Work centred the mind.
Pull a cable. Connect a terminal. Check continuity
Repeat.
Test a hydraulic line. Patch the leak from a faulty seal. Retest.
Repeat.
Gaige worked for hours. Gaige almost forgot about her body until a breast brushed against her arm, or until she caught herself straddingling a piece of metal in a way that should’ve been just as uncomfortable - but in a completely different way.
Gaige worked through it. She had more important things to worry about.
She finished her work after well over twelve hours. Long enough to almost forget about Kotono. Long enough for the anger to simmer and reduce into something bitter that sat in the back of her mouth.
It crawled across her skin, creeping in under her breasts and between her legs,
Gaige forced herself to keep going.
First to make up for the time lost to torn clothes. Then to keep her mind off her situation.
She fished another cable through the spaceframe, working up into the cockpit behind the pilot’s instrument panel. Slender fingers, and longer arms helped simplify the job. Her legs made getting her body into the cockpit just that little bit harder.
She fit herself into the pilot’s seat to fit the gauges, wiring each one before locking it into place. Empty spaces still remained, but they’d only be filled at the Forge.
Alexandria had enough to fly, navigate and fire the main cannons. That’s all that could be fitted.
The last thing she fitted was a basic gyro-sight for the cannons, setting it on top of the instrument panel where the heads up display should’ve gone. Gaige didn’t expect they’d see actual combat - even as she wondered if giving shape to that idea in her mind didn’t all but guarantee it. A pair of 30mm gas-driven gatling cannons could bring a lot of hurt - enough to embarrass even a Hog.
She switched the circuit breakers to test the jet’s power systems.
Instruments hummed to life, flashing up dozens of warning messages for systems not yet fitted, filling the cockpit with glimmering oranges, yellows, reds and greens.
Gaige allowed herself to settle back into the Pilot’s seat bathing herself in the glow, closing her eyes for a single heartbeat.
She opened them, to be met by a pair of grey eyes at the centre of a broad, curious face. Grease and sweat shimmered on pale skin and gaige. A week’s worth of stubble framed pursed lips.
His eyes had focused on a point somewhere below her chin
A moment of mutual understanding passed between the pair. He blinked. She blinked.
“Shit!” Gaige yelped.
He sprang back, pushing off from the canopy.
“Shit! I thought you’d passed out,”
His body went rigid on locked arms. The eyes never raised above her neck. Her skin crawled beneath her clothes, her body begging to hide. Her arms crossed her chest
“If you like them so much , there’s some pink wave in the infirmary,” she said, biting her lip “But they’re not what they’re cut out to be,”
“Sorry,” The eyes didn’t move. Gaige felt herself glare. His eyes turned to the floor. “I thought you’d had an accident or something,”
The sense of exposure lingered, warring with the idea somewhere in the back of her mind that maybe he’d been telling the truth.
Hadn’t Mackie been in the exact same situation, more than once
“Just leave me alone.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
She waited for him to clamber down, looking at her legs disappearing under the pilot’s console. Gaige curled her toes in her boots to prove they were still attached, waiting until his footsteps had disappeared into the background noise of industry.
She looked out after taking a few moments to build up her nerve, just to make sure nobody was watching.
Outside Frigga’s industry rumbled on. People worked at their own vehicles. The Starlight Express thrummed from a side tunnel, steel wheels squealing as the locomotive it turned on its rails. The driver jumped from the cab, running forward to set the points to divert to the tunnel up to accommodation deck, sprinting back to the locomotive before it’d accelerated away from him.
He barely made it.
Above, Lun rained sparks as a welding crew got to work on one of the missile tubes, voices shouting at each other. Gaige saw someone straddle a girder, shuffling forward to fix one of the missile tube doors in place.
Some catgirls congregated at the back end of a Bolitho parked beside a pallet loaded with exocomp shells, chattering with each other. They’d dressed themselves in the same loose full-body work uniform. All three had the same tanned fur - only a single coloured band wrapped just short of the tips of their tails told them apart.
Gaige found herself wondering if any of them had ever been men at some stage in their life, before meeting the catgirl machine. She wondered how they dealt with it at the time,and how they still dealt with it.
They seemed happy.
She wondered if she could be that happy.
Gaige felt her fingers drum on the metal of the console. She thought about the group she’d joined up with on fenboards, and felt herself smile.
No matter.
She glanced at the screens in front of her, flickering with the expected failed tests from systems not yet fitted. A dozen red x’s listed out on the screen her jobs for the next two days. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she could blitz the lot of them in half the time, if she didn’t sleep.
Gaige decided to sleep anyway, if only to get a break from her body.
Dozens of eyes crawled across her skin as she clambered down from the jet. The body’s natural stride carried her across the steel floor to her parked motoroid with an artificial, hollow confidence.
