Chapter Text
They say a good mech operator on the field can last up to twenty four hours all in one solid, continuous shift. Any longer than that and they start to get ideas. It was Angel’s job to make awful pilots of every person she got her grease-stained hands on. Her personal record was two and a half years, the bot was called x0201 and the girl she called Carter. Toni Carter. Young and butch and stupid with this can-do attitude that was washed away by the crashing waves of the frontline that crawled forwards and back, but never left this scarred and brutalized strip of land. When x0201's radio contact cut the first time it was nine months in and Angel was sure she'd never see that girl or that bot again. She missed the climactic return, half jammed limbs clamoring up the docks from the brackish and polluted sea, trash and plantlife dangling from the chassis, its paint worn and blasted off in a million new ways. When it was cut the second time was two weeks ago.
Angel slept in the watchtower every night since.
It was the most dangerous place to be on all of the base, exposed, a priority target for infiltrators. The people who worked there strong-armed the company until it agreed to have only one person up there and only for six hours at a time, four shifts, that rotated slowly to spread the danger. Each of the six of them got to know her much better over that time, but none of them could truly understand why she chose to be there. She'd lost pilots before- hell, she'd lost pilots since, her case load shifting like the borders, never the same for long. The x0 models only contain enough coolant to keep the cabin compatible with human life for seventy two hours. With careful planning, last time Carter was able to push it to ninety. It has been three hundred and ninety eight hours and forty four minutes since lock in. The x0 model cannot be disembarked from the inside.
She was dead.
Angel's commitment to this one specific pilot was noted, at first as an annoyance, but later as a lever they never quite capitalized on.
The hr office that Angel was dragged to was like a snapshot of an old TV show. Its lights were crisp and bright, its carpet vacuumed, its furniture clad in wood veneers not unlike the ceramic ones on the managers teeth. She left smudges on everything she touched like an afterimage of her every move.
“Engineer Ortega.” The manager addressed her as if she was a military officer. “You seem stressed… the company would like to formally extend a day off to grieve the loss of Operator Carter.”
Olive branches aren't supposed to have thorns. Angel didn't even entertain the statement beyond an objection. “Carter's not dead.”
“All operators are considered dead on forty eight consecutive hours without radio contact, Ortega, your file says you’ve never had a problem with this policy before.” He raised an eyebrow at her response.
“No… not Carter. Carter’s come back before. She’ll come back again.” Pure, unfettered delusion. Being a little crazy is what keeps somebody sane on the battlefield.
The manager just shook his head and sighed. This is what they wanted, no matter how crazy it would make her. She didn’t have to be normal, she had to establish connections. If she was obsessive to the point of losing her mind, that’d just make the wet grafting process easier. “Ah yes, Operator Carters… party trick. It’s well known, I assure you. Still, it must be stressful waiting on her return.” He sighed, trying not to seem too frustrated with the grieving woman. “We want to prepare you for a transfer anyways, so you’ll have two weeks after your day off to hand down information on the files for x0419, x0351 and x0514 if they are to survive that far, and you will not be given new assignments. If your operators all expire by the end of this trial period, please focus your work solely on training engineer Riker.”
“You want me to… to hand over my operators?” Angel responded, incredulous. “No if I’m getting transferred, they're coming with me! I can't trust some greenhorn to-”
He cut her off. “They are the company’s operators, Engineer Ortega, and they are grown adults. Besides, you’re being taken off the x0 project entirely.” He spoke fast and firm, refusing to let her get a word in despite many, many attempts. “You have been reassigned to the Cascade project to work with c1 mechanics and operators. The company has determined you are better suited to the projected lifespans of c1 operators in a hybrid role.”
“Cascade? We abandoned Cascade. The immersion fluid was just– I mean you must have seen it! Exposing these kids– and they’re really kids- eighteen year olds with no training and shit- it's not okay! I mean the mental effects alone, not to mention the potential nerve damage-” Angel spoke fast and loud to get her protests out, only doubling down until-
“Have been taken into consideration and deemed within acceptable limits, understanding current circumstances!” He stood out of his seat to shout at her. The manager had soft hands, but he wasn't a small man. Small men don't survive out this far without a mech suit on. She stopped, wondering for a moment if he was like her, holding on desperately to whatever job numbers his years rather than his days. He took her silence as an invitation.
“Engineer Ortega, consider your leave extended, and your current position terminated effective immediately. Your transfer goes through at the end of two weeks.” He almost sounded sorry, or maybe she was.
The argument did not continue. Angel stared, somewhere between furious and despairing, as several seconds stretched on and on. Then she stood up, shoved her chair over, and left. She expected the guards to escort her out, but no one even said a word to her on the long walk back to the tower. She slammed doors, shoulder-checked walls, glared at everyone, but everyone just gave her space. She was clearly the last to know.
