We made small talk for another few minutes or so, but I had things to attend to so I couldn’t push it much further. Cygnus knew this was a conversation for Prochazka and I alone, so he went off to talk a lap around the factory and left me to my own devices.

The headache was gone now, and I felt mostly on top of things—but Prochazka would understand if I was a little slow, anyway, so I tried not to worry about it too much.

All the way up to when my fist was on his door, I tried not to think about it.

He opened that door and saw me there and my worries stuck hard in my throat.

“Welcome back, Erika,” he said.

“Sir,” I stammered, without a follow-up thought.

“Come in,” he said, gesturing to one of the chairs—the ones that were always out, not the rusted metal folding chair he kept in the corner of the room in case he ever needed to talk to three people.

This was for us and us alone.

Prochazka took a seat behind his desk. He’d acquired a few more random trinkets since I’d last been in there—God, how long ago now? Not since February, at the bare minimum.

Four months of war, of up and down. Everything and nothing at all, somehow.

“I got a concussion,” I said, again. It worked with Cygnus, it was worth a shot again.

“I know,” he said. “I heard from Loybol. I’m glad you’re okay, mostly. It could’ve been a lot worse.”

I grimaced and didn’t respond for a moment. When I did, all I said was, “I got lucky.”

“No, you didn’t,” Prochazka said, voice even. As always. “You acted correctly in a situation that a lot of people would have panicked in. That’s not luck. It’s skill.”

People kept saying that, but it didn’t make what happened then feel any different. As the time between now and then widened it only made me feel more like I’d come out on the right side of a coin-flip.

Dumb luck got me here and nothing more.

He went on. “The odds are in your favor on this one. If you’re up and moving, and you can still do the droplet echolocation without getting too much of a headache, there’s probably no meaningful permanent damage.”

A bit of blood drained out of my cheeks. “Meaningful damage?”

“All concussions give you a little bit of brain damage,” he said, even-toned. “Your brain slams into the side of your skull. It’s not a big deal unless you get a lot of them in a short span of time. Luckily, concussions are pretty rare in our line of work, so I wouldn’t stress too much over it.”

“It seems like—like people’d get them pretty often.”

“Not really,” Prochazka said. “Most of the time, if they’re getting hit in the head hard enough to have a concussion, they’re getting hard enough for the brain to exit the skull completely.”

Admittedly, I walked right into that one.

The idea of any amount of brain damage—no matter how insignificant—was stressing me out enough as it was. I didn’t want to consider the possibility of another one, or what an actual, significant amount of brain damage would look like on me.

That wasn’t important now, though. Well—it was, but it wasn’t what I wanted to talk to Prochazka about.

I had a more pressing concern.

“Are we winning?” I asked him.

He nodded. “I think we are.”

“How do you know?”

“We know more about how to strike New York at its heart than we used to. That’s winning in my book.”

I swallowed. It was time, wasn’t it? This was my chance to tell Prochazka how I felt about his “winning.”

I opened my mouth and tried and couldn’t quite do it. Wasn’t my complaint—and it was a complaint, nothing more—worthless? We were winning, weren’t we? All we had to do was keep them on the back foot and make sure nobody too important got shot until wintertime, and then—assuming we knew where to go—the war was as good was won.

Maybe we weren’t doing too hot on the latter, but the former was going just fine. We were working our way up the ladder, picking apart their organization level by level. We had a step forward and promising prospects. Prochazka had the unlocked company phone of a mid-level manager in his possession—it was screen-side-down on his desk.

We were winning. What wasn’t to love?

“What’s wrong?” Prochazka asked me.

“Nothing,” I said, a touch too quickly. “I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously not,” he said. “You’ve almost completely eaten your lower lip.”

“It’s not important.”

“If it’s important to you, it’s important to us,” Prochazka said. He was smiling—I could tell from the contour of his lips—and just to make sure I was aware of it, it he licked them, all the way around, so the shape glowed extra warm in my perception.

I wasn’t sure if that was a thank-able action so I kept my mouth shut.

“I don’t—” I started. How was I supposed to phrase this? I didn’t like doing my job? I didn’t trust Prochazka’s leadership?

No—I had to say exactly what it was. Nothing more and nothing less. Anything beyond added riders to the sentiment, and I only wanted exactly the words that described my fear.

“I don’t like the torture,” I said.

And I was perfectly content to leave it there, but I blew it. Prochazka didn’t react to that statement fast enough and I panicked. “It—it’s not the same as what I was doing here. It’s more personal. When I was just doing random missions, I knew—I knew that those people had done wrong, that they were evil, and that it was justified to kill them, but these people…they don’t…they don’t know what they’re a part of, I don’t think.”

