Dash had known better than to suggest Vale remain on bed rest. It didn't matter that he outranked her when it came to all health procedures. She would not be deterred. So when Vale tried to sneak out of her room as soon as the painkillers let up long enough to give her clarity, she yanked out the needle that administered them and slowly pushed through the door where she found Dash waiting for her.

He didn't bother looking surprised as she moved through the door, looking exhausted and pale. "Wow. Figured you'd be up half an hour ago," Dash said pushing off the wall he had been leaning against. He shot her an amused grin, his bright green eyes mischievous. "You've lost your touch Lightning."

Vale snorted. "Noted. I'll work on that." She walked past him, wary of getting too close. She knew she was at a disadvantage when she was so exhausted, even with her reattached arm in place.

"I wouldn't go that way," Dash said, unmoving as he watched her slowly make her way down the hall.

Vale gritted her teeth, annoyed that he had stated something so obvious. She had never been on this vessel. She didn't even know where in the world they were. And despite wanting to walk off in a huff and rip the ship apart, so taut with grief and anger over her current circumstances, she turned around. "Why?" Vale asked as politely as she could muster.

"Well unless you want to fall off the back of the ship by opening the hatch at the end of the hall, there isn't much else to do over there." He shoved his hands in his dark trench coat pockets, calling Vale's eyes to his form of dress for the first time.

He wore all black, a pair of dress pants covered most of his glistening jet boots. A buttoned-up black shirt had been pressed and sat across his taught chest. The trenchcoat flowed down towards the ground like wet ink on a page, a dark brush stroke in an otherwise pale hallway.

He noticed her confused expression and shrugged. "Ace's doing. We have a final debrief before I head back to The Ingus."

"Ah," Vale replied so she had something to say. The Ingus was the hospital airship that hid in broad daylight, rescuing passengers from airships that were rumored to be loyal to the rebellion. It was strange to think that AI's had gotten to a strange level of paranoia. Especially when they were often the ones used for determining logic and laws throughout the societies of the word.

"Should I change?" she asked, praying that Ace hadn't come up with a garish outfit for her. But then again, Dash looked fine in his, perhaps Geo wouldn't punish her with something formfitting.

"Probably." He began to walk in the opposite direction. "But if Geo can't find you, you won't have to!" he shouted over his shoulder. Vale moved to catch up, the idea of being dressed like a mannequin in a storefront enough of a terrible idea to make Dash's company preferable.

They moved in silence down the hall and around the corner. Dash pressed his hand into the wall and a door popped out of the metal panel, revealing a lift. Squeezing in, Vale stared out of the three walls covered in graves, catching pieces of the sky as the lift sprang to life, creaking as it moved.

The entire thing seemed to protest their weight as it stuttered upward, cursing in the language of mechanics and metal. Vale kept her eyes on the small pits of the sky that called to her past the grates, doing her best to ignore her heightened claustrophobia. She was moving in a small death trap. "How old is this thing?" she managed to ask after several failed attempts at calm speech.

Out of the corner of her eye, Vale caught Dash touch one of the walls in a gentle sign of respect. "The Veteris is a marvel. It's older than the first AI's." The deathtrap came to a sudden stop and Vale threw the door open before Dash could move. She stumbled onto a deck, all pretense of calm gone.

Gulping in a large breath of fresh air, she placed her hands on her knees and closed her eyes attempting to steady her erratic heartbeat. "I'll take the stairs next time," Vale murmured as she straightened. Her eyes immediately caught on the vast ocean of fire taking up the world around her. No, not fire... sand.

She jogged to the ancient deck's edge and tilted over the side, taking in the glistening sands of sunlight, sparking like billions of diamonds. Turning her metal hand into a hook, Vale climbed over the metal railing and planted her feet onto the ship's side. Hot wind ate away her weariness, sand cut across her face causing her to place a protective hand over her face as she stared around her fingers at the sight.

"Sahara!" Dash shouted as he flew past her and dove towards the sand below. He flew back up a moment later and showed her what was cupped in his hands. Climbing back over the side of the ship, she pressed her fingers into the hot grainy substance. She had seen sand before and the feel of it in her hands made her suddenly miss her home close to the walls of shipping barges that took up the skyline.

"Why are we all the way out here?" Vale asked as Dash allowed the sand to slip through his fingers and fly off into the sky.

