Chapter Text
Your room has begun to retain the smell of your belongings.
Well, actually, your room smells like melted taffy because you left two boxes of Short Change by a space heater and it liquefied to tropically scented puddles of goo, but that’s still something. This is all something. You’ve never had a room to yourself before - or at least not a room that belonged to you - and it’s strange. You’re lying on your bed, waiting. You’ve been on-ship for about a week now, though most of that week has been in medical, engineering, and general briefings. Your helm and your chest harness are on the floor and the rest of your armor feels… insubstantial as you lie there.
Your new equipment, though modeled after Halsey’s work, is not a SPARTAN’s armor. Your helmet is 70% visor now, domed gold face shielding and highly-reactive neural interface that makes up the whole front and top of the helmet. Functionally, the OS is a better design than the MJOLNIR HUD, but the armor itself has no shield generators; the outer shell is titanium alloy but not pure; it has no force-amps, no reactive circuits, no bio-foam injectors; lock-down system is in place; it does have space-worthy pressure seals, mag-strip holsters, and titanium nanocomposite bodysuit with hydrostatic gel layer.
No word on its AI interface. You think, of all the things to gut the armor for, the AI interface is the least useful. Most SPARTANs never fight with an AI on board and the heinous expense of the necessary liquid crystal layer accounts for 90% of the MJOLINIR’s expense so, to you, the ‘cheap and ugly’ version of Doctor Halsey’s armor would be gutted for this. In your opinion.
Mostly you’d rather have shield generators. Like a real SPARTAN.
You think of these things as you wait.
You have one foot locker with one rucksack and in that rucksack are your belongings:
One battered datapad – Everson’s, still loaded with his collection of digital comics. About eight boxes of Short Change. A blue plug-in holo-light, ostensibly for reading. Three sets of dog tags – collected and given back to you – on a thin chain with three bullets – dug out of your lower back – from Tantalus. A set of clothes in your size: four sets of black fatigues, two sets of blue, one tan. Socks, underwear, an electric shaver. Combat boots; half a dozen UNSC issue T-shirts; a sweatshirt (also UNSC). Six paper-back issues of a re-print Superman comic released on Reach. You got them by tracking down and calling Angela Kohl – the gunnery specialist from Circumstance – to ask about Seattle. She knew nothing of his whereabouts but she mailed you the set.
These are the things that are yours. Everything else is borrowed.
“Agent Maine.”
A pleasant, slightly automated female voice says your new name through the PA system. The Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System, FILSS for short, is generally incapable of sounding any other way but pleasant, which, apparently, is a glitch in the ‘dumb’ AI’s colloquial subscripts. There’s a ticket in to maintenance because the monotonic cheerfulness is ‘creeping everyone out’.
“Agent Maine, report to the training room floor for combat assessment.”
Get your armor on.
Time to meet your team.
***
Your teammates don’t seem incredibly thrilled to meet you.
There are seven agents already waiting in the training room – a massive cylindrical room outfitted with the latest in war game tech, environment manipulation and hard-light generators. Or that’s what they say -- you have not had the occasion to train here yourself. High overhead, there is observation room behind wide viewing panels. Behind the glass you can see two figures. Recognize them, even at this distance -- the Director and the Counselor.
Even from here the weight of their observation is a physical force. Ignore it. Cross the training room floor.
The other Freelancers stop talking when you come in. They’re all gathered around the center of the floor. As you close the distance between yourself and them, they look at you and you think, their armor looks like MJOLNIR armor. But it’s not MJOLNIR armor and they are not SPARTANs. One of them, a woman in purple and green, leans toward another Freelancer, also in purple and green, and says:
“This is the motherfucker they bumped straight into Alpha Team?”
No one else says anything though as you square up to them.
The intercom comes online.
“Thank you for joining us, Agent Maine. With you here, all agents present now represent the top operatives of Project Freelancer not presently deployed on active missions. Agents Connecticut and Florida are currently deployed. You will meet with them upon their return. They, plus the agents here, comprise Project Freelancer’s Alpha Team. They exclusively cleared for Level Zero and, as per your joining their ranks, so are you, Agent Maine.”
