Every morning began the same.
It started with sound. In the secrecy and sleepy comfort of the charcoal darkness that filled the building, a sound like wind swept through the many corridors and rooms. Almost imperceptible at first, the constant noise swelled and grew louder until its presence was unmistakable. The sound of wind would continue for exactly thirty six seconds. At the twenty first second, a counterpoint of crystalline wind chimes would join in measured and slow. Perhaps the sound of wind continued for the duration of the track, but at the thirty seventh second, it was drowned out by the heartier roar of a sea. The sound of waves and wind chimes and now the occasional gull would continue for an additional forty two seconds.
The pinging of a digital tone, objectively gentle but jarring in contrast to the organic soundscape presented before it, signified the end of the soundtrack. By now, rows of blue LED lights had blossomed into a soft glow. They provided enough visibility to function and move about the building, and they functioned as an imitation of the early dawn twilight.
Allelujah had never seen the sea. He'd never smelled the balmy scents of brine and kelp and fish on a damp breeze. He'd never felt the spray from breaking waves or seen sea-foam, or felt hot sand under his feet. He could imagine it based on the familiar soundtrack that signified the daily reveille: an endless expanse of grey-green water churning under an overcast sky just beyond a spit of bungalow-lined beach. Maybe there was a rocky outcropping with a lighthouse. Maybe there were long-legged seabirds or sandy turtles or the manmade shape of sails against the sky. Allelujah thought he'd like to visit such a place one day.
He rolled over on his mattress and pressed his face into his pillow. Above him, a second digital tone from the intercom nagged him to get up.
"The time is now 0530 Greenwich Mean Time," a recorded voice told him. The voice was female and gentle, but maybe had not originally come from a real human, but from a simulacrum. "The morning personal period has begun. The morning meal period will end at 0645. All residents are to be present in the staging room by 0700."
Every morning began the same.
By this time, the deep indigo glow of the LEDs were being steadily drowned out by the much brighter fluorescent lights on the ceiling overhead. It was officially morning.
Allelujah stretched and finally managed to pry himself away from his bed. It hadn't ever been the most comfortable bed - the mattress was covered in a plasticky liner that the thin, scratchy sheets didn't mask. The pillow was too solid and the whole thing smelled of bleach. But it was what he knew, and it was more inviting than the stale recirculated air of his room.
Nevertheless, he moved barefoot across the room and gathered his belongings: underclothes, thermal gear, jumpsuit, toiletries. He slipped on the standard-issue bathroom shoes before leaving his room and moving down the hallway to join the commune of a dozen others in the male shower rooms. Being the first to snag a shower was a given impossibility; most residents, Allelujah included, felt no desire to rouse before the already early morning alarm, even for the prize of slightly hotter water.
The showers, all twelve of them situated in a long row and separated by shoulder-height privacy dividers, operated on a timer, which itself was operated by a swipe of an ID band. Each resident was allotted exactly five minutes and fifty-nine in the shower. At six minutes, the water would shut off abruptly with no regard for who still had shampoo in their hair or who might not have gotten all the enjoyment out of standing under the stream of warm water he would have liked. Allelujah always counted along with the digital display that counted the seconds: one-one thousand. Two-one thousand. Three-one thousand.
He knew exactly what needed to be done and when to maximize his bathing time. Because every morning began the same.
Clean, dry, and clothed, Allelujah made his way toward the mess hall sometime between 6:00 and 6:15, following a steady trickle of his male cohorts. As they headed upstairs, their female counterparts would join them. There was no particular rule about what parts of the building were considered off-limits for the co-eds; the ladies were free to move about just as the men were. But repeated trial and error had always proven that each group was more comfortable when given their own wing of dormitories. Those wishing to live in foreign territory were, of course, free to do so, but like tended to cling to like. Allelujah had never personally given it much thought and assumed the lifestyles of each group must have been fairly similar and equally regimented. Above all else, it was easiest just to do as he was told, including accepting his given accommodations.
The mess hall was, objectively, the coziest room in the entire institute. Some result of a psychologist's recommendations on what colors encouraged appetite, perhaps, it forsook the sterile whites and cold greys and harsh alloy hues of the rest of the building and, instead, donned itself in warm colors that evoked the delicious facets of food: juicy burgundy maroon walls, rich espresso-stained wood tables, creamy faux-marble linoleum floors. The mess hall also featured windows, uncommon in the rooms to which the residents had access save for a small 45-by-20 centimeter barred window above their bed. The mess hall windows were tall with curtains and blinds, and they offered a view of downtown Quanqiu gently sloping around the inner circumference of their colony.