Two weeks. No work. They don't build outposts nor mechanics with leisure in mind. She doubled down hard into sitting in that watchtower, waiting for her knight in tarnished armor to come and save her, with or without her tattered x0. If you make it back from a mission alive but too injured, they usually transfer you to research and development. A well experienced operator like Carter could become a consultant to talk some sense into these people while Angel worked to make the c1 safer and less invasive to operate. She dreamed a life for them together as she watched out the cracking bullet proof glass as the rain came down hard enough to muffle the distant crack of gunfire, lights sparking over rolling, marred hills. An explosion. The muzzle flash of an x0s main gun flickering until the red glow of an overheated barrel became too intense. The lightning streak of the enemy combatants plasma rail obliterating all it came into contact with, caustic smoke mixing with the burning rain. The fighting was close. She should be happy she was leaving.
By the end of two weeks, she'd slept five times. Long, uneasy, unrestful sleeps as she could no longer keep her eyes flicking between the sea and the encroaching frontline. She'd left the watch tower twice, both before she convinced the watchmen and the dining hall to just bring her her food and set it near her faux campsite. No one celebrated her departure, no going away party, no well wishes for the apparent promotion. It was clear that that would be painful, like celebrating an upcoming euthanasia. It would be better to mourn her once she was gone, and in some cases before then. She was a shell, dead to the world, and still a reflection of one of the least cruel fates the company had to offer.
And so the day came, possibly a little early, and Angel's friends helped her pack her belongings into the provided boxes and bags. They said their teary goodbyes, her operators- the two remaining ones- promising they would keep safe and write back soon. The ride in the transport was long and rocky, but when you're this deep into the game any turbulence short of mortar strikes would do little but rock you to sleep.
Research and development was being conducted well behind their own lines, though still within spitting distance of the action as the war continued to turn against them. It was buried beneath the ground in a complex and unmapped labyrinth of bunkers and boltholes. The windowless transport offered no hint of the out as it wound down into the tunnels, dropping off this or that person. Until finally, at some place so deep the pressure was tangible, it left Angel in a small hab block. The C1 lab staff quarters. A roomy, well lit, clean sort of place where the wires were all tucked away under the wall panels and the smoke alarms still worked. She stood at the arched entrance staring up at the high ceilings, feeling like a released animal. She hadn't worked in weeks. She'd no longer be leaving those prints everywhere she touched, but something about an untarnished white unnerved her. It was at once nostalgic and alien.
More white and crisp blue flashed over her vision as someone's small hand waved in front of her face.
“-ou okay? You look really pale…” a soft and accented voice spoke beneath her. A petit medical officer, her long hair tied back in a pony tail, her gloves free of blood stains, her chubby cheeks clearly showing off her good health. Her stomach showed good health too, round despite her slender frame. Angel had to blink a few times. She seemed to be in that awkward phase, maybe just bloated, maybe pregnant. Did Angel really land herself in a place with an active repopulation program?
“Oh uh… yeah, I'm good just…” Angel's words caught in her throat when she tried to speak without knowing what she was saying.
“I know, I know, it's a big leap off the front lines!” The medical officer spoke to her in that gentle tone usually reserved for the young or mentally unstable. “I'm Avery Donovan, the nurse for Project Cascade. You're Handler Ortega, right?”
A new title, it burned to hear, but Angel tried not to seem so disgusted by it. “Yes… That's me, new promotion and all.”
The nurse started to guide her along, one hand on her arm. The blocks for Cascade were a lot more organized than the research and development complex as a whole. Things flowed into each other in a logical, symmetrical way. Common areas in the center, wings of homes on either side with stairs and elevators to a higher level, a door to the classified parts of the project behind them. The medbay, or at least the superficial little nurses office, was the nearest room to the doors that led deeper in. Avery herded Angel inside and coaxed her up onto a clean, pre-conflict styled medical chair. Posters lined the walls. A scale in the corner. It all made Angel feel like she was taken from her uneasy life and dropped into an even less stable facsimile of something that hasn't existed in decades.
“So I have your medical files here, but any new injuries since your last checkup? Any chance you may have had x0 coolant enter your body through a wound or orifice? How's your sexual health?” The questions came in rapid fire, a little trick to make them seem less odd. Normal question, normal question, question about her balls. It was almost comical, clearly the company knew the answer to the first two, and were just trying to brush past this.
“Thats not really ap–” She stopped herself. Actually it was appropriate, this is a nurse, in a medical office, in a place that has a repop program. “Uh. I guess no, no, and fine?”
The nurse noted a few things down, nodding. “Good! You know you’d be surprised, but when you throw three generations of young people into the machine that ruins your body and kills you, one of the first things to go is the organs not directly responsible for keeping you alive.” She laughed about it, but it wasn’t funny. “Would you be interested in joining the repopulation program?”
Angel paused, chewing her lip as she thought about it. Getting laid was the last thing on her mind, but…
She waited too long, and the nurse spoke up. “Oh uh, don't worry about it too long- it was never an actual question.”