Summary – The bed has been made and it isn't always the maker that has to lie in it.
Disclaimer – I don't own Dark Angel. I'm merely borrowing it for a while. I'll return it fairly intact soon enough.
Notes – Please take the time to review!

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The next evening Shauna watched the X4s. When she arrived the exercise had already begun. That did not matter so much. She was not interested in the activity, only the soldiers themselves. The exercise merely produced an ideal setting for her viewing. She was ignored by everyone present. Lydecker was not there. The night was warm, without a breeze.

The X4s were young, only somewhere between five- and seven-years-old. Shauna had known this, but, as in the classic case, she had not truly believed it until she had seen it. They were just little kids. Children. Moving in a way that should be impossible: graceful, yet deadly, as they avoided each other, in what was some macabre game. Shouldn't they be at home, eating dinner or watching television or being read a bedtime story or whatever else kids that age did?

At seven – what she could remember of it – Shauna had been a terror. She had given her parents and teachers absolute hell. That was excluding all the scrapes she got herself into (including the time she broke her arm trying to climb a cliff at the beach). She'd sat still for an occasional storybook, but nothing else would make her be quiet. Halfway through maths classes she would get out from behind her desk and wander over to another student and pull their hair; or she would leave her bed at night and sit there and play 'war' with G.I. Joe figurines and Lego. Nothing and no one could make her behave.

Maybe these were not children (even though the very appearance of them seemed to say they were). Maybe they really were soldiers. Maybe it really was their sole purpose of existence to be soldiers. It still seemed wrong somehow. Very wrong. They were being denied the knowledge of a world that even she had been allowed to experience. Something in her stomach dropped and she felt vaguely sick.

She kept her observations to herself, though. Not that anyone here would be interested in what she thought, beyond labelling her as a trouble source. It was one thing to think these thoughts. If she repeated them aloud, she was likely to end up with a bullet in her brain – something she wished to avoid at all costs.

It was possible that those who had sent her knew what she would feel at the sight of the children and had recommended that she be kept away from them. How they would know something she had not even said aloud, she did not know. They had a habit of knowing things like that about you. In the past, she had wondered if they developed psychic powers so that they could keep track of what their assassins were thinking. But she'd had to scrap that theory long ago, or else they would have figured out about Venice long before she'd said anything.

Until now, it had only vaguely occurred to her that – soldiers or no – these would be children she was condemning to life at Manticore. Which, unlike herself, was something that they had never chosen. But as she watched them, it hit home that these little soldiers, which were like something out of a science-fiction novel were just children. Like she had been. But without parents or any kind of relief from their world. Without any say in what happened.

Just then one of the little soldiers ended up in front of her. He or she – it was hard to tell – looked up at her. She gasped, because beyond this child's shaved head and grey clothing he – or she – was beautiful. Small and delicate with olive skin and large azure-coloured eyes, which were framed with long thick lashes.

The child turned to move off, but not before Shauna caught its eyes and barely hid a second gasp, this time of horror. The child's eyes were blank. Mild curiosity had flitted briefly through them but beyond that – nothing. Like a little automaton. A robot. A genetically engineered soldier. The sick feeling grew.

Shauna knew from experience that it was possible to drain all reaction from your voice and your face and even your eyes. But this soldier was only about five-years-old. Not even the best assassin training could work that well on a child who had been trained as Shauna had. Something had obviously been done to make these soldiers completely blank.

Her own training had included human relations. How people reacted to each other. Why they reacted to each other. What to avoid when on an assignment. Whatever these soldiers had been taught, it must have been very different from what she had been taught.

When she could watch no longer, she turned away, but the soldier's eyes were still firmly imprinted in her mind. The pit in her stomach grew even bigger. She was starting to feel hollow. Like those days in Venice when…Much like the way she had at her parent's funeral…

Oh no, she thought, please don't go there again, I don't need that particular distraction on top of everything else. She walked towards the currently unoccupied X4 training rooms, feeling more and more sick as she went, and faintly surprised she had not thrown up.

The sight of those beautiful children – soldiers – moving in a way that seemed impossible. The empty eyes of one of those children, reflecting only mild curiosity to her presence.

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