Gaige felt her soul rattle around inside with every step.
She sighed, then settled herself onto her motoroid, fidgeting as she felt herself press up against it in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. She shifted forward and back in the saddle, before finally given up and finding some position that took the strain out of her arms and legs.
The discomfort elsewhere would just have to be dealt with..
She thought for a moment - discomfort would be the wrong word. It was more that it shouldn’t have been comfortable.
The ride back cleared her mind, her electric bike racing past what traffic remained in Frigga’s tunnels. She parked it up in a small enclave beside her apartment door, setting it out of the way of general traffic in the depths of a hard shadow.
Striplights overhead fizzed, casting the concrete walls in a green winter light. She felt the chill embrace her body, wrapping up under her breasts, making her feel her body once again.
A single door painted a night-sky shade of blue waited. A painted label on the wall identified it as 410-A. A single smoked-glass panel above the door shone with her name picked out in green LED segments.
Gaige Kisaragi.
The door opened with her key - a heavy mechanical lock rather than the fashionable - hackable - electronic types. It squawked as it opened, then followed her shut as she stepped through it.
The apartment door locked with a clunk, sealing her inside her own private space. Nothing, or no-one, could open the door without her permission.
She spun the barrel-key on its ring around her finger. When everything ended, she wondered if she’d be allowed to keep the apartment at least.
The lights flickered on, glass windows opposite her flashing from the black of space, to a mirror the whole apartment with the image of a woman standing in the doorway. It took a moment to realise that was her, looking back at herself.
She sighed, stepping inside. The hard heels of her boots clicked on the concrete floor, echoing off the walls around her. Her bed on the mezzanine overhead beckoned.Gage answered, climbing the stairs to meet it.
She slipped off her boots and stockings, then swallowed, pulled up her courage and peeled herself out of the bodysuit, leaving her body standing naked in cool air with the still unmade bed in front of her.
Every nerve ending on her body flared in the cold, intruding again into her mind. A shiver of cold crawled up her spine once again, to fill her chest.
A momentary terror that she’d been caught flashed inside
No, just the doorbell.
She slipped into her bathrobe, not sure whether it would be better if it was someone she knew, or someone she didn’t.
The bell chimed a second time and she hurried down the stairs, padding on the balls of her feet across the floor to the door. Gaige tried to viewscreen on the wall beside the door.
No Signal.
She cursed it, resigning herself to the surprise. Her hand unlucked
Blue eyes met blue, dead on. For a moment, she thought someone had set up a mirror as a prank. She cought the differences in the hair - cut short and left rough, followed by the polymer covers on the ears and hard look on her face.
“Sis…” she managed.
“You mind if I step inside?”
Jet’d treid to sound warm. She failed. Gaige felt the chill in her tone crawl up her back. Whatever Jet had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
“I was going to bed,” she offered quickly
“I only need a minute,” Jet assured.
Gaige felt herself step back involuntarily, her breath catching up in her throat. Her stomach sank to her feet, the dread crawling over her body.
She couldn’t escape.
“Alright,” she relented, stepping aside.
Jet stepped forward with a distinct tak-tak from her heels. Gaige felt the heat radiating from her body, a flux of energy that washed over her and soaked her to the bone.
Gaige regretted it the moment that door closed.
Jet stepped around, taking a moment to check the apartment.
“So, is it getting better?”
Gaige followed, the feeling in her stomach twisting itself over. She took a breath, centering herself,
“It’s like trying to carry a steel ball floating in a steel box and every time it hits the side I get an electric shock,”
Jet offered a smile that “Eventually the ball gets smaller,”
“I don’t know,” Gaige placed her hands on her breasts, pressing them together. “These are huge, and everything rubs and it’s always the first time.”
“After years getting used to this body, my first day wearing that one was pretty intense,” she smirked. “That night with Ford was really intense.” Jet’s eyes sparked. “You haven’t tried that yet?”
Gaige felt the flush rush from her face to a point deep within her body. Her knees pressed themselves together
“No,” she answered, her voice pulling tight
“You should,” Jet assured her.
“You didn’t come here to see if I’d masturbated yet?”
“No,” Jet shook her head, the light in her eyes going out as that hard look came back.
“Then why?”
“I know why you were shot down,”
“Oh.”
Gaige felt it descend on her like a dark fog
“They wanted you alive,” Jet said. “They know about the Foxhound’s engines. Which means they know about the plutonium, and why they were built that way.”
Oh.
The conclusion formed in a moment, growing fat in seconds. She felt it rise through her throat and form on her lips.
