Full Synopsis: [Canon Divergence AU] When the Mother of Invention crashed, Project Freelancer was in shambles, its surviving agents scattered, its equipment stolen, and an impending investigation into the crash from the UNSC was on the horizon. To regain control of the deeply corrupted program, the Director established a new unit from his remaining supplies - the Recovery Unit.
Three former Freelancers were chosen for particular tasks: Zero is to hunt down and destroy the Meta, One is to investigate and recover stolen or missing equipment, and Two is to take down AWOL former agents.
Of course, no one's motivations are truly what they seem...
A/N: I have been very excited about working on this for a very long time, and also incredibly nervous about whether or not I'm going to be able to pull it all off. We'll see! Hopefully if you've read my other work, Divided, you'll have an idea that we're getting ready for a long haul. : ) Hope everyone enjoys it!
Red vs Blue and related characters © Rooster Teeth
story © RenaRoo
Recovery None
Prologue: Recovery
Zero...
The sounds of harmonic screaming just behind her eyeballs was something she wouldn't forget for the rest of her life.
They were wailing, crying for her, attempting to call out, to get her to move, to warn her of danger, and yet all she could do after the crash, after fighting Tex, after breaking bone after bone through the breaching of the Mother of Invention, was lay and moan in the snow. Eta and Iota were no help with the way they hummed and screamed and cried in the confides of her brain.
She could see Maine's armor, hear the way his boots crunched through the snow as he quickly approached her.
Run her AI whispered. Run away, Carolina.
But she couldn't. With a great amount of effort, she drug herself, one splintered elbow at a time, delirious and unable to see the literal cliff before her.
Maine never halted his own approach, closing in and striking fear into the AI that Carolina simply couldn't understand. Wasn't it Texas who had been after the AI? Isn't that what they told her?
He closed in, the twin AI screamed until her feet were off the ground.
"NO!" Carolina roared at him.
It's the only way. We have to. She'll die if we don't. We're sorry, Carolina.
Her mind was racing nearly as fast as her heart, suddenly she felt a click. She didn't understand and yet she did all at the same time.
We're sorry, they whispered. We love you, Sunshine.
Carolina's heart stopped, eyes widening in horror at the last thoughts the dual AI placed in her head before she felt the click of her helmet, the forceful and against all AI protocol ejection from her implants. The pain was impossibly searing and awful. The snap between their connections deafening long before the loosened helmet was ripped from her head.
She screamed, kicked, roared with all her dwindling might as Maine's broad hand reached behind her head and yanked at the ejected implants with enough force to break the skin around them anyway.
There was snow beating down on her and yet Carolina's face was hot from the throbbing pain just before Maine flung her - her, his friend - and tossed her over the cliff facing, into the canyon.
If there was screaming for her, Carolina couldn't hear it, her body freezing, a delayed suit suspension locking her down as she tumbled down the rocks. Eta and Iota locked her up - they locked her up for impact.
They called her "Sunshine."
Carolina sunk into the snow below, eyes rolling back into her head. She felt broken, defeated, and lied to.
Eta and Iota were gone. Maine and York betrayed the program. The Director's favoritism toward Tex had doomed them. C.T. died for nothing.
They called her "Sunshine" - and Carolina realized only in that moment that she had no idea who they were.
She didn't truly feel the time elapse in the snow. She only felt the way her body grew colder, locked down in a battered armor, and measured by that. She felt dead by the time others gathered around her body and began to move her form.
Someone among them sounded almost surprised to find her breathing.
"Get her to the medical ward."
"It's destroyed, Sir."
"Then make a new one. We aren't going to lose her."
"The AI are removed."
"That is truly unfortunate."
For reasons she couldn't begin to explain, Carolina felt even more betrayed by those harsh words than she had during the crash. And it was that, and the hum of "Sunshine" her mind closed off to.
One...
North and South took off and a part of Wash had wanted to follow - their bickering and the subsequent alarms and sirens were quickly taking their toll, though.
"Fuck, my head," he groaned, grabbing the sides of his head and curling in on his side. Everything was throbbing. His heart felt like it was jumping into his throat.
If what North had said was right and Tex had broken back onto the ship, Wash wished desperately that she would hurry and leave or get caught so that the blaring noises and flashing lights would go away.
He screwed his eyes shut, gripping to his own hair tighter to somehow keep his skull together, wondering what Tex could want when it felt like his mind had suddenly exploded.
His eyes blew wide open, vision blurring.
"Allison," tumbled from his lips. He felt like he was in a haze, weakly rolling off the cot, mind throbbing. "Tex... Allison..."
The thoughts of another person were still ricocheting in his skull as he tried to move toward the hospital door. He couldn't think straight - they were such foreign ideas, feelings, memories - so obviously not his own and yet separating them from his own thoughts was a heinous and painful practice.
