Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov was scared.
She was always scared, these days. Fear clung to her like blood on a uniform, like gas in a shell crater. How could she not be, when she knew full well what her presence at this horrific training program meant?
Her second life had started so well. She had been reborn into a strange, futuristic world, full of wild differences from her old home. Technology had advanced so far that it was almost magical, yet magic itself had vanished from the world entirely. Buildings soared higher than ever, and were made with shining metal and gleaming glass, rather than old worn bricks or timber. Every person, even the children, had wireless communication devices. Every room was exactly as warm or cold as you'd like it, and you could get all sorts of food no matter the season! You could watch opera whenever you wanted, or comedies, or all sorts of other plays!
Siberia Prime had not been a warm planet, but it had nonetheless been a very pleasant place to grow up, full of industry and growth and happy, productive people. Her childhood friends had been the children of laborers and professionals alike, with no social stigma between the two. They had played on elaborate toysets that were like something out of a novel, and eaten ice cream and snacks, and life had been good.
But then Visha had been taken, and she knew that all the happiness and luxury of the United Nations Space Command was nothing more than a dusting of snow over No Man's Land, covering up the bodies beneath.
She had long forgotten most of her childhood memories, but Visha would never – could never – forget the days of frantic running as her family had tried to flee the Communist purges. The terrified faces of her parents and the other travelers. The constant watch for spies or enforcers that might drag them away to the camps.
When the UNSC had taken her, all her fanciful daydreams of life in this wonderful new world had come crashing down, and she knew that this life was no dream.
She had been dragged, kicking and screaming and biting, into a car, and injected with some drug. She'd tried to fight it off, and when she had regained her consciousness, it had only been for a few seconds. Visha had awoken naked, trapped in a tube as frigid air was pumped inside, so cold that felt like she was going to freeze to death in the depths of winter.
But that cold plunge had not been death. She even knew what it was now: cryosleep, a process to make the weeks and months of journeying across the stars pass much faster. She'd been frog-marched into an underground bunker, forced to sit alongside dozens of other children, and been told in blunt terms that she had been conscripted.
She would never forget that night. The cold, emotionless look on the face of Doctor Halsey, the scientist running the Orion-II program. She hadn't been the fanatical, raving kind of mad scientist, but Visha still thought she was the same kind of monstrous researcher as the famed Doctor Schugel, whom she'd heard so much about. Even when Halsey had tried to feign compassion, telling them blunt truths on that first night, all Visha saw was a cruel master, rubbing their noses in the horror that they had been immersed in.
Visha had been conscripted once before, when the Empire of Germania had needed mages desperately, as the Great War had ground on and more nations had joined the fray. She had been a teenager then, painfully young by military standards, but still close enough.
To conscript a child… that disparity between her life before, and her life now, terrified her. What government would ever resort to conscripting six year olds in a time of peace, unless there was some greater danger that needed to be confronted? She assumed that this program's mere existence was evidence that things were not going well for the UNSC.
For the past three months, she'd kept her head down. She'd tried to blend in, tried to pretend to be one of the others. It hadn't been hard back on Siberia Prime, but here on Reach, the other children were far more observant. They could spot when she was imitating them, and they'd disliked it, resulting in many of them keeping their distance from her, because she was 'weird'.
But now, she had failed.
Visha walked forward, with the trainer right by her side, one hand resting on her shoulder, ready to tighten into a grip at a moment's notice. The man's other hand was carrying an evidence bag, which carried a broken piece of military issued equipment. Thankfully, it had stopped smoking when he'd sealed the bag, but it was still a burning hole in Visha's mind.
She'd been told that she was being brought to the CO's office for destruction of government property, and part of Visha was terrified. If these people in the UNSC, in the Office of Naval Intelligence, were willing to kidnap children for some kind of military training program, what would they do when one of those children misbehaved?
What… would they do?
