I make my way down the hall, heading towards the conference room I've only been in once before. The walk is taking more than a few minutes, and my mind keeps jumping between the various topics I've been putting on the shelf for later. One train of thought is ruminating on Ko-lee's jealousy that I only just now managed to notice. Another is still trying to find links with the writing on the jet engine, comparing random ideas like a gamer stuck in King's Quest. Still another is trying to figure out who should be squad leader, and another is just vaguely worrying about the upcoming operation in general. The plus side to my Grand Central mind is that I lose track of the time, and the walk is done before I even realize.

  I'm stood in front of the roundish, purple accented door for nearly 20 seconds while my mind continues to race, before I take a deep breath. Rather than trying to wrangle my thoughts back into their boxes, I lean on my training with De'Launda before stepping through the door and into the room. It looks entirely untouched from the last time I was in here. Purple cloth is draped along the ceiling and stretches down to the floor, but the room is otherwise entirely empty. Soft lights cast tinted shadows through the semi opaque fabric, lending a regal bent to the space. Like before, her hologram coalescence in the middle of the room, and despite the hint of transparency at the edges, she appears entirely corporeal.

  "Recruit Nova," says the Lotus, with a hint of a smile. "Lotus. You're looking sovereign as usual," I say, the words slipping out of my mouth unbidden. I'm not entirely sure what prompted them, and I decide to wait for her response before I determine if it was a stupid thing to say. From the small head nod she gives me, she seems to take it in good spirits. "I received your information about the Grineer Queens," she tells me. It takes me a moment before I'm able to remember what she's talking about. "Oh yeah, a few weeks ago," I think, recalling a message I had sent offhandedly after going out to drinks with Caz. "While your information was limited, I appreciate you letting us know. We have been able to reduce our search space by an order of magnitude." I shrug.

  "Yeah, of course. We're on the same team, and I had felt bad about not really having info for you, so..." My words trail off. The info I had given her was limited, but not due to a memory issue for once. There just hadn't been specifics in game about which asteroid out of the millions in the solar system was the specific one that the Queens had decided to turn into a base. "Speaking of helping, I've been told that the training with Major Imperator De'Launda is going well?" she asks. I nod. "Yeah," I say, before correcting my overly casual language. "Yes. It's a little... well, it's something else, for sure. But I feel confident about the surgery, and I'm definitely committed, so there's no worries on that front."

  "Good," she states. "You'll be going on your first operation in a few days, and the surgery will be performed when you return. Is there any other information that you are capable of sharing with us before you leave? For example, you described a warframe to your squad that I don't have in my databases. Xaku, I believe the designation was." I feel my cheeks grow warm at the memory. "Right," I say, remembering how exactly I had described the warframe. I worry away at the fibers at the tips of my gloves for a moment.

  "Uhm, so. I can let you know about all the different types of frames there are, but as for obtaining them... a lot of the stuff with the information I have is sort of centered around a single operator. I don't think I ever mentioned that, actually. But, assuming there is a player analogue, she'd probably be a girl, named Mara, I think. The specifics of her awakening I'm a little iffy on because the start of the game got retconned, but it probably involved Captain Vor and an Ascaris Negator? And she escapes in a Liset, and there's a Cephalon called Ordis? I don't know if any of that rings a bell."

  The Lotus is quiet for a moment. "Yes, I know of who you speak. She was awoken two years ago. You'll understand if I avoid being more specific than that. You are still a recruit." I wave my hand, entirely unbothered. "No, it's cool, it's fine. It's, ya know. Opsec and all that. But to bring it around to my main point, Xaku was one of the frames that was released in a later update, and they... uhm." I pause for a moment, realizing I'm at a loss in regards to certain timeline events and the cosmology of the solar system. "Sorry, I know there's a limited amount of info that you can tell me as a recruit, but maybe you'd be able to confirm some stuff?" I venture. "Play some 20 questions?"

  The sentient tilts her head slightly. "Why only 20?" she asks, with a confused lilt. "Sorry, not... it's a game. I ask questions, and you only need to answer yes or no. If you can't answer, you just say you can't answer. Just 'cause I think I'm missing a few things." There's a moment of silence, before she gives a single, slow nod. "Cool. Cool, so... do you know who Inaros is?" She shakes her head. "Okay, no worries. What about Titania?" Another no, but there's clear curiosity. Thankfully, she holds off on asking them. "Limbo?" Finally, an affirmation, and I have a sense of where we might be. "Okay, so, earlyish. So, I know Deimos isn't around, but it-"

  "The infested Martian moon?" asks the Lotus, cutting me off. "It is very much 'around'." I'm thrown for a loop, and it leaves me at a loss for words for a moment. "Oh, I... didn't know that," I mumble. In the game, the moon had "appeared", according to Ordis, and while it hadn't been explicitly stated, I had assumed that it had previously been located in the Void. It was why I was asking her questions to figure out where we were update wise. "Have you... visited?" I ask, still feeling slightly off balance by the revelation. "I'm not sure why we would. The entire moon is infested," the Lotus explains to me.