When the Mother of Invention began shaking, hard enough that even the furniture of the recovery room slid, Washington's body and mind was completely unprepared. He stumbled off his feet, hitting his knees before sliding headlong into the wall.
Letting out a short cry at the jarring pain, he curled onto his hands and knees, hanging his swirling head low, trying to catch his breath.
The struggle to move from that position was real. He had no concept of time or direction. He just knew he had to leave.
"I have to... I have to find her," he reasoned nonsensically with himself, pushing up from his knees, tenderly holding his head. "I can't... I'm not ready... not ready to say goodbye..."
Somewhere just outside the doors of the recovery room, Wash realized he wasn't only unsteady on his feet from apparent weeks of in and out of a coma but that the shaking of the Mother of the Invention had continued, that the ship was probably under some kind of attack.
When his feet lost traction with the floor and his back hit the ceiling, with names and deaths and years of memory longer than his own life burst in small pockets around his brain, Wash felt himself grow sick. He curled into his stomach and released a frustrated scream. He was quickly losing sight again of where these implanted thoughts and feelings ended and his own began again. Now in the air - on the ceiling - he wasn't so sure if his senses were even functioning.
"Wash!"
His name felt foreign to his own ears - was that it? wasn't it David? wasn't it Leonard? - but, the hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him down from the ceiling, were unmistakably real and familiar. He let his head contact the plated chest of his friend.
"York," Wash muttered tiredly against his fellow Freelancer's chest.
"Why are you out here!? Why didn't they evacuate you - I mean, good that they didn't. You're coming with us."
"Leaving?" Wash clarified, looking up to search York's face only to be met with his reflection in York's visor. "I'm Washington."
"Of course you are, buddy," York responded, sounding a little baffled. "Don't worry, Wash, I'm getting you out of here, alright? Me and North have a plan."
"What about her?" Wash asked, head throbbing.
York immediately stiffened. It was the first time Wash really noticed the abnormal way his shoulder was dropped, out of place. "Carolina... I just gotta trust that Tex'll handle her."
"Tex..." Wash repeated, the screams of a whispered name broke into his head again. "Not Tex... ugh my head."
"Wash, you do not look good," York said, slowly kneeling with Wash and bracing his back against the hall wall. "Do I need to carry you to get you out of here?"
The question didn't even make sense in Wash's head, his mind elsewhere, distracted, being torn apart again. He wanted to vomit, but he realized almost peripherally that his stomach had never felt more empty.
When an incredibly loud explosion shook the walls, Wash just moaned and lowered his head. He only noticed that York was looking toward the sound as his friend released grip on Wash's shoulder, letting the weightlessness of the ship hit him again.
"Ah, fuck - South must not be giving up," York growled. "We don't have time for this bullshit."
Nothing York was saying made sense and Wash was beginning to desperately wish his friend would stop talking altogether when York grabbed onto his shoulders again.
"Wash, listen to me, we're going to get out of here. I've gotta help North first, alright? Just sit tight."
Before a syllable could leave his mouth, Wash was watching York turn his back and race down the hallway, reaching for the gun on his back. It felt like famous last words.
Head throbbing, he mumbled, "Just... don't say goodbye... I hate goodbyes..."
Not able to keep focus much longer without York around, Wash laid back his head on the wall and slowly slipped into the haze again. There were so many pounding thoughts to sort through, so many high strung emotions and pain, and so so many memories. He hardly felt the explosions, the entry into gravity, but the crash that sent him hurdling into the wall once more he felt.
He laid there in a daze until he was found - in minutes, hours, he wasn't sure.
They weren't York.
Two...
She ground her feet into the scaffolding, levied the rocket launcher, and glared through Texas to her brother. Even with his helmet on, she could see that smug smirk back at her.
"Whose side are you on, brother?" she demanded.
North hardly hesitated before nodding to Tex. "Tex, take a walk."
South began to see red, cursing under her breath. That son of a bitch...
"I need to have a little chat with my sister."
Nostrils flaring, South had never felt so much anger before in her life - so much disgust. Her own brother. Her own twin! For who? Agent Texas? He'd betray the program, betray everything they'd worked for, betray his own sister for her? What the fuck was so special about her? What the fuck had she done to South's brother?
In a motion that only later would strike South as being surprised, Tex loosened from her defensive pose, eyes trained on the other twin. "North... you're sure?"
"Go," North said firmly, a flicker of purple over his shoulder - those goddamn AI. "This is a family matter."
"You better believe it is," South snarled under her breath, hardly noticing as Tex took off. She began firing, watching expectantly as the bubble shield domed around her brother in preparation for the attack.
There wasn't time to breathe - unlike her brother, South didn't have a fancy shield or an AI to project it if she had. She had her own skill and her own firepower and that was all she needed to duck and dodge, to fire back.
