XV

CT stormed into the welding shop. It was a small room, clinging to the side of the hangar. Two techs looked up, stiff and surprised behind their half-face helmets. "Get out," she said. "Get out!"

"Yes ma'am!"

That's what people did here - they listened to Freelancers, because Freelancers were storms, forces of weather, and she was going to storm into this task with all the wind and lightning she could muster because it was dangerous, this was going to be the hard part. She had the data chip in her pocket, prickling and heavy. The dogtags rained onto the table like falling stars.

A few minutes ago she had tested Tex's locker, expecting it to be just the first of the places that might be the best to use to hide her carefully gathered information, but the door had swung open. Inside, the locker was empty, a snowfall of dust graying the shelves.

It had been so easy that CT had reeled back for a moment, almost certain that she was being watched and that she had just stepped into a trap. But no alarms rang, no footsteps slammed onto the metal and CT smiled to think that the director might not even know that Tex left the locker open. Did she use it? That didn't matter. CT could use this as a storage space where no one would think to look.

In the welding shop she grabbed a sharp-toothed pair of pliers from across the desk and cracked open her tag's plastic casing. Her name did not bend. The metal was caught under the plastic edges, and she levered the pliers down and down until it released.

She dipped her hand into her pocket for the chip and placed it down inside the tag like she was laying a winning hand on the table. The two halves of the broken tag, the second, whole piece, and the chip were fanned out in the high-stakes game -

And then she covered the chip with the plastic side of her tag and bent to the fiddly work of bending the plastic piece around again, sealing the metal in as if nothing had been placed in between. The plastic had been tight to begin with, so it barely fit now, and she thought that she might have to find another way. if the chip did not fit in - if it was too wide, and the tag bulged, she would lose a lot of time.

But the idea held. The chip was flat and green, studded with metal flecks, but it hid completely under the tag, and when she snapped the last pliant plastic piece over it she could barely feel the extra width. She picked up both tags and weighed them in her palm.

Now that she had taken this from around her neck it wasn't hers any more.

She would leave it for Tex. She had wondered who else could be trusted, and realized that Tex would be the only one for whom not all of this information would be a surprise. Allison's doppelganger would be the one most likely to act, too, since she had seen firsthand the pain the director's obsession had inflicted. Unlike the Freelancers, she wasn't distracted into compliance, and unlike the other AI, she wasn't damaged.

Or at least, CT hoped, Beta was not as damaged as the others.

She thought about Carolina and Tex as she worked her fingers in under plastic pieces and jimmied the secret compartment closed. The rivalry between Tex and Carolina might have been a spat between gods to CT: she felt sorry that Carolina did not know what she was fighting, but the fact that Carolina would hold her own against what CT knew was a robotic body was shocking. Carolina, CT thought, was always glorying a little in how large the scale of her tragedies.

CT's deed had taken longer than she had expected. A tech knocked on the door, and CT turned around.

"Do you need help, ma'am?" said the tech.

Just working out some dents, CT thought. She could make an excuse. She didn't have to, though. The techs would listen to her, and she was leaving soon -

And she was scared. Fear made her snappish, made her thoughts blur from defiance and obstinacy.

"No, soldier." She said. "I don't."

The man moved forward incrementally, shrugging, not impressed. "What's that there on the table?"

CT glanced at the table and saw nothing that she would have forgotten. "Leave me alone!" She clutched the dog tags in her hands, imagining the darkness inside the comfortable dome of her glove. A coil slipped out and she fumbled it, whipping the starlight-shine of the metal in a tiny, restricted arc.

"Ah, I think you forgot something."

CT looked back. The pliers were still laying on the table. "They're yours," she said. "They are?"

She took a breath. "Yes."

"Oh. I thought...Never mind. That's okay then."

"Thank you," she said, and walked out.