The Director’s drawl is strange to you still, but you don’t mind it. It’s weirdly soothing, though you cannot tell if that’s because the Director is the clear source of objectives and order thus far or because you have a legitimate affiliation with his regionally specific Earther-accent. He is not really speaking to you, though. He is clearly saying all this for the benefit of the other Freelancers. You suppose they think he’s saying it for you.
“We will be conducting a series of hand-to-hand full contact matches now, agents.” Blink behind your visor, but otherwise do not react to this news. “I know there has been some… malcontent about the inclusion of Agent Maine on the roster. We will be setting those concerns to rest today.”
Do not react to that announcement either. Question the tactical motivations behind pitting you against the other Freelancers, but do not flinch. Watch the others. Note how the agent in light-brown armor and the agent in turquoise exchange a look and how a dark green and orange pair immediately elbow each other and become more attentive at the possibility of fight.
“Now let me be clear, agents. I am not permitting these match ups because I believe Agent Maine needs to prove himself to you. I am conducting this test because I want to be fully assured that Agent Maine will not kill any of you during the course of his working with you.” There is a stunned silence. Several agents visibly bristle. It’s clear, at least to you, that he’s baiting some of them. “I am confident that your training, augmentation, and equipment are more than enough to match Agent Maine’s particular skill set.” His voice lowers and the room’s barometric pressure drops. “Now, I need three volunteers.”
“Three on one?” says an agent in light-brown armor. “Really?”
“Yes, Agent York, really. And you’ve just volunteered.”
“Crap.”
“I volunteer,” says Orange.
“Me too,” says Green.
“Agents Montana, and Oregon. Thank you. Everyone else please clear the training room floor.”
Turquoise and the two Purple-Greens briefly circle Agent York who complains, “Man, I’m the fucking security specialist. Are you kidding me?”
“You’ll be fine,” says female Purple-Green, in a tone that says ‘you are gonna die and I will laugh’.
“Yeah,” says male Purple-Green, in a tone that means ‘what she said’. “Just don’t let him hit you. Like ever. Because I think his specialty is punching skulls in and you have this really punchable skull…”
“We knew this was coming,” says Turquoise. Her tone is stern. “After what happened to Nevada, the Director said he’d be bringing in more muscle.”
“Yeah, but I thought that meant, like, a couple more tough guys and bumping them up the leaderboard. Not one guy with all the muscles of three guys,” hisses York. “One guy the size of three guys and why am I volunteered?”
Turquoise pats York on the shoulder and says, softly, “Just keep to formation and keep ahead of him. He’s big. He’s won’t be fast and you’ve got Montana and Oregon. This is what they do.”
It’s good advice. She’s wrong, though. The others clear the floor, looking curiously at you as you pass. York joins his eager compatriots, Montana and Oregon. He looks back and forth between the other two. “What the fuck are you two so happy about?” he demands.
“Breaking in the new guy,” says Montana, who is male.
“Breaking the new guy,” says Oregon, who is female.
“Are you two brain-damaged? Because you’re about to be.”
“Hey,” says Montana. He’s looking at you.
Tilt your head at him.
He shrugs and takes up a boxer’s fighting stance. “Good luck.”
“Match begin,” says FILSS. “In three… two… one.”
Your fist slams into Montana’s head and knocks him thirty meters into the wall.
“FUCK!” says York.
“Monty!” says Oregon. Montana smashes into the wall and crumples to the floor with his visor smashed open and – do not stop, Agent Maine, do not be shocked by how hard you hit him without the MJOLNIR armor. Orders are order so you – pivot hard, catch Oregon’s decapitating back-kick in one hand. She’s fast though. She’s strong. She twists in your grip, whips the heel of her foot into the side of your head but you move. You spin your whole body to the right in a mighty shot-put spin and hurl the other Freelancer. She smashes into the far wall so hard the metal buckles and FILSS says, “Medical personnel to the training floor immediately.”
“Oh,” says York when neither get up again. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
York runs.
The match rapidly devolves into a game of ‘corner the security specialist’. York vocally dislikes this game -- “Nope, nope, nope!” he shouts, dive rolling away from you -- even ignores the Director’s command over the intercom of: “Agent York, the objective is to defeat Agent Maine, not play tag with him.”
