(Lieutenant 'Zero', 21:36 EST, 05/20/2035, Location: Unknown)
Well, as my fears had been proved, Bradford had indeed called me in to talk to the Commander. I was headed up to the control room now, dreading the worst. Where would I go if they removed me from the ship? I could go settle down with one of the resistance camps back in America, maybe. Now I had a lot of practice with guns I could actually help to protect them. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, it would be pretty relaxed, I think. But it wouldn't be with Brick, it wouldn't be with the people I liked with, and I think at this point, most importantly it wouldn't be with Kassara.
Ethera was a little better before I left her, I think she needed to have a good cry about what happened. She really did love both Hettie and Astrith as sisters. Not in the same way that Kass would also call them sisters, but in the way I would call my parents family. Maybe it helped give her a little bit of closure, I don't know. I found myself thinking back to my parents, I hadn't seen them for ages now, it must be coming up to around 3 years since I had left. The Matriarch's idle threats played again in my head. That she knew who they were, that Advent had gone to do…something to them. Maybe with her here now I could actually get some answers. If I could stay on the ship, anyway.
I approached the control center, the bright blue hologram of the globe visible through the window leading up to the door. It looked a lot more 'full' than the last time I caught a glimpse of it, there were a few more odd colors that filled out some of the parts of Americas, and a little of Africa. I suppose that may be the different resistance factions, or at the very least information provided by them. I tried to open the door, only to find it locked, stopping me from entering completely. I must have looked a little lost, because that's how I felt. It didn't really look like one of the doors you tended to knock on, it just opened usually, so if I couldn't enter, what could I do?
I waited for about half a minute, trying to peer into the room to see if I could see anyone, but it didn't really allow for me to do that. The door flew open, Bradford standing in its frame, his eyes already set on mine.
"Zero, thank you for coming. Head on in, the Commander has just finished with a call from the resistance leaders." He nodded, speaking monotonously. He knew about the situation I was in, certainly, he had heard it over the comms, but I couldn't tell if he thought any differently of me because of it. He was a hard book to read. He just stared at me with the same authoritative look he always wore.
I headed in, glancing around briefly at all screens that made up the room, operators at every console. The small sounds of the computers being used made up a fairly pleasant ambient noise for the room, but it didn't help to ease my thoughts very much. As far as I was concerned, I could easily be being dropped from X-Com here.
"Zero," The Commander called out to me, snapping my attention away from the rest of the room to him. "Follow me. We'll have a little more privacy to speak over the other side of the room." He said, leading me away from the bright blue globe that illuminated the side of his face. It only highlighted the stern look on his face, and definitely only made me more concerned about how angry he was about this. Leading me to the far side, there again more consoles, and a couple of desks with monitors on the walls beside them, but all were empty, allowing us just to talk between us. He pulled out one of the seats from one of the desks, sliding the chair over to me on its wheels.
"Sit."
I obeyed his words, spinning the chair around for me to sit on, and waited for him to get a chair for himself, but Bradford seemed to remain standing.
"So, Zero, you know why I've asked to talk to you, I assume." He asked. I responded with a small nod, before he continued. "Obviously it's quite worrying about what happened. And it's left me and Bradford in a predicament about what we need to do about it. I thought it would be best to shed some light on the situation and give you a chance to explain what happened, since all we currently have to go off of is the Matriarch's version of events of what happened, and both you and Kassara's seeming agreement to her story."
I stared at him, dubious as to why he was giving me a chance to explain. Maybe I had a chance to actually defend myself, but I didn't know how I could ever phrase it to make it not look how it was. Because, in all honesty, it looked pretty bad. Now I just had to think of how I could even phrase it to prevent the worst from happening. Bradford was still standing above me, not making the issue any easier, as the Commander waited for me to start explaining.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"What happened." He answered quickly, there was barely any time in between my question and his response. I tried to swallow my nerves, tried to calm myself down even momentarily. It reminded me of how nervous I was at interviews back in Advent. You were being studied scrupulously by a person that held the power on whether you made it or not in their hands. It was terrifying.
"It was the Blacksite mission. Deadbolt fell asleep during it, and Kassara noticed that before I did. She attacked me, I think she figured out we were out of the range of the cameras." I started, pausing in between each sentence, I managed to escape and grabbed my rifle, and I gave her a chance to explain why I shouldn't shoot her. She wasn't attacking me, she had stopped, I would have shot her otherwise."
"Why did you not shoot her straight away though?" Bradford asked, his arms folded across his chest. To say it was intimidating was a slight understatement.
"…By the time I had the weapon, she wasn't a threat anymore." I shrugged, trying to rake my mind back through the situation. It made me slightly uneasy to think back to it, back to what had happened. It was different than before, where it felt wrong to think back to the undressed alien because it was unnatural, and sick to think of an alien in that light. This was a different kind of wrong, it wasn't out of disgust that my mind didn't want me to recall it. It was more out of a respect for Kassara, for a friend, that I shouldn't be thinking about her naked, whether recalling memories or just imagining things in my head.
"I think she was remorseful," I followed up, the detail coming back to my head not long after I had given my initial reasoning. "She said she was sorry when she was trying to kill me. I think she saw it as a last resort, and opportunity, and didn't actually want to kill me. I think that may have had a part to play in it as well."
