"Yeah, it's embarrassing," she answered with a tone of finality. "Nothing to worry about."
As the ship settled down in the hideout's cavern-like hangar, Olivia released her grip on the pilot seat's backrest, only now noticing that she had held on tightly enough for her knuckles to turn white. In fact, her entire body was tense, her shoulders and back beginning to ache. She took another deep breath, trying to stand at ease.
"As good as I can be under the circumstances," she replied to Damien's second inquiry, trying to sound more relaxed and confident, like her usual self. Truth be told, she had no idea whether she was doing well. She continued to worry about her blackouts, she was exhausted, and the stress of being on the run from the law was consolidating into a firm, pounding precursor of a migraine.
Sh*t, she kicked herself. I forgot my god damn meds.
Even if he wasn't convinced, he was the better pretender of the two, so for now he'd feign an attitude of having conceded that topic of conversation in favor of another. "Well, come on, you're probably hungry. Canteen definitely still has a few meals left that haven't been served." The food here wasn't exactly stellar, but it was still something to live on, it could have always been worse - much worse. It took him about a minute's worth of time to power down the ship, remove his helmet and then open up the hatch so they could both walk out of the Eagle. The moment they cleared its threshold however, it seemed as if people were expecting them, two fairly nondescript individuals clad from head to toe in fairly ramshackle looking tactical gear. They might almost pass for soldiers if it weren't for the gritty and rebellious looking nature of their overall kit.
"See that my friend here gets to her room safely and stays there. And prep a technician to take a look at the box she's got. Last thing I need is for this to turn out to be an elaborate sting operation." It must have been something he'd said when clearing the ships to land, because these supposed guards were here, ready and waiting and things revolving around the situation of her arrival ticked like clockwork. Evidently some degree of reforms had been put in motion because these two "marines" of sorts were not the usual rabble that Olivia might have been used to. "I'm sorry to be doing this to you, Olivia. Really, I am. But you're setting off all kinds of red flags for me, and I need to know this isn't a setup and that I can really trust you. So please, make this easy on us both, stay in your room, eat the meal that'll be delivered to you and get some rest. But don't mistake any of these things for requests." Of all things he was suspicious of in this situation, it was that she might have been part of an effort to take down Alliance leadership before they got more problematic than they already were. Suspecting the box to be some sort of device which would aid in that effort and finding the whole situation surrounding her warrant to be suspicious.
There was also the lingering notion of the fact that she'd not been behaving like herself since she got back from the Omicrons, and if there was going to be any closure to any of these things, it wasn't going to come easy or willingly, as she'd proven with the kind of answers given.
For a moment, Olivia stared at Damien. Then, in a flash of anger and renewed adrenaline, she dropped the crate she was carrying to the ground and drew her sidearm. Almost faster than the eye could see, she had it trained on the Xeno commander's head, her finger pressing down on the trigger, a fraction of an inch away from discharging.
"You god damn bastard," she growled through clenched teeth as the two guards raised their own weapons at her. Despite of a fog of rage and pain clouding her mind, she knew she was screwed. The only thing her antics would accomplish was getting herself killed, in which case she would have been better off turning herself in to the police.
Her eyes shot down at the black container at her feet. She didn't know herself what exactly its contents were, but something told her that she wasn't meant to let anyone else know about it.
Should've left it on the Lich, she thought to herself.
"I knew you were too happy to help," she barked at Damien, not lowering her pistol. "I should've stayed away from you and your f*cking terrorists."
He stood his ground, and if he was disturbed by the gun being pointed at him then he wasn't showing it. "Everything about this situation surrounding you is wrong. The way you're behaving's out of the norm for you. And I am helping, but this is the tough love approach to that. So fine, let's play this your way for a second. I'll trust you and call off all the arrangements if you'll trust me enough to show me what's in that box." While they were having this conversation and the two guards had their eyes and rifles glued to Olivia, a third laser sight was affixed to her back, likely directed by a weapon somewhere in a far corner of this hangar.
"I'm not selling you out to anybody, and I am going to make sure you get out from under the LPI's thumb, but I need to know you're genuinely under it first." After saying this, he tilted his head and watched her carefully. One, to better observe what she was going to do and two, so that there was less of a risk of him being hit by that shot which might have to be fired from behind her. To say this was a tense situation would be putting it lightly.
Seconds passed as Olivia considered the Xeno's offer, gun still pointed steadily between his eyes. At the periphery of her vision, she could make out the guards' fingers closing in around their rifles' triggers. They shifted nervously.
Just people, the mercenary reminded herself. She sighed and flicked her thumb against her pistol's safety before slowly lowering it back to her side.
