The next few days went by rather smoothly with North drifting in and out of sleep every now and then, and even being able to eat something more than just a watery bouillon.
Sure, he still was weak and not completely recovered, but him eating something with a little bit more consistency than colored and flavored water was a huge plus in Ala's book.
Of course, when Ala broke it to him that South had left for several missions again and would be gone for about a week this time, he didn't look really happy. He seemed worried and a bit pissed, but understood South's reasons for leaving—even more so when Ala told him about her walking around like a caged tiger and getting progressively worse when it came to her mood.
She needed space and the chance to blow off some steam.
And that was what convinced North to not hound South too much about when she would be coming back. She was just a free spirit and more of a tomboy, and she needed her space to think over shit and come to terms with everything.
Which led to South returning to the apartment when she was done with her missions after six days, informing them that the mission dealer would charge her more in order to pay Ala for the missions she was missing to tend to her brother.
Sure, she looked quite surprised when she came home and, after showering and changing clothes, went to North and found him sitting upright in bed.
Although there were tons of pillows to make him stay upright, she was still surprised. Or at least, that was what Ala was told by North later on as when she had heard South leaving the shower, she excused herself and went to the kitchen.
She preferred taking herself out of the mix in order to avoid any possible confrontation, even more in her bedroom with a still injured North who needed all of his energy to recover and not just to mediate a fight between his sister and their host.
So when South decided that she wanted to spend some quality time with her brother, Ala took the cue and left the bedroom to get North something to drink.
By now it was a Spritzer: a bit of orange juice mixed with water to give him as much energy through light food as was possible without overburdening his stomach.
When that was ready, maybe with a prepared soup too if he still hadn't eaten or felt hungry, she waited in the kitchen for South to leave the bedroom.
When she heard the woman leave North's bedroom for another mission or to go to her room, Ala then would appear with a gentle smile and a knocking on the door frame to the bedroom.
When North would look up, she would always ask if it was okay for her to enter and that she had brought something to drink and (sometimes) eat.
He would always nod and invite her to come in and sit with him when he was eating or awake in general.
It had become some kind of routine. Whenever it was possible and he was awake, she would sit with him and talk with him when South wasn't around to take over that task.
Alaska respected the tight bond the twins shared and didn't try to interfere with that bond by always bursting in. She would wait patiently until South would leave before making her appearance.
Of course, North would notice and ask her about this. She would always explain that she didn't want to interrupt them as they were siblings and surely had a lot to tell each other.
North didn't buy it and Ala was pretty sure he knew the real reason, but he was polite enough to let it slide to keep them from fighting.
South for her part was a difficult case. She either was always hiding in her room or out on a mission. Alaska hardly got to see her, mostly only whenever she was coming to the kitchen and asking for something to eat. If there was nothing around, she went to some takeout restaurant around the apartment.
The black haired woman didn't like it that she left the apartment so often, even more after she told South that she was living more or less incognito here, but South didn't really care about that. However, considering the fact that she was a Special Ops agent calmed Ala a bit. She surely knew how to make herself invisible and not give away shit.
During the last couple of days, the female Freelancer started to trust her a bit more. Or at least would be a bit more open and accepting of her a bit easier since she seemed to notice that Ala really meant well after seeing that she was looking after North to the best of her ability.
In any case, it became a habit between them that Ala, whenever South came back from a mission, would find money on the kitchen table. It was enough to make a good living here, together with South and North.
Okay, South was mostly fetching for herself and North didn't eat as much as a normal man would, but the medication and the bandages cost a little fortune for Ala and that was a problem most of the time.
With a sigh, she threw another set of bandages away and hoped that she wouldn't have to use the bandages anymore soon because buying all of those bandages was likely to get someone to become suspicious.
Snatching another bottle of Spritzer, she returned to North, not noticing this time that South was sitting and talking with him.