Also unlike her brother, she wasn't pulling her shots.
"What the fuck are you doing, North!?" she roared as yet another stray fire kept her moving but was nowhere near meeting a good mark.
"Waiting for you to calm down," he droned back in that ridiculously easy tone of his.
"You son of a bitch!" South roared, skidding to a halt behind North and aiming for behind his feet. She narrowed her gaze as she saw that signature purple flicker and then the shields stop her rockets.
"Hey, now, that's our mother you're talking about there," North replied before firing just above her head, hitting the water mane and flooding them. South moved long before the first drop could hit.
"Have you lost your mind!?" she screamed. "Is it that goddamn robot in your skull? Is this why they wanted to remove them?"
"You have no idea what's actually going on, do you!?" North snapped back, showing his impatience at last. A small victory for a sister. "Damn it, South, stop for a second and let me tell you-"
"There's nothing to tell, Brother!" she snarled, leaping forward, stomping her boots onto the bubble shield as it appeared three feet between them. She aimed her rocket launcher for the shield.
"South! DON'T!" he yelled voice harmonizing with the AI flickering over his shoulder.
Hearing her brother yelling had never made her want to do something contrary so much before in her life, and without any hesitation she pulled the launcher's trigger. The next second she was blown back in the air, trying and failing to land on her feet before rolling back to her knees, watching as the flicker of the bubble shield cracked and faded through the air, North tumbling head over heels backward before sliding to a halt on his chest plate with a groan.
He didn't have his guns and South could just about taste the victory from that accomplishment alone, throwing her busted launcher to the side as she stumbled to her feet and into a full run right at him.
"North!" the AI squealed beside her brother's head just before South threw herself into a full punch right for his helmet.
"Stay down!" South roared.
North was shaking his head, obviously more than a bit dizzy as he rose on his hands and knees. But he didn't seem ready to jump up and fight.
Which was why when she noticed that the spray of gun shells and debris began to rise from the floor, she was taken more than a little by surprise.
"The fuck!?" she growled, realizing she was also off the floor a second before she remembered to look for her brother.
"Hey, South!" he growled, knocking her right in the face with his own punch. "YOU stay down!"
She flew back, momentum more than a little broken by the weightlessness of the ship before she hit the opposing wall. "NORTH!" she screeched, kicking off the wall to fling herself back at her twin.
"I still don't have a shield charged!" the AI cried out.
"Don't worry about it, I've got this!" North ground out as he caught the first two of his sister's punches.
"No!" South hissed, throwing more and more hits. "You!" She grabbed the sides of her brother's helmet and slammed his visor down on her knee. "DON'T!"
It worked to stun him only for a moment before he got wise and set the magnets of his boots. His gaze shifted to the floating guns above them.
"Don't you even think about it, North," South hissed before he kicked off. "You bastard-" she reached for her sidearm and aimed it for her brother's hand, hitting her mark just as he reached for the sniper rifle.
"Fuck, South! I'm trying to save us!" he roared back.
"You're such a lying piece of shit!" she howled back. "You're trying to keep your precious baby AI from being taken away from you. You've gone just as crazy as Wash or Tex-"
"Tex isn't crazy!" North tried to explain.
"But that AI sure drove Wash crazy, didn't it!? How much nonsense have we listened to since that thing was in his head? He only started to get better when we got that fucking thing out because he couldn't handle it," she hissed. She aimed for that signature shoulder the AI just loved to stand by. "I thought yours was different, but I guess I know now it isn't, huh?"
"Theta is not bad! And even so, this isn't about what the program's doing to us, South. It's about what the program's doing to them! To Theta and Delta and Tex-"
"What the fuck has the program done wrong to Tex!? She's their little darling!"
"How about you put the gun down and I'll explain it to you," North reasoned.
"So you can grab your gun?" South laughed hollowly. "I don't think so."
North floated for a moment, looking a bit defeated. "Don't you trust me?"
South pursed her lips, considered the question before seeing that signature flicker again. "Not anymore."
"I hate when family doesn't get along."
South nearly jumped at the sound behind her, firing as she turned but York knocked the gun from her hands and threw a fist right to her face, knocking her back from the floor into the wall with far more force that North would have ever managed.
"Sorry, South," North's voice sighed in her ear.
It rang over and over again, building to something she couldn't quite place until she began to feel her body move again. Not by its own will, but by some other touch - someone carrying her, then setting her on something hard.
"Sorry, South" merged with gunfire and roars of "we can't go back!" "stop!" "we have to go!" "you're under arrest!"
Her eyes fluttered awake and she took a wide roll of her neck to assess everything around her - she was in the back of a vehicle, perhaps a jeep, and there were two people in front of her, driving. North. York - fuck they mentioned something about Tex.
