XVI
She left Wash's room without Maine turning over, without Wash opening one sleep-clotted eye. The next day, she left the Project, but everyone saw that.
Joshua called her unexpectedly just before she was due to muster, when she was already dressed and prepared for the mission to an Insurrection-held scrap metal recycling station. She gripped tight to the screen in her hand as she ran to the hydroponic garden, lights and creases in the wall rushing past her as she held the screen close to her chest. She only had time to dash behind a corner, no more stable than when Wash had found her, before the call would have expired. When she picked it up she didn't even speak, instead berating herself and looking back and forth for whichever Freelancer would surely come to witness the risk she was taking.
"Something's come up," Joshua said in a rush. "You need to know. The Charon Corporation isn't just looking for your Director."
"What else?"
"Alien artifacts. We had that Engineer for a reason, Connie. Now we think we've found something else. A mining ship picked it up and sent it to the recycling station, the same one you're about to attack. We arranged to make our mission loud enough for the Mother of Invention to pick it up, so they'll bring you right to us."
"That's already done. What do these artifacts do?"
"Lots of things. Some mirror human AI technology so closely that it's eerie," Joshua said.
"So the director might want them."
"That too."
"You think this is the final piece of the puzzle," CT said.
"I hope so. We're ready."
"I'm ready too," she said, meaning to sound impatient. He should have known, she thought, that calling her this close to their second in-person meeting was endangering both of them.
"Good," he said. "And Connie -"
Frightened and hurried, she cut the signal.
She had made digital preparations for her departure as well as physical ones: closing her back doors into the Mother of Invention's radio, making sure that even if the director knew what she had done, he did not know how she had done it. Now she quickly had to go back over some of her erasures, cutting the links this last communication had created.
The more she thought about Joshua's words, the less sense they made. An alien artifact had been brought to a UNSC station and no one had confiscated it? There was something missing here, something she should have understood a long time ago.
She stayed stiff and quiet as the predicted mission to the recycling station progressed, answering South with what little sound she had left in her. Wash shook and teetered underneath his jet pack but CT felt like there was a gyroscope inside her keeping her trajectory straight, pushing her forward to an inevitable cold destination. She hoped to be coming back to the Mother of Invention as soon as she could. Space would look the same in the other direction.
When the shooting started, she she took off, back through the force field into the silence of space.
As she ran along the top of the space station she heard maybe the same cadence of words in her head that Wash would be hearing in a few minutes or hours or days. She had snatched her name away from him and now she had taken his too - Wash Wash Wash repeating in her head until it became meaningless.
When she got to the hatch in the ship she fell down and switched her flashlight on. His name faded into the back of her head as if she had passed through a force field that did not allow it. Maybe it was floating out in space somewhere. She had moved on to other things.
She had to find Joshua and get out of here alive.
The Freelancers would really be after her if they caught her now. Thankfully, York wasn't in the ship any more. She had hoped not to encounter him, had been just as relieved as she had been frightened when the director had reported that York had been spaced. CT's back prickled as if they were watching her. She thought of Carolina's helmeted glare and the silver gleam of North's sniper rifle, the wicked way South could shoot. Funny how you thought about your friends' firepower differently when they were your enemies.
Except, no, they were not her enemies, not even now. The Director was, but the Freelancers-
She was saving them.
She pushed thoughts of them out of her mind and, following the path that Joshua had sent to her last night, found a closed door.
The first Charon corps she found attacked her. They hadn't been brought into Joshua's confidence. He had warned her about this. It would have been too much risk to tell everyone. Instead she disabled them, crunching two helmets against heads that would scar in a split kick that downed both at the same time. She had one moment to feel proud of herself, to feel a rare love for her own stocky legs in the heavy, drab armor.
The moment she began to feel winded she activated her hologram, stepping to the side of the attacks, flicking out of the corner of her own eye. What a gift, she thought, to be able to step out of your own skin.
When she got to the Leader she pointed the snub-nosed pistol at him too for a moment, because it felt natural; she had taken just a half step to get here, and she could shoot him right now if she wanted, if she really wanted to go back -
"I was worried about you," he said, and she saw with disgust and awe that he would mobilize the whole base for her - but wouldn't it have mobilized anyway at the moment the Freelancers landed? "Didn't think you'd be able to get away," he said.
