Viktoriya Ivanov Serebryakov was afraid.
A pair of MP's walked in front of her, and a pair walked behind her. They were escorting her not to the main auditorium, but somewhere else.
Four days the investigation had been going on. Four days of painstaking analysis of everything that Tanya had done as the head of the Spartan-II Program. Four days of questioning her every decision, her every action.
None of it was sticking. It wasn't a surprise to Visha: she had helped Tanya prepare for this kind of thing for years now. Tanya had been understandably worried about a political attack from inside ONI as soon as she had fired Captain Wilson, much less before she'd started stepping on toes.
Visha had helped Tanya with so many preparations over the years. They'd vetted the training staff, removing all those who didn't measure up to their standards of ethical and moral principles. They'd wargamed out the various ways that Tanya might have been called to the carpet for what she called a 'performance review'. They'd even taken turns pretending to be various ONI officials with an axe to grind.
The Military Policemen had probably noticed that she was scared, but they probably thought it was for some other reason. The fear of death, of punishment, of torture.
But this was not Visha's first life, and this was not the first time she had faced all of those possibilities. By now, certain fears had been burned completely out of her brain.
Artillery. Guns. Superior Officers. All those, and more, had become mundane to the former Lieutenant of the Germanian Aerial Mage Corps.
There was only one fear that was worthwhile to Visha. Only one that could make her tense up.
Failing the Major.
And at the moment… Visha had failed her.
Tanya had been so clear about the problems of the Spartan-II Program. She'd been ironclad in her determination to see not a single cadet die to the augmentations – explicitly because if one of them had, it would have been Visha.
The Major had always been a sentimental sort of person. It was hard for others to understand, but Visha had cleaned up the results of the Major's workaholic planning nights too often to believe that Tanya was foolhardy or arrogant. She cared for the men so much that she refused to allow even the slightest possibility of harm to come to them – even as she led them into greater and greater battles, all because of orders.
She was trapped, in both lives. A victim of her own success, forced to perform miracle after miracle for Generals Rudersdorf, Zettour, and Lergen, to continue to bail out the war effort. And here, in this third life, the Major was trapped by ONI's demand that she make super-soldiers to solve their Insurrection.
Was it truly fate for Tanya to suffer? Had she truly antagonized God, as Visha's dear friend had once confided to Visha, in the secured privacy of her office?
Or was it simply that humanity never changed, and kept demanding that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few… and Tanya was simply the poor soul trapped at the lever, watching the trolley barrel down the tracks towards the victims tied to them?
Visha didn't know, and frankly, she didn't care.
For years, she had believed that she had a potential solution to the Major's problem, and if it cost their last secret, then so be it. She was willing to make that deal with the devil, willing to cross the line, willing to risk it all, just to ensure that Tanya was not forced to watch Visha die.
She was going to give Magecraft to the Office of Naval Intelligence.
It had seemed so simple, those years ago. The idea had started when Tanya had told Visha that watches ran on 'circuit boards' these days, rather than clockwork. It had percolated, slowly taking shape until it had occurred to her one day, laying in the bunk-bed of the old communal dormitories, the same kind of dormitories that the Spartans were staying in during this investigation.
Wilson's conspiracy had been six years in the making, and for six long years, Visha had kept a secret from Tanya – that the conspiracy had approached her in the early days.
Right after Captain Wilson had been fired, on the very same day that Visha had discovered that the dreaded Doctor Catherine Halsey was her old friend Tanya… she had been approached by one of the trainers, and quietly asked to be a part of it. Oh, the man hadn't used those words, but he'd asked her to 'keep an eye out for any abuses'. To make note of things that she thought were unfair, or cruel, or sadistic.
It was clear that the conspiracy wanted to use Visha as some kind of 'whistleblower', as Tanya might have called it. They'd claim that she was a canary in the coal mine, sounding out the early warning of impending danger and death… but it was clear to Visha that she was going to be used as a patsy. A mouthpiece.
They would feed her lines, give her lies to parrot, and tell her all the monstrous things that they would need as justification for taking over the Spartan-II Program.
