Brooke's cranial nerves are just fine. The woman who performed the examination—simple commands to determine the necessary: can you see? Can you hear? Can you follow? (Can you kill?)—repeats this valuable assessment to Rachel, who stands a solitary two metres away, watching wordlessly. Throughout the exam, Rachel remained in place neither smiling or frowning—a wintry expression of critical neutrality—while the woman proved that Brooke was normal. Undamaged, a term Brooke overhears. Functioning satisfactorily.

Just fine.

She can't tell whether or not this is good news or bad to Rachel—her expression didn't change hearing this. Brooke is suddenly afraid that Rachel—who she has always reverently known as Doctor Wells—isn't looking for "satisfactorily." That damning pronouncement of mediocrity. It makes Brooke want to beg for a retest because she knows she can do better and doesn't ever want to disappoint the doctor, Rachel, who watched wordlessly while her hired stooge demonstrated Brooke's apparently middling abilities (could she see? Could she hear? Could she follow?) like a trainer showing off to a stern judge her tidily shorn and coiffed Poodle, its naked body never not long-limbed and awkward. But see how intelligent she is. How obedient. She can do tricks, too—just watch.

Rachel approaches and musters a smile, feigning contentment that feels to Brooke more like passable satisfaction over the results. But when she places her shiny, black hand just behind Brooke's left ear and rubs her cheek with her thumb, Brooke almost brings herself to believe it was just an innocent check-up, and that the doctor could be happy with her thawed body that is functioning just fine. Rachel's hair is paler than before, more unnaturally coloured and simply less. They are signs of aging and decay that Brooke missed out on while she herself was preserved and living forever in her icy slumber. Brooke used to think they looked alike, although she's never shared this observation with the doctor or anyone.

Then, unexpectedly, Rachel pulls Brooke into a taut hug. Brooke wraps her arms around the small of Rachel's back, unfamiliar with the motion. Her breath caresses Brooke's own blonde hair as she whispers, "I'm so glad you're not broken."

They are surrounded by stacks of rusty shipping containers in a cathedral-peaked warehouse. Brooke was an expedited delivery; Rachel paid for the best in shipping and handling. Brooke suspects the crate she arrived in has painted on its side which end should face up, and a snotty, high-cut wineglass there to emphasize its importance. But if the cryotube was damaged in some way and Brooke came out of her sleep with a starved brain, she wonders what Rachel might have done if that were the case. Would she get a refund on damaged goods? A replacement?

Would she hold her in the same, pampering way she does now?

#

Later, Rachel and Brooke sit in the back seat of an oily black car speeding down Number 1. Marble chin fused to her shoulder like she's a brooding Rodin, Brooke's eyes dart and recover as the world rushes by her rain flecked pane. It's moving too fast, too far out of her control, and all she can do is grit her teeth—bore a hole through the unconvincing seatbelt she grips between petulant, wormy fingers. Feet wrapped in woolly socks forced in suffocating leather boots, Brooke is a corseted Russian doll held captive by Rachel's hyena-gleaming buckles and straps. The cramped backseat already feels more confining than her previous shoebox purgatory, stacked somewhere in Rachel's tidy closet that isn't supposed to exist. The window doesn't frame the world that has already forgotten Brooke, it captures her in her natural habitat—or as close an imitation as they can get—and presents her this way. She's an offering tethered to a choke-chain seatbelt, surrounded on all sides by safety glass she might claw at but can never seem to break, while everyone passes by her tiny life.

"Who are you thinking about?"

Etching a floral design on the milky pane with a fingernail, Brooke says, "No one."

"Is that right?"

Brooke lugs her heavy head to face Rachel and tucks the cold digit underneath the bend of her knee. "Who would I be thinking about?"

"I wouldn't know." Rachel has her eyes on the road ahead where the lane reflectors urgently wave the car onward. "You're just quiet tonight."

Brooke says nothing.

Rachel says to the driver up front, "Let's get some music back here," and neon-puddle, pornographic jazz wipes away all existence of Brooke in the backseat. Front-facing Rachel is always headed in one direction—the world that rips by her periphery goes unnoticed or unacknowledged and she never looks back.