"You got on with her at the time?" The Commander asked this time, before Bradford could continue his line of questioning.
"Yes. Brick and I were the only two she would really talk to. I think she got on okay with Vandal and Deadbolt and a couple of others too." I responded automatically. I was still feeling pretty stressed, I could feel my heart beat away in my chest, and my tongue threaten to slip up on any of the words I was saying.
"Alright. So when the Matriarch said that she 'offered' herself to you…?"
"Yeah. When I asked her why I shouldn't shoot her she tried to do that." I said, trying to skip past talking too much about her that way. "I refused, I didn't want anything to do with her, especially not in that way."
"And then?" The Commander encouraged me to continue, his chin resting on the back of his knuckles as he leaned forward, propped up by his elbows on his knees. It was unnerving, to say the least, but I couldn't tell whether he was trying to analyze and see if I was telling the truth, or whether he was just listening.
"I used the medkit in the bathroom to fix up the wound I had made on her, to avoid attention being drawn to what had happened. And told her I wouldn't say anything, and that nobody else would give her a chance as I did." I recounted to finish off the story. After the last part had come out of my mouth, I couldn't really remember if I had actually said that to her or not, and a short wave of panic washed over me, in case the Commander had a way of finding out himself whether I had actually done what I have said or not.
"Why didn't you come to us and tell us what had happened, Zero? This is a serious breach of duty!" Bradford commented, waiting for me to finish before her burst out. "You could have put somebody else at huge risk, or even the whole ship. What if she would try it again with another guard and be successful?" He hypothesized, going over the possibilities of the repercussions. "She had already proved herself lethal and dangerous, or do you forget that she managed to kill an operative despite being outnumbered four to one."
"You would have killed her," I stated, any nervousness or doubt I may have shown whilst answering the other questions barren as I responded to this one. "Or sold her to the Black Market. She didn't deserve that. Not in the ways that I had heard."
"You're not the one to decide that." Bradford argued back, as the Commander raised a hand to silence him from his questions.
"We're going to review the CCTV footage from the evening, now that we have a date for it, in that case. We'll have to see if it matches up with your story." The Commander began. "I still don't know what we are going to do about this, even if what you say is true to the letter."
I looked at him, knowing full well that he was talking about a punishment for it. Bradford remained silent as the Commander got up, leaving the both of us just staring at each other as he talked to an operator, presumably to try and get the footage of the night in question over to one of the monitors near us. He sat back down gracefully, his finger tracing over his lip in thought.
"We can't very much kick you off, not without repercussions. I can't allow for actions like this that put the crew at risk to go unpunished, however." He spoke in a measured way, unnerving me more every second. I really felt like my future here at X-Com was being questioned, even with him saying he wasn't going to kick me off the ship. I could feel my nerves starting to get to me more and more as Bradford decided to pull up a chair as the Commander turned on the screen to our left, hung on the wall above the desk we were sat at, for us all to see. It showed two clips side by side being fast forwarded at the moment, the date flying past in the bottom right of the screen. It was obvious fairly quickly that the two clips were the cameras in the room, which covered most of the room, apart from the beds, just as Brick had expected.
We all watched in silence, both of them fixated on the screen ahead. All of me wanted to do anything but watch, but I didn't really have much say in it. The screen froze for a second, before it resumed, this time playing at a normal speed. It showed Deadbolt sat on the chair, slowly but surely nodding off in the chair. I was near the back on the right-hand side of the screen, half of me out of view of the camera as I stood near the wall. As I had explained, Deadbolt soon fell completely asleep, his head lulled off to one side. I stepped forward into shot not long after, my hands on the back of my head, an expression of disbelief play on my face. Within a second, I turned back around, and Kassara came into view for a brief second, her arm stretching into frame, wrapping around my mouth, my body animatedly flying out of view. I could see out of the corner of my eye as Bradford glanced over to me, I was trying desperately to ignore it as we sat watching what was now a still image, with only Deadbolt sat in the middle of the room, nothing else showing.
Just under half a minute passed before there was any more movement on the screen, as I rolled into frame, grabbing my rifle from the wall and aiming it towards where I had just come from. Admittedly, it looked very fluid, I kind of admired how well I operated under the stress of the situation. We could all see my body moving up and down as I tried to regain my breath, the lack of sound now infuriating as I spoke to Kassara. My stance seemed to break all of a sudden, as the video showed me turning away from her, with my hand out in front of me. I quickly moved off screen, transferring from one camera to another, and finally disappearing through the bathroom door. Bradford quickly used the small downtime to quiz me.
"Why didn't you just shoot her? You had obviously only just escaped at least being completely unconscious."
"I wanted to. A part of me told me not to. I guess I cared for her at that point and wanted to understand." I responded back with a shrug. Rewatching the cameras, even though it hardly showed much of what happened, it was sending my mind all the way back to the date, as if it happened within the last week. Admittedly, coming close to losing my life probably helped solidify it so much in my memory, but it was difficult to forget.
"And you shouldn't have left her alone with Deadbolt. She could have attacked him and done exactly the same thing. You put him at risk." The Commander added his observation, still looking at the footage, showing me leaving with something in hand. I disappeared off screen past the Viper for a brief moment, before moving back into view. She came into shot as she approached slightly, a shirt clutched to her chest, still obviously naked. The camera was a little far away, but everything not hidden behind her hands was pretty clear to see. I kneeled down as I attended to her tail wound, watching as she contorted in pain at the medikit. The Commander nodded, looking behind him briefly, enough of a signal that the footage stopped, frozen on Kassara in pain, clutching the shirt to her chest.
