Chapter 8 – Intentionis
January 15th, 2532 - (03:54 Hours - Military Calendar)
Sol System, Earth
Australia, Old South Wales
Topkapi Training Grounds
(20 Years Ago)
:********:
Change is painful. It is not always meant to be but it usually is nonetheless.
Carisa learned that lesson the hard way. Changes to her ocular nerves to increase the message relays between her eyes and her brain were excruciating. Alterations to the cochlear nerves in her ears made her able to hear a pin drop in a noisy room, but left her dizzy for days. The same could be said of the adjustment to her olfactory nerves which gave her an increased sense of smell, though at the cost of not being able to taste anything for well over a week. Consequences like those made her grateful that the class's enhancement regime was broken up into different months rather than all at once. Doing so allowed a smidge of time to heal up, to get used to the changes brought on by the last treatments before the next drastic step in their development.
Most of the enhancements given to the Janissaries were sensory-related. They were the result of intentional change and unintentional pain. Six years into the program and their supervisory board decided it was time to improve the class, those who remained that their training hadn't paralyzed, maimed, killed or worse, disappeared.
Carisa remembered how each time she would be brought into some part of Topkapi that she didn't recognize. She could never recall how she got there or when she left. There would always be a medical table. A multitude of apparatuses would line one side of it and several adults dressed in surgical suits would stand on the other, both waiting for her. The smell of sterilized surfaces was overwhelming. So was the scent of the gas which hissed out of the mask they attached to her face. She would sleep a while then wake back up in her bunk at the Janissary barracks. Those sitting around her there used to tell her that she was gone for days, not hours. There was nothing confusing or weird about it though, not when everyone else was also taken for the same amount of time.
The class knew when to expect it too.
The instructors would purposefully slow down their training tempo, leaving room for Topkapi's medical staff to come and go as they pleased. Those kids they took had little memory of leaving. Those they brought back had no memory of doing so. And yet they would wince if someone touched the new scars that lined their faces here and there. Soon enough everyone would have them.
The on and off disappearances went on for the first half of their sixth year in the program. Before long, everyone had been taken and returned. Without a formal announcement of why or what was done to them, the class relied on personal explanations. The general consensus became clearer once candidates started complaining about the 'loud' conversations of base-personnel several kilometers away. Once they were so overwhelmed by the smell of their own food that they could tell what ingredients were used and how old they were. Once they could make out the names painted on the hulls of frigates flying here and there in the mesosphere.
ONI had altered them. A better word for it came later: augmentation.
With the new changes, they were given an arsenal of new abilities. Training sessions with the instructors of any adversarial kind would turn into one-sided affairs. Simulation match-ups became more drawn out as each Janissary used their senses to their advantage. Within months, however, the sharpness of the changes began to plateau, fall then redirect themselves into a new normal. Their abilities became less of a torturous burden and turned into something more manageable. Ears that could rival a bat's, noses that could match a bloodhound and eyes that could compete with an owl's; the instructors knew how to use them all.
While their augmentations were an intentional change and unintentionally painful, they could also be used for intended change and intentional pain. Carisa's greatest fear taught her that, and what she learned was that pain always had more to teach.
Her improved hearing could be used against her if a loud enough stereo blasted animal noises into her ears for hours, without any sign that her torturers planned to stop. Her ability to smell could be her downfall if she was forced to inhale obscene odors without ever being allowed to see their source. Bright lights and the inability to look away as she was deprived of her third day of sleep could make her eyesight her worst enemy.
Moreover, it made her overly sensitive to when she was blindfolded, dragged into a room and restrained in a chair. The true discomfort began with the towel that was wrapped around her face as her whole body was tilted back. Then the water would begin to pour.
She wanted to scream. She couldn't. To scream would mean losing the remaining air she had left. Once that was gone, she would start to panic and the enemy would win. So she suffered through it, trying to make as little sound as possible while she spat out what she could. She tried selling it to herself as another form of augmentation; the toughening of her mind and will.
It didn't work.
Twenty seconds in and she was gagging. Her lungs were squeezing out the last gasps of oxygen they had left. She tried making noises, moving her hands that were bound behind her back, shaking her head, anything that would make them stop. Nothing happened. She tried screaming and found she didn't have enough air to do that either. She tried shaking her body. The water kept pouring. The shaking quickly left her control. Her mind darkened as the convulsions took over her like a seizure, doing no good against the restraints on her arms and legs.
"Lift her up."
The voice, deep and eerie, called her back from the void.
The water stopped pouring.
Her chair was lifted back into place. Someone removed the towel from her face and she coughed hard, nearly throwing up the water that was forced down her throat. She swallowed down the cool air until the last of the liquid drained out of her nose. Lightheaded, she struggled to perceive what was going on.
There was movement around her. From the handful of shuffling steps, she discerned the presence of at least several other persons in her immediate vicinity. One of them walked up to her.
Fingers slipped into her blindfold and the fabric was pulled away. Light shot freely and painfully into her eyes.
They slowly adjusted to the hazy image of a room with walls she could barely see. A dozen figures stood in front of her. Looking closer, she saw that it was really half that number. Most of those she mistook for figures were actually floodlights mounted on tripods. Five silhouettes stood out to her. She spotted the outlines of holstered pistols and rifles slung over their shoulders. She could see one of them best, the closest, the leader judging by his authoritative stance. The tactical gear he wore as well as the ski mask wrapped around his face were accentuated by a pair of shades that reflected the floodlights.
He stopped just out of arm's reach. A voice, his, came out with an electronic baseness. "Are you ready to talk yet?" He raised his hand and showed the wet towel in his grasp. "Or would you like to continue?"
