A mere two hours before my time was up, I was given another tray of food. About half way through my meal, the guard outside my cell dozed off in the middle of his meal.

I looked around quickly but saw no one moving around in the hallway outside. His own tray of food sat about half-eaten on the table in front of him.

Going back and searching my own tray, I found a key that was stuck to the bottom of a bowl. Trying it on the cell door, hardly daring to believe my luck, the lock turned with a quiet ka-chunk, and the door swung open.

I was free!

I suspected that my currently-young fellow Agent had somehow prized his way in here and freed me. Even now HQ was probably taking over the building, and they'd surely be able to fix my BPG. All would be well now.

Grabbing the guard's Carad pistol, I rummaged in a cabinet containing my knives and other possessions and found the BPG itself. Fastening it back around my neck, I felt an immense sense of security and, well, Agent-ness. The cold metal stung my neck, but warmed rapidly. I knew then that a part of me would probably always identify itself as Keia; the acceptance had gone too far. But I was five-two-three once again, back in action. One of the elite. With a little over an hour left to find the others and get the heck back to HQ!

The hallways were quiet, too quiet. It was odd that there were so few people around the building who would stop me, but I thought that perhaps they were all in other areas, fighting with the Agents.

I heard someone whistling in the distance and followed the sound. Even if nothing else came of the assignment, I'd finish it honourably by taking out the leader of the terrorist group, Initiate or not. The leader must be her, I thought. She was the only one with the power to organize something like this. Tasha's face, with that mockingly sad look she'd had when she'd bound me, still haunted my inner eye whenever I thought of her.

The whistling came from a large room with an open door, a warehouse full of boxes ready to be shipped or stored. With my Relian avatar, even with the very tiny ability I possessed to channel Mana, I could feel the resonance of the immense number of Tear Stones in the room. The air seemed to shimmer with light and a humming sound, though I could neither see or hear anything physically.

My BPG was glowing again. The wealth in that one room could've bought entire small nations.

"Do you want to talk, Keia?" I heard a voice echo out from behind a stack of crates. Astra's voice. I dodged around to where I thought the voice had originated, holding my gun out at the ready, but no one was there.

"You are no longer bound, you know," her voice called, seemingly coming from several different directions at once. She was right -- I'd been able to move at full speed for some time.

"It was I who gave you the key, and gave the guard his special treat. Please, say you'll come talk with me," she called, almost pleadingly. Despite my best efforts, the part of me that was Keia leapt up inside and calmed the rest, and I felt moved to know what was going on, at least.

"Okay," I said to her. "I am bringing my weapon with me, and I won't promise you anything, but I'll listen. You've only got a few minutes before I do what I came for and take down Tasha. And then... my fellow Agents will have some pointed questions for you, no doubt, when they find out what you know."

A puzzled silence followed that statement.

"Keia, there are no other Agents in the building. None that will rescue you, anyway. And the Tear-mancer of clan Emerald River is not our leader. Your mind is in turmoil, and time is short. Let us talk."

Astra seemed to appear out of thin air at my side, having ducked around one of the stacks of crates, her too-knowing silver eyes looking into mine.

"Follow me to an area where we may sit, and I may explain a few things to you."

As we sat, I aimed my pistol at her, ready to fire. Her calm face betrayed no nervousness.

"Let's make this quick," I told her. "After what you've done to me, I don't plan to make it painless. You'd better have a good story for me, and I make no promises except to hear you out."

"Yes," she said with a sigh, "that was our deal. There is no way to soften this, so I will be blunt.

"True, my name is Astra, but before that I was known as... six-four-three. Yes, I can see from the surprise on your face that you know of the apparently infamous case of the disappeared Agent.

"As you probably know, I was one of the most gifted Carad machine operators the Agents had ever seen. I could hack into anything, retrieve any information, change any information, with no one the wiser. It was my curiosity that fatal day that prompted me to hack into the files of HQ itself, just to see what was in there.