"Well, you were definitely telling the truth, as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't help much with answering what we should do with you." The Commander sighed. "Though, I appreciate what you did. You evaluated the situation and decided to try and help everyone involved, and not just take the easiest option. That doesn't mean you should have done it, the risk to yourself and Deadbolt was too great."
"I understand, I should have taken more precautions to keep him away from danger. Please let me stay at X-Com, I'm useful and have helped integrate Kassara into X-Com, and performed many vital missions. I spared her life because she didn't need to die. I couldn't report it, because she would end up being killed as well." I pleaded, conflict scattered across my thoughts. One side arguing that I had done the right thing, and I knew if I was placed back in that situation, I would do exactly the same thing every time. But the other side knew how much danger I could have potentially put X-Com in, how irresponsible my actions were. The Commander seemed to take my words into consideration, that or he was still thinking of the correct punishment for me. Bradford sat in silence also, holding his tongue until the Commander reached his verdict.
"It would be best to keep you away from other crew members for a short while, at the very least, as I'm unsure how they will react, and I can't have it getting in the way of missions coming up." He pondered aloud. He stood up from the table, Bradford following suit. As he started walking back towards the Hologlobe, I decided to also stand up, somewhat timidly following behind them, still unsure of my fate.
"Zero, I'm going to assign you down to Engineering, everyone knows they sure need the extra helping hand. Especially with the new orders coming in. And you can help Ash adjust to life on the Avenger with us, Kassara certainly can handle herself around everyone else. " He finally decided, turning around to face me, his hands held behind his back as he addressed me."You can probably expect not to be seeing any field time for a while, much less a promotion. At the very least, until this all blows over."
I didn't realize I could feel so crushed, yet so relieved at the same time. On the one hand, I wasn't going to be able to help as a soldier for X-Com, and that upset me, as that's where I knew I could help the most, it's what I've been trained to do. On the other, I'm glad I still had a place amongst the others on the ship, and a part of me was certainly looking forward to being able to spend some time with Ash. So I stood in front of him, confused about how to react, my cocktail of emotions probably more than visible to him.
"On top of that, I'm going to disallow you from doing any shifts with the Matriarch. It would be unwise to do so," he added on, with nods from Bradford agreeing with him to accompany. That made sense, I certainly couldn't argue with that. "That should be all, Zero. Dismissed. Shen will be expecting you down in Engineering at 'O' nine hundred hours' tomorrow morning. I'll also give you a room near the other Engineers, again to keep contact with others in the crew minimal. They have singular dorms, but they are tiny rooms. You should go and move your stuff down there now, Bradford can assist. Dismissed."
And so that was it. My fate sealed, I didn't bother putting up an argument to him. Part of me did want to stand up to him, tell him what I did was right. But I knew that that side would just have been spouting a bunch of nonsense at him, and it wouldn't have done me any good. In some respects, I got a good deal. At least, definitely considering some of the alternatives. Bradford was quick to show me out, snapping me out of my confused daze briefly to lead me away, heading back towards my current dorm. I felt really crushed now, due to the news of not being able to fight, but maybe I would feel better once I'd got a little rest and moved in. A nice early night's sleep ready for tomorrow is probably the best thing for me to do at this point. Thankfully, none of my roommates were there to see me move my stuff out, so there would be no having to awkwardly explain to Samurai that this is because I let Kassara live. Just moved silently, with little attention drawn to it. I picked up the last of my things, not that I had much, it was mostly just clothes and a couple of books I had already read through, chucked alongside my current bedding, to be transferred down. I just need to put my head down and press forward now. I was looking forward to speaking more with Ash, hopefully, she would make my time there a bit more bearable.
(Captain 'Kassara', 13:07 EST, 05/21/2035, Location: Unknown)
I opened the door to my Matriarch's cell room, watching as she grinned at me with interest, or a morbid curiosity, I couldn't place it, but she seemed excited to actually see me. Vandal quickly stopped me as he and Samurai passed, quickly telling me that he had seen Zero earlier and that he was still on the ship, before letting me and Twitch enter in their places, our turn to guard our new prisoner. It was certainly strange being this side of the bars, it looked so different than being within the cage itself. My Matriarch was curled up on the bed they provided, sitting in silence, for the time being, as Twitch took his place at the table and chairs on the other side of the room. I hadn't bothered picking up my extra armor pieces; the greaves and extra shoulder armor, there wasn't much point in it.
I had heard from Deadbolt this morning, when I went down for breakfast, that Zero had moved out of their accommodation, and nobody had seen him this morning, or at least when I last spoke to them. I had been fearing the worst, that Zero had been removed from the ship overnight, left to fend for himself. So the fact that Vandal told me that Zero was fine, I was relieved. More than relieved, if I was honest. I'd feel even guiltier than I already did about the whole situation if he had suffered so much for it. I can't say exactly how it was for Zero, but on my side, I had received more distrust from a lot of people, understandably so, but nobody really seemed to hold it particularly against me. Except for Goblin and Elena, as to be expected. It was a shame, I thought I had just started to win over both of them, and it felt like it was back to where it started, if not worse. Goblin blamed me for using Zero, for taking advantage of him, and a lot of talking about how we should have expected just as much from a 'Xeno'. I hadn't spoken to Elena, or heard anything about what she thought yet, and I wasn't particularly wanting to. It only reaffirmed what she already believed.