She stared at the towel and shook her head.
"Then I take it you're ready."
Another of her captors stepped forward. They were dressed relatively the same and carried a large bucket of water. They set it down between her and their leader. As they backed off, he crouched down next to it and ran his hands through the water.
"You see this? There's a lot more we can do with this than just drown you. Remember that."
He stood up and leaned towards her. "Now answer me. Are you an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence?"
Carisa shook her head.
"Are you a security asset, soldier or member of the United Nations Space Command?"
She shook again.
"No?" The leader crouched back down to the bucket and splashed water into her face. "If that's your answer, you can use your mouth. You're not gagged. Just come out and say it."
"No."
"Well, what are you then?"
"I'm a grocer. I work at a storefront stacking cans for a living. That's all."
"And you're sticking with that story?"
She nodded.
"Hmm." He dipped his hand into the bucket. "So, how long have you been surveilling us from your storefront, Ms. Grocer?"
Carisa frowned. "You guys are assuming that I am what I'm obviously not. What am I supposed to tell you?"
He began to stir the water around. "What I want to hear."
"Figured. And what do you want to hear then?"
"The answer to my question." He looked up at her. "How long have you been surveilling our activities here?"
"For as long as you've been accusing me of it."
"You're real funny, aren't you?"
"Well, if you think I am then I must be."
The leader nodded back to one of his men and they walked off past the floodlights, beyond her sight.
"How's your family? Do you know where they are right now?"
"Right where I left them, back home."
"Why do you sound so confident about that? Who are you trying to convince here, me or you?"
She shrugged. "Whoever's listening."
The leader unholstered his pistol and tapped its barrel thoughtfully against his temple. "You know, I'd doubt that somewhat."
"Why's that?"
"Because if you're thinking that the insertion team you came in with are family, then maybe you've got the right people but the wrong location."
Carisa hid her concern at that last part. "Like I told you, I'm not with ONI. I don't even like the UNSC. So why would I help them do whatever it is you say I did?"
"You know, I don't like when people lie to me." He holstered his pistol, picked up the bucket and walked around her, taking one lazy step after another. "I don't even like it when I lie to myself. But I notice I tend to do that whenever I'm under stress. You might be the same way. Relax a little. Do that and maybe you'll sound more convincing than you are right now."
He splashed some water on her, matting her hair against her cheek. Feeling it on her skin made her realize how cold it really was. She shut her eyes against the icy feeling gnawing at her face. "I'm not with ONI. I'm just a regular person. That's all."
He splashed her again. "You're sure about that?"
"I'm sure."
He splashed her a third time. "Positive?"
"Yes."
He splashed her a fourth time. "How positive?"
"What?"
A fifth time. "You're absolutely sold on that?"
"Ye-"
The sixth spray went down her windpipe and she coughed it back up. The exhaustion tugged at her eyes, gravity pulled at her and she felt herself slumping over.
Another bitter cold splash down her spine made her shoot upright in her chair. Two fingers touched her eyelids and pried them open. The leader stared down at her. "You're two things right now: tired and a bad liar. Give up on being one and I'll let you have relief for the other. What's your name, who do you work for?"
"Merissa, and I work for a grocery store."
The leader pulled out the towel and began wrapping it around her head again. Desperate, she mumbled an answer through the cloth and he pulled it away.
"Your real name." He warned. "The real people you work for."
She moved her mouth as if to speak then shut it again. She smirked. "I already told you what I know, so just give me the towel already."
He stared at her for a while before throwing the towel aside. "No." He turned to the subordinate that came jogging back. "Is she still conscious?"
They gave him the thumbs up. "She's good to go, boss."
He looked at Carisa and cocked his head. "Where'd you say your family was again? Back home?"
The floodlights dimmed as a new, brighter source of light activated in a part of the room directly ahead of her. Carisa narrowed her eyes to see.
Beyond the rest of her captors there was a glass wall. There was a room on the other side of it that looked identical to the one she was in; mostly dark and featureless. However, there was another set of floodlights arranged in a similar fashion. These had their lights focused on a single chair on which sat a restrained woman.
Carisa's eyes went wide the moment she recognized her.
She had gone three whole days without seeing her, and it was almost sufficient to make Giana appear like a completely different person. Her hair was ragged, eyes bloodshot, face made into a grim mask that glistened with water. More captors were standing around her. Carisa spotted a bucket by her chair and made the obvious connection.
Through the glass, their eyes met and Carisa saw in her gaze a weary defiance.
The leader stepped between them. "Do you know why she's here?"
Carisa shook her head.
He approached the glass wall and spoke into a comm-device, sending his voice across the PA systems of the two rooms. "Do you know why she's here?"
Giana likewise gestured 'no'.
"You're here because you two are working together. You say you're family, and I'm honestly tempted to believe that. ONI's got a lot of freakshow scenarios under their belt like that."
"We're not ONI." Carisa exhaled.
The leader held up a hand. "Not from you." He pointed to Giana. "You're the one I want to hear from right now. How about it, friend?"
Giana said nothing.
"She hasn't broken yet, right?"
"She might as well have a padlock on her mouth." A captor on the other side said. "Pretty sure she's at the end of her rope though."
"Hmph. Then let's see if it's still long enough to hang her with." The leader snapped his fingers.
The crew on the other side moved for Giana. She instinctively pulled away as they wrapped a damp towel around her face, making sure to cover her mouth and nose. She was tilted back. The bucket was brought up and its watery contents poured onto her. Unlike Carisa, for Giana they poured it intermittently, stopping then and there to let her gag. At first, she couldn't see why they were giving her so much room for relief. Then she saw through it.
