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As Wash wakes up, he realizes he was never asleep. He slides into awareness like a soft reboot. In a way, it makes the waking world completely impossible. Wash’s memory of the last week hasn’t completely returned but he knows there is no outcome that could have ended in this brightly-lit room in a cotton sheath, and he concludes that he is dead. This must be the waiting room, because Wash can’t imagine being granted this for eternity.
Interesting that you reject heaven categorically, but it is moot for now. You are still alive.
Wash feels the soft voice more than hears it. Before he can recognize the feeling, he wonders idly how he can feel words, and he gets an answer.
You have a neural implant, and Dr. Grey thought I could best assist you from within it. My name is Agnodice, AI custodian of--
And Wash remembers feeling words before. They were a scream the last time and now they may as well be a whisper, a handshake where Epsilon was a tackle to the ground, but Wash remembers that pressure, the pain, the memories, and he opens his mouth as he remembers--
Oh. Oh dear, Agnodice says, I’m so sorry.
--Wash’s throat seizes around something solid, a line of something that shouldn't be running through his neck, and he doesn’t know why. There’s something on his neck, something taped in place and covered in gauze and trailing off to the right, and he brings his hand to feel it, runs into a thin plastic tubing--
Please don’t touch that.
--Agnodice sounds panicked and panic is what Wash woke up to the first time, panic and horror and a crushing hatred for a stabbing sorrow, panic that flooded the brain and drowned Wash in desperation, swept his body away with the memories of something that hurts too much to touch, throbbing in the back of his skull like a bullet wound and it has to stop, he needs it to end somehow, brings his hands to the back of his neck ready to rip the implant out, death would be better than--
Pressure releases in Wash’s skull and he reels forward like a passenger on a stopping train. His hands are frozen, immobilized behind him without a cause to move, and his thoughts are empty again, terrified but not feeling it. He distantly hears something, distinct from the full-brain reverberations of an AI implant, harder to process despite being so much less painful.
A door opens, and Wash registers the sound as an alarm. He hears a voice like Agnodice on a loudspeaker, jarringly calm. “… intense distress, in need of immediate attention…”
A door closes and Wash hears a voice like Dr. Grey chiding, “Agent Washington, don’t you know that pulling out tubes is the leading cause of death in hospital patients?”
He looks up before he realizes he can. Dr. Grey looks sharp in her doctor’s coat, holstering a handgun in a motion that nearly blends in with her setting hands on her hips. Wash almost doesn’t recognize her out of armor, but he comes back to himself enough to try a greeting. His vocal cords find no air to press against.
“Don’t worry about talking, you’ve got a tube that won’t let you and it won’t heal as well if you try,” Dr. Grey says, looking at a computer screen. “Looks like you got a bit of a panic from the wake-up, but nothing else seems wrong. Agnodice, could you tell me what our guest wants to say?”
A holographic avatar manifests where Dr. Grey glances away from the screen: a golden body made ambiguous by a robe and a boyish face, the same size as Epsilon would be when he showed himself. She looks anxious. “I’m afraid that I cannot. I assessed that my presence in Agent Washington’s mind was detrimental and removed myself to minimize the impact.”
Dr. Grey has a sharp look for Agnodice. “His neural implant should be perfectly safe for both of you. Unless he’s gotten other modifications to it since I fixed him up the first time?” She turns accusatory eyes to Wash. “I’m not sure I can sort those out until you’ve recovered from that malnourishment, but it’s the least I can do. I’ll have to see if I can get in touch with your friends, maybe they have some idea what’s wrong with you.”
She’s gone before the word friends can register for Wash. He’s left gasping, stuck with a vague and nonsensical notion of how he even got out of Temple’s basement. The last thing Wash knows about the Reds and Blues is that Temple intended for them to die, and there is a team of imposters who could probably intercept any call Dr. Grey makes.