Visha realized that she didn't actually know. The future was so confusing that nearly all of it was alien to her. It was only once she'd been conscripted that Visha found herself on familiar, if uncomfortable, ground.
During the war, destruction of government property would be grounds to have someone flogged, or if it was bad enough, even executed.
But the UNSC was not at war. They were at peace. And in peacetime, an offense like this could result in a dishonorable discharge.
Visha's breath caught in her throat, and she struggled to hide that reaction from the trainer's eyes.
She didn't know why the government was doing this kind of training. Maybe they'd had some high-performing child volunteer, like her old commanding officer, and they were trying to replicate it. Foolish, if that was their idea, because there was an enormous difference between a volunteer and a conscript.
But… if it was some plan of high command, without care for the basic truths on the ground that all the enlisted knew, then it was entirely possible that they would be sticklers about protocol. Certainly, the trainers had been gradually ramping up their demanded precision for cleaning the barracks, or keeping your uniform tidy, and that kind of thing.
Which meant that this might be her escape. Her way out.
Visha would have never believed that she would be longing for a dishonorable discharge, but if it was the only was to escape this training program, then she would gladly take it. She'd thought about escaping initially, but at her age, without equipment, in a completely unfamiliar planet and region, it would have been suicide. This was much more preferable.
They had left behind the firing range where all the other cadets had been training. The trainer guided her out the door, down the concrete walkway, and towards the imposing three-story building in the center of the compound. It was painted in the UNSC's drab green, with identifier codes in bold white lettering along the sides, and there were even windows on it, tinted and reinforced, but windows nonetheless. It was the command post, or the administration building, or something to that effect, because Visha didn't know whether this compound qualified as a military firebase or a garrison.
No cadet had ever been inside it, except for John, Cadet-117. He'd been hauled in there by Chief Petty Officer Mendez himself, and Visha and all the other cadets had been certain that he was about to be punished. Yet when he'd returned, he'd been promoted.
John had taken an action to protect the other cadets, though. He'd come up with the plan to check if the trainers were going to be mean or not, taken charge, and gotten them all home safe and sound. It was an excellent example of small unit tactics, exactly as the Officer Candidate School would have taught her back in Berun.
Visha had not done anything so wonderful. She'd abused a piece of her standard issue gear in an attempt to regain a valuable ability, and had destroyed it in the process. The evidence was right there, visible through the clear baggie that the trainer was carrying.
"Listen carefully," a man's voice hissed in her ear, right after they walked behind another building and into what Visha already knew was a deadzone in the cameras. "Don't react to what I'm about to say. Keep walking. Don't say anything. Don't look at me."
She stiffened, but did as the man said. The trainer must have bent over slightly, to whisper in her ear like that.
"There are people who want to see this program shut down," the trainer told her quietly. "Doctor Halsey has a lot of friends in high places, but not everyone agrees with her. We can't get you out right now, but we're trying."
Visha's eyes widened. Was this the Insurrection that she'd vaguely heard about on news reports, back on Siberia Prime? It didn't sound quite like that, not to her ears. Was it internal politics instead? Some other faction of the Office of Naval Intelligence, working against Doctor Halsey? She didn't know, and she didn't care. If they could get her out of this place, she was willing to listen.
"We need evidence of how horrible Doctor Halsey is treating you kids," the trainer continued, his voice turning harsh. "We need you to remember all the horrible things she's doing, okay? You don't have to do anything hard or difficult. Every time Halsey hurts you, or makes you cry, you need to remember it. Make sure you never forget it. Once we've got enough… we can get her punished. We can get you home, to your family. Do you understand? Will you help us with this? Don't speak, just nod."
She nodded, just once, with a furious certainty. If it meant an escape from here, she was fully willing to testify. After all these months, finally, she had hope. No, better than that – she had allies. Someone she could lean on, someone she could trust. Even if this trainer didn't speak to her again for months, or years, she would know that she had a friend on the inside, who was working to help her.