But her effortless inquiry that's already evaporated is more noxious than she intended because now Brooke does begin to think of someone—she sinks into her seat and wonders where he might be. She misses his smile that she remembers, an upwards tug that was both a welcoming smirk and a smug hello the first time she met him. She didn't catch his name as he walked away, so that's all he was for a while: a smirk-smile over the shoulder of a sleek two-piece suit. Right now he's the tick-tap of stuttering, machine gun keys; velvety cigarette smoke reaching up from a too-full ashtray; the whispered whir of a dozen yellowing clocks on the wall as she stares after him. He is garage-sale filing cabinets, the smell of new whiteboard markers, sealed manila envelopes and fat ringed binders. He's another world Brooke wants to return to, not this surreal, midnight state she woke up in. She hopes he's waiting for her, somewhere. Then Rachel is two fingers through a part in the blinds and a rap on the glass; she tears Brooke's attention away from the man and drags her into her office.

The car stops outside a high-rise on a clean residential street and Rachel undoes her seatbelt. Brooke reaches to do the same, but Rachel's hand descends on hers.

"Oh, no, Brooke. I don't think that's a good idea, honey."

Her gentle touch is loaded with the Roman cruelty of a railroad spike being driven through the soft skin of her palm; Brooke is a betrayed martyr. It's the sensation of the crushing point of all of Rachel's weight thrown on a single stiletto heel. She is pinned and bitten, and can't help the fluttery feeling of unexpected disappointment.

"I've got a place all ready for you. You'll stay there tonight." Rachel unzips her handbag and hands her a lumpy paper bag. Brooke doesn't need to open it to place its distinguished curves and familiar weight. A .38 snub, probably. Where is she going that Rachel thinks she might need it?

The doctor opens the door and slinks a leg over the side. The thought of her disappearing into the long night touches Brooke and she becomes worried she may not have another chance, so she hastily asks: "Benson."

Rachel stops.

"I need to know."

Rachel weighs her answer carefully before replying. "I've looked, but all reports are unanimous. Nothing's surfaced since then to suggest otherwise"—a deep breath that Brooke feels in her gut—"that Spartan 000 was killed in action in 2552. He never made it off Reach. I'm sorry."

Brooke is surprised that the news hurts her this much. She doesn't show it, though, and she never will. Not to anyone. Voice like broken teeth and a bleeding tongue, she says, "I see. Thank you, Doctor."

"I'll see you in the morning, Brooklyn."

With the slam of the car door, Rachel returns to the world outside, leaving Brooke alone once more. She's one of the few who can just pass through. She never stays long, just long enough to play for a bit until she is satisfied. Then she'll put Brooke back in her glass cage where she found her.

The car whisks Brooke across the city where boutiques and charming cafes fall away to East Hastings grocers with doomsday barred windows and doors; lonely stoplights and saxophone street corners; the shopping cart rattles and crazy murmurs of all of the city's homeless. Brooke is dropped off on the sidewalk here with a set of keys and the revolver-shaped paper bag stuffed into her pocket. With its strangled puttering, the car is an evil U-boat slipping into the foggy sea beyond the familiar cove. Then it is out of sight and earshot. Brooke finds the address nearby and takes the stairs up to what she discovers is a utility-grade one bedroom apartment.

Tonight, she dreams of Benson who passed through her life, too. He's a face from another life that's really the same one she's living because the apartment Rachel has her shacked up in suggests nothing has really changed. She went to sleep Yesterday, woke up Tomorrow, and will soon just resume a life stuck on pause. It's a suggested return to normalcy that is both comforting and deadening. Always on the job, ready to kill.

Anyway, in her dream they stand in front of a bathroom mirror, their hair equally damp, bare skin equally scrubbed. Benson is bent over the sink, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He makes funny faces at himself; smiles his smile. Brooke is wrapped around him, arms around his waist, red lips to his ear. She can't let him go and feels herself pulling him in as tight as she can, soaking up his presence as if it is precious. She rubs at his hair and is all over him, soundlessly begging him to turn and take notice of her, but Benson just stares into the mirror. He lifts a hand and brings it over the glass where Brooke's face is, his fingers gently tracing her jaw line. Her hand snakes down the length of his arm. She wants to feel his touch—the woman in the mirror is undeserving of it, but she has his complete attention. Benson doesn't budge, no matter how hard Brooke tries to tug at him.