It was a decent plan… if Visha had been the scared, terrified six-year-old that they'd believed her to be. It lost some points for taking so long, of course. As her old friend Elya might have said, relying on an asset to stay loyal for that length of time without contact was a foolish mistake. You'd never know if they decided to defect or turn into a double-agent!
Visha had assumed that she'd be able to switch things around at the last second. It had been a mistake.
For years, she'd pinned her hopes on Magecraft, and for years she had been increasingly proven wrong.
There was no magical potential in any of the other Spartans. There was no magic in anyone, save for Tanya and for Visha.
And even that was fading.
The decay was so subtle that it had taken years for either of them to notice.
For Visha, she'd already been operating on incredibly small amounts of magic, utilizing formulas on devices not designed for them. She put only a small amount of mana into the formulas, so as to not accelerate the destruction of her watches.
For Tanya, she had barely touched Magecraft unless she absolutely needed it, operating almost entirely without it.
But the truth was undeniable. Their magic was fading.
Tanya had noticed it about a year ago, when she'd done a random check of her Type 97 Mage Orb, and realized that somehow, someway, she was weaker. Her mana reserves, her strength of magical potential that had always been one of the Majors foremost talents… reduced.
It hadn't been the first time that magic had come up between the two of them, but it was the moment that made everything click for Visha.
Visha hadn't simply been hoping and praying that her gambit would work on ONI. She was a graduate of the Imperial War College, and a veteran of the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion. Initiative, aggression, decisiveness, those things were as ingrained in her as breathing.
She'd conducted experiments. She'd taught simple little mage formulas to the other Spartans, disguised as mathematical mantras that helped her concentrate. She'd looked for the signs, be they as subtle as the improved performance at the rifle range or the running track, or as distinctive as the glowing eyes.
It had never worked. Not once. Not a single Spartan had even the slightest drop of magic in them.
The first taste of fear had entered her heart when those tests had failed.
Visha had tried to stifle it, tried to remind herself that she was just a child, and that she didn't really know as much about magical theory as the Major. After all, during her time as Doctor Schugel's test pilot, Tanya had been forced to learn quite a lot about magical theory, if only to keep herself alive from the man's prototype orbs.
Visha could still hear the words from that conversation, just a few years ago:
"Do you think that anyone else has magic?" she had asked Tanya, keeping her tone light and casual, as if this was nothing but an idle thought, and not a desperate fear.
They'd been having coffee, Visha remembered. She'd just finished fixing two cups on Tanya's expensive coffee machine that the Major could never quite get to work properly, and she had set them on the desk as she'd asked.
"I've thought about it," Tanya had admitted, sipping from her cup. "From what I understand of the history back in Germania, there were signs of magic even before the Industrial Revolution and its consequences altered the landscape from an artistic mystery into a reproducible science."
"Oh?" Visha had prompted, barely keeping her excitement and hope out of her voice. "How so?"
"Usually, it was through some form of primitive focus," Tanya had said, shrugging. "Feats of unusual strength or agility, but only when wielding some arcane tool. A good comparison are the watches you keep breaking, actually."
Visha had pouted at the reminder. Tanya had her Type 97, but she'd had it custom made on the Inner Colony world of Circumstance, and she couldn't simply order another one without raising a lot of questions from ONI about why.
"Many objects can be used as a substitute for a proper orb," Tanya had recounted, leaning back in her office chair and looking up at the ceiling in thoughtful contemplation. "Pathetic substitutes, mind you, but enough to become noteworthy. The tales told were not from pure propaganda or mythology, but because some magic users were able to continually achieve results, and this was noticed."
"There are tales like that in the UNSC," Visha had said, hope blooming in her chest at the time.
"Yes, but far fewer," Tanya had replied, shrugging. "And they've never managed to reproduce any of them, via any effect. Given how many charlatans keep trying, and that none of them have ever succeeded, I think it is fairly certain that the people of the universe do not have magic."
Now, as she walked through the corridors following the Military Police to her destination, Visha could not help but wonder if the slow drain that was affecting them was the same thing that had drained away all the magic from the other people – assuming they'd had any magic in the first place.