The trainer didn't say anything further, but his hand squeezed lightly on her shoulder. It was a small thing, but it was the first real human contact she'd had in months. Visha bit her lip, and tried to keep her tears from spilling out.
They walked up to the imposing building, and the trainer opened the door with a wave of a keycard. He marched her inside, guiding her with the hand on her shoulder, as they walked down the hallway towards an unmarked door.
Visha took a deep breath, and tried to steady her racing nerves. She was an officer of the Germanian Army, an aerial mage, and a veteran of the Rhine front. She could handle a chewing out for breaking government property, especially if it represented a step towards her freedom. Her body might be that of a six year old, and her brain filled with that body's urges and whims and flights of fancy, but she could do this.
The trainer rapped on the door with a closed fist, and waited for a response.
"Enter," a cold voice called out.
The trainer opened the door and gently pushed Visha into motion. She stepped through, feeling a little less uneasy about the trainer's presence, now that she knew he was one of the good guys, trying to help her get out.
Unfortunately, the trainer's presence was nothing compared to the presence of the Orion-II project's director. Doctor Halsey sat at the other end of an imposingly large desk made of utilitarian metal wrapped around a central section of black glass, framed by the dark window behind her and a light directly above her head.
The Doctor was still dressed in the exercise clothes she had worn earlier that day, when she'd joined the cadets on their morning PT. She had thrown a white labcoat over the top of the exercise clothes, but nothing more, and her eyes were staring at Visha with an intense focus.
Visha repressed a shudder at the cold look in Halsey's eye, but thanked her very small luck that Halsey had regained her emotionless mask – it was vastly preferable to the wide-eyed, manic expression that Visha had last seen on the Doctor's face. That face was locked in her mind, and even though it was only a half hour old at most, Visha knew that she would remember that expression for the rest of her life.
She had been at the rifle range, following orders and performing basic marksmanship. With vermin rifles, there wasn't as much challenge, and so she'd been distracted, and had allowed her technique to grow sloppy while she focused overwhelmingly on her attempts to recreate usable magecraft formulas. She had just finished shooting her target, had set down her rifle, and had rolled over to talk to her trainer, when she realized that she had not been alone.
Doctor Halsey had been standing over her. No, not standing. Looming over her. The woman's brunette hair and blue eyes should have made her plain and unassuming in appearance, but that expression… the horror and fear that Visha had seen in Halsey's eyes had made it clear that the woman was not normal – and that she knew that Visha was not normal.
Worse than that, however, was the knowledge that Visha had gained. A cold, mechanical, purely logical scientist gaining an interest in Visha was worrying, but manageable. A passionate, frenetic, emotionally compromised scientist gaining an interest was far, far worse. Especially if Halsey had learned that she needed to hide her mania from others, and pretend to be cold.
"Cadet 016, as ordered," the trainer said, snapping out a salute to Halsey. He advanced forward, walking past where Visha was rooted to the ground at attention, and set down the bag containing the broken device. "The evidence, ma'am."
The woman's gaze shifted from Visha to the bag on her desk, and then up, to the trainer. Visha closed her eyes briefly, hoping that it would be mistaken for a blink. Doctor Halsey was not military. It was not appropriate to salute her. The trainer had made a mistake, and Visha wondered if, for the first and last time ever, she and Halsey were sharing an emotional reaction – irritation – at the trainer.
"You are dismissed, Corporal," Halsey said, her voice stiff.
"Ma'am," the trainer nodded, before taking a quick step backwards, out of the office.
The door clicked shut behind Visha, and she was left alone with Doctor Catherine Halsey, the monstrous mind behind the Orion-II program.
It was silent for a long time in Doctor Halsey's office.
Visha's muscles were locked tight as she stood at attention, not daring to move a millimeter.
Halsey looked at the evidence bag for a long moment, then switched her gaze to Visha. She withstood the Doctor's curious look by reminding herself of who she was. She was Lieutenant Viktoriya Serebryakov. She was standing at attention before a superior. She would not betray her training or her competence by showing any sign of weakness.