"Unit 19201648." My Matriarch interrupted my thoughts, drawing my attention to her. She was still lay furled on her bed, though it looked a little undersized for her needs. "It took me a while to remember that name, the first time I realized you fought for them. It's interesting to see you in person. The X-Com Viper." She began. I wasn't sure whether I should even give her the attention she wanted. It would be easier on both of us to just sit in silence for the entire thing. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, it all suddenly clicked into place, why so few of the soldiers even bothered speaking to me when I was a prisoner. I wanted to argue that this was different, that she was evil, but inside I knew I should show the same respect that Zero and Brick showed me when I was first a prisoner. To them, I was an Alien, a murderer, an enemy, and they still made the effort to speak to me and look after me. I should show the same courtesy, even if it felt wrong to do so.
"I don't use that name anymore. It's a reminder that I left who I was in Advent behind with Advent." I answered back, after the pause that had transpired between us.
"Yes, it's Kassara now, isn't it? 'Free'?" She remarked, giving a small sniff of amusement. "You aren't free. You're more imprisoned than ever, a slave to their ideology."
"I made my choice. It was the right thing to do. Living under Advent leaves you blind to what they actually do." I responded back, taking my place on the chair opposite Twitch. There was a chess set on the table, I presume to help keep us occupied, it must have been a recent addition because I don't remember it being there during my short time here. The Matriarch seemed to pause for a bit, so I turned to Twitch, placing my hand on one of the white plastic pawns on my side of the board, offering him a game. He nodded, so I moved forward the pawn I had my fingers on, starting the game between us.
"And living here won't make you blind to what they do? They're terrorists, Kassara. They are here to kill others and instill fear. You're a fool if you think otherwise."
"That's pretending Advent doesn't do exactly the same thing. They're tyrannical. I watched them send dropship to exterminate a group of people who didn't even have weapons, they just lived outside of the city centers." I fired back calmly, watching Twitch make his move. I hadn't played much of the game, but I had been placed on patrol around a park with several glass sets just sitting there for people to play with, during one of my times guarding in a city. One of the better cities I had patrolled in, to be honest. It was a little confusing at first, but I watched people playing it from there on out, almost continuously for the 4-week duration there, and gradually it made more and more sense.
"The resistance camp raids? They are terrorists, they need to be killed otherwise it's the people within Advent that suffer! Do you not understand? Those are the people that join up with X-Com."
"Then explain the people that go missing within Advent territories. Those two that I saved from a resistance attack, they were processed anyway, weren't they? They went missing after being taken by an Advent ship. We've seen the black site, we've heard what the gene clinics do. Don't act as if Advent isn't purposely killing its own population too." I angrily retaliated, still not moving to look at her from my chess game. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction so readily that she had my entire attention. Because she didn't.
"It's not something I can avoid. Trust me, it's the last thing I want for the human race, but it's part of the Elder's plan, it's for the greater good. If it could be avoided, it wouldn't be happening. But that's the cost of being under the Elders. The humans benefit from it overall; within Advent so much had been achieved." She made her excuses, not seeing the irony of it all.
"You want to claim that the terrorists are killing people when it's the Elders who kill more. We would make the same advances with or without Advent if we put everything our races has to offer together. Advent just kills in their name for the sake of control and order. They kill to instill fear. And you want me to accept that it's better than a bunch of terrorists. It's not. Don't pretend you care about humans."
"You sound just like one of these extremists. They've brainwashed you so well..." She sighed, as if the entire point of her talking to me was to try and 'rescue' me from the vices of these people.
"She is one of these extremists," Twitch interjected. "And she's not the only Viper onboard the Avenger. Or the only Viper to resist your rule. It's not just humans that are angry with how Advent treats those in their cities." He proceeded to move his bishop to take my rook, placing it delicately on the side of the table, earning a hiss of frustration from me. I'd been paying too much attention to my mother that I had missed a blatantly obvious trap that he set for me.
"If that was what she actually thought, and not just repeating what she heard. She's chasing the one you call 'Zero', though. She's infatuated with him." She slyly teased, knowing that at least this would get my attention. I snapped around to her, anger starting to boil up inside of me at her words, dismissing me so readily. She was currently stood by the bars, watching me intently. A small smile reached her face as she saw me paying my attention to her properly.
"I'm not chasing him. Despite what's happened between us, both of us have made it clear that we want nothing of the sort from one another." I disputed. "He means a lot to me, yes, but not in that way. He's a good friend to me. The same as many others on the ship."
"Tell me, 1648, have you heard of 'Stockholm syndrome'?"She asked.
"No?"
"Stockholm syndrome is a psychological effect recorded by humans, it establishes that it's a defense mechanism for a captive to develop feelings for their captor in order to survive. It's not that unreasonable to suggest that this could have happened to you, you know."
"I don't have your 'Stockholm syndrome'. I had my chance to abandon and return to Advent. I barely even considered it." I retorted, angered at the insinuation of her comment.
