The rest of the day was taken up with running, weight training, practice combat, and the assignation of numbers and security passwords to go with their code names. Connecticut became Foxtrot-Five. She received new dog tags with that name and the Freelancer symbol stamped into the metal. For a moment she weighed them against her UNSC assigned ones, noting that her real name wasn't even on the Freelancer version, and for a few days kept both around her neck until it became a bother, and she stashed the UNSC originals at the bottom of her empty duffel bag.
When they were released back to the common room they got ready for bed. Carolina changed in the bathroom and returned just as Connie was adding to her letter to her parents, unable to make her sentences longer than a few words, and struck with the fact that she still wrote like she was a child. I've made some friends. We're learning a lot.
There was no use telling her parents that she had seen a smart AI. The censors would just laugh at her attempt.
When Carolina came back, Connie asked, "What did you think of the exercise this morning? What did you do?"
Carolina didn't respond to her, instead climbing under her covers and staring up at the ceiling. Connie sat down on her own bed, wondering if the other woman had even heard her. The armor they would be receiving was still the first thing on her mind.
"What did you do?" she tried again.
Carolina started the longest speech Connie had heard her make thus far. She spoke with a detached air of looking somewhere else, narrating someone else's achievements, and disdaining them slightly - perhaps, Connie would think if she was not in fact talking about herself, she was jealous of them. Carolina did not ever think her achievements were good enough to call her own. (Maybe she did not think she was good enough to belong to her achievements either, but Connie did not see that until Carolina was sleeping, eating, and breathing her place on the scoreboard and Connie was thankfully, blessedly outside the conflict.)
Carolina said, "As soon as I came out there were those three soldiers. I'm sure you saw them."
"Yeah."
"I backed up, I got away from them. I hit two, and another came around toward the back of the room, but the turrets started. I kept jumping in between columns. The turrets were the worst."
Connie could hear her lip curl although the light had gone out. "Yeah," she said, because that had been true. The turrets were the worst.
"You made it, though," said Connie.
"I didn't make it fast enough."
"It wasn't a test of speed."
"It was a test of everything."
Connie couldn't argue with that.
She repeated, "What do you think you got?"
"I don't know."
"No guesses?" Connie turned over to face the other woman.
Carolina was still staring up at the ceiling. "I don't know."
"Did you see the computer?"
"Yes. It would have taken too long."
"There were two buttons!"
"I was busy." She finally showed some emotion in her voice, regret, like Connie's ribbing was getting at her.
"That's okay," said Connie, suddenly feeling a little bad about it. But Carolina didn't respond either way.
She thought of telling her own version, but Carolina was silent and contemplative as the minutes silently wore on.
(Later, York would tell the story differently.
"She was amazing. She flew on top of a column, spun around, hit one guy so hard he knocked into the next one and then she hit that one too. The way she moved like - "
And then he didn't tell it at all, silenced and awed, the opposite of Carolina's own wordy dispassion.)
Connie lay in bed and rewound her fight in her head, wondering what she had forgotten and whether the director or the other Freelancers had judged differently than she had. She would be fine with being trained in some aspect of computer warfare, although she also didn't want to be sitting behind a desk if she could go out and fight. Hefting both the rifle and the pistol had been pretty cool, she thought. Someone must have thought that was cool.
Maybe Wash had thought that was cool.
He had seemed to do the challenge well enough without needing the computer either. The simplicity of the buttons had been laughable. How much could the director really learn from that?
These thoughts swirled around in her head, mixing and discussing themselves, while she fell asleep.
The next morning, they got up earlier. One day of getting to sleep had been suspicious enough. The next time, when FILSS spoke up, everyone was already dressed and ready. Wash and South sat on the couch, and Connie sat between them while Carolina stood with her arms crossed, her back so straight that she looked rigid. York and North bantered and played rock-paper-scissors for unknowable prizes, probably bits of breakfast. Wyoming was missing. (Later, she would figure out that he was making friends with the white-armored soldiers. He saw them as backup, for when the Freelancers eventually discovered what he was like and turned on him.)
They waited a long time. "I bet the others are going first," South said, and scoffed at them.
Connie didn't think they needed to form a rivalry with the other group yet. "I thought we were going to be spending more time with them."
"I guess not," South replied.
"Maybe we will later," North said, his hands now on the back of the couch near South's shoulders.