  "Right, no, I know. It's... well that's where you get the blueprints for Xaku. But it's like, a whole thing. And also, it's probably sealed up right now, so I guess we just leave that one for the future," I say, half talking to myself. "Are you saying that we'd be incapable of fielding an expedition to retrieve the blueprints for such a frame?" the Lotus questions, an imperious undercurrent to her words. "You are aware of the capabilities of warframes, yes?" A single laugh bubbles out of me, and I nod rapidly. "No, trust me, I am very aware. It's not about that, it's about other stuff. Besides, I don't know where on the moon it is anyways, so unless you wanted to scour the entire surface and it's many, many miles of tunnels...?" I leave the question hanging, because I'm confident we both know that it'd be a waste of time and resources.

  "Also also, it's not like it's sitting in a vault. Grandmother Entrati ends up giving it to you, and so besides the fact of 'find a single mansion on a moon' is some haystack needle bullshit, you'd still need to convince her to give it to you. In game, there's the distress signal, and then she gives it to you as a 'thanks for making my family chill' gift. Without that whole debacle, I don't know why she'd just give it away," I think to myself. "Well, as far as the next frame," I continue, "is Maroo around yet?" The air feels tight all of a sudden, as though it's pressing in on me.

  "The thief?" asks the Lotus, her words aggressively neutral. The smile on my lips slips off, the Lotus' body language snuffing out my enthusiasm from having narrowed down the timeline. "That's... is something wrong?" I ask. I'm more than 80% sure that I'm not in any danger, but my mind is throwing up yellow alerts regardless. "It's just convenient for you to be asking about her only a day after we've begun an operation involving her. One that is way beyond your rank, Tenno."

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  "Well, yeah!" I snap, exasperated. "I'm from a different timeline? I have future knowledge? Why are you acting like I'm shady all of a sudden?" The surge of aggression seems to come from nowhere, like the fight portion of my fight-or-flight activating. There's a tense silence, but only for a second, before she sighs, an oddly human gesture from the robotic lifeform. "Sorry you're right," she says, and the pressure in the room drops a few bars. "I trust you understand not to spread this information? I know you've been fast and loose with the other members of your squad, but you have yet to step over the line." The implication of the word "yet" isn't lost on me.

  "Right, I'll keep a lid on it," I respond, nodding. "Thank you. Do you have any more... '20 Questions'?" she asks, after a moment. "No, I'm confident I know where you're at. Maroo is Stolen Dreams. The bit with the Arcane Codices and stuff. I'm pretty sure the next frame is Chroma," I explain. "He's a... uh... actually, I barely played him, so I don't really know his whole deal. I think he's an elemental dragon frame, where the element he's using allows him access to different abilities. Mainly I just remember him because there was this plot hole where Chroma was sort of the antagonist of Stolen Dreams, and then once Second Dream came out, people were confused because how was he an antagonist? If all the frames were supposedly piloted by operators? It maybe sort of gets cleared up in Jade Shadows..." The Lotus has an odd posture about her, and it takes me a second to realize that's she tense. "A rogue warframe?" she asks, in a clipped tone. "Oh, uh, yeah," I stammer out. "I mean, but that shouldn't be news, right? I mean, Stalker's a warframe too?"

  "Stalker?" she asks, frustration coloring her tone. "Yeah? He... what? He literally hunts warframes! How haven't you heard of him?" I ask, incredulous. "What exactly is the Stalker?" she demands, and I start infodumping everything I know, throwing caution to the wind. "Yeah! Stalker, he hunts warframes, he works with Hunhow. Black and red color scheme. He can teleport and kill you basically in a blink; pretty much all of his abilities are assassination themed. His name is Sorren, he was a Low Guardian, whatever that was. Him and his wife Jade got turned into frames, and the OG Jade is actually in his base right now kind of giving birth to a warframe baby, whatever the fuck that means."

  I'm not sure if what I'm explaining is helping; the Lotus begins pacing ever so slightly, her hands passing out of whatever constitutes as the frame of the hologram to interact with something I can't see. After a minute or so, where I patiently wait for her to finish whatever she's doing, she speaks. "We have lost a number of frames to seemingly unknown sources, but there has been little linking the incidents together. Struck from behind, sabotaged ship during extraction, attacked in the dark," she says, as though reading off a list. "We've also received data during espionage operations referring to this 'Stalker' character, but it was always assumed to be a mercenary; someone willing to work both with the Corpus and the Grineer. Not a Tenno."

