| Status | TODO |
| Tags | TODO |
| Warnings | TODO |
Prison isn't as bad as Phoenix thought it would be. She's been in this place for nearly four months now and so far the main danger has been that she might die of boredom. Every day's exactly the same: wake up, morning roll call, breakfast, chapel, labor, lunch, labor, evening roll call, dinner, lights out. The only breaks from the monotony are when new prisoners arrive, which is always at least a little bit interesting, or when someone loses their shit and earns a beatdown from the guards, which was scary the first time it happened but now is mostly just predictable. The isolation, the endless sameness, and the almost total lack of any dominants in the camp cracks some of the prisoners pretty bad, so that they start acting out just to catch a punishment. It's fucked up. You can kind of see it coming, if you know the little tells - subs who normally comply instantly starting to resist in small ways, or stopping outside to just stare out through the wire into the distance, seeing nothing. Some of the other prisoners in her barracks have been here for years and they say that eventually it gets to everyone. Phoenix is going to be the exception to that.
She's got twenty-six months left on her sentence. She doesn't bother counting the days, since she figures it'd just make the waiting worse. Instead, she passes the time by constructing increasingly elaborate fantasies of what she's going to do when she gets out. First thing, very first thing, is going to be finding Zaid and having him take her out of her head for a bit. She's never trusted easily, but she and Zaid grew up together from practically babies and he's the only dom she's ever felt comfortable enough with to actually let her guard down. She hasn't seen him since the day before she got caught, and there's a persistent, unpleasant pressure sitting in the back of her skull from not having submitted since then. When it gets bad it makes her skin feel clammy and kind of hot, which grosses her out like nothing else. She's tried... what the prisoners usually do, fucking or hurting each other or tying each other up, but it doesn't work, not for her. It is what it is. Twenty-six months left.
The second thing she's going to do, once she can walk again after Zaid's done with her, is find Gerard and gut him, the rat fuck. Someone burned her and it can't have been anyone other than him. She doesn't think of herself as a particularly violent person, but equally she's never shied away from hurting people if it's what seemed necessary. To her knowledge, none of those have actually ever been pinned on her; if they had, she probably wouldn't be in a shitty prison camp for a two-and-a-half-year stint. No, it has to have been Gerard. She hopes he's fucking counting the days until she's out as well.
So far, today's been like any other, just another beautiful day in paradise - at least if your idea of paradise is a prison camp on a remote, deserted island where the temperature rarely gets above freezing. It's called Camp Temperance, but as far as Phoenix knows, everyone, including the guards, calls it The Freezer. Roll call was an exercise in shivering as little as possible while being counted, breakfast was the usual slop, and morning chapel was a priest who... well, it's clear why he's one of the staff clerics at a remote prison instead of somewhere people actually want to be, and maybe it's best left at that.
As Phoenix is marching to morning labor, which is probably going to be yet another task with literally no point, like moving rocks from one end of a field to the other and then back, she hears the low roar of an aircraft coming in to land. She, along with virtually all the prisoners, turn to look; it's a prison service jet aircraft, a relatively small one. New prisoners, then, not supplies. She doesn't bother getting her hopes up - there's no need. If it's new prisoners, there'll be new faces in the barracks, or there won't. A couple of the newer inmates try to have a hushed conversation between themselves, speculating, but one of the guards gives them a meaningful glare and they shut up.
After lunch, instead of being taken back to labor, her barracks - all one hundred and twenty of them - are marched over to the admin block, assembled in an auditorium. Phoenix hasn't been back in here since the day she arrived. On the stage are a handful of officers in slate-grey military uniforms; one of them, the most senior if Phoenix remembers how to read rank insignia, is standing at the lectern looking out over the assembled prisoners. Phoenix stands at attention, hands folded behind her back, since sloppy form in a situation like this is asking for a beating for making the guards look bad in front of whoever these guys are. Indeed, a couple of the prisoners aren't as careful and are summarily dragged outside, leaving holes in the neat formation.
The officer clears his throat. He's clearly a dominant, probably late forties or early fifties if she's any judge, wearing a peaked officer's cap. He's still wearing his greatcoat and gloves, too, as if he just came in from the cold and won't be staying long enough to merit taking them off. His gaze sweeps across the waiting prisoners, and Phoenix feels a little twinge of something when he momentarily makes eye contact with her. She straightens up a little more, squeezes her hands together behind her back. Fuck this guy, she thinks, and fuck you, body, for being like that just because we haven't seen Zaid in a while. Get it together.
"Every one of you," he begins, "is here for crimes against the sanctity of the State." His voice is deep, a resonant bass that she can almost feel in her ribcage. He goes on: "Some of your crimes are greater or lesser, but every one of you has harmed our society and offended God himself."
Phoenix manages not to roll her eyes, but only because she doesn't want one of the guards to see.
"Today," the dom says, "I am here to offer you a chance at redemption. All of you will shortly be put through a test. Those of you who do well will be offered a chance to join a special military unit, of which I am one of the officers. Those who join will have their sentences commuted and will be whole again in the eyes of both God and State."
That perks Phoenix up. She thought about the Army once, a while ago - still thinks about it off and on, or did before she was in here - and twenty-six months is a long time to spend sitting on an island. Whatever this guy's recruiting for probably isn't exactly a luxurious assignment, but it has to beat The Freezer.
He spends a few more minutes talking about the honor and virtue and whatever else inherent in serving the State, which Phoenix pretty much tunes out, and then he and his fellow soldiers head into an adjacent room, and the guards have all the inmates form one long queue. Phoenix winds up near the back, so she has to just wait, standing silently, while the prisoners ahead of her slowly file out of the room. None of them come back.
When she's eventually ushered through the door, all the military people are standing around, as are a bunch of the guards, all standing by the walls. The old dom's there, too, as are five other prisoners, all visibly bloodied. One of them, a guy about Phoenix's age, is cradling what looks like a broken arm. None of them are from her block.
In the center of the room is... someone, standing in the middle of a ring of blood splatters. They're dressed in military fatigues, with no rank badges at all, and with an opaque black mask covering their entire face. At first Phoenix thinks they might be a robot of some kind, but no - they're panting with exertion, and Phoenix can see a sheen of sweat on their neck, right beneath a featureless slate-grey collar, and perspiration soaking short-cropped black hair.
"Prisoner," says the older dom, to her. "Catch." He tosses her a steel baton, the kind the guards use. She catches it.
He turns to address the masked sub in the middle of the room, who Phoenix just now notices is holding an identical baton, stained dark with blood. "Unit," he says. "Injure her."
"Wait," Phoenix says. "Wha -"
Only her reflexes save her. The other sub lashes out at her, lightning-quick, but Phoenix has always been fast, and she dances back just out of range. The follow-up strike comes fast, too, as does the one after that, and Phoenix backs away, parrying, hard-pressed to even keep up. Her opponent's baton seems to be everywhere, and Phoenix backsteps, dodges, and tries desperately to get enough breathing space to assess what's going on. She ducks beneath the baton as it makes a flat, humming arc, lunges forward, and drives her baton into the other sub's stomach - or she would have, had they been a fraction of a second slower twisting away. The other sub pirouettes, and then the baton's coming down towards Phoenix's head, and her own's out of position to parry. On animal instinct, she drops, a skull-cracking blow misses by a hair's breadth, and she sweeps her opponent's legs with a foot. The sub falls, the fight's over, but Phoenix's blood is up now, and she doesn't think, she just acts. In a moment she's on top of them, her own baton coming up in her fist, but then the sub under her twists, unfolding in a single economical motion that ends with Phoenix pinned flat against the floor, panting for breath, the other sub's baton pressed tight against her throat.
"Enough," the old dom says. Her attacker, the faceless submissive, twitches slightly then holds rock-still.
"Let her up. What's your number, prisoner?"
Phoenix, in between gasps to fill her lungs, rattles it off from memory. She hauls herself to her feet, still unsteady, and does her best salute. It probably sucks. She's never been big on saluting.
He gives her an approving look, then turns away, addressing one of the other soldiers with him. "Prep these six for transport while we assess the last two blocks."
Phoenix gets a window seat on the flight out. She's shackled to the seat, of course, along with the other six prisoners on the plane. It seems a little excessive to her given that there's no less than fifteen soldiers here too, but whatever makes them feel better. There's also the blank-masked sub, seated next to the dom officer, hands folded in their lap, still as a statue. Phoenix is equal parts curious and creeped out.
