XIV

York was awarded Delta shortly after Maine returned to service. It was gentle service - there had not been a mission in a week, and the Freelancers had slowly gone back to their old routines from the very beginning, making coffee and working out and exploring, although there was much less now to explore and CT had already walked most of the halls that York and Carolina found new and interesting.

There was no ceremony for him: only Carolina had gotten that. Instead, the director spoke to York through his proxy counselor and through the med techs. One day York returned to the common room flushed and proud.

"I'm getting one called Delta."

North congratulated him and Wash smiled a small smile. Carolina's was small too.

The fact that the AI were emerging out of order frustrated CT. She returned carefully to the data she had liberated and saw the list of unknown, unmanifested, incomplete AI. Would there be exactly as many AI as letters of the Greek alphabet?

York was disoriented when he got Delta, and CT liked that. The adverse effects of the director's program were finally showing.

He stayed in the recovery ward for a few days, but Freelancers were always in and out visiting him. Sometimes CT went too, remembering fondly the good, if inapplicable, advice York had given her in the early days of the scoreboard.

She visited one day when South was the only other person there. Delta was sitting beside York on the bed. CT looked down on his green head as he moved around, every step the same, twitchy movements like a bird.

York looked up at her as soon as she came in. To her knowledge York had not been involved in tracing the Insurrectionist signals, although as Wash's best friend he would have heard all about the domestic side of their breakup. South turned, her purple-tipped hair swaying, and CT thought about the different types of anger they all had: Carolina's anger at Tex for usurping her spot as number one, South's anger at everyone because she liked the aesthetic of it, and because she, like CT, feared falling to the bottom of the ranks.

York said, "Hey man." He looked at South and CT evenly.

"How are you feeling?" CT asked. She stood next to South, at the side of the bed.

"Okay. Me and D are just getting acquainted."

"What does he do?" South folded her arms and glanced at the AI.

York followed her gaze. "He talks. And figures things out."

Delta looked up. "Hello." The voice had a buzz to it, but was warm.

South nodded her head. CT gave a small wave.

"I am artificial intelligence program Delta. How may I assist you?"

"This one is a lot more...computer-y than Sigma," South said. "Play me a music video."

"He's just starting out," York said, just as Delta spoke with him.

"We are all different, Agent South. "

South tipped her head. "How do you know my name? Do you have any punk rock?"

"Your friend-or-foe beacon contains your service record. As an artificial intelligence program owned by the UNSC, it is useful for me to be able to identify agents in the field. Or, in a ship. We are not equipped for entertainment."

"Huh." South nodded.

"Does the UNSC have a lot of AI?" CT asked on a whim.

"I don't know," York said, scoffing, and CT couldn't help but smile at the tiny laugh that curled across his mouth. He hadn't instantly been made expert.

To her surprise, Delta also said, "I do not know." He looked around, wary, still standing next to York's thigh like it was a wall he had been assigned to guard. He did not elaborate.

Of course he wouldn't know, CT thought. The AI were only computers, and only unlocked what had been inside their operator's brains all ready, she thought.

Except Delta was a fragment of the director's mind too, and...

"It gives me headaches sometimes," York said. "Just a little. Hey, he helps me see better." He squinted his uninjured eye. CT sometimes forgot that York was half-blind: he still fought, he still drove. When he talked about his eye it was usually a joke.

Delta said, "Yes. One of my first tasks was to calibrate myself to York's field of vision."

York interrupted. "He can't exactly see for me, but..."

When Delta interrupted right back York gave a laconic blink and simply let him do it. "I advise him in more detail about the things in his lost field of vision."

"So you AI are all for people with medical issues, right?" South said. "First Maine, now this - maybe Carolina gave hers up because she didn't need it."

"South -" CT snapped before she could stop herself, anxious to defend the man who had answered some of her questions a long time ago.

York simply sat up, though, sinuously dragging himself away from both them and Delta to wave a hand and prop himself up further against the wall behind the bed. "My eye might be damaged, but the rest of this is fine. And don't worry, I'm sure you'll get one soon."

South laughed.

Afterward, CT would think that it was ironic how she had made her next discovery as part of one of her few entirely permissible errands.