They waited. Wash asked whether they thought they would have fruit at breakfast. North and York resumed their game, quietly. Carolina learned forward with her elbows in her lap and interlaced her fingers, every line of her facing forward. Maine stood on the side of the room with his arms crossed, and Connie looked at the thick veins on his forearms. Maine had almost been silent. Connie wondered how he and Wash were getting along.
When they were finally collected, it was the counselor himself who arrived and brought them to the place where they would receive their armor. He brushed off questions, and Connie felt like he was hiding his personality behind a sheet of glass if he even had one. He was untouchable in a way that suggested he was damaged. What kind of rank was 'counselor' anyway?
Rank didn't seem to matter to the Freelancers.
The armor was housed in a lab, tended by people in white coats. The Freelancers walked single file down the narrow halls. When they entered the lab, they crowded into a side passage and watched as a machine fitted Georgia, his body already dressed in a black under-suit textured with rivets and stripes, with forest green sheets and plates of metal.
"The robot arms are calibrated to make the initial fit," a tech muttered to Wyoming. Connie glanced sideways at them. The older Freelancer must really have been making friends. Why did he feel more comfortable with the director's staff than with his fellow trainees?
The tech continued, "The armor comes on and off more easily than it looks, as long as you do it in the right order."
Alpha had taught them that - how the armor's gauntlets were strong enough to lift the rest, although human arms and hands by themselves would not be able to remove the smaller pieces. They had to be taken off in order, but it was possible to do so on the battlefield for emergency medical crises.
Ideally, though, the armor would prevent any emergency medical crises from occurring.
The group was quickly shuffled to different parts of the large lab to pair up with the machines that fit the armor. Connie found herself looking at a young female tech, who handed her a folded black undersuit.
"Connecticut?"
"Yes."
The tech dumped the suit into Connie's hands. It was astoundingly heavy and cold, more like thick rubber than cloth.
"Put this on."
She did, shedding clothes with hasty hands. The air was cold and the suit, when she unfolded it, was deceptively complicated. With the tech's help, she fit it on and made sure to remember the bits she would have trouble with later. Already the suits were unexpectedly intrusive. "It's designed to be worn for long periods of time if need be," said the tech, and Connie thought about the ways the UNSC augmented even its non-Spartan personnel.
"Your FIF beacons will be modified later," said the tech, "and the femoral IVs that you got in boot and they told you were for medical are designed specifically with this in mind."
"Somehow," Connie said, "That's reassuring."
"Really?" the tech said, pulling at the material at the back of Connie's neck as she fixed the fit.
"Not particularly."
Her armor was already there, looking at her with small yellow eyes. She saw the others across the room, mostly hidden by silver struts and the backs of their attendant techs, but with the occasional pale plain of skin or a thick colored plate of armor.
"Step here please," said Connie's tech, and she stood on a plate as the armor started to fit around her.
She closed her eyes, feeling like the process had nothing to do with her. The tech flitted around, but mostly watched screens. Connie felt the metal settle heavy over her arms and around her waist.
"It is normal to have some trouble adjusting to the weight at first," the tech said. "You'll get stronger as you work in the armor more."
"Who tried this before us?", said Wash, and Connie opened her eyes. His voice was querulous. He was standing a few rows away, dark gray armor entirely fitted to him, with the helmet still suspended over his head. Next to him, Maryland had been given dark red armor with white accents.
The tech hooded her eyes, and for the first time Connie suspected that her friendliness was either an act or a cover-up for something. "We had it tested."
"By who?"
"Other agents."
"Where are they now?"
"They're in the program. Maybe you'll meet them."
"Georgia and that group?"
When the tech answered, it was transparently obvious that she was relieved that he had given her a safe answer. "Exactly. You'll see them later."
Wash nodded. "Okay."
"Stay still sir," said his tech, and he raised his head to look straight across the room at where York was laughing with his tech and rotating his armored forearm. He wore gold, and Connie thought that it fit his personality. Why had they chosen these colors? Customization was unusual for the UNSC. Uniforms were used both to intimidate the enemy and make the soldiers feel like a team. These colors wouldn't encourage teamwork at all - and the director couldn't possibly have determined which color fit each person from one test against paint bullets.
Connie felt that the brown was right for her, though. It was comfortable. And York's gold fit him too. It would draw people's eyes to him all the time, and that was what he wanted.
Brown would keep people's eyes off her.
And gray?
She wasn't sure.
Wash had a gold stripe too, on top of his head, and gold patches on the outside curve of his thighs. She saw it when he stepped down from the platform on which he had been standing. His forearms had yellow panels too, that brushed at the ones on his legs.