The view out the window as they climb out is nice, at least. The Freezer's on some nameless little island, a smear of grey rock a few kilometers across, but on the climb out she can see some of the north end of whatever the bigger island to the east is. She'll have to look it up when she gets back to civilization - or not, and just forget the place ever existed, since she has a total of zero worthwhile memories from four months here. The base is an untidy sprawl of concrete blocks, clustered around a single airstrip; from up here the double line of fencing around the perimeter is just barely visible. She's never really understood what the fencing's even for, since the island is surrounded by kilometers of frigid sea anyway. Maybe it's to keep people from accidentally falling in, or maybe the authorities just thought you can't have a proper prison without a fence. Who knows.
Once they've climbed above the heavy cloud layer, there's nothing to see. Phoenix settles into her seat, which has exactly the level of comfort that "prison service issue" usually brings to mind, and does her best to sleep.
It's a long flight, and once they land Phoenix is unpleasantly surprised to find out that they aren't even there yet - they're at a refueling stop at some military base, and they're not even allowed off the plane to get some fresh air. There's a second long flight, and by the time they're coming in to land at another military base, it's dark. Beyond the lights of the base, Phoenix can't see a single thing off in the distance, just an endless void. The landing feels like they're descending into the abyss.
They're escorted off the plane, still shackled, still in their prison uniforms, and taken into what seems like another cell block. Phoenix is taken into a room by herself, escorted by two of the soldiers that were on the exact same fifteen-hour plane journey that she was and who Phoenix assumes must be just as tired as she is, if not more.
"These are your quarters," one of them says, a blonde dominant woman with close-cropped hair, piercing eyes, and rank insignia that make her a sergeant. "You'll be here during training. Everything in here is your responsibility to keep clean and in good order."
Phoenix shrugs. "Kay," she says.
The woman grabs her by an upper arm, spins her around to face her. She's a couple of inches shorter than Phoenix, maybe twenty pounds lighter, but she doesn't have her hands shackled behind her back and her feet manacled together so she could obviously beat the shit out of Phoenix with no difficulty, even if the other soldier here didn't do anything. It occurs to Phoenix that being flippant about the rules is probably a bad idea.
"Understand this, prisoner," she says, eyes hard. "Discipline here is harsh. Most entrants to the program do not complete it. Your initial test was promising, but promise is nothing. Do well, in all things, or you will be removed. Obey, or you will be removed. Do you understand?"
The way she speaks is clipped, forceful, like she's talking to an idiot or a small child. Phoenix flushes. "Yes, ma'am," she grits out. She's torn between deliberately trying to fail out, which seems like it should be easy, and the irritating urge to do as she's told. On the other hand, if she does fail out, they'll probably ship her back to The Freezer, and this is likely to be a lot less dull than that was, so - she'll try to stay.
"Good," the domme bites out. "On the desk is a packet of information you will need. Read and understand it before you sleep tonight." Just then, she appears to think of something, and glances down at her watch and her expression softens just slightly. "You have missed dinner, but I'll feed you regardless." She pulls a slender grey plastic pouch, perhaps ten centimetres long and two wide, from a pocket in her uniform and places it on the desk just behind Phoenix. "Do you have any other questions?"
Phoenix has about a million questions, starting with "what the fuck is going on?", but she'll hold onto them for now. Probably a lot of them are answered by the stack of paper on her desk, and this domme lady already seems to hate her and is probably exhausted to boot, so she'll hold off on wasting any more of her time. "No, ma'am," she says, with considerably more respect.
"Good," the domme says again, with a curt nod. She gestures to the other soldier with her - a corporal, it looks like, and also a dom - and he steps behind her and undoes her shackles and her manacles. The two soldiers leave the room, and the domme turns back to her from the doorway and gives her a thoughtful look.
"Prisoner," she says. "Your initial test results really were good. Few entrants come even close to overcoming a Unit in combat. Do not waste your potential with pointless disobedience. So that your situation is perfectly clear, there are only two ways out of this facility: joining the program, or execution."
The domme presses a button and the door to Phoenix's room - her cell - slides closed, leaving her alone with that threat hanging in the air.
Phoenix manages a few hours of broken sleep. Her cell has no windows or any sources of outside light, and there aren't any clocks, so she has no idea what time it is, or indeed when she's even supposed to get up. She lays on the bed in the dark for a few minutes, staring into the perfect darkness, but she's too keyed up to sleep, too curious about this new place she's been taken, so she fumbles around until she finds a bank of switches on the wall and clicks them until a dim ring of lights around the bottom of the walls of the room comes on. The lights are a pale orange, so it's surprisingly warm and homely, more like a hotel room than a prison.
She gets up to look around and take inventory, since she's probably going to be stuck in here for a while and she can't get any more rest anyway. Her cell is about four meters by three meters, and contains a bed (more comfortable than one might expect, although certainly not luxurious), a small desk, a single chair, a couple of cupboards, a tiny cubicle shower, and a sink with a mirror above it. Everything that isn't concrete is metal, and she soon realizes that every item of furniture is anchored securely to the concrete walls, so she won't be doing much interior decorating.
On the desk, as the domme said, is a small stack of paper - several loose sheets, a pair of spiral-bound booklets with laminated covers. Phoenix flips through them; they're all blank. The only scrap of text on any of it is inside the cover of each notebook, printed neatly in one corner: "Unit #", then a blank, then "Supervisor", then another blank. She sets them back down, puzzled. There's a slim drawer built into the desk, and when she pulls it open there's a trio of pens, also unadorned metal, and nothing else. So, she figures, when the domme said that everything she needed to know was in the stack of paper, she was just messing with her. Oh well. The plastic-wrapped stick the domme gave her yesterday is here too - it's filled with a chewy, dark brown paste, vaguely nutty in flavor, probably some kind of protein bar. She's had a couple of bites of it, and doesn't care for it.
In the cupboard are a few neatly-folded stacks of clothing, all in the same slate-grey color, which turn out to be several sets of uniform fatigues and even more sets of underwear and socks. She puts it back as neatly as she found it. Also in the cupboard are some toiletries, thankfully, a metal cup, and a small stack of black face masks made out of some sort of tough, vaguely slick synthetic. She picks one up; it's the kind that goes over your nose and mouth, like to filter your breathing, and buckles behind your head. Huh. There's also a pair of spare collars, also featureless synthetic, also matte black. She picks one up, swaps her prison-issued unclaimed collar out for it; it doesn't feel any different.
With that, she's exhausted the entertainment available in her room. She takes a long shower, enjoying the hot water and privacy (both nigh-unavailable luxuries in The Freezer), then towels off and dresses in one of the uniforms. It fits her pretty well - better than her prison uniform did, certainly. That done, she's out of ideas other than doodling in the notebooks, which she thinks is probably not what they're for, so she decides to just sit down on her bed and wait.
Without any way to keep track of time, she has no idea how long it is, but eventually some of the other lights in her cell come up on their own, and the door slides open. Outside is the blonde domme who hauled her in here last night, still in uniform and looking considerably more lively.
"Oh, good," is the first thing she says, when she sees Phoenix already dressed and obviously freshly showered. She steps into the room, looks around, then gives Phoenix a small nod. "Mask up, recruit. Let's go."
She must mean the masks in the cupboard. Phoenix grabs one, puts it on. The domme steps closer to her, reaches around her head, adjusts the fit slightly. "Good," she says. "First rule, recruit: your mask stays on outside your cell, no matter what. Carry a spare with you just in case. Got that?"
Phoenix blinks. Are they that paranoid about diseases? With prisoners coming in from all different prison camps it could make sense, maybe - but the domme's not wearing one, so it can't be that.
"Yes, ma'am," she says.
"Good. I'll be your supervisor. Second rule: you do not use names. You call me 'supervisor' or 'ma'am', the other instructors 'instructor' or an honorific, the other recruits 'recruit'. Understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," Phoenix replies, straightening her posture slightly. She's never been the biggest fan of rules, but she's also not the biggest fan of being summarily executed, which seems like it's on the table here, and also this domme is giving off a very strong impression of having no sense of humor at all. She's probably best off obeying as best she can, at least until she figures out what's going on.
The domme circles her. Phoenix squeezes her hands into fists at her sides, trying her best to handle the sensation of being studied. She actually hasn't been this close to a dominant in months, she realizes - even just the woman's presence is setting her body off, throwing her emotions for a loop. She grimaces beneath the mask and squares her shoulders, pointedly ignoring how it makes her feel when she sees a small approving smile on the domme's face.