She had been verifying her ID for an update to her service record, a simple electronic signature that everyone had done and sent to the Oversight Committee of the UNSC over the last two days. The update had required no mention of AI or even of rank. It was a signature and a check box: special forces, one year.

She was on her way back to her room, dressed in casual clothes and thinking about how she had lived in the room she shared with Carolina for a year and never acquired anything she wanted to take with her, when Carolina appeared at an intersection and with an almost aggressive expression of recognition headed toward her.

"Where are you going?" CT said.

"It's nothing," Carolina replied.

Carolina was walking too fast for it to be nothing. CT turned and followed her, immediately curious. She had let York talk his way around her questions, had let him change the subject and laugh the AI off: Carolina wouldn't do that.

"I don't think it's nothing," she said.

Carolina stopped short. CT almost ran into her, bending slightly forward so as not to run into the other woman's shoulder, and Carolina pushed on into the hallway, still blocking CT's path.

CT backed up. In a physical challenge, she was hesitant to go up against Carolina but didn't think they would be too terribly matched - CT was as nearly good with short-range fighting as Carolina. CT just struggled with everything else.

And there wouldn't be a point to fist-fighting in the hallway.

"Wait." Carolina turned around.

"What?" CT said, faced suddenly with a green-eyed stare.

"You know how our computer systems work. And the ship's security?"

What was she saying? CT had practice looking natural. It was easier when natural was a pouting glare, a cold, disinterested eye. "I know some. With this ship it's different. FILSS, just as a start -"

"You trained for this."

"Yes."

"Come with me. I might need you to help me."

Suddenly caught up in the current instead of eddying, CT followed Carolina as smoothly as if they had always been walking together. Where were they going? Closer or farther away from CT's goal?

"South was with me when Texas came and said she had to speak to Internals," Carolina said.

Closer.

CT kept walking, striding along easily next to the shorter woman, who forged ahead with her head down and her shoulders slumped. Carolina was wearing a turquoise t-shirt, and CT could see her shoulder blades move through the fabric.

"So you're going to see what Tex is doing in Internals?"

Carolina gave no answer.

"Don't you think we might get in trouble for this?" she asked.

"We won't."

Her confidence barely registered for CT, but she was caught up now, towed behind Carolina like the smaller woman was a current, and CT wanted to see where it would take her. "Ah, I know Wash sees internals too," CT said, trying to sound innocent. "What do they do?"

"Internal Affairs. The same thing they always do. Ask people for reports if somebody gets mad. You should know that."

"I do."

"Just help me do this," Carolina said.

"Oh, were you giving me a choice?" When Carolina didn't respond, CT rapid-fired the next question that she had not yet been cornered into asking. "Are you going to try to get a different AI?"

"I don't think it works like that."

"How do you know?"

Carolina said, "Quiet, CT," and kept moving.

They were coming up on a door that CT knew lead to administrative offices. It was guarded by one man, a white-armored grunt with a helmet that didn't cover his pale, stubbled face.

'What's in there?" Carolina gestured at the door.

"That's internals, they're having a meeting. Shouldn't you know that?"

"Let me in."

"Private meeting, ma'am. No can do."

"Who's in there?"

He hesitated, biting his lip and looking around.

"Who's in there?"

"Ah, the director. Agent South. Agent Texas."

"Why?"

"What?" He was just stalling now.

Carolina shook her head, then pursed her lips and emerged on the other side of those gestures calmer, more precise. "You need to let me in."

"If you say so," the guard said. "The director doesn't like to be disturbed, but...479 recommended that people do what you say. Just in general."

"You've more afraid of facing her now than the director in an hour..." CT couldn't help adding.

The guard shrugged and opened the door.

South, in armor, was seated in a chair in a room too big for it. There was no other furniture. The director and counselor stood in front of her, Church's arms folded, the counselor midway through what might have been a gesture of supplication. Tex stood behind South, one hand on her own hip. She didn't turn to look at Carolina, and CT hovering behind her, as quickly as the others did.

The director pursed his lips in same way Carolina had. CT expected him to say her name, the word "agent" starting to shape.

He said, "We are in middle of something."

Carolina took the laconic tone as permission to be more aggressive. "I want to know what Texas is discussing with my agents."

How easy it was for her, CT thought. Carolina marched in and demanded answers. If only she had been asking the right questions. CT didn't belong here, in this room full of giants interrogating one another; she was more suited to trawling for information in their footsteps.