"Fine," she conceded. She had no other option than to agree to Damien's deal. As much as, in the moment, she would have loved to splatter his brains out over the hangar's deck, there would be no point in doing so if she didn't live long enough to savor the victory.
She turned to face the two guards with a scowl that would have frozen a charging Cretan warhound in its tracks and had the desired effect. The two men let out the breaths they had been holding and lowered their rifles, glad that the situation had relaxed.
Olivia glanced back at Damien with the same hateful expression, then crouched down and hoisted up the crate.
His posture slackened a bit, as if he'd been expecting a bullet for those tense few seconds, since she'd agreed to the deal he waved the guards off who were glad to back away and go back to their posts. "Fine, my office. You've been there before. It's less of a mess this time around though." The moment the guards had been waved off that additional laser sight also vanished, as the third guard returned to their post as well.
"Do you mind if I ask why you killed whoever it was you killed?" Since the walk to their destination here in the hideout wasn't going to yield any pleasant conversation now that he'd pulled his gambit and got her to honestly cooperate with him, he decided to stick to things that were pertinent and try to understand what was going on. She was doing an awful lot to keep him in the dark when it came to details, and in a way it felt like she didn't really know much about what was happening either. It was an odd sort of mutual disbelief over everything that had happened and was now happening.
Trying to ignore the growing pain in her head, Olivia fell in beside Damien as he moved down the hideout's hallways towards his office space. Her arms were growing tired from carrying the heavy crate, but she didn't complain, not wanting anyone else to touch it. Even through the migraine's agony, she could feel alarm bells go off in her mind at the very thought of handing the box and its contents over.
The mercenary remained quiet at Cobra's question. It was one she had been asking herself for the past few hours, in vain, as she knew. Whatever memories the blackout had covered weren't going to come back just by interrogating herself. Staying silent wasn't going to do her any favors, either, so she decided to be honest.
He sighed hearing her say that, one of both relief and exhaustion. It was a preemptive reaction realizing that things really weren't going to be simple at all, something truly was quite wrong here. "That's the first time you've sounded like yourself in a long time." While part of him was happy to see that fact, he sounded equally parts concerned, genuinely so.
"Just through here." He gestured at the doorway leading into his office and waited until they were inside with the doors shut before he'd speak again.
"Show me, and tell me everything." If he was going to truly help her, beyond just get her out of Liberty, he needed all the facts. And she was the only person who could give it to him.
Olivia glanced around the office. It wasn't the cluttered mess of strewn about papers that it had been the last time she stood here. She found a desk standing at its center and stepped towards it, heaving the crate on to it. Released from its burden, she rolled her shoulders in their sockets, relieving some of the tension and pain. Then, she looked over her shoulder, back at Damien, who stood behind her, expectantly waiting for her to open the container.
She hesitated, if only for a brief moment. There was no backing out of this now, she reminded herself. With a resigned sigh, she pressed her thumb against the biometric lock and waiting for the signature hiss of the pressurized seal releasing. Then, carefully, she lifted the lid and swung it open.
Immediately, the dimly lit room was illuminated by the crystal's blue light and Olivia could feel the familiar wave of peace and calm wash over herself, cleansing her of the agonizing migraine faster than any medication. She breathed in deeply, visibly relaxing, and turned to face Damien, gesturing for him to come closer and look inside the crate.
"I've no clue what this thing is," she said truthfully, nodding at the glowing orb lying within the black box. "It was ... bequeathed upon me by some crazed Rogue after he offed himself." A pang of regret shot through her mind at the offhand way she described the man's suicide. But she swatted it away, having more pressing matters to think about. "It's just become important to me, somehow."
Things really were complicated. Was the immediate thing to strike him, and since he didn't seem to share in her phenomena with the odd alien looking bauble, it had to have been something unique to her and it. Which only made things more hard to wrap the brain around. "Whatever that is, whatever's happening to you, it's all beyond my expertise. But I know people, and judging by the look of what that is, I think they'd be the ones who are better equipped to help you. I know you coming here got off to a rough start, but I wasn't sure if I could trust you, and I needed to be sure I wasn't putting everyone here at risk." He took a sigh, gesturing for her to take a seat but not making any mention of closing the box back up or about what was in it.
"If you're willing to stay here a little longer, I'll put in a call for help and get them to look into this. Getting you out of Liberty's one thing, Olivia. No point in me doing that if you're just going to end up dead in some gutter." The next words were phrased carefully and after a hesitation's worth of thought. "Will you let me help you?" It was direct and to the point, and short of knocking her out and going through with calling in his vague contacts, there was no other way through this.