“They know what they signed up for,” he said, slowly.

“Like us?” I asked.

“Exactly like us,” he replied.

I looked away. I couldn’t face him any longer—but I knew I had to. I sucked in a breath and planted myself and forced my eyes to face his.

Now—now was the time. Even though everything was still a bit foggy and it was tough to string complete sentences together.

There was no quarter for cowards there.

“When Loybol killed Pete, or—or tried to assimilate him, or something, I wanted to tell her to stop. He didn’t need to die. Why did we kill him?”

Prochazka was unfazed, “Did you ever ask Loybol?”

“I—um, no,” I said. “I thought that it was your order.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’d assume she thought he may have been strong enough to survive assimilation, and then we’d get extra information out of him. I didn’t specifically tell her to do that, but it’s a reasonable choice given the opportunity.”

“Oh.”

“Loybol will probably tell you why she did it if you ask. I’d assume it’s what I said, but I know you care about hearing it straight from the source, so feel free to ask again.”

“I—I think I will,” I said, knowing full well I probably wouldn’t. This conversation was sapping the courage reserves enough as it was. I figured I wouldn’t have it in me to question things like this on this scale for at least another month or two, and by then the odds were good that we’d all be dead.

Then, I supposed, I could just ask Loybol when we were together in hell.

The final question burst out of my lips before I could stop it. “They want me alive, Prochazka. Um—sir.”

“I know,” he said, softly. “They’re not going to get that.”

“Why do they want me alive?”

He paused for a moment. Thought it over a but longer. “If your enemy is going to hand you a nuclear warhead, you’d rather they do it in a functional state than a broken one, even if you don’t have anyone on staff who knows how to use it.”

My breath caught in my throat. The possibilities surged up into my jaw and it locked tight keeping them back—the questions, the delusions—and the answers, possible and impossible.

“What would they want me for?” I asked, when I was half-confident I wasn’t going to spew my deepest insecurities.

“I don’t know,” Prochazka said. “I can guess, but I’m not going to. They’re not going to get you alive.”

“What if they do?”

“They won’t,” he said, again. There was no possible contradiction to his statement. It came from his lips so it was law—just like Loybol could do; like Bell could.

Those gods I walked among.

“But—”

“You remember what Benji told you, don’t you?” he said, quietly.

I stopped. And I did.

I remembered perfectly well what he told me—and the second telling of it, even if Prochazka did it without words, made it all come clear. It scrambled my chest. Turned my stomach. Bubbled through my eyes before I forced it back down. I was not going to cry in front of Prochazka. That was an unforgivable sin.

To myself—maybe in my bunk’s pillow—if I still felt so inclined in ten minutes when this was a past beyond memory, a simple thought inside a version of myself lost to time.

Now there was no time for such things. Nod. Understand. Do not question. Do not worry.

It was, is, and always would be—fine. This was what we signed up for. All of us, surely, had the same agreement.

It existed apart from opinions. I couldn’t say if it was good or bad—like air, the sky, the sea, hunger or thirst or boredom or pain: it was what it was.

“I’m going to go lie down,” I said, suddenly. “I—I think my headache’s coming back.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. My headache was going to come back if I kept thinking about that for too long.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I just wanted to check in and make sure you were okay.”

I stood. Pushed in the chair—felt a little woozy on the way up.

“I’m okay,” I said, in the same way I always did.

“Don’t worry too much,” Prochazka said to me, raising his voice just a tough to nab my attention as I turned to leave. “Try to enjoy yourself a little in the down-times. I’m not worried about you, and I think that should give you confidence that you shouldn’t worry about you, either. Okay?”

I pursed my lips. Waited just a second too long before agreeing.

The sentiment went in one ear and out the other. Stuck to nothing and picked up nothing as it passed.

I left that room as I entered it.

0 0 0

Cygnus was back in the common room when I returned. His walk, apparently, took exactly the same amount of time as my conversation with Prochazka.

I was a touch suspicious of that but didn’t know how he possibly could have seen or heard us, so I pushed that feeling away and tried to take this at face value.

“How was it?” he asked. He was sitting at the table, shaping an empty metal can into a long, thin rope of aluminum. Twirling it up with his finger into a small spiral-cone like a Christmas tree.

“Fine,” I said, sitting down next to him and watching his idle work.

“Did he say anything you weren’t expecting him to?”

“Not really.”