The training regimen, interrupted by Maine's injury and York and North's individual trials with their AI, resumed. CT wondered what they were being watched for, now that the scores on the board were locked in. York adapted to his AI acting as his eye so quickly that his injury seemed like a nonissue until he turned his head to focus on something in front of him. Maine emerged hulking and shining from several more tests with Sigma. The fiery AI had, more than the others, inherited the director's mannerisms - the level stare, the loose slope of his shoulders as he clasped his hands behind his back.

Carolina stayed out late into the night on errands CT did not understand. She showed herself off more and more often, staying in the gym after the others had left, doubling whatever holographic enemies they faced, whirling in back-flips and cartwheels. She pushed them all hard because, CT thought, she could so easily outshine them. This just made CT want to stop trying.

Carolina had taken over the next hand-to-hand combat session. The counselor was also present, ostensibly overseeing the team despite not, to CT's knowledge, having any combat experience himself. The director usually challenged his Freelancers to obstacle courses, mechanical forces opposing them instead of people.

When CT arrived and found a small group in one corner of the gym, Carolina was calling the shots. North and South had just separated from where he had headlocked her under one arm. York and Wash stood against a wall just to the side of the mats, York stretching and Wash leaning against the wall, his posture unusually dismissive.

Carolina gestured CT onto blue mats that had been torn and bludgeoned by armor, leaving their corners round and edges dull and uneven. Wash lowered his gaze, twitched his hands at his sides like he didn't know what to do with them. CT wondered what he was remembering.

"Your turn, CT." Carolina said without rancor.

CT stepped onto the mat. "What game are we playing here?"

"Don't get hit. Three strikes and you're out. Don't leave the mats, and don't hit anyone except me. Got it?"

CT nodded. This was unexpected and she wasn't stretched but you did what Carolina told you here.

They circled, legs criss-crossing. CT knew that Carolina liked to use elbows and knees, just like CT did, although Carolina also used heavy weapons more often -

Carolina moved forward, tapped at CT's helmet with three quick but short jabs. They were entirely pretend: Carolina was just waking her up.

The rest of the fight wouldn't go like that.

CT dropped. She swept one leg out, hoping to catch Carolina on the end of the swing. Carolina jumped it. CT pushed up off the mat just in time to see Carolina coming at her with a hammer punch, one hand reinforcing the other.

CT turned sideways, letting the punch glance of her armor and rock her, before hitting Carolina twice in the back of the head.

"Does that count as one or two?" she said, panting.

Carolina shouted "One!"

CT backed off just as Carolina punched toward her and followed it with a kick that ate up ground. The ends of the mat was just a foot away now, and CT looked around, lifting her hands into guard, not sure what she would do in the split second where Carolina stopped her combo -

There was no stopping point, though. Carolina hit her twice, hard, once under her arm and once on the throat. CT was dazed and angry.

"How many does that count for?" Carolina said.

CT croaked, "One."

She lashed a kick toward Carolina's head, and to her surprise and pleasure, Carolina ducked. CT put her foot down and was moving forward again as soon as Carolina started straightening her shoulders. She could almost see her punch push straight into Carolina's helmet -

But the other woman caught it, breaking the momentum, twisting CT's wrist, and snapping a left-handed punch toward CT's face at the same time. CT blocked it, clumsily, with her back hand. Her right was still hanging in the air. "Two!" Carolina said, and CT hopped away, switching her guard to bring her dominant right hand back to the front, begrudging how small the perimeter of the mats seemed when she was actually on them. It would be different if she were allowed to jump off, to get more distance.

They squared off, facing the opposite direction from when they had begun. Carolina twisted her toes into the mat, and CT saw her next attack coming; a complicated spinning kick that launched Carolina across the mat. CT ducked and punched at the same time. She hit Carolina's arm. Her knuckles caught under Carolina's shoulder armor and, just as it was intended to do, the armor jolted CT's shoulder and stopped her momentum. Someone who wasn't wearing the same grade of armor might have broken their hand or dislocated their shoulder. Before she could ask whether that counted - it wasn't an incapacitating blow and had probably hurt herself as much as it had hurt Carolina - the other woman turned and snapped two low jabs at CT's stomach. She blocked both, stepped, aimed a kick at Carolina's kidneys. It landed on empty air as Carolina turned again and flung out a hook punch that rattled CT's arm. Carolina's next strike landed neatly on her solar plexus.

