Chapter 16 - Lost Reality

 “Jim,” the voice came into his memory palace. He could tell it was real, and not from his Augs, the sensation of Molly resting her hand on his shoulder was different than her avatar, weightier. He opened his eyes and was instantly back in the real world, sitting cross-legged on the foot stool in the living room. “You need to start living in our world more. The house is unmoved. Have you been sitting there since I left?”

“No,” Jim started, shaking his head into place. “I worked out for a few hours first. I also took a really long shower, prepared dinner, and picked out a game for us to play tonight, if you're interested. If you're not, I also picked out four different movies. Or we could listen to music, I made a playlist of music I dug up from an obscure Southern Union archive of ancient compositions played on actual analog instruments. I watched a documentary on the guy, he makes them all by hand using ancient techniques and materials. The Solomon governor even gave him a special exemption and sent out a special military detachment to cut down a tree. Real wood! I also dug through your research stack and found an interesting book about wizards that I could read to you. It starts out a bit cruel, but I bet, by the end, we grow to love the little black-haired ragamuffin. That was so typical for books of that era. Or...”

Molly put her hand over his mouth, plopped down behind him, and pulled him back onto the couch, his back between her legs. “James. When will training resume? Or missions? You're killing me, love!” she breathed a deep, grumbling sigh from the bottom of her lungs. “You've been holed up in this barracks for months. What are the others up to? What about Dekah and the guys from the team? Is there any way you can get shore leave and go topside for bit to visit your dad?” Molly dug her chin into her chest to try and read Jim's face.

Jim rolled onto his stomach, his elbows on her upper thighs, hands on the couch, chin on top of his hands, fixated on Molly's green doe eyes. “The guys are all stuck down here, too. Digital Olympics are in a few months so the team has been practicing non-stop, so they haven't had time to play with me, and, quite frankly, after I cleaned up shop against them because of the Augs, they really haven't been in the mood to play with me anymore, either. Dad is still super busy with work. He's been picking up countless extra shifts, and he has been spending most of his time with his new girlfriend.”

“Oh right,” Molly swung her leg over Jim's head and mimicked his pose, chin on her hands, hand on Jim's back. She kissed him on the neck and rested her cheek against his, wrapping her arms and hands underneath him, between the foot stool and the couch. “How is that going? How are you doing with it?”

“I'm thrilled, honestly. Dad loved mom with all his heart, I like to think. How else could he have stayed with her through all that?” He rolled over onto his back, bicep straining to prevent his hand from sitting comfortably behind his head, Molly's bright red curls now exploding across his chest. “But it was hard the last few years. Her condition meant she slept most of the day, so there was very little intimacy or playfulness to their relationship, anymore. My dad was more caretaker than partner. So, seeing him with what's-her-name so happy and doting, I think it's good for him.”

“And how are you taking your mom's loss?” She asked from his chest, cheek resting on his pectoral, eyes transfixed.

“You know, it was hard for a while. I came to the realization that I never really knew my mother, but now I'll never know her, either. My dad never talks about her and never really did talk about her to begin with. I have a few memories of us all when we were really young. Dad took us all to a nature preserve on the outskirts of Roma. 'A Slice of the Wilds' it was called. I remember her holding my hand as we walked up a sort of steep path that had loose rocks on the rough trail stairs. I remember slipping and her pulling me up the stair by my arm. That's the only memory I have of her not in bed. I still,” Jim paused to sniffle and wipe a couple tears away from his eye. “I still don't know how they couldn't fix her. The Old World could cure anything. I just don't get what made her so unfixable.” He used his elbows to pull his back against the couch, one arm still threaded underneath Molly's torso, and then used the now-free hand that had been propping up his head to stroke her beautiful, soft hair.

“Well,” Molly began, adjusting to Jim's new position, swapping cheeks and curling into a vague fetal position, “as an archeologist; there's catastrophic record loss, language drift, loss of academic minds that never re-accumulated, status-based depopulation control policies, lack of researchers and archeologists, lack of funding, deprioritization of research based on prevalence...”

Jim cut her off, “That middle one, that's the one that gets me, the 'status-based survival' or whatever.”

“Status-based depopulation control policies,” Molly corrected.