“Really,” York mutters, backing away from you like a cornered animal, “I thought the objective was get two agents fucked up for no reason and then go for three.”
Hear him, tilt your head at him.
“Hey, big guy, how about you cut me some –? Yikes!” He ducks and pivots out of an attempted grab. “Okay, fine, don’t cut me some slack.” And when you growl, annoyed, he barks, “Really? Really?” Ducks another grab, deflects a swing. “What fucking pen did they find you in, asshole?”
Hatred is electric heat; feel it as static in your brain, the Freelancer’s words lancing something raw inside you and for the split second your temper gets the best of you, York rears back and kicks you, hard, right in the chest and the blow, powered by the strength mods of his armor, is enough to make every rib in your chest vibrate… but it’s not enough stop you grabbing the offending leg. (“Oh, shit,” says York.) Yank the Freelancer into the air like a rag doll, then slam him to the ground so hard the floor panels buckle.
York moans as you step over him, idly kicking his arm out of the way.
“Match concluded,” says FILSS. “Point awarded to Agent Maine.”
Agents North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming come next. Male and female purple-green turn out to be the Dakotas and the agent in white is Wyoming. Of the three, North and South are the real problem. They blitz you in sync.
Maine, admit that you are not really at your best right now. Your armor has no mods. You constantly over and under swing. Unlike Oregon and Montana, the Dakotas do not make the mistake of coming at you straight on. Frustration is a slow burn, building in your blood as they continue to blitz and fade, landing strikes and jumping back to avoid the sledgehammer swing of your counter attacks. South kicks you in the back of the right leg, knocks you down on one knee and North instantly smashes his elbow across your temple and snaps your head to the right and down.
“Shit,” says North.
South, not liking that, says, “What?”
“I don’t think that hurt him, I think we just –”
His next words are interrupted by your exploding from your crouched position into a flat out sprint, snapping across the space between you, leaping the last five meters and bringing your fists down with meteoric force directly where North was standing. All three leap clear just barely as the floor buckles again beneath the force of your missed strike. The Dakotas swear. Wyoming – sounding both annoyed and fed up – says, “Well, bollocks. York had the right idea.”
The Dakotas engage you.
Duck, pivot, block South’s throat shot facing one direction, grab North’s leg at the back of the knee, pivot, throw North to the ground, spin, slam your palm into South’s chest and shove her to the floor. Kick Wyoming as he jumps at you. Run at North and kick him in the flank as he struggled to stand, send him skidding across the training room floor and – get tackled from behind by Agent South. Snarling, she hooks her arm around your throat, locks her fist into her opposite elbow and tries to guillotine you with the full force of her armor mods behind it.
“Fuck you, you giant fucking –”
Grab South’s arms and hold them around your neck. Glare at her over your shoulder… then jump backwards and drop your full body weigh directly on top of her. Leave her groaning on the floor as you stand. Torque back around, ready to take down Wyoming and finish this fight before – oh. Blink. Process. Wyoming is still lying on the ground where you kicked him before.
He’s not hurt. He’s just lying there, hands folded on his stomach.
Wander over. When he doesn’t get up, come and stand directly over him.
“Good show, old chap, well done,” he says, lying there, very calm in the large swath of your shadow. Tilt your head at his accent just as FILSS cheerfully announces the match point to you. “Finally,” he says, sitting up and rubbing at the boot mark on his chest. He holds out a hand, obviously expecting you to help him up. Bemused, you take his hand and pull the other soldier effortlessly to his feet. Wyoming dusts himself off and slaps your shoulder armor in a congratulatory manner. “Welcome to the team. Frightfully good of you not to kick me again. There’s a good lad. Carry on.”
He leaves you there. Watch him go -- the only agent to walk off the training floor upright and not hobbling -- and decide you’re not so sure about Agent Wyoming, but you think you might like him the best so far. North and South Dakota lean on one another. You don’t have to see South’s face to feel her hate like heat off a smoking gun.. Ignore her. Pretend not to see.
And then there’s just the agent in the turquoise armor, squaring up to you and shaking out her hands.
