Not Human Enough

Jane Kelly was looking for trouble. It was what she did. It wasn't her fault that her job had always been to find things that could go wrong and bring trouble to them. It was what rangers did.

The word 'ranger' meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some thought of beings who had warded parks and recreation areas back when such places had meaning. Others thought of law enforcers given authority to ride everywhere in their jurisdiction to keep the peace by any means necessary. Still others thought it means some kind of commando and that was closer to what Jane was. Not entirely, but then again, nothing in human experience had prepared humanity for what had happened.

There had been warning signs for decades and various groups had risen to understand and contain any potential threats. None had succeeded however and humanity had fallen. Jane had been born into a world far different from the one her parents remembered. She barely remembered her parents. One day, Advent troops had come and dragged both of them away. She had been five? Six? She didn't remember. A lot of that time was a blur of drugs and fear. She had been taken to a place for 'relocation' but instead of an orphanage or other Advent run facility, the director of the holding facility had seen her, had seen the ball of anger she held deep inside her and sent her to a very quiet man named Jacques who raised her as his own. She had come to love the old curmudgeon even when he had driven her completely bonkers at times. Then one day, Advent had come for him. Jane had escaped the cordon by sheer happenstance. Jane had gone out for supplies, she was smaller and faster on her feet so it simply made sense for her to scavenge through the blasted rubble that had once been a prosperous city. She had watched from concealment as Advent troops had stormed the building she called home.

To her amazement, they had been repulsed. Two other families had called the structure home along with Jane and Jacques. She did not know where they had gotten weapons, or why the Advent called in no less than three additional transports full of troops to overwhelm the place. She remembered the taste of blood as she had bitten her hand to keep from crying out as the misshapen forms had assaulted her home, taking fore from weapons that she did not know. When the firing had stopped, she hadn't relaxed. Oh no. She knew her mentor. Sure enough, no sooner had the Advent forces approached the house to search or whatever they did than it had exploded, taking most of the Advent force with it, including a transport. Something had landed near her, something long and shiny. She had reached for it and someone had grabbed her.

Jacques had taught her well. Her first strike had been low and the second had been high. But both were blocked! Something had hit her neck and she had been woozy enough not to fight any more. The man holding her had pulled her way from the blasted remnants of her life, introduced himself as 'Central' and changed her life irrevocably.

Jane shook off her memories and smiled a little as she walked. The world had changed again. But this time, it was in a better way. For so long, X-Com had been a terrorist organization in almost every regard, striking Advent operations when and as they could. There was simply no way for the small force to match Advent's might in any protracted engagement, so they hadn't tried. Their strengths had been mobility, deception and surprise. The goal had been noble, to free Earth from her overlords. The methods had been less so. There were things that Jane had done that to this day turned her stomach, but nothing she had done compared to what X-Com had discovered during their battles with Advent.

Very few on Earth knew how close humanity had come to being wiped out entirely. Not in conflict, but quietly rendered down to the basic constituents that made up human flesh. Just the thought of the Black Sites made her angry again, but she shoved the anger aside with the skill of long practice. Anger did not help anyone. She was more than her anger now. So much more.

Jane walked down the street wary despite the calm that pervaded the area. This town had risen up against Advent in the wake of X-Com's final attack on the aliens' base of operations and they had welcomed X-Com with open arms when the resistance had finally arrived. She and her team had been detailed to provide security for relief efforts so here she was.

X-Com was not a relief organization. It was too small and too focused to do much at all in that regard despite the unprecedented mobility that their HQ provided. The Avenger simply did not have enough room inside to carry enough supplied for more than its own team. Most of the space inside the repurposed alien cargo ship was allocated to specific tasks. Workshops, laboratories, armories, power supplies and the like provided the materials for the soldiers living aboard to use in battle. There wasn't space for much more. Luckily, they did not need it.

While X-Com was small and tightly knit, the Resistance against Advent and their alien masters had been far more decentralized. It simply made sense for such an organization to act in cells, small groups that only knew each other. She hadn't known as a child that her adoptive father Jacques had been a cell leader. She wouldn't have understood. But now? She did. The Resistance was organized in ways that baffled even the bard bitten commando, sneaky underhanded methods of bypassing Advent security. These methods allowed the Resistance to send material where it was needed, to send food or blankets to where people were hungry or cold. To call for X-Com troops if things got out of hand to be controlled by local forces who usually had little more than sticks or captured weaponry at their disposal.