“Yeah, that one. Every other nation in the Great Union covers medical care, but we still make our people pay for some bullshit 'only the richest survive' policy,” Jim huffed indignantly.

“I've never much liked it either. But, the evidence is pretty clear, however. Market-based healthcare makes for much more advanced technologies. Cost is the mother of invention, not necessity,” Molly rolled up from Jim's chest to sit next to him side-saddle on the couch, resting her hand on his leg.

Jim planted his hands onto the couch and pushed himself up into a fully-seated position. “I know, I get it, but at what cost? I never got to know my mom because of it. But someone with money might have been completely cured, for all I know.” Jim furrowed his brow and paced his words, treading carefully on such a delicate subject.

“I know, but it's more than just that. We have a massive wealth-redistribution mechanism in place. Money is mostly arbitrary, anyway, and just buys luxury. Everyone has a reasonable and well-maintained life provided for them. The health care system is a money-sink, Jim. Without it, there'd be far too much money in the system. Most of the jobs in our society are cosmetic, anyway, you know that. Everyone does. We could robotize or technologize just about every job. The DPRC does. The IA just prioritizes productivity. We think that you'll make better choices with your money if you earned it. We believe that a bit of a class divide is positive, because it drives people to want a better life.”

“I know, I know, and I accept all of that. That's where we live, and I grew up, and I do truly believe in those principals. But it's hard to be faithful when you're at the bottom like me and my dad are, Molly. My dad works day and night trying to pay off the debt. They're crushing him.”

“But why?” Molly pleaded. “Why? It's a small payment a month. It never has to be paid off. He can pay the small monthly fee to service the debt, and when he dies, the debt is absolved, it doesn't transfer to you, it doesn't have any bearing on yours or his status. It's just there. It's not like the government will take away your house, or let you go hungry or unclothed. All of those basic necessities are just provided, it's not even portioned! If you wanted to you could go get a pallet of salt, for no other reason to have it, and no one would bat an eye. So why? He could be using the extra money he throws at that debt to live comfortably like everyone else. His life has no bearing on your success. Everyone has the same opportunity, and is granted a clean slate.”

“Because he wants to leave me with something. He wants to leave something to the world, my love. He wants my life to be better than his. He wants his life to have mattered. He wants contribute to the world,” Jim had kicked the foot stool back and had his feet planted on the ground, butt on the edge of the couch. “He works so hard because he thinks he can pay off his hospital debt and accumulate some money to leave to me when I die. He wants to set up a research grant fund, too. Something to remember my mother by. It's more than just living, Molly. It's about why being alive matters at all. It's like you said. His work is cosmetic. He could easily just quit and live off the dole. Millions of people do. So why work at all? To try and move up. To get to where you and your dad are. To matter to the world.”

“Is that why you became a pilot?” Jim could barely read Molly's blank face.

“No. I became a pilot because I don't know what I'd do otherwise. I had no direction before this. Before you,” Jim put his hands on top of Molly's, now sandwiched between them and his knee. “I was just a dumb kid with no idea what I was going to do with my life. I still am. We both are. Your research gives you purpose. This life down here has changed us, it's changed you, too. No, no no! That's not bad!” Jim patted her hands emphatically to ease her as she pulled a shocked face of horror. “It's made us better. More responsible. Smarter. More aware. More mindful. When I first met you, you and your friends were more concerned with sex and image and your place in the social hierarchy. Now, you're focused on bettering the world. You're invested in society. You've grown up. You're a real woman now.”

“But you just said we're dumb kids,” Molly said weakly through her frown.

“We are. Molly, we're barely out of school. You're still in school, love. We've lived less than an fifth of our lives. There is so much left to see and experience and learn and understand. We have no idea what our future holds. I can barely predict what'll happen a month in advance, let alone a year or a decade or half a century. We don't know what our lives will mean or where we're even going. We're just along for the ride.”

“But is that so bad?” Molly looked a bit more relaxed, a bit of sadness cracking her stone expression. “Aren't we allowed to just go with it? Do we have to try and steer our lives? Can't we just accept the choices we make and the life we were born to and not feel guilty for it? Can't we just accept that privilege exists?”