Upon knocking, she noticed South looking around. Her eyes narrowed at the intrusion, but not at Ala in general.
"Oh, sorry, I will come back later then." Ala muttered and turned around to wait in the kitchen or the living room, but North called her back.
"It's okay. Just come in, you're the owner of this place after all."
He was able to sit up by himself, his broken bones healing pretty well. He was already able to move his fingers and his foot a bit, but they still would have to wait some more time until he was fully recovered.
The black haired woman suspected his shoulder would take the most time to heal since many things could have gone wrong when his shoulder jumped out of its socket.
Carefully, Ala came closer, now standing at the footing of the bed and making sure she was equally far away from the male twin as much as the female, only to be sure that she did not somehow enrage the female Freelancer with her presence.
For once, however, South didn't seem to react to that.
"We were just talking about how lucky we have been to end up here and to have such a nice host like you. Right, South?" he started, throwing his twin a pointed glare.
"Yeah, sure…" the tomboy of the team muttered, crossing her arms and looking away.
"Well, thanks…" Ala replied, scratching her neck before grabbing her braid and starting to fiddle with the end of it. It was a bad habit she had where she would often fiddle with the end of her braid if she was thinking or embarrassed.
"You're the one who should be more grateful. At least she helped drag your sorry ass over to this place and took over all the patching up shit." South grumbled, sinking a bit deeper in the chair she was sitting on.
North smiled warmly at Alaska, "I need to thank you then."
Sending a bit of a derailed and awkward smile back, she shook her head, "It's okay. I was just glad to have someone looking after me when I was in a similar situation."
This got the twins' attention and so she ended up telling the story of her previous Platoon, the Elbon Team on Chare.
They had been fighting aliens and all kind of shit to bring away a huge and very important discovery before shit really hit the fan.
In the end, only one member of the Elbon Team had officially survived.
She had managed to get away from the battlefield, badly hurt, using a refugee's transport. She had lost her helmet and, with that, the Elbon tracking signal.
After being able to get a new helmet, she contacted the leader of the Platoon she was in before joining Elbon. Sargent Hollaway had immediately organized a transport from New Russia to New Asia, where he had some friends who still owed him a thing or two.
This was how she had ended up here in New Asia, in New Bangkok to be more specific, being treated after having survived more than a week with biofoam closing up the wound in her abdomen. Luckily, nothing vital had been hurt in the first place, but it was still painful and the doctor patching her up was pretty surprised that she had been able to pull through everything up until then.
The wife of the doctor looked after her when she was staying at the man's house until she was halfway back on track and was able to look after herself.
Another friend got her the apartment and some rudimentary furniture such as a mattress, pillow, and blanket, along with some things for the kitchen to cook and to eat with, and some minor stuff for the shower. Pretty basic things, really.
Soon after when the wound was healed up halfway and wouldn't open up the moment she was burdening it, a third friend of Hollaway's, Kyle, contacted her through a safe channel and informed her that he had one or more missions that she could do for income but that she would have to prove herself worthy to be taken up in his 'catalogue of co-workers' as he liked to put it.
The first missions went down rather smoothly and soon she was able to get more and more missions, which made it possible for her to buy more things for her apartment like a kitchen table, couch, TV, stuff for the office, a new and complete bed together with a pillow and blanket, a laptop, and many more things.
The old mattress, pillow, and blanket were now being used by South.
South made a somewhat disgusted noise through her nose at that last part, but didn't comment otherwise on it. They all knew that it was better than nothing.
Sometime after Ala had finished her story, South got up and left the room with the information that she had another mission coming up.
The black haired woman then took the seat that South had occupied before.
She sighed, "I guess your story wasn't much better?"
"Not by much, but at least we never had to live incognito. Aside from now, of course." He replied with a low chuckle.
That's how North slowly started to tell his story, about how he had volunteered for the army to keep an eye on his sister, how they went through basic and both made it to the Freelancers because of their individual skills that the Director could use.