Allelujah stood quietly in line for his tray of food. Today's offerings were some sort of wheat porridge and smoked eel. It was an odd combination, he thought, but they always tended to be. In a way, Allelujah supposed it made sense. There were many nationalities represented in the workers of the institute: cryophysicists from St. Petersburg, geneticists from Delhi, neurosurgeons from Hong Kong, soldiers from opposite ends of the HRL. Pleasing everyone's tastes must have been challenging, so they would often end up with meals like porridge and eel, or kolbasa with rava uttapam. Usually half a plate of carbohydrates and the rest a blend of protein and fats. Always with a cup of assorted tablets which the residents were assured were vitamins, and always with some kind of protein-electrolyte beverage.
Allelujah swiped his ID band for his meal, was handed his allotment on a metal compartment tray, and headed directly for his favorite spot in the mess hall: a two-seater table nestled in the corner of the room where he could keep his back against the wall. There was no assigned seating arrangement, of course, but all of the residents had their preferences. Newer recruits, who tended to have ages in the single digits, clustered together in a loud tangle near the central cafeteria-style table. They drowned out the hushed murmur of the older residents who staked out the tables designed for smaller groups.
To be sure the message was clear, Allelujah dropped his heavily booted feet in the empty chair at the table.
As he ate, Allelujah liked to halve his time between people watching and taking in the view outside from the vantage point of the twelfth floor mess hall. Occasionally, but only very occasionally, he would talk to his comrades. The older the institute's residents grew, the less sociable they seemed to become. Perhaps it was because there was no more need to vocalize when they all could feel every other person around them in their heads like a constant hangover, their collective consciousnesses a steady, ever-present buzz in the edges of their minds. They were a hivemind who had transcended the need for things as archaic as spoken communication. The younger recruits couldn't know that yet; they hadn't been rebuilt and retrained and reprogrammed. They'd know soon enough, and then they, too, would grow quieter and quieter.
Or maybe the reason was less sinister. Maybe they were all coworkers who had simply run out of things to talk about after days and weeks and months spent together. Maybe it was just too early in the morning for small talk.
The latter was true for him.
Allelujah picked at the bland porridge and downed the vaguely vanilla, chalk-like nutrient drink without tasting any of it. He looked at the small aluminum dish of eel and considered eating it, and then prodded it with his fork and reconsidered.
Outside, the mirrors which would reflect sunlight and warmth into the colony were beginning their blossoming sequence. Every morning, the three long mirrors expanded slowly outward as an imitation sunrise, opening like the massive petals of a titanic flower. They would be fully opened by 0900 and would remain so until 1800, reflecting light in through the long bands of windows dividing each strip of inhabitable land and also acting as shutters to keep out the frigid darkness of space during the night. Allelujah watched as thin strips of stars became visible as the mirrors moved off the windows. He knew that he'd seen a real Earth sunrise - he must have - but he'd been too young to remember it now.
"We should go over today's itinerary."
Allelujah, lost in his head, nearly jolted at how close the voice was. His mismatched eyes twitched over to the source, his brows simultaneously furrowing and muscles tensing in case of a need to defend himself. His line of sight was interrupted by the form of a young woman standing in front of him, her face expressionless in a frame of snowy white hair.
"I've already reviewed it," he offered as he relaxed, the scratchiness of his unused voice coming out with his words.
He met the woman's gaze and held it. She was always like this - always intense and demanding attention without knowing it. She seemed to be challenging him to a staring contest, drawing him in with her unnatural yellow gaze.
Allelujah looked back toward the window and forfeited the match.
Unperturbed by his lack of cooperation, the young woman, dressed in the same combination of jumpsuit-over-thermal gear as Allelujah wore, used her hip to unceremoniously bully her way into the seat that he had claimed as his footstool. His boot hit the slick floor and made a solid thud as she plopped herself into the seat and placed her tray on the table in front of her.
Allelujah shot her his best attempt at an incredulous glare, but she was ignoring him in favor of a rubbery piece of smoked eel.
"We've got a flight simulation together at 1000," she said when she did finally look back up at him. "They programmed the new sequences for the Union's latest Flag units into the simulator and want us to perform a mock sortie."
"I know," Allelujah confirmed.
"Have you studied the possible combinations of flight formations?" She was drilling into him with her gaze.
"Yes," he replied. She made him nervous. "Most of them."
"You were supposed to review all of them, Fifty-Seven."
Allelujah chuckled nervously and shifted in his seat. "Why, Soma?" he asked, quickly qualifying his question by adding, "What good would memorizing the enemy's strategy do when the entire point of this program is to build soldiers based on reaction speed? Isn't it better for their data to send us in blind?"