"Two," Carolina said. She sounded angry.

CT stepped on Carolina's foot. She hadn't intended to, but a moment later she realized that it would work: Carolina's neck was now bent away from CT, since she had been mid-way through a turn after her punch and CT had stepped in the opposite direction. They were so close now that an elbow was quicker than a punch, but as soon as CT lifted her arm Carolina punched across her own body, striking CT in the chest again. It was a clumsy move, but it pushed CT back far enough that she stepped off of Carolina's foot and squared off. Carolina - Carolina who everyone loved, who the director did not suspect but kept as his lieutenant - just kept hitting at her then, and although CT blocked some of the strikes, others went through. She felt herself step off the mats but did not lower her arms, not sure whether Carolina would stop. York had been whistling occasionally during the match and now did it again, while Wash leaned forward and looked concerned. CT positioned herself for another kick.

Carolina did stop, although she was breathing heavily too now and it seemed to have surprised even herself. "Three," she said, her voice entirely cold.

She's angry at me, CT thought. She's angry at every single one of us for failing to keep up with her, because we can't all be the perfect daughter -

CT's shame surrounded her: now that the match was done she could see South and North exchanging what she imagined to be derisive glances. Her shoulders slumped, and she walked off the mat in a dizzy haze. It had been inevitable that Carolina had beaten her, she thought, but that made the loss of a potential, miraculous victory even more painful.

"You've gotta do better than that, CT," Carolina said to her back. "Stick around. Next!"

North and South made identical gestures indicating that the other should go first.

CT moved to the side of the gym. She tried not to meet Wash's gaze, but avoidance was as much a signal as a stare, and Wash pulled his helmet off. His hair was spiky and stiff, brown roots starting to show through the dyed-blonde. He hesitated before speaking, lips parting in something that CT thought might have become a frown in a minute if he hadn't started talking. She remembered kissing him and feeling his teeth grip her in a light, possessive pull.

"What are you looking for, CT?" he asked, mocking her stare.

"It doesn't matter." She almost passed him and headed for the door, but the truth of her words folded in on itself. "It doesn't matter to you, Wash. And..."

'And now it never will,' the words continued in her mind, but she stopped herself, because she had just given an ultimatum. Her use of the word now created a deadline, for both her and Wash, although he did not know it. Behind him, South waved at CT before snarling and leaping full-on at Carolina.

"You-" Wash said, earnest and defensive all at once, his left hand raised just enough to pat the air before he twitched it down again. CT mentally finished his sentence too - not an accusation, but "You still matter to me." The shared sentences hung between them, quite possibly misinterpreted and therefore nonexistent, but also somehow solid and powerfully poisonous.

When she turned away again it felt like she was dragging a planet behind her, towing its weight by her shoulders. 'I'm sorry,' she wanted to say, over and over to his honest marksman's face, but as soon as she thought it she added 'sorry for saving you from the manipulation you cannot see' and did not care for his honesty any more.

Carolina had told her to stay for another match. She did not.

(Later, she wondered whether she would have known more about Carolina's fighting style if she had. She might have worried less about the terrible reversal, when she realized that she would be fighting Carolina as an enemy in a few days, when she thought about that level yellow gaze and all the speed in Carolina's feet.)

CT opened the door to the external viewing platform. This tiny room, containing only a bench and a window, was the Mother of Invention's second-best-kept secret. CT did not know for sure that a room with a view of space was recommended to the UNSC shipbuilders as something that would be good for the psychology of the troops, to give them a sense of wonder and solitude, but she guessed it.

The floor was hard and cold, but she settled down in her pajamas in the corner nearest the door. The usual excuse this time: she was talking to her parents. The usual route: an encrypted channel and a short-wave burst to the corresponding signal on the Insurrectionist ship.