Jane was not sure why Central and the Commander had sent her squad of six to this out of the way town in the middle of the East Coast of what had once been called the United States. On one hand, it made sense to show the flag, to show that X-Com was present and in control. On the other hand, Jane was used to operating in the shadows. Yes, she had been through the advanced training course that the Commander had put together and she was considered a good leader by her team, but...

"Excuse me, Ma'am?"

Jane jerked to a halt and turned to see something that she had rarely seen in her life, a human child. Children were so rare and so precious after the fall that anyone sane hid their children. Even Advent had taken special care when children were involved, they had entire teams dedicated to 'removing' children from dangerous areas. Jane had fallen prey to one such team as a young child and nearly fallen to another when she was a teen and lost her dad. No one knew what happened to many of those kids and most of X-Com that Jane talked to had confided to having nightmares about it.

But Jane was obviously not Advent. Her armor was uniquely X-Com in design and her wrap around powered visor showed her face in a way that no Advent trooper would have been allowed. She lifted the muzzle of her shotgun to the sky, they had declined her wish to carry her usual Storm Cannon on such a mission. She could understand, a little. Having humans carrying alien looking weapons might spark trouble. Her fusion blade was far, far better than any human tech could produce on its own, but that was harder to tell with a glance.

"Yes?" Jane asked when the child stared at her warily. The boy was maybe seven or eight and malnourished as so many humans outside of Advent control tended to be. "Can I help you?"

"I um..." The boy looked unsure and Jane waited. If he was anything like she had been at that age, all it would take was one wrong move and he would bolt. It wouldn't do much good against Advent stun weapons, but being fast on your feet helped a lot. Jane considered her early years good training for her current role.

"I don't bite, boy." Jane said with a smile. "As long as you are not one of them. And you look way too human to be one of them." She wrinkled her face into a comical grimace and the boy smiled, just a little.

"Are you human?" The boy asked, eyes wide as he stared at her armor and weapon.

"Yeah." Jane frowned a little at the question but nodded. "I bleed red. Seen enough of my own blood to last a lifetime, but yeah. I am human. Why?"

"You don't look like me." The boy protested. He scowled indignantly when Jane laughed. "What?"

"Well, I hope I don't look like you. I am a woman." Jane put just the right tone of self derision in her tone not to offend and the boy grinned at her. She looked down at herself and the at the boy. "We do look a little different."

"You look like a machine." The boy said slowly. Jane held out her free hand and he stared at it. "What?"

"I am not a machine." Jane said softly. "This is my clothes. Touch it." She kept very still as the boy reached out and ran his fingers across her armored forearm. "I wear this to fight the aliens."

"You fight." The boy murmured. Jane paused, that was odd. "Why do you fight?"

"I didn't have a choice." Jane replied. "Fight or die, those were the choices I was given. I didn't want to die."

"Neither do I." The boy said weakly. Jane stared at him, confused. Something sprayed from his other hand at her face, but battle honed reflexes kicked in. She lashed out even as her visor sealed her face away from whatever contaminant the boy had thrown. The boy cried out as she hit his arm. His aim was deflected and before the throw was even half done, she was a meter away, the spray flying harmless to stain a wall nearby. Her onboard systems were working to identify the substance. It wasn't a toxin or anything weapon related on record. The chemical analysis... Wait! Was that scarlet paint? Had he just tried to throw paint on her?

"Mind telling me why you just tried to paint me?" Jane asked mildly. The boy stared at her and flushed bright red.

"The Elders say you need to leave, I don't want to do this, but I don't have anywhere else to go." The boy froze as Jane stiffened, her weapon automatically coming down to a ready position, if not quite aimed at him. Then again, she had been part of the team that had gone into the enemy fortress and what they had found boggled the mind. But the alien Elders were gone, right? So... "The paint marks you as one of the Lost."

"Lost? I am not lost, boy." Jane said firmly. "Throwing paint at people who are trying to help you isn't nice." Whatever else she was going to say was cut off as a roar of anger sounded nearby.

"There he is! Get him!" Jane went still as the boy darted behind her, cowering behind her legs as five men came running around a corner ahead. They came to a sudden stop on seeing Jane. The one in front goggled at her. "Ah... X-Com?"

Instead of answering, Jane raised her shotgun to port arms and waited. As always, the silent, grim apparition that was an X-Com operative loosened tongues fast.

"That thing is an alien!" The man said, pointing at the boy cowering behind Jane. "Kill it!"

"Not any I have seen." Jane replied, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. She did not move.

"That thing looks like Sara Pikerson's boy." The spokesman of the group said with a snarl. "She is dead. They took him. That isn't him." Jane looked from the man to the cowering boy and back. Something was wrong here. The boy wasn't hostile. He was terrified, but not of Jane, which was odd considering she was the only one armed.

