Xaviers!

"I haven't really daydreamed of that luxury. Find somewhere nice to live and start a family, I suppose. But there always seems to be call for warriors."

"I guess there is a certain kind of... belonging that comes from that."

"Fewer questions about what you should do. Decisions are straight forward."

"Sometimes it just... works. I'm not sure what that says about me."

"That deep down, at least some part of you is a warrior and likes being one."

"And is that how you feel about it?"

After some silence, "How I feel about it is irrelevant. I'm good at what I do and doing what I'm good at is all that matters."

"To your superiors, you mean."

"To everything we've fought for," Siberia countered.

"I'm not saying that isn't important, but it's not all that's important, aye?"

"Nothing else is more important," Siberia said automatically.

"I didn't say more important."

"But I'm not reporting back to Moscow, aye?"

"You asked me what I'll do when this ends... For me, it doesn't get to end. Even when we crush the Order in the Savage Land, there will be years of mopping up and there will always be some group who wants to take their place. Some of us don't get happy endings or retirement, so that others can have those things."

"You said you go after what you want. So that's what you want?"

Siberia looked at her sharply, "My wants are short term and temporary by necessity. The less said about them the better."

"...alright, alright."

"We'll just... chalk that up to another way you're like her."

Siberia stared at Sam, then turned back to the horizon. "If you're able to return to her, then maybe you can understand how important her mission is to her, assuming she has one."

"Not quite how I meant it, but fair enough."

"What did you mean?" She looked at her suspiciously.

"I mean you're both bloody hard to convince that you have a future."

"I have a future. That you don't like my future is on you."

"I can honestly say I've gotten this far by having an absolute awful sense of when to stop prying," she sighs, hoping to defuse things.

"Prying is a good way to lose your fingers," Siberia says.

"Didn't say I had much sense with things that bite, either."

"Just so we're clear, I have no bark, just the bite."

"Wouldn't want it any other way."

A man steps out of the bridge, "<Admiral, alarms in the engine room.>"

"<Systems?>"

"<Systems read normal. A response team is investigating.>"

"<Thank you. I will look into it myself. Keep us on course.>" The man nodded and headed back into the bridge. Siberia turned to Sam, "We may have a problem. Come with me." Without another word, she leapt over the railing of the walkway, landing in a three point stance on the flight deck without any trouble, though much to the surprise of some of the crew working there. With the briefest of pauses, she starts striding towards one of the entrances deeper into the ship.

Sam nods, growing out the wings again and using them to control her own leap down to the flight deck with slightly less graceful results before pulling them in and following Siberia.

As they head into the bowels of the ship they inevitably come to a part of the ship that's pitch black. Moving down the stairwell one deck is lit up but anything below it seems to be without power, plunging it into darkness.

"Normally, I wouldn't worry about this, but this wouldn't have been reason enough to trigger an alarm," Siberia says, shrugging out of her long coat which leaves her arms bare. She folds it carefully over a nearby pipe and then takes a deep breath. The veins in her arms begin to glow with a soft blue-white light. Not enough to light everything up, but enough to keep them from tripping over something. The change also brings with a faint chill to the air.

"...have to tell her it works as a night light," she mumbles to herself as she follows.

The light is faint but it works to help them not trip down the steep metal stairs. Half the time they can only barely make out the walls around them and the descend feels even more claustrophobic than just moving through the cramped ship. It doesn't help that Sam can sense the people all around in the ship and even though they're trained soldiers, there's still a lot of fear hanging in the air. Almost too much for an experienced crew that surely trained how to act in worse circumstances, almost as if the atmosphere itself was influencing their minds...

"I so much prefer the flight deck with its open space," Siberia comments as she stops at a corridor intersection, going over the ship's layout in her head.

"...your crew is better trained than this," she says to Siberia.

It isn't a question.

"Maintenance on a ship this old can be difficult, but my crew does a worthy job with what we have. Power out to a whole deck is rare, but it would not be the first time." She seemed to have completely missed Sam's implication.

"I mean the air here about stinks of fear. This isn't normal."

Siberia turns to look at her and her eyes narrow, "So scenting emotions is a part of your power now as well? Or is there something you haven't told me?"

"Do you have something against telepaths? Because this is an awful time to have this discussion."

"Not particularly," Siberia says, turning back towards the other passageways. "I've actually had relationships with several. I just don't like being kept in the dark."

"I've got nothing to hide."