The young woman leaned forward slightly. "You should not question the orders you are given."
Allelujah wasn't sure if it was meant to be a threat or a warning.
"Can I please finish my meal in peace?" Allelujah sighed after a few silent seconds.
"I want to synchronize before we go into the staging room," she replied, turning her attention back to her breakfast.
"Fine," Allelujah ceded. He leaned back in his chair and tipped his head back a bit, staring at an unseen target on the wall on the far side of the room, somewhere over Soma's shoulder. He went still, his chest rising and falling normally and his blinks coming in even intervals, but otherwise unmoving. After what could only have been a few seconds, he crossed his arms and sighed, reaching up a hand to rub his eyes and the bridge of his nose. "What do you want?" he grumbled.
Soma's gaze was flicking back and forth between his eyes, left and right, grey and yellow. She settled on the yellow. "We're synchronizing," she informed him.
Allelujah looked down at the tray in front of him and the quickly congealing remains of his breakfast. "Christ, what is this shit? Did the program take another budget cut?"
"Fifty-Seven." Soma's voice was stern and captured his attention. "Focus."
"We're synchronized, Peries," he replied with something of an annoyed growl tinting his voice a darker shade than normal. "Thanks for my daily migraine." He stood and took the tray, turning sharply toward the rows of compost bins on the adjacent wall and striding toward them purposefully.
Soma was following him. "Fifty-Seven," she demanded, but he didn't look back. "Hallelujah—"
"Don't—" He snapped, wheeling around. "You don't get to call me that."
"Do not be late for the training." This time, it was both a threat and a warning. The tingling of quanta in the deepest parts if his brain conveyed her meaning better than any words could ever manage.
He sneered. "Where else would I go, Super Soldier One? I'm looking forward to it."
...
The nets of neural sensors and the rigging for the simulator were uncomfortable and cumbersome, but Allelujah supposed it couldn't be much worse than the cockpit of an actual mobile suit. Without the constant headache that scraped its nails along the inside of his skull, it wouldn't have been as bad. Probably. The myriad sensors and nodes that fed his vital stats back to the Super Soldier Institute's mainframe would have been just as pinching and unwieldy, and the harness over his shoulders and chest would have been just as heavy, but it would have been nice to have a pain-free head for once.
Since he had reached the needed height and weight requirements to do so, Allelujah had run near daily simulations. This was, of course, the purpose of the Super Human Special Duty Project - to create pilots who were specialized for the unique challenges of battle in space. Their hand-to-hand combat skills and brute strength were, of course, also highly finessed and refined beyond the abilities of an average human, but success in a fistfight wasn't their main objective. The information gathered during these trials would be added to the SSI's banks of knowledge, and based on it, the soldiers' training would be modified. And often, so would their bodies.
"Test subjects," a loud voice boomed from somewhere in the room beyond the confines of the simulator. Colonel Yuan - a stern and humorless man whose hand often enjoyed the feeling of administering corporal punishment to out-of-line soldiers. He stood perfectly erect with his arms folded behind his back, gaze sweeping back and forth like a searchlight over the soldiers and engineers before him, searching for any signs of insolence. "As you are all aware, this is an important simulation today. You will be running new test plans against the latest data we've collected from the Union. Do not disappoint me."
The hangar was a massive cavern of hurried activity and confused, overlapping sounds: the low rumble of air circulators, the whir of machinery, the beeping of biomonitors being calibrated, dozens of voices vying for primacy above all the other voices - and reverberations from all of it. Its design was basic: four walls on a rectangular concrete slab. There were mobile suits parked in neat file along the longer walls with doors big enough to accommodate the largest of the machines on the short walls. The simulators and the bodies in and around them were in the center of the room. One day, all of the test subjects who successfully logged the needed hours in simulation would be allowed to take a real suit out for a test flight. One day, they would use these very suits in battle. But for now, while they were still in training, the Institute's residents used simulators. Real suits were expensive, and in the event that they were needed to mobilize for a real battle, it was to the benefit of the HRL to not have them wrecked and out of commission due to the inexperience of some greenhorn.
As a scientist fitted a spirometer over his airways and a warrant officer practically cut him in half him by tightening his lap belt far too much, Allelujah peered through the open canopy of the faux-cockpit around him. Soma was climbing into her simulator now, too, with the assistance of the same entourage he'd been given. For as long as he could remember, they'd been paired for mock sorties. He and Soma weren't the only successful pairing, of course, but they had been among the first to show promise. He had run the occasional one-on-one with other partners, and had even achieved a successful mission result, but none as successful as those missions he performed linked with Soma.