“I didn’t think it happen this quick,”
The words emerged with a squeak, her body tightening up into itself, winding
Her mouth opened one more time. Her throat caught. Tears welled up, her lips shivering as she pulled back. She looked away from her sister, she felt herself chase it, to try swallow it back. , ashamed in the moment at even being seen.
She swallowed. She felt her heart stop. She opened her mouth to speak, to beg Jet to leave.
It emerged with a scream. She tried to swallow. She felt herself scream again, a wreaking sob that rattled from her throat and filled the room. She glanced at Jet, the image of the cyber swimming in her vision. Her legs buckled under and she felt herself drop
Hard metal hands caught her, soaking up the heat of her body. She looked up, to her sister’s face set hard. Glass-blue eyes stared through her with absolute certainty.
“I’ve a mission for you,” she said. Gaige felt herselft swallow, another shiver running through her body. She felt herself swallow another sob. “Your mission is to hold it together. For as long as you can. “
Gaige found a single breath
“Every day you hold this together is a day the enemy doesn’t know who you are,
Which is one more day they don’t get the secret and one more day for me to find them.”
Gaige felt herself whimper, her mouth goldfishing open and closed, searching for words.
“No matter how bad you feel - every day you make it through this is another day you win and they lose.”
She gasped. She hiccuped. Her heart drummed in her chest . She felt every beat reverberate in her breasts. She gasped again, and she found her voice.
“And if it fails then what?” Another gasp “This is me forever!”
“If we fail….AC will look after you,” said Jet, her voice direct, but calm, with a certainty that made it impossible for Gaige to say no. “She’ll give you a safe space to stay if it ever comes to that, Somewhere you’ll be comfortable”
“I…. she started. Her voice caught. Something sat wrong on her skin, but she couldn’t tell what.
“Get a bath,” said Jet, interrupting the thought. “Go to bed. Get up in the morning and complete your part of the mission. I’ll talk to you in the morning”
“Sis…” Gaige managed. The vice-grip from the metal hands on her shoulder relaxed and she felt herself sway on her feet for a moment
“I’ll see tomorrow,”
Gaige felt herself nod, still shaking inside her own skin. Something inside her urged her to beg for an alternative, another option.
But the mission.
It had to happen.
She watched Jet leave and waited for the door to latch shut, sealing her in. Her breathing came rapid, begging her to run.
It faded after a few moments, leaving her alone with tears still streaming down her cheeks, with cold air nipping beneath the fabric of her robe
Her voice emerged as the smallest of whines “No…”
---
Jet waited for for the door to lock behind her before exhaling the breath she’d been holding. A parked motoroid stood waiting for her. She locked herself into the saddle, allower her mind to flow through the motoroid’s data connections. She unhooked her helmet from the handlebar, then slipped it over her head, letting the visor seal her in with her own thoughts.
She felt her shoulders sink under an invisible weight, like the entire system had settled onto her back.
“And I’ve just jammed my brother into a closet for the rest of his life”
She said it to herself.
Her own comm-link sparked in the back of her mind, accompanied by an identity token that formed in the shape of a grinning kitten
“Anika?”, she answered with her mind’s cybernetic voice.
“The ARSC are coming here!”
Even in synthesised voice, the panic ran clear. It sparked through in a microsecond.
“Well, they can fuck off!”
Jet heard her voice before she realised she’d spoken, a hot flash of anger lighting off in her veins.
There was a pause on the comm, an echo of a flinch from the other end.
“What?” Anika responded.
“Tell ‘em to fuck off. Tell ‘em from me!” Jet caught her breath.“I could do without some bored fucking mandarins looking to justify their worth to this year’s budget by fucking things up on me,”
“Jeez….”
The line closed, leaving Jet simmering alone in her own mind.
“Fucking hell” she breathed. “Fuck me for doing this. This’ll fuck it all up”
--
“We have a Stel-Oil on the station,”
Miyuri hadn’t realised she’d dozed off until Shinji’s voice snapped her out of it. It took a microsecond for her cybernetic mind to orient herself in the pastel colours of the shuttle interior. Shinji, still in his security uniformed.
“We could ask them what’s going on,” he suggested.
Miyuri settled back into the navigator’s chair, glancing at the flat-panel consoles around her. A NOTAN from Friggn flashed up in red
Radiation hazard. Reactor core on fire.
“You’re worried about your family?”
Shinji looked away a moment to hide his expression. “They’re not really my family,” he said quickly, before catching Miyuri’s expression. “I don’t hate them. But I don’t really fit in with them either, that’s all.”
Miyuri pondered a moment, trying to gauge Shinji’s true feelings. His discomfort filled the cabin, settling on her skin and soaking through to her bones.
“I’m worried about Mackie, but Frigga’s not a comfortable place for me.”
Not a place, but people. Not for the first time Miyuri found herself wondering if it hadn’t been something more ‘baked in’.