They were taking advantage of her endurance and turning the relief itself into the source of her torture. Carisa saw how they timed their efforts, stopping to let her gag and take a breath before repeating the cycle over and over again. The whole point was probably to convince her that it would never end. A minute dragged past in the same manner, then two.
"Hey grocer," The leader said. "Your field partner is dry drowning over there. Don't you care about her?"
Carisa said nothing.
Giana's torturers gradually switched their tactic. The aim was still to wear her down, only they started focusing on pouring water at the moment that she tried to breathe. They waited for her chest to rise even slightly then struck, making her breaths increasingly shallow as she tried to compensate.
"She won't have enough air soon." The leader turned to Carisa. "You can end this. Just admit why you're here and we'll stop."
Silence.
"You really don't care, do you?"
Carisa kept her mouth shut. The turmoil she fought to keep hidden inside suddenly betrayed her and she felt tears burning behind her eyes, ready to give way. She bit down on her lip in an attempt to hold them back.
Perhaps perceiving it, the leader leaned over to see. She refused to give him the time of day and averted her gaze from his.
"Wow." He laughed. "You really are ONI, aren't you? Only people like that can be this heartless."
Carisa looked and saw Giana was beginning to struggle. She pulled against her restraints, shot her head to one side then the other to keep away from the water.
The leader turned to the opposite room. "Hold her head down, don't let her move too much."
Giana's captors grabbed her head and held it in place. This time the bucket was lifted over her, tilted and kept there for the water to pour continuously.
"You'd rather watch her die than give away your secrets?"
Through the glass, Carisa heard pained gasps for air. She bit her lip so hard that it bled.
"That's pretty sad."
The gasps grew louder.
"You're a pretty sad person, Ms. ONI. I wonder what they did to you to make you like this."
The gasps devolved into ragged coughs and groans.
"Or were you always this way? Maybe the Office just knows how to pick'em?"
Giana bucked in her chair.
"Am I right? Am I wrong? Say something."
By the time the blood drained down her chin, Carisa saw Giana in a full panic. All several of her captors were pushing against her just to keep her still in her chair. She kicked at the floor, writhed in her seat and gave a gargled shriek.
Carisa felt something snap inside. Her lips, cracked, flew open. "STOP!"
Despite his mask, she sensed a satisfied smile from the leader. "You heard her guys, give our guest some breathing room."
The crew in the other room set Giana's chair upright. They ripped the towel off her face, triggering a waterfall that spewed out of her mouth. Through fits of heaving coughs, she sucked in the air with a voracious intent, stopping only to bring up more water. Random convulsions shook her frame and she looked ready to vomit. As her breathing calmed, she tried to sit up. Her exhaustion wouldn't let her. Since her restraints kept her from tumbling to the floor, she sat hunched over while the last of her torture drained from her nostrils.
Giana's image grew hazier as Carisa's eyes glazed over.
The leader returned to her, hands on hips. "See, we stopped. So, what do you want to tell us?"
Carisa blinked away her tears. Her chest felt heavy and her lungs constrained. She wanted to talk. She needed to for both their sakes.
She moved to speak when Giana sat upright. Having overheard them, she stared past the veil of soaked hair hanging in front of her face, straight at Carisa.
The defiance was still there.
Carisa felt her chest lighten. "We-, we're...just grocers."
The rooms returned to their eerie stillness. Carisa saw the faint traces of a grin on Giana. She looked up to the leader and realized he was staring at her with hand to chin, thinking, his eye twitching behind his shades. He nodded to himself, having some final decision.
"Okay, how about a game of chicken?"
He rounded on the captors in the same room. "Get the bat'."
Two of them sprang into action. Both disappeared into the dark then reappeared, one carrying another bucket of water, the other carrying a portable car battery and a pair of jumper cables.
The first came over and rested down the bucket. He lifted her feet to push the bucket in place then pressed them down into the water.
Carisa swallowed. "Wha-, what're you-"
"Here's the rules." The leader said. "Both you and your partner there are allowed to confess."
The guy with the car battery attached the cables to the device's terminals.
"If even one of you fesses up, you both win and all of this stops. If neither of you do, well,"
The battery was switched on and a muted buzz emanated from the cable clips.
"I win."
The battery was turned back off. Carisa shook herself to try to stop them as they attached the clips to her big toes. She winced at the tight clamps but gawked at the realization of what was about to happen. In the opposite room, Giana looked equally afraid.
One of the captors kept a finger on the battery switch while their leader stepped closer to her. "Anything to say?"
She glared at him.
"No?" He looked over to Giana. "How about you?"
Giana stared back with a murderous intensity.
"You too? Gee." He waved off the guy at the battery and crouched down next to it. His finger hovered over the activation switch. "Whenever you feel like it."
No one said anything. He brought up his wrist and checked his watch. "Actually, scratch that, whenever I feel like it. Listen, I'll give you 15 seconds. After that, I'll give your body a second brain. Think fast before you can't think at all."
Carisa gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to lash out at him. Not that it would have done her any good.
"You've got 10 seconds."
Her anger ebbed.
"9...8..."
Fear unclouded the haziness of being waterboarded, allowing her to think clearly on her own demise. "You-, you wouldn't-"
"7...6..."
A rising heat in her chest cut her breaths short. She glanced at Carisa and found a look of growing horror aimed back at her. A burst of adrenaline surged through her veins. She pulled at her restraints but they refused to yield.
"Hold-, hold on a sec, I-"
"5...4..."
"Wait. Wait!"
"...3-"
"CARISA!"
The counting stopped. It became so deathly quiet that Carisa could hear nothing but her own name echoing off the walls. She shut her eyes tight, not daring to look at Giana.