“As our current squad leader," says the Director, "Agent Carolina will be fighting Agent Maine solo. FILSS, lock down the training room floor and clear for variables.”
Roll your knuckles into your palm, crack each joint. Then do your other hand. Wait. Watch her. Carolina bounces on the balls of her feet a little, circles back and forth at the edge of the center ring, pacing, pacing, as she waits for the room to lock down again and her anticipation is chemically catching. She wants to fight you, Maine. Her anticipation runs down your spine, makes it hard to stand still. You like how she moves, with a weight that belays her size – pent up intention humming through every sinewy line of her.
She cocks her head at you, jerks her chin. “You good to go?”
Her question surprises you a little. Nod your head.
“That’s two matches in a row, Agent Maine. You good?”
She talks to you like you’re already under her command. Nod again.
“Good.” She brings up her fists. “Let’s do this.”
“Match begin,” beams FILSS. “Agent Maine versus Agent Carolina. In three… two… one… begin.”
This is the moment you remember most about Agent Carolina: that split second between her moving and your moving together to attack and you think, She moves like Kelly. Then she hits you. She doesn’t just hit you though, she supercharges something in her armor at the exact second she launches from her starting position and she hits you going about 25 mph. She puts 25mph of force behind the heel of her cataclysmic haymaker which slams into your throat and floors you instantly.
She hurts you. Actually. Your head snaps back against the floor, the air goes of you, freeze for the split second it takes the pain to suffuse your whole body. Lie there, stunned, your windpipe half shut, gasping into your helmet’s respirator.
Carolina does not fucking slow down because she floored you. She skids past, reverses hard and leaps up, bringing the heel of her boot down directly on the space where your skull was and, while she doesn’t dent the floor, she makes the whole room vibrate. You’re up and moving, fading back (the first time you’ve had to retreat) shaking off the pain and the psychological panic from being unable to breathe for that split second. The cartilage of your throat still aches. You can’t make a single sound now. Carolina rushes you.
She deflects your right-hand haymaker and her momentum carries her fist like a freight train into your collarbone and knocks you back a whole five meters skidding and she kick flips off your shoulder and lands only long enough to launch herself at you again. This soldier with the turquoise armor starts hammering body shots, ducks your grab, twists, jumps, nails you across the left temple. It’s a hit. A real hit. It fills your skull with motes of light and make your body wretch in on itself the way real deep set pain does to a person… but she hangs in the air for a split second too long.
Grab her wrist, yank her against your chest and lock the steel girder loop of your arms around her middle. Take a split of a split second to be startled momentarily by the narrowness of this killer’s solar plexus, then pick her up and body slam her into the fucking floor. You are ruining these fucking floors, Agent Maine.
Carolina screams – once, in surprise and pain.
Remember that sound.
She doesn’t stay down, though. She kicks you off her back to your feet, hooks her ankle around the back of your right leg and kicks, driving you down on one knee and putting your skull directly into the path of her explosive follow-up kick. The heel of her boot slams into the underside of your jaw, bashes the world loose in your skull, and knocks you sideways to the ground.
Carolina’s already on her feet and, again, she doesn’t stop because you’re on the ground. She comes at you and soccer-kicks your head with brutal accuracy, knocks your teeth into each other and throws you to the ground again, reeling. She’s floored you three times now in a minute. Shake it off and come at her. Fast. Feint right, go left, nail her in the arm as she tries to block your punch. Like trying to block a wrecking ball. She goes rocketing across the room, hits the ground, rolls, catches her feet again and charges forward again.
Her fist cracks across your temple, her elbow across your jaw again with enough force to make every bone in your skull grind. Allow her to punch you in the chest and grab the joint of her right arm, heave up and roll to the floor with her. Pin her arm to the floor beneath your knee, block the volley of face shots, grab her other wrist and pin it. Rear back to pummel Carolina unconscious at the precise moment she knees you in the backside, knocking you forward and – she grabs your hips, twists, and mount-breaks you back to the floor.
She tries immediately to kick you in a testicles. Block her foot with your knee and from the floor, kick her in the gut so hard it sends her skidding away from you. She shakes it off, squares up, shouts at you.
“C’mon!”
There is a tightly gathered audience in the observation deck far above.