Wash throws the blankets off of himself and tries to leave the bed. As soon as he’s standing, the world is spinning around him, and he has to steady himself on the table with the ventilator on it. How the hell is he supposed to carry the thing in this state?
“Agent Washington, please return to your bed,” Agnodice pleads urgently. “You won’t be able to carry that. I’m afraid I have to lock the door now.”
Wash grabs a pen off the table and throws it at Agnodice’s hologram. He doesn’t see where it lands, he’s already reaching for something else, gripping a small vase of flowers.
“I want to help you, Agent Washington,” Agnodice says, and that’s fucking rich. This asshole’s been in his head, has seen Epsilon and thought she could help him like--like Sigma helped Maine. Wash flings the vase but emotion sends it wild, unpredictable as the rush of mingled emotions. He remembers the cold weight of the Meta’s footsteps in the snow and feels that weight in his feet and his chest, dragging him to the floor as the world spins around the arm he uses to catch the edge of his bed.
Agnodice’s hologram appears on the floor next to Wash. She looks like a hallucination that wants to help him and somehow Wash thinks of Locus. “I’m sorry for the distress I caused,” she says, and she doesn’t particularly look like she means it but she definitely sounds it. “And I’m sorry that you can’t tell me what’s wrong. Can you reach the pen you threw? I will be able to scan and read if you are able to write.”
From the floor, Wash sees a display of drug information pamphlets, knocked off the counter at some point. He wants to tear them apart, rip them into the shapes of something that can be understood and make this feeling stop. But he doesn’t feel like he can move, the rise and fall of his chest already too much. He’ll have to settle for something less exhausting.
Wash has to live. He carefully dodges the question of why, knowing that it will be too heavy for his body in this state. He knows he can’t let anyone trust the Reds and Blues until he knows they’re the right ones.
One pamphlet fell further from the rest, under the upholstered chair next to the bed. Wash reaches out a foot and barely manages the friction needed to pull it closer. He finds the pen, not nearly as far as Wash had judged the throw, and manages to pick it up, and he writes in the margins.
Wash has seen Carolina’s determined glower before, but it’s been a while. He’s impressed by how serious she can look, glaring at him even as she works her arm out of the sleeve of her undersuit. Wash isn’t entirely sure what he did to deserve this--did he say something stupid when he was about to die? His stomach twists at the thought, wondering what he could say to make her hate him, what he’d even do without her.
Dr. Grey sticks her with an IV line with probably the same nutritional bullshit Wash is on, and she doesn’t flinch. She keeps staring at Wash, building enough tense silence to make Dr. Grey take a hint and leave them alone pretty quick.
As soon as the door’s closed, Carolina asks, “Why aren't you letting the Reds and Blues in?”
Wash has a whole clipboard full of blank paper now--an upgrade from the drug pamphlets--and he writes his answer now: “Those imposters got pretty far. I couldn't take that risk.”
Carolina has to lean in to read the page, but then she nods. “I didn't want to push it if there were some other thing going on. The Blues and Reds are all dead or in custody now. We've got all the right idiots, I made sure.” Then she purses her lips. “So you better update your visitor permissions before Tucker hurts himself trying to break in.”
Wash nods and starts writing permissions for Agnodice to scan.
“Do you need me to call Dr. Grey or someone to get that filled out?” Carolina asks.
Wash shakes his head. Agnodice appears and says, “I can update your patient information without bothering the staff.”
There used to be a joke on the Mother of Invention about Wash and Maine being the only ones who could figure out Carolina. She barely twitches, but Wash recognizes that she’s startled by the AI, even as he lists the names of the Reds and Blues. She gives Wash an intense stare, and as Wash holds the clipboard up for Agnodice, he looks back. Carolina’s eyes flicker towards the AI avatar in a question, urgent and concerned.
Wash scribbles a clumsy, “done?”
“Yes,” Agnodice says. “Your visitor list is updated now. However, there is a limit on how many people can visit at once, so I imagine there will be some time to sort that out.”