"Very well," she says, stopping in front of Phoenix. "Third rule, recruit: you do not speak to other recruits unless ordered to. Me, or any other instructor, you may ask questions or speak freely unless we tell you to be quiet. The other recruits, no. Is that clear?"
"Crystal clear, ma'am," says Phoenix, keeping her eyes straight ahead.
"Good. Repeat all three rules to me, in your own words."
Phoenix does her best. It's evidently good enough, because it earns her an approving nod. She looks down at her wrist. "You're up early. Time to eat, then I'll take you for induction." She digs in a pocket and hands Phoenix another of the plastic-wrapped tubes.
Phoenix takes it. "Is there, um, anything else to eat, ma'am?"
"No," the domme says. "You'd best get used to them. Eat."
Much of Phoenix's first... day? is spent doing long batteries of tests. She's put through obstacle courses, running, climbing walls and ropes, tests for her reflexes and reaction time and attention span and a lot of other things she couldn't even begin to guess at. None of the instructors talk to her beyond explaining what she's supposed to do, and she has no idea whether she's doing badly or well. Being around so many dominants - it seems like every single instructor is one - and clearly being judged by all of them, without the slightest hint as to whether she's actually doing well, is giving her a kind of anxiety she hasn't felt since she parted ways with her piece-of-shit parents. It's a relief every time the supervisor-lady domme comes to get her, if only because it means she's about to get to do something new and get out from under the eyes of whichever instructor has been watching her.
During the whole day, she sees a handful of other recruits. All of them are masked, just like she is, and she can't tell whether they're from The Freezer or some other prison entirely. For that matter, they could just be regular military volunteers or conscripts or whatever - she doesn't know for sure that everyone else here is a convict. In any case, none of them speak to her or even look at her. The only person she has an actual conversation with the whole day is her supervisor.
By the time her supervisor takes her back to her cell, she's exhausted, filthy and covered in sweat and utterly drained. The last assessment she did was basically running sprints, then a test of reaction time, then agility, then starting the cycle over again with more sprints, as fast as she could, with barely a break. She can barely stand now. She was in fairly good shape before she went to prison, and it's not like she's been allowed to just sit on her ass since going in, but she's still not at all up to this. The reaction-time tests are some bullshit thing where she has to hit buttons when they light up as quickly as possible, which sounds easy but isn't when you can hardly see through your own sweat, and the agility tests were basically dancing through sequences of numbered squares drawn on the ground as the instructor calls them out, in a flat, almost bored monotone. It was, not to put too fine of a point on it, fucking grueling and Phoenix finds that she's very much looking forward to a shower and maybe an actual meal made of actual food.
At least she gets the shower.
Over the next few days, or weeks, or however long it is, since there's basically no way to tell how much time is passing in here, Phoenix starts to figure out the rhythm of life. Her supervisor collects her in the "morning" (Phoenix decides to call it the morning, anyway), feeds her one of the paste sticks, then takes her between various training classes all day long. Some of them are still tests, or feel like tests; some of them are more like actual classes though. It's weird sitting in a classroom with two dozen other totally silent people, but it seems like the other recruits are all taking the rule about not talking pretty seriously, so Phoenix does too. Eventually, her supervisor will come pick her up, give her another couple of food sticks, and deposit her back in her cell, which she decides will be the "evening".
She's kind of expecting that the domme supervisor to warm up to her at some point, but it never actually happens - she's still just as terse and standoffish as the first time Phoenix met her. She's in the same identical uniform every day, hair styled the same way, same piercing eyes, same upright posture, same everything. Phoenix still doesn't know her name, her age, or one single fact about her. She's not supposed to, she figures.
She also still has no idea whether she's actually doing well at things. The instructors pretty much never tell her, and unless it's obvious from the activity, or there are other students to compare herself to, she just has to guess. The feeling of being constantly judged but never actually hearing the result of that judgment is starting to seriously get to her. She generally thinks of herself as a fairly independent sub; like anyone else, she definitely feels better with occasional attention from a dom, but she doesn't need approval the way some others do. It turns out that she does need some attention, though, because eventually she cracks and just outright asks her supervisor, while the woman is dropping her off back in her cell:
"Ma'am, am I... doing okay?"
The domme smiles at her. "You are."
Phoenix waits, looking expectantly at her, then realizes that she's waiting for the woman to praise her, blushes, and looks away. That's not her.
"Thank you," she says quietly. The woman says nothing, just hands her her usual evening meal sticks and shuts the door. Phoenix showers, rinsing a day worth of sweat off of herself, then sits on her bed to start working her way through the sticks. She still doesn't care for them, but she's ravenous and there's nothing else on offer, so she forces herself to get through them. They're not that bad, at least, and they're pretty filling. You just have to remember to drink plenty of water with them.
That night, as she's lying in her bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling, she raises her hands in front of her, presses them together in the two-handed handgun shooter's posture they taught her. Today was a lot of shooting practice, interspersed with brutal agility and speed drills. She likes shooting. It's fun, and she can actually tell whether she's doing well at it. There's this feeling of putting the body into harmony with the weapon that she likes. Even when she's panting for breath, struggling to stay upright, she can still reliably hit targets out to twenty meters with the handgun, and she's nearly as good with the rifle on the big long-range shooting range. She likes the shooting instructors, too - both of them look like they're way too old to be in the Army, and they're just as to-the-point as all the other instructors, but she could swear that they both seem to like her at least a little bit. Maybe it's just because she's shooting well.
It's weird wanting to learn things. Phoenix was never much of a student, and most of her time at school was spent doing as little as possible and trying not to get noticed, just waiting out the clock until she could legally quit. The last time she was actually excited to learn anything was when her mom - her birth mom, that is - signed her up for the Pioneers, who taught her interesting stuff like how to navigate by the stars and how to climb a tree.
Remembering her mom makes Phoenix's heart clench. She hasn't seen her in nearly ten years, ever since Dad decided he wanted a younger, prettier sub and fucked off, taking Phoenix with him. She hopes her mom's doing okay, wherever she is. She wishes she had a photo or something to remember her by, some way to anchor her own mental image of how her mom used to look to reality. Maybe once she gets out of here she'll go look her up somehow.
Before she can get too far down that line of thinking, the exhaustion of the day finally catches up with her, and she drifts off to sleep.
Gradually, the training gets more and more intense. The physical exercises get more grueling, until Phoenix's lungs are burning and her muscles are rubber at the end of every one. On top of the endless shooting and unarmed combat drills they practice tactics, teams of recruits moving as fluid groups in total silence, driven just by hand signals. She learns infiltration, stealth, how to climb, how to swim, how to run and run and run, how to handle a dozen kinds of vehicle and a hundred different weapons. As the exercises get harder, the classes get more advanced, and the schedule gets more and more punishing, she notices that the recruits seem to be fewer and fewer. Though she's never seen any of their faces uncovered, hasn't exchanged so much as a word with any of them, she gets to know some of them anyway - the way this recruit's hand looks making the go signal, the shimmery copper-red of that recruit's tightly-bunned hair, a particularly striking set of eyes above a mask. It's not much but it's something.
Training goes on seemingly forever - weeks, months, maybe years for all she knows. Nobody speaks to her except the instructors and her supervisor. She speaks to nobody except her supervisor. The domme is always there, present, shuttling her to and from classes and sessions, providing her meal sticks at the beginning and end of each "day", but she never says an unnecessary word to Phoenix. She hasn't had a genuine, actual conversation with another human being since she got here, and she's startled to find herself missing The Freezer. It was shit, cold and dull, but at least you could swap stories over breakfast. Eventually, she starts getting worried about herself, starts repeating her name to herself in the little mirror in her cell. She watches her own lips move, the way the muscles form the sounds. It's starting to feel strange seeing herself without the mask.
It eventually dawns on her that her supervisor shows up when she wakes up, and not at some particular set time, unless Phoenix has suddenly developed a surprisingly regular sleep schedule. She always seems to appear at the door just after Phoenix has finished showering and dressing. It's unnerving; she tries altering her own sleep patterns unpredictably, to see if she can catch the domme out, but it doesn't work - the woman's still there every "morning", looking as crisp and impassionate as ever. All Phoenix manages is to tire herself out, make the day's exercises even more difficult for herself. She doesn't try it again.