Miyuri let the idea die. It took her a few moments to find the address for the direct connection to the Stel-oil outpost. She keyed it in, finding herself hoping that somebody would answer. Those few moments of silence gave her mind time to run through all of the awful possibilities.
The face of a chinese man in his mid-40’s flashed up on screen, looking vaguely surprised at the sudden call. A smear of engine oil marked the point on his cheek where he’d recently been bothered by an itch.
Maybe he’d been disturbed from some basic maintenance. Nothing that’d be out of the ordinary.
“Ma’am?”
He did seem harried, worried or otherwise concerned - except by the usual concern that followed having someone of Command rank call up your quiet outpost out of the blue
“What’s the situation out there?” she asked, the words coming quicker than she would’ve like “We’re on our way for a social call, and we just got a NOTAN about a reactor fire,”
The face on the screen gave her a quizzical look, as if she’d grown a seperate head on her shoulder.
“That was...six months ago, ma’am.”
Miyuri felt something crawl across her artificial skin. Shinji behind her shifted position in the seat.
“Six months ago?
“It was in our log to corporate.” He stated. Obviously.
“You didn’t do anything else?”
It almost sounded like an accusation.
“You know we can’t take a position on behalf of corporate,” he said, a trickle of sweat glimmering on his forehead. “We reported it to our region manager - that’s all we can do. We’ve had no instructions back otherwise.”
“Hmmm…”
Following procedure. Doing what was expected. Letting the company decide how to handle a disaster with potential political ramifications. Somebody with more than an attendant’s viewpoint needed to make the call.
“You’re only getting this now?”
“Yes. Today’s date.” she confirmed.
He thought for a moment, taking a glance to see if anyone was listening behind him
“There’s a rumour going around that a few engineers were contaminated by a leak earlier ”
“A rumour?” she pushed.
“I’ll see what I can confirm,”
“Thanks,” Miyuri nodded, uneasy in her seat. An idea sparked in the back of your mind.“Can you send me through a copy of your logbooks?”
The sound of a quick burst of keypresses carried across the comm-link.
“Done.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Not a problem,” he smiled. Whatever had happened, he wouldn’t be found responsible - of that he had reassured himself.
The channel cut
“I’ve got it,” Shinji said. Direct download through his wrist-com, then scanned through his mind in a microsecond. “Station critical alert. Reactor core exploded during system test. No injuries to or involvement of Stellviacorp personnel. ”
“Exploded?” Miyuri looked to Shinji for an answer. “How does a fusion reactor explode?”
“I don’t know.” he said, looking out at the stars for a moment. She got the sense he was searching for the answer. Not even the interwave could give something quick
“That has to be an exaggeration.” Miyuri grasped for the obvious Frigga would be a tomb if one of their reactors exploded. But why keep it quiet?”
“Embarrassment,” said Shinji. “But now something’s happened that can’t be hidden”
He settled back into the pilot’s seat, exhaling a sigh, looking for a moment like he wanted to say something else
“What?”
His shoulders sank. He drew a deep breath, looking to Miyuri for a moment.
“NERV was a lot like that. People were afraid to own up to mistakes. Things were hidden until they couldn’t be.” Shinji paused a moment. “Jet’s a lot like that - she doesn’t take responsibility.”
--
A picture of every single desire Mackie had ever had, rolled up into one borderline unnatural form stared back at her through the condensation on the bathroom mirror. Gaige couldn’t help but stare, raw desire fizzing beneath her skin and up the back of her throat.
Gaige watched the woman in the mirror, her chest rising and falling in time with Gaige’s own breath and ached to just reach in and touch. Her arm reached out, mirroring the woman in front of her. Their fingers met on the wet glass. Gaige placed a warm hand on her own damp skin, pressing with the palm against her chest.
Of course it felt uncomfortable.
“Hold it together,” she breathed.
The inescapable truth; Mackie knew The Secret. Mackie, if he survived, would always have a target on his back. So The Secret died with Mackie.
Gaige knew nothing.
Gaige would be a safe place to hide. Not a comfortable one. Gaige would be the last place anyone would look for Mackie.
She finished drying herself, tying a white towel around her waist. She padded through her apartment, climbing the stairs, her hair leaving a trail of water droplets on the ground behind her.
Gaige stood by her bed, tenderly patting down the rest of her body, before finally drying her hair.She sat herself on her bed, feeling it creak beneath her. Being a full fifty centimetres taller, and having most of that below the waist, added a tint of strangeness even to something as simple as sitting.
She took a breath, taking a moment to gather her thoughts.
The laptop on her desk interrupted with a chime, a single notification flashing up onscreen.
Prometheus Forge guest security details and access codes. Expected arrival in two days.
At least the work would keep her mind off it.