But either way, the future was set. There was no magic to use as a bartering chip in Visha's attempt to save Tanya, and herself.
Which meant… which meant…
She kept her expression stiff, her tears locked away. She couldn't afford weakness right now, no more than she could have afforded it on any of their missions in that past life. But it hurt.
Finally, after a few minutes of walking that had seemed like hours while Visha was stuck thinking to herself, they arrived at an unmarked door guarded by another pair of MP's.
The MP's exchanged passcodes, and once they were satisfied, they ushered Visha into the room alone, without anyone following her.
It was a conference room, but someone had clearly removed the usual central table. Instead, they'd brought in a plush, overstuffed chair from somewhere and set it at the epicenter of a half-circle of business chairs.
There were five people in the room. Visha scanned them on reflex, and stiffened to attention, snapping a salute at the Rear Admiral that was sitting in front of her.
"At ease," the Rear Admiral said, waving her salute away without actually returning it. Visha bit back a frown at that – he was an admiral, it was his prerogative if he wanted to break regulations. "Please, take a seat."
She recognized him. It was Rear Admiral Laborde, the more aggressive, antagonistic of the two Rear Admirals that had been questioning Tanya for the last few days.
Why couldn't it have been Darlan? Visha thought to herself, morosely.
The other four people in the room were a strange mixture that she both didn't recognize, and did.
Two of them were total strangers, wearing space-black ONI uniforms with no rank insignia, but with names: Langford and Blunt. She didn't know why they were there, but if she had to guess, they were representatives of some detachment, some department. They didn't look like Section Three. They weren't fit enough, and nor did their expression indicate the barely-restrained lethality that was so common with members of her Section. They must be from Section One, or Two, or perhaps both.
The next was a man in an Army uniform, who she recognized. Captain James Ackerson, the commander of the Army Ranger unit that had done a joint training session with them just a year ago.
That had been an interesting day. Visha had survived the surprise ambush, but that had been when she first realized that her magic was becoming more difficult. She'd been slower than normal, slow enough that the man had actually gotten a glimpse of her before she'd knocked him out. Sloppy, she'd thought at the time.
The final man in the room, however, stole her thoughts away from Captain Ackerson, the supposed ally who hadn't lifted a finger to help Tanya thus far.
"Visha, how nice to see you again," said Major Arnold Wilson, standing up and smiling at her. It wasn't a pretty sight. She could tell that he thought he was being reassuring, but knowing what she did about the man, it simply looked… wrong.
"Major Wilson," she said, nodding to the man.
"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Victoria Pelham, Candidate 016," Wilson said, turning and addressing the other men and ignoring Visha instantly. "Visha, as she prefers to be called, is the inside source that I've been telling you about. She will confirm what I've warned ONI about for the last six years. That we never should have allowed Halsey to be anywhere near this project."
"Despite her having created it," pointed out one of the ONI officers, Langford, looking unimpressed.
"Yes, she did create it," Wilson said, nodding to the man. "And that was the first sign we should not have ignored. What kind of person decides to create the galaxy's definitive guide to committing war crimes?"
"There is a war on," the second ONI officer, Blunt, replied idly. "The program is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but if it prevents casualties, then it is worth it."
"To us, there is a war on," Wilson countered. "To those of us serving on the front lines, trying to stop the Insurrection from spreading. But Halsey was not one of us. She is not ONI, no matter how she dresses or how she talks. She wrote the original paper on how to make super-soldiers while she was a civilian at a prestigious university. And why?"
Because she was drunk, Visha thought to herself, though she didn't dare say it out loud.
"Because she was celebrating," Wilson said, emphasizing the words. "I've looked up the dates, and the day before Halsey submitted this paper, she had just earned her first PhD. A momentous achievement, to be sure, but what did she do to celebrate the achievement? She used her new title to support the most sadistic idea proposed yet. Her idea of fun was to write a detailed plan for how to kidnap, torture, and brutalize children."