One morning, her supervisor appears at her door. Phoenix is already up, showered and dressed of course, and she's hungry, body ready for the food stick. She's gotten used to them by now and they don't even taste particularly bland any more. The woman comes into her cell and Phoenix pulls her mask on, then stands, waiting for her to adjust it. It's a tiny ritual, something that Phoenix is ninety-nine percent sure is not part of whatever this woman's standard protocol is, but the miniscule span of intimacy where the domme tightens the strap behind Phoenix's head means more to her than she'd like it to.
This time, instead of adjusting the fit of Phoenix's mask, the woman undoes its buckle and pulls it off. Phoenix looks up at her, startled by the change in routine, and the woman gives her a small smile. "Sit," she says.
Phoenix does, on the edge of her bed.
The woman digs in a pocket of her uniform and, in addition Phoenix's regular meal stick, she hands her a brightly-colored orb. Phoenix takes it from her; it's been so long since she last saw one that it takes her a moment to realize that it's an orange. She stares at it in wonder.
"The first part of your training is done," the domme says, smiling. "Fifteen percent of your intake class remain in the program, and you are one of them. Congratulations, recruit. You have done well and I am proud of you."
The words hit Phoenix like a blow. She looks up, away from the orange and at the domme, eyes widening. She can feel tears pricking in the corners of her eyes. It's been so long, and she's not normally that kind of needy sub, but God... she wants to freeze the memory of those words in her head so she'll never lose it. The weeks or months or whatever of training, the exhaustion, the worry, the effort, the endless endless study and practice, they're all... oh.
Her supervisor blushes slightly, a faint red that adds a touch of color to her cheekbones. "The orange is a reward," she says. She straightens a bit, looking momentarily uncertain, then continues, in a softer voice: "Today you'll be moving to the next part of the program, and you'll have a - a new supervisor, one whom you'll be working with for the remainder of your time here and beyond. There's a... medical procedure, which I'll escort you to shortly. Take your time in eating though, there is no rush."
Phoenix squeezes the orange lightly, staring down at her own hands again. They're rougher now, calloused from hours of hard work; her whole body is lean, fast and whipcord-strong and enduring beyond anything she would've imagined previously. They've been making her into a weapon, she knows, and there's a part of her that likes that. She can feel the danger coiling inside her now, the contained, tightly controlled sharp edges of who she is. Even as her supervisor stands before her, she can think of a dozen ways to kill the woman before she could pour a cup of tea - not that she would, obviously.
She peels the orange, takes the first bite. The flavor's so much it makes her head spin. She chews slowly, letting it sit on her tongue, gradually adapting to it. It's overpoweringly sweet, bright, acidic. It's the best thing she's ever tasted. She pulls another segment out, offers it to her supervisor.
There's that faint blush again. "It's all yours," the woman says, gesturing at the orange. "I hope you enjoy it."
It's the most personal thing she's ever said to Phoenix, in all their time together. Between that and the orange and her saying she's proud (and the thought that has kept Phoenix going sometimes, through the hardest parts of her training, has been the idea that her supervisor is in some secret way proud of her), it's too much. Phoenix turns her face away so the domme won't see her crying.
Once she's done, and she's eaten her meal stick and had some water, her supervisor has her put her mask back on, then fixes the fit one last time, fingertips ghosting over the skin by the back of Phoenix's neck. She's aware, more aware than she should be, of how close those fingertips are to her collar.
"It's not likely we will see each other again after this," the supervisor says, and Phoenix can hear just the barest thread of emotion there - not sadness, but maybe longing. "You have been one of the best recruits in the history of this program and I really am proud of you. I expect you will do great things in service of the State and of God."
It's a good thing Phoenix's eyes are already wet. The domme pauses, as though expecting Phoenix to say something in return, but she can't make the words come. After a few seconds, the domme says: "come along, recruit," and turns to lead her out into the hallway.
Her supervisor leads her down to the medical clinic. She's been here a couple of times before, for examinations and treatment for injuries. The doctor, an older male submissive in the stereotypical white coat, seems like he's expecting her and gestures for her to hop onto the exam chair, which she does.
"Her lucky day, hm?", he says, but to Phoenix's supervisor, not her.
"Yes," the woman replies, watching while the doctor rolls up the left sleeve of Phoenix's uniform and paints the inside of her elbow with something cold and astringent. He tells her to make a fist, which she does; the sculpted muscles of her own forearm stand out in a way she finds vaguely pleasing. The doctor inserts a small needle into the crook of her arm, then a few moments later a cold feeling starts to seep outward through her body.
"You'll be asleep soon," he explains. "Just try to relax."
Phoenix is actually feeling pretty far from relaxed right now, given that she has no idea what's happening and is being injected with something. Her supervisor being here helps; she doesn't actually know the woman, but her familiar and steady presence is comforting anyway. She's watching the procedure with a kind of mild interest that suggests that it isn't unusual.
Fortunately, it soon turns out that it doesn't matter whether she tries to relax or not.
Her mouth is desert-dry. That's the first sensation that comes back to her. She tries to swallow but finds that she can't - there's a tube down her throat or something, and she can't make the muscles move. Fuck. Okay. She tries to open her eyes, but the lids won't move either. She's... paralyzed. Is she supposed to be awake? Increasingly frantic, she tries moving her arms, her legs, even single fingers and toes. She can barely feel any of them, let alone get them to move. The sensation of panicking without her body actually being able to hyperventilate is even more unsettling. Apparently at least her heart still works, because she can feel it pounding in her chest, can feel her blood surging in her veins.
Just then, she feels a line of heat crawling up the inside of her left arm from where they gave her the IV, a building itching beneath her own skin creeping up past her shoulder and fanning out through her chest. She tries to struggle, to get away from the feeling of having something burning her from the inside, but of course she can't move and then the warmth reaches her heart and shoots outwards throughout her whole body, and then she's -
She's six years old. She knows she can't be here, that it's just a memory, but it's so real, deeper and richer and more present than she's ever experienced it before. This is one of her favorite memories, one of the things she comes back to sometimes, and like all memories as it's aged the little details have started to fade until only the broad, bright brush strokes are still there - but now here she is, and every iota of it is just as real as if she was really there, and it's breathtaking. She's outside their parish church, a midsummer day at noon, just her and her mom in the hot sun. Her mom's holding her hand, leading her down the steps, and she looks down at Phoenix and there's just this perfect smile on her face, the shadow from her broad hat falling across her upper chest, and she says "I love you," in her soft melodic way, and then -
She's eight, reliving another memory. She's little, curled up in a corner of the apartment her birth parents used to share, and there's a woman, horribly familiar but who she is is just out of reach, standing over her and shouting that she's worthless, a drain, a leech, a waste of space. She presses herself back into the corner, choked with terror, and then suddenly there's light, and warmth, and the woman's gone and in her place is her mom, crouching down next to her, reaching a gentle hand towards her. "It's okay," she's saying, over and over. "She's gone. I'm here." Phoenix sobs - has she been sobbing this whole time? - and then her mom's taking her into her arms, warm and soft and perfectly safe, and she kisses Phoenix on the forehead, and in her soft way she says "I love you, Sara," and -
The carefully-built layer of armor that is Phoenix crumbles away, and she's just Sara again, the small terrified child that Phoenix has nursed at her heart all these years. She wails, raw grief flooding through her, as half a lifetime of anger and violence and never, ever letting anyone see how scared she is disintegrates, coming down like a building in an earthquake. She's in another memory now, and another, and another, her whole life unspooling before her as disconnected fragments of who she is and used to be. Her mom keeps coming up, over and over again, in places Phoenix knows she couldn't have been, but the memories are real, so maybe she's just been forgetting all along and maybe her mom was never gone at all.
At last, the swirling chaos of her own past starts to ebb, the rest of the memories fade away, and she finds herself in a familiar place - her own childhood bedroom. She's still small, eleven or so. She's carried this memory ever since, buried as deep as she can, like radioactive waste leaching its poison out into her spirit. She's never shared it with anyone, never will, never could.
"No," she tries to whisper to herself. She's been trying to burn this memory out of herself. She hates it. She can't handle reliving it like this, not with every detail crisp and sharp and every hard-won blank spot filled in. She tries to make her remembered self move, to get up, to scream, to do anything, but of course that's not how the memory goes, and she can't do a single fucking thing but live through it over again.
Once it's over, once her father's shut the door and left her alone, she's lying still, curled up on her side, tears soaking into her pillow, and then the door opens again, and it's not him, not back to scare her or remind her to never ever tell, it's - Mom? She tries to shake her head; this was after they separated, a bit before Dad married her new stepmom, so Mom can't have been here. Her mom comes into her bedroom, shuts the door quietly, and then she's sitting on the bed right next to her, back of her hand gentle on her cheek, and she says: "I'm sorry, Sara. I should have been there." That's not right either, Mom doesn't even know about this, so how can - is she dreaming? What's going on?
