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When Hanna was given orders for her next task, at first she thought she had misheard. First time, she was paired with one of her closer friends here, Cami, and second -- "Jack Hawthorn, Life," the older Death Hunter had told her, quickly rattling off the location and desired items. Recovering weapons tablets? Should be easy enough, hopefully she could accomplish it just as quickly as she had the other scavenging mission.

But seriously -- was whoever made these pairings strategically linking her with people she was sort of already linked to? Sure, it was her division's job to know things, but that kind of attention to detail gave her pause. What else were they tracking about her? If her next assignment was also a friend, Hanna was going to feel the presence of Big Brother even stronger.

In any case, that didn't stop her from hoofing it from the main tent over to the next location -- a crumbling tower surrounded by carnage. Hanna stopped short when they broke onto the scene, tilting up her protective glasses for a moment before sliding them back into place. "Jesus, what is inside that tower?" she said. "Something went to a lot of very bloody trouble to protect it." A booted foot kicked aside a blood-stained bone, leaving a smear across the toe of her boot. She dragged it through the sand to clean it.

Yeah, Hanna definitely preferred scavenging at the crater instead.

"The last time I stumbled upon a weapons tablet was in the belly of the titan in the Sahara," Hanna said with little emotion, maybe just a tilt of dark amusement. "I handed them over to Mist and then... nothing. No idea what they are even doing with them. I'd like to rush my promotion if only to actually be told things that matter. Death deals in information, and yet I am privy to none of it. Bullshit." It was not fun to be in the dark, but Hanna and most of the Death trainees lived in the dark. The most she ever got to learn was stolen information from peeking inside of files, many of which were probably fakes anyway. It wasn't like they would hand a trainee anything of importance.

At least she could feel helpful-ish doing this scavenging work.

Side-stepping a bashed-in skull, Hanna kicked around scattered debris -- broken jewelry, shattered shapes of black, mushy piles of ooze, but no weapons tablets. Maybe the conspiracy theory game would be more fun. (It was always more fun.) "So from what I can piece together so far, something happened here that was, perhaps, not even a battle involving Hunters. Carnage everywhere, but these skulls are monstrous, not human." She nudged a horned skull that was more goat than human.

"Plus the tasks -- set up barriers, recover as many items as possible, kill off any insanity creatures at our backs. It feels like we are in a flash mission, like a window opened up after a battle between something else, and we are just here to grab what we can to study and run." Hanna wiped a hand across her mouth, knocking away some sand that had gathered there. Reaching for her scarf, she adjusted it so it covered her mouth, only slightly muffling her words. "My biggest confusion is where we are... and what -- well, I had a weird dream that apparently other people had. And that is the piece that doesn't fit for me. What is this? And why is it all such a blitzkrieg effort from us when it appears that the battle is long gone?"

It occurred to Hanna that she was talking too much, but she had been thinking about this for forever and Jack was the first person who asked her opinion.

Hanna was still multi-tasking her searching, okay.

Is that a tablet there?

NOPE.

"If I wasn't in Death, I'd be Life," Hanna said, nudging through the debris as best she could. She thought about summoning The Lady to use as a tool to --

Don't you dare, Adelphe hissed in her mind.

I wasn't actually going to do it. It was just a thought, jesus, keep your non-corporeal shirt on.

I am an instrument of terror and death, not a massive toothpick. My job is to keep you safe, which I can't promise I can do if I am dirtied by this mess...

A threat. Nice. But since Adelphe had recently made good on threats, Hanna kept her telepathic-linked-mouth shut. She refocused on the actual person standing near her instead. "An alliance would be stellar, but I doubt I know anything worth knowing. At least, not yet." Though Jack did raise an excellent-yet-chilling point about an informational final encounter.

"I can't even find a ******** weapons tablet, apparently."

Tablet? Nope, just a skull.

"I remember some things," Hanna said, tucking a loose piece of auburn hair behind her ear. "It's fuzzy though, like I'm looking at my own memories through a fogged window, or underwater. It's hard to explain." She knew from both her time at Deus and personal experience that memories could get skewed and lost in the repodding process. It usually took time for things to come back, and it could be worse the longer you were under.

"In my case, I don't remember basically the last month before I was put back in the pod," she explaining, kicking aside skull after useless skull.

That didn't mean Hanna was empty of memories. Her mind was full of faces and feelings and experiences, but most of those people in her memories were missing now. "I distinctly remember my trials. I recall the first missions I went on. It was so much smaller back then, god. The first floor? Totally empty. The only rooms that were taken were taken by a couple full Hunters on the second floor. We all ran in there like it was the first day of college. I didn't even know there was a basement. We were expected to journal throughout our training, I don't know." She kicked a skull extra hard. "It's weird, you know? The people I was closest too are MIA now. The top Hunters are people who were still in the pods when I woke up." Mostly, that was true. There were a few from her group that were still around.

It would make Hanna feel better to find a tablet now.