It wasn't true at all. Tanya's idea of fun had been to drink, and to laugh at how much money the government wasted. To mock the very idea of an unlimited budget, and how the government could still spend it all anyway.
Tanya had told Visha, once, that she sometimes didn't know whether to laugh or to cry at the fact that ONI had completely missed the actual joke in the original research paper. The program was an abomination, without doubt, but the fact they'd taken her joke so seriously was the icing on the cake, the cherry on top. It made you laugh at how dumb the Government was, and cry at how those dumb people were still in charge of your life, your happiness, your peace, and freedom and so much more.
"Halsey wants one thing, and one thing alone," Wilson continued, not knowing Visha's thoughts. "She wants the power to spend billions on research projects, just to delve the sick twists of science."
Every single word of that is wrong, Visha thought to herself. Especially wasting all that money.
"And yet, none of that changes that we do need the Orion-II Program," Wilson said.
Visha stiffened, her eyes widening slightly as the words hit her.
Did Wilson… not want to shut the program down?
That was what he'd promised her. That he wanted nothing more than to end the program and help her return home.
It hadn't mattered to Visha that she might go home. She was a solider, and even if she had not been conscripted, it was likely that she would have wound up in the UNSC's ranks anyway.
But the others – the genuine children who knew no other life, who'd never had the opportunity to benormal in the first place. That was not their destiny, their inevitable life. They would have been normal children. They might have done anything else. Doctors, lawyers, engineers. Leaders and lovers and so much more.
"We simply don't need Halsey running it," Wilson said, and Visha's heart twisted more. "She has done valuable work in improving the augmentation chances, I'll admit that freely. But we are now well past the stage where more improvements will happen. To prevent the four expected casualties, we will simply not perform the surgeries on the four least compatible candidates – including Visha, here. There's no point in forcing her to die on a surgical table, as Halsey would insist."
He gestured to Visha with an open hand, and smiled at her. Visha looked back, stonefaced, and stared at him until he turned around.
"As well, there is also the matter of mental health and well-being to consider," Wilson said. "The abuses that she's heaped on these children, the pain she's caused them… it could provide a very real chance of breaking them. Before we augment them, we'll need to conduct psychological studies with a new team of outside experts, just to try to repair the damage that Halsey has done to them."
What damage? Visha thought with agitation. The damage of wrapping bandages around our injuries? Of praising us for our achievements? Of holding us close when we cried? How many lies will you make up? You weren't there, you have no way of knowing!
He was expecting her to lie. To make up fake events, to weave a narrative out of whole-cloth as justification for his takeover attempt.
Of course he was. There was no other way. Major Wilson wasn't blind enough to believe that Tanya had genuinely abused the children in all those ways.
But that was stupid.
What kind of idiots would listen to one child's lies, and overturn the evidence of Halsey, the Chief, Captain Stanforth, Doctors Meyer, Wu, Sullivan, and even the random trainers that they'd pulled in?
There was video evidence, there were medical checkups! There was Déjà, the A.I. who could show them years of footage disproving those claims!
"So, Visha, why don't you tell us about how Halsey hurt you?" Wilson asked, trying to make his voice sound gentle, though even Visha could see right through it.
She stared at him, and her eyes caught on the tiniest bead of sweat dripping down the side of Wilson's face.
He looked… desperate.
Then it hit her like a bullet out of the blue sky. The same way she'd killed the most unaware Aerial Mages during the war, with an extreme range shot so hard to pull off that they simply never saw their death.
It was the fourth day of the investigation, and Visha had watched it all from her seat in the audience with the other Spartans. She had seen the same things that Rear Admiral Laborde, the two ONI officers, and Captain Ackerson had all seen from their respective seats: a complete and utter vindication of Tanya's decisions as the head of the program, and a complete repudiation of any slanderous accusations from the long-since fired Wilson.
This was Wilson's last hope. He was only calling on Visha because everything else had failed.
He hadn't succeeded. He hadn't convinced them to remove Tanya.
If he had, they wouldn't have been in this room. They'd have never bothered listening to a twelve-year-old girl if they'd already decided to remove Tanya from the program. It wasn't like her testimony would have moved them.
