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In that moment, you could almost suppose it had the quality of a memory. In the neutral colours of the Mother of Invention, the plain seating area, the plain table, the plain setting; these were brought to life by the laughter of York, by the smiles of Connie and North, the borderline pleased tilt of the lips from Maine, the warm look in Carolina’s eyes. These were not the only ones that gave the room its quality: there was Wyoming continually curling his moustache, Florida grinning so happily you had to do another take, South with her arms crossed and her chin up, teller of the joke and proud of the reaction. All of this before you, all this – what could you call it – all this jubilance amongst people whose jobs were to kill, or to sneak, or to deceive. It shone briefly, like the flash of a supernova, the star expanded and exploded and combusted and you were light years away, you only found the evidence of it until after all was said and done.
Were you the one that was supposed to live? Out of the cunning of York, the preciseness of North, these people who, even in friendship, still called you the weaker one – maybe in jest, but how could that not get to you?
Yet you were the one that lived. Survivor’s guilt? Perhaps not. Maybe grieving the missing future for Connie, or the husk of Maine, or the choices they all had taken – even you, even you, left after all of this.
Name one hero who was happy.
-
You see Agent Texas for the first time, on the training floor. You watch a grenade explode beside York’s head. It’s difficult to even recall the evenings on the Mother of Invention, the lighter moments, when all this happens within one day; you begin to watch Carolina fuel herself on rivalry, begin to watch the gradual breakdown of a network. A network that held itself together by the ties of trust, that knew each other covered in blood but also knew each other by the cards they’d play in poker. That was the dichotomy of the Freelancers, that was the dichotomy of you, who dodges a car and uses a twirly straw, who shoots with a rifle like it was your extended arm. What were you? Were you a killer or were you somebody in the wrong place at the right time? Were you good or evil? Or were you amoral? Who, David, are you?
Not David.
Were you in love with them? The Freelancers. Of course you were, of course you fool, you loved them like brothers and sisters because you were brothers and sisters, really, the only ones understanding this strange, strange program, the only ones who could console each other when kept up at night by their AI’s. You watch Maine take so many headache preventatives you’re sure he’ll overdose, but then you remember the bulk of him and wonder if it’s enough. You run into North when you need the bathroom, you ask, “Are you all right, North?” and he just nods his head, his ever-calm smile upon his face, continues on down the hall as you hear a murmur of “It’s Theta, again.”
And you can’t damn well do anything. The only hilarity that comes out of it is Delta correcting York – that, indeed, is a sight to see, the casualness of York and the sterility and exactness of Delta.
Only it’s not so funny when Delta refers to the length in miles, that you fall through, in a powered-off Pelican. That’s not funny. Ever. At all.
And then when you almost think – possibly, possibly, Carolina might be herself again, might not be thinking of Tex and thinking about teasing you again, things are back straight to how they were since she dropped to second place on the leader board. You know then there’s no going back. There never was any going back. The minute you caught sight of that black armour you should’ve known. Should’ve known from the way she took down three Freelancers.
There was no happy ending.
You wish there was. You keep thinking, no, this isn’t happening, it isn’t, because you watch as there are more shadows under York’s eyes, North consumes more coffee than is healthy for his heart – Florida whispers this to you, with worried eyes and a bloodied helmet under his arm, he’s almost more paternal than North, because he acts like North’s dad because sometimes North needs a dad – and you can’t do anything, because you feel the crumbs, you feel the cracks, you see it in Carolina’s eyes and you see it in the lack of gel in Wyoming’s moustache one morning, he hasn’t bothered, unlike he always does, even when wearing a helmet.
These signs are inescapable. They are mercurial. Then you see a pregnant dog on one planet, one planet with a Sunkist sky and rows and rows of corn. You know of bad omens. Of course you do.
Then you have Epsilon implanted.
You lie and lie to the Director and the Counselor, you have a smooth face and a composed exterior. You are Agent Washington of Project Freelancer, and you – you, David – have been lied to. Everybody has. It’s only time to play fair.
Then York and Tex hatch a plan – without you, of course without you – and then you’re left to find out, pick up the pieces, Carolina’s dead, Maine’s gone, Tex is gone, York’s, well, of course York is gone. None of them come back for you.
You have to really wonder, then, what was happening all along. Were they the light of the room, were they the gun covering your back, or were they just the people that used you, just the same way the Director did?
But then you remember they did care. Of course they cared. They just… had to leave. You would have, too, before you’re Recovery One and – and you pick up the pieces the same way, of course you’re the one with clean up duty. It’s Friday nights all over again, except this is your only job now and you still hate it, anyway, except this isn’t York’s dirty cups or the lollipop wrappers of North’s, no, this time it’s York’s body and it’s North’s body, and then it’s your own blood from a wound that South made, no, it’s not a jelly bear she threw at you.