About how they had met York, Carolina, Tex, Wyoming, Maine, CT, and Wash. How they had become North and South Dakota.
Alaska, however, restrained herself from asking for their real names. That was way too personal a question to ask at the moment. She would give him some time to tell her that on his own whenever he felt more comfortable in doing so.
With the next day's passing, North got progressively better and was now even able to leave the bedroom and join Alaska, and occasionally South too, on the couch to watch a movie or to eat something in the kitchen.
He often felt pretty exhausted rather quickly, but he was able to stay awake for a longer time with every day that passed.
The only thing that remained was that odd restlessness of some part of his mind during the night, as Ala would put it.
It seemed as if a part of his mind was afraid of the dark just as she was.
She knew that it sounded pretty damn childish, but she was fucking afraid of the dark and always needed some kind of light source which is why she never shut the blinds when sleeping in her bedroom, or she would leave the laptop running or have something else on that was a light source to make her feel safe. Even just a small light source remaining on helped her to sleep.
Anyways, back to the topic. The restless part of North's mind.
Since she had picked up on it days ago when North had been out cold, she would tell the sleeping North some kind of fairytale or a self-invented story which always had a happy ending.
Sometimes she would even sing a little song that was always loud enough to be heard, but never loud enough to wake North up.
When she felt like the restless part of North became calm, she would leave the sleeping Freelancer after waiting some more minutes and went to sleep on the couch that she currently was using as her replacement bed.
It was days later again, with North and Ala sitting at the kitchen table and eating something for breakfast. North still had to have something different from what Ala was eating for breakfast: something lighter to get his body back on track, but he was already allowed to eat some bread and a few other normal things.
South wasn't with them. She was again out on a mission for several days.
Ala was just about to bite into another slice of bread with jam when North suddenly looked to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
She hadn't expected the blond to do that and jumped a bit in surprise given the unexpectedness, almost dropping the bread. She managed to catch it though, luckily not spilling any of the jam.
When she looked over to North, he smiled apologetically at her before saying, "I wanted to thank you for sitting with me and helping Theta fall asleep when I was too beaten to look after him."
"Oh, that was nothing," she replied automatically, before noticing something odd in the phrase. She furrowed her brows, looking over to North, "Who's Theta?"
Sure, she had already heard about AI Technology and about people having this type of artificial intelligence connected to their brains in order to work together but since it was so rare for people to come into contact with that technology and it being even rarer still to meet someone who had it outside of the army, her first fear was that this guy was probably somewhat bonkers and had a split personality.
A soft smile appeared on his lips, "Right, I haven't told you about one of the many special aspects of Project Freelancer, have I?"
This at least answered her question about whether it was AI Technology or North was just plain bonkers. She now more or less suspected that this Theta person was some sort of an AI.
Indeed, her suspicions were confirmed seconds later.
"In the Project, each of us had different armor enhancements. For example, I have a domed energy shield. There also were healing units, EMP Units, and Speed Units that were used. I heard about others being deployed out in the field too, but I've only known these four so far." He began explaining, taking a gulp of the tea he had for breakfast, "In any case, they noticed that our cranial capacity wasn't enough to have us focus on the fight and use the enhancement properly as efficiently as possible at the same time, which is why they started giving us AIs…"
North now began explaining the details about what happened in the Project involving the AIs. He also told her about the accident with Agent Utah, the Epsilon incident, and how all of the other AI Fragments were to be removed afterwards. Carolina, North, and York were able to get away with their Fragments as shit hit the fan in high speed after incident with Epsilon.
When North finished, Ala looked at him.
Aside from all of the questions floating around in her mind about the Project, there were other questions she wanted to ask—one of which she deemed to be the most important one to have answered at the moment.
"Aren't you… I don't know, being a bit too trusting to so openly tell me about what happened in the Project? I thought the rules about telling outsiders about that were stricter?" she asked at length, "Not that I mind, but this sounds pretty confidential to me."