--
Pull a cable. Connect a terminal. Check continuity
Repeat.
Test a hydraulic line. Patch the leak from a faulty seal. Retest.
Repeat.
Gaige worked for hours. Gaige almost forgot about her body until a breast brushed against her arm, or until she caught herself straddingling a piece of metal in a way that should’ve been just as uncomfortable - but in a completely different way.
Gaige worked through it. She had more important things to worry about.
She finished her work after well over twelve hours. Long enough to almost forget about Kotono. Long enough for the anger to simmer and reduce into something bitter that sat in the back of her mouth.
It crawled across her skin, creeping in under her breasts and between her legs,
Gaige forced herself to keep going.
First to make up for the time lost to torn clothes. Then to keep her mind off her situation.
She fished another cable through the spaceframe, working up into the cockpit behind the pilot’s instrument panel. Slender fingers, and longer arms helped simplify the job. Her legs made getting her body into the cockpit just that little bit harder.
She fit herself into the pilot’s seat to fit the gauges, wiring each one before locking it into place. Empty spaces still remained, but they’d only be filled at the Forge.
Alexandria had enough to fly, navigate and fire the main cannons. That’s all that could be fitted.
The last thing she fitted was a basic gyro-sight for the cannons, setting it on top of the instrument panel where the heads up display should’ve gone. Gaige didn’t expect they’d see actual combat - even as she wondered if giving shape to that idea in her mind didn’t all but guarantee it. A pair of 30mm gas-driven gatling cannons could bring a lot of hurt - enough to embarrass even a Hog.
She switched the circuit breakers to test the jet’s power systems.
Instruments hummed to life, flashing up dozens of warning messages for systems not yet fitted, filling the cockpit with glimmering oranges, yellows, reds and greens.
Gaige allowed herself to settle back into the Pilot’s seat bathing herself in the glow, closing her eyes for a single heartbeat.
She opened them, to be met by a pair of grey eyes at the centre of a broad, curious face. Grease and sweat shimmered on pale skin and gaige. A week’s worth of stubble framed pursed lips.
His eyes had focused on a point somewhere below her chin
A moment of mutual understanding passed between the pair. He blinked. She blinked.
“Shit!” Gaige yelped.
He sprang back, pushing off from the canopy.
“Shit! I thought you’d passed out,”
His body went rigid on locked arms. The eyes never raised above her neck. Her skin crawled beneath her clothes, her body begging to hide. Her arms crossed her chest
“If you like them so much , there’s some pink wave in the infirmary,” she said, biting her lip “But they’re not what they’re cut out to be,”
“Sorry,” The eyes didn’t move. Gaige felt herself glare. His eyes turned to the floor. “I thought you’d had an accident or something,”
The sense of exposure lingered, warring with the idea somewhere in the back of her mind that maybe he’d been telling the truth.
Hadn’t Mackie been in the exact same situation, more than once
“Just leave me alone.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
She waited for him to clamber down, looking at her legs disappearing under the pilot’s console. Gaige curled her toes in her boots to prove they were still attached, waiting until his footsteps had disappeared into the background noise of industry.
She looked out after taking a few moments to build up her nerve, just to make sure nobody was watching.
Outside Frigga’s industry rumbled on. People worked at their own vehicles. The Starlight Express thrummed from a side tunnel, steel wheels squealing as the locomotive it turned on its rails. The driver jumped from the cab, running forward to set the points to divert to the tunnel up to accommodation deck, sprinting back to the locomotive before it’d accelerated away from him.
He barely made it.
Above, Lun rained sparks as a welding crew got to work on one of the missile tubes, voices shouting at each other. Gaige saw someone straddle a girder, shuffling forward to fix one of the missile tube doors in place.
Some catgirls congregated at the back end of a Bolitho parked beside a pallet loaded with exocomp shells, chattering with each other. They’d dressed themselves in the same loose full-body work uniform. All three had the same tanned fur - only a single coloured band wrapped just short of the tips of their tails told them apart.
Gaige found herself wondering if any of them had ever been men at some stage in their life, before meeting the catgirl machine. She wondered how they dealt with it at the time,and how they still dealt with it.
They seemed happy.
She wondered if she could be that happy.
Gaige felt her fingers drum on the metal of the console. She thought about the group she’d joined up with on fenboards, and felt herself smile.
No matter.
She glanced at the screens in front of her, flickering with the expected failed tests from systems not yet fitted. A dozen red x’s listed out on the screen her jobs for the next two days. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she could blitz the lot of them in half the time, if she didn’t sleep.
Gaige decided to sleep anyway, if only to get a break from her body.
Dozens of eyes crawled across her skin as she clambered down from the jet. The body’s natural stride carried her across the steel floor to her parked motoroid with an artificial, hollow confidence.