South's teeth gritted together and she looked up, seeing the back door's handle.
"She didn't tell you where to meet her!?"
"I didn't ask-"
"This is the worst insurrection plan. Ever. Of all time!"
North's voice gave way and South knew she'd been found out - uncanny twin connection and all that. She gripped the handle as tight as she could and threw her weight into it.
"Wait- NO, SOUTH!"
With a solid kick, throwing her body into the door, South forced the door open and rolled out into a shocking amount of snow. She continued to roll, eating face fulls of the stuff before finally coming to a stop, shoulder pulled and knees bruised.
There were troops from Freelancer closing in, approaching, but South couldn't have cared less about them. She rose to her feet unsteadily, holding her shoulder and watching the jeep speeding away.
She bit down a scream. The assholes hadn't even slowed down.
The brake in her leg was bad. She'd need therapy to use it again - no speed boosts in her immediate future. Two black eyes and a split lip still held together with crusting blood were more than enough to remind her in every mirror that she didn't walk away easily.
The back brace was the hardest to adjust to. They said it was temporary, that the disc damage would be be repaired in her next round of surgeries.
It had been over a week and she still hadn't been visited by the Director.
Sitting in the bed, stewing, flinching back at the endless harmonizing screams, the whispers of Sunshine in her head, Carolina was beginning to get the idea that she wasn't supposed to be walking out of the infirmary any time soon.
That was when she started to put together that since she had woke up, she had only seen one doctor and one nurse.
And, of course, there was the Counselor.
He had been in her hospital room every day, perhaps even before she had woke back up.
The next time he came to visit, she was ready to share what she knew with him.
"You've limited the medical staff assigned to me," she stated as the door closed behind him. "You're also sparing some expense on my medical treatment. Why else wouldn't I be in a full healing unit by this point?" Her eyes narrowed, following him as he crossed the room. "I've never been outside of this room since I woke up either. And I haven't seen the Director-"
"You are much more astute... much more lucid than your medical assessments would have one believe, Agent Carolina," he said calmly, pausing to pick up said chart from the foot of her bed. "That's good. We take a deep concern for the mental prowess of our agents. Our agents are our most precious asset."
Carolina's lip curled, her back resting back further into her pillows. "I'm sure," she hissed.
"It's true," he said calmly. "I would think you, of all the Freelancer agents, would understand what a personal investment that the Director has in the program and its operatives."
She closed her eyes tightly, balling her good hand into a tight fist at the thought of him.
"I do," she near whispered.
"It was actually for your benefit that the Director devised our next directive in dealing with this situation head on," the Counselor continued.
"What do you mean?" Carolina asked just before the Counselor took a seat beside her.
"We understand how you must feel as betrayed by the recent insurgence from the program as we do," he explained softly. "That the opportunity to do something with those feelings would be well in due."
There were screams in the back of her head that wouldn't stop, and Carolina felt the pitch only grow as she looked into the Counselor's dark eyes. "I certainly feel betrayed," she responded.
"Would you say that this betrayal could serve as an adequate focus for you to continue on a new course? A new direction that would put you on a path to confront those you feel the most betrayed by?"
She ground her molars. "Yes."
"And do you understand, upon taking that path, you would not fit the merits of a UNSC soldier any longer?"
She hesitated. A soldier - like her mother before her - was all Carolina truly knew how to be. She closed her eyes.
"Yes."
"We are very glad to hear that, Agent Carolina," the Counselor stated, pulling up a tablet to begin working on. "In light of the recent destruction of the Mother of Invention, the deserting of several operatives and the subsequent stealing of equipment and AI from the program, the UNSC Oversight Committee has saw fit to assign an investigation into the program. To... assist as it were with any issues the program has developed as a result of the crash. And part of their inspections will be the proper use and etiquette in regards to sensitive equipment. Should our program be found to fail in any of these criteria or to not be completely honest with our records, our entire operations will be found to be in a truly desperate state with anyone involved in a very dangerous legal position."
Carolina pursed her lips the best she could with her wounds. "So you're saying you need someone outside of the program being one step ahead of the investigations. Someone correcting Freelancer's deficiencies before they can be found."
"More that we are recovering from the program's losses after a very dire tribulation," the Counselor corrected, a meaningful look in his gaze.
"That's a large job for one operative," Carolina responded darkly.
"Truly," he agreed, tapping his pen against the tablet. "Which was why the Director began a plan, starting with you."
"Me?"
"Yes, we are beginning a new sub section of the program, one dedicated to just those objectives of recovering lost personnel and artifacts," the Counselor continued. "It is the Recovery Unit. And on papers it will have one specialized agent and several military police orienting it."
Carolina turned her head to him more. "Just on paper?"