"Exactly, that's part of the syndrome. It's really well documented, I'd recommend you have a read of it some time." She grinned. There it was, her human facsimile of a smile. I couldn't explain it, but just the way she spoke, the way she looked, it had my interest in what she was saying for just that little bit before I thought about dismissing it again. This was her game, wasn't it, to play with me. I needed to ignore her. I focused back on the chess game, taking my turn as Twitch had been waiting for me for a short while.
"I don't like him in that way. He's just a soldier here." I finally responded quietly, hearing her hands leave the bars, and the springs of her bed as she went back to lying on top of it.
"Whatever you say. But I don't know many who would infiltrate a prison complex on their own to rescue a soldier on their own accord. Unless you were forced to, of course."
"I wasn't forced to, it was my idea." I clarified, waiting for her response for the verdict. Thankfully, the door swung open, before she could start her sentence. I whirled around quickly to face the soldier who had entered; it was Zero. He shot me a quick wave as he came in, walking past the bars of the jail, standing over the chess table.
"Hey, guys. Glad I was able to find you Kass, Vandal said you'd be in here." He greeted, though he sounded kind of down, I couldn't quite place my finger on it.
"Yeah, it's nice to see you Zero," I warmly returned. "I hadn't seen you since yesterday, and the others said you had moved out of your dorm. I was worried that they had got rid of you..."
"Yeah, I thought that was what was going to happen for a bit too. They've put me down in Engineering for the time being with Shen and Ash. I'm just having a small break now before I head to lunch with Ash." He explained, giving a short shrug. "Is she behaving?"
"Probably being more cooperative at the moment than I was." I replied playfully, earning a quick laugh from him.
"So you mean she's trying to not get shot then? I'm impressed." He smiled, brushing his hands quickly through his messy hair. "Have you spoken to Bradford yet then?"
"No, I haven't been told anything about it. I don't think they're going punish me for it, I didn't exactly 'break' any rules, spoken or unspoken. Are you stuck in Engineering completely or are you able to come up whenever?" I shrugged. I hoped that I wasn't going to get called in to speak to them, anyway. The Commander was still a little scary to me, I hadn't really seen much of him. I didn't really want to at the moment.
"Don't know. As long as I'm helping Shen when she needs it, I guess. I'm mostly just hanging around with Ash until I get my bearings, at least. She's really fit in well there, you know. They work together pretty well, Shen and Ash. I don't understand half the stuff they talk about though, but they get on super well." He grinned. "And now she's out of her shell a bit more, she's been good fun to talk to otherwise. You should join us for lunch, or dinner if you're still on duty for lunch."
I couldn't explain it, but I could feel something in me twist a little at his words, not too dissimilar to the feeling I had when I watched him with Olivia. I quickly pushed the thought out of my head, trying not to focus on it much.
"Yeah, that sounds like a good plan." I agreed, moving my next piece in the chess game I was in the middle of playing. Twitch was certainly getting the upper hand on me, but I still had both of my bishops and knights, along with a rook, whereas he had lost his bishop and his queen so far. It was still winnable, but at the moment it looked like an uphill battle. I watched as Zero turned away from our game, walking up to the bars to see the Matriarch. I turned my attention away from Twitch, watching him intently, seeing what he would do. He stood in silence, for the time being, probably marveling at the fact that he could see his captor locked up. I remembered back to the wounds I saw on him when I rescued him; they were horrific. I'm sure that was exactly what was going through his mind right now.
"Are you just gonna stare at me then?" She asked him, obviously irritated by his presence there.
"Just remembering why this cell is such a fitting place for you is all. I hope you give me a reason to kill you. Any of us a reason. Cause you and I both know you deserve it."
"Can I not use my body to talk my way out of it?" She mocked, putting on a flirtatious tone as she did so, appealing to him with a real look of desperation. It was such a clean expression, I knew that Zero could understand it perfectly. I always wanted to have such convincing facial expressions, it was something Vipers just didn't do naturally. Zero didn't give her the attention she wanted, turning away from her whilst shaking his head.
"Definitely glad I'm not allowed to be a guard. I wouldn't be able to stand to look at the person who spent the best part of 4 days assaulting me. Not for such a length of time, anyway. I should probably get back to Engineering, Ash will be waiting for me." He quipped to me. I pushed myself off of the seat, briefly stopping the game of chess with Twitch to say my goodbyes to Zero. As I stood up, he offered his arms out, and I automatically accepted his hug, just a short hug that lasted less than a second, but it meant everything. It was very much a hug that said 'I care for you', if nothing else.
"Hugging you in your armor isn't that comfortable," He gave a quick grin afterward.
"I'll take it off for the hug, next time." I responded back, watching him raise an eyebrow in response, a smirk playing on his face. I quickly continued with an excuse, realizing my verbal blunder, not meaning anything by it initially, since I would have my black top on underneath, of course. "Sorry, I've obviously been spending too much time around Ruby."
"Should have guessed. I'll see you later, hopefully." He smiled, making his way out, giving a quick wave as he left back out through the door. I sat back down to the chess game with Twitch, focusing now on trying to secure a win against ever-increasing odds. He knew he had the advantage and was making sure to press it. My Matriarch didn't bother interrupting us, as we spent the next 10 minutes finishing the game, as pieces from both sides continuously left the board, but unfortunately not quite at a favorable enough rate for me to recover. Once he finally took my queen, it was inevitable that I would lose. I hissed in joking frustration as he grinned at me, uttering the cursed word of 'checkmate'.