Eventually the woman Brooke barely recognizes becomes bored and struts away, leaving Benson by himself. On this side of the glass, he and Brooke stare longingly after her for a moment. Then he easily shrugs Brooke off as if he is disinterested and follows her more alluring reflection out of the room. Brooke searches for herself, but the bathroom insists on being empty and sullen. She presses both palms against the glass—

Finally Brooke awakes and rises from the couch, taking a moment to reorient herself. It's still dark outside and she guesses she couldn't have slept for more than an hour or two. She's fine with this—she's slept enough for a lifetime. She shuffles to the window that provides a view of the skyline, curls up in the corner of the room, knees to her chest, and watches the twinkling city.

#

With a plastic shopping bag in her hand, Rachel comes back in the morning where Brooke is squished in her corner, having watched the entirety of the sunrise through scanty shreds of curtains, and the stuck window—the twisted-off handle lies meekly on the radiator.

When Brooke gets to her feet, Rachel asks, "Are we okay?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. This is everything." Rachel gives her an envelope and Brooke dumps it out on the counter. Rachel pads into the centre of the apartment and drops her handbag on the couch. "I'll give you a minute."

Brooke studies a stack of photos, all with the same subject. The first is an official-looking headshot and Brooke makes out an ONI watermark in the corner—he's an employee, or he was, sixteen years ago. The other photos are fuzzier, taken with the indecent closeness of telephoto lenses. In the rest of these it's the same man, just aged. Brooke runs through the dossier, memorizing as much as she can. "What's the accuracy on this intel?" she asks Rachel. "He'll be where you say he'll be?"

"We put him there." Brooke's eyes shoot upward at this, but Rachel looks immaculate. Like she's rehearsed this for fifteen years, she tells Brooke: "Let me make something clear. Your actions won't reflect on ONI or myself. You're not Section Zero anymore—not Auction. I'm not either. We're shut down now. What we're about to do isn't legal, Brooklyn. But ONI released you to my care during demobilization. A lot of assets were deactivated, and most went private sector. UNSC-funded research patents were declassified and sold off."

"So what does that make me? The asset?" Brooke says. "Or the science project?"

"You're a free woman. You're not my soldier anymore, if you don't want to be."

Brooke hasn't had this conversation with Rachel before. She wouldn't dare.

Rachel continues, "If this is too much... if you're done, I understand. There's nobody who'll come looking for you." There's a sadistic soothing to Rachel's words, and Brooke knows it's deliberate. She's always been manipulative, and Brooke never wants to say no. That always fell to Benson, second-guessing Rachel's every move. Even if offered, shown the way out, Brooke will not say no to Rachel, especially now because she's thinking of a gloomy bathroom with nobody in it. Brooke realizes she has one person left in her shrinking life, and she's standing between her and the window that showcases unflinchingly an inhospitable city life she'll never be a part of.

Rachel strokes Brooke's arm with an exploratory fingernail. She says, "You know I need your help. Won't you do it for me?"

Then slowly Brooke nods. Rachel leans in and embraces her again, and gives her a clean kiss on the cheek. Brooke shuts her eyes and learns to savour the warmth that pools around her skin, learns to accept the feeling because it's all she has left. She clings to it; the promise of more will keep her going for the time being.

"You'll find instructions in the envelope. There's a carry-on in the bedroom closet that's good to go—passport and flight pass inside." Rachel holds up a clump of Brooke's hair and says, "And you'll have to do something about this." She reaches into the shopping bag she's brought and pulls out clippers and a hair-dye kit. Brooke takes the box into the bathroom, balances it on the sink, and looks resolutely at her bright hair that spills over her shoulders.

She hears the apartment door click shut, and knows Rachel's gone again. She's just passing through.