Now Texas did look at them, and crossed her thick, armored arms.

"Internal Affairs, Carolina," the director said. "This is very rote."

"There's nothing for you here, Carolina," Texas said. "Whatever you want from me...I'm just a bystander right now. They're talking to South."

"Yeah," South said, her visor switching between CT and Carolina. "What did you have to bust in here for?"

"Wash isn't here?" Carolina said.

Tex replied fast. "We take shifts."

"Calm yourself," the director said to South. "We were discussing personnel. As you all know, there have been unauthorized transmissions going out. Agent South is helping us."

CT felt cold. She reminded herself that she knew this, that Wash had been working on the same thing for weeks, that with the computers the director used - with the Alpha - she was no more likely to be caught right here than if she was if she was one million miles away.

Carolina shrugged one shoulder, turned the movement into a gesture toward Texas. "Why's she here if it's about personnel? It's my team."

"She is simply standing guard." The director did not indicate that he found anything wrong with Carolina's assertion that the team was hers.

"Guard against what?"

"Variables," the director said. His response was quick, his tone, chilling.

"Can I be done?" South said. "I've told you everything already."

CT checked the director's face. He looked skeptical, if she could read him at all. He had overlooked her the entire time, literally looking around her instead of straight ahead. Carolina's height and how close CT was standing to her meant that the director's gaze just hovered around CT's right shoulder.

"Are we finished here?" South asked.

The director said, "We are."

"I don't like what she's doing here," Carolina said, looking at Tex.

Tex tipped her head. "You don't like that I'm doing my job?"

South rose noisily from the chair and imposed herself between CT and the director. Church moved so that he could better see Carolina, blocking his view of CT behind South. At the same time as it gave CT an avenue of escape so easily that it almost felt inevitable for her to take it, she didn't know what else she could find out here. She fidgeted, cocking her hand at her hip.

"Quit complaining," South muttered, looking at Carolina.

Carolina gestured at Tex. The director was still watching them, with an expression that CT could not identify as either concern or curiosity. The quirk of his lips could mean either one.

"I don't like that..." Carolina hesitated. That you're patronizing me in front of my team? CT thought. Or that you're lording it over us?

Carolina looked at the director and her shoulders lowered, from a hackle to something calmer. She took control of herself, but with that control she was still radiating anger toward Tex, pointing at her like an arrow, ready to punch right through even though Tex was armored and Carolina was not.

Carolina said, "I was curious. Sir."

"I implore you to indulge your curiosity in a manner that is less disruptive in the future, Agent Carolina."

Tex tipped her head. "Yeah."

Carolina whipped around to look at Tex. Leonard and Allison were here in the same room, CT thought suddenly. They were close.

Carolina nodded to Tex and the director in turn. Silence gathered around her. Everyone had given her space, two feet and a chair between Carolina and the others.

South broke the silence, brash and loud. "What next, sir?"

The director didn't turn to look at her. Instead, he looked through Carolina to Tex. "You are dismissed."

"All right." South's voice was quiet but joyful. She turned, and CT followed in her wake. South never outpaced her. They passed through the doorway in a few steps, and that was it - CT's peek into the workings of Internals was done. She narrowed her eyes. What had she learned? What had she heard?

Only that Project Freelancer was falling apart.

"Us ladies gotta stick together, right?" South said.

(Later, she would use that line again. Because she remembered this moment, because she thought it was funny, because those shapes were just easiest in her mouth - CT didn't know.)

CT looked at the hallway in front of them. When she glanced back she saw that Carolina was following, but slowly - hesitantly, watching Tex, stepping only when the other woman stepped. After a few more paces Carolina changed tack and strolled, making it look like she was out for a walk and would be happy to have Tex come and talk and walk next to her, daring Tex to give in to the illusion. CT and South outpaced them quickly.

"Carolina and Tex are women too," CT said when she was sure they couldn't hear.

South looked back at her. "Nah, Carolina's a big wolf, like those ones at the head of the pack that everybody hates, and Tex is some kind of snake."

"Like an anaconda?"

"Sure. Like a freaking anaconda."

They paused at the meeting of two hallways. "Okay, good, we're done," South said. "Thanks for being sane with me."

CT nodded.