The man smiled gently, taking another gulp of tea before answering.
"The Project crashed with the ship." He said simply after putting the mug back down, "And take it as some kind of payback. If it weren't for you, there would be nobody who knew about us and our life. We would be deleted out of the records of history if they found us." He explained, sounding pretty rueful.
This time, it was Ala's turn to lay her hand on his sound lower arm, "I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I'm sorry."
North shook his head at that, "It's okay. In any case, we somehow managed to get away with our Fragments. Since Theta is the Fragment symbolizing trust, he is reluctant about many things. Mostly when it comes to opening up to strangers. His behavior is also more of a child, although he can be quite an asshole sometimes. I guess that comes from Alpha."
"The first AI that the others have been split off from? His character sounds like a real sunny one." Ala commented dryly, taking a swig of her coffee.
North snorted at that comment, "You could put it that way. Epsilon and Alpha are the most alike when it comes to their personalities." He explained, before exhaling deeply and searching Ala's eyes.
"Anyways, I wanted you to meet Theta so he can get to know you and thank for what you did for him. If that's okay to you?" North then asked, which caused Alaska to gape at him with large, round eyes.
It took her a second to process what he had just said and what big trust he was placing in her, even more when she thought back to the things that North had just said about how Theta was pretty childlike and you had to be careful around him given that.
She exhaled deeply, getting her bearings back in check before replying with a warm smile, "I would love to. Although I suppose we better move that part to the bedroom so you can sleep afterwards if you feel tired."
She could already see that he was struggling to keep awake to continue sitting there and talk with her.
This gave the Freelancer pause, but eventually he nodded his head in agreement.
While Ala shortly cleaned up the kitchen, North went to get clean. They met up in her bedroom after that with a full bottle of Spritzer and a new glass. North had gone to the bedroom a bit before her to talk to Theta before the meeting with Ala.
Putting down the glass, she shortly filled it with some of the liquid before taking a seat on the opposite side of the bed, on the chair. She still was pretty surprised with how trusting North was towards her, although they had just met days ago. He was so trusting that he even wanted her to meet the Fragment he had been asked, or more likely ordered, to take care of.
When she was sitting, the Freelancer again smiled warmly which something she already liked about him: that warm and reassuring smile that made him look even more handsome.
She subtly shook her head. Her libido was playing tricks on her mind since she hadn't been with a man for quite some time since joining the army. And since North was appealing to her, her mind went crazy. Seriously, she was no high school girl anymore—get yourself back in check, old girl!
"You ready?" the man asked and Ala only silently nodded her okay, curiously waiting for what would happen next and afraid as if every loud word might scare Theta so much that he wouldn't show himself.
Sure, she didn't expect some kind of otherworldly fireworks to go off when the Fragment appeared, but nonetheless, she had never seen an AI materialize while being together with their human partner or ever, really.
It started off with a slight flicker on North's left shoulder and his smile started to widen ever so slightly.
The flicker started to intensify until Ala could make out a violet shimmering figure, maybe a bit bigger than her hand, hiding behind North's head. It only peeked around the Freelancer's head every now and then to look at the foreign person sitting there and regarding the Fragment with a curious glance and a smile on her lips. It hid immediately when it noticed Ala's eyes on it.
"Hey there, Theta, don't be so shy. She's okay." North turned his head slightly to look at the little Fragment looking insecurely past his head.
"Are you sure?" the Fragment asked nervously, looking over to the unknown woman sitting there.
"Absolutely. She's the one who told you stories and sang songs when you were afraid during the night." North replied patiently.
Alaska took her cue to chime in with a rather embarrassing detail of her own.
"Hey, Theta, my name's Ala. You know," the Fragment looked over to her timidly, "I am afraid of the dark too. I can't sleep without some kind of light being left on."