They were probably only here because ONI wanted to appear impartial, by giving Wilson every possible chance. It didn't matter, he couldn't succeed, so it was just more rope for him to hang himself with. It was a character test; and Wilson didn't realize it.
Which meant that all Visha needed to do… was tell the truth, and make it perfectly clear that Wilson was lying. To pass the same test of character that Wilson was failing.
Ironic. She hadn't told Tanya the truth – though she'd never once lied, not to Tanya, not to her Major – and she'd wound up in this situation.
Lying would change nothing. It was a negative option in absolutely every way. It would help no one: not Visha, the Spartans, the scientists, the trainers, no one. It would fail, and worse, it would make enemies of all these ONI officers who would knowthat she was lying. It would have been an attempt to put a sadistic, myopic man in charge of the Spartan-II program.
It would have been an attempt to hurt Tanya.
Telling the truth would simply be the final nail in Wilson's coffin. There was no downside to it.
"Doctor Halsey never hurt me," she said slowly and firmly.
Visha looked not to Wilson, but to Rear Admiral Laborde, the real power in the room. Laborde didn't say anything, but he stared back at her with an impassive gaze, as if checking her face for signs of lying.
Langford and Blunt were exchanging glances of their own, eyebrows raised. It seemed that they hadn't anticipated this. They leaned forward slightly.
Captain Ackerson, in comparison, leaned back, a slight frown on his face.
"There are a lot of ways to hurt someone," Wilson said, a small red flush creeping up his neck. "Did she starve you? Have the trainers beat you? Make you sleep on the ground, in the cold, without proper care?"
"She never did any of that," Visha denied, shaking her head.
"That isn't what you told me before," Wilson lied, pointing a finger at her accusingly. "You're changing your story."
"I never told you anything like that," Visha shot back. "You are the one making things up!"
It wasn't the most mature defense, but in her defense, she was twelve. She was under a lot of stress; even if it was for a different reason than anyone would have thought. The other officers in the room wouldn't judge her for that.
But they would judge Wilson, for getting into a childish argument with her. Even if they were amoral monsters, they'd dislike the fact that Wilson hadn't convinced her to play along, that he wasn't competent enough to have ensured her cooperation before asking her opinion.
"You told me-" he started to say.
"I told you I would tell the truth!" Visha cut him off. "Your men said they just wanted me to remember all the bad things that Doctor Halsey did. Every time she hurt me, or made me cry. I told your man that I would remember, and I have remembered. Six years, and the Doctor has never once hurt me."
The two ONI officers were leaning towards each other. Visha could see their lips moving in a whispered conversation that shouldn't have remained quiet in such a small conference room, but was still inaudible.
Rear Admiral Laborde had raised an eyebrow, but he still didn't speak up. He seemed content to let this conversation continue, to let their argument reveal whatever it could. That didn't help Visha at the moment, but she understood why Laborde was doing that.
It was a correct and proper move from the superior officer, a sign of decorum that also allowed him to maintain his neutrality until he'd made up his mind.
"Your man was one of the trainers," Visha continued, not letting Wilson speak. "You had someone on the training staff, back then. Some spy, some agent inside the program. He asked me to spy on the Doctor, and yes, I agreed – but I agreed because I was afraid! Because I was only six years old, and I didn't know any better."
Wilson's face was growing redder by the moment, blood rushing to his cheeks and brow as he glared openly at Visha.
She resisted the urge to smirk or smile at him. He had thought of her as some little girl, easily duped, but now that he'd dragged her here, the tables had turned. If he declared her untrustworthy, then he had no more cards to play. But he couldn't allow her to keep revealing things that she shouldn't.
"You were asked to keep track of abuse by a trainer who had already seen Halsey's corruption," Wilson argued, trying to reframe the narrative in a blatant, obvious manner. "After she seized power in the Orion program and forced the head of Section Three to remove UNSC officers from it."