"Our private records will be more truthful to the size of this program," the Counselor explained. "In our own understanding of the unit, we will know only one agent needs to be focused on the generalized mission objective. We will have at least one more agent with the intent of a specialized recovery mission. This ghost agent - our Agent Zero - will have one purpose, and one purpose alone. They are to hunt down and stop our Level Zero threats to the program and to Recovery."
"Level Zero?" Carolina asked, narrowing her eyes. "Such as..."
"Agent Maine," he said simply. "Does this objective interest you at all?"
"Of course it does," Carolina snapped. "But how am I supposed to be a ghost in the program? I already have several records due to my involvement with Freelancer, don't I?"
As she continued her questioning, she watched the Counselor begin to turn his tablet toward her, the files pulled up were her own. She narrowed her eyes and read at the top of the large, red letters as the report said clearly "K.I.A."
"I am afraid, Agent Carolina, that you did not survive the fall from Agent Maine's attack," he explained in the same even, cool tone he explained everything else. It was infuriating.
She shook her head. Like everything else in her life, it seemed, the Director had once more removed any possibility for her to have a real choice.
Carolina locked eyes with the Counselor. "Let me at Maine and I will do whatever I need to," she said darkly. "And, by the way, Counselor, where is the Director?"
"He is in a secure location," the Counselor responded cryptically.
"I understand," Carolina responded though her fist only tightened. "When do I start?"
"As soon as your physical recovery has met our standards for active duty," the Counselor responded, smiling. "It is good to have you on board, Recovery Zero."
He spent a lot of time being quiet.
When you were left with what was basically two minds sharing one space, sanity was a hard thing to achieve again. There was an overlap of thoughts, feelings, memories that he had to focus time on one by one. He had to sort them, to break them down - what was his and what wasn't.
Did he remember that as himself or as someone else?
No one could really appreciate the effort that he put into breaking apart those bases, splitting his own brain wide open in order to tear everything down to the most minute details so that he could sort them accordingly. No one knew why he was quiet because he didn't tell them.
And that, Washington believed, is what scared them so badly.
Sometimes it would take so much concentration to remove himself from a thought that he would miss meals, miss sleep, in order to pull the string from the ball of thread, lay it bare and then sort it.
Epsilon's thoughts were dangerous in that way - the AI had immediately come online in the base of Wash's skull just to desperately try to break itself in half. He was a being of pure torment, trying with indomitable will to end itself.
And they had put it in Wash's brain.
Whenever a purely Epsilon memory unveiled itself, the soldier became violently ill. But he stored it away all the same.
It wasn't like after Epsilon had rooted in his mind Wash was capable of forgetting these things.
There were medical staff and guards in this facility - this makeshift institution carved out of a prison on the Freelancer satellite planet. Wash vaguely recalled it from training exercises - when a military project expanded enough to have an entire colonized planet turned over to them just for simulations and drills, they had to have their own penitentiary, after all.
Most of the people in the facility had probably gone rogue from their silly Red and Blue games. But Wash was there because the Director couldn't get a word out of him after the crash.
Because the Director suspected Wash knew something. He just wasn't sure what.
According to the Counselor, however, Wash was incarcerated for treatment.
"You seem to be more rested today, Agent Washington," the Counselor said almost optimistically. It was one of the few days where the man had bothered to show in person rather than through a vid screen.
"Two hours of sleep instead of thirty minutes will do that to you," Wash glowered in response.
"And during that time, did you experience an uncomfortable or unsettling dreams?" the Counselor continued, not wasting a moment of Wash's talkative days it seemed.
Wash pressed his lips to a thin line, glaring at the table in front of him. He didn't have dreams anymore. On good nights he didn't have anything. On bad nights...
Well, he remembered.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said firmly.
The Counselor's head turned slightly, as if he was peering through Washington, trying to drag the answer out from his cryptic words. Almost hysterically, Wash worried that the man might just be able to.
"Agent Washington, have you put any thought into how long you have spent in this facility?" the Counselor asked. "Do you know how long it has been since you were transferred here?"
Looking to his hands, Wash frowned.
Sometimes it was better to not answer.
When the Counselor saw that Wash wasn't going to give a response, he looked down to his tablet. "You have been here for almost twelve months. It will have been a year next week. And in that time you have not put much effort into answering the questions the Director has posed for your since you were first lucid."
Narrowing his eyes at the mention of the Director, Wash held his breath. He had counted eight months since he began to keep track, which meant that whatever the Counselor and Director considered him not being lucid probably constituted the other four.
That was a lot of time to have wasted.
"You're going to clear me anyway," Wash said, finally looking up to the Counselor. "Right?"
The Counselor hummed, tapping his pen against the tablet. "And what would make you say that, Agent Washington?"