You really have to consider what happened, then: you hate the answer.
All the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
But your king had fallen, and Humpty was broken from the beginning. You just had never noticed.
-
This is your last chance. To try and do what’s right, in the name of those you’d killed, the names of those you’d loved – they were your flesh, to you, they had seen your skin pulled back and watched you unconscious – and this is playing to the end. This is where, no matter who wins, you will die. You know it. You have an inch of winning.
You have find to a way to end this. You walk right into it by accident. The first Blue you find – excluding the girl in yellow armour – is a hazard. Simply and truly. You begin to doubt yourself. The next Blue?
You only realise when he comes out as a ghost the prize is sitting right in your hands. You always were slow with things, but here you are now and the answer you realise right when you see it and you know it, you can do this. You can get back for everything that had happened.
Everything you had and loved. Loved, damn it, and you never even told them. Never even said to York, or North, or Carolina, or South, or Maine, or Florida, or Wyoming, or Connie – never told them how much they meant to you.
You watch the Alpha die, you watch the fragments that are reunited all die. Quietly. There are no screams, there is no blood. There is you and silence as everything stops: the lights go out, the hum of the machines go out, the facility goes out, everything in the radius stops.
You admire it for a flashing second. Breathe in the quiet, so opposing to the voice of Epsilon once in your head, or the ever-constant breathing of the Mother of Invention – at night, when you slept, you could hear it. It was alive as much as the rest of the ship's inhabitants. A machine, a ship, and it kept you safe and floating through space and then you think you’re in space, you’re amongst the stars, and you think for just a gleaming moment of how beautiful that was, how you loved it, you loved it so much—
So here you are, Agent Washington. David? Wash.
The solitude of prison isn’t quite the same. There is no opportunity to take in the fact you are one of the last remnants of Project Freelancer, the last of the equipment – used and broken like the rest of it.
The only thing on your mind when you hear Caboose’s voice is this: there is a way out. You’ll take it no matter what. The death wish is gone. You want a home, you want a coffee pot, you want a bookcase, you want a cat – yes, a cat – and you want to breathe. Just to feel your lungs free, in a place with a proper atmosphere. Feel your chest free of armour – not just briefly, between showers or sleep – you want to run at 6am and watch the sun rise, feel your feet hit concrete one, two, three, four without metallic clanking, or two guns on your back and leg and one in your hand.
So you’ll go out with a big bang.
-
Here you are. You know there’s no Maine there, you know it’s just the Meta, but the Meta still hates needles, you’d be sure Maine would hate Doc, so really it is him, were it not for the fact deep down Agent Maine was gone long ago. You’d only found out afterwards.
Story of your life, Epimetheus.
It’s ironic, in a way, trying to find Epsilon – memories of this brutality, this sham, this way to bring back the dead – when all you need to do is run away from this. But you can’t, so you go on (chasing the past).
Go on as you have for so long.
You look at your bloody hands in the snow, and you wonder, absently, if perhaps this will all disappear in a shimmer. But then you grab your weapon, you continue fighting because you must, because you will, because you are Agent Washington and you will not be the Titan of afterthought or dwell on hindsight, no, you will make these decisions now and you will grab that line Doc has given you, you will get up and you will watch that Pelican descend from the heavens – a chariot, a chariot of Zeus, that is your luck – and you think you are making one last stand as you hand the Warthog’s tether to Sarge, and you think, if this is it, let it be.
Then they give you a hand and you’re wearing blue armour and you really have to wonder if this colour suits you, but you look at the grey and you think: change. Enough.
After that? You’re not sure if you’re prepared for an identity crisis yet, but you’ve sure as hell left behind Agent Washington somewhere in the corridors of the Mother of Invention. Or you’ve redefined the definition, revisionist of our time, you are.
Oh, but then, but then, to add to your towering stack of difficulties and mental crises and oh, love, when did thou spring forth, there is turquoise armour.
You put it to the back of your mind, try and acquaint yourself with the fact the dead are coming back from Hades and you are watching a girl with armour you thought you’d never see again walk around like she never left, like of course she’s going to order you to do things and of course she’ll use that tone where you know she’s either frowning or there’s a coy, toying smile but you haven’t seen the smile in so long so you’re sure it’s a frown, what are you going to do now?