“We can, and we do, Molly. I do. And our society provides for the unprivileged as best it can without compromising our collective morality,” he took her face into his hands, his palms resting on the diamond-point of her chin. “I'm just explaining why my dad is the way it is. Why I feel the way I do. I can feel resent for being less privileged but still accept its necessity. I can feel disgust with the cold and calculating nature of 'the system,'” he made air quotes and rested his hands on her shoulders, “and still believe it's functioning for the greater good. I'm just mad. I want a better life for my father. He's worked so hard to try and provide one for me, can't it be my turn to help him?” He pulled Molly close and hugged her deeply, nuzzling the hair between their cheeks out of the way and kissing her on the side of her forehead.

“I know, Jim, I do,” she said, emotion welling in her voice as she fiercely returned his embrace, herself nuzzling deeper into his shoulder. “I just want to fix things for you. I want to provide for you and comfort you and make your life easy and better. I was born into so many gifts. I want to use them to make sure you can flourish, just like they have enabled me to. I just want you to be happy. I solve problems, Jim. I always have.”

“I know, My love,” he threaded his arm from underneath her pit and grabbed the back of her neck, scooping his other hand under her legs, and swept her up into his arms as he lurched forward. “But sometimes I just want to vent. I know there's not much we can do, and that I'm just being moody. But you're all I really have anymore. You, my job, and my peers.” He kissed her on the forehead and let her drop to the floor.

Molly wrapped her arms around his waste and pulled herself tight to Jim's chest, leaving Jim's arms akimbo and elevated, as though he were walking into a cold, deep swimming pool “If you ever need anything, you're not afraid to ask, are you?”

“Never,” he said as he dropped his arms around her neck and squeezed her yet-tighter to his body. “Never.”

***********************************************************************************

With a rush, Jim's perception was planted into the core.

“Sweep rear and hold the ingress.” Jim had developed an autonomic habit to respond instantly to Marion's commands when she used her authoritative voice. He snapped instantly into action and began crawling through the tunnel toward the rear entryway, squeezing around the rusting corpse of a long-dead train. He butted the sniper rifle he was toting to his shoulder as the tripod-feet at the end automatically extended and leveled. “I am going to advance on the objective, keep an eye out for the enemy stealther.”

“Roger Gold one,” Jim pulled the pin of his mass driver back and pushed a special round into the breech. “Prepping track drone.” With a careful trigger pull, Jim fired the drone at a forty-five degree angle into the sky with a soundless rush. The drone flashed briefly as it exited the muzzle, lost instantly to the rich blue sky above. At length, Jim closed his eyes and used his will to project himself to the sky. His visual perception and acoustic position changed to a 3rd-person perspective, like one of his battle arena games. The mountain range his tunnel was in became transparent, using the Core's visual processors to augment the drone's perspective. “Drone away, patching map data through.”

“Roger, Echo one,” Marion's voice confirmed, a bit more casually. “Keep sharp for Tomah and Blaize, they like to play it tricky on this map. They're not the type to sit around and let us just steal the objective, Blaize has a very 'the best defense is a strong offense' mentality.”

“Roger that. I have the drone tracking heat signatures and I'm feeding to our analysis servers which are doing the change differentials on the terrain to alert me of any motion.” Jim pulled the pin back on his mass driver and allowed the casing of the drone's launcher to shell out of the breach. He collected the metal tube and put it in an empty compartment at his hip. The mass drivers were based on extremely archaic technology, but there was little need to change something that was still incredibly effective. And, as effective as they were, they were equally as hard to master. Unlike an energy rifle -who's rounds were less “rounds” and more concentrated laser bursts that instantly appeared at their target, moving at the speed of light- a mass driver had a physical projectile with a travel time. It required you to compensate for things like wind, ballistic trajectory, droop, and the like. The tracking computers did a great job at “spotting,” as it's known to snipers, but without a full-fledged AI, all of the target acquisition and shot calls were still reliant on the meat-computer inside Jim's head.