You both charge. This time, you let her hit you, grab her arm, then grab her by the neck and whip her to the floor for the second time. Get kicked in the jaw again as retribution. Watch Carolina reverse somersault back to her feet, circling away from you. Two body slams, the gut-kick, and the wrecking-ball haymaker have clearly done her some damage. She’s not moving as fast. That said, your mouth is full of blood and your head aches profoundly and completely, muscles burning beneath your armor.
“Ready to surrender?” says Carolina.
You can hear the smirk in her voice, but you can also hear she’s slightly breathless.
Answer her taunt by attacking. She ducks, jukes, deflects, ducks, defects, deflects, she spins, tumbles, it’s hard to follow the liquid flow of her movement. She doesn’t waste a hit. She doesn’t hit you anywhere that’s armored – aims for the throat, the stomach, kicks you in the head, tries to break your arm, fails, gets suplexed to the floor where you almost succeed in elbow-dropping into her stomach. She rolls out of the way, pivots from the floor, spin-kicks her heel into your jaw again, knocking you to one knee where your vision blurs and the taste of blood distracts you.
Recover, shake it off, attack. Carolina engages you – launching a volley of head and gut strikes, deflects, deflects, counters, ducks, counters you again. She moves among your attacks as a blur. She over-exaggerates. Her moves are flashy but fast and she uses it to fake you out over and over. Her breathing is getting labored, sharp and athletic. You’re having trouble breathing with your throat messed up. She hits you, you snatch at her, she kicks, you grab at her leg and she twitches back from you just fast enough to avoid getting grabbed. Circle each other. Her firsts are up, your hand are open. You can see her realizing that you intend to take her to the ground at any opportunity.
“Weapon variables activated,” says FILSS suddenly. “Lock-down paint live-fire. In three…” Turrets unfold from the floor around the perimeter of the room. “Two.” Carolina is already diving behind the pillars. “One.”
The whole room becomes a blur of pink paint rounds. This is new. Hunker down behind one of the pillars, not quite sure what ‘lock-down paint’ means, but you seem to remember something about impact electrolyzing hard-foam and it not being very fun stuff to get hit with. Carolina is darting around behind the pillars. Coming for you, obviously. She dives behind one of the column to your left and you – you charge forward and straight-kick the column.
The whole thing explodes forward and the sound of it impacting Carolina’s armor tells you that worked precisely as planned. Carolina flies backward, tumbling somehow into a backward flip and landing, skidding in a crouch covered in dust… and that’s when a lock-down round hits you in the knee. It’s like being hit with a taser - every muscle from your calf to your upper thigh cramps up and the armor instantly goes immobile, the gel-layer beneath seizing up and immobilizing your leg. Hiss in pain and surprise, falling to one knee as the pain jars through you.
Carolina is crouched across from you, behind the safety of another pillar “Gotcha,” she says.
Surprise her by snarling and powering through your locked down leg, the paint chunk snapping off, but leaving your leg locked. She easily avoids you, pivots beneath the clumsy swing you throw at her, kicks you in the chest so you slam back into the pillar behind you. Then she’s all over you. The split-second slow-down from the lock-down paint in your armor is all she needs. She hammers a fist into your throat, your gut, grabs your head and slams your face into her knee before smashing a straight kick into your chest and dropping you on your hands and knees, gasping.
“Stay down,” hisses Carolina.
Immediately tackle her.
She grunts, goes down with her foot against your chest, kicks you back into that pillar, your head snapping back against the stone again and this time when she hits you it’s with the full fucking force afforded her by having time to ramp up her speed mod and jump kick you with momentum. She hits you so hard you go down completely blinded – vision mottled with lights, whole body numb, your head a pulsing locus of pain and confusion. Get up. You’re on your hands and knees, your head pressed into your forearm, completely paralyzed by the impact. Get up.
You can’t get up and somewhere far away FILSS says, “Match ended. Point to Agent Carolina.”
Someone kneels down in front of you, puts their hand on your shoulder.
“Agent Maine,” says Carolina clearly. “Hey, you need medical?”
