------------- "I Am Become Gray"

"You still picking up their signal?"

Primus adjusted his sensors. The lower RF bands were still squeaking, but the chatter was almost unrecognizable. Unrecognizable to anyone else.

"Signal's weak. They've adopted some crypto. It'll take me a while to crack it."

"How far?"

He focused and used the internal HUD to guide the system's scan.

"Can't say. Twenty, maybe twenty five miles. Bearing 215."

Zhicarra looked off to the southwest, like she could see that far over the desert badlands. Primus knew she could, but not in any traditional sense.

"The Kar'Thane?"

She shook her head and closed her eyes. With her nearly black, nearly featureless skin, it was hard to tell what she was doing, what emotions she might be feeling, what thoughts were running behind her stone brown eyes.

"She's out there. Coming this way."

"Has she,..?"

"Sensed me yet? Not likely. She may be a Shadow Agent, but she's just a Kar'Thane Warrior, after all. She lacks any real mental skill. I can cloak us from her, as long as is needed."

Primus smiled. It wasn't something he did often. No one outside of Zhicarra, with her exceptional psionic powers, would sense it anyway. No one saw his face. No one knew his heart. Not even her.

The wind shifted, blowing in from the north along the length of the Al-Setti. The spring rains in the south and the dust storms across the Western Erg would drag on until summer. Here, in the green and wet of the valley, and the sea of humanity that ebbed and flowed along the Al-Setti like the river itself, they would wait. Wait for the coming of war. Hide in plain sight, with any who might pierce Zhicarra's mental blocks eliminated by Primus. None would understand, or would need to. They both had a score to settle, and there would no mercy for any who stood in their way.

Primus thought back on the old Seer's vision, the words she had said.

"I am become gray. I stand between the Shadows and the Light."

------------- Credits

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