Saria stared at the old gloves before her. They had originally been locked away in a closet in the Director of Defense's office, Rhine Lab HQ. Her departure had been too rushed to take nearly any personal items. And they should have cleaned out her office long ago. So why save these? Why send them to Rhodes Island? And why now? A few days ago, at the intervention of the Maylander Foundation, construction ceased on dozens of unlawful experiment sites. Certain people had bribed officials in the municipal planning department to circumvent the necessary auditing procedures, and used fabricated plans to deceive the ethics review committee. Business as usual. Saria had spent months on the move to find evidence of their illegal dealings—fortunately she'd gotten ahold of Anthony Simon, along with his sources. Ultimately, over half of the test sites shut down had belonged by Rhine Lab. Maybe that was why these boxing gloves turned up now. A warning, or even a reminder. They were hardly the first boxing gloves she'd ever owned. Those would be the ones her father gave her, clearly unfit for a child, which always chafed her skin to the point of bleeding. But she persisted and did as her father told her, pounding her weakness into a sandbag, along with all her *impractical* emotions, punch by punch. Others had minds filled with openings, so one moment of complete disarray was all she needed to shatter their defensive line in a single punch. Saria was never as enamored with fighting as so many other boxers were: for her the skill was simply a means to survive until now. Unconsciously, her fingers read the ridged words along the back of the gloves. 'Trimounts Institute of Technology'—she'd once taken part in an intercollegiate tournament with these. She spent many a late night in the boxing club back then, always with a plus-one tagging along. That certain someone wasn't a fan of the sport, nor was she interested in the tournament, but hung around simply because 'varying your environment prevents your mind from getting stuck in certain lines of thought.' She wasn't joking: not much later she proposed the concept of a hand-mounted exoskeletal operating system, based on observation of Saria's own movements. That system was still in use to this day, in the office of Rhine Lab's Control. Though they hadn't seen use in so many years, the gloves looked as snug as ever. Saria very nearly put her hands in them, but a slight ache from beneath her shoulder blades held her back—apparently a call to adjust the dosage of her painkillers. The mercenaries outnumbered her in her last investigation, after all: a whole platoon against one . It meant she was gradually getting close to the truth. A few minutes later, Saria let go of the gloves, stowing them in the lowest drawer of her temporary desk, and once again picked up Ifrit's latest physical report.