Shake your head, and breathe – your breath is a rattling growl – and shrug her hand off. Wait for the dull throbbing and the darkness to go. Shake it off, slowly take a knee… then stand on your own power. Carolina tilts her head at you and waits until you nod at her, rubbing your throat a little while the training room floor resets itself.
“Can you talk?” she says. She leaves it up to interpretation what she means – in general or after she punched you in the throat so many times.
Cough once, then, “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
If she is surprised by the gravel of your voice, she does not show it. She thumbs the release at the jaw on her helmet, tugs it off with no preamble and then you’re looking at Carolina. The neck of her undersuit fits snugs to her throat all the way up over the base of her skull, the underarmor cupping the sharp line of her jaw as she shakes her bangs from her eyes. She’s a redhead – a startling vibrant example and when she looks at you the pale green of her stare carries the eerie intensity of possible gene-augmentation. You wonder if she’s been augmented at all to withstand her speed mods. The question, like most things, is on the back of your tongue with no neat way to ask.
She tucks her helmet under her arm and looks up at you.
“Welcome to the team,” she says. “Sorry it’s not under less… exacting circumstances.” She glances toward the observation deck far above. “The Director wanted to make a point, I guess.”
The medical team have already cleared Montana and Oregon from the training room. There’s still blood on floor. Personnel are already moving to scrub it from the floor plating, mopping it with bleach. FILSS chimes that the training room is being closed for repairs and for all agents to please clear the floor.
“You coming back with the rest of us?” This question is, perhaps, more hostile than Carolina was the entire time she sparred with you. “Or are they hiding you in the back room or wherever they’ve been keeping you up until now?” When you shrugs, she narrows her eyes a little. “They set up your locker in the main showers already. Been there for a week now. You know that?”
No. You didn’t. Shake your head.
“Well, it’s yours. So you should use it.” She studies you, eyes tracking across the mirrored dome of the non-standard EVA helmet. Her stare is acute, penetrating, taking in details in a way that makes you want to hold as still as possible. “Look." She re-adjusted her hair slightly, then puts her helmet back on. "I have mission briefing to take care of, but I want to talk to you when I’m off. Understood?”
Shrug, but nod your understanding.
“You don’t talk much do you, Agent Maine?”
Open a shortwave HUD on the inter-team frequency. Transmit: no
She doesn’t laugh or respond to your strange way of communicating. “Alright. I’ll see you in a few hours. And watch it, alright?” Her tone is not exactly kind. “You put Montana and Oregon in the medical ward, Maine. It’s one hell of a first impression.”
You know exactly what kind of impression it was.
***
Oregon is in surgery. The doctors tell you she should be fine in a few weeks, though it’s unclear if she’ll be reassigned to the top roster again. They tell you Montana is not in surgery but they don’t know if he’ll be fine. He’s in the first recovery ward. He’s unconscious, they say, meaning you could go in if you wanted to.
You don’t go in.
It’s a quarter ‘til two when you notice you’re not alone in the hall anymore. There’s an agent in dark brown bomb tech armor standing at the end of the short corridor with her helmet under her arm. She’s small, pale, brunette, one side of her head shaved crew-cut short, the other half long enough to partially tuck behind her ear. The rest hangs to the pale line of her cheekbone. She’s watching you, a slight knit in her brow.
“You must be Agent Maine,” she says. When you shrug, she adds, “Figured. I’m Connecticut.” A small shrug, mirroring yours. “Connie.” She points behind you. “That one is Florida.”
When you look over your shoulder, sure enough, there is another agent. He’s fitted in dark blue armor, leaned up against the adjacent wall, arms folded. Like Connecticut, he is not very big. There’s a bandolier over his chest, hip to shoulder, and a second looped around his belt. His helmet is still on. Agent Maine, you have absolutely no idea how long he’s been standing there watching you and it sets your nerves slightly on edge. Ultimately, Florida doesn’t say anything. He just gives a kind of lazy two fingered salute, pushes off the wall, and leaves quietly as he came.
“Don’t worry about him.” Connecticut is smiling slightly. “He’s actually really friendly, but under the circumstances…” She leaves the sentence unfinished because the surgery light is still on in the hall, because the red glow is still on your armor, because it’s awkward that you hospitalized her teammates. “We just got back. Heard what happened.”