Carolina's armor was bright blue, and her visor was small and thin. For a moment Connie thought that her helmet had separate eyes too, but it did not. Connie took one step once the robot arms disengaged from the body of her armor, and immediately felt off balance. She stretched a hand out to steady herself and found Carolina's forearm. She gripped it for a moment as Carolina lifted her arm and looked at her.
"Sorry," Connie grumbled.
Carolina didn't reply. She looked straight ahead, as if evaluating the other members of the team coming off of their platforms, but Connie noticed that Carolina wasn't moving very fast either.
The armor was heavy. Taking small steps were like swimming through molasses, and Connie had the bad feeling that if she fell over she'd never, ever get up.
(Besides which the entirety of humanity would laugh at a special agent squirming on the ground like a turtle on its back.) She took tentative steps, more appreciative than she had been in a long time simply that the ground was flat instead of rocky. Everyone was toddling around.
"Don't move around too much," said the tech, and moved back far enough that Connie knew to be sure to take her advice. "Walk straight to the door."
The other Freelancers must have been told the same thing, because Connie's field of view was filled with the tall, blocky shoulders of her fellow agents in armor. Carolina was still behind her somewhere.
"This is awesome!" York said, turning his head very slowly.
"Careful," said a tech.
"Yeah, okay man. What does this toggle?"
"You'll have an overshield and an ammo counter when you equip your weapon." His tech, a young man, scurried along behind him. The armor even made their strides look longer. As Connie got used to the feel of it she walked faster and with more confidence. This really was amazing. The armor creaked and squeaked around her as it became more fitted to her body shape.
"We can change your settings if you need," said the tech nearest Wyoming, and the older Freelancer nodded his head once.
"I am in need of a weapon."
"Ah yeah," said the tech. "We're not authorized to get you into combat yet."
"My good fellow. What is your name?"
"Um, Billy, sir."
"Billy. Thank you very much for your assistance."
(Wyoming would know the names of most of the techs, the medics, and the pilots by the end of the week. The pilots showed signs of disliking him by the end of the next, and Connie had a feeling that 479 had organized that in some way. 479 was good at reading people.)
Connie eased up next to Wash, who looked down at her and tipped his head. She almost giggled. It was the first of many times in which she saw that people's gestures weren't hidden by the armor: they were almost enhanced, if you knew how to look. The armor was supposed to provide anonymity that would make a soldier appear more threatening to his enemies, but to his squadmates it would just make the sense of camaraderie more thorough. If they could fight beside one another and be loyal to one another without seeing one another, what other reserves of loyalty and friendship would they find when they could look at one another's faces?
Later, she wasn't sure whether it was only when she saw his mask that she started to dislike her own, or whether there was really something off about the flatness of the upper arm pieces, or the heavy angles at the side of her face in contrast with the others' sweeping air vents and the smallness of her eyes. The armor was going to becoming her identity, and she was uncomfortable with it.
"You'll go through some basic exercises outside and then you'll be assigned lockers," said her tech as Connie left her behind. "The armor is yours now. Tax dollars at work. If there's something wrong with it or you have trouble with the suit, bring it back here. Do you understand?"
"That's fine," Connie said over her shoulder. "Thank you."
"Don't rush off too fast. You'll knock over somebody's equipment."
"It's so exciting!" Connie, said, and that was true.
The Freelancers were festive as they moved out of the lab. A wheeled cart shook, glass instruments rattling as someone hit the side of the cart top with their hip. York, Wash, and North laughed with each other. Carolina kept looking down at her suit, examining what it could do.
"Purple," South yowled. "I can't believe I got purple."
She had. Her suit also had green accents where Wash had his yellow ones.
North looked back at her. He had been fitted with a darker purple suit of his own. "What's wrong with purple?"
"I dunno. It's just...what, you've got it too."
"Sure. We match. It's appropriate."
"We haven't dressed alike since the third grade."
"Now that's just untrue." North sounded blase. He kept looking at her, although he had to glance forward so as not to run into Wash and North ahead of him.
Somehow, Wash had jumped ahead, and Connie found herself between Carolina and Florida. His armor was blue and thin. (Later, he would acquire a bandolier, but this was his addition. If the director had authorized it or had any hand in choosing it, Connie did not find out.)
"Our parents made us do it." South gestured widely, the armor not seeming to impede any movement as she spread her arms.
"The director is like our parents now," Carolina added.
North said, "South, you bought the matching pajamas. You don't need to act cool here."
