old human. She took the children with her and scurried off Aegis II. He would find her again, or the System Collective would.

When she breached the atmosphere, after her starskipper was a twinkling light in the sky, Bonechill and the other dissenters looked to one another. They knew what was coming.

It was standard procedure, after all.

Bonechill walked back to the Elysium in silence. He thought all of those things, about the dissenters, about the woman with the purple hair, about his hesitation. Why now, after four hundred years of hunting, was he starting to doubt himself?

He shoved the thoughts into the back of his mind and powered the main engines. Once airborne, Bonechill piloted the ship toward where the dissenters' building was. He opened the communications channel, dialing the Therian Code for the High Chancellor, and waited.

Behind him, Pythia manifested herself through the ship's hardlight projectors. The lights flickered for a moment, disrupting the communications link momentarily. Bonechill sighed and reestablished it before turning his chair around to face her.

She took her usual form, a short rotund woman with shoulder length hair and literal stars in her eyes. Her smile filled her cheeks and softened her eyes. She was wearing an old standard issue space flight, the ones that were more commonplace in the Mid Rim about two hundred years ago. It was black with gold accents and a dark red trim. Her space suit matched his, minus the laser holes and other sprinklings of damage that afflicted it over the centuries.

"Do you really have the processing power for hardlight, Pythia?" He asked.

She smiled, "You look like you need a hug."

Bonechill shrugged, "I'm fine."

"A starskipper got away. I calculated their trajectory before they grav-jumped. It's possible that whoever's onboard is staying within the Outer Rim."

"Nah," He turned his chair around, remembering what he lied to the woman about; the Mid Rim colony prisons. The communications link was established, the light next to the display glowing a dull amber, "I know."

The comm link crackled to life, and a buzzy static-y image manifested over the control board. The image was of a young man trying too hard to appear imposing. He was in his twenties, probably, with a scraggly beard that was filled in with some kind of cosmetic product. His eyebrows were about an inch too thick, and his clothes were maybe a size too large and sagged in places that you wouldn't dare point out on a superior officer. From his breast hung only two pins, one was the sigil of the System Collective, a gold plated shield with two diagonal lines running perpendicular to one another. The other was the badge of the High Chancellor, a platinum encrusted, gaudy, think that reflected too much light all the time. The High Chancellor brushed his hair back with his hands before barking an order at someone out of the projector's range. He turned his attention to Bonechill and clasped his hands together.

"The job's done then?" Asked High Chancellor Waylon.

"Yes."

"Wonderful! What were those sneaky motherfuckers up to this time?"

Bonechill scratched the back of his head, "They were hoarding kilos of pytherium onto starskippers, sir. I suspect it might be more than just this isolated operation. There were three vessels in total, all space faring and-" He cut himself off, shook his head, and continued, "-new, sir. Fresh off the assembly line by my best estimate."

High Chancellor Waylon furrowed his brow and rubbed his temples, "Oh no, that's no good at all, is it? Surely you were able to recover the starships?"

"They're still in-tact on the surface, sir. I can send you the coordinates as soon as this transmission concludes. And," He added, "There was an Etruscan among them. One that they had somehow managed to turn into a Precog. I'm not entirely convinced the survivor of their group said was true, but-"

High Chancellor Waylon's eyes widened, "Excuse me? A survivor?"

"Yessir. One of the dissenters, as well as several children, had… escaped. I had taken the measure to coat myself in pytherium in case something like this happened. No matter where they go, they will all die from overexposure to radioactive material."

"Well, that's not like you at all." High Chancellor Waylon smiled, the corners of his mouth stretching ear to ear, "The children won't be an issue at all. What does the adult survivor look like?"

"Long, purple hair, shaved on one side. Green eyes, tall and skinny, probably from a low-gravity planet a fair bit away from its local star."

"Was there anything else about her that you remember? Anything at all?"

Bonechill thought for a moment before continuing, "She was looking for a federal prisoner, wanted to know if I had seen where she was being held. I told her that I saw the P.O.I. on one of the Mid Rim colony prisons, so it's likely she either grav-jumped there or is preparing to do so now."

"And the prisoner? Her appearance?"

"Same as the survivor's. Purple hair, slender," Bonechill paused, "Gold eyes."

High Chancellor Waylon paused, he stared long and hard into the projector, as if he was trying to look into Bonechill's very soul from the other side of the galaxy.

"Gold eyes?"

"Yes."

"Fuck."

The line went dead.