"My name's Carisa Falton. Her name's Giana Falton. We're both operatives for the Office of Naval Intelligence. We were tasked with tracking the movements of your group. We've been watching you for the past six months." She sighed out the last part with resignation.
When no immediate reply came, she risked opening her eyes again.
Her captors were still watching her as were those in the other room.
Giana was even more pale.
The agony of the past three days faded in light of the newfound shame boiling in Carisa's gut. She knew she'd just failed them both.
The leader stared up at her, unreadable. "1." He pressed the switch.
An explosion of sensations bolted through Carisa's body and she screamed...then stopped. The feeling of thousands of little ants crawling over her feet and up her legs was nowhere near as painful as she expected. It was no better than a mild buzz, a minor annoyance. In fact, with the way the water in the bucket bubbled through her toes, she would have thought it no better than a hydrotherapy massager.
The leader sat down on the floor and leaned back on his elbows to size her up. He pulled off his mask and threw it away, revealing the unamused face of 1-Actual.
Taking off his shades, Dimitri's silvery eyes watched her with a single, palpable emotion: disappointment. He didn't say a word. Instead, he peered up and off to the right side of the room.
A new light source appeared there, activating so suddenly that the observation room from which it shone seemed to materialize into being on the upper floor. Two figures stared out through the viewing window. Though two different men, they were equally mixed reflections of approval and disapproval.
Carisa quickly picked up on who had earned the disapproval by the way Head Drill Instructor Mahmud and Drill Instructor White focused on her.
Mahmud's voice came over the PA. "Well done, Team 1. That's another pair you've successfully cracked today. I'd say you're almost too good at this, but in reality, there's no such thing." He turned to Carisa and Giana. "Team 4; Recruit-151 and 108, you've failed the last interrogation phase of your SERE training. I'm afraid you'll have to be held back with the rest of the class that failed until you pass. Expect to be here again soon. This simulation is now over."
In response to his words, more light activated throughout the two rooms. Carisa could finally see that she was inside of a two-story high chamber with walls made of a light-absorbent metal. She took note of the exit and immediately wanted to leave, to escape the scenario, to hurl herself under her bunk, curl into a ball and cry herself to sleep.
Dimitri showed no interest in letting her go as yet. He continued to scrutinize her. At length, he sat up and switched off the car battery with a long sigh. "You know, what disappoints me isn't that you talked, it's when you talked. You didn't squawk when we had Giana on the edge but you did when it was your turn again." He stood up. "I don't know if I'm right about this, but it seems to me like you were more worried about yourself than her."
He strode over with one of his guys and began to remove her restraints.
"Not that that's a bad thing. In reality, I guess that could work out to your advantage. A little word of advice though, always let the other person break first. If they never do, you win. If they do, you still lose but at least you don't get the blame for it."
Removing the restraints from her arms, he caught her scowling at him and stopped. He smiled at her and put a finger to his lips. "'Loose lips sink ships', it's an old war saying but it still holds up to today's standards. Just remember that and you'll be fine."
He patted her shoulder and worked on freeing her legs. As he did, her attention shifted to the opposite room. They were already removing the last restraints from Giana. She wasn't conscious anymore.
"Hospitality Crew-1", Dimitri comm'd. "Brace yourselves, we're carrying these guys over to the med."
The members of his team, half of Team 1 she surmised, expressed their own reluctance with groans and pretend sobs.
"Come on, we don't got to do that."
"Yeah, let personnel handle it."
"We can call in a gurney or a wheelchair. They can get it done."
Dimitri fixed them all with a look that silenced their dissent. "We're carrying them. That's an order." He turned to Carisa. "You two are the first we've actually had to pull out the car battery for. Needless to say, I feel kinda bad that we had to push you that far. So, how about I make it up to you two?"
Carisa never replied. The days' worth of exhaustion caught up to her and she no longer had the strength to keep her eyes open.
She heard the others communicate, negotiate and finally agree to follow Dimitri's orders. Someone picked her up and hoisted her over their shoulder. Once they started walking, she peeked around for Giana. Within the lineup of Team-1, whoever was carrying her to the door was at the front. She eyed Dimitri in the rear. He was carrying an unconscious Giana in his arms. Looking further up to the observation room, she locked eyes with the last person standing behind the window.
White was still watching. Regardless of distance or consciousness, she was well within range of his disappointment. She shut her eyes again and let herself drift off.
:********:
Carisa made a mental note to keep her chin up, feet parted and hands to her side. She looked straight ahead, managing to appear focused without ever meeting the unsympathetic eyes staring back at her. There was a dozen of them belonging to men and women of Topkapi's instructor personnel. None of them looked particularly happy to see her here. Not even White seemed happy who she glimpsed sitting off to the right side of the crescent table that occupied the conference room. Carisa herself wasn't happy to be here either, nor was any other member of her class in the past.
No one ever enjoyed a trip to the academic review board. It was what she expected of a full-on tribunal or courts-martial and her actions up to that point had earned her a spot in their crosshairs.
They scrutinized her for a second or two before the man sitting at the middle of the table, Head Drill Instructor Mahmud, cleared his throat.
"Do you know why you're here, 108?"
Carisa nodded.
"Let's compare notes then. I'd like to hear your take on things, why you think we asked you to be in this room."
"My performance, sir." She swallowed. "It's been lacking."
Mahmud reached under the table and pressed something. A series of projector nodes whined across the table's surface, each emitting the ghostly image of a screen for each of the instructors. Reports and background filings strobed past in a continuous stream of information. Carisa knew many of those same reports were probably written by the same instructors that now began reading them.
Mahmud toggled his screen and stopped at a cluster of several reports, always keeping an eye on her. "Lacking in what way?"