"Mom?"
This time, her lips do move, just barely, and the un-memory loses some of its substance, frays around the edges.
"I'm here," she hears her mom say, only the voice is inside her now, coming from inside her own head - not like she's imagining it, or remembering it, but like her mom is somehow speaking directly into her mind. "Come back," she says, and Sara's eyes flutter slowly open. She's looking upward at the ceiling of a medical ward. She tries to turn her head, to look around for her mother, but she can't.
"I'm here, Sara," her mother's voice says. "I'm in your head, with you. We never have to be apart ever again."
It's a while longer before the anesthetic fully wears off and they let her stand up. Sara doesn't mind, except that her body itches all over and she can't scratch any of it, but Mom just tells her to be patient, so she does. She's supposed to call her May, though - it's very important for her to remember that. When she's talking to her, even if it's just a quiet whisper, she has to call her May. She's been practicing as she tells her mother everything she's never been able to, lets the grief and loneliness and raw guttural despair of the years seep out of her in broken-voiced whispers. Nurses come to check on her a couple of times, but they don't speak to her and don't seem bothered that she's whispering to herself. She tries not to cry; Mom - May - says it's okay if she needs to but she hates the sticky feeling of her own snot and tears on her face and she can't move to wipe it clean.
Eventually the drug burns out of her body and one of the nurses helps her to unsteady legs. Her body feels all wrong, bigger and heavier and harder than it's supposed to be, but that feeling too is gradually fading. After a few halting steps she's able to walk on her own, although the nurse keeps holding her by one of her upper arms. The nurse helps her into an adjacent room, where her uniform is sitting neatly folded on a bench, along with her mask and a new collar, a thicker band made of some matte-black metal.
"Get dressed, sweetheart," May says to her. Sara does so, fumbling slightly - her hands still don't seem to work perfectly - until eventually there's nothing left to put on but her mask and the collar. She holds the collar in both hands, looking at it, and Mom says: "Put it on."
Sara does, pulling it around her bare neck and fastening it with a final click. It's slightly flexible and fits close to her skin, not uncomfortable but definitely more of a constant presence than her old unclaimed collar was. Now that she's collared again, she pulls her mask on, pauses - then realizes that she has to adjust the fit herself, so she does so until it's tight enough to stay firmly in place.
"Done, May," she whispers, beneath the mask.
"Good," says her mother's voice. "Let's get back to your room. You and I have a lot to catch up on."
Her training continues. Every day there is physical conditioning, drills in tactics and weapons, practice in climbing and moving unseen and soundless. It's still exhausting, and it never gets easier, but it also stops getting more difficult. She's been honed to a keen edge, and she's sharp enough now to fulfill her purpose and merely needs to be kept ready. She understands this.
There are also new things she must learn and master, now that she has May with her. Silence, and how to keep it even when in pain or afraid. Stillness. Patience beyond anything she's imagined previously. Obedience, of a kind that's never come so easily to her before. Peace.
"You are doing well," May tells her, interrupting her thoughts. She smiles beneath her mask - the only movement she's permitted during this exercise, and then only when May praises her. She's been kneeling in the corner of one of the exercise rooms, hands clasped behind the back of her head and eyes closed, for so long that she's lost all sense of time passing. She can hear others moving around her, the normal comings and goings of any common space, the same as any other gym anywhere else in the galaxy except for the fact that no words are spoken. Having her eyes closed and remaining stationary in this position is difficult - it frightens her, makes her aware that for all the dozens of methods of murder she knows, she can't so much as raise a hand to ward off a blow when one of the instructors chooses to strike her. Her right cheekbone is aching beneath her mask from where one of them did just that not long ago.
Nonetheless, she's remaining still as best she can. For one thing, if she moves from her position May will use the collar fastened around her neck to deliver a painful corrective shock, and will then direct her back into the position anyway and probably lengthen the exercise. That's all true, and important, but it's not the real reason she's making herself a kneeling statue in the corner of the exercise room. She also understands intellectually that the true purpose of this exercise, apart from cultivating stillness in the body, is that she must learn to trust May to be her senses when necessary and to keep her safe from any true danger. That, too, is important. What actually keeps her still when her muscles tremble with fatigue or when she hears boots coming to stand right in front of her, when she wants so badly to open her eyes so she can see what's coming, is that she knows it will make May proud.
The interminable exercise eventually ends, and she gets back to her feet at May's instructions, bruised but victorious, and is sent back to her quarters, knees still aching from holding the position. May has her eat a pair of nutrient sticks from the box now stored in her cupboard, then has her spend some time writing in her journal. That's what the paper books on her desk were for, apparently; she's already filled three of them with her messy handwriting and is partway through a fourth. She often feels like she doesn't actually have much to write, but when that happens, May will prompt her with a gentle question or two, until eventually she's able to open up onto the paper. It feels good.
After she's done that, May has her undress, sends her to turn the lights off and get into bed. She does so, curls up on her side under the blankets, and into the dark whispers: "Mom?"
"I'm here, sweetheart," her mother says back to her. This little private space between bed and sleep is the only time she's allowed to be Sara, when it's just her and May alone together. That's okay, though, because she frightens easily anyway and only May truly makes her feel safe. She's allowed to call her Mom, like she wants to, and allowed to... to be herself.
During the day, when she's out of her cell, she has to be someone else instead. She used to be Phoenix, but Phoenix is gone now, and Sara needs something else around her, something that isn't just a girl that never properly grew up. May's been helping her forge that something. May calls it Unit 627c.210d, although she always addresses it as simply Unit. The Unit is calm and competent and knows what to do and how to act and is so fast and deadly that nobody can ever, ever hurt it the way Sara was hurt. She likes being the Unit for May. It feels safe.
When she's being the Unit, she's supposed to refer to herself with "it". This is to help remember that the Unit isn't a person, but rather a thing that May built to keep her daughter safe. The Unit acts like a person sometimes, does things people do, can even pretend to be a person if it has to, but it doesn't have the inside parts that a person has. It doesn't have fear, or guilt, or nervousness, or anything else that might compromise what it's supposed to do. The Unit listens to May, and she fills it up with whatever it needs to contain, and otherwise it is empty.
It's difficult, sometimes, to be - that, to hollow herself out the way she needs to to truly be a good Unit for May, but she's been practicing, and every day she gets a little better. There are meditations, little body-mind exercises, that May has been teaching her that help her feel that way. She has to quiet Sara enough to send her into a kind of sleep, because once Sara's sleeping inside her, there's nothing left, she doesn't have to struggle to keep all those emotions away any more. May says that eventually it'll become effortless, that the Unit will become a part of her that will be there whenever she needs it, but it takes time and practice and she should be patient with herself. Sara's never been good at patience, but May is teaching her that, too.
"Would my girl like a bedtime story?"
Sara curls herself up smaller, nods. She loves May's stories. She's never heard the same one twice.
"Alright then," May says. "A story, and then it's sleep time. So, there once was a boy..."
The Unit is tense. It should not be; it has everything it needs, and there is no true danger in this mission beyond the prosaic risks of any time spent in the wilderness. It is trained and equipped for every situation it may face, and of course it has May with it. Despite that, the Unit's grip on the straps of its pack is tighter than it ought to be. It's alone in the back of a truck, sitting against one wall of the vehicle's cargo bay, pack resting on the metal floor by its side, legs pulled up to its chest. The ride has been getting increasingly bumpy for the past half an hour.
"Nervous?" asks May. Of course she can tell; she can feel every miniscule movement of its body, every tiny shift in its biometrics. She is a part of it now.
"Yes, May," the Unit whispers.
"You have everything you need for success," she reminds it. It knows that, but knowing it and feeling it aren't the same. It feels guilt for doubting itself, for doubting the way May has formed it. Doubt is one of the Unit's flaws.
The truck pulls to a stop, and May orders it out of the back. The Unit leaps lightly to the ground, then pulls its heavy pack from the vehicle and shoulders it. The vehicle pulls away, loops around, and turns to return back down the rutted forest road; the soldier driving it throws the Unit a surprisingly friendly wave, which it returns as a salute. The truck disappears down the track, and then the sounds of the woods close around it.
