Chapter 45 #2
“Maybe. It was in another lifetime, so I try not to think on it too much,” he said in a verbal shrug.
“Her name is nothing now, so it doesn’t really matter who she used to be.
I just think that Reinhardt would have been a good name for a mighty killing machine, too.
But she wasn’t the type to take on someone else’s last name, even in marriage.
She was such a daddy’s girl, you know? ”
“No, I really don’t know,” I deadpanned, which was near impossible with how much pain I was in, but here we were, so put off by my instructor’s entire personality that I was accomplishing the impossible.
“No? Sounds like you’re more of a daddy issues type then. I can work with that, too.”
Please, Unit #31852, just kill me now. “Are you sure she didn’t choose to die in that Shinka just to get away from you?”
“I’m not sure. Hell, maybe she’s still alive somewhere, and she just ran off with ‘David with the Good Dick.’ I wouldn’t even be mad if she did, honestly.
Thinking about him saved her life the first time she tried syncing, so I wouldn’t have gotten to spend the years with her that I did if not for him.
Conceptually, he was the best and worst person in the world.
” He really liked listening to himself talk.
It was vaguely disturbing how unbothered he was talking about the death of a woman he married and presumably loved, but everyone grieved differently…
or something. “Jokes on me, because I’m still working on perfecting these damn things fifteen years later.
” Though he kept his tone as nonchalant as ever, I caught the first hint of devoted hurt in those words, and I might have respected that if he hadn’t already been so insufferable.
“Well this is fucking excruciating, so it would be great if you could make some fucking progress.” I tried to laugh, but the gut punch of my life allowed no such joy.
I kept talking in hopes of distracting myself.
“Do men go through this, too?” I asked next, while that radiating misery made it to my lungs again.
My whole chest seized, and the heavy sensation of cement filling my airways forced fresh tears from my eyes.
My one lifeline was my breathing, and suddenly I felt like I was suffocating in dry air.
“Sure.” Conrad’s noncommittal response only pissed me off, when every semblance of agency I’d ever had was being rapidly ripped from my being.
“What do you mean sure? Do you not know—” My words were cut off as the fire scorched upwards, taking hold of the rest of my chest.
“I mean that everyone’s brain is a little different, so it’s hard to draw a conclusion based on a handful of men with vastly different experiences. Your parents were scientists, no? You must know how test cases work.”
I wanted to ask how he knew who my parents were, but if his wife invented Shinkas, and Mom was involved in some weird neurological experiment related to the syncing system, he likely knew my mother, too.
Besides that, I had no ability to answer as the wave squeezed my neck.
It rose to my chin, seared my sinuses, then entered back into my cranial cavity, and I couldn’t tell what was sweat versus tears versus snot, blood, and drool at this point.
If Conrad was still speaking to me, I’d blocked him out, and I couldn’t hear anything other than the warning beep of my elevated vitals and the scream in my head. My vision went solid white then black then white again, but no images were translating through my eyes now.
Was I about to die? Was this it? Had my wax wings finally found the upper limit as I neared the sun?
I didn’t want to die.
I wasn’t ready.
I had too much still to do.
I had dreams, I had someone to protect, I was going to make a difference.
I wouldn’t die here. I couldn’t.
The darkness got heavier, and I no longer felt any pain.
This must have been death. All the will power in the world hadn’t meant anything after all. This was what I got for thinking I was special. I was going to change the laws for women everywhere, and I was going to prove to everyone that I was just as good as any man.
Only, I was dead, and the men were laughing about how fun it was to break each other’s bones, while casually piloting giant killer robots like it was no big deal.
What a cruel universe we lived in. I could start my long list of could have, would have, and should have confessions.
but while I should have done this differently, if I could have, would I have, really?
No. The only way this might have played out any other way was if the world was anything but what it was. I saw a crack in the door of my cage, and I chose to try and break through.
I would always choose that. That was simply who I was.
I wondered then, in that hard to pinpoint moment between the limits of my mortality and my invite to the afterlife, what the guys would think once my death was announced and my secret was laid bare for everyone to see.
Would Elio come around? Would he feel bad for walking out on me?
Would Breaker be upset? Or would he just make a quick joke and move on with his training. He never seemed one to take anything too seriously, after all.
And Sebastian? He would probably be relieved.
I’d been such a burden during training. I’d won the ultimate objective in that singular VR mission, but only because I self-detonated.
If that fight had continued, he surely would have beat me, but now I would die without him having ever gotten a rematch.
Would he be humiliated if he learned it was a girl who beat him? Would he go back to dismissing me as inferior because I’d only succeeded in the virtual space, and my body couldn’t handle the real one?
Would Vann resent me for leaving him behind, putting myself in danger, using protecting him as my excuse?
Would he be able to go on without me?
I didn’t even know for sure if he’d ever wake up.
I only assumed he was going to be okay, because I needed that to justify my decisions, but there was still no promise that he would live.
I might have done all of this for someone who was already gone, who I’d never gotten to say goodbye to.
I’d not had a chance to speak to him in months, and now I never would.
I wouldn’t be able to explain my reasoning, or make him proud.
My thoughts, my feelings, my beliefs, and my resolve were all for nothing.