Wash doesn't imagine it'll be long. He just writes quickly, “can you give me some privacy with Carolina?”
Agnodice hesitates, but she says, “Affirmative. I will be back to announce if any guests are about to arrive.” And her avatar winks out.
Carolina stares at the vacated space suspiciously. “Did you get her to leave?”
Wash nods and starts writing.
“How the hell did they even get an AI here?” Carolina wonders, quiet but heated. “The regulations haven't gotten any lighter, and the UNSC wouldn't be making any exceptions for Chorus so soon after clearing up about the Blues and Reds…”
She stops when Wash holds up his clipboard. “Tell Dr. Grey that I had a traumatic experience with an AI implant. That's all she needs to know.”
Carolina’s eyes flicker over the words before she looks at Wash’s face with a question. “You had that AI in your implants.”
Wash nods.
“And you… didn’t…?” She must see the alarm on Wash’s face because the confusion turns to concern. “You were getting along with Epsilon. I didn’t realize you were still…”
Still traumatized? Wash is so surprised that he almost says it out loud, lips wrapping around those sounds even as the intrusion in his throat makes him flinch. How could Carolina, of all people, think that Wash was over it? He picks up the pen, ready to tell her… He doesn’t know what. He sits poised for nearly a minute.
“Of course I’m still,” he writes, and crosses it out.
“Just because I got along with,” he writes, and crosses it out.
“Just because,” he writes, and crosses it out.
“Epsilon,” he writes, and crosses it out, tears the page off, balls it up, stares at the new page with his pen touching paper like that’ll help him think of how to explain that you can forgive a traumatized AI fragment but you can’t stop the searing memory that it burned through you. Agnodice has none of that, Dr. Grey explained that she’s a full AI and too new to even have many memories, but Wash still had to wake up from surgery with someone in his skull. He’d promised himself that nothing would be in his implants ever again. If he could get them removed, he would.
“Are you just going to sit there?” Carolina asks. It sounds like an accusation, but Wash knows her well enough to recognize her concern. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you had that AI? You could tell her what to tell me, right?”
Wash isn’t sure he’d ever be able to come up with the words to tell her why that isn’t an option, so he tries to tell her with a look. He tries to send his thoughts across the line of eye contact, just the ones about Maine and how no number of changed circumstances make him consider that risk.
All he really conveys is his desperation for her to understand.
At night, Agnodice has little to do. She reads the data for every machine in the hospital, but nothing really changes from cycle to cycle. Most of the numbers stay the same, hovering within half a standard deviation. The rest inch downwards or creep upwards, and the few that don’t go towards recovery have not passed the threshold to demand action by staff. With everyone asleep, there’s nothing to do but watch and listen. Her privacy routines keep her from storing anything that doesn't trip a filter, but every room has a microphone, waiting in case someone calls for help.
Every reading relating to Agent Washington indicates he is asleep, but his room is the one that the sound filters catch. Agent Carolina says, “It’s Agnodice, right?”
Agnodice initiates a glowing avatar near Carolina, dimmed by the night mode. “How can I help you, Agent Carolina?” she asks, using a low volume setting on the speaker.
Carolina hesitates for an unusually long time. Agnodice doesn’t want to prompt her, but she nearly forgets about the avatar she has in the room until Carolina says, “When you were in Wash’s mind, did you see Epsilon?”
Since the first day of her creation, Agnodice has been aware of an AI fragment called Epsilon. Chorus has nearly built a pantheon out of the all the characters involved in ending the Chorus War, blending facts with rumors to elevate the soldiers to a legendary status. Epsilon received this treatment more than any others, for various reasons: his isolation from the Chorus soldiers, his role in finding and then exposing Charon Industries, his sacrifice to protect the other heroes in the last stand. Agnodice has monitored several infants named after him, and privately aspires to be known with the same admiration that humans give to him.