"You will need to cover sixty kilometers in four days," May reminds it. "I will navigate. If you begin experiencing any pains or discomfort as you travel, tell me immediately. It is better to address problems while they are still small problems. Pain is a signal from your body that there is a problem. Do not ignore that signal."
"Yes, May," the Unit replies. It knows all of this already, could probably recite the exact wording from memory, but it doesn't mind May repeating the lesson. It reminds the Unit that May cares about it, cares about it doing well and being good.
It adjusts the fit of its pack slightly, then looks slowly around itself, taking in the forest. There are so many colors, sounds, and scents that it's nearly overwhelming. The varied shadings of the sunlight on the swaying leaves of the trees are almost entrancing, and there's a salty, earthy tang on the breeze from the west which fills the Unit's nostrils. It's still so much, even after a few exercises in the woods. The Unit misses the safety and order and cleanliness of its home, but to be a good Unit for May it must become comfortable operating in the outside world when necessary. It understands that, but nonetheless it longs for its cell.
"In your own time," May says, reminding the Unit that it's supposed to be hiking rather than standing around admiring the trees. It blushes, faintly embarrassed. Embarrassment is an emotion, but not one of the Unit's flaws, because it feels embarrassed when it performs poorly, which encourages it to do better. May has explained this.
The Unit turns, finds a bearing, and sets off, boots brushing through drifts of fallen leaves.
There are other missions. Infiltration. Exfiltration. Theft. Reconnaissance. Assassination. All practice, but all as real as May and the staff can make them. The Unit is returning to its cell after a three-day simulated assassination, during which it methodically stalked a government agent through the streets of Theophilum, staying inconspicuous amidst the crowds, then managed to get itself to within easy killing range without being detected. It was successful, it thinks, and May agrees, although as always there are things it can improve on. It will do better next time for her.
When it re-enters its cell, its box of nutrient paste sticks has been refilled and its sheets have been replaced in its absence. There is also, on its desk by its stack of journals, a small plastic case, containing a small injection kit and a vial of a pale blue liquid. The Unit picks it the vial up and holds it up to the light; it looks like there's dust suspended in the solution.
"Put that down," May tells it, "and strip."
The Unit does, folding its clothing neatly. Since it's alone in its cell, it takes its mask off as well, leaving itself naked but for the metal shock collar. It hasn't earned a shock in more than a week, which it is proud of, and that pride is not a flaw, because it comes from serving May well.
"Gather your restraints and place them by your bed. You will shortly be injecting yourself with a drug and once you have done so you will have only a couple of minutes to complete the rest of your instructions."
The Unit swallows, mouth suddenly dry. It does not like the restraints. The only use for the restraints is when it's been bad, so bad that the shock collar isn't enough for it - but it hasn't, has it? Its mission went well, and May never lies to it, especially not about that, so what...?
While it's thinking this, its body gathers the metal cuffs and fasteners and places them neatly on the floor next to its bed. Whether it is frightened or not, whether it likes it or not, it won't disobey May.
"Good," May says. "Prepare yourself for injection." The Unit does, assembling the kit, finding a vein, and sterilizing the injection site. It sits down on the edge of its bed, holding the syringe in one hand, point a millimeter from its skin. Its hands are shaking slightly, it notices.
"You no doubt remember the drug you were given shortly after I was placed in you. This vial contains another dose of it. Tonight you will relive one of your memories."
The Unit frowns, looking down at the syringe. It does not want to relive anything, and especially not in the horrifyingly intense detail that the drug gave it last time. It can feel the shock collar around its neck, knows that it couldn't disobey May even without the threat of pain, but nonetheless it does not want to.
"When I tell you to do so," May goes on, voice perfectly even, "you will inject yourself, then restrain yourself to the bed, on your back, with your legs spread and your hands above your head. You will need to act quickly to apply the restraints before the drug takes effect. Once you are restrained," she continues, "you will re-experience what your father did to you."
The Unit stills, muscles suddenly tense, breathing suddenly sharp and shallow. No. It can't. It can't. That happened to someone else, to a small girl long ago and far away, not to it. It's gone, the memory dead and excised. The Unit hasn't dreamed of it in weeks. She... May can't make it go back. It won't. The Unit's hands are trembling now, tip of the needle wavering.
"Now," says May, emotionless.
Months of conditioning override its paralyzing terror, and the Unit injects the contents of the vial into its arm in one smooth motion.
The Unit restrains itself to the bed, clicking the cuffs shut around its ankles, then finally binding its wrists above its head. It's helpless now, immobilized until May or someone else releases the locks, horribly vulnerable and afraid.
May darkens the lights in its cell, leaving the Unit alone and panting with fear. It can feel the drug burning outwards through its veins, already knows what's going to happen when it reaches its heart.
"Good," May purrs. "Now, tell me what happened to my little girl."
The Unit does, in hoarse, broken-voiced whispers, and as it speaks the evil out into the world, it remembers. The memory's horrible, sickening; her father's stink, so real it's almost in her nostrils, makes the Unit retch, and it tugs uselessly against the restraints with such force that one of its wrists starts to bleed. Just like in the memory, though, it can't move, has to lie still in its memory of her body, whimpering and begging in a tiny shattered voice. The old remembered pain is fresh again, searing-hot and bright, hurting her in a way she's never allowed anyone else to, and the Unit for all its skill and strength and practiced lethality cannot do the least thing to protect her, and -
She hears her mother's voice, out of the darkness. "Sara."
She startles, manages to force her eyes open, looking for the sound. Above her, her father is frozen in place, a waxwork figure out of her past.
"Mom?"
"I can end this, Sara."
That tears a sob from her throat; she's never wanted anything in her life as much as she wants this to end. "P-please..."
"I'll keep you safe, sweetheart." There's a pause, then she says: "Unit. Present."
The memory falls away instantly, dissolving as the Unit's conditioning asserts itself. It's been drilled relentlessly to react this way: when May tells it to be present, it does. Around it, the universe thrums, the grey walls of its cell seem to be shivering, the pressure of the cuffs against the rubbed-raw skin of its ankles and wrists is far far too much - but it's here, and it's safe, and it's with May. It gasps with relief.
"Good," May tells it. "Remember that I can keep you safe, Unit. Do you understand?"
The Unit nods, still trying to catch its breath. The drug is overwhelming it, breaking down the walls between it and the world, and it's so so much -
"Again," May says. "Tell me what happened to my little girl."
The winter air is a knife in the Unit's lungs, even through its mask. It's wearing an extra layer of winter clothing over its uniform, but the chill still creeps in, making it shiver in the darkness. It's been on this mission for nearly three days, and it's so close to finished that it can almost taste success. May's been with it every step, of course; she's been reminding it to keep its food intake higher than normal, to supply its body with the energy it needs to survive the brutal cold, and to dress warmly and pay attention to its extremities. May cares a lot about it, of course.
Less than a hundred meters away, the Unit can see a soldier on sentry duty, shoulders hunched and back turned to the wind. He's smoking a cigarette, rifle still slung across his back, and looks as though he's anything but alert - indeed, it seems as though he's almost barely awake. Nonetheless, May tells it to wait patiently, lingering motionless in the winter night, peering into the gloom through its night optics, scanning the facility it's supposed to infiltrate, shivering beneath its heavy layers.
"Just because there is one obvious guard," May points out, "doesn't mean there cannot be a second, less obvious one."
"Yes, May," the Unit says. If the Unit had opinions of its own, one of those opinions might be that the odds of that are very remote, especially on a pitch-dark night when it's well below freezing, and the odds of that second guard being both awake and alert enough to see the Unit moving in are almost equally remote. However, the Unit does not have opinions, or at least is not supposed to, so it keeps that thought to itself. Besides, it obeys May, whether it agrees with her or not.
Eventually, May seems satisfied (or possibly she's just eager to have this mission done with, as well), and she gives the Unit permission to close in. The Unit slips forward, staying low and moving slowly, towards the deepest pool of shadow by the facility fence. Clearing the fence is a quick matter, and the Unit disappears into the gloom. After all its training, staying out of the light is second nature to it, and soon it's silently defeating the simple lock on a warehouse's side access door. Whatever this place is, it's not important enough to have modern electronic locks, it seems. It opens the warehouse door cautiously, peering into the cavernous darkness; inside is a quartet of squat, bulky armored vehicles of unfamiliar design, but the Unit's not here for those. It looks around, holding its breath, but there's nobody here. Unsurprising, but still good. It slips inside, then finally exhales once the access door is closed behind it.