She huffed. Connie could picture her hair blowing out of her eyes. Maybe she was angry that her mode of expressing herself would now be largely unseen. "Well that was straightforward."
North said, quietly, "It's true," and no one disagreed. No one laughed. North could say things like that, especially to South, and people would just accept him.
(South only would for a little longer. She railed out against authority, and she saw love as an authority so she raged out against that too. Connie would see many instances in which she was fully comfortable with her brother, the two of them sitting together or making jokes with a sense of humor that only they had perfectly together, but she was angry and he, for all his kindness, could be patronizing. He could have been a teacher.
After she saw that he got Theta, and remembered the brief description of the childlike empathy AI, she realized that he could have been a father too.
Pity her job was to try to prevent that from ever happening.
But when Theta and North filled a bubble shield with blood and the bodies of Insurrectionist men, the pity went away.
Sometimes, she wondered what would happen to South.)
In the halls of the Mother of Invention Connie could feel her helmet rub against her short hair. Even if the director allowed her to do whatever she wanted with her hair, it made more sense to keep it short so as to preclude any of it interfering with her helmet. She thought Carolina must be pretty uncomfortable with her ponytail squished in behind her.
Someone, Connie couldn't see who, lead the group to the arena.
It was set up completely differently this time. Even the small viewing room had disappeared; perhaps its wall panels and the table holding the weapons had sank into the table.
Now, the room was set up like an obstacle course.
Ramps and columns punctuated the large floor space, arranged in a rough but recognizable U shape. She didn't see any troopers or weapons emplacements. The director's voice boomed from the viewing room up above where they had all gathered the day before.
"This exercise will teach you, quickly and efficiently, how to use your armor." A crackling noise sounded, as if he were losing reception or conversing with someone on the side. Connie mentally edited in the counselor, even though she couldn't see into the viewing room from this angle. "Your performance here will not affect your degree of rating for combat or any other skill."
"Other ones are going to rate us for things?" South said in surprise.
North replied, "The last exercise did. Maybe others will too."
Connie exchanged glances with Carolina. With her mask pointed down, she looked fierce and angry. Her body language revealed nothing.
"You will all enter the obstacle course at the sound of the buzzer, and complete it together. It is not a race. There is a finish line."
"Passive-aggressive much?" Connie muttered, and Wash caught her eye and said nothing.
"Buzzer," said the director distractedly, and Connie looked up. South and Maryland laughed, dispersing some of the tension from the room. The director snapped, "Let's go. Why isn't it working?"
"Oh!" It was FILSS's voice that replied, and her startled exclamation coming out of thin air made even Carolina give a low chuckle. "Ready," she shouted. "Buzzer!"
At the front of the group, York took off. He sprinted a few steps, mere seconds, before North followed and caught him, long legs pumping but his shoulders canted in an awkward way that meant he hadn't quite gotten the hang of the armor. He laughed nervously: Connie could hear more details of sound than she was used to, more sighs and scrapes and laughs in the back of throats, through the helmet speakers next to her ears. Footsteps pounded. The speed of the race caught up with CT and she leaned forward and ran, at first looking down and then straight ahead as people stomped and swayed around her, the armor so heavy, all their breaths in her ears. (She would be able to hear them no matter how far away she got, no matter whether she came in first or last or somewhere in between, neck-and-neck with another person or alone.)
She would rather not be alone.
York hit the first obstacle, a sequence of columns like stairs, and jumped. He caught the first step with his hands and hauled himself up on his momentum, his shoulder armor peaking like the shoulders of a tiger. Carolina and Maine followed like the rush of rain after the initial few drops. Maine swung himself up one-handed like a gorilla; Carolina jumped, just straight up from the ground to perhaps five feet in the air and landed on the platform on her feet. She looked at York, said something that Connie heard but paid no attention to. It was some kind of taunt and it wasn't meaningful to her. She hit the first obstacle at almost the same time as South, feeling the other woman crowd at her as they jockeyed for space.
Connie jumped. Her back arced, and for a moment she envisioned herself just slamming against the column and falling backward. Wash was crowding her now too, and she was dimly aware of Maryland and Wyoming behind him.
As soon as her hands hit the top of the column she gripped and pulled up. She felt suddenly light and unbalanced as she pulled herself over the top, touched her knees to the top of the column for just a second, and stood up, all so fast that it dizzied her. The armor had lifted her. It made the whole thing so easy.
A moment later South's mask popped up beside her at her shoulder, and she realized that she could compete.