They would vanish into the ether, and nothing I stood for would ever mean a thing in this grand, cruel scheme.
My only hope now was that, maybe, the sciences were wrong, and there was a mythical afterlife in another realm, where I would see my brother again. If he died, I could explain everything to him. He’d be mad, but he’d forgive me in the next life. That was the best I could ask for.
So it was, I suppose. If the world was kind and fair, I wouldn’t have ever ended up at a war academy.
Color bombarded my vision all at once, and a clear image of the arena blinked into view. Suddenly I was back in my machine, back in the world of the living, and back to hearing the panicked voice of Conrad demanding I respond.
“Fuck. Fianna. Fianna Callan, wake up. Come back to me right fucking now.” He was shouting, and this obnoxious man who was making fun of me just moments ago sounded genuinely terrified over the status of my well-being.
How cute.
“I-I’m here.” It was a wonder that I was able to speak at all, but I managed the smallest squeak through my strained vocal chords. “I’m alive.” I said next, more for myself than for him.
A feigned chuckle came through the COMM, doing little to hide his previous panic. “S-see, not so bad after all, was it?”
I fully scoffed at that. “Yes, it was so bad. It was worse than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I thought I was legitimately dead.”
“You were for at least a few seconds.” He informed me to the tone of a fun fact and not a horrifying reality. “That’s part of the process. You die and are reborn as one with your machine as part of the initial onboarding. The only problem is that not everyone manages the being reborn part.”
I blinked rapidly, letting that sink in fully. The thought that I legitimately died, even if it was only for a blink, was… unsettling.
Conrad’s next statement was lacking firm confidence, “The mental linking system has been modified heavily since the early units, but due to the population crisis and all, they’ve refused to allow women to test the new design. It’s good to see that their paranoia isn’t justified. You did great.”
I did great… “Because both systems require death of the pilot?”
“More or less. The neural link was more complete in the old system, which means the units had more agility and reacted more accurately to your commands, but it was also made of a heavier material and a slightly different technology, so it did result in more mental and physical strain, overall. It was a superior unit, but also one that was deemed unsafe for average soldiers. Last I heard, a few independent researchers had been trying to create a way for humans to survive the old system, but for the general masses, we just changed the tech instead.”
Independent researchers, like everyone on Zircon station?
“Well, regardless, you impressed me, Callan. Good way to start off.” He used my last name, and I could only assume that was to dodge the inconvenience of picking between my real and my stolen first names.
“Lucky me.” I groaned, not entirely sure what that was supposed to mean.
Not wanting to think on it further, I started familiarizing myself with the movements as I spoke.
It truly did feel like I’d become one with the machine, and I was existing inside its mind.
It was a distinctly different and more visceral sensation than it had been in the VR space, and there was a strange, back of my mind understanding that my real body still existed and could be controlled independent of my current mental link, but otherwise it was every bit as complete of a neural transfer.
“Have you ever lost anyone under the new system?”
“Only one or two. But that’s pretty rare these days.
It’s more common that they just can’t sync at all.
Being on extraction duty when a brain does melt is pretty unpleasant though, I gotta say.
” Conrad was so damn unfazed by this, it was horrifying.
“But that’s all in the past. This was the hardest part of the whole ordeal, and look at you, handling it. ”
I checked my vitals that had returned to something steady and normal. I started testing my thrusters and locating all of my basic weaponry.
I guess I was handling it.
“So men had died in both the new and old systems?” This part, I felt needed clarifying. Here I thought my female brain truly couldn’t sync with a real Shinka, when it turned out that everyone had issues,
Fucking bullshit.
“A few, but those weren’t as heavily publicized for some reason.
The wifey was pretty high profile though, so maybe that’s why.
” Or maybe because there was a reason they wanted women excluded.
“Either way, the technology has been heavily limited to prevent past mistakes. I’ll let you try an old suit for comparison one day if you want, but I think you’ll find that this is easier to adapt to. Either way: be proud. You did it.”
“Yay, I guess,” I said, flatly.
“Yay, indeed.” His penchant for snark matched mine entirely too closely, and I was starting to think I deserved that time Elio punched me in the face if he saw me like I saw this guy. “Now if you’re done whining, let’s begin the drills.”
Conrad instructed me from his COMM center, and we started out with simple movement, trap shooting, and solo martial arts, just to get me acquainted with the machine.
To my surprise, it moved faster than I, myself, could react.
It was almost as if I’d been given the knowledge and muscle memory of the machine itself.
My understanding of the dynamic movements was seamless and bordering on innate, while it felt as though I was physically moving real muscles as I commanded the heavy limbs.
I wasn’t sure what to think of Conrad just yet, but he was unexpectedly competent when he wasn’t being a smartass, so maybe it would work out in the long run. If nothing else, I didn’t have to hold anything back around him, and that was freeing all its own.
With how much was on my mind at the moment, freeing was what I needed.
At some point I’d have to face Elio again, and I wasn’t looking forward to that, but for now, I just had to keep sight of why I’d come here in the first place.
It wasn’t to make friends, and it wasn’t to impress some guy.
Every jump and spin and pull of the trigger reminded me that I had a real purpose, and I couldn’t let something as fickle and insignificant as relationships be what ruined everything.
I was a pilot now, truly and indisputably.