She felt an awkward smile appear on her lips when she noticed North's eyes widen slightly at that confession. He got himself back in check pretty fast, but the reaction wasn't lost on the black haired woman since they were sitting so close to each other.
"Really?" Curiosity piqued and noticing that she wasn't as big and mean as he had initially thought, Theta came out of his hiding spot a bit more.
Alaska nodded, affirming what she had just said, "Yep," She popped the p at the end of the word for added emphasis, "I feel really scared when it's pitch black. I sometimes prefer staying awake than sleeping somewhere when it is too dark."
"I feel the same! There could be monsters lurking everywhere and I don't see them because it's so dark. North not being able to protect me makes me anxious."
The ice seemed to be broken as the Fragment now fully showed himself and sat down on the man's shoulder.
Ala smiled happily, although her fear of the dark was for other reasons.
Firstly, you are trained to be always on alert to notice an enemy before he can attack and kill you, even in darkness. You get kind of paranoid.
Secondly, most of the gloriously disastrous missions with the Elbon Team went down in the night or somewhere dark. So that paranoia became increased even more, mingling with the childish fear she had never completely gotten over and then turning into anxiety at some point.
"See, we aren't that different. Don't you agree?" she asked, and the Fragment nodded enthusiastically.
"Theta, didn't you want to tell Alaska something?" North chimed in, reminding the little Fragment of why he had initially materialized.
"Oh, right!" he looked a bit sheepish now, kicking one foot back and forth, "I wanted to say thank you for being there and helping me fall asleep." He muttered almost too low for Ala to notice.
A broad and happy smile appeared on the black haired woman's lips, "That's okay, Theta. You're very welcome." She replied with a happy grin and added, "If you ever need someone to help you fall asleep, just come to me if North is okay with you showing yourself without him being awake."
With the last part of the sentence, she looked over to North questioningly.
This drew a little laugh from the man, "He does it anyway most of the time."
"Yeah, in safe places and because it's boring when you sleep and I don't." the AI quipped back immediately.
Ala could see what North meant with the similarities to its 'brothers' and their asshole-character shining through on occasions. The loose mouth might stem from that too.
"Okay then, let's declare this place as safe. All right?" North asked, shortly looking over to Alaska who nodded faintly to give her okay to North's declaration.
"Okay, then I am allowed to show up whenever I want to?" Theta asked, happiness clearly audible and visible in his voice and posture.
"Only if it's us three and South." North explained, with the AI looking to the ground again.
"I don't like South. She's mean." the little AI muttered, Alaska being able to understand that feeling perfectly well.
"She's a good person, just give her some time to get used to you." North replied patiently, no venom or anger in his voice—only parental patience and gentleness.
"I would prefer not showing up when she's here." The Fragment replied.
"You know, she's mostly in her room and I am either staying in the living room or in here. So if you don't feel like wanting to be alone, then come to the living room and wake me up if you don't find me sitting beside the bed, okay?" Ala asked, sensing the insecurity of the little Fragment.
He was so small and so childlike, she felt some strange sense of motherly protectiveness welling up inside her as though she wanted to protect the little guy. It was about the same as with her sister: she felt the same protectiveness in this situation as she did with her.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, her logical understanding told her that this was an instinctual reaction of humans to want to protect their own kind in order for their race to survive.
She made that voice shut up immediately with a well worded answer.
"So I am allowed to show myself when we are here and only South, Ala, North and me are around?"
Both of the adults nodded.
"Yes, exactly." North told him.
"Okay, deal!" Theta clapped his hands in joy, both of the adults smiling at the outburst of the young AI.
Soon after clearing the details of him being able to show up, the young Fragment showed Ala fireworks and skating tricks before North decided that it was time for him to go to bed.
For once, Alaska couldn't feel the restlessness of the presence around North which she knew was Theta by now. She assumed that all of these things happening just before going to bed were enough to make the little guy tired and fall asleep soon after North had laid down himself.