"You've kept me isolated from other inmates, but you've still had me performing routine cleaning and maintenance on my... room," he had been told before to not use cell or prison to describe his time in the facility. "I don't have time in the courtyard, but I've been given a training room with drills and equipment not dissimilar to that on the Mother of Invention. And I've been encouraged to ask questions about the progress of the program in sessions with you."
"Questions you've elected not to ask each time," the Counselor reminded him.
"Why do you want me active?" Wash asked darkly. "What do you want from me?"
For a moment, the Counselor seemed to consider the question. He shifted forward. "Allow me to answer your question with a question."
Wash closed his eyes to keep from rolling them. "Of course."
"Would you say, after your experiences with the Freelancer program, that you would be willing to ever implant another AI-"
"No," Wash hissed. The anger that question ignited in him was potent - how dare they think to ask him that. And even if he hadn't been through hell, he could never let another AI in, never show them what he knew thanks to Epsilon.
It was too great of a risk.
"And after seeing the insurrection of your fellow agents, as well as the deaths of several of them, do you think you could ever work with another partner?"
That was more of a surprise than the AI. Wash stared at the Counselor for a moment, searched his face only to see nothing helpful. Instead his thoughts drifted - to the crash, to the reports, to the blurry memory of anger and disappointment, to the pain and loss at being read off those who were dead, those who had left him behind.
They were his best friends. They were all gone.
"No," Wash answered at last. He dropped his head, feeling a pang of something in his chest. "No, I don't think I could."
"For those reasons, Agent Washington, we want you in commission," the Counselor revealed. Wash looked up, allowing an inquisitive look for the Counselor to continue. "In the months following the crash, the Director created a new sub section of Freelancer - the Recovery Unit. Its sole mission is to pick up the pieces, as it were, that were left in the remains of Project Freelancer. We need someone to respond to reports and to follow trails of missing equipment, former soldiers, and AI. Someone we can trust to never use them or take off with them on their own.
Wash watched the man carefully. "And I'm your man?"
"You would be the only agent in the field," the Counselor said. "There will be several operating military police, but as far as genuine equipment and AI recovery is concerned, you will be the only operative given permission to activate and physically recover."
He took a deep breath through his nose. "The only people who would have taken equipment... they would have had to be formerly with the program," Wash realized out loud. "I'll be recovering things from people I knew."
"Will that be a problem?"
He looked to the side, remembered that flicker of anger and betrayal that he still hadn't unwound enough to figure out if it was his or Epsilon's. "No." He looked back to the Counselor. "But if I were to refuse. What are my options?"
"A wise man doesn't agree to things he doesn't know entirely," the Counselor said, almost amused. "I respect that, Agent Washington. Unfortunately, your options are very limited given the circumstances... and your official diagnosis as recorded by our physicians."
"What do you mean?"
"You have been Certified Article 12 - unfit for service," the man reported, and the sting that delivered, even as much as Wash already suspected as much, hurt. "You are incapable of service in the UNSC and in Project Freelancer and will be discharged... after your treatment has been deemed successful by this facility."
Wash narrowed his eyes. "As deemed by you... since you're the only physician who has talked to me since I got here."
"In a manner of speaking... yes," the Counselor said simply. "And I am concerned for your mental well being given the trauma induced by the Epsilon AI-"
"I'm sure," Wash cut him off.
The Counselor fold his hands and looked seriously at Wash. "Your decision here is completely your own, Agent Washington. And Project Freelancer will support you in which ever choice you feel is best suited for you - to progress with your treatment and therapy here before eventual discharge, however long in the future that may be, or to be cleared of your certification for the capacity of becoming a Recovery Agent - and to begin new reassignment training for the tasks expected of you there."
Running a hand through his hair, Wash sighed. "What a choice," he breathed. "And I suppose the Director himself couldn't ask me about this?"
"The Director takes a personal interest in your progress, Agent Washington, but due to security issues, travel is not the most available option for him," the Counselor said smoothly. "I should also note, I will need your answer before this session ends."
Wash leveled a look at the Counselor, frowned. "What decision is there? I suppose you have your Recovery Agent."
"Very well. We are grateful to have you, Recovery One."
She watched for a long time through the glass. They hadn't had anywhere else suitable to put her in the hours after the crash - in the hysteria of everything else going on.
Old Agent South was just another inconvenience in the midst of a string of other operations as they scrambled to reclaim control.
She was sore from a car roll that had her suspecting they were never really going to get that control back.
The glass that lined the room she was in once had automated controls - something that would allow either side to become one-way as it was activated, similar to the outlook for the training room. South knew that because it had been the same room they grilled her in after her "failed" mission with North. Where things began to truly fall apart on them all.
She gnashed her teeth, hitting her fists on the table as she remembered North, the program - everything.