She lowered the mouth of the gun. "You don't know the half of it. They stepped up production." It was easier to deal with things like Maine's implantation when she described it as if it was a routine, but her glibness, and the way she almost sounded like the director, surprised her. She hadn't expected to say that. "Here." She dipped into her pocket for the data chip, kept the gun in her less certain left hand.
"This ship was captured by the enemy," she said, stumbling over the words, realizing the director must have known more about this and been threatening a skirmish against the Charon corporation on the recycling rig for a long time. Perhaps he had started after she had siphoned his system. She was looking downhill now and starting to roll too fast to brake. "I'm surprised there's anything left in the data banks."
"Not everyone follows protocol. You should know that better than anyone," Joshua said. She glanced at him. If that was a dig at Wash, it had struck hard.
"You really think they found another artifact?" she snapped. "How could nobody have discovered that when they were processing the wreckage?"
"They didn't know where to look. And they didn't have what you have."
She looked at the data in his hand. That was all she had. That, and, yes, a certain affinity for spotting things.
"Watch this," he said, and turned to the console next to him. After a few keystrokes, a full-color camera feed opened up. CT moved over to Joshua's side. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing on the screen: the image was a chaos of machinery and people. Then she identified Carolina, who nearly cleared the room as she leapt over and around a Warthog spinning in zero gravity.
"I didn't expect that," Joshua said quizzically.
"What?"
"The loss of gravity. But it doesn't matter. They won't reach us."
The Warthog fell back to earth, and in the suddenly revealed length of the hanger CT saw Wash crouched by the side of the bay, the yellow flashes of his shoulder and forehead plates giving him away. She picked out other Freelancers one by one.
"My transponder is floating on the other side of an asteroid field," Joshua said smugly. "They'll figure out they're on the wrong scent soon and they'll be right where we want them."
"What's over there?"
"The Staff of Charon, and its strongest armaments."
"Which are?"
"Nuclear."
"You're dropping a nuke?"
"Yes."
CT drew in a breath. She was not used to praying but imagined that it felt something like she felt now, a reaching out without any expectation of receiving an answer back. She glanced back at the screen. The Freelancers were leaving. Wash and York had hesitated at the edge of the hanger bay, sitting there are casually as if they were in the barracks, until York reached out a hand to pull Wash up.
"Time to get out of here," Joshua said.
Still watching the screen, CT could barely hear him. She looked at the brown metal wall to her left as if she could see out into space and better judge how far the Freelancers were from the concealed ship.
"You too," Joshua prodded.
CT dragged in a breath that only gave her a tiny respite. "I can't. Not yet." I didn't want to go. I thought I was ready. But I was hoping all the time that something would make it easier for me to stay than to go.
"If they weren't onto you before, they definitely will be now," Joshua said. "Come with us, Connie. I'm not gonna lose you over this."
The words echoed. Not gonna lose you. As if it was personal, as if what happened to her mattered.
The mission mattered, and if she tried to go back to the team now they would all know where she had been. Wash already suspected so much.
For a moment she fantasized about berating herself in front of them, talking about how she had wanted to hack some computer inside the station and help the mission that way, and telling them how she had failed utterly. It would match their vision of her.
If she went out now, though, she would most likely be caught in the nuclear blast. With one last glance at the live image now empty of everything except crumpled metal equipment, she marched away after Joshua, pushing her fear and horror back, holding her head high.
The Staff of Charon was wedded to the rock-breaking facility by a short airlock. Joshua rushed inside, CT following.
Katie moved toward her immediately out of the next hallway, her hips swaying with each heavy step. CT recognized her by her yellow, feathery hair, and then her voice. "You're back," she said to Joshua. She walked like she was going to start a fight.
The leader glanced between Katie and CT. "She'll show you around." He hesitated. "I'm going to be honest about this because I think you'd want me to be. She'll be watching you. We can't let you walk around alone. People here won't...trust new people."
"They won't trust a Freelancer. I'd expect nothing less," CT said, but that wasn't really true - the Insurrection owed her too. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to go home, but home wasn't Rhode Island or the Mother of Invention. She wasn't sure what it was. She made nervous taps with her fingers against her moulded-metal holster.
She said, "Listen, the next time I see the Freelancers, Agent Texas will have received the data I left for her. The Director's greatest attack dog will be on our side."
"I'm not sure how many of them survived." Joshua laughed quietly. "And anyway, how do you know she'll be on your side?"