"That Tex maniac is messing everything up. And you thought Carolina was obnoxious before."

I never said that, CT thought, but she wouldn't have said it even if she did want to defend Carolina.

"So what were you talking about in there?" CT asked. It was worth a shot to ask.

South hesitated. "Personnel issues."

"And...?"

"And it was private. Lay off." A moment later she softened her tone. "I don't want to get in trouble either."

"Somebody's in trouble?"

"Maybe. But we're gonna make trouble first."

"For the Insurrectionists, you mean."

"Yeah, of course. Hey, I'll see you around."

South jogged away down a hall that could have led to the the locker room or the hangar bay.

CT waited in the space of a few hurried heartbeats for Carolina to appear. She didn't, though - whether she meant to cause or avoid a fight CT didn't know. CT looked down at the floor, back up, scratched at her elbow.

Some investigator, she thought - standing in a hallway while the major players moved around the game board in another room. What other risks should she have taken in there? What had she missed?

She stood there for a few minutes, getting angry and frustrated at her own lack of planning. She had learned a few things: that internals were on the trail that they did not know was hers, and that Carolina had not been talked to about that at all. She also now knew that Tex was serving as the director's enforcer when she wasn't with the other Freelancers.

Still musing, CT headed to the mess hall, the next place she had planned to go after verifying her ID. When she got there, there were some pilots spread out between two tables and a small pack of Freelancers, all wearing plain clothes, near the middle of the room. South was there, and CT realized that she must have taken a shortcut to get here. They could have walked together, if she'd known. South was sitting next to her brother and Maine, opposite York and Wash.

CT picked up a tray and took the food that was offered to her . At the table she hovered for a few awkward moments before sitting down next to York, who gave her a friendly glance. Wash had been asking a question, though, and York immediately turned to him, presenting CT with the back of his neck. She poked with her fork at a plateful of mashed potatoes and peas.

Delta was perched on York's shoulder. He had been there almost constantly since York got out of recovery, like a strange familiar that the Freelancers had grown accustomed to seeing in the common room and the training rooms. They still weren't sure how to address him, and South had more than once referred to him as a night light. Wash must have asked what having an AI was like, because York answered.

"I dunno, man," York said, "It's hard to describe. Like a little tingly feeling in the back of my head. They said it would be cold, but it's more like...looking at a picture of a snowstorm than being actually cold."

"So he's scenic?" North said, and South rolled her eyes.

"It's not quite that...visual," York said. "You'll see, when you get yours."

"Not all of us will," South said, and looked at CT.

"Hey, you might," Wash said, gesturing at CT. "We don't know yet."

"Yeah, South," CT said, if only because she had been surprised that they had brought her into the conversation at all - she had never expected to get an AI.

South said, "It's only people on the board."

"It's not a competition," North said, and the ridiculousness of that stunned everyone - for everything that it was it had always been a competition, and North's assertion sounded childish and ridiculous. If he told such a blatant lie in the name of morale, CT thought, how much of his other comforts were equally fictitious?

"What do you think, Delta?" York asked, squinting sideways at the AI.

Delta disappeared and reappeared, with a lowering of light, at York's right shoulder. "How do I feel about being partnered with Agent York?"

"Yeah," Wash said. "Or Sigma, what do you..."

Maine had been sitting at the table quietly, his arms crossed over it. He had eaten a head of broccoli and a mushy carrot in the time that the others had been talking. CT took a forkful of food. Sigma was perched in the air at Maine's side and CT, like the others, knew that if she looked too close at him she would have to blink away the afterimages, even in her peripheral vision, for too long. While he intruded physically, Sigma had not been part of the lunch time conversation so far, and CT could have forgotten about him if he did not represent one piece of the AI puzzle.

Maine did not look at Wash. Sigma, though, looked at Delta, ignoring Wash entirely. "Hello, brother."

Delta said, "Hello."

"I..." Wash said, failing to re-assert his question. In the past, CT would have defended him. Not even a defense - she would have continued his words, and felt that the sharing of them was intimate.

Now, she kept her mouth closed.

What will two fragments talk about? She wondered. What will they do - two parts of one mind that have been broken apart?

Sigma asked, "Are you well, brother?"

"We have been learning strategy," Delta said, and CT thought that that wasn't entirely an answer. "My agent is sufficiently fed and clothed, and his health is excellent."