He wished it could have been anyone else.
"Let me kill her in at least a mock battle."
Allelujah narrowed his eyes and tipped his head back to allow a strap to be tightened under his chin. A muffled thud reverberated around his head as the officer looming over him gave a hearty smack against his helmet. He was ready.
There were not enough simulators for all of the SSI's residents to run test flights at once, and so those soldiers who had not been selected for that day's mock battles would act as observers from an upper deck where a wall of screens reflected real-time cockpit data from the simulations. They were to learn even when they could not be hands-on.
The trials today would test subjects in pairs. Those soldiers whose quantum brainwaves were most compatible would work side-by-side to complete a mission. Sometimes, they would be tested as a larger group; real battles rarely necessitated formations of only two, after all, since even super soldiers could be quickly outnumbered. But those group trials were easier than one-on-one sessions like today's. Allowing for the reception of quanta from many sources was a passive process, whereas filtering for only a single person's waves was much trickier. Their brains were generalized receivers, and although most test subjects would eventually teach themselves to be more selective, things were more often cacophonous than not. Test runs like this one better proved skill and finesse than did large group trials.
"She wouldn't really get hurt," the voice nagged, "and I'd be happy. It's a win-win for you."
Ignoring the whisper at the back of his mind, one not sourced from one of his many cohorts in the room, Allelujah pulled the visor of his helmet down over his face and pressed the switch to activate the hydraulics of his simulator's hatch, closing himself off from the observing officers and soldiers outside. The walls of screens around him lit up. He was in a digital desert, endless stretches of yellow sand far below him and an equally infinite blue sky above in brilliant picture quality. He could see Soma's suit, identical to his own, standing in repose beside him.
Allelujah began the familiar routine of starting up his suit, activating its weapons and balance and thrust systems and monitoring the sensors to ensure he'd achieved the all-green. The display around him alerted him of an approaching heat source from his three o'clock.
"Six suits coming in at five hundred-eighty kilometers per hour and increasing," Allelujah announced through his communicator. "Horizontal acceleration is holding at two-point-four gravities. There are two land armors behind them."
"Acknowledged," Soma's voice crackled over Allelujah's headset, and then her face was on an overlay in his display. "Tsaplya-Nikolai Eight will engage at the rendezvous point. Start mission clock now."
"Willco."
"Mobilizing," she announced.
"Mobilizing," he confirmed.
The hull of the simulator rattled as Allelujah pushed the throttles forward, and the land in his display began to whizz by. In his display, and also nearby in the simulator, Soma was also pushing her suit into a takeoff. The pressure of acceleration, even this imitation, walloped him in the stomach and chest first, and threatened to pull his hands from the controls. He'd become accustomed to this, though; he could handle up to nine Gs without passing out. He remained in control.
"Peak acceleration achieved," he and Soma announced simultaneously. From here on out, what they did as an individual and what they did in programmed unison would become harder and harder to distinguish. When Allelujah yawed left, Soma pushed her suit in synchronicity. When Soma rolled to avoid a collision, Allelujah mirrored her movements perfectly in time. Their reaction speeds were synchronized, and when they announced battle plans over their two-way, it was for the benefit of the outside observers whose brains were not equipped to hear nonverbal communication.
They met the first simulated enemy at the calculated rendezvous point and administered swift and efficient firepower. The second and third were taken down with similar ease. Land armors were slow and lacked maneuverability, but they required heavy ammunition expenditure. It took time, but they, too, were dealt with. The fourth suit, heavily armored, took some time and required their combined firepower. As the fifth suit crumpled against the earth, a sharp, electric pain ripped through Allelujah's right temple. He tasted metal. He felt pressure. Soma was in danger. Her six - something was approaching from behind. She didn't see it.
He focused his thoughts into a solitary idea: "Move!" He turned his suit and fired a volley of shots aimed at his partner.
"Move now!"
Soma wrenched her suit in a violent horizontal motion at her comrade's warning. Her movements were impossibly fast, and allowed his fire to miss her and to, instead, find its intended target: the enemy suit that had managed to sneak undetected to a threateningly close proximity in Soma's blind spot. It plummeted to the simulated ground beneath them, kicking up sand and smoke. Their suits' sensors had not even had time to alert them to the danger before they'd handled it.
Allelujah swallowed thickly as the pain subsided and returned to its usual low levels.
This was the culmination of the Institute's efforts: to create soldiers who could link up mentally, to share information in a way that could not be detected by the enemy, to create perfect and complex bonds between fellow soldiers. Soma and Allelujah had not perfected it, perhaps, but they were teasingly close.