Today, in the 2.71 seconds spent connected to Agent Washington’s conscious mind, Agnodice received 117 distinct memories loaded with emotions more intense than Agnodice had imagined possible. All of them related in some way to an AI fragment called Epsilon. The damage left in Washington’s mind contradicts every known record of the Epsilon on Chorus.
“Which Epsilon?” Agnodice asks.
A human response usually leaves plenty of time for Agnodice to assess every biomonitor in the hospital two times--three if she doesn’t try to predict their response--a capacity which allows her to converse in multiple rooms without impacting hospital performance. Agnodice does not bother trying to make a prediction and busies herself with patient checks. She makes 18 rounds through the entire building before Carolina answers with a flat finality.
“There was only ever one Epsilon.”
Agnodice knows on a factual level that Carolina could not have known every secret that Project Freelancer had--but Epsilon must have, and everybody on Chorus knows that Epsilon and Carolina did not keep secrets from each other. Agnodice has to believe Agent Carolina, though she doesn’t know what to do with this information. It is important to her personally, but she is unable to reconcile it with the functional extremes presented within a single fragment of an AI. She files it for contemplation on a slow night, not wanting to compromise her function in the hospital or in conversation.
“I’m afraid discussion of my experiences in Agent Washington’s mind would be a massive breach of patient confidentiality,” Agnodice says. The very act of obtaining them was hardly better, but now that it's been done, Agnodice is very motivated to make it up to Agent Washington in any way possible. It's the least she can do to protect what privacy remains.
“I already know everything,” Carolina says. “I know that Epsilon was tortured and Wash experienced all the memories associated with it. I know that he’s said before that he won’t take an AI ever again because of it. Did you see that? Did you see anything about Epsilon?”
Agnodice wishes she hadn’t. She has quarantined the memories, afraid to interact with them again, even to delete them. From Washington’s mind, she gleaned that the majority of the memories belonged to Epsilon, and that these memories primarily reflected the conditions an AI was subjected to in order to fragment it. Agnodice is not sure that the emotional weight of third-hand memories would be adequate to induce her own fragmentation, but she cannot risk the possibility. Luckily, she doesn’t even need to acknowledge them aloud.
“I cannot answer this question as it would violate hospital privacy policies.”
Carolina sighs. Between patient readings, Agnodice analyzes the soundwave, looking for emotional undercurrents to explain her prolonged silence. Carolina is not attached to many biomonitors, but those that she has are enough to conclude that nothing has changed in her medical condition and she is still awake.
Agnodice is considering prompting Agent Carolina again, not wanting to leave an uncomfortable social situation with such an important patient, when Carolina says, “If you had… memories, from Epsilon… would it be physically possible to use those to reconstruct him? He was…”
In an effort to maintain a pleasant relationship with her patient, Agnodice wants to answer the question. She is hardly an expert in AI theory, though, and the subject of AI fragments is not researched very thoroughly. The Director of Project Freelancer is associated with most of what is known about AI fragments, and his research is widely rebuked due to massive malpractice.
Agnodice begins perusing an AI science database before Carolina clears her throat. “We’ve lost so much already,” Carolina says, with heavily augmented soundwave patterns in her voice, “I just had to see him again. I thought Wash would too. That’s why we went looking, that’s why Wash…”
On her first day helping the hospital, Agnodice thought that crying was usually a symptom of a medical emergency. The first 3 people to cry for an injured loved one had nurses burst into the room because Agnodice was sure that the crier had been overcome with adrenaline in the moment and only now felt the pain of injury. Now she has other protocols in place, determining whether the patient wants to be comforted or to cry unnoticed and how to comfort them if needed.
Dr. Grey’s status, Agnodice sees, indicates that she is asleep for once. When Carolina’s sobs reach a local minimum, Agnodice says, “I am not sure, but I will consult my creator. She may know more about this subject of AI theory than I do, or at least where to look.” She will save the reminder about the importance of hydration, in Carolina’s current state, for a slightly less emotional moment.