Gaige felt her soul rattle around inside with every step.
She sighed, then settled herself onto her motoroid, fidgeting as she felt herself press up against it in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. She shifted forward and back in the saddle, before finally given up and finding some position that took the strain out of her arms and legs.
The discomfort elsewhere would just have to be dealt with..
She thought for a moment - discomfort would be the wrong word. It was more that it shouldn’t have been comfortable.
The ride back cleared her mind, her electric bike racing past what traffic remained in Frigga’s tunnels. She parked it up in a small enclave beside her apartment door, setting it out of the way of general traffic in the depths of a hard shadow.
Striplights overhead fizzed, casting the concrete walls in a green winter light. She felt the chill embrace her body, wrapping up under her breasts, making her feel her body once again.
A single door painted a night-sky shade of blue waited. A painted label on the wall identified it as 410-A. A single smoked-glass panel above the door shone with her name picked out in green LED segments.
Gaige Kisaragi.
The door opened with her key - a heavy mechanical lock rather than the fashionable - hackable - electronic types. It squawked as it opened, then followed her shut as she stepped through it.
The apartment door locked with a clunk, sealing her inside her own private space. Nothing, or no-one, could open the door without her permission.
She spun the barrel-key on its ring around her finger. When everything ended, she wondered if she’d be allowed to keep the apartment at least.
The lights flickered on, glass windows opposite her flashing from the black of space, to a mirror the whole apartment with the image of a woman standing in the doorway. It took a moment to realise that was her, looking back at herself.
She sighed, stepping inside. The hard heels of her boots clicked on the concrete floor, echoing off the walls around her. Her bed on the mezzanine overhead beckoned.Gage answered, climbing the stairs to meet it.
She slipped off her boots and stockings, then swallowed, pulled up her courage and peeled herself out of the bodysuit, leaving her body standing naked in cool air with the still unmade bed in front of her.
Every nerve ending on her body flared in the cold, intruding again into her mind. A shiver of cold crawled up her spine once again, to fill her chest.
A momentary terror that she’d been caught flashed inside
No, just the doorbell.
She slipped into her bathrobe, not sure whether it would be better if it was someone she knew, or someone she didn’t.
The bell chimed a second time and she hurried down the stairs, padding on the balls of her feet across the floor to the door. Gaige tried to viewscreen on the wall beside the door.
No Signal.
She cursed it, resigning herself to the surprise. Her hand unlucked
Blue eyes met blue, dead on. For a moment, she thought someone had set up a mirror as a prank. She cought the differences in the hair - cut short and left rough, followed by the polymer covers on the ears and hard look on her face.
“Sis…” she managed.
“You mind if I step inside?”
Jet’d treid to sound warm. She failed. Gaige felt the chill in her tone crawl up her back. Whatever Jet had to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
“I was going to bed,” she offered quickly
“I only need a minute,” Jet assured.
Gaige felt herself step back involuntarily, her breath catching up in her throat. Her stomach sank to her feet, the dread crawling over her body.
She couldn’t escape.
“Alright,” she relented, stepping aside.
Jet stepped forward with a distinct tak-tak from her heels. Gaige felt the heat radiating from her body, a flux of energy that washed over her and soaked her to the bone.
Gaige regretted it the moment that door closed.
Jet stepped around, taking a moment to check the apartment.
“So, is it getting better?”
Gaige followed, the feeling in her stomach twisting itself over. She took a breath, centering herself,
“It’s like trying to carry a steel ball floating in a steel box and every time it hits the side I get an electric shock,”
Jet offered a smile that “Eventually the ball gets smaller,”
“I don’t know,” Gaige placed her hands on her breasts, pressing them together. “These are huge, and everything rubs and it’s always the first time.”
“After years getting used to this body, my first day wearing that one was pretty intense,” she smirked. “That night with Ford was really intense.” Jet’s eyes sparked. “You haven’t tried that yet?”
Gaige felt the flush rush from her face to a point deep within her body. Her knees pressed themselves together
“No,” she answered, her voice pulling tight
“You should,” Jet assured her.
“You didn’t come here to see if I’d masturbated yet?”
“No,” Jet shook her head, the light in her eyes going out as that hard look came back.
“Then why?”
“I know why you were shot down,”
“Oh.”
Gaige felt it descend on her like a dark fog
“They wanted you alive,” Jet said. “They know about the Foxhound’s engines. Which means they know about the plutonium, and why they were built that way.”
Oh.
The conclusion formed in a moment, growing fat in seconds. She felt it rise through her throat and form on her lips.
“I didn’t think it happen this quick,”
The words emerged with a squeak, her body tightening up into itself, winding
Her mouth opened one more time. Her throat caught. Tears welled up, her lips shivering as she pulled back. She looked away from her sister, she felt herself chase it, to try swallow it back. , ashamed in the moment at even being seen.