Jim pulled his “normal” view into a mini-map frame in the lower corner of his perception and pulled up the cartoonified map the analysis servers had created to his main field of view. It was a rudimentary black and blue wire-frame of the space, with Marion and Jim represented by green polygonal units. Jim was currently at the mouth of a stout tunnel, the only land-based entrance through the ring of mountains inside which the campaign objective, a downed space vessel, lay smoldering inside. They needed to hold the objective until backup came to recover it. Marion had already piloted Heimdall half-way along her blue mission line to the objective when a red wire-frame popped up on the map in the lower quadrant of the spherical map. The change differentials had noticed something out of the ordinary and was flagging it as one of the enemy interlopers. The figure began to move, and a red projection line appeared on the map, displaying its estimated destination. It was heading to the beach coast flanking the top of the rocky ring.

“I have enemy activity at the edge of the map. It looks like they're heading for the beach again,” Jim relayed to Marion. “Judging by the speed, it looks like it's Enlil making the run. What should I do?”

“You're the tactical genius,” Marion replied snarkily. “I say we collapse the tunnel and you go defend the valley that he's running for.”

“Yeah,” Jim began as he began crawling out of the entrance, “but the last time we collapsed the tunnel and defended the valley, Tomah came in from the south and used his rocket booster to get over a low mountain on the south face and picked you off before you could hit the objective.”

“But we have the beacon set up to cover that side now, right? Sniper-Scout is too strong on this map against Sniper-Heavy,” Marion replied. “That's why we're running you through this sim. We need your 'strategic brilliance' to figure out a positive scenario. And it doesn't hurt that you need sniper training.” She was rapidly closing in on the mission objective. The enemy unit, which Jim could now clearly see from the overhead drone was indeed Enlil, was about half-way up the river basin he was tracking to get to the coast. There was still no sign of Tomah.

Jim dropped a charge inside the tunnel and began sprinting Annie Oakley around the ring, toward the coast. After a short while, a thud and rumble tremored into Jim's feet as the dotted line representing the tunnel disappeared from his map. “I know. This is the fifth time you've said that exact same phrase, 'it doesn't hurt that you need sniper training.' I can hear you wink when you say that, you know? I think the scenario we have worked out is going to work this time. This is the third time Blaize has ran that channel, thinking that he can skirt outside range but still maintain speed through the wilderness. The plasma rifle wasn't strong enough to disable him the last time we defended the valley, but I think I can drop him this time.” Jim deviated away from the mountain face he had been tracking and made a B-line for the blinking navpoint he pinged onto the map. “If I can get to nav point beta before Enlil hits the river switchback, I can clip him with a mass driver while he's crossing the terrain to avoid double-backing.”

“How do you know he won't take the double-back again? He did it the first two times,” Marion inquired. She was within striking distance of the objective.

“Exactly because he's taken the switchback both times. He'll do it to throw us off. Watch,” Jim had made good time and was just hitting the nav-point, the farthest reach of his rifle's possible range. He instantly hit the deck and set up his rifle. The tracking computer set up a targeting reticule on him and gave Jim a shot probability based on the bullet path through the undergrowth. 50%. “Looks like landing this shot will be a coin toss. Wish me luck! Javelin round is breached,” Jim said as he pulled the pin back on his rifle and pushed a long, snub-nosed round into chamber.” His perception still in the clouds, he focused on the red outline of Enlil and gently squeezed the trigger. As expected, Blaize took the switchback, and the success percent on Jim's shot jumped to 85%. As the bullet exited the muzzle with a flash, the air in front of the massive round compressed and then collapsed behind it in a thunderous bang due to its prodigious exit velocity. The crack triggered the computerized round's transformation as it spun into action. The miniturized momentum sinks absorbed the shockwave, channeling it into a the rear thrusters, the spin from the barrel's rifling forming the jets from the three tiny nozzle into a twisted stream of hot plasma that extended a few feet behind the round. The snub nose of the round became an ethereal barb, blue with converted energy, forming a dissipator cone in front of the round, reducing drag and allowing the round to rocket forward. The internal guidance computer made tiny microseconds-long corrections to the round by modulating the various thusters' outputs.

Quicker than Jim could blink, the round had closed the several miles between he and Enlil. Just before impact, the blue barb disappeared, forcing the air between Enlil and the round to compress. The rapid compression released a shock of energy forward, into Enlil's center masss. This also fueled rapid ablation at the front of the bullet, revealing an explosive payload. The explosive bullet struck right into Blaize's Core, the blue lance exploding Enlil's shoulder, sending his arm, head, and several other indistinguishable body parts asunder. “We have a hit!” Jim roared through the comm. He returned his perception to his Core and quickly shucked the casing of the round.