Carolina was distant, a blue blur at the end of a balance beam, and Connie crossed the beam without looking down. It was just like basic training. The armor didn't matter there. In front of her Carolina was jumping from column to column, four of them, staggered, leading to a climbing wall where York didn't just scale the wall, but took jumps that looked impossible.
As soon as Connie stepped off the balance beam, Wash tried to push past her. Without thinking much about it she elbowed him, assuming that since her six-inch thick armor was just pushing against his it wouldn't hurt him or even affect him much at all. Having the suit was like wearing an airbag.
He pushed back.
She kept sprinting toward the next block, pushing back, trying to keep him from getting in front of her. If they went much farther, they would have to start fighting to push the other off the ledge. Was that what they were supposed to do? They were a team - they wouldn't be rated according to how well they persevered over each other.
But they weren't being rated at all.
Wash seemed to come to the same conclusion. He stopped shoving, but when Connie looked behind her to see South as the twin cursed, Wash took a leap while he was still a foot from the edge of the column. Arms flailing, he landed seven feet away. South used the opportunity to pass Connie on the left like a car on a highway, blurring by. A second later, Connie launched herself into the air.
Her legs tingled. The jump the suits enabled was really dizzyingly high. It just lasted too long: she against felt disoriented, as if she were about to fall over, and then landed and got the world back. The next few jumps were the same, four people ahead of her now but she couldn't think about them. She just had to ignore the ache that was beginning in her limbs and back and keep going. The climbing wall was made of an orange plasticy material. Of course she couldn't feel it with her hands, but it was slick. She felt the scaly undersides of her gloves catch a grip she would not have expected to have as she made it to the first platform. Wash had simply climbed his way up, fast: she could see his feet disappearing above her.
"Get going!" Wyoming yelled from below.
South had started just jumping from handhold to handhold, and Connie followed. Her palms smacked against the plastic and she pulled herself up hand over hand or jumped depending on what felt right. When she reached the top of the climbing wall she was sweating and feeling a cold, strange, refreshing sheen on her skin as the suit whisked the sweat away. North wasn't as far from her as she had thought. She could see him in the purple armor balking at the next obstacle, which was back down on the ground of the room, one smooth slanted slope of orange plastic away.
North was staring at a setup like a swing-set, with tripod legs and one long metal spine, but this one also had spike-tipped bars hanging vertically and swinging side to side. Padded out slightly with the sort of material used on punching bags, it looked like the spikes could deliver a nasty hit if they struck someone, and they would, at the least, slow anyone down. Beyond it, the next obstacle beckoned. It looked like the last one.
North dashed forward, moving with the slow arc of the spikes, and passed the first two.
Connie noticed that one spike had been ripped from its socket, the metal torn into skeletal strips, and was lying on the floor.
(This, she would assume correctly later, was Maine's work. Maine was faster than he looked, mostly because he tended to quickly break the kneecaps of things that looked fast.)
For a moment she looked back and forth, tracking the swing of the spikes, and wondered whether her HUD could help her in any way. If it could, she didn't know how.
She decided to try to move with the spikes, dodging them as if they were people swinging their fists at her. As soon as she got into the thick of them they blurred again but she could see the pattern. She passed three. Then one brushed against her upper arm and scared her, and she heard a horrible clang as a spike hit someone behind her and knocked them to the ground. Right in front of her was the safe spot presented by the broken spike, and as soon as she stepped into it the world seemed to snap back into focus. She still had to keep going, though, and the next time she ran forward she realized too quickly that the next spike was swinging toward her more quickly than she had expected. It would catch her right in the stomach on the upswing at this rate.
She sidestepped outside the range of the swing.
For a moment she found herself outside the course entirely, staring at it as Wyoming dashed by, wondering whether she should go back in. There were no walls out here, literally. Because she wasn't in the air any more there was no barrier of a drop, no logs or tires or piles of tracked dirt in the way. She could theoretically break out of the course and run, through what she imagined was woods because in her army training camp it would have been but would actually just return her to the comfortable halls and mess of the Mother of Invention.
Or she could go back to the course and finish it like a proper Freelancer.
As Maryland approached, leaving only Florida lagging behind, she did.
She thought, in the armor, it wouldn't have winded me anyway.
She had to dodge one more spike before reaching the next and last obstacle, and she passed Maryland as she took her first few steps onto it. South was a few steps in front. Carolina had finished and Wash was standing up from a shoulder-roll that had taken him, dramatically and effectively, right to the end of the course.