You don’t know what she’s expecting you to say. Say nothing.
She continues to study you neutrally.
“Well,” she says, “If you’re done, we should head back up to mess. Lina’s gonna want to have a sit down with everyone.” She puts her helmet back on. Fully armored, she still looks tiny. There are two combat blades and two magnums affixed to the mag-strips on her thighs. She falls into stride beside you, almost speed walking to keep pace. “You probably shouldn’t have given York your books, just for future reference. He kind of wrecks anything he borrows. Superman… that’s an Earther classic right?”
You stop.
Connie stops.
You stare.
Connie stares.
“Oh. You didn’t give him any of your things, did you?”
Five minutes later you have York pinned to a wall in the galley, hauled up over your head so his feet are way off the ground. His neck in your fist seems very tiny. York’s got his helmet off. Register his face – pale, Caucasian, flushed bright red, contorted with pain. Brunet. Everyone is shouting, but they seem far away through crackle of red static in your head.
“Maine! What are you doing?”
“Guys, stop! It’s okay just –!”
“Jolly good. That took less than a day. You owe me five quid.”
“Fucking Christ, why is this fucking psychopath even allowed –?!”
“Just put York down and let’s talk this out before–”
“Don’t. Touch. My. Stuff.”
“MAINE! STAND DOWN! THAT IS AN ORDER!”
Carolina, still in full armor, has a hand on your arm and her fingers dig into the crook of your elbow, hard. Snarl and let go of York, who drops to the floor coughing and clutching his throat. Carolina strides forward and shoves you back another step, putting herself between their security specialist and you.
“You have five fucking seconds to explain yourself, Agent.”
“York broke into his room,” says Connie immediately. “Look. That’s not his.”
“What?” Carolina follows Connie’s pointing, spots the comic book lying on the floor. She glances back at you, then York, then bends down to pick it up. Her fingers on the stapled spine are careful, but the cover is bent, a tear down one of the pages. “York…” she says, in this very dangerous tone.
“Right,” snaps York, standing up, “defend the guy who hospitalized two agents.”
“I’m not defending him,” she says, her tone low. Like thunder in the fucking distance is low. And the air density in the room changes with the force of her displeasure. “Agent Maine fucking brutalized two of my squadmates today and I have yet to hear him say a word on the subject, but you know what doesn’t help me? You breaking into another squadmate’s room to do recon like that’s you’re fucking job.”
“Okay, how am I the bad guy?” York gestures toward you. “This guy almost kills two people in a goddamn training exercise and they bump him up to the middle of the roster and I’m supposed to be cool working with him? I snuck in there to get a little background. Big deal. He’s the one brawling.”
“York’s fuckin’ right,” says South. She’s standing with her counterpart across the room, arms folded. “Why the fuck should we have to work with a guy they brought in right to the top of the roster? He didn’t even run missions before now. They’re just bringing him straight in on Alpha Team? What the fuck has he done?”
“Thin the ranks,” says her brother, so quietly the others likely don’t hear him.
South ignores him. “No. Montana and Oregon are Freelancers. I don’t know what the fuck this guy is.”
“That’s not fair,” says Connecticut sharply. “The Director ordered him to do the match ups. If you want to blame someone –”
“Oh shut up, Connie.” South drags her name into a sing-song. “You’ve been on Alpha team for, what, a month? And that’s only because Florida recommended you. He’s the only reason you’re even up here at the Big Kids’ table, so why don’t you shut up and let the adults talk?”
“That’s a bit sterling,” says Wyoming. He’s sitting off to the side, reading something on a personal tablet. He hasn’t looked up the whole fight. “Coming from you, I mean. You’re only here because of your brother.”
“Suck. My. Cock. Wyoming.”
“I don’t doubt its existence, South, my girl.”
“Shut. Up. All of you.” Silence falls when Carolina speaks. Carolina steps forward and hands you the battered issue, all tattered and colorful. When you don’t take it back, Connie steps forward and gently tucks it under her arm.
“I’ll just… hold onto that for a minute,” she says.
“Maine…” Carolina starts to say, her tone unfriendly. “York is a jackass. This is a scientifically proven fact.”
“Hey!”