Visha felt a little pity. Not for Wilson, but for the standards of the UNSC. The Imperial War College would never have allowed an officer to graduate from its halls with such a shoddy ability to argue in front of his superiors.
"To remove you from it," she said, stating the obvious. "Because of what you tried to do to us. You're projecting your own failures onto the Doctor, Major Wilson."
At this, Laborde spoke up.
"What failure would that be?" the Rear Admiral asked, from his seated position.
Wilson flinched, as if he'd forgotten that he was not alone in the room with Visha, but that they had an audience.
Another display of the man's poor discipline, Visha thought to herself.
"She is-" Wilson started to say.
"Not you," Rear Admiral Laborde said, cutting him off with a cool voice. "Cadet?"
"Six years ago, just before then Captain Wilson was removed from the Spartan program, he ordered the trainers to abuse us," Visha informed him. "We were doing a land navigation exercise, and upon locating the Pelican that would be our exfiltration, we spotted the trainers carrying stun batons, which was not normal."
"Not normal?" said Langford. His expression was tense, bitter. He looked like he was supremely unhappy with something, but Visha could not tell if it was her, or Wilson.
"Doctor Halsey had banned the use of stun batons," Visha explained. "Forcible coercion of children would only result in increased resistance and loathing of the program, as well as risking the growth of rebellion amongst us. The Doctor explained that to us early on, to make sure we understood. The only way that the program was ever going to produce loyal, trustworthy soldiers for the UNSC was if we were willing – and beating children into submission does not make them willing. It just makes them too afraid to speak out."
Langford bit his lip, but said nothing more.
"We saw them from the cover of the treeline," Visha said, recounting that horrible day. "John came up with a test to determine if the trainers were trouble or not. We had Kelly report in, and then fall back. When she did, the trainers drew their stun batons, and one of them came after her with a drawn weapon. So we ambushed him, knocked him unconscious, and then repeated it on the other two."
"You were insubordinate and needed a firm hand!" Wilson snapped, unable to keep his silence any longer. "This proves the validity of my actions."
Visha's eyes flashed to Rear Admiral Laborde – but the superior officer said nothing, apparently content to watch the yelling match. She was on her own.
Was this another test from the Section Zero man? To see how she handled the confrontation? To see if Visha was making things up, and if the lie would falter under pressure.
"Do you remember what happened next?" Visha demanded, meeting Wilson's glare with her own. "Do you remember what happened after we knocked out those trainers?"
"Halsey failed to understand the danger, and abused her authority to get me removed!" Wilson barked back, gritting his teeth.
"No!" Visha countered fiercely. "In the forest. Do you remember what happened in the forest, after that?"
Wilson's eyes shifted in a sign of recognition. It seemed that he did remember, but he didn't understand.
"You were the only one to understand what you had to do next," Wilson said, biting the words out. "That's why my man approached you. Because you were the only one to realize that this is a war, not a damn daycare!"
She could tell that it was meant to be a compliment, but the words made her stomach churn.
Wilson's approval of her actions, even all these years later, was an unpleasant twist that she didn't like.
Tanya had told her, once, that Wilson had approved of her decision, but it had been too distant, too removed. Staring at the man while he openly expressed a desire to see her kill UNSC personnel, just for some kind of moral lesson… it was something else. Something ugly.
What kind of a monster kills his own comrades? She thought to herself, disgusted with Wilson.
"After we knocked out the trainers, I picked up a rock, and I went to finish the job," Visha told the other officers in the room, turning her head to look at them all. "I thought I couldn't trust the UNSC, so I went to kill the trainers. The only reason those men are alive right now is because John talked me out of it. Otherwise, I would have bashed their heads in, and left their bodies there for the wolves."
Langford looked queasy. His companion, Blunt, was paling. Laborde had pursed his lips in disapproval. Ackerson's only reaction was to close his eyes for a moment, as if taking a slightly longer blink, and take a sharp, slow inhale.
"What do you think that would have done to my loyalty?" Visha demanded, turning back to Wilson. "How on earth would it have helped make me into a super-soldier? You wanted a war? You nearly got one – and I would have been on the other side, because of you! "