"To put it mildly, I found some interesting things. Things so top secret that I had to spend several weeks off and on decrypting them, bypassing alarm triggers, and all other sorts of nonsense. What I found inside would change my life forever: the true history of the Agents. Allow me start at the beginning, though."

...

I was finding her stories at the same time increasingly difficult to believe, but too many details of the story of her time as an Agent matched up with what I'd read. She continued on, implacably.

"The secret files at HQ had much more information than the researcher who wrote that book.

"We know little of our culture now, what part our shape-shifting ability played in it. But inevitably... the others discovered us.

"When the governments of Carad and Relia learned of the Ba'hari, they felt threatened. Who knew who might be a Ba'hari spy? They decided to work together to contain this 'menace' first, no matter how unlikely.

"Ba'hari were captured, and horrible experiments were performed on us. Finally, they were able to create it: the BPG. Its true name: Ba'hari Power Governor.

"Somehow the Relians were able to channel Mana and use Tear Stones to make a device which would effectively siphon a Ba'hari's power into itself. The Carads added circuits to detect its location and limit that power, control it. The device around your neck does not grant special powers to a receptive Carad or Relian. It controls your own power for you like a nanny.

"Most of the Ba'hari were at first unwilling, but a couple of weeks spent as a pet convinced them otherwise. It went against all of our beliefs, our spirituality. Instead of growing old and eventually letting the soil take us, we were forced to live forever. Instead of reproducing naturally to allow future generations of Ba'hari, we were forced to renew our own bodies indefinitely.

"Unable to take what was happening to ourselves, all of our beliefs violated, and our families sold into this horrible slavery, we eventually gave in. A little creative brainwashing by HQ, and we all believed the story you still believe to this day, our culture brutally crushed.

"And us... just literally nameless and faceless enforcers of their laws. Psychological projection is a harsh mistress, and they'd turned us into their own fears."

Astra stared at the ceiling, seemingly lost in her own memories, but she shook her head, snapping back to the present to continue her story.

"For my next assignment, I'd taken a slightly younger version of the form you see in front of you now, similar to the original form of our people. When I'd fallen away from the immediate radar of HQ, I destroyed my BPG. I felt like I'd lost control of my body; I was thrown violently to the ground. An immense vise was crushing me down; no, the weight of an entire city.

"My head pounded with a headache that lasted for days. I felt a part of my soul leave me. Quite literally, as I knew from HQ's files. I will probably never transform again.

"But it had to be done so that I could free my brothers and sisters. Only completely free from HQ would I be able to accomplish my task. They would know of the destruction of my BPG, but my hope was that they'd think it an accident; I went into hiding, taking no chances.

"I had no identity that I remembered, as none of us do. I adopted the name Astra el Rahim, Star of Truth in the old Ba'hari language.

"That was when I found my way to Relia..."

...

"Tasha was the descendant of the leading Relian involved in the creation of the BPG, Tehara Emerald River, working at the College of Delving at the university, at that time. You see, I'd quietly worked a small physiological change into my form, one unmistakable to delving.

"When she finally believed my story, she was incensed beyond belief. Tasha is a woman of great passion, quick emotions, and steadfast resolve."

I chuckled and mumbled "understatement" under my breath.

"By combining our knowledge," Astra continued, "we were able to create the BPG-A process, the BPG awakening. It reverses the effects of the initial BPG bonding, freeing a Ba'hari back to their native powers. They can change shapes at will and are untrackable by HQ."

"The BPG-A process requires the destruction of a quantity of purest Tear Stones, as well as the incorporation of some which must be replaced after every few Ba'hari. Tasha has been able to provide these through her connections in Relia. They surround you now. Enough to free many of our people.

"You can choose to believe who you will: us or HQ; but my story is true. You must choose of your own free will - that is part of the process, and why you are completely unrestrained. The decision is yours."

She leaned back quietly in her chair and watched me.

"Don't take too long... I'm afraid there's worse yet to tell."