She ignores him. “But you can’t barge in here and attack your teammates. That is not how it works here. The Director didn’t bring you onto this team to thin the fucking ranks. He brought you onto this team because we need soldiers who can do their job and your job on our roster is force specialist, Maine. You’re not here to fucking brawl in the fucking cantina like boot-fuck recruit throwing tantrums. Am I understood?”
Don’t say anything.
“I said: is that understood, Agent Maine?”
“Understood.”
“Good,” she says, then she looks at South. “And you, you are not paid to backtalk the Director’s personnel decisions or who he brings into the Project. In case you didn’t notice, the whole point of the match ups was to underline that Maine will not be babysat on our missions. So shut up. Keep your opinions to yourself and do your job. Clear?”
South mutters something vaguely like, “Right.”
North, who must be her brother, claps her on the shoulder. She elbows him.
“Connecticut, same to you. You don’t get to talk about the Director’s decisions that way. This isn’t a blame game.”
Connecticut shrugs. “No. But he sure did set us up to blame Maine, didn’t he?”
“Connie…”
She salutes Carolina. “Shutting up, boss.”
Then she rounds on York.
“You. I’ll deal with you later.” York looks visibly afraid at the notion. Carolina lets her judgment hang for a moment, then: “Maine.” She looks at you. “With me. Now.” And when you don’t immediately move she says, “Now,” and the air molecules in the room seem to ionize.
“I’ll hold onto this,” says Connecticut, meaning the comic book. “Be here when you get out.”
“Thanks,” you say, and Wyoming finally looks up from his datapad.
As you leave, following Carolina out the door you hear North saying, “He collects comic books?”
***
“Take off the helmet.”
Carolina has led you to the Freelancer locker room. It’s bafflingly large and empty with just the two of you, but Carolina and her anger more than take up space. She seems different now, not hot off the end of a fight. The glacial cold of her anger is beneath her skin and in her eyes and it’s behind her teeth – sub-zero and liquid Nitrogen – when she repeats herself.
“I said take off your helmet, Agent Maine.”
Don’t move for a moment, your right hand at your side flexing – testing the feel of a fist-- and Carolina sees you do it. She’s not wearing her helmet, so you can see every muscle in the architecture of her pixie-pale face flicker with displeasure. She waits for you to do it: to take a swing or do as she says and for a moment it’s there again – the adrenaline tang of a fight and the two of you could rip this room apart if that’s where you take this. You could. Most of you wants to, wants to attack her, to burn off the anger beneath your skin but...
She’s your squad leader.
Reach up and thumb the pressure seal at the jaw of your helmet, pull it off over your head. Settle the helmet on your hip and wait for Carolina’s reaction. She studies your face quickly, her gaze tracking over the thin, dark slash of scarring across your nose, cheek to cheek, the strange composition of your eyes, the too-pale complexion of your face. If she has a remark on your apparent age, she doesn’t make it.
She says, “Are you a soldier or an attack dog, Agent Maine?”
You should be offended, but you’ve been with too many Marines for too long. “Both,” you say.
“You are really not very fucking good at this first impression thing are you, Maine?”
“No.”
“Okay, Maine.” Carolina rests her hand on her hip, just above her side arm. “Here’s the deal: I don’t expect you to be nice. Being nice isn’t why you’re here and I don’t want you to be nice. I want you to be a brutal son of a bitch because that’s what the Director brought you here for, clearly. So let’s have this understanding where you don’t need to be nice to anyone and I don’t need to pistol-whip you like a rabid pit bull for biting other Freelancers, because I am not running a goddamn kennel.” There is a beat, likely to allow you to be offended again, but you’re not. Again, you’ve worked with Marines too long and she just sounds reasonable and well-mannered to you. “Fall in line. Got it?”
Shrug. “Yeah.”
The right side of Carolina’s mouth twitches and you think, maybe, she’s trying not to like you. Or at the least she’s trying not to smile because you are the motherfucker that hospitalized two of her agents and she cannot, is not allowed, to like you. You wonder, Maine, if those two agents were not her favorites on the team. Either way, she says nothing else, just nods once, slowly and leaves you to yourself.
So that’s how your first day with the Freelancers goes.