10.15
"Get me a match."
Four live people in the room and it's the computer who responds, the FILSS voice from the tiny speaker grills in the ceiling. "Agent Carolina, are you sure you are recovered?"
She's grimacing, her chin pulled up and her lips bloodless, but she just stares down the invisible voice. "Get me a match."
"Prepping the training floor, now. Which team would you like to compete against, Agent Carolina?"
The answer is immediate and flat. "Texas."
Carolina swings her legs off the cot and hooks her helmet from the shelf beside her. York stands up, Wash turning slowly and Maine still shaking his head at a medic, and in that tiny space Carolina starts walking out. York just follows. "Carolina. Are you okay? How are the AI?"
She says nothing, pushes the helmet down over her bobbing ponytail, and takes the quick way to the training floor. Wash hesitates at the left-hand hall, wanting to go to the viewing platform instead. "Can she even set up a match without the Director knowing?"
York waves him off, follows Carolina. York can't even see them, the two AI she supposedly has. "Now, you're probably going to be experiencing something kindof…weird." He thinks back to Delta's coldness, and the ache at the back of his neck. She says nothing. Just marches to the floor.
When she gets there, everything's set up. York looks up at the lights already on, the tables building themselves in the edges of the center circle. Even Tex is there on the other side like another programed part of a play.
He's getting a bit tired of feeling like the audience.
He's got Delta there, though, that worried, reassuring mechanical feeling, and among all the other autonomy he cannot fear that one. So, because it is all that he knows how to do, he starts to tell Carolina what she'll feel. He starts to explain, because he would have liked someone to explain to him.
She still won't look at him, but that's not a first, so he just keeps talking.