"I don't know if you knew this, but you caused quite the spectacle when you were caught. Feeds of your metal arm wonders have been trickling across the darknet faster than the AI's can take it down. And we had to... improvise." He motioned to the ship around them. "So we are laying low for a little bit until we know for sure that our other locations are still safe."

Dash touched his ear, getting a message. "Yep. On our way." Turning back to Vale he motioned for her to follow him through a door in the ground. They climbed down a set of steep steps, Vale talking in hushed tones as they moved.

"Why are people so hung up on the bridge? It's not like I haven't gone up against the AI's before"

"True. But they were in darkness, or in places with high security. Like the Masquerade with the Elite. This time, your rebellion was on full display in the middle of a busy city. People are watching you save me, sacrificing yourself, and taking out a few dangerous AI in the process as something sensational. It's making people question whether AI's are stable or just in their ruling and policing."

"But, how did the footage get leaked?"

"Ah that. Well, one of our own hacked into the AI's recording systems and pulled the footage."

No doubt Tye— aka "The Builder," Master of Architect, Coder, and Technology, she recited to herself, a habit she picked up to remember everyone's roles. There were a lot of code names to keep track of. "Show off," Vale said with a snort. "That stunt won't help the AI's cool off."

They opened a door several floors down entering a hallway and stumbling right into Ace. He shook his head and narrowed his eyes in disapproval. Placing his hand on his hip he shot Dash an exasperated look. "I expect her to run away from all my attempts to make her more fashionable, but you helping her is a true stab of betrayal Dash!"

Dash had the common sense to step away from Vale and leave her to Ace's upcoming monologue. Ace ran his fingers through his brown curly hair, adjusting the large curl that sat above his brow, and sighed. "Honestly, I dress you in a corset and bustle once, granting you the ability to hide more weapons all while giving you the most breathtaking look at a high-class event and you thank me by ripping it off and leaving it at the bottom of a canal! A. CANAL!" He spoke the final two words with so much emphasis that Vale had to hang her head to keep him from seeing her sudden grin.

"Then when you are given a stunning outfit that hides all of your mechanical additions, you destroy them in front of an AI army and then show up to the Elite of all Elite houses in the shredded version of my work of art!" His deep baritone voice was thick with rage.

"HOWEVER..." Ace placed his hands on Vale's shoulders and waited in a dramatic pause for her to look up at him. "I will not kill you, or punish you with garish outfits which would destroy your reputation faster than you can say... corduroy." He said the word like it was a curse.

A large grin cracked Ace's face into a bright smile, transforming him into the warm friend Vale had come to rely on. "And do you know why?"

"Because you love my whimsy?" Vale offered at a loss.

Ace scoffed. "Hardly. I will forget your transgressions because the entire world saw my clothes on the Daughter of Rebellion!" He gripped her human hand in his and began to tug her down the hall. "Tell the others we'll be there in ten!"

Ace pulled her down the hall, and through a door with clothes scattered across every surface imaginable. "No corsets. I promise," he said as he dove his hands into a nearby pile.

"Daughter of Rebellion?" Vale asked, confused.

"Oh, that?" Ace asked half-listening as he brought over a pair of green wide paints that gave the illusion of a skirt and helped Vale into it once her own clothes were thrown into the corner with a sniff of disgust from Ace. He turned his back as she pulled on a black blouse that went up to her throat. Two small buttons attached at the back, keeping the material tight around her throat. As he snapped them shut Ace continued. "They'll explain all that in the meeting. You've become quite the celebrity."

Ace threw Vale a brown leather jacket before fussing over her hair for several moments. They left the room nine minutes later in a sprint, arriving at the Tradesmen meeting, exactly ten minutes later as Ace had promised. "No need to be fashionably late when you can look fantastic and still punctual." Ace had said with a little extra swagger in his steps as they moved into their seats.

Vale, who had grown accustomed to sitting mostly unnoticed in the meetings since joining the rebellion heard the others whisper as she took her seat next to Ace and Geo. She rolled her hands into fists as she stared at the screen in the front of the makeshift meeting room. A familiar face filled the screen. A pair of sky eyes and hair made of golden thread that was no longer wild set Vale's heart racing. Sky stood next to Kedar in front of a crowd. The screen was muted, but text crawled across the bottom of the screen. Words that knocked the air right out of Vale's lungs.

Kedar Devinus's Grandson to be married. Showcasing that the rebels' empty threats will not stop them from celebrating the next generation of the Devinus empire.