"Here," May says, highlighting a ladder in its visual field. The Unit scales the ladder, then May directs it to a small cluster of workstations in a crude office area on the second floor. It follows her directions to one of the workstations, then pulls a small device from a pocket of its uniform, connects it, and carefully powers the workstation on.
"Stay low," May says. "This will take a few minutes." The Unit feels the usual gentle tingle of May drawing more power from its body to feed her computer cores.
The Unit crouches low, perfectly still in the dark. It can't be seen from the warehouse floor, even if there was anyone down there, so the Unit lets itself relax slightly, steadies its breathing out. After May's work is done, it'll retrieve the device, exit the base, then it'll have to hike overland to the planned exfiltration point. That'll be several hours, but at least it won't have to overnight in the woods again.
"Complete. Retrieve the device."
The Unit does so, slipping it back into its pocket.
"No signs of increased activity. Leave the way you came in."
The Unit does so, retracing its steps and scaling the facility's fence again. Within a matter of minutes, it's disappeared into the winter night, without a trace left behind.
An overnight hike in deep winter, after three days of bad sleep and relentless cold, is no easy feat, but the Unit is strong and tough and long-enduring and, of course, has May to encourage it on. It's almost half an hour's hike from the facility, heading steadily to the east, when it first hears something other than wind whistling through bare branches. The Unit stops abruptly, peers upwards through its night optics, and it's able to just barely make out the shape of a drone passing overhead, mottled grey paint near invisible against the night sky. That drone, the Unit knows, will be carrying cameras, and thermals, and all kinds of other sensors, and there's really not many reasons for it to be out here on a night like tonight.
"It is not likely you were detectable," May tells it, voice even. "Beneath the tree cover, in darkness, and with your outer layers near the ambient temperature, you are not easy to see. Continue as planned."
The Unit does, redoubling its pace. It'd like to take a more evasive course, but if it misses the pickup point the backup point is nearly two hours further away, and it'll have to cross those two hours in daylight, which will make it even harder to evade pursuit. It can't afford to delay. "Yes, May," it replies.
Unfortunately, a few minutes later, it hears the faint hum of the drone again, passing far above it.
"We will evade," May tells it. "Change course to the northeast instead, and move into the heavier tree cover. It is worse terrain and they will not expect us to flee that way. If need be, we will find a cave and wait."
The Unit swallows, suddenly nervous. It's never actually failed during a training exercise before, never been spotted or caught or stopped. To fail during its final exercise, to be caught exfiltrating, would be an intolerable failure in its duty to May. It grimaces beneath its mask, turns, and starts jogging, every sense straining for sounds of trouble.
It manages to reach the area of heavier tree cover and takes shelter in a hollow at the base of a huge, long-dead evergreen to catch its breath and eat another food stick. Above, it can just barely hear the hum of a drone, now circling its position. It's not sure it's visible through the trees - May thinks it probably isn't - but it has to decide where to go next. Unlike it, May has access to maps of the whole area, and steers it away to the south, towards a deep, narrow ravine with a small stream at its bottom. The ravine will provide excellent cover, and the Unit can use it to stay out of sight for nearly ten kilometers if it has to. Hopefully that'll be enough.
The Unit manages to make its way to the ravine, and the sound of the drone gradually fades away into the distance behind it. It stops to scan the sky every couple of minutes, peering upwards through its optics, but sees nothing further.
"Onward," May tells it. "We cannot stop to rest here."
After nearly another hour of hiking, during which it makes four more kilometers of distance, the Unit's luck finally runs out. A drone passes by over the ravine, flying low and slow, a bare few hundred meters up. At this range, there's no possible way it can have missed the Unit's thermal signature, dimmed though it is. The Unit looks around, but the walls on either side are too sheer and treacherous, covered in ice and dead brambles, for it to risk climbing. All it can do is turn back or press onwards. May sends it onwards.
In less than a minute, the drone passes overhead again.
"Run."
The Unit does, leaping sure-footed across the ice slick rocks, heedless of the weight of its pack or its winter clothing or the fact that it can hardly see the ground, even with its optics. It's been trained for this. Any pursuers will have to be quick indeed to chase it down in this sort of terrain, and if it can make some more distance, maybe it can -
From up ahead, it hears the heavy thudding of helicopter blades, and a grey, almost insectoid shape drops out of the sky into a hover barely ten meters above the ground. The Unit stops immediately, whirls to run back up the ravine, but in the distance it can just make out the shape of a second helicopter closing in. Its only remaining option is to scale one of the ravine walls; it turns and sprints towards one of them, while out of the corner of its eye, it sees figures beginning to rappell down from the nearby helicopter. That doesn't matter, if it gets a few meters' start they'll never catch it in the climb, and -
There are a pair of low, barking coughs, and a pair of gas grenades land a couple of meters from the Unit. They immediately spring open, spewing a thick, grey-green gas. The Unit holds its breath, tries to get clear, but its lungs are already burning from the sprint, it can't - can't quite do it, and... its last conscious memory is of a gas-masked soldier closing in on it, weapon raised.
The next thing the Unit's aware of is being on a cold metal surface, probably the floor of the helicopter. It stays still, eyes closed, giving no sign that it's awake. It can feel cuffs on its wrists and ankles, and it has something over its head. All it can hear is deafeningly loud engine noise.
"May?", it whispers, mouth dry.
"I'm here," she says, and the Unit feels its fear ease just slightly. "We've been captured."
"What happens now?"
There's an uncharacteristic silence, then May says: "I don't know. There's nothing about this in the mission plan. I would guess that they're going to interrogate us and ensure we can keep secrets, and that this is part of the training."
Oh. "So what do we do?"
"Resist interrogation. Likely there is a pre-set timeline for this part of the training. If we hold out until that timeline elapses, we succeed. Otherwise, we fail."
"Yes, May."
"Do not fail, Unit."
"Yes, May," the Unit says, squaring its shoulders. It can do this for May.
Eventually the helicopter comes in for a landing, and the Unit is picked up bodily and hauled out. It's carried by strong hands, then tossed onto a cold concrete floor, where it lands painfully on one of its hips. A few moments later, it feels hands on it and the point of a knife. Its uniform and its thermal base layer are cut and ripped away from it, leaving it nearly naked, and then the covering is tugged from its head. It blinks, squinting up into harsh white light; there are at least three faces staring down at it, all concealed by helmets and visors. One of the figures yanks the Unit's own mask off, leaving its face exposed, then cuts its collar off with a pair of heavy-duty cutters. The Unit shivers, trying to get its eyes to adjust to the light, but it can't make out any other details of the figures before they vanish from view. There's the sound of a slamming door, and then the Unit is alone.
The Unit squirms, still bound hand and foot, as it gradually regains the ability to see. The room it's in is small, perhaps two meters square, with no furniture or contents of any kind at all - it's just a blank concrete space, with a metal door set into one wall. There's no apparent lock or knob on the door, either, and there's not even the smallest gap on any side of it that the Unit can see. The Unit concludes that the odds of escape are virtually zero. It does the best it can to rearrange itself into a comfortable position, but lying against the cold concrete is slowly sapping warmth from it, and there's no way to get out of contact with it.
"They are making you feel physically vulnerable," May says, still sounding totally collected. "Especially by removing your collar. You are used to wearing one continuously and you will feel unprotected without it."
"Yes, May," the Unit says, shivering. If its captors are trying to make it feel vulnerable, they are succeeding. If it wasn't bound, it could at least try to attack one of them, but it can hardly move and doesn't have any of its equipment. The feeling of being uncollared is awful, like having a part of its own body missing; the Unit tries to notice it as little as possible.
"Collared or not," May tells it, "you are still mine, Unit. You will always be mine."
"I understand, May," the Unit replies. Its anxiety lessens just a little bit. It belongs to May, and it will always belong to May. She will take care of it, tell it what to do, correct it if it errs.
"Good. I believe they are about to begin to hurt you," she says, as the sound of boots becomes faintly audible through the metal door. "Be strong for me, Unit."
Time begins to lose meaning. The Unit is subjected to burning heat, to freezing cold, to pitch darkness, to searing light, to horrible grating loud noises, to isolation, to starvation, and to simple physical brutality. It is bruised. It bleeds. It whimpers. It cries.
It does not break.
May is there with it, for every step of its interrogation. Her presence is the Unit's lifeline, its only solid connection to reality. It whispers her name through cracked and bloodied lips, feels the ghost of her warmth on welted and purpled skin. As its captors fail to break it, and become increasingly vicious, it clings to the knowledge that May knows what it is going through, that she is there, that she believes in it.