-Shogun- The voice of Control in her ear was a welcome diversion. -We show armor activation. You okay?- Having big brother in the sky watching got old on occasion, but she knew it was a good thing.

"Got something odd here, Control." Jane said aloud. "What looks like a human child just tried to throw paint on me and a group of men are claiming he is an alien." The five men shared glances but none moved. Wise as keyed up as Jane was.

-Paint?- Control's disbelief cracked his iron clad discipline for a moment. No surprise, it matched Jane's own. -You are the one on the ground. What do you think?-

"Whatever is going on here is odd, Control." Jane said, not taking her eyes from the men who were looking at each other now. "Recommend isolate and examine."

"No!" The boy screamed, but Jane reached down and grabbed him before he could flee. The men didn't move as Jane tried to hold the boy. He twisted out of her grip and bolted. She stared as he slid through a culvert that was far too small for her. She spun back to the men who gawped at her.

"Stay here in case he doubles back." Jane commanded as she mentally keyed commands on her heads up display faster than most humans could follow. Multitasking came early for X-com operatives. "And X-Com command wants him alive. My team will be here momentarily."

"What are you-?" The spokesman broke off with an oath as Jane raised an arm.

Lily Shen and her engineering teams had worked wonders during the conflict and after, making tech that never should have worked together not only work, but sing and dance on demand. The grapnel that shot from her wrist mounted launcher was tiny by human standards. The carbon fiber cord that trailed from it was nearly impossible to see. More than one of them men inhaled in awe as Jane flew into the air, pulled by her grapple up onto a nearby roof. She paused, checking her scanners. She had a faint IR trace, but it was fading. She started that way and keyed her com.

"Control, subject has fled." Jane ran lightly to the end of the roof and threw herself off. Her gear wouldn't let her fly but it was far lighter than it looked. "Request any surveillance available."

-We show an IR trace moving away to your southwest at six meters.- Jane nodded even though control couldn't possibly see that. -Status?-

"The humans said he was an alien that looked like a child they knew." Jane kept up her run. At this speed, she could literally run for hours. "Something is very wrong here. He mentioned 'Elders'. Put the team on alert."

-Elders.- The voice was different. Central was on the line now. -What about Elders?-

"I don't know." Jane stopped short as her IR trace vanished. She stood on the roof and scanned both visual and with all of her scanners. Nothing. "Control, I just lost my trace."

-Roger that. Hold position.- The voice of Control was back. If she knew Bradford at all, Central was probably checking in with the other teams and maybe even the Commander.

"We will lose him, Control." Jane protested, but remained in place. If there was one thing X-Com operative knew how to do, it was obey orders.

-Team ETA two minutes.- Control replied.

"What?" Jane demanded. That was far too long. "Where were they? Oh hell. Syndrome was at the bar, wasn't he?"

The psi operative was a very good person to have at your side in a fight. He never lost control. He never did anything that made anyone doubt his ability. Outside of fighting, he was a very different person. Without the focus of combat, he often drank himself into a stupor to try and drown out the voices in his head. Jane could sort of understand, she had her own ghosts. At least when he was drunk he couldn't use any of his powers. Just the thought of an out of control psi operative would have made any X-Com operative wet him or herself. Almost everyone had seen psionics in battle, both the aliens using it first and then X-Com once the humans had figured out how to unlock it. It was terrifying what lay within the deepest recesses of the human mind. The outward changes to hair and eyes were the least of the alterations.

-Feedback reports he only had one drink.- Control reassured her.

"One drink of what?" Jane snapped.

'Feedback', the team medic was good, no question. But she also had a crush on Syndrome that he was never going to notice, poor slob. He refused to open his mind to his teammates. That explained why the two of them were together. Gertrude tried to keep him out of trouble and it was a full time job out of combat. One beer wasn't going to impact the veteran psi operative. One shot of home brewed moonshine would be a very different story. Her thoughts broke off as a human voice cried out in pain and terror nearby. It sounded like the boy.

"Control, I am hearing sounds of a young human in distress. Request permission to investigate." Jane said flatly. "Team is less than a minute, yes?"

-A lot can happen in a minute, Shogun.- Central's voice was flat, but he understood. Did he ever. They had both seen far too many dead humans in their time. They were jaded, but there were limits too. -Be careful.-

"Acknowledged." Jane stepped forward, eying the roof she stood on. It had seen far better days. So it came as no surprise when she took another step and the surface under her caved in.

All in a day's work for X-Com. Jane had time to think ruefully as she fell. Then darkness claimed her.