"Well played, you make a formidable adversary!" He teased, standing up, and starting to collect the pieces, placing them back on the board in the correct order. "But you'll never be a match for me."
"I'll have to give you another game when I'm not going to be bitter about losing twice in a row," I said with a smile. I started helping put the pieces back on the board, though I always got the order of the king and queen messed up. I could never remember if the queen went on her own color or not. Twitch quickly corrected the order I had placed them, earning an eye roll from me.
"You like it here because you actually get to live as an individual, isn't it?" My Matriarch called back out from her cell. "Get to talk to people, not just guard stuff."
"It's a small part of the reason, yes." I agreed, giving it some thought before I responded. "But not the whole reason."
"Zero's the other reason."
"For the last time, he's not. It because Advent needs to be removed if we want to progress. Not even Vipers are 'free', nobody is." I sighed, almost done with her repetitive arguments, always going back to hanging onto the idea that I was tempted onto the other side by a human.
"Alright, maybe 'a'-nother reason. You like him, it's so obvious." She shrugged. She still lay coiled up on the bed, her elbows resting on her curled tail, helping prop her head up to talk to me. "And yes, in that way, is what I mean. You must have at least given it some thought, or are you actually living in that much denial?"
"Look, I'm not sure if you picked up the second rumor, but Zero and I had a little misunderstanding when I got drunk and came onto him. We both agreed afterward that we didn't share any feelings. He was adamant about it to me, and I shared his feelings on the matter." I crossed my arms, approaching her cell.
"Alcohol? Where have you got that, it's been banned for 20 years! There was a reason that was banned!" She hissed, pushing herself up from her coils. "It's... besides my point, though. Whatever you two said to each other, you both lied. You're lying to yourself if you are saying you don't want something more from him. The way you looked at him, the way you reacted when he talked about spending time with someone else, hell, the way you got up and decided to give him a hug. Are you blind to yourself? The humans may not be able to read you that well, but I can, Kassara."
I was taken aback, finding myself unable to respond to the sudden outburst from her. Was I that easy to read? Did I really come across that way to her? If she could tell, somebody else would be able to, right? What if Zero noticed? Questions flew through my head faster than I could reasonably answer them. I thought back to the warmth I had felt burn inside me so strongly on the night I had cuddled with him, or our moment together, just sitting comforting one another in the broken ride. Was that warmth what my matriarch referred to, as wanting something more from him?
"Kass, ignore her, she's just messing with you." Twitch came over, placing a hand on my arm, his touch quickly bringing me back to the present.
"I'm not trying to. That's genuinely how she feels. Look at her hesitate. It's because she knows she loves Zero, but she's hidden it so far down that she doesn't even realize it." She laughed. "And the best part is he's done exactly the same. I'd say she's in more denial that he is."
"Then why are you telling her this?" He questioned, skeptical of her. I was too busy trying to process what she was saying. If what she was saying was true, he felt the same way to me as I did to him? My mind thought of the possibility of us becoming closer, what it even meant. Ash talked about dating as spending more time together, but that didn't exactly sound that plausible if he was stuck in Engineering now.
"He's the reason she's part of X-Com. As soon as the novelty is over, once she has him, she'll realize that he's just like every other human she's met. The only ones interested with Vipers in that sort of way just like them because we look attractive. And Zero does find her attractive. All it takes is to look at where he's looking when he came into the room. He was all over her." She shrugged. "She'll know once they go out that it was a mistake. You are all terrorists, you don't really care about her, other Vipers. She's just another victim in their war on peace. She'll be killed along with all the other aliens, should you ever get close to dethroning Advent." She spoke with conviction, it was really what she believed. I realized instantly, that she didn't know anything. I remembered all the preconceptions about X-Com I had when I was first captured. She would be exactly the same way, if not worse. My indecisiveness about Zero was suddenly wiped away, she just saw another human treating me like an actual being, and is taking that to be something more. Maybe. She didn't know what he was like, she just knew he was a terrorist. She had no way of knowing what he thought about me.
"It's alright, I'm ignoring her," I reassured Twitch, straightening up slightly, and turning away from her. "Let's have another game of chess, you can go first this time."
(Lieutenant 'Zero', 15:20 EST, 05/21/2035, Location: Unknown)
"Hold here please," Shen ordered, waiting for me to grab onto the bottom plate of the new set of armor we had been spending the last couple of hours creating. It was a little slower than Shen would have liked with so much staff, but she talked me through the process of shaping the metal alloy, which she set me to work alongside Ash with to create each individual plate to fit onto the armor, each a slightly different specification, so they had to be made carefully. Now she was busy welding each of the pieces together, using me to hold everything in place, with special thermo-resistant gloves, which were thick, heavy, and ran halfway up my arm.
"So you went up to visit the Matriarch earlier?" Ash asked, her voice barely heard above the welder, as the sparks jumped in front of the helmet I was wearing. "What was she like?"