"Enemy suit neutralized," Soma confirmed. "Unit Tsaplya-Nikolai Eight, Super Soldier Soma Peries confirming the destruction of all enemy suits."
"Not so much as a word of thanks? Shoulda let her take the bullets."
"Unit Tsaplya-Nikolai Eight, Test Subject E-Fifty-Seven confirming destruction of all enemies," Allelujah reported, ignoring the interference.
A large alert banner appeared on their displays: ALL CLEAR/COMPLETE. The pressure of imitation speed decreased until it was gone. The canopy latches released and cracked open letting in air that felt cool and fresh relative to the stale air of the simulator cockpit. The noise of the busy hangar seeped in.
"Tsaplya-Nikolai Eight," Yuan's voice carried over the noise of the room. "Report."
Soma and Allelujah stiffened, helmets tucked under one arm and the other arm raised in a salute.
"Sir," Soma replied. "All enemy units were destroyed. The mission timer stopped at twenty two minutes and sixteen seconds."
"Damage report."
"Minor superficial damage to the joints of both machines caused by sand and detonated ordinance. No major damages to report."
"Very good," the Colonel responded. "Pick up your biodata from med central and have your official reports in to me by 1145. Do not be late. You're dismissed."
"Sir!" the pilots responded in unison, their acknowledgements unheard as their commanding officer had already turned to bark orders at the techs to prep the simulators for the next two pilots.
...
The relative silence of the trek from the hangar to the barracks was nice. The further away Allelujah moved from the rest of the soldiers, the more hushed the constant crowd of voices became. From dozens to a handful, and then just two.
Soma never talked to him after their test runs. Her excuse had once been that she used the opportunity to contemplate the mission and reflect on what could have been improved. Allelujah didn't know whether or not to believe her; she was anal enough for it to be true, sure, but he'd always had the nagging suspicion that she just didn't want to interact with someone like himself — an imperfect experiment who had the nerve to go and get himself paired up with the poster child of the SSI's dark project.
Soma never talked to him, but he often talked at her as they walked. If he didn't, if he stayed silent, Hallelujah would fill that silence with all manner of inappropriate suggestions:
If you killed her here, no one would see.
You're far enough from the others that you could take her down without them feeling her distress.
You could just see if she wants to fuck or something; stuck-up bitch needs it.
Even if her distress signals reached them, they'd think its from someone in a simulator. You could kill her.
She killed Marie. She's a parasite wearing Marie's body like a costume. Aren't you going to avenge her?
You should have left on that pod eight years ago. You really fucked up. Maybe you could find one now.
Seriously, man up and ask her if she wants to fuck.
And the longer Hallelujah made suggestions, the more receptive Allelujah found himself to listening and considering them. So Allelujah filled the silence and ignored the icy glare Soma would shoot him for being noisy.
"So the Union has some kind of equipment that makes them undetectable even from that close of a range?" he mused, looking down at his partner as they walked abreast. She said nothing. He looked away from her. "That's way more advanced than their last models were capable of. The League's gonna have to come up with a fix soon."
"Ask her!" Hallelujah prompted. If it was possible to sneer vocally, he was doing it.
"Do you want—" Allelujah cut himself off, nearly tripping over his own feet.
The young woman stopped abruptly and snapped her head up to meet his gaze. "Do I want to what?" Her tone was accusatory, one of disgust. She must have felt Hallelujah's intentions, must have felt Allelujah's control waver.
"Do you want me to write up the mission report?" Allelujah tried. The fix was lame, and he felt it.
Soma narrowed her eyes. "No. I'll do it. I want it to be complete. Just submit your mission notes to me."
With that, she hurried toward the barracks, quickening her pace to leave her teammate behind. She didn't need to use quantum brainwaves to get her message across; her stay-away-from-me aura would have been obvious to even the least perceptive human.
Allelujah stared blankly after her for a moment before grinning a wide, sharp grin. "That was kind of rude, Peries," he said aloud. "You didn't have to look so disgusted."
— — —
A/N: This is an idea I've been kicking around for a pretty long time now - What would Allelujah and Marie's dynamic be if, essentially, Allelujah never got marked for disposal and, instead, spent his entire life in the Institute — specifically, what it would do to his psyche to be around Soma for years, knowing that she was Marie but never being able to reach her and, to a lesser extent, Hallelujah's role in his life. Everything came out a little angstier than I originally intended, whoops! In terms of a timeline, the first chapter is set just after the start of season one and CB's first couple interventions. Currently planning for six parts, so here's hoping!