Finally, Halsey sighed. It was a slow exhale, like a train releasing steam after a long journey.
"Please, sit down," the ONI scientist said, gesturing to the chair placed in front of her desk. It was a bare-bones metal chair of stainless steel, the kind of thing that would have been expensive and fashionable in her old life, but which was cheap and ubiquitous in this second life.
Visha hesitated. It wasn't formally an order, but there was a lot about this program that had violated military protocol thus far. More importantly, any chance to make Halsey think better of her was worth taking, for surely she was somewhere lower than dirt in the Doctor's mind.
She walked forward carefully and took a seat, watching the doctor for any reactions, any sudden movements, as if she was a tiger whose pen Visha had stepped into.
"I am so very sorry this has happened to you," Doctor Halsey spoke, staring right into Visha's eyes. There was the usual intensity that the cadet had come to expect from the doctor, but there was also something more. Something… tender, vulnerable. "I hope you can forgive me for this, Visha."
Visha started to nod, words coming to her lips on automatic response, something like 'Of course, Doctor' – even though she had no idea what the Doctor was talking about. She couldn't have been talking about the Orion-II program itself, because that was simply too bizarre to be real.
But then the words died in her throat, and her eyes widened against her will.
The Doctor had called her 'Visha' – the name that nobody in the Orion program knew. The name she had not entrusted to a single living soul in this world.
And she had spoken in Germanian. Not the German of this new world, so close yet so distinct to the language of her second home. This was more precise, less guttural, and it had come with the clipped intonations of a noble aristocrat, someone trained from a young age in the exacting manner that officers and gentlemen spoke in High Command; that was the Preussian fashion, unlike the Russy way of aristocrats being more relaxed in their accents than the military.
"What?" Visha whispered, unable to stop herself. She too had spoken in Germanian, jolted back by the familiar language.
"You don't recognize me," Halsey said, an uncharacteristic softness in her tone. "That makes sense, I suppose. I'm in a different body to that last one that you saw."
Halsey lowered her head and breathed in with a loud, almost voluminous inhale, as if she was mustering her courage. She raised her head and looked back to Visha, and her cold mask had vanished. Halsey's face was open, without any attempt to hide her true feelings. Her eyes were wistful, her chin sagging, and her cheeks slumped.
"I am Tanya von Degurechaff," the Doctor said.
Visha stared. There was no breath in her lungs, but she was not breathless. She felt ethereal, as if she was having an out-of-body experience.
"Impossible," Visha murmured, absently. They were the words of someone else, because she had not said them. She was too stunned, too frozen to say them.
"Impossible?" Halsey repeated, slowly. She stared at Visha, and slowly, she started to chuckle. It wasn't a happy sound, but a sad, miserable one. "Yes. Yes, it is impossible. But yet it is true. How many impossible things did we achieve, Lieutenant? Do you remember Dacia? That night raid, where I spoke in such a childish voice? And now we have switched, and you are the child."
Visha's chest clenched. She did remember Dacia. She remembered the bombardment of the factory, the way that the Major had scrupulously followed international law by giving them prior warning, and how they hadn't listened.
That was why it was impossible. Visha knew Tanya von Degurechaff. She knew her well. Tanya had always followed international law when it came to warfare, with a rock-solid legal analysis behind her actions.
"No," Visha said. Her voice was shaky, but after a moment, she firmed up. She stood from her chair, and pointed an accusing finger directly at the imposter. "No. You can't be. The Major would neverhave kidnapped children. Not after what she went through. You are not Tanya. You are Doctor Schugel!"
It was possible she was wrong about it being Schugel, in which case she didn't know how Halsey would have learned Germanian, or how she knew about reincarnation… but she knew that Tanya von Degurechaff would never have been a willing party to this program, much less created it. Tanya had been a volunteer, and she'd confided more than once to Visha that she despised the policy of conscription for how ineffective most conscripts were.