"As awful as I remember. I want nothing to do with her." I grunted my response. "Meeting your captor on the other side of the bars, it makes you think things you never really want to think. For all the times she did something to hurt me, I wanted to do something back there, just standing in front of her. A part of me wanted her to suffer like I did."
"Sorry, Zero." Ash apologized. "I wouldn't want to be in your situation. I'm thankful I never ended up going to-"
"Hold here." Shen interrupted, focusing on the word. She was really dedicated to doing this exceptionally, it was as if she completely tuned out the conversation around her. I wouldn't doubt it, that's for sure. I shifted my hands, holding onto the next plate down whilst she got to work attaching the rest, watching the sparks fly in front of my face once more.
"I'm thankful I didn't end up in prison. You know, you hear jokey sort of stories about that sort of thing, but you never really question how true they are until it's you." She completed her sentence. I glanced over to her briefly, she was tinkering away with one of the Gremlins, she had asked Shen to allow her to work on it in the downtime between the armor and guns, as a sort of pet project. I think Shen saw something similar in Ash that she had in herself, that little bit of inspiration to make a change, but whatever the case, she let her fiddle away, decommissioning one of the Gremlins we had for her to work on. She had almost completely disassembled the thing, the four levitation pads completely removed from the thing as she messed with the circuitry inside.
"Any luck with that?" I asked, absentmindedly, trying my best to focus on holding the plate relatively still at the same time. Multi-tasking was not my strongest suit.
"Uh...maybe something. I know they rigged the one Gremlin with a transmitter to be able to send back footage to the Commander. I was wondering if I could use similar technology to transmit data from a field Gremlin to the other troops. Short range transmitter, maybe paired with a long-range one. I don't really know what you can do it, but I'm sure there's an advantage to be had here."
"Hmm..." Shen paused for a second, stopping the welding job, but obviously hadn't finished the plate yet. "I could work on something, but it would require setting up a computer simulation to run within the Gremlin. I'll need Tygan's help..unless you are able to do it."
"What are you thinking?" Ash asked.
"Get a map surveyor code set up in the Gremlin, analyzing the terrain as a hexagonal lattice, and transmitting the data to all the soldiers through some sort of visual aid, so they can all see an effective map." Shen began to theorize, thinking out loud more than anything. Her free hand brushed against the bottom of the helmet she wore, as she remained leaning against the work table, above the armor I was still having to hold in place. It wasn't exactly heavy, but my arms were starting to ache ever so slightly at having to hold it in place. "The Commander could use this to assist in the movement of people. We could possibly make it even interactive from within the control room so each individual would be able to see a hexagon highlight in a color, telling them where they need to move, even which targets to shoot. It would make us more efficient on the battlefield with enough practice."
I was completely taken aback by how quickly the idea had come into her head, she had spent barely any time thinking about the possibility that Ash provided her with, and it sounded completely plausible, granted I only knew a little about what they were on about.
"I could probably help with the code. I used to study Computer sciences, I could probably recall something, it was only a few years back." I offered. Ash's face lit up at the sound of the plan coming together, her viper-like smile in stark contrast to the Matriarch's expression I had been looking at just a few hours prior.
"I'll ask the Commander what he thinks about the idea. He may pass on it, but I have a feeling if we can get this implemented in record times, we really have something to show off about, you know." Shen announced back. I could hear the fact she was grinning, but behind her mask, it was impossible to tell.
"I'll try and check out the frequency calibrations of the stuff we can put into the Gremlins. Check out the combination of sending short-range communications and long-range as well." Ash volunteered, moving away from the Gremlin carcass she left on the table, as she went to the other side of the lab to fetch whatever it was she was looking for, I assume. Shen returned to welding the next piece on, the last one to finish the main piece of this armor. She worked on the extra parts to each set, and worked on the gun whilst Ash and I shaped the plates, usually, at least until the suits of armor were completely finished, since we were finishing the armor sets faster than the guns, which was understandable, I think the guns were way more complicated anyway.
I got back to work in shaping the plates for the next piece of armor, using the machinery that Shen had littered around to go about bending and cutting the alloy for the next 20 minutes, getting through half of the necessary plates before I could hear Ash calling out to both of us.
"Shen! Zero! Come and see this, it's important!" She yelled, glancing from the screen above her over towards us repeatedly from the other side of the lab. I shrugged, shutting down the thermal cutter I was using, and aking my way over with Shen, to see what the issue was. On the screen in front of her was a small map of the North American continent, with a small blue blip repeatedly blinking on the west side of the continent, though more near the middle than near the coast.
"What are looking at?"
"A signal being sent on a very specific frequency with a particular polarity. It doesn't overlap into the net nearby 0.03 hertz, that's how accurate I'm talking about. There's so little chance it's been found by anything else. There's some sort of message to go with it, but it's too fractured to piece together this far away, we would need to go closer to get a better signal. But I think it's important, the type of transmitters that could broadcast across such a defined frequency range is usually military standard or higher. It could be some sort of secret base from Advent, you know. We should at least check it out." She explained excitedly, giving us a quick synopsis of what she found. Shen looked at the diagram herself, fiddling with a few buttons on the console. The volume of the data became louder, the scrambled message breaking between white noise and some sort of woman's voice, with a notable European accent, it sounded German maybe. But nothing clear came from the signal, only ever the odd word.