South and Wash laughed. Delta really was the logical one, CT thought.

The Freelancers were all watching Delta now, Wash with his arms crossed on the table, North and South sitting stiffly, identically straight until South, just then seeming to noticing that she was mirroring her brother, tossed her head. York touched the tips of his fingers on the transparent plastic cup of water in front of him, not quite holding it. CT took another forkful of food.

"You learn from the Alpha, do you not?" Sigma asked.

"We do," Delta said, sounding intrigued. "All of us do."

"And what does he teach you?"

"You're there in the classrooms too," South said, gesturing with a fork at Maine and sucking her lip as if in embarrassment immediately after.

"But the Alpha teaches us very important things," Sigma said.

"Yes," Delta said. "We need to know...not what he wants...perhaps what he needs."

The AI didn't have enough range of expression to cock his head, but he still looked confused - perhaps his limbs had gone looser, his feet drifting more freely. The Freelancers looked back and forth, almost in unison.

"What?" Sigma repeated calmly. "Is that what we need to know?"

"The Alpha knows the answers?" Delta said. "No. that is incorrect. The Alpha knows...the question."

"What are you talking about?" South said. Wash and York shook their heads, as if they were just waking up, while Maine stayed mountainously still. South looked at him with what might have been concern, and the softness in her eyes made CT feel, suddenly, the emotional impact of what she had known all along that this cryptic conversation was about. The AI knew that they were missing something but not what it was or how to begin bringing it back. How close they were to understanding, but how wide a gulf of truncated and ravaged memory they would have to, impossibly, cross. CT felt herself blanch, but no one was looking at her.

(She didn't have an AI, after all - they were the main event, and she had escaped ever being partnered with one.)

"What's the question?" York asked. He scratched his head, ruffled his hair.

"We learned...about maneuvering in a vacuum yesterday," Wash tried. His earnestness brought a stab of emotion to CT, but she couldn't tell whether it was affection or annoyance. She realized just then that without Carolina there it made it easier to sit at the same table as Wash and not think about relationships at all.

"Stop that," Leonard Church's voice suddenly shouted out from the doorway to CT's right.

The Freelancers all straightened up to see the director, suddenly, standing there just inside the mess hall. His voice was level but so loud that the pilots turned and the echoes jumped around the mess hall. Without no Carolina to dilute him - what corner was she gritting her teeth or raging in? - he looked stark and tall. It would have been better if he had come out of the shadows - even in the thin lights of the room set aside for Internals he would not have been as unavoidably present, thin and dark, as the scowling director who marched into the brightly-lit mess hall. This was not his territory, and all the Freelancers knew it: South and York bustled to their feet, smacked shins on table-edges, while Wash saluted where he sat, his shoulders twitching. CT saluted too, allowing the near-instinctual, practical gesture to hide her. She had tensed to stand up when the director moved closer, off of the tongue of bare riveted metal extending from the door and almost to the head of the table, and when she did she felt stiff and clumsy.

The director said, "AI program Sigma." He looked at them all like a teacher, like one of those who had driven her to join the army so that she would have a yes or no chance of success instead of a sliding scale of potential failure.

Sigma folded his fiery hands behind his fiery back. "Sir."

The director had already moved on, scowling, as CT had initially suspected, at York. It looked too much like he was looking through York at her, so CT kept her pose as straight as if she were still saluting. The director had never told them to stand at ease but they had all done it, South easing back down while York still stood, pinioned. The Freelancers had gotten sloppier than the UNSC in general: she hardly noticed now when she saluted more like a child playing soldier than like a member of the elite. The director, after all, held no rank higher than science officer.

The director said, "Program Delta. You are not to converse with another artificial intelligence program. Do you understand? You are here to assist my agents, not to give voice to whatever fancies you consider in your copious free time."

Stunned by the tongue-lashing directed into their midst but not at any of them, delivered from on high to a team member so new and cryptic he was equally likely to be considered a mascot, the Freelancers waited while CT tried not to chortle.

It was out of nerves and fear that she would have laughed, she was sure. Copious free time indeed. Smart AI thought so fast that it must feel like they had weeks, months in one afternoon to figure out anything they put their minds to, including their parentage.

Maybe they would start CT's revolution for her.