Halsey stared at Visha. Her jaw was slack, and there was liquid building up in the corners of her eyes.
More confirmation, Visha thought to herself, distantly.
Tanya never would have replied to confrontation so meekly. She would have fired back, she would have recited the logical analysis that informed her every action, until her opponent in any debate was so thoroughly educated that they could do nothing but understand.
"Was it not bad enough that you hurt my commanding officer in your past life?" Visha demanded, harsh words rising unbidden from her throat. "Must you do the same to me as well?!"
"I made a mistake!" Halsey screamed, a sudden torrent of noise that blasted Visha back a step.
Visha stared, shocked, as Halsey raised a fist and slammed it into her imposing desk. The outer casing of the desk buckled, shrieking in protest. Even from a few feet back, Visha could see the indentation of her knuckles in the metal. It was a feat of strength beyond anything a normal human could do. Halsey's head was hanging, her shoulder length brunette hair concealing her face.
A single tear dropped from behind that curtain. It splashed down onto the unbroken glass at the center of Halsey's desk. After a moment, a second followed it, and then a third. The drops burst on impact and sent smaller dots of liquid all across the smooth surface. They looked like glimmering diamonds, caught between the obsidian glass and the lights above.
Doctor Halsey slowly raised her head. Her hair fell backwards, a few strands sticking to her wet cheeks, and she stared at Visha like a desperate animal.
"This was never supposed to happen," she whispered. "I wrote a paper on how to train super-soldiers in college, and ONI thought it was brilliant. But it was never intentional. It was a bad joke, and now we are all paying for it. This program was never supposed to be real."
Her eyes were wild as she stared at Visha. The dark blue orbs were not the same as Tanya's. They were duller, less vivid. Yet there was something in them, something familiar.
"We were drunk," Halsey confessed, her words gripping Visha like clamps. "We were joking about how to waste the most money possible. We all threw in our ideas. Paul, David, Steve, and I. We came up with wild and absurd theories… and then I ruined it. I was offended! We'd written all these pages on the science of how to make super soldiers, and I was angry that we hadn't written a tactical doctrine for it. How the super-soldiers would be trained, how they would fight!"
Visha stepped back instinctively, and her calf ran right into the chair that had been behind her, preventing her from moving. The edge of the chair bit into her leg in short bursts, like the chair itself was shaking back and forth. No, Visha realized. It was she who was shaking.
"I was so arrogant," Halsey murmured, tears still leaking down her face, as she stared at Visha. "But ONI saw my doctrine, and assumed that I must have been serious about it!"
Halsey shuddered, her spine arching, and it was only the fact that her fist was still embedded in the outer casing of her desk that held her up. She looked pathetic. She looked miserable.
"I'm so sorry, Visha," the doctor told her, her voice breaking halfway through speaking Visha's name, chased by a choking sob. "I have killed you."
Even afterwards, later that night, Visha did not remember moving. She only remembered the feeling of her shoulder slamming into Doctor Halsey's stomach, her short arms straining to reach around her and pull her tight. The force of her impact was barely enough to push the Doctor, but she was so feeble at that moment that it was enough to knock them both to the floor.
The Doctor's butt hit the ground first, and she slid backwards slightly, as her back hit the far wall and stopped dead.
"Major!" Visha cried out, unable to stop the tears from coming from her own eyes as she hugged the woman before her. "Major, is it really you?!"
"Visha," Catherine Halsey – Tanya – murmured, her own tears dripping onto the back of Visha's head, and her arms slowly wrapping around the child in her lap. "Visha, I'm so sorry."
"Major," Visha whispered, shuddering and shivering from the rush of adrenaline that had propelled her around the desk like an artillery shell. "Oh, God, what happened to us? Why? Why are we here? How is this even possible?"
