Chapter Text
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
The engineer’s voice was crackly over his radios, distant. They didn’t want any extra bodies tangled up in this introduction; they needed as good a response as possible from the other party.
“Positive,” Hydra insisted, shoulders set and head held high. He could feel his coolant coursing, a jittery, nervous energy buzzing to the tips of his fingers, making it impossible to stay still. He shuffled his feet back and forth as he waited, trying to look as if he had any clue what he was going to be doing.
Alstom had been working with them for years on this project. There’d been updates every now and then. Fuel cell development, confirmation that something used with him had worked here. Requests for his blueprints and records, for advice on suppliers and parts. Quizzical inquiries into his function— working scale, yes, long since, but work ready? And personality.
And lastly, finally, travel plans.
Today, the next phase of the project, and the next eighteen months of his life, would start.
Overhead the sun was shining, the sky lightly clouded. He’d not seen much of Germany on the way here, and the unfamiliar countryside kept catching his attention. There were mountains on the horizon, birds he’d never heard before singing in the brush. He couldn’t fight back the hair-trigger distraction, the buzzy anticipation making it much, much worse.
Today, he would meet a miracle.
Slowly, the huge exterior shutter of the warehouse lifted. A human woman stepped out, smiling.
“Hello!” she called. She was fair-haired, middle-aged and smiley, giving the impression of a kindergarten teacher who’d decided to put on a boiler suit and get her hands dirty. “You’re Hydra, yes?”
“Yup!” He sounded much too enthusiastic, but how could he not be? He dropped to her level, trying to reclaim just a little bit of dignity. “Pleasure to meet you, Frau…?”
“Bauer,” she answered, her tone bright. “Do follow me. Someone special is waiting to meet you.”
Suppressing the urge to dart ahead, he trailed after her. He’d never actually seen inside another test facility before— he’d been trotted out at expos and conventions, but the actual places behind the other technologies there might as well have been shangri-la. It looked surprisingly similar to his home. The network of buildings he’d been led through housed other projects, with most of their names painted on the sides in inscrutable German. This one was the same sort of dull, practical warehouse-style construction he’d come to expect from newer sheds. Concrete floors, white walls, and cool overhead lighting. He would have been disappointed, but then the corridor gave way to another door, and he saw her.
The first thing that struck him was just how small she was.
The prototype was, in a lot of ways, an echo of him. Built on his technologies. She’d have to grow into her blueprints, just like he had.
All the same, he was sure he’d never been quite that little.
She wouldn’t even reach his hip, if she was standing. Even her human handler might have been taller than her. And she’d been built incredibly young. He’d seen pictures, of course, but nothing that gave much of a sense of scale; just the contextless shape of a toddling trainlet, marooned in a sea of white walls.
She still had the soft, round face of a baby, big blue eyes looking up at him distrustfully. Her hair was mousey-blue and wispy, loose around her jawline. In one pudgy hand, she had a wooden toy train, which she’d been pushing around the carpeting when they’d interrupted.
It looked like a truck.
It looked, he realised, like him.
“Oh, wow…” he said. Moving slowly, trying not to startle her, he drew closer. Here it was— a half-decade of hard work made real. The beginning of a revolution, and it was staring at him, bright inquisitive eyes locked onto his. Hydra bit his tongue, knowing that she probably wouldn’t understand any of the things he wanted to say. “That looks like a really cool toy, could I see it?”
The child looked to her human handler. Her free hand went to her mouth.
“Ah,” Frau Bauer said. “She doesn’t have any English yet, and she has very little speech in general. We were hoping your presence would help with both.”
“Well I talk a lot, so it should rub off on her eventually.”
Hydra was trying to keep his tone calm, but he couldn’t stop staring at the trainlet. A hydrogen train. A real one, planned for mass-production, a miniature multiple unit. She’d take to the rails someday, under her own power, moving passengers. Ten years ago she’d been the stuff of science-fiction. Every agonising step of his development— test after test, fuel cells and fixtures and a hundred thousand other things— had led right here.
She was so new. So small. She didn’t even talk yet.
The woman sounded concerned by that, so probably the kid should have been talking, but he didn’t know. His experience with trainlets started and ended with the working-scale kids who’d peek over the fence of the training yard next door. They were teenagers, or roughly equivalent, confident on their wheels and most definitely talking. So much and so loudly that he’d hear them shouting and laughing from across both complexes.
“Do you want to introduce yourself?” Frau Bauer suggested. “We’ve explained who you are, but she might not quite understand yet.”
“‘Course.” Hydra sank to his knees, gave the trainlet a little wave to try and catch her attention. Spoke softly, like he’d been told to in the pre-contact files. “Hi! My designation is JCB-Hydrogen-003, but I go by Hydra. What, uh, what’s your name?”
The toddler just kept staring at him, sucking on her fingers. Slowly, her brow knit into a scowl, wispy little eyebrows drawing together.
“Coradia iLint 001,” Frau Bauer supplied, helpfully. “First of her kind.”
“Big name for such a little guy, huh?” He couldn’t keep the reverence out of his voice.
“Some of us have been calling her Corrie.”
Her head whipped around at that, and Hydra had to hide a smile. Something similar had happened with him; for a while he’d apparently only answered to -003.
“I see.” Hydra waved again. “Hi, Corrie.”
He had absolutely no idea what to do with a baby. He’d been briefed, sure, but “fueling and general care” didn’t really get the situation across. This tiny, precious marvel would be his responsibility, now. Stars above.
“Do you want to pick her up, and we’ll start the tour?” The human suggested. Corrie’s focus was still on her, despite Hydra’s best efforts. “She should get used to you.”
“Oh, sure?”
Hydra had never held a baby before, but Corrie seemed sturdy enough. She looked a little puzzled when he reached for her, but she didn’t protest as he scooped her awkwardly into his arms. Just leaned into his side as he rose, tucking herself closer and keeping them balanced. Tiny hands scrabbled for a grip on the smooth surface of his panelling, then settled for something vaguely like a hug.
She was warm— because of course she was; she wasn’t cryogenic like him. Warm and impossibly small, light but somehow solid in his arms, smelling like fresh paint and slightly-scented detergent. A dream made real.
Corrie stayed like that as they were escorted through the facility, Hydra trying and failing to absorb the deluge of information. There were the expected maintenance areas, worker accommodation, track sites for various tests- and the nuances and complexities of the trainlet herself. Every single point in her care regime made him feel more out of his depth.
Feedings and fuelings had to be staggered at least thirty minutes; fuel first, or she’d struggle to digest anything she was given, and no more than an hour or apart or she’d get hungry and fussy and throw fits. They were trying to wean her, but she was stubborn; still got most of her raw materials from the bottle, still took a dummy to soothe her through testing. Her proof of concept stage— when she’d been an infant— had worked fairly well, but there was snagging in the upscaling; he’d have to keep an eye on that. There was a night feed, even now, if they’d been working her hard in testing.
The subject of the lecture sighed, her head falling against his shoulder. She was warm, limp, a snuggly little bundle of dead weight with one thumb wedged in her mouth. When he glanced down at her, her eyelids were drooping. Hydra was pretty sure he understood what was happening— he could remember, very distantly, being small enough for an engine to carry him this way; the smooth, soothing motion of someone else’s skating.
He was right, it turned out.
By the time they were back at the main building, the future of the railway had fallen asleep in his arms.