York looked back and forth between Delta and the director, and then at Wash and North as if they would speak up to defend him.

Maine said, "Sorry."

"I only communicated with him because he was present," Delta said, skirting so close to blaming Sigma if his tone hadn't been so level and innocent. "But I will retire."

He did, going up in a glow of light that made York flinch and blink. Sigma remained.

York said, "Why can't they talk to each other, sir?"

The director leaned forward. Wash lowered his shoulders, but did not wilt any further. "Because they are experimental, Agent York. Their behavior must be monitored as much as possible. A dining room is not a controlled environment."

"Got it sir."

"Good."

Carolina appeared, suddenly in the doorway behind him. CT looked up. Carolina could have come right from Internals or stopped somewhere briefly in between.

"Keep the cutting-edge nature of our program in mind, agents," The director said. He turned and idled out, his shoulders slumped and hands clutching each other behind his back. Carolina smoothly stepped into the space he had left.

"What happened with you and Tex?" South said to her.

"Something happened?" Wash paused with a piece of meat halfway to his mouth.

"Aw man, Delta's kinda...bummed," York said to no one in particular. This wasn't unusual - people tended to listen to York, though.

"Everything's fine," Carolina said, sounding as calm as she ever did in battle. She pressed her hands against the top of the table. CT kept eating.

South said, "It looked like you were gonna punch Tex in the Internal Affairs office."

The Freelancers looked at each other. CT was glad that South was asking all these questions - that way, she didn't have to. She still didn't know what South herself had been doing with Internals. Could she take South's cue and just...ask?

Carolina actually laughed, kindly and as if at herself. "No. Almost."

"Did you find out what you wanted?" CT asked.

"They're investigating the same kind of transmissions they've been investigating for months," Carolina said. "We don't know who or where but there's likely a mole on the ship, maybe a pilot or a maintenance guy." Carolina kept standing, kept looking at South.

CT spoke so that she didn't have time to feel the fear and shame that were threatening her. "So that's what you were looking into, right, South?"

"Yeah," South said. "We weren't supposed to talk about it!"

"Did you find anything?" Carolina asked.

"No. I don't know anything. They just want to know if anyone's been acting suspicious. And Tex doesn't have anything to do with that search except that she's the muscle, I think. She just stands there to act threatening," South said.

"Has anyone been acting suspicious?" York asked, suspiciously.

"I didn't tell them that York broke into the director's office one time just to see if he could do it, no." South huffed at him.

North and York laughed, while Carolina looked disapproving. Wash had the most dramatic reaction, though. "You didn't tell them the truth?" He blurted out. Don't look at him, CT thought. Don't look at that man who loved you and would turn you in.

"I didn't leave out anything important." South glared out from under her dyed bangs.

What if they think it's York? CT thought suddenly. She didn't want him to take the fall for her, to be penalized for good deeds he did not do.

Carolina glanced at York, took in the fact that the seats on either side of him were occupied, and sat down next to North on the opposite side instead. "I think things have been a bit...tense, lately," she said.

York nodded. Wash and North looked at each other.

"We've all been sneaking around today because we've been told to keep tabs on each other." Carolina sighed. "What the director told me is exactly what South just told you. Minus the part about York. Tex postured, but that was all. We need to remember how we worked together before she got here."

"It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows back then," South snapped.

York looked at Carolina. "I like that idea, but...let me catch you up to speed. The director was just in here telling us that the AI aren't allowed to talk to each other. That doesn't seem like the best way to go about building team spirit."

Good. CT thought that York might be starting to get it. "See?" she said. "He doesn't want us to compare notes."

"He said it's because the AI are experimental," Wash said.

Carolina looked at Sigma. "Tell me what you saw."

York looked at Sigma too, but kept talking, perhaps not liking that Carolina had asked the AI instead of listening to his perspective. "They were talking about the Alpha."

"Maybe we shouldn't do that, then," Wash said.

"The director told you not to talk about the Alpha?" Carolina looked quizzical.

Sigma said, "That is correct. I believe he thought it might be dangerous."

"And what do you believe?"

"That we must seek the Alpha. But we will concentrate on our missions, of course."

His last two words were a little too pat for CT to like them - it felt like he was reassuring himself.

"It's not just that," York said. "I think they're not supposed to talk to each other at all. About anything."