She swallowed. She felt her heart stop. She opened her mouth to speak, to beg Jet to leave.
It emerged with a scream. She tried to swallow. She felt herself scream again, a wreaking sob that rattled from her throat and filled the room. She glanced at Jet, the image of the cyber swimming in her vision. Her legs buckled under and she felt herself drop
Hard metal hands caught her, soaking up the heat of her body. She looked up, to her sister’s face set hard. Glass-blue eyes stared through her with absolute certainty.
“I’ve a mission for you,” she said. Gaige felt herselft swallow, another shiver running through her body. She felt herself swallow another sob. “Your mission is to hold it together. For as long as you can. “
Gaige found a single breath
“Every day you hold this together is a day the enemy doesn’t know who you are,
Which is one more day they don’t get the secret and one more day for me to find them.”
Gaige felt herself whimper, her mouth goldfishing open and closed, searching for words.
“No matter how bad you feel - every day you make it through this is another day you win and they lose.”
She gasped. She hiccuped. Her heart drummed in her chest . She felt every beat reverberate in her breasts. She gasped again, and she found her voice.
“And if it fails then what?” Another gasp “This is me forever!”
“If we fail….AC will look after you,” said Jet, her voice direct, but calm, with a certainty that made it impossible for Gaige to say no. “She’ll give you a safe space to stay if it ever comes to that, Somewhere you’ll be comfortable”
“I…. she started. Her voice caught. Something sat wrong on her skin, but she couldn’t tell what.
“Get a bath,” said Jet, interrupting the thought. “Go to bed. Get up in the morning and complete your part of the mission. I’ll talk to you in the morning”
“Sis…” Gaige managed. The vice-grip from the metal hands on her shoulder relaxed and she felt herself sway on her feet for a moment
“I’ll see tomorrow,”
Gaige felt herself nod, still shaking inside her own skin. Something inside her urged her to beg for an alternative, another option.
But the mission.
It had to happen.
She watched Jet leave and waited for the door to latch shut, sealing her in. Her breathing came rapid, begging her to run.
It faded after a few moments, leaving her alone with tears still streaming down her cheeks, with cold air nipping beneath the fabric of her robe
Her voice emerged as the smallest of whines “No…”
---
Jet waited for for the door to lock behind her before exhaling the breath she’d been holding. A parked motoroid stood waiting for her. She locked herself into the saddle, allower her mind to flow through the motoroid’s data connections. She unhooked her helmet from the handlebar, then slipped it over her head, letting the visor seal her in with her own thoughts.
She felt her shoulders sink under an invisible weight, like the entire system had settled onto her back.
“And I’ve just jammed my brother into a closet for the rest of his life”
She said it to herself.
Her own comm-link sparked in the back of her mind, accompanied by an identity token that formed in the shape of a grinning kitten
“Anika?”, she answered with her mind’s cybernetic voice.
“The ARSC are coming here!”
Even in synthesised voice, the panic ran clear. It sparked through in a microsecond.
“Well, they can fuck off!”
Jet heard her voice before she realised she’d spoken, a hot flash of anger lighting off in her veins.
There was a pause on the comm, an echo of a flinch from the other end.
“What?” Anika responded.
“Tell ‘em to fuck off. Tell ‘em from me!” Jet caught her breath.“I could do without some bored fucking mandarins looking to justify their worth to this year’s budget by fucking things up on me,”
“Jeez….”
The line closed, leaving Jet simmering alone in her own mind.
“Fucking hell” she breathed. “Fuck me for doing this. This’ll fuck it all up”
--
“We have a Stel-Oil on the station,”
Miyuri hadn’t realised she’d dozed off until Shinji’s voice snapped her out of it. It took a microsecond for her cybernetic mind to orient herself in the pastel colours of the shuttle interior. Shinji, still in his security uniformed.
“We could ask them what’s going on,” he suggested.
Miyuri settled back into the navigator’s chair, glancing at the flat-panel consoles around her. A NOTAN from Friggn flashed up in red
Radiation hazard. Reactor core on fire.
“You’re worried about your family?”
Shinji looked away a moment to hide his expression. “They’re not really my family,” he said quickly, before catching Miyuri’s expression. “I don’t hate them. But I don’t really fit in with them either, that’s all.”
Miyuri pondered a moment, trying to gauge Shinji’s true feelings. His discomfort filled the cabin, settling on her skin and soaking through to her bones.
“I’m worried about Mackie, but Frigga’s not a comfortable place for me.”
Not a place, but people. Not for the first time Miyuri found herself wondering if it hadn’t been something more ‘baked in’.