But, before he could collect the spent shell, Jim was distracted by an imminent beeping from his core. “Impact imminent,” the calm female voice came into Jim's head before his world went black and he felt the jarring rush of his perception being withdraw from the sim. With a loud “kutcsh,” the hatch door of his simulated plug swung open, Blaize's shaded face haloed by the harsh overhead lighting, his Aug's irridescent yellow inner glow burning against his black face.

He was at Jim's feet as he lay supine in the plug. “That was a fucking amazing shot, man,” he said as he extended a hand to Jim.

Jim swung his arm across his body and locked thumbs with Blaize they both pulled him up from recline. “Where was he?” Jim inquired as he shook his head back into place, the disorientating context switch unable to be knocked loose.

Upon reaching his feet and stabilizing his balance, he followed Adrain's finger, who was now pointing at the massive array of monitors and 3D projections the swarm of analysts in the room were watching. He saw Tomah, piloting Simo, in an active camouflage gillie suit on top of one of the higher mountains. He was training his attention on Marion now, who was taking up evasive maneuvers behind the rough cul-de-sac the space vessel's impact crater had dug.

“How the hell did he get up there without us noticing? He couldn't have climbed it that fast and our beacon would have detected his jump jets?” Jim inquired to Blaize blank-face, almost accusatory.

“Ah,” Blaize leaned back and crossed his arms, rolling onto his heels, a smug smile creasing his cheeks, “there is a well-hidden dried river bed that runs along the mountain ridges that we noticed last attempt. It was a bit of a tight run, but if you deploy on the beachfront, you can get across it without disturbing the canopy and triggering the motion sensors. The gillie does the rest.”

“Hell of a gambit. You wouldn't have much energy left to power the gillie once you got into position,” Jim observed as he too hugged his arms to his chest, rocked back on his heels and quickly glanced at Blaize, eyes fixated on Simo.

“And yet, here you stand,” Blaize replied with a grin.

“And yet, here you stand, as well,” Jim repartee'd with a sharp wink.

“Like I said,” Blaize re-folded his arms, leaving a half-smirk on his face, “that was a fucking amazing shot. Javelin round was inspired. How the hell did you get in position so fast?”

“We deployed in the train tunnel and I opened with a beacon covering the western forest,” Jim explained, eyes still fixated on Tomah. Neither had moved from their embankment. It appeared that Marion was wearing out the gillie, and Tomah was wearing out the beacon. “You'd ran that river a few times, I took a guess you'd notice I noticed and would run the switchback instead of crossing the forest. Bottom of the switchback...”

“...was JUST inside the Javelin's 100% range with a quick lateral strafe,” Blaize cut him off.

“Bingo,” Jim said as he made a finger gun and clicked the side of his mouth.

“Inspired, man,” Blaize acknowledged with a nod as they both returned their attention to the monitors. Marion had lost the bide, and the beacon ran out of energy just before Tomah's gillie.

“What the hell is she doing?” Blaize said as Marion took the mortar tube off her back.

“Does Tomah have LoS on her?” Jim inquired in reply, arms dropping to his side as he leaned toward the screen.

“Doesn't look like it. We didn't deploy with a beacon, didn't have time,” Blaize returned as Marion loaded a gigantic rocket-propelled grenade into the tube and hoisted it onto her shoulder.

“Tomah is too low on energy to move, isn't he?” Jim's jaw went slack in excitement, “He has to wait for Marion to stir before he can site her. I think she's going to bust him blind,” Jim clapped his hands together and rubbed them together palms-flat.

“You brought a bazooka?” Blaize responded as he eyed Jim like a crazy person.

“Bazookas are cool, man,” Jim said casually, still smiling, mouth wide open as he eyed the monitors, “I was supposed to find and eliminate you and then bait out Tomah so Marion could hit him with a bunker buster.”

Marion was in a kneel and had dialed in her site line, still hidden behind the wall of uplifted dirt the crash-landed spaceship had rent. One of the analysts had laid over her targeting computer's overlay onto her observer's video feed. Her guess was a little off, but Tomah was still within the primary blast zone of the massive charge.

