Chapter 20 #2
A match. I was supposed to pick a human being from a catalog with little more than images and a vague list of highlights as though I was shopping for a pair of shoes or a new book to read, and then I’d be expected to perform sexually with this stranger for the best interest of the state.
What agency did that give either party? I understood the value of my DNA, but again and again, my heart and my head were both rebelling against my sense of duty, and I was as conflicted about taking life as I was at the notion of helping create it.
Because all a child of mine would be is another weapon.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and headed to the dorms. Just like always, I’d do as I was told, so it was pointless to complain when I didn’t have the luxury to push back.
My father often reminded me that he’d saved me when he found me in the rubble of a city destroyed by Gehenna.
My life was forfeit from the start, so I owed him my obedience as the price of being rescued.
He was the only reason I still had this gift of existence.
A gift I couldn’t say I’d have asked for if I’d known how the strings attached would cut and bind.
I crossed the field, then I arrived at the entrance to the main building. Even amidst my inner turmoil, I found I was always listening for that telling hint of a coming attack in the silent night of the Mictlan dome.
I’d heard a piercing, high pitched noise seconds before the first explosion back on Protectorate 005.
When I’d asked the rest of the surviving crew if they’d heard it, no one else knew what I was talking about.
Elio was the only one who had picked up on something similar.
Maybe our hearing was just sharper than those who’d been wearing down their sensitivity in a lifetime of noise, or maybe there was more too that story, too.
I should ask Vann if he heard it. It would be nice to sit down with him one day and get his full perspective, without feeling so self-conscious about looking like a weak leader. Maybe I’d learn something I didn’t know.
I sighed aloud, frustrated that I was thinking of one of my most unimpressive recruits again.
Why he stood out to me so much, I couldn’t say, but he seemed to be an unexpected constant in my day to day despite his lowly status and unimpressive physical performance.
My only justification was that I’d come to associate him with everything that was Protectorate 005, being the only person in my unit from the station.
Other than that personal association, there was zero significance to him, and thinking on it was giving me a headache atop a headache.
It was long past lights out in the dorm hall, as I approached my room and placed my palm on the lock. Breaker greeted me as I closed the door on our shared space.
“You look like something the cat dragged in,” he noted with a raise of his brow, as my entrance drew his attention from his CHRONO. He tapped the device on his wrist, retracting the teal screen from the back of his hand.
“I’ve never seen a cat drag anything anywhere.” I scrunched my nose, at a loss for his usual Earthisms.
“Then you haven’t spent enough time with cats.” Breaker snorted. “It means you look rough, like you’ve been batted around and chewed up.”
I frowned at that, checking my reflection in the mirror, assuring I hadn’t been disheveled when I visited Father. Not that he’d looked at me at any point in our meeting.
“How so?” I scanned my jacket for wrinkles or stains. “I made a point to clean up properly after training.”
Breaker got up and stood behind me with an unusual seriousness.
“Wow, you’re slipping then, Seba. How did you miss this single hair out of place.
” He mockingly plucked a single strand of hair from my head.
My expression flattened at a rate inversely proportional to the way his lifted with amusement.
“I meant emotionally. Your whole forehead is stuck in a permanent grimace.”
“I just got out of a meeting with General Takeyama,” I said as I ducked out of his too close presence, and started to undo the clasps of my jacket.
“You mean your dad?” He leaned against the wall, giving me his full attention.
“Yes, I mean my father.” I pursed my lips.
I didn’t know why I ever bothered to keep any semblance of appearances around Breaker.
He was insightful to an obnoxious degree.
Even if I tried to be rigid and unfeeling around him, he always picked up on some minute twitch of my eyebrow or bead of sweat that no one else ever would have noticed, and he was the type to readily call me on it.
My ‘tells,’ he’d called them, which was what inspired me to use the term in my instruction.
It was the oddest and smallest ways that I relied on people like him and Elio without even realizing it.
I was still undecided if having him as a roommate was a blessing or a curse though.
“Nothing worth discussing. They’ve deployed infantry to every Protectorate and they’ve started pulling some of the third years from other Academies on Mictlan to have more troops prepared in the event of further escalation.
But they won’t be pulling from Astaroth until there’s an official declaration.
We’re still more valuable here, and the Shinka supply is limited even with increased, round-the-clock production.
” I chose not to mention the matchmaking expectations.
Breaker might be the one person who would listen and offer sympathy if I did, but I didn’t want sympathy when I hadn’t fully processed it myself.