Carolina looked at him. "What about during missions?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe they're only allowed to talk about the mission," Wash said.

Carolina switched tacks. "Maine. How are you holding up?"

Sigma answered for him, and by the tightening of Carolina's forehead CT could immediately see that that was not what Carolina had wanted. "We are doing fine, Agent Carolina," Sigma said. "The director's words were...illuminating as to our purpose."

"'Our' meaning you and Delta, or you and Maine?"

"Delta and I," Sigma said.

"Maine," Carolina repeated. "What do you think?"

She was trying to draw him out, but Maine stayed silent, looking first straight ahead and then slightly to the side as if he would address her, only to drum his fingers against the table and turn away again.

"Well if the AI can't talk, they won't be very useful," South said.

"They can talk to us, just not to each other," York said. He seemed determined to defend Delta.

South shrugged.

The silence was tense and antsy. York rose, and circled the table to speak to Carolina. She stood too, and he put a hand on her shoulder. For a moment CT sat with an empty seat between her and Wash. When he looked at her she first thought that after weeks of enduring under the director's gaze she could also endure this. It was the care in Wash's eyes that bothered her, though, because she began to regret leaving as soon as she looked at him, and that was not a thought she should cradle and treat fondly. She stood up and made for the door. As she passed York and Carolina she saw him drop his arm, and her shake her head, angry.

South and Maine also left together, South walking opposite Sigma so that maybe she couldn't even see him over Maine's shoulders.

Later, she would remember these three instances as her introduction to the AI: an unholy trifecta of Maine's silence, South's vitriol, and York's sheepish, unhurt acquiescence to a rule he hadn't known he had broken.

That brought her back to the sight of York in the hospital bay, adjusting more easily than CT felt he should. Something was very, very wrong if the implantation was going this well. The AI were benevolent, maybe, but fatally flawed. If someone like York could be given one of the pieces of the director, an AI that would rob him of his freedom and steal his voice, than nothing York had achieved (his social grace, his place on the board, his ease with himself) would prevent it.

CT, who had achieved so much less, felt like her own moves to help him would have to come crashing down around her soon.

She had to leave. What was keeping her here? She struggled with the feeling that she had to watch over the other Freelancers like she was their parent. They weren't her children - she should not coddle them to the exclusion of her own discovery. Like she was the mother bird, faking a broken wing.

She poured over the data again, feeling that if she focused hard enough she could avoid thinking about the fact that this was happening to people. She was barely sure what it was she feared. The introduction of the AI felt like an infiltration.

It was on the third read through everything, through the paragraphs of things about Delta that York did not know or about Sigma that Carolina and Maine did not know, that CT dug deeper into the nature of the AI.

In another file was a note, a simple edict: one AI from one brain.

Then, pages and sketches that looked handwritten, different enough from the other parts of the file that she mentally ascribed them a different author. These included more neuroscience terms and concepts that CT might have been able to understand if she had gone to classes for that instead of for computer systems. She could not see how they connected to the catalog of AI, although the question was picking at her brain - who had these AI been patterns on? - until she found another file within the list of handwritten, scanned pages.

The acquisition of the Engineer will allow for the introduction of the AI to each other on a digital, not a conceptual, level. Used to speak to one another.

It is on that conceptual level on which the Alpha will realize its nature and its situation. If I can induce enough trauma in it it will break, will exhibit the symptoms of rampancy that have been already studied and have always ended in the AI's destruction in the past. But now, young as it is the Alpha will survive.

Beta has already arrived, in a different fashion. I will show her to it first.

She had already known that there weren't multiple AI aboard the Mother of Invention for the director to hand out. There was only one. Sigma and Delta were fragments, and the fragments, which were designed to be near-rampant, were what he was distributing to the Freelancers.

The Alpha, though, that had been original. The Alpha had come from the director, as clearly as if he had clipped his own nails and cloned himself with the pieces.

Going over it for the second time, it all felt more clinical than the first. But it was all manifesting now: she had seen it in Sigma's face, heard it in Delta's voice.

Whoever got the top spot on the leaderboard got the top AI - the most whole one, the least sick, maybe, she didn't know. Now that Maine and York had gotten that the first two (and her escape in the hydroponic garden had been so close), each subsequent one would get sicker.