It really all just made her wonder why she was here.
Her eyes flickered up as she recognized a voice, even if the walls worked well to keep the exact words obscured. She could see the outlines - the crash must not have done their equipment any favors - and immediately recognized the shadows.
The Counselor and the Director were outside of the interrogation room. Then the Director left. Then the Counselor came to the door.
"Hello, Agent South. I trust you have been looked over by one of our physicians already," the Counselor said smoothly as he pulled up a chair.
"Haven't had the pleasure," she returned snidely. "They must've overlooked giving me a checkup between pulling my ass out of the snow and handcuffing me."
"We apologize for that inconvenience," he said, tone not sounding very apologetic at all. "In the confusion after the crash, it was difficult to determine what agents were deserting and what agents were not. I just wish to assure you that your allegiance to the project and general discipline is not being called into question."
She narrowed her eyes. "Isn't it?"
"Of course not," the Counselor said softly. "After all, isn't that why you are still here?"
South stared at him for a long time, tried to search that ominous face for something to go off of. God, she hated the Counselor something fierce. In the last several months she had forgotten how much she disliked him more than the Director thanks to his little sessions with them.
She hated how easy he could see right through her.
"I don't know why I'm still here," she said lowly. And it was the god's honest truth.
"Don't you?" the Counselor said, head tilting in curiosity. "Is it not obvious?"
"No, Counselor, I guess it really fucking isn't," she growled. "How about you inform me of why I'm here since I'm apparently too stupid to figure it out?"
"This is not a matter of intelligence," the Counselor said simply. "Simply one of... introspection you might lack given the current difficult situation." He waited a moment, making sure she wasn't about to interrupt before continuing. "You've stated many times in our sessions that you and your brother have always been treated as a set, a pair. He and you were often dressed the same, given the same activities, and even once you were enlisted, the two of you were paired together, served together. And while you have never said as much, I have gotten the impression over time that you resented that Freelancer did much the same in regards to how we assigned the two of you."
South narrowed her eyes, crossed her arms, and waited for something interesting to be revealed.
"You two did work well together. For the most part. But not in the last several months. I would assume it started either with your drop from leaderboard placement... or perhaps with your brother being chosen for implantation two groups ahead of your own."
"Is there a point to all of this history?" South snapped finally.
"The point, Agent South, is that at this recent impasse - this mutiny - you were given a choice between staying with the program and leaving with your brother once more, making an agreeable decision between the two of you," he continued, eyes somehow seeming sharper while his tone remained even and calm. "You chose to stay. And I believe that this decision has all to do with your need to finally be your own person. Your own agent."
When he finished, South kept her spot, looked him over, considered the Counselor's words. She then leaned forward, snarling, "You're spouting so much bullshit right now it's hilarious. Do you want to know what I think about all of this? What I think is the problem here? I think that your little project, your little games with us, backfired spectacularly. I don't think it turned out to be such a good idea to put a computer program in someone's head and expect them to remain some kind of perfect little super soldier - to not lose their goddamn mind somehow. I think you put a chip in my brother's head and, just like it did on Wash and your guys' precious little Tex, it knocked the screws loose. And I think that's why if you check around, everyone who's gone now had those AI and everyone who's still stuck with you bastards don't have them." She clenched her jaw. "And now my brother's gone."
The Counselor was infuriatingly calm throughout the outburst, his pen tapping against his tablet. "So would you say that you're glad the implantation process did not reach your level?"
"I didn't say that," South responded haughtily. "I'm saying that you obviously either picked the wrong computers... or picked the wrong agents for those computers."
"Wrong agents... like your brother," the Counselor clarified. "Instead of the right agents... like you."
"Agents who would know when to not listen to everything they're told," she said darkly. "Something I've not been growing a lot of interest in lately thanks to bullshit like this."
"Do you fear there's any danger for your brother given this assumed state?" the Counselor prodded.
"Of course I do," South growled. "I know what mean fuckers you all can be."
"So the news that we have already set tracking parties after him and other deserters would not be very reassuring."
South stared at him for a long moment, fist clenching. "Are they going to hurt him?"
"Current orders are for operatives to recover equipment and property in means that they see fit," the Counselor explained. "So it will be entirely dependent on whether or not Agent North Dakota will be willing to comply. I have my suspicions that he will not easily comply with us. But, perhaps you think differently. You would know him better than even I do."
"Goddammit, North," she swore under her breath, looking to her hands. She tightened them into fists. When she looked up, the Counselor was still patiently waiting. She scowled at him. "No. He won't comply. Either he's going to be taking care of that fucker York in his mind or... I don't know, protecting his AI." She looked back down, feeling a painful pull of the muscles over her chest. "He... He's a real stubborn bastard when he thinks he's looking out for someone. I don't know."