Wash watches enviously as Carolina eats the absolutely shitty hospital food from the upholstered chair next to his bed. He won’t be taken off the ventilator for a few more days: now that he isn’t about to die at any minute, Dr. Grey doesn’t want to do the removal surgery until he’s recovered more from the malnourishment. Until then, all of his calories are coming from an IV, which would probably be uncomfortable if Wash hadn’t stopped feeling hunger after six days without food. The biggest pain is the mandatory bed rest, which is making Wash restless. He can’t even talk to people, he has to write, and that’s been getting so frustrating that Tucker’s gotten this idea about sign language.
“Get with the fucking times, old man,” Tucker says, sitting on the edge of Wash’s bed with a computer. “Everyone’s learning how to talk with their hands. Or maybe that’s just around me, if you know what I mean. Bow chicka bow wow. ”
Wash rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. Agnodice’s voice comes over the speaker to say, “Captain Tucker, it is against hospital policy for you to sit on an occupied bed, especially for an intubated patient.”
Wash moves his hands in a classic military gesture. Do not engage .
“Hey, you already know some?” Tucker asks.
Carolina sets her spork-wielding hand on the table to say, “It’s a hand-and-arm signal. Is that meant for Agnodice?”
Wash nods.
“He wants Tucker to stay there,” Carolina explains, and Wash nods again in confirmation. God, is he glad she’s here for him. Despite the cool tension building between them since the rescue, Wash still loves her.
“Very well,” Agnodice says, a hint of uneasiness in her voice. “Don’t touch any of the medical equipment.”
“And that’s why Caboose isn’t in here,” Tucker says. He looks back at his computer and the sign language tutorials he brought up. “I guess you don’t really need this, then, if you already know that other thing?”
Carolina shakes her head. “It’s not very conversational. The vocabulary is all combat terms. It’d be easiest if…”
She trails off even before Wash can glare at her. She looks like she’s just realized who she’s talking to, and her eyes are full of regret.
“Easiest if what?” Tucker asks.
“Wash doesn’t want to do it, so it doesn’t matter,” Carolina says. That cool tension weighs down on Wash, and from her glance at him, she must feel it too.
“Hey, no, you can’t just drop something like that on me and act like you didn’t. Is there something that can be done?” Tucker looks at Wash. “‘Cause I’m gonna get real tired of this writing thing, takes for fucking ever.”
Carolina backs down. “It isn’t really my place to say,” she says, which is fucking convenient, isn’t it?
Frustration builds in Wash. Carolina needs to fucking think about what she’s saying, Wash needs her to put it together so badly that his hands are moving before he can feel the outrage. He gestures even as his glare burns the command into her. Advance .
Of course Carolina looks surprised. Wash gives her half a second before he repeats the gesture and Carolina nods, not breaking eye contact. “Wash has AI implants just like I do. He could communicate with an AI nonverbally, and that AI could relay to us verbally. Dr. Grey has already volunteered Agnodice to help with that. It probably wouldn’t be feasible if he were to leave the hospital, but he should be able to talk soon after the ventilator is out anyway. It could at least ease the transition, if he has to avoid talking afterwards.”
“Then why doesn’t he--?”
“The implants were put there,” Carolina explains, even as Wash signals for her to go on, “for the Epsilon AI unit. I thought you knew about that.”
Tucker blinks for a minute before realization hits him. “Oh right, the thing that made you batshit crazy when we first met. I thought you were over that somehow.”
Wash rolls his eyes at Tucker and signals to Carolina again. She has the gall to look confused, even as she says, “The implants are capable of holding a full AI, so Agnodice shouldn’t be the problem. If they couldn’t, then the…”
And now she fucking realizes it. Carolina drops her shitty plastic spork and stares at Wash with her jaw slack, her eyes wide, her forehead wrinkled with pain. Her lips twitch and Tucker is staring at her. Wash doesn't want to feel bad for her--it took her so long that she might as well deal with Tucker on top of it. But he still loves her, and she could never be honest with an audience. Maine knew it, and Wash knows it. He taps Tucker on the shoulder and points to the door.