"My performance?"
"Yes, your performance in the program. In what way is it lacking?"
The first thing she thought to say was 'You already know so why ask me'. She squelched the idea, not wanting to dig her grave any deeper.
"My abilities in certain phases of the training haven't been exemplary."
"In what way?"
"My SERE results weren't the best. Neither in the CMC, HTPS, DA or SE training."
Mahmud pushed his screen aside with a wave of his hand. "Here's an important lesson for you, 108. It'll help you substantially. In the intelligence community, our world is made up of two things: specificities and definitives. We want to know something specific and we want the certainty that what we know is in fact accurate. Those two can't be separated operationally without risking the lives of others. So far, you've given me definitives. Now I want the specifics."
Carisa felt her mouth drying out as she called her best examples of those 'specifics' to mind. "I failed to pass the last component of SERE because I panicked and gave in to the interrogating team. In CMC, I failed to complete the heart-lung bypass on the simulated casualty in time. HTPS; our informant was taken out by an enemy sniper prior to our arrival at the exfiltration point. The DA raid on the hostile compound led to a friendly fire incident and with SE, I suffered technical issues with my intrusion software that stopped me from extricating the full database of the designated server."
"You're cherry-picking."
The attention shifted to the instructor sitting at the left end of the table. The pronounced Germanic features of Instructor Lutgens, from his wide forehead that wrinkled with suspicion to his sharp chin almost pointed at her, were good indicators of his displeasure. Then again, for the instructor that oversaw most of Class IV's conflict-oriented training, Carisa could hardly think of a time when the old salt wasn't scowling at someone.
"Sir?"
"I know and you know that there's more to those stories than you're telling, and even more stories than just those." Lutgens said. He drew his personal screen closer and flicked through it until he stopped at a report, likely one of his own. "For that High Threat Protective Security session, you failed to mention that the informant was shot by a Team 1 sniper posted in a tree. A tree within an area that, according to the after-action report, was given to your Squad 4 to secure."
"We did secure it, sir." Carisa murmured.
"Yes, right before you maneuvered Squad 4 out of the area prior to receiving the all-clear from 4-Actual. You presumed the enemy wouldn't reappear in an area you had searched beforehand."
"The time gap between my maneuver and the sniper's appearance was minimal, 30 seconds. Not enough time to setup a position 20 meters overhead."
Lutgens shot her a glare that made her back down. She pried her gaze from his own. "Or so I thought."
"So you thought." Lutgens repeated. "Apparently, that sniper thought otherwise. One of you ended up being right, and that person's obviously not the one currently standing in front of us."
He turned to Mahmud. "Should I go on, sir?"
"You have the right of way, instructor. Floor it."
"Copy."
Lutgens switched to another report. "In the Direct Assault training, you didn't say how that 'friendly fire' incident was committed by you on the leader of Squad 3, ironically three seconds after you saw and recognized him as a friendly. It's logged as an accident but it sounds more like self-sabotage now that I'm revisiting it."
"My weapon let off an accidental discharge, an equipment malfunction."
Lutgens held up a finger. "One: why were you aiming your rifle at a teammate during hall clearance when I already taught you standard weapon etiquette for those specific situations?" He raised a second finger. "Two: you said the trigger was partly jammed at the start of the operation and only loosened after you, quote, 'slightly squeezed it'...while aiming at 239's back. That represents both a lack of trigger discipline on your part as well as not making sure your gear was squared away prior to the operation. A negligent discharge, not an accidental one, led to the first casualty. As I said; self-sabotage."
Carisa bit her lip and stayed quiet, realizing how she was digging her own grave despite her own reminder not to. She had much to say and little ways to say it.
Lutgens relaxed into his seat. "Not to mention the other ways you've let down your squad across the length of the time I've had to teach you. Your decline's become more pronounced in the last year. Sure, you had a lot of moments where you shined. However, the degree of those successes, in my eyes, does not reach Janissary standards. If you wanted to grow soft like this then we could have transferred you into the ODST pipeline instead. You'd probably have turned out as a model recruit in that 'sphere. Not here. Here, you're starting to turn into dead weight for the rest of your squad, your team and your class. With that, I end my turn."
Carisa stood firm. It was open-season on her reputation and she remained watchful for who would take up the hunt next.
Instructor Patstone leaned into the conversation. He was a tan man that always looked like he spent a lot of time sunbathing. He was armed with a thick chevron moustache above his lips and even thicker eyebrows perched over his searching eyes. He analyzed a lengthy report on his screen. For the instructor that primarily oversaw the class's medical training, Carisa expected his review to be the most surgical.
"I noted in one of your Combat Medical Course lessons, the one you talked about earlier, that your portable CPB pump was not utilized efficiently. The goal that day was to provide an emergency cardiopulmonary bypass for a ballistic gel torso simulating a wounded comrade. Then they could be stabilized and carried off for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, at least that was the scenario. Your partner, 185, managed to play his part. It seemed to me that you didn't know yours as well as you should have. You took longer to hook up the CPB pump and forgot a few of the procedures along the way, causing you to lose time. Have you not been keeping up with your CMS studies, among others?"
Carisa moved to shake her head, stopped halfway once she remembered there was no real way to lie to them, and nodded.
"Any reason why specifically?"
"Yessir, mainly with balancing and prioritizing. We don't get very much time to keep up."
"I see. The only issue I could take with that is that everyone else also gets the same amount of time. However, everyone else isn't lagging behind in their practice to the same extent. Perhaps there's another reason?"
Carisa was aware of it, had been for years, had kept it in the back of her mind for nearly a decade. "No, sir. Not that I can think of."
"I can think of a few."