"When I spoke earlier to the Director, about our predicament with loss of resources, and with the limitations the various Freelancer deserters will be met with given our strict control of this colony, we decided a new operation was in order. A sub section of Project Freelancer. One that could meet our needs for searching and recovering lost properties," he explained. "We are calling it the Recovery Unit. And it will concentrate on these efforts, particularly those tracking and hunting down stolen AI and field armor enhancements."
"You mean things like what North has," she said lowly. "North would be a target."
"Yes," he said. "As would any other operative to steal from the program. Including Agent York, Agent Wyoming, Agent Maine, and Agent Texas-"
"Let me guess," she snapped. "You're going to want someone who isn't likely to turncoat on you to head this little bounty hunting expedition... right?"
"We were thinking you, among other candidates," he said calmly.
She rolled her eyes. "What? Who's left? Carolina? Florida? Washington?"
"I'm afraid that Agents Carolina and Florida did not survive impact," the Counselor reported.
South immediately stiffened. His words felt like a knife striking through her. She couldn't even remember the last time she had talked to either of them - her teammates, the only others to not leave her like her brother and supposed friends.
"And our plans for Agent Washington are dependent on several additional factors. Including his field readiness," he said simply. "That leaves us, and the fate of this program, in your very capable hands, Agent South. How do you feel about that?"
She watched him carefully, exhaled sharply from her nose and shook her head. "What the hell. I'm in."
"Thank you very much, Recovery Two."
He uploaded the files directly, watching as they moved from his tablet screen to the shared vid screen between them - the three Recovery Agent files set in motion before them, three live feeds beneath each.
ACTIVE.
INACTIVE.
ACTIVE.
The Director's vid screen was online, but he had not yet turned on his video. He had been doing that more and more recently. While the Counselor was never to document his findings on the Director, he did take personal note of them. He looked into his own feed lens.
"Greetings, Director," the Counselor said gently. "I trust that your work abroad has left you some feeling of accomplishment."
"Anything but, Counselor," the Director drawled. "Truly, bureaucrats and politicians are incapable of understanding vision and risk. Let alone the scientific process." He took a breath. "I had hoped that the appointment of a Chairman with some understanding of our field would have changed some of that, but it would be Malcolm Hargrove that they chose."
The Counselor hesitated to use explicit information in their conversations that were recorded, but he knew that it was FILSS moderating them, and the AI was nothing if not completely devoted to its creator.
"Do you believe that the crash last year is going to be used as an excuse for a fishing expedition?" the Counselor asked carefully all the same.
"Do you mean if I believe the CEO of Charon Industries is using his position in the Oversight Committee to investigate any suspicions he has about corporate sabotage, Counselor?" the Director growled. "I believe so. Now will be the time where I need to get full restraint on the program and any loose ends. Now will be the time for full use of our Recovery Unit."
"Operations have been moving smoothly," the Counselor reported dutifully. "We have all bases for simulation troopers fully operational - any one of them will pass fully for inspection. In the meantime, small equipment recalls that have been interrupted and minor outposts with Freelancer equipment that have been attacked seem to be following a single pattern. We don't believe that it is multiple deserters but rather all are committed by one of two - former Agents Maine or Texas." He looked toward the blank screen. "I have Recovery Zero actively trailing that information with a twenty-four seven contact with Command."
"Very well."
"Smaller reports of missing food supplies, break ins, and various petty crimes that have been seen mostly to the Northern urban colonies are currently tracked by Recovery Two. Among our top suspects for these reports are Agents North or York."
"Anything from Florida? About the Alpha?"
"Captain Flowers last reported in two months ago, passing a UNSC inspection with the presence of the Alpha fully masked," the Counselor reported. "Given the tracking the Oversight Committee is currently using on any and all Command received messages, we found it better to set up a Virtual Intelligence Computer as standby for the Blood Gulch Outposts. If there was any danger, Flowers was to report in immediately from a direct line to you and I. Thus far it hasn't been activated."
"You know what they say about making assumptions, Counselor," the Director warned darkly. "Still, I trust Florida. He was a top agent and very commendable in the field. The Alpha will be fine as long as it's under his charge. But I need to know the status of the Recovery Unit. How long before actual artifact and AI recovery is put into practice."
"Recovery One has completed two weeks of training and has been shown to meet all field standards," the Counselor reported, bringing the second file and feed into the foreground. "In another week-"
"Send him out on Monday," the Director ordered. "I need full operations now."
The Counselor frowned. "Sir, as physically prepared as Agent Washington might be for the field, I have not psychologically cleared him to my standards. I can only control him so long as I'm fully able to trust my analysis of him."
"Counselor," the Director said in a low sigh, "you and I would be fools to think we can trust any of these agents. As long as we remember that, then we can control them."