Was Allison's face under that black helmet? How much of her was left? CT said, "I'm sure." She changed the topic, shuffling her thoughts around to find the one that needed to recur. "Did we even get the artifact?"
"I'm don't know yet." He sounded angry at himself now. Maybe he was wondering if the question was revenge for his gloating comment about the death of the Freelancers.
(Maybe it was.)
A strange sound, like a buzz of static, filled the ship before CT heard a booming sound that she recognized as an explosion.
"That's it," Joshua said. He sounded pleased. CT looked toward the source of the sound, her eyes widening, threatening to stay that way so long that it hurt. Which of the Freelancers had escaped the bomb, and which had not?
Instead of obsessing over that and dwelling in the sadness that would surely follow, CT switched her gaze to Joshua, still unblinking. The ship's engines rumbled and hissed, and he said, "The pilot just radioed me. We've jumped to slipspace."
CT stayed her own course. "Show me all the data you have on the artifacts. I'll compare it to what I have on the AI, and call the UNSC. We need to put the Director on trial, now."
"I thought Katie would show you around."
"No. We're both here to take down the director, right?"
He sighed. "I'll show you the artifact."
"We'll want to examine your armor and that ability too. What is it - a hologram?" Katie said.
"Later," Joshua replied, and CT held her tongue.
As they walked, he explained. "We found this on a colony planet where Charon was building a cryogenics factory - our first hard target that the Freelancers actually attacked, I think."
He lead her to a lab near the stern of the ship. It had the same dark silver walls as the hallways , with computer screens hung from dollies and wires snaking across the floor in rat-king bunches. Blue light reflected off his helmet as Joshua looked down at a silver half-sphere encased in rock.
CT walked around the examination table on which the object lay. The table looked like it had come from a medbay. "These cavities are...it's like this is meant to be filled with something, or to adapt to clamp onto a different part." She reached in, tapped a bulbous blue half-sphere.
"There are ports in there that aren't all that different from UNSC FIF tags," Joshua said, sounding more and more proud of himself as he spoke. "They even have the same amperage."
"So humans and aliens developed parallel technologies at different times..."
"Except these are older than the aliens that the military is fighting now. This would be an antique to them."
"Okay, so our devices can interact with their old ones." It was fascinating, her mind starting to swim with images of lost civilizations and ruins, but she wasn't sure how it was relevant to making sure Alpha - and Theta, and the rest - were not used for any more experimentation. "What does this have to do with AI?"
"I don't know..."
"The FIF tags." It came to her quickly. "The director modified those tags just like the UNSC does for Spartans. And the director used an alien to break Alpha apart. This has all got to fit together somehow."
She moved around the table, looking at the artifact from all sides, feeling Joshua's and Katie's eyes on her. A moment later she shook her head. "This isn't the most important part. I need to get my data to someone at the UNSC who won't take a cold look at it and leave it for another scientist to figure out ten years later. I'm going to get in touch with the Oversight Committee." She looked at Joshua. "Do you know anything about them?"
He shook his head. "No? I'm a security chief. I was never even in the military."
"Then I'll look it up."
"Okay." Joshua paused. "But first - we need to examine your armor."
"Why?" CT said.
"It's one of the greatest advantages the director has over us. Our suits don't seal or take hits like that. And didn't you say yourself that the AI interface with the suits?"
"Yes. The director always emphasized that the suits and the AI weren't supposed to fall into the wrong hands."
Although, half the time he framed it in the honorable way - don't leave your teammates' body behind. I should have known he was doing that just so save money and keep the AI a secret.
Joshua stared at her, businesslike. Assuring acquisitions. "Do you need some kind of equipment to take it off?"
"Sometimes. But there are ways around that," CT said. They had all figured out the shortcuts, like removing the arm pieces last, to preserve the arm strength needed to lift the rest.
Katie and Joshua turned away like there was some sort of spectacle to CT shucking the armor and piling it in a corner next to a snaggle of cords climbing the wall of a desk that held a monitor. The ugly helmet, she faced to the wall after its stare turned a little too bright. She tried not to think too hard about how her expression looked, thus shown to the world. Even when she felt neutral, she looked angry.
To their credit or hers, Joshua and Katie did not comment.
After that, it was almost easy.