Everyone's eyes turned to the man sitting to the right of Mahmud, Drill Instructor White. The white in his hair had grown more prominent over the years, to the point that one in every two strands had changed pigment. Regardless, his overall face remained unchanged by time and unphased by her lie. Being one of those instructors personally in charge of a Janissary Team, he possessed a greater familiarity with Team 4 than anyone else in the room. For that reason, the acute intuitiveness in his glare frightened her.
White pulled up his screen which was pre-set with an opened document. Unlike before, the lines of translucent text were intimidating in their brevity.
"This is an individual evaluation I filed for psych branch's annual candidate assessments. In it, I noted the gradual change in 108's behavior that I observed over the past year." He scanned through it. "When placed in a position of leadership, 108 has demonstrated impressive qualities in her communication as well as cooperation with her squad. Nevertheless, she also demonstrates an overreliance on guidance from her Team leader, 151. Though this isn't as obvious in Team-sized operations, it becomes fairly visible in the squad-sized exercises that cut her off from 151's influence. In these settings her overall tacticity tends to take a hit, leaving her vastly unprepared for and less decisive during critical moments and increasing her failure rate by a noticeable margin. The same can be said of individual training sessions. These see her willingness to learn and adapt fall well below average. By comparing her individual and squad performances with what she displays in the teams, it becomes clear of the root cause."
White dragged the screen aside. "Recruit-108's close connection with 151 and her overreliance on 151's leadership causes her to fall short of our necessary standards. Three solutions are available for the remediation of this problem. Immediate intervention on the part of the review board to encourage her to adapt to her responsibilities, to relieve her of her position," He stopped to look her straight in the eye. "Or to discharge her from the program entirely."
Carisa felt her breath hitch in her throat. She had expected them to call her in and give her a slap on the wrist, not the whole boot. She especially hadn't expected it to come from White of all people. The one person who worked the closest with her for years was juggling around the idea of kicking her out.
Mahmud crossed his arms over his chest and considered it. "This isn't your first time standing in front of this review board, is it, 108?"
"...No, sir."
"Then I guess encouragement wouldn't work. We've encouraged you plenty already. How about a replacement of leadership?"
"To teach her a lesson, sir?" Lutgens asked.
"I wouldn't recommend it." White said. "If you look at the assessments I made of the rest of Squad 4, you'll see that they would still defer to her as leader despite whoever actually holds the position. And she typically defers to them when deprived of 151's presence. It's a vicious cycle of indecisiveness."
"How about transferring her to a different squad within the team or to a different team altogether?" Patstone asked. "Wouldn't that cancel out the negative feedback loop?"
White shook his head. "Afraid not. You see, 108's become so attached to 151 that placing her in another squad wouldn't change things. What's more, reassigning her to another team would only worsen the problem. Those two are joined together at the hip. Wherever one is, the other isn't far behind. The same can be said of other Janissaries in their respective teams but to a less detrimental extent. They're a tightknit unit and they've been so for years. To suddenly change that up would certainly damage the efficiency of the transferred party." He sat up straighter. "Which is why I suggest we performance-drop 108 from the Janissary Program completely."
A shock of fear and confusion coursed through Carisa, from head to toe. She knew the stories. Everyone in the class did. The list of Janissary candidates who were pulled from the program over the years was small, far smaller than those who the training had injured or killed outright. She could think of a few familiar numbers in place of the names she never learned: 023, 157 and 161 among others. Performance drops like theirs were rare, but when they happened, the ejected would simply disappear. There would be no notification to the dropout or any update to those who knew them. To vanish without a trace left a great deal of room for imagination. From meeting a firing squad and being left for dead in the vast wilderness of the Australian outback to being transferred to an even more unsavory program, one thing was always clear: dropouts would never leave ONI. They knew too much and too much had been done to them to be thrown back into normal society.
Either they were recycled to some other purpose or their existence was written off the Office's roster in totality. Carisa accepted that she could be erased. She already was. Yet to have the last few etchings of her life rubbed out by a review board made her feel queasy. No one knew she was here, she realized. As far as the outside world was aware, Carisa Falton was some orphaned child who years ago the violent streets of Noctus had decided to swallow up. She never had to think about it before.
No mother.
No father.
No home to go back to because anyone left there, if they weren't dead themselves, probably thought she was. Worse, the review board had the power to make it official.
"Before we decide on any final actions," Mahmud said, breaking the silence. "I'd like to hear from 108 on what kind of response she believes her actions deserve."
The instructors turned her way. Carisa thought through a reply, threw it aside, tried again and failed to find anything convincing. Several attempts later she settled on one she hoped would work.
"Thank you for requesting my opinion, sir. Personally, I believe my actions up until this point are worthy of the full scrutiny they're receiving now. I admit I have not lived up to the expectations and standards of the program as I should have. I take full responsibility for those failures. For that, I believe whatever the review board decides is ultimately the right course of action."
"That's not a very solid answer, 108." Mahmud replied. "I feel like you're evading my question." He leaned forward; brow arched. "Are you evading my question?"
"...Yessir, I am."
After a long pause, he cracked a smile. "Good. Evasiveness during the providing of information is a useful skill. Especially when providing it to a superior officer. Especially if that officer is not in-line with the 'proper' priorities that we've trained you to hold dear." He glanced at White. "That means we might still have some use for you here."
White looked away and Mahmud returned to Carisa. "The reason I asked you that is because I'm not sure what I want to do with you. You're not settled on anything either, it seems." He looked around to the others. "Removing 108 this late into the program would be extremely costly. The closer to graduation she gets, the more we have invested, the greater the loss if we drop her. I'd rather prefer to give second, third and fourth chances this deep into the training regime. Because of that, I want to ask one more question."