However, before the characteristic, stealthy “thwunk” of the launched grenade could go off, her feed cut out, and the stereotypical “kutsch” of an opening hatch could be heard behind them.

“What the hell?” Marion grumbled as Jim and Blaize swung around to see her sitting up and aggressively ripping off the sensors attached to her flight rig.

Another “kutsch” rang out as Tomah's plug swung open at the other end of the bank, his devious cackling drowning out the deafening silence in the training room.“Oh my god,” he said as he pushed himself up and ran over to Marion who had just finished unclipping the chords connected to her suit and had ripped off her helmet, her short-cropped black hair matted to her cheeks, framing her face. “I can't believe I got you! OSOK, too! That's crazy!”

“What the fuck did you do,” Marion looked deflated and defeated and angry.

“I had run out of energy on the gillie and I wasn't sure if you were still behind that embankment or if you were making a move on me,” Tomah huffed around pants and wheezes as he frantically gesticulated. “So, I fired a digger into the bank at the only angle that gave me 100% penetration. Looks like it just barely skimmed through the top of the bank and got into your flight plug. I seriously just fired a blind round.”

“That's one hell of a lucky shot,” she responded, shaking her head and pulling her face into a disappointed smirk. Jim wasn't sure if she was ready to offer a good-natured laugh or was about to punch his head off. “I had a 'nade in the tube and was about to bomb you. If you had missed, you'dve zero'd my shot computer on your locale and it would have been curtains, man.”

“Actually,” Jim said, “If you had fired, he was on just on the lip of your redzone. If you had fired an instant earlier, you'dve got him anyway.”

“Fuck!” Marion screamed as she let out a loud, good-natured laugh. “Well, that's what I get for hesitating.”

“Man, that was the best run yet. You almost had us!” The four had formed into a little square, and Blaize slapped Marion and Jim on the back as they had a good laugh together.

“Good job, guys,” the Commander's unmistakable voice carried over the laughter. At once, Jim, and everyone, really, turned where they stood and locked eyes on her and Standish as they ushered a tall, incredibly fit girl with tight black hair in casuals into the room. After Marion's bomb, he daren't guess her age, but she looked reasonably young, her round face beaming with innocent wonderment.

“She just showed her the Cores,” Marion slapped Blaize on the chest with the back of her hand as she knowingly pointed at the new recruit and addressed the Commander, “didn't you.”

“Thought I'd try something new with this one,” she said as she crossed her arms underneath her bust and took up her typical toe-pointed T-stance.

“Well, I think you should go back to holding saving it for after you introduce us,” Blaize said as her nodded his head toward her charge. The girl was wide-eyed and couldn't land her focus on anything for longer than an instant before she darted around to the next thing, her mouth hanging slack in wonderment.

“That's what I said,” Standish poked his head around the two, his caramel brown pate a refreshing site for Jim's weary eyes. He had on his shiny grey suit, a purple shirt beneath, unbuttoned down a few from the top in place of his varied neck adornment, his smooth, rippling chest bursting out.

“I like the suit,” Jim said, resisting the urge to run up and hug him. “Like what you're doing with the shirt. No fedora, though? Not even a Trilby?” Jim beamed ear to ear.

“Why thanks for noticing,” Standish said as he raised an arm between the two and cut in front between them. He stood, almost triangular from foot to shoulders, heels together, and adjusted the cufflinks. “I decided the hats were passe and that, when you look this good, you shouldn't hide it underneath a tie.”

“A new series of Bond movies were discovered in a vault a few weeks ago and now he fancies himself a secret agent,” the Commander said from behind him with an audible eye roll, head lolling back in disdain. “This is Tony. She's our new recruit. Just pulled her out of deployment from the Eastern Line that separates the DPRC from the western colonies.”

“Ah, so battle-tested,” Tomah said as he reached out a hand. “I'm Tomah.”

“Just nervy training exercises,” she verbally shrugged as she took his large hand into both of hers and shook emphatically. “Never any skirmishes like you all.”

“Not much of a difference these days, really,” Blaize said as he took the hand she had presented. “Blaize.”

“Ooo!” She replied as she got very close to Blaize and put her hands on his shoulders. “You have the eyes! Can you do the light trick like Standish did on the train?”