The UNSC had channels set up for this kind of reporting, channels she wouldn't have been able to access under the director's eye. Since CT had looked at the Oversight Committee's website before, she just came at the same place from a different direction and submitted a classified ethics complaint through the UNSC, using codes that had been drilled into her in intelligence training. She went through back door URLs she had also learned there, and addressed her message to the Oversight Committee created to follow up on reports of ethics violations. A sidebar offered her information about whistleblower reprisal and legal action. She wondered whether she and Joshua would last long enough to need it.
CT sat at a console in the lab, with Katie and Joshua looking over her shoulder. The woman folded her arms. Joshua reached out and touched CT's shoulder; she could barely feel it through her under suit but she recognized the scrape of armor against thick cloth. His grip was strong. When she ignored it, he pressed his palm against her shoulder and let her shrug him off.
To the representatives of the Oversight Committee.
Doctor Leonard Church, Science Officer of Project Freelancer, has been conducting unauthorized experiments up to and including the splitting of an advanced artificial intelligence program and creating new ones from the split. His reasons for doing so are personal and are detailed in the attached files; nevertheless they do not represent anything beneficiary to the UNSC at large. He has been sending his troops on increasingly dangerous missions against employees of the Charon Corporation, after falsely accusing those employees of being Insurrectionist soldiers in order to coerce the Freelancer agents into participating in their downfall. I've been collecting data about Project Freelancer. I never could shake the feeling that something was wrong with the program.
She blinked, felt but did not see the people looking over her shoulder. She had written the letter quickly, not knowing whether or not the formal tone was appropriate. It certainly got the message across.
She wrote her real name underneath, and 00572 84952-RT, and Specialist MOS-29E. Read the letter over again, wondering whether she had ever been taught how to draft an exposé and forgotten.
Joshua had fed the data chip she had given him into the computer, but walked off in the middle of her composition. "Where did he go?" CT asked Katie as she attached the full suite of the director's data.
"He controls our troops. Was probably called away to run the place."
CT did not reply. What she had not written was that she had sequestered all of her righteous anger away behind the professional words. She had chambered it like a bullet and she would use it later when the unsuspecting target would walk in front of her hiding place. Those words, she kept to herself.
"Where do you want to go?" Katie said.
CT looked up. "I want to see how your operation works."
"I'll only show you so much," Katie said as CT pushed back her chair.
"Take your precautions," CT said, not kindly.
Katie turned her back to CT and walked out without checking to see whether she was being followed. When CT tailed her, the other woman started to talk again. "The bridge of the ship tells you as much as you'll get here. Real headquarters are...somewhere else."
"In the building we blew up in the city?"
Katie hunched her shoulders. "Not any more."
"I didn't know what we were doing at the time," CT said. "He never told any of us what the missions were for. That was part of why I had to put so many puzzle pieces together."
"That seems a good way to drop your people into a situation blind."
"It was. There's a reason why I left."
On the way, CT got her first view of space from the Staff of Charon through a tiny window. She felt the skin of her back prickle as her muscles tensed. Somewhere out there was the UNSC, waiting for her to reveal herself to them. Admiral Margaret Paragonsky would be on the lookout for Leonard Church after this.
Paragonsky had not exactly been CT's hero, but she had skipped right over Lord Hood and on to Paragonsky in her first few looks at the military's hierarchy in social studies.
A few minutes later, Katie opened a sliding door and shifted forward into the bridge. It was not as large as the Mother of Invention's prow with its dramatic overlook. This bridge had a console across the front for two pilots and a central navigation console bisecting the room. Another door on the opposite side probably opened onto a parallel hallway, CT surmised. In addition to the pilots there were two navigators paying close attention to glowing green screens.
"Where are we going?" CT asked.
"Our base of operations."
"Charon central."
"Not even. The security forces operate out of a central base, not any one Charon operation. You could say we almost operate like freelancers."
CT did not laugh.
"What do you think?" Katie said.
"It's...nice."
"Is it what you expected?"
"Not exactly. I don't know what I expected. Who runs the Charon Corporation?"
"There's a board of shareholders. Do you want to meet them? I'm sure they're happy that someone's stopping the terrorists posing as UNSC from causing a media disaster for most of civilized space."
"No. Not unless they want me. I have too much else to do."
"Good. It's easier that way," Katie said.
CT turned to look more closely at her. "I want to call my parents. Can I do that?"
"I'll be watching you. Don't mention you defected. Don't you dare say 'Charon'."
"Fine."
While she watched CT open the message Katie made the same nervous gesture that CT had before, tapping the ammo pack at the side of her leg.