Carisa braced herself.
"Though we don't allow it, if the offer was made for you to quit on your own, 108, would you take it?"
It was a question she was just as unprepared for as the other instructors. They gave Mahmud the same surprised look that she did.
"Well?" He asked. "What's your answer?"
There was an answer in waiting that she never expected to give. Having sat in the back of her mind for so long, it leapt forward. She caught it at the last second. A new sensation, a burning in her throat made her suck in a deep breath before whispering out a reply.
"What was that?"
"I-, I said I don't know if I would or not, sir."
"You...don't know?"
"No, sir. I don't."
"Hmph. That wasn't very affirming in the positive or negative. It's just neutral." Mahmud sat back and pondered it. "And that might be your main problem. You're too neutral about your training. That's not very uncommon. We see this from time to time. We also see cases of very motivated candidates that soar through their phases of training. I'm sure you can think of a few."
In her mind's eye, Carisa saw the faces of Team 1. Dimitri's stuck out to her the most. "Yessir, I can."
"Then you should take some time to learn from them, see what makes them push as hard as they do. What you're lacking is the proper drive to improve. If you don't have that, the only thing we're doing for you here is making you a stronger, faster and smarter quitter. The desire to succeed is central, 108. Discipline can only sharpen it, not take its place. You've been disciplined for years so your latest failings can't be accounted for with that factor alone. Once you find your reason why, I honestly believe we won't have to see you in this setting again. What do you have to say to that?"
"I-, I can try, sir."
"You can try?"
Carisa stood firm. "I will do it, sir."
"I like that confidence, 108. Keep it up and you just might make it." Mahmud turned to the instructors. "I say we give her another shot, see what she does with it. That's my verdict. What's yours?"
There was a round of agreement from most of the instructors, nods and comments of approval.
"Seems feasible." Patstone added. "I think she has what it takes. Like you said, it'd be a shame to see her walk away on what she's accomplished at Topkapi."
There was also a round of disagreement from the minority of the instructors. Among them, Lutgens stood out. "And what'll we do if she does end up in front of this board again? What will be her penalty then?"
Mahmud rubbed his chin. "Well, then she'll really be in for it. Consider this your last warning, 108. Excel or be expelled. Your choice."
"Y-, ye-, yessir." Carisa stammered.
Mahmud turned to the last instructor in the room who had yet to answer. "White?"
White inspected her from his seat. He appeared to be calculating something. After a while, he shrugged. "If the majority opinion is to give her a second chance, I'll agree to it. I guess it falls to me now to make sure she follows through."
"That it does." Mahmud said and nodded to Carisa. "Looks like you'll get your chance to stay, recruit. Don't waste it."
"Yessir. Thank you."
"Thank us with success, 108, not words. Its settled. We'll keep you around for a while longer. Keep that in mind as you go. You're dismissed."
Carisa saluted, pivoted towards the exit and walked out. She felt their eyes still on her even as the doors slid shut. But her own were quickly fixed to the sight of the other person in front of her.
Within the waiting corridor, sitting in the row of chairs against the opposite wall, was Giana. She was as much taken aback to see her coming out as Carisa was to find her waiting there. Carisa quickly walked over.
"Hey, what's going on? They called you here too?"
"They sure did." Giana replied. "But I didn't think they brought you too." She peered past her to the doors. "Can I ask what for?"
Carisa peeked at the security cameras in the corners of the ceiling.
"Don't worry." Giana said. "They're just as likely to ask you the same things as they will to me. I figure we were brought here for the same reason."
"...They called me in to review my performance." Carisa hesitated. "...So they could decide whether they wanted to remove me from Team 4 or from the program completely."
She watched the color drain out of Giana's face. She stood up, utterly rigid.
"Why would they-, what'd you even do?"
"My mistakes during the different phases, I guess they didn't go as unnoticed as we thought. They told me I'm barely reaching the standards they're looking for. One of them even tried real hard to give me the axe."
"Which one?"
"White, believe it or not."
"White? Wh-, why? Why would he-"
"I don't know. But he sure tried. I didn't even know he said all those things about me in his assessment." Carisa paused to make sure the doors were still closed. "God only knows what he said about you."
Giana exhaled. "Yeah, he'd probably have more to say about me than you. You have your squad, but I have responsibility for the whole team." She smiled painfully. "That means I'm done for, doesn't it?"
Carisa didn't know what to say. She chose to act instead and wrapped her arms around Giana.
A bit surprised, Giana returned the embrace and they held each other tight.
"Mahmud gave me a second chance." Carisa whispered. "Maybe he'll give you one too."
A wave of relief washed over Giana's demeanor. She was about to speak when the doors opened behind them. There on the other side was the review board, all of its members sitting unphased at the spectacle. White was standing at the threshold. He nodded to Giana and she let Carisa go.
"Let's hope so." Giana whispered back and left her. Carisa stayed to watch her approach the table. For a heartbeat, she was tempted to go back in and defend her before the board, to vouch for her efficiency as 4-Actual. She would have done it too if it weren't for White's presence. Her uncertainty about him kept her feet pinned in place and the doors slid shut.
:********:
Carisa got close to three hours to think about what she would need to make of her life. Three hours to meditate on what the instructors told her and to consider how she could improve, at least to the extent that she could get out of the review board's crosshairs. But right as she began believing she was safely out of range, she found herself back in harm's way.
The door to the Janissary barracks opened and the last person she wanted to see stepped inside. The other candidates in the neighboring bunks stopped what they were doing and stood at attention as he passed. Instructor White paid them no mind. He went straight to Carisa's bunk and stopped in front of her as she stood to salute.
