In the yard, the drill sergeant marches up and down the line of the newest additions eyeing them all sternly. Ellie stands with a couple other soldiers, arms crossed behind her back, sight locked dead ahead as their bold leader tries to instill some fear into the kids.

"Nobody here is an orphan!" he finally shouts at them. "You are all children of the Boston Quarantine Zone. You are under the new and interminable parentage of the Federal Disaster Response Agency."

Ellie turns her snigger into a light cough. She's heard this more times than a human being should before it's considered torture, but here she is again. Despite pissing off the principal for years, he reeled her back in to serve as counsel to the cadets on weekends. She understands why: she's a good bet at keeping the troublemakers in line. After all, she knows the school, the town, all the escape routes and the tricks of the trade. She knows firsthand what it's like passing through and being passed through the system. Her higher-ups believe that she "gets" them. Plus she's a young soldier, someone that they can probably see themselves becoming in a few years. She exists as proof that the QZ is a way of life. The military has to stand, even as a concept. Hope doesn't cut it in the real world, and the reform school offers something tangible that dreams cannot. Sergeant McBullshit (as Ellie refers to him) continues his rant more or less reiterating those sentiments.

"People need sustenance, and here you are provided for. People need protection, and here you have an armoury of it. With the same vigour with which we put food in your bellies, we'll put a bullet into the skull of anything that tries to infiltrate your heads, fungus or Firefly. The world has broken down and we are here to keep the remaining strongholds of civilisation functioning. There are those who will disagree. But know this: those so-called freedom fighters only want to emancipate you from security, from safety. You will not fall to their false promises. They will feed you foolishness instead of food. You will be stronger and better than that. You will be soldiers."

Ellie can recite the rest of his speech verbatim.

"You are not hungry. You are not homeless. You are not helpless. We're not here to put a gun in your hands and ask you to die for a hopeless cause. We give you a means to fight for today because tomorrow does not exist. Everything is here and now. The past has no place here. So put aside any notions that you have been left alone. This is your family. You have siblings, look around you. Your brothers-in-arms. Your father is the flag of our fathers. And 'mother' is spelt F-E-D-R-A. Now won't you all make your mama proud?"

There is confused and intimidated silence.

"You answer 'Sir, yes sir!', do you hear me!?" the sergeant spits, face red as a beet by now.

"Sir, yes sir!" they chant, only partially in unison. Some don't even open their mouths.

Ellie bites her lip to hide the amusement. Every new shipment of kids to the home has to listen to McBullshit and his lovely rehearsed welcome speech which he doesn't even try to mix up a bit. She watches the worn, dirty children of different sizes and ages, all lined up neatly, hands strictly at their sides. She observes a girl at the furthest end of the line looking down at the ground, expression poorly masking extreme sourness. She's one of them who didn't answer.

There we go.

A problem child has been found. Ellie does this with the new lot, sizes them up. She doesn't snitch on them as the Sarge hopes she would ("Tell me, Williams, which of these brats looks like they'll need solitary or toilet duty?"). For the past two years, all she does is grin and say that all of new recruits seem fine, constantly to his chagrin. He wants names and faces; he's always out for punk blood. But she's been in that chair, in that office (being intimidated by the former sergeant) and knows it's always better to prevent them from getting ripped a new one than having to try to put salve on later bruises.

Following the introduction, it's time for sorting and assignment of rooms and duties. Ellie makes sure to get the sour-faced girl's file. Her "team" for the remainder of their time at the home consists of that girl, a scrawny boy who couldn't be more than ten years old and a broadly built girl who might just be months away from active duty. She knows these three will need her training and counsel more than they'll ever know or accept it.

They relocate to the mess hall, each soldier at a table with their respective group. They are to meet once a week for an hour with their groups for "bonding". Ellie takes a seat and instructs the children to do the same. Their countenances are miserable, but there are never happy faces coming into this place. She scans through their files quickly to get their names. The boy is Jace, nine. The big girl is Myra, fifteen. And then there's Wendy, thirteen years old.

"I'm Private Williams," she tells them. "I'll be in charge of—"

"Did someone knife your face?" Myra interrupts her to ask, jutting her chin out and eyeing Ellie's scar.

Ellie smirks and answers, "If you're asking if this happened while I was on duty, then no. I had that for a long time. This, however…"

She rolls up the long sleeve of her uniform and shows them a rather ugly gash on her right forearm. Myra is taken aback. Jace pales but doesn't tear his eyes away.

"That looks sick," Myra finally says as flatly as she can manage.

"Whoa," whispers Jace.

"Some wire meshing taught me a pretty good lesson. I'd recommend not doing stupid shit and giving yourself any unnecessary wounds."

"Did it hurt?" Jace asks so quietly she barely hears him.

"Hurt like a motherfucker," she admits. "You'll get a couple of these when you're a soldier, that's unavoidable. The trick is to not die from them. They're not that bad, though. They make rad stories to tell."

"To tell who?" Wendy mutters, staring at the table.

She hasn't looked at Ellie or anyone once since they all sat down. Ellie almost wants to laugh – the defensiveness, the sarcasm, the bitterness. Are all thirteen-year-olds like this? It's nostalgic.

"To new recruits. Teammates. Your friends," Ellie offers. She adds gently, "Future family."

Wendy scoffs.

"Who says any of us will even live that long?"

Ellie considers the question before answering.

"You're right. You might not even make it to your dorm room before you clock out. I mean, I could go out on patrol and a smuggler could shank me and that's that. You could be running from infected and get your ass bitten. Any soldier can engage Fireflies and get their entire face blasted off. I won't bullshit you and tell you to have hope for a happy future. We all know what it's like to sleep and don't dream a damned thing. All I can do is advise you guys about getting by. I know a guy who lived to be an old man, and he died like a regular human being. I think that's worth it, don't you? I'm alive and I'd like to keep living, even just a day more. You should try it sometime. Doesn't feel so bad."

Wendy finally looks at her and asks, "So why be a soldier and not a Firefly?"

Myra's eyes go wide at the comment. Jace looks startled. Ellie wonders if this kid even knows how monumentally stupid it is to say something like that in general, far less for inside a military school and in front of a soldier.

Thank shit I took this one.

"I knew someone who once thought like that," she answers her. "I can tell you: there's no happy ending there."

"I didn't ask for a sob story," says Wendy, turning away completely and looking out the barred window.

Little bastard.

Ellie smiles.