Blaize shrugged and took a nervous step back, his face turning slightly red, “Not in here,” he said with an awkward expression on his face, “don't have access to the system.”

“Oh you all have them!” she said as she took a too-far-back step into the Commander, who caught her with open, flat palms, gently nudging her into the correct standing posture.

“Not me,” Marion said as she reached a hand out, “But I can still keep up with these jokers,” she said with what now looked like a well-practiced hip-waggle and thumb motion. “I'm Marion.”

Tony took it briefly and then used it to pull herself, closing the distance between her and Marion, siddling up slightly off to her side and gingerly touching her hair with her rear hand, her front palm still pressed into Marion's now-akimbo hand. “Culture kid, I've never met one of you before,” she said, eyes wide.

“Shit, girl,” Marion said as she dropped her hand and took a large step back, a horrified expression creasing her forehead, hands up above your shoulders. “Do you always get this fucking close to everyone?”

“Oh, sorry, I forget sometimes,” She said as she took a large step back, this almost bumping into Standish, who deftly juked out of the way and straightened his completely uncrumpled suit.

“Tony is a defector,” the Commander started. “She worked for the DPRC's core program before joining the IA as a mobile platform operator.”

“How long have you been grooming this one?” Tomah quipped with a chuckle and a knowing glance at Blaize and Marion.

“Groomed?” Tony said, as she furrowed her brow and pulled her lips down into a confused frown. “I met the Commander three months ago. She claimed to be a platform mechanic. We would talk when I brought my unit in after patrol. She was nice. Usually people are mean to me because they think I am a spy,” she looked back at the Commander with a warm grin.

“And you're sure she isn't a spy?” Blaize said coldly.

“Well, she's on lockdown just like all of you are, and if she is, we'll kill her,” Standish said with a cold shrug, arms still folded, feet still married at the heels at a ninety-degree.

“Don't be so dramatic,” the Commander said as she punched Standish's arm, hard, when Tony looked back in horror at him. “She's not and you know it. Don't worry,” she said as she switched attention to Tony, gently wresting her hands on the obviously-shake girl's shoulders.

“And you are Jim,” She said as she stepped out from under the Commander's grip and folded her hands to a point, bowing at the waist to him before offering her hand.

“I am,” he said as he shook her hand. “Did they talk about me?” Jim smiled as he shook her hand.

“Oh no,” she said, a bashfully. “You have owned me at one point,” she said as she rocked side to side, summoning the image of Molly's sheepish face at their graduation, but the angle engendered a very different thought. She was very close to Jim's height, and in all honestly, probably only a few pounds shy of his build as well.

“Excuse me,” Jim said as he shook his head into place. “Owned you?”

“Is that not the word you use here? Maybe it is powned,” she said with a giddy smile. Her uncharacteristic cutesieness was equal parts endearing and disorientating.

“Are you secretly running a dungeon or something, Jim?” Marion prodded from the right side of the line they had unconsciously formed.

“No, I mean,” Jim shook his head from the back foot, “powned would imply that you game?”

“Yes,” she said with an awkward attempt at a skip. “You played against me in the Digital Olympics when you were very young. You eliminated in me in the first round. I have been a fan of yours ever since. You are amazing, Jim! I could not believe you were a pilot when I saw you on the news. You are the reason I took the Carol's offer!”

Jim's eyes grew wide. His heart sank and his head became so cloudy he couldn't see out of his own eyes, the room becoming blurry, a sharp white heat brewing at his ears and temples, his heart dropping a thousand miles into his chest.

“On to the Magister?” Tomah interjected for the save, sensing his unease.

“Magister?” Tony turned her body fully, and batted her glance between the Commander and Standish.

“We, uh,” Standish said, a chink in his coolness armor flashing across his cheek, “aren't going to be encouraging her down that path,” he recovered, his left hand shoving into his pocket.

“I actually would like a status meeting, if that's possible,” the Commander interrupted, mercifully drawing their attention away from Standish. “Meet me in the debriefing room post-haste.” She turned on her heel and pulled an arm behind Tony, ushering her out of the room. Standish fell in line, turning at the waist at the last minute, angling his body forward and to the side, throwing up a double-thumbs-up and a frozen wink as the door closed behind them.