"God," Tanya repeated softly, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of Visha's head. "This is my third life, Visha. At the end of my first, I offended the thing that calls itself 'God'. It was slothful, and arrogant, and it cursed me by sending me to live in a world where I would suffer. To live in the Empire, during the war."
"You volunteered," Visha remembered. "Before the war ever began. Were you… trying to get away?"
"Correct as usual," Tanya concurred, hugging Visha tighter. "I wanted nothing more than a rear line posting, where I would be safe. But those damn war maniacs… every time I thought I had escaped that fate, I was roped into another assault, another attack."
"That's…" Visha murmured, frowning, as she pulled back from Tanya, the older woman's armed releasing her gently. "You proposed many of those attacks and assaults."
"Of course I did," Tanya said, smiling sadly as they looked at each other. "At first, I couldn't admit to cowardice, or they would have executed me. Yet after that, if I contradicted my lies, High Command would know that I been lying to them for years."
"If you'd told the truth, at the start…" Visha started to say.
"If I'd done that, they never would have believed me," Tanya answered. "And if they did, they wouldn't have accepted me into the army. I would have avoided the start of the war, sure enough, but you yourself were conscripted for your magical potential, dear Visha. Do you think that I would have avoided such a fate?"
Visha shivered. She didn't know. Like always, the Major had already weighed, evaluated, and made her decision on the idea that she herself had only just discovered.
"What will happen to us?" she asked, changing the subject as she stared up into Tanya's unfamiliar face. "The cadets. Why is the UNSC doing this? Are things truly that bad with their rebels, that they need to do this program?"
Tanya scowled, a ferocious expression
"Fools," she muttered harshly. "No, things are not truly that bad. But ONI has been convinced that they will only get worse, and so they must crack down harshly before the Insurrection becomes widespread. Their existing special forces were not up to the task, and so they went reaching for miracle solutions, like my damned paper on super-soldiers."
"But what is a super-soldier?" Visha pressed, her old worries clawing deep, even through the soothing balm of her knowledge that she was not alone in this strange new world. "Are they trying to train mages? I haven't seen anything about magic here."
"No, Visha, not mages," Tanya reassured her, though her voice quickly became grim. "They do not even know that magic exists. Our paper was wild, and full of experimental ideas. Robotic exoskeletons for a new type of powered armor that is much more durable. Expertly trained and psychologically inculcated soldiers to wield them, starting from a young age. Even… 'cybernetic' enhancements. ONI wants us to do them all – the full suite of improvements to human beings."
Visha tilted her head in confusion.
"What is a 'cybernetic' enhancement?" she asked, the English word unfamiliar and standing out in their all-Germanian conversation.
Tanya's scowl grew tighter, more serious, and she closed her eyes for a moment before responding.
"When you and the other cadets undergo puberty," she said, speaking slowly and precisely. "The doctors will perform surgeries on you. They will cut and trim, and implant small devices to enhance your bodies. Growth hormones and other chemicals that will synergize with your own body's puberty hormones. Your eyes will see further and spot patterns quicker. Your reflexes will be like lightning. Your muscles will be stronger. Your bones will be unbreakable. You will be taller than most normal men."
"Taller?" Visha repeated, her eyes widening. "But Major, I don't want to be tall! The taller I am, the bigger of a target I am! I'd rather be short, like you were!"
Tanya's face twisted. It was split right down the middle, her lips crinkled both upwards and downwards, eyes twinkling and glaring simultaneously, one half amused and one half offended.
Visha winced. She hadn't meant to rub Tanya's face in her old height problems, for the Major had always been sensitive about it… but they had all used to joke about how it made her a better fighter. She remembered Koenig and Grantz chuckling about it with the Major once, in one of the quiet moments on some forgettable battlefield.
"It is inevitable that current situation cannot stand," Tanya told her, solemnly. "I do enjoy it, but I am afraid that soon enough, dear Visha, you will once again be taller than me."