“Figures,” Cygnus said. For a second it seemed like he was going to leave it at that, but then he didn’t. “Man, I wished he talked to me half as often as he talks to you.”

“He doesn’t talk to you a lot?”

“Not unless he’s chewing me out for something,” he said. He let the spiral of metal stand where it was in its cone, satisfied that he’d shaped it enough. “Dude barely gives me an eye unless I’ve fucked something up. It’s—I don’t know, I just like attention.” His voice dropped at the end. “I shouldn’t be complaining when nothing’s really going wrong.”

“I get that,” I said, and I did—I really did, I meant that.

If nothing else, I knew that.

“He’s just an odd guy,” Cygnus said, leaning back. Folding his hands behind his head and turning his eyes to the ceiling. “And like…I know he can’t help but see both of us as his kids, and it bugs me a little that he’s all nice and understanding with you and he’s so tough on me. Like—I came in for my break to visit you, right? And I saw him in the foyer talking to one of Loybol’s standees and he didn’t even say hi to me. Gave me a look and a quick wave and that was it, like I was the milkman or some shit. I’m not saying I want a hug—although I wouldn’t say no to one—but just a little bit more tenderness would be nice, you know?”

He paused. “Maybe it’s just because he’s old and you’re a girl.”

I shrugged. “I mean, I—I kind of always thought he was like that with everyone.”

“He’s like that with Benji. Or, um, was,” Cygnus said, catching himself. “Yeah. He—really does wear a lot of faces depending on what he thinks the person he’s talking to needs to see.”

“Does he.” It wasn’t a question and I made no attempt to couch it as one.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I trust the guy to the ends of the earth. If he put a gun to my head and said the chamber was empty, I’d let him pull the trigger. But, like, that little bit’s always bugged me. It annoys me when people aren’t consistent with stuff like that. Pick a face and wear it, you know? There’s no sense in being untrue.”

I wanted to tell him—I wanted to tell him more than anything else in the world.

But I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t yet figured out if it was true or not. Not in the factual sense, but the personal one—was it an actual moral quandary or just a balking at the line of work I’d chosen?

Did I actually care about what I said I did, or was I just hellbent on not being untrue?

The woman behind the K-Mart an eternity ago, Pete and his letter, Sal in the house—did they know something I didn’t, or was I just being untrue?

I didn’t know, so I couldn’t tell him.

I left that fear buried. I did what I do best—I took all of it, the sentiment from Benji echoed by Prochazka, the future I somehow knew was inevitable despite any evidence to prove it, the torture and my delusion—

I chose not to think about them.

0 0 0

And despite all of that—

The next two days, I think, were some of the best days I’d ever had.

Not for any particular reason—and against the odds, if I have to say so—but they were. Cygnus didn’t get called back to the front lines until Thursday, which gave us a full forty-eight hours to exist without responsibilities. Both days were gently warm without a cloud in the sky and finished by humid nights that locked the warmth in. Nights in which I saw all things and I was invincible—and I showed Cygnus such, by doing target practice in front of the factory when nobody was around.

Thinking back on it now—I must have, somehow and subconsciously, convinced myself I could escape the fate that seemed so certain just before.

There was nowhere to be in those days. We had the world to ourselves, save for Loybol’s assimilated slaves wandering the factory like a mansion’s maids.

I wish I remembered more distinct things from that time. I remember plenty, sure, but I wish—for once—that I had a photographic memory just for that time. I wanted to be able to walk back through every second, even the ones just spent passing from one room to another with the light smell of grass carrying through the open windows, the blades of sun lining and heating the floor in strips.

A world without war in a place without perdition.

With the way things are now, these memories are worth twice as much as they used to be. I’ve got to cling to them with everything I have—but even then some parts escape me. Little bits here and there are vague. Things Cygnus said to me that I can’t quite recall; places I went without quite remembering the order I went to them in. The complete recollection of those two days was frayed at the edges in a way I could not possibly repair.

I knew, slowly, I was leaving it behind. Each tread over the memory cemented it in the form it was. That place was not the one we left. Unit 6 did not live there anymore. It was my home, still, but it wasn’t quite our home. The shape of the empty round table in the middle of the room told me as such: it was always, forever, going to at least a little bit empty. Emptier still, maybe, than I could reasonably imagine it in the moment.

We were all going to die out there—but for just forty-eight hours, we weren’t.

In those two days I had all the self-aware joy of the last day of a vacation, and none of the dread of the flight home.

But it’s gone now, I suppose. These recollections hold me over.

Everything else was left behind in the summer-evening haze of a past beyond memory.