For a Cadre Operator, there is no retirement but death. Thompson, Argo, and Beckert limp home in a stolen transport. The reconnaissance mission to occupied Earth has left them broken and barely alive. But what they discovered beneath the rotted concrete of Washington, D.C. cuts deeper than Blueskin knives... While sifting through terabytes of raw data retrieved from Earth, Cadre Techs find evidence of another covert research station called, 'Cadre Two.' If it exists, could it have escaped the genocide like Cadre One? Could there be survivors? Cadre Operators quietly don their gear and prepare for rotation. Beneath their stoic exteriors, they know Cadre Two could be a burned out shell. Or, it could be a trove of lost technologies, possibly a refuge should the ancient machinery at Cadre One fail... ...that is, if the saffron-eyed alien hasn't found it first.