She told herself that it was dangerous for any of this to feel usual.

Joshua wasn't wearing his helmet, but she could see armor across his shoulders. "Connie. It's good to hear from you. It had been a long time. What do you have to report?"

"The director is starting to give out AI like party favors. Agent Maine - he's one of our strongest."

"The soldier at the freeway. I remember."

"He has this AI that speaks for him. Except it speaks mostly for itself. They're starting to put together that something is wrong with the Alpha by themselves, or at least that he's important."

"I still think that you need to get out as soon as possible. The longer this goes on -"

"I know. I'm..." She bundled her sleeve in her hand. "I'm ready now. At least to hand you my data."

He loosed a held breath. "Good. Listen, we've got to draw the Mother of Invention into a confrontation with my ship. We're going to plant a signal at a scrapyard. I'll send you the coordinates, but they'll decay before the rendezvous date."

"Which is when?"

"We want it to be two days."

"We?"

"Me."

Two days. That was soon. CT nodded. "I can do two days."

"Okay. Good," Joshua said. CT realized that she did not know the protocol for saying a polite goodbye after arranging a clandestine information drop, but apparently neither did he. "I'll see you then."

"Yeah." She worked at her sleeve again, looked up at the dappled starscape. She wanted to say something else, to be able to confide in this person who she was already confiding in, but the words did not order themselves. They were all arrayed in scaffolding in her head, and if she took them out it would all fall down.

"Hey, Connie. I thought we should talk about what we're doing after this is all over."

"I haven't thought past it being over yet. Let's take one thing at a time."

"But Connie, I...I really like you."

Oh no.

She said, "Explain."

He looked down, scratched at the shorn hair on the side of his head. "I just thought that after the data was taken care of we could -" He rallied. "Figure it out together."

The fact that he was asking whether she had feelings for him rolled around in the scaffolding, ricocheting off delicate supports.

She hadn't thought that she could use their personal relationship to get closer to him, hadn't considered it at all. Joshua had become someone she went to for comfort as well as for information, but of course he had - he was the only one who knew her situation.

Her brow furrowed. "This isn't exactly the time."

"I'm sorry. I just...needed to say it."

"Well I need to get the data that I have out, of here and keep my friends from becoming more like science experiments than they all ready are, not to mention the Alpha..." She hadn't thought enough about the Alpha. There was no way to get him out without the Director and Internals knowing.

"When we're all done with this," she said, trying for closure or a hook she could use later or a block to steady the scaffolding. "Let's think about it then."

"Okay," Joshua said. He sounded disappointed, or tired. If he had sounded at all exasperated she could have used that as an opening to hate him, but he did not.

"I've got to go," she said.

He nodded. She cut the connection.

She had no where to go.

The coordinates came in the way hers went out, in a bulky data-packaged disguised as a tight-beam transmission. She looked at the numbers for just a few seconds, knowing that as soon as she left the Mother of Invention she could plug them into her helmet and let the navigational system do the rest.

Two days.

On the first day, she did not speak to Wash. She ached from the fight with Carolina, and thought that Carolina was pushing her team too hard if she'd fought them all cold like that. Maybe Carolina was conditioned not to ache after, but the others were not so perfect. CT noticed that Wash had taken to staying at Carolina's side, as if he was waiting for orders. York, with whom Carolina usually confided, stayed distant from them. Likely, CT thought, Carolina had told him off.

She began to feel an immense, tender pity for the other Freelancers, for their interpersonal squabbles and pains. She entertained thoughts of telling someone - anyone. Sometimes in the dreams it was Wash, sometimes Carolina. But there was never any question that it was a pointless dream. As soon as she spoke her secret, even to one of the AI who were suffering from it, the director would know. He would silence her, console them, and they would believe him instead of CT. Instead of Connie, angry Connie who had always been jealous of the Freelancers who made it onto the leaderboard.

Every one of her actions became a facet of leaving. Every movement could be the last of that type of movement, every footstep could be her last on that bit of deck. She did not hate the ship. She still thought of it as home, and leaving it tore at her.