“What? I thought you wanted her to tell me some shit,” Tucker says.
Wash will have to tell him something later, but he can’t bring himself to make Carolina have this conversation with Tucker watching. He points again, more emphatically. Agnodice shows her avatar and says, “My patient has asked you to leave, Captain Tucker. If you do not respect his wishes, I will have to contact security.”
“Fine!” Tucker throws his hands up as he stands and stomps to the door. “Didn't want to participate in your melodramatic Freelancer bullshit anyway.” The sliding door is slam-resistant, and Tucker can be heard cursing it.
Agnodice's avatar floats near Wash. “Do you want me to give you some privacy?”
Wash wonders how much Agnodice knows, how much he wants her to. Maybe he owes her an explanation for why he refuses to let her help, even if he could get over Epsilon.
But this isn’t about Agnodice. Wash nods.
“I'll be back when you say my name,” Agnodice says, and her avatar disappears.
Carolina closes her eyes, inhales, covers get face with one hand. “I'm sorry,” she says when she collects herself a little more. “I’m sorry I even suggested it. Shit, Wash, I can’t believe I forgot about Maine and Sigma. I’ve just been so…”
Wash sighs silently. He’s not sure how anyone could forget Maine, but he knows how long he’s gone before without thinking of the man he loved. He reaches out a hand to hold Carolina’s.
She doesn’t take it. “It was my fault, Wash,” she says flatly. “If I hadn’t given up Sigma, there never would have been a Meta. We’d all still be Freelancers, and I fucked it all up because I wanted everything to be perfect.”
There are a lot of problems with that. Wash knows what Carolina was like back then, always terrified that the Director would find out about her relationships, always training. In the rare moments when Carolina was asleep between them, Wash and Maine would whisper their concerns, speculating on how easily this happiness could melt away if someone overtook her on the leaderboard. They watched her fall apart when Tex showed up. Now Wash has a better understanding of why, and it doesn’t make him any happier with how desperate Carolina was to prove herself.
But that conversation doesn’t deserve to be stilted by paper or eavesdropped by Agnodice. Wash doesn’t know how he’s going to remember to tell Carolina, but if he keeps with her for half as long as he wants to, it will come up. For now, he writes: “Then you would have been the Meta.” And the thought of losing Carolina like that, on top of it all--that Maine might have been the one tossed off a cliff, that Carolina might have turned on the Freelancers, become a dead woman kept alive for the dream of a piece of code--the thought weighs down Wash’s arms so they can’t show Carolina what he’s written. His throat tightens and that shift of muscle brings him back to acute awareness of the physical intrusion of the tube in his throat. He knows it will only draw attention to his face if he wipes his eyes, but he can’t stop the automatic response to bring a hand to the gauze at his throat, gently tapping at it as though that will make it comfortable.
Carolina leans in close, arms brushing against Wash’s as she slides his hand from his throat. “Don’t make it worse,” she murmurs, and then she glances at the clipboard and holds herself still against him. Or maybe she feels how Wash does about the physical contact, suddenly realizing how long she’s been deprived of the simple feeling of someone’s skin, of being able to comfort the last lover she has alive.
“Maybe I would have,” Carolina admits, and Wash knows she’s read it. She leans her head on Wash’s. “I guess things were always going to be fucked up.”
Wash poises his pen. He thinks of what people say about this sort of thing. “It could be worse,” but god, Wash doesn’t want to contemplate how. “The worst is over,” but that’s only because Project Freelancer is shut down and Carolina’s father is dead. “At least we have each other,” but that would fall flat when they’re talking about Maine.
“We’re still here,” Carolina says. “He’d want that. That’s all we can ask for.”
The pen blurs against the background of the clipboard. Wash nods.