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“Who is the vessel of NULL?” you sign.

“Getting right to it I see,” Synth signs. “You won’t like my answers, but CommSpec here should be able to scan me and detect if I’m lying, right?”

She nods.

“Okay, so the vessel…I have no idea,” they sign.

“Really? When you were standing right next to them?” Akiko signs.

“Really. If you’d gotten closer you would know, Unas projected an echo around them so I couldn’t perceive any more details than you did. I can tell you it’s someone who was--at least at that time--here on TLA, and obviously someone close to Unas, but other than that…they never said anything when I was around them, never responded to me or acknowledged, like in a dissociative haze, in a higher æthertrip plateau than you were.”

“You mean--“

“I mean I don’t know if they even knew where they were or what happened to them. Just like when Aydan was possessed by ÆON, the NULL exopath’s host probably doesn’t even know they’re walking around carrying an exo,” Synth says.

“Then who is Unas?” you say.

“Nobody knows that. Not even the Admins, or at least, they don’t tell me if they do.”

“So you’re not working for Unas?”

“I was spying on Unas,” they say. “I answer to Admin Crypta. She orders me to do something, I gotta, you can’t refuse the Admins. Kind of burned a bridge with Unas though when I took issue with them targeting Aydan, Admin’s not so happy with me now.”

“Did she order you to spy on us today?” you say.

“No, I had some free time,” they say. “Y’all were being very conspicuous, you’ve got a few things to learn about watching someone. If I didn’t teach you that lesson now you would’ve ended up in real trouble if you tried that amateurish approach on Unas and NULL Sector.”

“NULL Sector?”

“Unas’s cult, the ones who want to destroy exopaths.”

“Are they after anyone but me?” you say.

“Not to my knowledge, but y’all two will find yourself in danger real soon if you don’t shape up your opsec,” they say.

“Do you want to destroy ÆON too?” you say.

“Haven’t really made up my mind about that,” they say. “I’m a lot more worried about the cults than the exopaths themselves, but they are dangerous.”

“And how did you sneak up on us like that?” you say.

“Simple echo, a signal to your interfaces to make me invisible to your eyes. EvoSpecs aren’t clueless about Obfuscation you know.”