She smiled weakly, and Visha did the same. One of them chuckled, Visha wasn't sure which, and soon enough they were both chuckling and giggling and trying to pretend that this wasn't a deeply horrifying idea.
"This future is scary," Visha confided in her superior. "So many things that I could barely imagine back home. Travelling to other stars… implanting things like this in people. I don't know how you can act like this is normal."
"You're young, Lieutenant," Tanya said, mock chidingly. "I'm twenty-five years old, so I've had all those years to get used to this world. It's not so different from my first one, admittedly."
"Will we..." Visha tried to say. The words didn't want to come out. "The implants. The… cybernetics. Will we…"
Tanya closed her eyes, and pulled Visha in to her chest again, hugging her tight. She didn't speak for a long moment.
"We have several years to refine the technology," she said, but her voice was frail. "To improve the chances."
"What are the chances?" Visha asked, biting her lip. "Right now."
"Eleven percent," Tanya whispered, confiding the secret to the top of Visha's head.
"Eleven percent…" Visha repeated, thinking it over with hesitancy. For an army, an eleven percent casualty rate was atrocious, more than enough to annihilate morale and ruin their combat effectiveness. But for training, an eleven percent wash-out rate was fairly good. "That's… not horrible. That's… eight losses, nine if you round it up. Not up to our old standards, but uh, it's…"
Her voice faded, and even her thin attempt at a joke failed to draw any response from Tanya. She pulled back slightly, and saw that Tanya's face was frozen stiff. Her eyes were red from all the crying, and there was a sorrowful cast to them.
"Not eleven percent failure," Tanya admitted. The words echoed in Visha's ears, like a shovel of dirt being dropped on a coffin. "It's an eleven percent success rate."
Visha's breath caught in her chest.
Not eight deaths. Eight survivors.
"That's…" she tried to say something, but she didn't even know what to say.
An eighty-nine percent casualty rate was beyond horrific, beyond imaginable. Eighty-nine percent simply didn't happen in a battle, because people panicked and ran away before they could die like their comrades.
"It will be improved," Tanya said fiercely, her jaw clenched. "A month ago, it was ten percent. I have four science teams working on it, day and night, for the next seven years at the shortest, ten years at the most. I refuse to allow you to die."
Visha smiled feebly.
"Don't worry about me, Major," she tried to reassure Tanya. "I'd rather than everyone survives. Don't… don't tailor it for me, if it means one of the other kids dies."
She hoped that would cheer her old superior up, but if anything, it had the opposite effect. Tanya's eyes grew sadder, the bags beneath her eyes deepened.
"Visha," she said, before pausing. Hesitating. Something that Visha had rarely ever seen her do. "You are the least compatible with the augmentations. If anyone dies… it will be you."
Tears dripped from Tanya's cheeks, and Visha threw herself forward, squeezing her old friend tight.
"I won't die!" she promised, the words hollow as she said them, but she said them as fiercely as she could, to reassure Tanya. "I won't! You don't have to worry!"
"Oh, Visha," Tanya sighed, hugging her. "You don't have to worry. I'll crack the whip on those damn scientists until we have a hundred percent success. You will be fine. I swear it."
They sat there like that for some time. Minutes, maybe. It felt like hours.
Perhaps it was Visha's childish body, but it felt… so good to be held in Tanya's arms, safe and warm, like there was nothing in the world that could touch her. It was the first real human contact she'd had since ONI had kidnapped her, and there was something miraculous about the fact that it was with the person she trusted most in the whole world – in both her lives, no matter what world they'd been on.
Finally, however, they had to straighten up. Visha pulled away from Tanya reluctantly, and slowly climbed back to her feet as Tanya rose.
There was an awkward shuffle as Visha walked back around to the chair in front of Tanya's desk, and Tanya searched through her drawers for tissues or cloths to scrub at her cheeks. They'd never had problems with dignity, not in all the years that they'd shared a tent on the frontlines, but they'd also never been quite so honest about their feelings and fears as that moment.
