	"Mnh..." Standing at the back of the room, the leader of the Steel Meridian was deep in thought. She stood on a raised platform, her eyes scanning the room, watching her comrades mill about, either hard at work or simply resting. Each one swore themselves to her cause, to Cressa Tal's cause. Pride swelled in her chest as Cressa thought back on how far her syndicate had come, how she had deserted her troops in the Grineer empire, how the urge to protect others grew too strong for her to ignore. Often the deserter reflected on her origins, maybe if she had kept quiet and worked her way up the ranks she'd have more power, more troops, but the single thought of how inaction back then could have cost more lives stills these worries. She's damn proud to be what she is now, no squawking queen will tell her how to live. But that isn't what has the leader of the syndicate worried, what plagues her mind is something more...genetic.
	The Grineer were cloned as disposable labor, destined to lives of hardship and toil, their bodies sterile and unable to reproduce. As a result, even when the Grineer had their freedom they were forced to bolster their numbers through further cloning. And as the Grineer gave away their new found freedom to form an empire, their DNA continued to unravel as they grew to millions in size, each one a clone. It was an inevitability that there would be consequences but the Grineer had no clue of how dire it could become. Now every single Grineer is decaying the moment they come to life, their bodies breaking and dying, some unfortunate few being born with even worse defects. One of those unfortunate few also being the leader of the Steel Meridian.
	Even as Cressa Tal stood motionless, she could feel her body growing irritated, the armor she normally wore as a second skin now seeming as coarse as the dunes of Mars. Still, an army is only as strong as its leader, and Cressa stood watching over her comrades.
	Shnk. The far off door to the syndicate's room slid open as someone made their way through, their body encased in a carapace of white, with highlights of red, the colors of the Steel Meridian. "Tenno, I take it you found the artifact?" Cressa was first to speak as she stepped forward to meet the operative.
	"Oh did I ever, my dear Cressa~." A flirtatious voice lifted from the Tenno, its armor curved into the shape of a well-developed woman. "The void is nothing for a woman of my caliber, especially when she has the power of the Steel Meridian behind her~." This Tenno had been a struggle for Cressa to deal with at first, but the Grineer found comfort in the Saryn frame's commitment to her cause, most Tenno were fickle and willing to swap sides at a moments notice, but not this one. Committed as Saryn was, her armor had even been replaced by the smooth carapace that her kind called "graxx", evoking a Grineer aesthetic that felt at home in the Steel Meridian's base. One of the Tenno's hands dug into a recess in her armor and produced an ivory idol, veins of gold running across the objects surface.  "But I do wonder, just why did you need this so badly? Your request interrupted some of my...'personal time~'."
	"I'm telling you this in good faith, Tenno... But one of our other operatives intercepted some information that Tyl Regor had been looking for this for a long time. All we know for sure is it has something to do with...Cloning Decay Syndrome." Uttering those words made Cressa Tal's skin crawl, another wave of irritation rattling across her nerves. The Steel Meridian leader despised those words, she hated giving it a name, she wanted to act as if it didn't matter or exist, but she still had troops slowly dying in front of her.
	"Hmm, that makes this pretty important then, doesn't it? I'm glad I was able to help out the cause, Cressa~." Even discussing such serious matters, Saryn refused to drop her sultry tone, but ironically enough this is one of the things the Steel Meridian liked about the Tenno. No matter how grim it felt or tiresome, this Tenno's inability to read the mood annoyed Cressa to the point it took her mind off such dark thoughts. And as Saryn handed the artifact over to the Grineer woman, a tinge of reassurance filled Cressa as she saw the Tenno's grip firm, both of her hands supporting the ancient and strange object.
	"Make no mistake Tenno, your assistance is always valued. Your efforts ensure that we can work towards a better tomorrow." With a careful grip of her own, Cressa Tal hoisted the Orokin object, the light of nearby monitors reflecting across its ivory surface. It was in a strange shape, something that felt vaguely familiar to the Grineer leader as she inspected every inch of the cylindrical artifact. The golden lines ran across the artifact, sectioning it off into different portions, one end of the strange relic completely flat and wide, clearly intended as a stand, while the opposing end was bulbous and round. And stranger still, this Orokin idol had weights added to the base, two spherical weights. Cressa's hands ran over the surface of this esoteric piece of forgotten technology, a sense of unease coming over the the woman as she traced its veins of gold, and as she did so a tingle began to fill her fingers, an unsettling feeling which traveled to her chest. Whatever this object was, the Grineer felt like she should not be holding onto it.