The last obstacle was simply a textured surface, bumpy and plastic, that they had to climb like a hill. She looked up for turrets - being shot at would certainly make it more difficult - and found none. She ran up it, catching South at the top, and realized that the open space and relatively simple obstacle meant that there was more opportunity for people to compete against each other: she found herself shoving South, who cursed back at her and ran a few feet away to try to prevent Connie from becoming an obstacle. Wyoming was up ahead of them, but despite his bulky body had had short legs and seemed to be flagging. South and Connie glanced at one another. The textured floor, which was punctuated with irregular patches like the bumps on a golf ball, didn't add much difficulty except that she had to, every once in a while, look down. She was still tired but she could have sworn she could feel the armor giving her energy. Maybe she had run farther than she thought.
South slammed into her shoulder, purple and green filling up her vision when she looked to the right, and Connie lowered her forehead as if to head-butt her.
"Quit it!" she yelled.
"What?" South's voice sounded hoarse.
"Just give it up and go around him!"
"I was thinking the same thing, or would have been if you hadn't pushed me," South replied as Wyoming, in between them, spoke up over the helmet radios.
"I don't think your jolly good team work will save you," he drawled sarcastically, and Connie gritted her teeth.
She and South reached the end at about the same time. There was a moment, as their feet hit the floor, when Connie wondered whether it was important whether she sprinted ahead even now. The counselor was standing a few feet away with his hands folded in front of him, the palms together facing up and down as if he was in some informal type of prayer. He had sent the people who had already finished - York, Carolina, Wash, Maine, North - to stand over by a wall at attention. It was difficult to go from the obsession that she had had over the last few minutes with constantly moving forward to a walking pace that was more socially acceptable around a commanding officer. Connie and South jogged up to the counselor together. Florida and Maryland were still unseen somewhere in the course behind them - maybe they had really had trouble with the swinging spikes? - but they jogged over the last obstacle a moment later, Florida slightly ahead of Maryland.
The counselor gestured for them all to join the rest of the group, and they did so energetically.
"That was quite a sprint, wasn't it?" said Florida behind them. He didn't sound out of breath. "I'm happier than a june bug in a forest that we get to practice in spiffy facilities like this."
Connie tipped her head. There was definitely something...wrong with Florida.
South seemed to agree. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't fret, old boy." Wyoming walked up beside Florida and put a big hand on the blue-clad shoulder. "Don't worry about them. Peasants."
"What?" South shouted. "Is this, like, fifth grade?"
She stopped, shoulders hunching, and Connie immediately stepped out of her way. South was ready to fight. North stepped one foot out of line, a hand stretching forward as if to pull his sister backward. Connie backpedaled, not interested in fighting over words. She slipped into line next to Carolina and caught Wash looking at her. She nodded at him while Florida held up his hands.
"Now, little lady, I haven't said anything meant to get your riled up like that. Why don't we sit down and talk about it? Express your feelings. It'll be good for you."
Even Wyoming had had enough. "Come now, chap. We're busy. This is a training exercise."
Connie glanced at the counselor. He was as placid as always, looking down the row like he was counting them, and she couldn't see the director in the viewing room from this far away, if he was even there.
But then the counselor said, "Back into line," in a voice so quiet that Connie thought that maybe no one else had heard it, but when she put her back against the wall they did too.
They waited, fidgeting, and then the director descended from his hidden room and paced back and forth in front of them, the flats of his shoes clicking against the floor.
He said, "Good work, agents," and Connie both let out a sigh of relief and wondered whether he could possibly be talking about her. She had nearly ran out of the course out of fear from the most dangerous, and therefore most important, part of the mission. She had not, like Maine, torn it apart. Why should she be rated as highly as Maine?
She was glad the director couldn't see any expression - the relief, the confusion, or the disbelief - in her eyes.
"Aw yeah we did," said York, and Wash and North laughed, one wide and one thin cascade of sound. Connie realized then that the director couldn't hear what they were saying inside their helmets unless they specifically projected it, because he didn't react. Connie saw the lights on the radio display change color.
York had figured out to disengage from the external speakers, and after a few seconds of reverse-engineering Connie had too.
The director said, "Are you pleased with your armor?"
The proper answer was "Yes sir!" so they shouted it, Carolina extra loud and York sounding drunken and Connie sounding - well, shrill, probably, but also one of the few times that she would ever sound sincere in front of him -and meant it, except perhaps Wyoming, who sounded bored to the point of falling asleep.