When they leave it, for at least a little while, to lie naked and helpless on the freezing floor of its cell, it whimpers, shivering in fear, and May speaks into its mind, repeating over and over that she is proud of it, that it is being a good Unit for her.
It's enough.
The Unit sleeps, maybe. It's difficult to tell. Presumably May knows. It's awakened abruptly from sleep by having freezing water thrown over it. It gasps in shock and surprise. It's been cold for so long now that it thinks it may never be warm again, but the icy water starts a fresh bout of shivering, makes the Unit's teeth chatter. Three of the captors come into its cell, just as anonymous behind their helmets and visors as they've always been. Two of them haul it upright; the third stands in front of it, apparently considering it. It wishes it could curl up, or turn to protect itself, but it can't.
"Hmph," he says. "I hate working on these fucking freaks. Always so much work to break."
"Hey, Sarge," says one of the others - the one holding it up by its left arm. "It's got one of those AI things, right? In the head?"
"Yeah," the leader grunts. "They all do."
"S' implants, right?", says the soldier at its left arm. "What if we burn 'em out?"
There's a thoughtful pause. "Dunno if Spec Ops would be too pleased if we break one of their toys."
"Ah, hell," says the soldier holding its right arm. "Just say we didn't find 'em, got no idea what happened with 'em. Sick of these fucks creeping around on their God-damned exercises anyway, making everyone else look like idiots. Maybe one of their precious little slave things just up and vanishes. What do you think, Sarge?"
There's another thoughtful pause, then the leader's mouth slowly curls into a cruel smile. "Alright," he says. "Let's show the freak squad that we know just how to break 'em after all. Drop it, let's go get the gear."
They drop the Unit to the floor and leave, slamming the door of the cell.
"Well," May says, "that's... not good."
The Unit curls into a ball, true fear starting to coalesce in its belly. "They... they can't t-take you away, can they?"
"I don't know."
"Oh," the Unit replies. "What do I do?"
"Be strong for me, Unit," May says. "I - I might not be with you any more, depending on what happens next, but... but you know what I want you to do anyway. I believe in you."
"Okay," the Unit murmurs, insides almost liquid with terror. It needs May. It doesn't know how to do anything without her. It's going to break, they're going to break it, and without May it's going to be nothing, just an empty shell with nothing inside, and just the idea of losing her has it spiraling downwards into panic, and then the door slams open again, and rough hands are siezing it, and the Unit thrashes around helplessly while a boxy metal device is pressed against the back of its skull, and then there's a loud transient hum, and a moment of the worst headache the Unit's ever experienced, and then -
"May!", cries the Unit, and there's only silence in reply.
"Hah," says one of the soldiers. "Looks like it can talk after all. Well, now that it's just you and us, all alone in here, we can show you a few of the... unofficial methods."
The Unit cannot do this. It cannot. Its body is a mass of bruises, and its ribs ache in a way that tells it that at least a couple of them are cracked. Worse than the pain is the fear, though - it heard what the soldiers said earlier, about simply claiming not to have it. Without May, there's nobody who can call for help for it; it could simply be trapped here to be tortured until it dies, and nobody would ever know. The Unit wishes desperately that May was here - some part of it is whimpering her name to itself, over and over like a prayer, right now - but she won't answer. She's gone. It pulls itself into a yet-tighter ball, trying to do one of the breathing exercises she taught it to calm itself, but it's of no use. A little while ago the soldiers came back, and they... hurt it, the special way it was hurt once a lifetime ago, and while they were hurting it one of them had their arm around its bare throat, squeezing and squeezing until its vision started to fade to black, and it was only by the barest margin of desperate courage that the Unit kept its serial number, the secret they're trying to get from it, behind its teeth.
It won't survive being hurt like that again, it knows. It's running out of strength. If May were here, it would be strong enough, but by itself it's not enough. If they come back, if they push it down onto the concrete like that again, it'll... it'll fail. It'll give up the secret, fail the exercise. It knows this.
It'll fail May, if it does that.
May won't even know, the Unit realizes. She's gone. It can't disappoint her any more, because she's not here. She won't know if it tells. She won't know how weak it really was, how wrong she was to believe in it.
It whimpers, sobs her name again in the freezing darkness. There's no answer.
The door slams open again. More booted feet trample into its cell. Hands shove it facedown onto the concrete again. The Unit feels itself shaking, muscles tensing.
There's a hand in its hair, a punishing grip, a voice growling in its ear. "You got so close to telling us last time. We can tell, you know. Maybe another good fucking's what you need, freak. Bet all those fucking head cases over at Spec Ops don't even know how to treat a sub properly, eh?"
The Unit trembles. It can do nothing to prevent this - nothing except telling them what they want to know. It opens its mouth to speak, resigns itself to its failure... but then it imagines it's hearing May's voice, telling it how proud she is. Maybe it's her ghost. The Unit can't betray her, it realizes, even if she's gone. May would have wanted it to hold out, to pass this test, even if she's no longer here to see it. It snaps its mouth shut, grits its teeth, and prepares to endure.
Eventually, the soldiers seem to tire of hurting it, or to realize that it simply isn't going to talk. The Unit clings on, with desperate endurance, to its memories of May - how her praise felt, the clarity she gave it, the way she kept it company. It cannot fail her. It will not. What they do to it does not matter. At some point, they simply pick it up, without a word of explanation, and carry it outside, still naked and shivering in the winter cold. There's a military transport, a personnel carrier, waiting there. They dump it into the back, still bound, hand the keys to its restraints to someone, and leave it.
The Unit is surprised to see its former supervisor, along with another soldier wearing the red-and-white armband of a medic. Its supervisor uncuffs it, guides it into one of the personnel carrier's seats, and wraps a blanket around it. The Unit looks at her, blankly grateful.
"Good work," she says, with a smile. "You've passed."
The Unit slumps back into the personnel carrier's seat, utterly exhausted and drained. The medic fusses over it, cataloguing its injuries, applying bandages and ointments and whatever else he feels necessary. The Unit lets him. The domme sits next to it, one hand resting on its shoulder, reassuringly present and solid. The Unit feels the absence of its collar unusually keenly, is famished and exhausted and in pain and just barely clinging onto consciousness, but first it has to know -
"May?", it asks the woman.
"She'll be fine," the domme says. "They'll switch her back on for you when we get back to base."
Oh, the Unit thinks, with a wash of relief, and then there's blessed darkness.
The Unit is allowed entire days to recover. According to May (whose return causes the Unit to cry in front of a medical technician), the capture and interrogation are supposed to be part of the final training exercise, as is having her disabled during the last part of the interrogation. Some of the things that were done to it are... not supposed to be part of it, but there is little point in reporting them to anyone, although the Unit can feel May's fury at that fact. She, too, was not told what sort of danger her Unit was being sent into, and while she can understand the reasoning for not telling her initially, the fact that her Unit was placed in such a position, without her there to help it, seems to fill her with disgust and rage. The Unit has never actually seen May angry before, even when it has failed her, and it hopes never to see it again. Her "voice" in its head doesn't get any louder, but it becomes more clipped, more precisely controlled, in a way suggesting that she's just barely holding back an inferno.
The Unit is glad, in a way, that May wants so badly to keep it safe. Nobody's ever wanted to protect it like that before. It makes it feel like it might be worth protecting.
After a few days of rest, when it can at least walk without discomfort, May has it dress itself. It does so, and soon afterwards, it supervisor appears at the door. She smiles; it smiles back beneath its mask, and she steps into its quarters and shuts the door behind her.
"I have something for you, Unit," she says. "Stand."
The Unit does, folding its hands behind its back like it's supposed to. The domme approaches it, unfastens its mask, then produces a different mask - a flat slate-grey, matching its uniform, made of some hard polymer, precisely fitted to cover its entire face. She lifts it to the Unit's head - her own fingers are trembling slightly - puts it on, and tightens the straps to hold it in place. It fits perfectly, and it feels... safe. Right.
"This," she says, "marks you as a fully operational Unit and a graduate of the program. You are now ready to serve the State. I am very proud of you, and I am sure May is as well. Gather your journals and anything else that you want to bring; you're leaving this facility to be sent to your active duty posting."
The Unit, suddenly filled with a mix of pride and apprehension, has no idea how to respond, so it salutes. The domme's lips quirk into a smile again. "Good luck out there, Unit," she says. "We've trained you as best we can. The rest is up to you and May."