"Was this all you wanted from me, ah… Doctor Halsey?" Visha asked, a slight grin on her face as she tried out Tanya's new name. She couldn't go around calling her Tanya, after all. There were appearances to be maintained, discipline to keep in order.
"Ah… yes, Cadet," Tanya answered, with her own awkward smile. She glanced down at her desk, and saw the small evidence bag that was still full of plastic and metal. "Oh. What was this about?"
Visha looked at the bag, and winced slightly. It was amazing how just a few minutes could change so much. She'd been terrified of what Doctor Halsey would do to her, after she'd broken the valuable device, and now, it seemed almost completely irrelevant.
"I destroyed government property," she told Tanya promptly.
"You did?" Tanya asked, a perturbed expression on her face as she picked up the bag in one hand, and inspected the contents. "Is this a watch?"
"Yes, Doctor," Visha winced, but smiled anyway.
Watches were very expensive, what with all the clockwork they needed to work, and also the supply bottleneck, since most of the good watch-makers were instead working on magecraft orbs. Still, she was confident that Tanya could come up with some bureaucratic excuse for it.
"Huh," Tanya remarked, blinking once before shrugging. "Just go get another one from Sergeant Wentworth at the armory. Watches are cheap these days, you know. How did you even break it, anyway? These things are designed to be durable."
"I was trying to channel magic through it," Visha admitted. "I don't have a proper orb, and doing all the math for non-orb magic was too much to juggle while I was shooting, so I tried to improvise."
Tanya paused, and stared down at the watch, then up at Visha, confusion on her face.
"But it's not clockwork," Tanya pointed out, the suspicion in her voice slowly fading into fascination. "Watches are printed circuitry. They don't share almost any of the same technology as before. Did… did it work?"
"Partially," Visha reported, folding her hands behind her back as she settled into her familiar stance when she was reporting to the Major. "I found it worked for low-level enhancement formulas, but too much and it started to smoke."
"…digital watches can be used for magecraft," Tanya said slowly, her voice growing more intense as she stared at the watch. "That's…"
She reached into the pocket of her lab coat, and pulled out an object. Visha's eyes widened as she recognized it immediately – the shining ruby-red of the Type 97 Elenium Magecraft Orb.
"I had this made custom," Tanya told her, her voice distant, as she stared at the broken watch in one hand, and the gleaming orb in the other. "I had a lot of failed prototypes, and I lost a lot of money doing it. But I wanted an orb, for personal safety, so I did. I never even considered testing for substitute technologies."
She let out a huff of air, and a wry smile appeared on her lips. She looked amused, but at what, Visha did not understand.
"What a perfect example of officers versus enlisted," Tanya said, more to herself than to Visha. "I painstakingly insisted on the same weapon that had won me the last war, and failed to anticipate the changing times. While the enlisted man simply takes whatever he has on him, and made it work anyway, with improvisational ingenuity."
Tanya gasped suddenly, and looked up, her gaze locking onto Visha with a familiar intensity, a mania in her eyes that Visha knew all too well. Visha braced herself.
"Visha, do you realize what this means?" Tanya exclaimed, dropping the priceless Type 97 on her desk without a care, and cradling the broken watch with reverence. "Circuity can be used for magecraft! That's amazing!"
"If you say so, Doctor," Visha replied, not seeing why her superior had suddenly perked up.
"Imagine the possibilities!" Tanya insisted, holding up the evidence bag. "Circuity is in everything these days, Visha. Including the exoskeletons that Doctor Sullivan is experimenting on! What if we could replicate a mage orb in them? What if your power armor was a mage orb? Imagine how powerful this program could be if you and the other cadets could also fly?"
Visha smiled gently, and nodded her head.
"Of course, Doctor," she agreed. The possibility was interesting, she admitted, but that wasn't why she was smiling. She was smiling because it was good to see her old friend happy again, rather than maudlin and depressed.