And Maryland, quiet, who had come in last and also done good work.
"You will keep your armor in a designated room which FILSS will show you," the director said, and Connie wondered whether the dumb AI was going to be their babysitter for the entirety of their tour.
"Permission to speak, sir," said Carolina into the silence, and the director looked at her for a moment as if he were nearsighted and she was too far away. Connie thought he might take off his glasses or look over the top of them. He did not.
Instead he said, "Go ahead, Agent Carolina."
"Each of us was given armor with different specifications. Is this based on our performance in the first trial?"
"In part," he said slowly. "Another part comes from your service records. Many of you do have armor tailored to your skills or what those skills may become. Explore it. Find out what individual differences you have. If you have any questions, you may talk to me, or you may talk to the techs."
This was enough for Carolina. "Thank you sir."
Connie immediately began exploring her HUD. A few blinks in the right direction would open up menus with bright blue numbers and letters, not too different from an abbreviated computer menu. Her armor had specs that she bet were specific to it. EOD, they said. Explosive Ordinance Disposal. That was why she had ugly eyes.
The director expected her to disarm bombs?
She did have some of the requisite training. She was good at doing things carefully and doing them in order and staying calm under stress, although she had never thought of demolitions as an interesting career path.
What did the others have?
The director asked if they had any other questions.
The chorus answered: "No sir."
"Nice job, York," Connie said carefully over the radio as they filed out. "I didn't know we could talk like that."
"You didn't know we could do that?" He sauntered over to her, gesturing. York always seemed to be moving as much of his body as possible at any given time, but it didn't make him look uncoordinated: exactly the opposite. "Aw, I'm sure you would have picked it up eventually. You're smart."
"I." She wasn't sure how he had gathered that, even if it was true. "Thanks. I wonder why each of us have different types of armor, you know?"
"I dunno, man. Mine's pretty normal." He chuckled.
She did not have an answer to that, but she walked with him toward the locker room. When FILSS went inside she saw that both genders used the same locker room, although they were separated into facing rows of black lockers, and there looked to be space around the back to change. She opened her locker half expecting it to creak. It did not. The nameplate said Connecticut, and she wondered whether the director had known what names he was going to give before he had seen the group of people that would be assigned to them.
"You may keep your armor in these lockers," said FILSS, her voice still disembodied. "I do not recommend taking that technology out of this room. The tech may need to access it in the case of examinations and upgrades. Your undersuits may be taken with you wherever you wish, including...to protect modesty."
Connie nodded. That made sense. They could change out of the undersuits in the bedrooms - as long as they were careful.
"So no peeking, huh?" York winked at the world at large.
FILSS had enough humanity to sound affronted and slightly flattered. "Why, Agent York. I wouldn't consider such a thing. Besides, people with skin aren't my type."
Carolina laughed but kept her voice tight. "Good, FILSS."
Connie heard Wash mutter, "What? Ew."
Carolina sounded happier when she said, "Thanks, FILSS. You've been very helpful."
The locker next to Connie's was empty. Later, she would think that it looked empty. At first, without hindsight and without prejudice, she was glad that she would only have one neighbor.
While North and York punched one another in the armored stomachs to see how it felt she figured out more of the HUD's root files, sitting on the edge of a bench still in her mask and flipping through menus. North and South chatted, and helped one another with latches. Carolina and York carefully positioned themselves at opposite ends of the room, although neither seemed self-conscious in the least. Connie placed her brown armor inside her locker carefully, staring into the back of the bare metal walls. It had seemed at first that the armor wouldn't even fit in, but it managed. She folded the gauntlets and the backs of the hands over each other like a body at rest. The others bantered behind her, York and North, Florida and Wyoming. Maine spoke for what she thought might be the first time, and she turned around to see him standing with his bulky, round helmet under his arm. Even the thick black suit couldn't hide how muscular he was. He had a face like a biker, bald and small-featured with wrinkles around only the tops of his eyes. He glared naturally and without discrimination.
"Mine is different too," he said. "It sees more."
"What do you mean it sees more?" York asked.
"He's got advanced scanners and stuff," Wash said. "Look at the panels on the side."
Maine nodded.
"Good," Carolina said. "That'll be useful to us."
Maine said, "Yeah," and walked out.
Maryland made to follow him, then hesitated when no one else followed. "I'm going to go back to the common room?" she said.
"Right, right." South made it sound like she was tired of walking, but followed her. North waved at York and Wash. When Wyoming and Florida walked out without at all concerned with the others, both of them bony and skinny in the black suits, Maryland and company used them to cover their own retreat.