"There's something else here..." She paused, fiddling with the controls again. "Same frequency, it's interfering with the first. If we reduce the radar range, we should get a clearer signal on the first." She murmured under her breath. Gradually, the signal started to fade away, the sound reducing to nothing fairly quickly.
"It's a message?" I asked, watching as a black screen popped up on Shen's command console, but no message came up.
"No...it's an emergency signal. No details with it though. We should perform a scan in the area, so what we can get. I'll let the Commander know. Good find, Ash." She grinned, typing again into the console as she sent a message up to the Control Center for them to read. The location didn't seem to be far away from where I thought we were, so we should arrive there in a couple of hours. We returned to doing our work, casually chatting to each other as proceeded to complete another two pieces of armor, and another gun, meaning we were now 3/4 done with the armor order, and just under half way with the guns. I'm glad I was able to lend a hand, even if it was more because I was forced to by Bradford. It was probably for the best.
When I last spoke to Brick, it wasn't exactly the most comfortable conversation to have with her. She said that she was upset that I couldn't rely on her, that I should have told her or something. Apparently pointing out that she let out our other secret wasn't the correct thing to do, which just made her more upset with me than anything. It was a relatively short lunch, let's just say. Not everyone was exactly upset with me, I would say most people understood what had happened, and understood why I did what I did, but for others, the trust they had in me just wasn't so much anymore. I think other than Goblin, Elena and Samurai, who I think would dislike me the most for what happened, Deadbolt, Venom, and Angel all seemed to be avoiding me a little, not that I particularly blame them either.
And Ash was fun to talk to. She'd told me a few anecdotes about her time in Advent, mostly talking about her workplace and the times they had messed something up, resulting in a temporary outage of the network across South Africa, only for a few seconds, but the results were a little interesting. Said she never saw the guy responsible for it again after that, and said he had been fired, but my mind jumped to a slightly different conclusion. She also spoke a bit about people noticing that her scales were a different color, and getting odd looks from humans and vipers alike. And how she had been asked by a human to go out with him, which she told the story of whilst laughing the entire time, breaking into bursts of small hisses after every few words.
An incoming call on the screen quickly filled the room with the steadying ringing sound, interupting our small talk and letting Shen know someone needed her attention away from the next piece of armor. We quietened down so we could overhear the call. They had already done the patrol; apparently, they found an old pre-contact Skyranger that must have crashed and been lost to the years. But it also had some sort of cargo there that we should take a look at. So Shen went up to the Hangar, dragging one of the other Engineers with her, returning less than 3 minutes later, each with a bag in their arms, which they placed onto then spilled out onto the table. Shen excitedly darted around the table, pulling out various weapons from the bags as we all marveled at what was in front of us on the desk.
One of the four weapons immediately caught my eye, a silvered weapon, it looked almost like one of the old-world crossbows I had seen in one of the museums Advent had erected in one of the nearby cities. The weapon had a large spike in the middle of the weapon, attached to a large barrel, with two arms either side of the spike, both curled slightly back towards the main body. The trigger was underneath, so unlike the crossbow, which you held horizontally, this would be held with the arms facing vertically. It looked pretty, to say the least. I could hear Ash beside me let out a small 'wow' under her breath, as she picked up the pistol, the next weapon I had looked at. It also looked like it was a weapon resurrected from the past, a small pistol almost half the size of the ones I wielded otherwise, with a rounded grip.
The first of the other two weapons that lay on the table was a set of two axes almost the size of my torso, the blades looked sharper than any sword I had seen a ranger wielding, yet Shen commented on them being oddly light, for what they were. The final weapon was a small blue grenade, it was cold to the touch, and seemed to slowly leak a clear blue gas out of it. The weapons looked like relics from some sort of cursed temple, it was a little overwhelming.
"Oh, I am going to have so much fun testing these." She annotated, grinning to herself. "They must have been trying to retrieve these weapons for the others to use at the other signal. It was an X-Com Skyranger, maybe the signal is from the old X-Com group, maybe we have some more resistance fighters just waiting for us to help them!" She continued excitedly.
"That ship was over 20 years old, right? What's the chance that there are actually people waiting for us, Shen?" I asked, trying to apply what we knew to the situation, at the expense of annoying her by putting a dampener on the small theory she had quickly cooked up.
"No...you're right, I shouldn't be too hopeful. But these weapons...I think they are important. There's a reason it was the only cargo on board that ship. "They may just be special enough to be able to help us in our fights, you know."
"What makes you think that?" Ash asked. "They are old weapons, sure they look cool, but what we have today is going to be miles better than anything they could have made 20 years back."
"20 years back my father was working on building plasma-infused weaponry for X-Com, he was working on genetic therapy of the soldiers of X-Com. Trust me when I say this, but we were ahead 20 years back. Something from that time could easily help us out." She said with determination. "That, and we have a grenade that is cold. It's probably filled with some sort of refrigerant, I expect it probably erupts in a severely endothermic but violent reaction once exposed to air. It's probably a bomb that will literally instantly freeze an enemy solid. Imagine it!"
"Shen, that doesn't even sound possible. I'm not an Engineer and I'm fairly sure that there isn't a reaction out there that does that."
"Only one way to find out, right?" She said confidently, a huge grin splayed across her face. I shot Ash a slight look of concern, one she gave back immediately, but we certainly weren't going to stop her.
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