“That’s what you really wanted to know, right? ”
Breaker laughed, but he also shook his head. “No, I actually wanted to know how you were doing, since you always come back from your dad’s place all closed off and mopey, but that’s good to know, too, I guess.” His eye roll was mocking, but not cruelly so.
“I’ve been raised by my father my entire life. He doesn’t affect me anymore.” I stated for myself, more a quiet affirmation than an answer. “Your worry is unnecessary.”
“You know you don’t have to do the robot thing around me, right?” Breaker sat back on his bed, while I pulled on my sleeping uniform. “I’ll even give you a hug if he’s been withholding affection all those years.”
My own laugh was accidental, and it came out of nowhere when I was otherwise feeling rather dark.
“Your family was very loving, I take it?” I asked, though not expecting much of an answer. In all of his pleasantries and positive disposition, Breaker was more closed off than he appeared. I’d not been oblivious to how often he dodged questions about his home life over the years.
“I think I became more friendly out of spite, actually.” Predictably, he spoke vaguely about his origins with a non-answer.
I often wondered what kind of secrets he held.
The different ways we dealt with trauma was endlessly fascinating to me.
I was just glad he wasn’t the type to break bones to make friends like Elio so often did, but I suspected we were all more similar than we realized.
How ridiculous.
“I wish I had the mind to cope like you do,” I said plainly but honestly.
That elicited a full body laugh. “Now I wouldn’t go that far.
Imagine if we were both this chipper all the time.
If Ghuls couldn’t kill us, the hot head up stairs certainly would.
” His self-deprecation was light hearted, and I couldn’t help finding a sense of ease as we spoke.
Should we truly go to war, he was the type who would keep me grounded at the worst times.
As impersonal and disconnected from others as I tried to be, I knew that much was true.
I grabbed my headphones, then took a seat on the edge of my bed.
I hesitated to put them on and end the conversation.
I liked Breaker, even if I’d never openly tell him so.
After an extended moment, I decided to drop my guard long enough to ask, “Have you ever killed someone?” It was a dumb question from someone training to be a soldier, but I still asked, hoping he wouldn’t take it wrong.
Breaker paused. His expression dropped, that too bright sunshine suddenly eclipsed by a frown. “I uh…” It was unusual to see him stumble over anything. “Are you thinking about 005?”
His typical dodgy answer was expected and already told me everything I needed to know.
I tipped my chin, then fixed my gaze on my headphones.
“In Vetala, it didn’t really feel like I was killing another person each time I took down a Ghul.
I was able to disassociate and act on impulse like it was a simulation.
But now that the event has passed, and I’m looking back, the longer I sit with it…
” I trailed off, not sure I wanted to finish that sentence for my own ears to hear.
“I shouldn’t care. I know I did the right thing, and at the time, I made the only decisions I could make. ”
“The first time is always going to be the hardest. You didn’t panic and you saved a lot of people. That’s all you can really focus on at this point.” Breaker placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“I’m just worried that I’m not a good leader.
In the end, all of these men were placed in my unit—you included—so I could train them to engage in live combat one day, and I’m not sure I have the skills to teach others to perform in ways I’m struggling with myself.
” I shouldn’t be so candid, but Breaker was safe, and I wanted to get those words out into the world so they’d stop living inside me.
Something about meeting with father always put me on edge in the worst ways, and I hated the doubt he pulled out of me.
“Do you think anyone in our unit has any chance of making rank?” I tried next, addressing my easier fear.
Breaker grinned, his upbeat demeanor putting me more at ease. “Well…” He paused for entirely too long. “It’s still early in their training, really. If we’re lucky enough to get a few more months before getting called away, I think one or two of them are bound to figure something out.”
I almost laughed, having gotten the confirmation that he saw this situation as bleakly as I did.
“I shouldn’t overthink it.” I shook my head, as he sat down on his own bed again.
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t,” he agreed, then he reached into his storage and pulled out a pair of headphones I didn’t know he had. “Hey, what do you always listen to in those things? I want to figure out how to sleep as heavily as you do.”
His subject change was welcome, and it was a relief that he recognized I needed it.
“I’ll send my playlist to your CHRONO.”
Both of us committed to silence, I placed my headphones over my ears, and laid back. I started a soft melody that emulated the instruments of ancient days, and I let that sound pull me into sleep.
Whatever it took, I wouldn’t fail these men. I just needed to get them motivated.