Miyuri let the idea die. It took her a few moments to find the address for the direct connection to the Stel-oil outpost. She keyed it in, finding herself hoping that somebody would answer. Those few moments of silence gave her mind time to run through all of the awful possibilities.
The face of a chinese man in his mid-40’s flashed up on screen, looking vaguely surprised at the sudden call. A smear of engine oil marked the point on his cheek where he’d recently been bothered by an itch.
Maybe he’d been disturbed from some basic maintenance. Nothing that’d be out of the ordinary.
“Ma’am?”
He did seem harried, worried or otherwise concerned - except by the usual concern that followed having someone of Command rank call up your quiet outpost out of the blue
“What’s the situation out there?” she asked, the words coming quicker than she would’ve like “We’re on our way for a social call, and we just got a NOTAN about a reactor fire,”
The face on the screen gave her a quizzical look, as if she’d grown a seperate head on her shoulder.
“That was...six months ago, ma’am.”
Miyuri felt something crawl across her artificial skin. Shinji behind her shifted position in the seat.
“Six months ago?
“It was in our log to corporate.” He stated. Obviously.
“You didn’t do anything else?”
It almost sounded like an accusation.
“You know we can’t take a position on behalf of corporate,” he said, a trickle of sweat glimmering on his forehead. “We reported it to our region manager - that’s all we can do. We’ve had no instructions back otherwise.”
“Hmmm…”
Following procedure. Doing what was expected. Letting the company decide how to handle a disaster with potential political ramifications. Somebody with more than an attendant’s viewpoint needed to make the call.
“You’re only getting this now?”
“Yes. Today’s date.” she confirmed.
He thought for a moment, taking a glance to see if anyone was listening behind him
“There’s a rumour going around that a few engineers were contaminated by a leak earlier ”
“A rumour?” she pushed.
“I’ll see what I can confirm,”
“Thanks,” Miyuri nodded, uneasy in her seat. An idea sparked in the back of your mind.“Can you send me through a copy of your logbooks?”
The sound of a quick burst of keypresses carried across the comm-link.
“Done.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Not a problem,” he smiled. Whatever had happened, he wouldn’t be found responsible - of that he had reassured himself.
The channel cut
“I’ve got it,” Shinji said. Direct download through his wrist-com, then scanned through his mind in a microsecond. “Station critical alert. Reactor core exploded during system test. No injuries to or involvement of Stellviacorp personnel. ”
“Exploded?” Miyuri looked to Shinji for an answer. “How does a fusion reactor explode?”
“I don’t know.” he said, looking out at the stars for a moment. She got the sense he was searching for the answer. Not even the interwave could give something quick
“That has to be an exaggeration.” Miyuri grasped for the obvious Frigga would be a tomb if one of their reactors exploded. But why keep it quiet?”
“Embarrassment,” said Shinji. “But now something’s happened that can’t be hidden”
He settled back into the pilot’s seat, exhaling a sigh, looking for a moment like he wanted to say something else
“What?”
His shoulders sank. He drew a deep breath, looking to Miyuri for a moment.
“NERV was a lot like that. People were afraid to own up to mistakes. Things were hidden until they couldn’t be.” Shinji paused a moment. “Jet’s a lot like that - she doesn’t take responsibility.”
--
A picture of every single desire Mackie had ever had, rolled up into one borderline unnatural form stared back at her through the condensation on the bathroom mirror. Gaige couldn’t help but stare, raw desire fizzing beneath her skin and up the back of her throat.
Gaige watched the woman in the mirror, her chest rising and falling in time with Gaige’s own breath and ached to just reach in and touch. Her arm reached out, mirroring the woman in front of her. Their fingers met on the wet glass. Gaige placed a warm hand on her own damp skin, pressing with the palm against her chest.
Of course it felt uncomfortable.
“Hold it together,” she breathed.
The inescapable truth; Mackie knew The Secret. Mackie, if he survived, would always have a target on his back. So The Secret died with Mackie.
Gaige knew nothing.
Gaige would be a safe place to hide. Not a comfortable one. Gaige would be the last place anyone would look for Mackie.
She finished drying herself, tying a white towel around her waist. She padded through her apartment, climbing the stairs, her hair leaving a trail of water droplets on the ground behind her.
Gaige stood by her bed, tenderly patting down the rest of her body, before finally drying her hair.She sat herself on her bed, feeling it creak beneath her. Being a full fifty centimetres taller, and having most of that below the waist, added a tint of strangeness even to something as simple as sitting.
She took a breath, taking a moment to gather her thoughts.
The laptop on her desk interrupted with a chime, a single notification flashing up onscreen.
Prometheus Forge guest security details and access codes. Expected arrival in two days.
At least the work would keep her mind off it.
--
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.