  "Well, he's not, not really. Not one of the kids, anyways. He's like a frame minus a transference bolt. He's insane like the original frames were; super angry about everything, and thinks that because the Tenno took out the Orokin, he can't have his wife, or something like that. He's not all that eloquent. But... yeah. I sort of thought you knew," I finish lamely. She sighs again, and nods her head. "Thank you for this information. This is very useful to know. Moving on from this revelation, I'd like to know how many frames there are," she asks.

  "Sixty, I think?" I tell her. "I mean, more come out all the time, so I have no idea if there's like, a total amount. Maybe they'll stop at a hundred. But yeah, sixty that I know of." She shakes her head. "Sixty," the Lotus repeats softly. "But you don't know them all." I give a non committal shrug. "I mean, post surgery I'll have that info. Right now? I could tell you my mains, and like, the popular frames. Give me enough time and I'll probably remember them all."

  "Your... mains?" she asks, confused. "Yeah, like, the ones I use mainly. In the game. Uhm, Trinity Prime was my main squeeze for all of the regular star chart stuff. Before steel path. I had wanted to do this energy vampire build, since it does percent of health instead of a flat rate per pulse, and the damage was also true damage, but it always faltered when I ran into enemies with innate DR, which I think is stupid because the whole point of true damage is that it's supposed to circumvent that, and also they disabled the ability for bosses, which sucks." I'm unable to read her expression, but I'm picking up signals of confusion and annoyance in equal measure.

  "Sorry. Tangent. Uh, so, Trinity Prime, Octavia Prime... which, I don't think you have yet?" The Lotus shakes her head. "I do not know of a frame with the designation Octavia. Also, what do you mean when you say 'Prime'?" I'm caught flat footed again. "It's... you know, like Void Relics?" I say. She gives me an even more blank stare than usual. "Well, uhm, originally Prime meant 'frames that came from the Orokin Era', but then that moniker stopped making sense. Because, like, Valkyr was a frame with her specific abilities, and then Alad V tortured her, and then she ended up with different abilities, but there's a Prime version of her post the torture? It doesn't make sense, you know?"

  I'm getting the frustration vibe again. "Yes, I'm aware of Alad V and his... Zanuka project," the Lotus spits, in a rare show of emotion. "Right. Well anyways, I don't know the lore because it's a mess and DE can't keep their head on straight, but the long and short is that Prime frames are just stronger frames than usual. They come preinstalled with forma, and a potato- er, Orokin... catalyst? I think? Or Orokin reactor? I never remember which is which. And it give better stats, which... I honestly don't know how much of that translates."

  "Also, that one guy during Scientia's never mentioned catalysts or forma or anything. Maybe they don't know? Or maybe it doesn't exist?" I wonder briefly, before I realize that the Lotus is waiting for me to continue. "Oh, sorry. So, Octavia. She's a music frame, which you get from Cephalon Suda after... something? Something Hunhow related, I think," I explain. "I mainly remember a jumping puzzle. But I definitely remember that she came from Suda. Mainly I like Octavia cause she has an instrument called a mandachord that lets you make music, and then you could play it in game, and if you did stuff in time with the music, you'd get buffed, and also I'm a big music person. And then Xaku, which you already heard about. Skeleton frame, made from other frames in the void, pulls ghost guns out of enemies hands. Very strong."

  "Oh, don't forget "literally so hot". I believe those were your exact words," my mind teases. I manage to keep a poker face despite it. "Uhm, for other frames," I babble, in an attempt to distance myself from Xaku, "there's Dante, who's a wizard librarian. Friends with Drusus, who runs the Leverian, the warframe museum thing. Protea is a time travel frame; she's in a bubble with Parvos Granum." The Lotus raises her hand, cutting me off. "Parvos Granum is alive?" she asks, curious. "Yup, but I don't remember what's involved with the whole void time bubble thing he's stuck in. Nef Anyo enacts something called the deadlock protocol which kicks the whole thing off. Sorry," I tell her.

  "It will be remedied soon. Regardless, I think we've gotten a little off track," she says, before I can rattle off any more half remembered facts. "I wanted to thank you for your information on the Grineer Queens, which I've done, and collect any new information that you may have remembered. What you've provided so far... while it is interesting, it will be more useful once you have the full details. Right now, every question you answer leads to three more." I nod, but my mood sours slightly.

  "You can't just rattle off about a special interest. She's the leader of a military. She doesn't need 'fun facts'," reprimands one part of my mind. "Although, to be fair, that's why we're getting the surgery. Problem, solution," another part counters. "Emotions happen, regardless of logic. There's no need to feel bad about feeling bad," says a third part. I shake my head slightly, and refocus on the sentient in front of me. "Right, well, I don't have anything else for you." I give her a salute. "Ma'am." She gives me one more nod before her hologram fades, and once more, I'm left in her chambers alone with nothing but my thoughts.

  Discord?