Leaving Wash tore at her.

On the second day he approached her like a he was a stranger, like she was a perpetrator. It was almost refreshing, how right he was.

"I know what they've been talking about in Internals," he said, and she almost felt her heart stop. She had thought that sort of thing only happened as a metaphor but she felt it jump, some thick, gristly sinew shocked all the way under her ribs.

Wash switched tacks, and her defenses fell in a second.

"Don't...don't do this," he said, and all the strength in his expression fell away.

"Your the one who's acting like I'm a criminal," she said.

His jaw worked, but no sounds made their way to his mouth.

"What do you know, Agent Washington?"

He looked from side to side, not furtive but searching. CT was struck with the idea that he didn't know - that what he had really heard from Internals was that they had been stymied, that they couldn't tell how more and more information was being stolen. She considered telling him that a man far away from a planet she had never heard of had asked her to be with him, just to hurt him, but that would be petty and wouldn't do anything to assuage the mix of guilt and disdain and attraction she felt for Wash.

"There's nothing to know," she lied, and turned away from him. He did not follow.

She went to bed, looked at the sheets, then retreated and took a short, hot shower. When she got out the sensation of touching her own arm was a surprising thing. Maybe her skin had felt dry and greasy a lot lately, but whatever it was about the cool, clean skin reassured her. Maybe it was because she was the only person she could trust, the only solid place to stand. She went back to bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin.

She had done frightening things before. She could do this one too.

She still wanted someone to comfort her about it.

In the darkness with Carolina invisible on the other side of the room and Wash asleep and separate from her (I can't keep doing this, she thought, I can't keep letting him think I'll stay with him, because I might start to want to), no one comforted anyone at all.

Carolina had rubbed and arched her back that night, rotated her shoulders, and grimaced before letting down her pony tail and almost disappearing under her covers. She had never called CT out for not returning to the sparring session.

CT couldn't sleep.

She opened her door and then the other long after lights-out, numbers running around her head - Four days until the transmission could be decrypted if the Mother of Invention caught it on the way out, and one day, Joshua said, until the Staff of Charon was equipped to face her.

She wondered, not for the first time, if Joshua was his real name. He would be an idiot to tell her his real name.

Maine had left a shirt or something on the floor, and CT toed her shoes off after she stepped on it so she could kick it aside with the ball of her foot and feel her way across the cold floor. Wash's half of the room was mostly bare.

She sat down on the floor, feeling the cold through her pajamas, and wondered what she was doing here. Maybe she would stay on this floor forever, watching Wash breathe in the dark (a poetic falsehood - she couldn't see him breathe. He was under too many blankets and not breathing in great gasps He was just sleeping, so still that he could have been dead.)

Maybe her plan had been lurking in the back of her head, her conscious mind unwilling to touch the idea that she would just sit here and then go. She would give him, him asleep and her half asleep, the experience of her leaving that he would never be able to get tomorrow.

But maybe she couldn't. Maybe leaving him would be too much, one step she wasn't willing to take, the one for which her own consciousness serves as counselor and says no, this is the turning point, you can't go back now.

She wanted Wash to sit up and call her name. She wanted him to put his arms around her and say no Connie, please Connie, please, and her name over and over tolling in her head until he knows all the shapes and colors of it, and she would stay.

Maybe she could come back. She would get the data to Joshua and then turn around and go back with the Freelancers, and when the Oversight Committee took the director away she would tell them all that she had been right.

She knew that that was a slim chance, though. There were thousands of possibilities where she would be exposed, or it wouldn't be possible to get back to the team. The end was almost worse when paired with the tantalizing prospect that it wasn't really the end. She had gotten fond of this place: she wanted to smell this smell of the room and the sheets, she wanted to sit on the couch and watch her friends go by.

They hadn't felt like her friends lately, though. They had felt like pawns.

Maybe she couldn't do it.

Maybe she would just stay.

But maybe she could.