CT's own screen name, her own communication program, gave her flashbacks to high school. Funny how different people used computers in different ways, even though only one was so obvious to her. After repeated calls, neither of her parents answered, through, and CT decided to leave them a video call. Her own face appeared in the bottom right of the screen, and the first words that came to her mind were cliche reactions to her own wide-eyed appearance. She had to remind herself that this was not a confessional, although nor could it be a promise that CT would soon come home. She imagined her mother's face, that woman who for the want of sun dapple on a leaf had lost her career as an artist. Both of them were inside a different storybook scene now, darker and more constricted.
"Hi, mom and dad. I haven't talked to you in a while and I wanted to let you know that I'm okay. We're going to be just as busy as we have been over the next few days so if you don't get me at the first call don't worry. I have a lot to tell you. Tell me how downtown is and what the weather's like. That's all."
Katie looked up at her, just waiting.
CT stopped the message, sent it, turned around to lean her elbows on her legs and look at Katie.
CT said, "Why did they pick you to follow me?"
The other woman tilted her head. "I'm a hand-to-hand combat specialist. There's not much else for me to do in slipspace."
"You're their only specialist?"
"I was a mercenary before I joined Charon. Let's just say I know a bit more about dirty fighting than a lot of these guys. They're ex-bouncers, cops. I was a bad guy." She paused. "What about you?"
Me? Before Charon?
CT said, "I need to send one more message."
She typed it out almost automatically, like she had written the email to the Oversight Committee, all the while thinking: To Agent Texas, Allison, because I know that I can trust you the most. Not because we were friends, although I hope that we will be next time we meet. I hope we will be comrades-in-arms against your creator. But because you are the one who is going to be the most torn up by this. I and Wash and Carolina will look at Alpha's breaking with distant pity, but you -
You remember it. You were there. You'll sit back or not move and all and suddenly discover what you were born for.
I almost envy your ability to know that.
Pity that you were born as a shadow of someone's lover. You can't know, any more than I can, what Allison would think about Leonard's actions.
After that she stopped, and she told Texas that she trusted her in the hope that that would convince her. Texas would not be feeling an overabundance of trust once she found out what the director had hidden from her.
Katie watched that message too, but CT did not explain it.
Joshua was gone a long time. It was out of both boredom and convenience that Katie showed CT the barracks, which were more crowded but cheerier than those the Freelancers' had inhabited. The Charon crew had more personal possessions, more colors of cloth. The combat specialist quickly became bored and sat down on a bed that may or may not have been hers. CT stood, feeling like this down time should not be allowed. There wasn't supposed to be any free time. She was supposed to have been panicked with want for more time
Finally, she thought of something to fill it. "I need to get my armor back in order to receive any return messages. Where is it?"
Katie looked up from a handheld game. "In the lab, I guess."
They went back. Joshua and a helmeted Insurrectionist were there, examining one of CT's gauntlets. The leader wasn't wearing his helmet, but CT could see it sitting on the desk near where she had shucked her armor. CT spoke from the end of the table. "I'll need that back."
Joshua looked up, his expression morphing from serious to concerned with a quirk of his lips. "Right now?"
"As soon as possible. If I'm going to get a message back from the UNSC it'll be easier for me to check it from my helmet than from the console. I don't imagine I'll be sitting right there."
He nodded. "Give Frank a few minutes, Connie."
She nodded. He must have recognized the tightening of her expression when he said that name, because he approached her and let the tech go back to his work. Katie examined the armor too. As the man that he had called Frank moved around the table, CT saw that his left arm was missing, replaced with a thin, metal prosthetic.
Joshua moved closer to CT, looking down at her, his tone softening. "Are you doing okay?"
"They didn't call me Connie in the program. I told them not to."
"What did they call you?"
"CT."
"You could use that name if you want to," Joshua said.
"Or I could keep Connie."
You think Connie started this, and so I'll let you continue to think that Connie will finish it.
It felt right that she still hated that name a little. It was the only Freelancer nickname that sounded like a diminutive.
She said, "No, I'm not okay. I've just defected and I'm on a strange ship with strange people. But I'm not without some information. I looked up this section that...it's called the whistleblower reprisal act."
He had taken her angry speech with an optimistic look of blankness, but now looked more like the alert, businesslike man she had met during the raid. "If you're caught - "
"No, I mean, it might help us. They have measures put in place for people who expose useful information."
