Variation X: Intermezzo
Carolina doesn't wake up.
The Director claims he wants to evaluate her mental state before attempting to remove her AIs, and it sounds plausible enough that even Tex isn't entirely sure he's making it up. So she goes back to her regular training regimen, keeps Omega deactivated, fakes all the aggression and hatred she could ever need. She doesn't trust him. She doesn't trust herself.
Eventually, she steels herself and visits Recovery One, where Carolina is pale and still and barely breathing. York, slumped forward in his chair with his head pillowed on the edge of her bed, looks almost as bad, with dark-rimmed eyes and a new gauntness to his cheekbones, one hand outstretched to capture hers.
North is also standing at the window, and she supposes they've all been taking shifts for this silent vigil. For all that Carolina's definitely a bit of a hardass, she's their leader, and a lot of what she's done has been for them. They owe her their lives. Tex feels a pang, because she misses that kind of loyalty, that sharp-edged friendship (and how does she remember that so clearly?), and the weird, sentimental moment prompts her to let North draw her in to conversation.
She confronts North about his sister, explains that South is already petitioning to get one of Carolina's AIs, and he sighs and agrees to talk to her about it. She's never noticed before how tall he is, how he carries himself not to intimidate, but to reassure, a looming presence that's strangely calming. She envies South, a little, and remembers her own siblings, her own siblings, her own—her head aches, down at the nape of her neck, and she remembers that it's not going to end well, between the twins. It can't. The Director's made sure of that.
"Piece of advice," she says, covering the moment of confusion. "One soldier to another? You watch her."
"Something's... different about you," North says, and she really must be off-balance, because she confesses to him that she's been pulling Omega, that she hasn't used him since the fight with Carolina. And, much to her surprise, it's okay, she feels like she can actually trust him not to tell the Director. She can confide in him. It's easy. It's right. It's good.
In return, she tells him that the Director has already slated Wash for a new implantation, despite the whole mess with Carolina, and North says, "You're kidding me," and it's so good to hear that someone else thinks this is getting pretty fucked up, it's so good to hear.
"Hey. Call me when she wakes up. Or... if she doesn't."
"Will do."
She walks away from the conversation feeling good, hears Theta's childlike voice echoing back through the halls, "I think I'm starting to like her. At least, better than I did before."
Wash is up for surgery that afternoon, and Tex finds herself nervously pacing the halls, fingering the data chip from her locker, a little mystery she'd forgotten in the middle of all the chaos with Carolina. The AI theory class is over for the day, so the classroom will be free of interruptions, and on a whim she walks over, takes a seat, plugs in the chip.
Her breath catches in her throat when Connie's face appears on the screen. "Agent Texas," she says, then pauses. "Allison. If you're reading this, then that means I escaped. Or, well, at the very least I'm probably not around anymore." And she almost wants to stop it there, stop the playback, just close the file and try to forget the kid's soft voice and open face. "I want to leave behind all the data I've been collecting about Project Freelancer. I never could shake the feeling that something was wrong with the program. The secrets, the lies, the manipulation. Smoke, all of it, obscuring a big damn fire. I did some digging and now I know what the Director's been hiding. What he did."
Tex exhales slowly, and something inside is screaming at her to turn it off, to turn it off now, before it's too late. She stays frozen, her hands resting flat on the display. "He broke the law, Allison. The one law they don't just slap you on the wrist for. I'm taking the originals with me as an insurance policy. I leave this copy for you, not because you are the best soldier in the squad—" The girl on the screen sighs, and looks for a moment like she's much older, much more tired. "—but because I know that I can trust you the most. After reading these files, you will understand why."
Connie's been looking down through most of the recording, but now her eyes snap up, seem to focus on Tex through the screen. "Good luck," she says, and adds, almost shyly, "Your friend, Connie."
The video ends, the files open. Tex moves her hand like she's in a dream, opens the folder labeled "AI Experimentation". There's a section about Alpha, the original AI from which the others were fragmented, and... and a reference to Beta, presumably the first fragment. It's password-protected, so Tex scrolls past, reads about the others, about Delta and Gamma and Omega, and finds an article about AI fragmentation, about the Director's theories that an AI could be broken into its component parts by exposing it to various scenarios, by forcing it to twist and stretch and snap to save itself.
He tortured it, she realizes, with a horror that settles as a heavy lump in the pit of her stomach because on some level, she always suspected, she always knew. He threw the Alpha into impossible situations, tore at its new mind like a dog worrying a bone, harvested the parts of itself it tried to protect from harm. She's breathing hard, now, scrolling back to the Beta, the password-protected file.
She types in one word. ALLISON.
The file opens under her hand, and she sees a face, a young woman with blond hair and a uniform and she knows that face, she knows it. Her eyes are skipping, her breathing coming too fast, and it takes her too many tries to read the article itself, but it doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter, because she's remembering. She's remembering.
She's shipping out that day, saying goodbye to her sweet but clingy boyfriend, and for some reason, when she drags through her mind for the memory of that moment, she sees it from his eyes, sees her own face curl into a fake-looking smile, feels her own wrist slip out of his grasp. She looks sad, she thinks. She feels frustrated, trapped.
She leaves. She doesn't say goodbye. And somewhere, out in the fighting and the shouting and the cold, sharp pain, she dies.
When they created the Alpha, she came along for the ride, a memory so sharp, so real, so desperately and carefully maintained, that it formed a whole other person. She's breathing harder, now, only she's not, only she's not, because she's a fucking shadow and shadows don't need to breathe, shadows aren't really alive.
She runs a hand down the armor the tomahawk had sliced through, repaired and replated. There's no scar. There's no real skin beneath, just some artificial fucking body for an artificial fucking mind.
She stands up, grabs the data key as an afterthought, and explodes into motion, pacing down the hallways. She wants to be angry, she wants to feel like killing. She misses Omega, but she remembers what he is, now, and she doesn't want that snapped-off rage anywhere near her. So she walks, and pretends to breathe, and pretends to think. Pretends to be.
The Director copied himself to create Alpha (the gray at his temples, time marching on without her). He's been trying to get her back, the sick fuck, he's always been trying—
She slumps against a wall, ignoring the stares of a couple of guards passing by, grabs her helmet with both hands, because Jesus, Connie died for this shit, North and South are at each other's throats, Carolina's still unconscious, and they're breaking apart, all of it's breaking apart.
There's a veritable stream of people sprinting down the hallway, now, and in a daze she collars the last one. "What's going on?"
He flinches bodily at the contact, stammers, "Th-they implanted Agent Washington, but something went wrong. He went nuts! Just started screaming. It was horrible. They had to sedate him."
She opens her hand, and he makes a run for it. She watches him go, then looks down again at her hands, two hands and a voice and a will. She's going to make this right. She has to make this right.
She doesn't have a single fucking thing left to lose.