"At ease."
Carisa looked around, not appreciating the curious glances from the others. "Do you need me for something, sir?"
"I do. Follow me."
That was all. White turned and headed back to the door. Carisa, stumped, knew better than to wait for an explanation. She followed him out onto the streets of Topkapi. They reached an intersection busy with evening traffic, Warthogs and personal transports that she and the rest of Class IV were soon to learn how to pilot. The upcoming TODC, Tactical Operators Driving Course, was bound to be a whole other kind of beast. As the traffic filtered past, she tracked a three-Warthog strong convoy driving west down the highway. Likely a new perimeter patrol shift, they were headed for Topkapi's western gate, the same one she remembered coming through on that first day. The convoy slipped out of the gate and disappeared into the outback. Further in the distance, past the rocky plateaus, the fiery eye of Sol was preparing to blink below the landscape.
A flicker of jealousy made her conscious of how close the gate really was: a 200-meter sprint. Their morning jogs taught her how to cover that kind of distance in under 20 seconds.
She could probably scale the gate too, a 5-meter climb, if it weren't electrified. She would not know whether it was activated or not until her fingers made contact. Even then, she doubted a little shock treatment would stop her at that point.
A walking signal switched on and the two of them continued over the zebra crossing. Several steps later and they were entering the doors of the lowest floor of one of Topkapi's larger structures. The drill instructors' office building was nowhere near as imposing outside as it was inside. The interior was a nest of sanitized corridors lined with doors that each led to a personalized hell. Each came with a devil that spent the last seven years posing as one of Class IV's instructors. They were used to getting an earful and them some throughout the normal day, but a Janissary ordered to see an instructor in his office was like a trip to the lion's den. Disciplinary sessions were almost always the end result. Even now, she could hear a few loud bellows aimed at Janissaries inside, laying out one eloquent explanation after the next as to why they should never have been born. She overheard a couple of threats about getting sent to the review board if they didn't 'get their act together'. The board was where anyone ended up if a simple one-on-one wasn't good enough, as was the case for her and Giana. She looked to White and wondered if he brought her here to talk things out the same way.
White led her to the elevator on the far side of the building and took her up to the 12th floor. They walked down another corridor to the door of his office. Their proximity activated the door sensor and it opened for them. As White stepped inside, Carisa stopped short.
They were not alone.
Four seats were set before the instructor's desk. Of these, three were already filled. All three of the occupants looked back at her with a greater level of confusion than she had for them. As if they were bewildered well before she got there, with her arrival only making things more unsettling.
In the left seat was the ruddy, freckled and red-headed 185. In the right was his identical twin, 186, and sitting in the middle of them was Giana.
White sat down in his chair and beckoned Carisa inside. She took a few tentative steps, prompting the door to slide shut behind her. The sound of the metallic clamps locking into place unnerved her. No one said a word while she sat down in the last chair. Once she was settled, all eyes turned to the instructor who was in no hurry to face them. He reached under his table and pressed a switch. The lights that ran the seams of the room gradually brightened, pulsed and dimmed, pulsed and brightened again. They faded for good at the third pulse. An automated female voice spoke.
"The room has been successfully isolated from all visual and auditory surveillance systems."
"All of them?" White asked.
"Primary, secondary and tertiary sensors are no longer connected to this room."
"Good. Erase all your personal recordings of this meeting when we're finished too. Authorization code: White-glove."
"...Authorization request accepted. All personal recordings will be erased."
White took in a breath and let it out, as though he had held it in for far too long. He turned to the four sitting in front of him, each one nervous to a greater degree than they were before.
"Rest easy, recruits." White said. "I'm not about to do anything unusual to you."
They registered little relief from his words. Carisa's instinctive need for situational intelligence gathering, an instinct drilled into her over the years, made itself known. "Um, sir, what-, what's going on? Why're we here?"
"Yeah." 186 mumbled. "Why'd you call us here, sir?"
Much unlike his brother, 185 was beaming from ear to ear and tilted closer to the desk. "I bet it's something big. Something real big. What you got for us, sir? A special op you need us to go on privately? You need us to snoop around on the other instructors, ooh, or even the head-shed? Maybe we could finally figure out how Team-1's always a step ahead of u-"
"Shut up."
The three of them turned to Giana. She sat with arm's folded, face pale like she was beholding a ghost. That ghost ran a hand through his whitening hair. He seemed to be searching for the right words.
185 frowned. "But why?"
"Just be quiet." She hissed. "And listen."
185 looked to his brother and got a shrug in reply.
White tapped a pensive finger on his desk as he looked each of them in the eye. "The reason I brought you four here is to ask you a question. It's the same question for all of you but you might have different answers for it, none of which are inherently wrong."
185 scratched his head. "Like a test?"
"You could say that. Like a very easy test where there's no way for you to fail."
"Only one question, really?" 186 asked.
Out the corner of her eye, Carisa saw Giana sink slightly in her seat.
"Yes." White replied. "Just one."
186 thought about it and shrugged. "Okay then, shoot."
Intentionis - Intentions
Author's Note 1: Since this is technically Chapter 117, I'd like to take this moment to remember and honor our childhood/adulthood hero, humanity's personal lord and savior, Sierra 117. All jokes aside, making it to this point is honestly epic and I can't wait to hit more iconic callsigns along the way.
Author's Note 2: My apologies you guys for the EXTREMELY infrequent updates. It's been a bit harder to pump out these chapters over the last year as fast as I used to, again, so sorry. No worries though, with my final semester finally winding down (pun intended), I'll be able to get back on task. Look forward to way more frequent updates in the near feature. I don't plan on stopping for good until I finish the fight.