"Don't be naive about it, though. Someone at the UNSC might come down on you."
"For what? The director isn't actually with the UNSC, remember? He's operating using their paperwork but he hasn't been going on any mission that they would have paid for if they knew what it was."
"He's been attacking us."
"Exactly! There isn't a war against Charon."
"Then we'll go to a court."
"Yes. That's next, if my message even reaches the right committee. If not..."
"We find another place to hide out."
"We try again!"
"And then, we go somewhere where we can live in peace," he said firmly, and looked over at his teammates. They had both stepped away from the armor. CT picked up the gauntlet they had been examining in two hands, noted the slight chips around one of the textural rivets, and slipped her hand through, from bulbous back to narrow front. The back of the gauntlet cupped her elbow, and as soon as it notched into her bodysuit she felt the weight of it halve as it gave feedback to her muscles to support itself.
"We have to try first," she said, not wanting to think beyond that to anything else. There was enough going on now.
While she dressed he glanced back and forth to Katie, and then began to engage the other man in rapid conversation about the armor - whether they could purchase something similar, whether they could equip his own armor with a hologram like hers.
"You need a ship hooked up to an AI for that," CT said, stepping into a greave, not looking back. "It's not worth it."
"But you could still use your hologram when you weren't on the ship," Joshua said.
CT sealed her last piece of armor around her leg and looked up. "We were all authorized to use our abilities before we left for the mission. The people on the ship keep tabs on us. They make sure we don't overheat and that nothing goes wrong. It's possible to use the enhancements without an AI - you saw it yourself when Carolina used hers on the freeway. It's just dangerous."
"What can be dangerous about a hologram?"
"Mine is one of the safer ones. Not much happens if a hologram breaks. But imagine if Carolina's speed enhancement pushed her so hard that it broke her legs, and still kept running. Or North...ending up like Utah."
"Utah?" Joshua asked skeptically.
She put her helmet over head. "You don't want to know."
"Come on. What happened to Utah?"
What happened to Georgia?
It had been such a cruel joke for South and York to tease Wash with that question. They had been really saying that it was funny that someone was dead, and funny that Wash was afraid.
There was a trace of laughter in Joshua's voice also as he spoke the strange sentence, laughing too at the Freelancers' names.
CT rounded on him. "His shield removed all the air inside it and nearly suffocated him. It was horrible."
Joshua widened his eyes. He didn't seem to know how to react. "That's why we need to get out of here. So more things like that won't happen."
"Running away won't help. That was just a symptom. What happened to Utah was a test gone wrong. A procedure. There's much worse coming." The AI will just get sicker as they break down. They'll die faster.
Katie had withdrawn her game from its compartment again and was bobbing her head to heavy guitar music, but she looked up when she heard CT's raised voice.
"What are you going to do with her data, anyway?" she asked.
"Find out how to use it to take down the Freelancers," Joshua said.
"And stop him from hurting anyone else."
"I've got a lot to do here," Frank said, not looking up from the table. A three-dimensional framework in the shape of the armor had spread out on the table. Unlike the rest of the Staff of Charon's technology, it looked equal to the equipment that the Director had.
"I'll help," CT said. "I know this equipment better than any of you.
"You might want to get some sleep while you've got the chance," Joshua said.
She looked up at him. "Before we get to Charon central?"
"Yep."
"And your people will still be watching me."
He hesitated. Katie said, "Jailer's my job now, buddy."
CT said, "I'll keep focusing on this work."
"I've got to keep an eye on the rest of the ship," Joshua said. "I'll be back when I can."
"Okay."
"Do you need anything else? Coffee?"
She almost liked the concern she heard in his voice, almost could differentiate it from pity. She felt that if she slowed down, though, she would be wasting the time she had. The job wasn't done yet. "No, thank you." She patted his arm, wondered a moment later whether he would read too much into the gesture. "I appreciate what you've done for me."
He left her with a nod.
She examined the Charon tech's diagrams and taught him what he was up against, what he had been up against when York had handed him a bomb. She waited for an alert to come through her helmet, not knowing how the UNSC would try to get in touch with her, or whether they would go after the Director first.
CT could not relax, not under those eyes on in a strange ship. When there was no more to do, when she had told Frank all she could about the armor, she sat against the wall next to Katie, waiting for the ping of a message.
The silence darted back and forth through her head, just beneath her notice.