Connie left her mask in her locker and got ready to go.
It was only then that she noticed that Wash was still sitting down, holding his helmet in his hands like a fragile piece of art or a vessel to drink from, and she paused in the doorway because she had wanted to do the same with hers but hadn't gotten up the courage to be so somber.
She sat down next to him on the bench and looked at the padded inside edges of the mask.
She would have liked to say the tech was amazing, but couldn't find the words quite then.
"Why is yours different?" he said, and she stood and got the EOD helmet out of the locker.
"It's for demolitions," she said, sitting back down beside him and turning the mask back and forth. It was heavy, with each turn threatening to fall out of her hands. "I don't know why they gave it to me. But it's for demolishing explosives."
"How do you know all this?"
"I read the specs."
He tipped his head. "Is...is there a manual for that?"
"It's in the root file," she said, and reached inside the mask to toggle the HUD. It was hard to see without being inside. "Here."
He made a noise like he was too polite to get her to do things for him. She put the helmet on and blinked through the menus, then handed it to him. "Look."
"It'll be too small," he said, but took it and set it over his head. It worked well enough. For a moment he stared straight ahead, and she knew that he was reversing what she had done, reading through the spec menus so that he could find them on his own suit. He folded his hands under his chin and she looked at his knuckles.
When he took the mask off and handed it to her she could feel the residual heat from his skin, or maybe from hers.
"Thanks," he said.
"You're welcome. That should help you with yours."
The gray helmet was sitting on the bench next to them. She touched her fingernails on it gingerly, then when he didn't protest flattened her palm against the curve and stroked the yellow stripe like the helmet was a cat. "I like this kind better," she said. "They're more streamlined."
He reached over and got his fingers around the brown nubs at the side of her helmet's cheeks. "This part is kinda weird."
"It's hideous. And it's supposed to prevent people from grabbing it, Wash." She smiled and he retracted his hand, looking a bit shocked. "It's okay."
"Is it really?"
"The whole suit is apparently made to be difficult to grab. Again to help people who are sneaking around defusing bombs, I guess."
"Huh." He rubbed his shoulder as if wondering about the relative grab-ability of his suit.
She felt herself blush. Her whole face lit up with heat, and it hit her then in a surge of dizziness and disappointment that she was falling for him.
(It was intimate, wasn't it, that he had put on her mask? He had seen behind her eyes.)
"Can I try on yours?" she said, figuring now that she'd fallen off this cliff she might as well pretend she'd jumped for a reason. "Does the visor look different."
"It actually has a wider frame of vision than yours," he said. "That doesn't seem to make up for being...unable to grab."
She hooked her hands around the sides of the gray mask and put it on quickly, holding her breath until she could take one stale lungful of air in through her nose and smell the new cloth and the slight sweat-smell that was Wash. The fabric seemed to prickle on the inside edge where her chin brushed against the same place his jaw would rest, and she looked around at what was indeed a wider field of view without touching any of the controls or even blinking to activate the HUD.
She looked at him and he was looking at her.
Luckily he couldn't see her blush behind the mask.
She unlatched the helmet and took it off slowly, then dropped it in his lap. "Thanks."
"No problem," he said, and she felt that he was raising emotional barriers because of her glib response.
They sat there together for a short time, looking at the floor and at the lockers.
When she couldn't think of anything to say, she stood up. She suddenly wanted to run away - to be curled up in her bed, maybe, although it was the middle of the day and she knew from experience that no matter how much she wanted to nap she wouldn't actually do it. Naps just lead to sleeplessness, and now, with these added feelings about Wash, it would probably just lead to worrying about what he thought of her too.
"This tech is pretty amazing," she said, surprised at how calmly the words came out as she turned her back to him, started walking and gave him a wave.
"I'm going back too," he said, and followed her, leaving the mask in his locker.
The walk back to the common room was in halls she had walked before. They still felt new and unfamiliar but the light was unchanging, always bright and clear. However, the hall felt close and dim with him there, and she took care not to brush her hands or shoulders against his.
(Bodies were lesser, without the armor on them.)
(Later she would think that she loved the way he loved things: carefully, but never so gingerly that he gave the impression that either he or the object of his love would break.
She would also think that perhaps she felt in love with him because she fell in love with the program, and he was in love with it also. Therefore it would make sense for her love for Wash to die with her love for the program.
Not all things acted according to sense, but some did.)