Carolina holds a gun to Tucker and you don’t know, no, you don’t know who the real heroes are anymore. So you do what you think is right, the people you’d held captive present, the people who were inadvertently affected the same way you were by the Director’s actions, the artificial intelligence right there in the room that is boiling over because he is memory, he is all of this that had happened captured in one entity. You think you would go mad, if your name was Epsilon. You have already known it, inside your own mind. Let alone the fact AI’s and their experiences were so much more, in some ways, how every second was an aeon and you pity Epsilon, of course you do. You hold a gun to Carolina just the same and you walk with them. Because you are not among the dead, you are not among the living, you are somewhere in between and you need a new start to find out where you belong and why the memories of Saturday nights on the Mother of Invention suddenly become more clearer in your mind when with the Reds and Blues.
Apparently they have no regard for themselves, as they rally on forth to come to the aid of Agent Carolina and Church. Church, they call him, because he was Blue’s leader and they still think the same of him. You wonder if you should give back his armour.
You don’t.
(You must be a Blue, then).
-
Agent Carolina has left, Epsilon has left, there is no reasoning but you are sure – very sure, now – that there is a beginning of something here. The air is denser and you sweat more. There is also one thing: Tucker is important. It’s strange how you come to this decision.
He is seated by himself when you know he should be sleeping, you sit beside him, and ask, “Church?”
And he says, “Yeah. It’s weird without him.”
You return, “I know what it’s like to lose a leader. But they do normally come back from the dead.”
“Tell me about it.”
You think, in that moment, you have met the first person to understand it.
Then there is another:
“What’s up?” You look over to a tired Tucker, half-dressed and mumbling about early mornings and it’s your fault.
He groans, shakes his head, begins eating. It brings you back to your first week in the Freelancer Program, when York still complained about early mornings, and only now do you begin to think maybe Carolina had something to do with joining, after finding out about Club Errera and his lighter. York smirked throughout the whole story, and as you look at Tucker, you see some things about Tucker that are very, very York.
Then there’s a statement, interrupts your reverie: “It’s not leg day, right?”
You answer his question with raised eyebrows and he groans again, and again, like it will stop you and you don’t care, because he has to be strong to protect himself when you’re not there.
Caboose already had the muscle to contend with York, but not North, whose arms were delicately defined in a way that nobody else seemed to be, and the way he held sniper rifles—
It’s enough then.
“No, seriously, I don’t fucking get this,” he mutters. “Okay, so the crossword says—”
“You do crosswords?” There you are, incredulous. You almost drop your cup of water.
“You got a problem, Wash?”
You smile as you think of Wyoming and his chewed-on-the-end pencil, the way he’d curl his finger around his moustache, ask South for help with it and she’d glare and say, “Ask North, I’m not the asshole that cheated at Trivial Pursuit.”
North wouldn’t ever hear her say that, but you’d tell him later so he’d make her play again the next Wednesday after getting back from a mission – she’d still insist he’d cheat, but you knew he didn’t. Or he did and was good at hiding it.
“Not at all. What’s the clue?” You aren't much help, but it’s the memory that makes you want to volunteer.
Another:
“I suppose you don’t know where Caboose is?” Tucker is on his bed, but you know he’s not asleep. His breath is too quick.
“Probably… I don’t know, trying to find fireflies.”
“Were there fireflies at Blood Gulch?” You step into the room, brush the small overgrown part of your fringe out of your eyes.
“Church told him there were so he’d fuck off in the evenings. But you know, Caboose never understood there was no night so you’d guess how that went.” He rolls over and looks at Wash. You are almost taken aback by his eyes. Those eyes.
“He misses him.” You breathe out, imagine how it would be to lose – what was the need in doing so? You already felt loss, so deeply, so greatly.
“Yeah, well, Church was an asshole anyway.”
“You say that like he won’t turn up one day.”
“When he does, I’m tackling him and fucking shoving his helmet up his ass.”
-
You argue with Tucker like you’ve never argued before; there was, of course, Church, but he thrived on arguments like it was his lifeblood and you know how those sort of people work, no, Tucker is just so venomous you have to ask whether or not he is such a laidback individual but somebody waiting for the right moment to snap and let his opinions leak. Or maybe that’s how he dealt with loss. You know you locked it all up and it’s only coming back bit by bit.
There are more moments:
“It’s okay to be – to be sad, you know,” you say, covered in armour and harsh sun persisting onwards. You think, across all planets, the sun was going to be annoying.
“I’m not sad, I’m fucking angry!” he belts back, you can tell there’s spit on his helmet and he takes it off to wipe it, an expression of loss and aggression on him.
“You know I got left behind, they didn’t come back for me. That’s how I ended up looking for the Reds and Blues.”
“Yeah, but at least you’ve got us.” He puts his helmet back on, and you think you miss his face but you’re not sure.
“I guess so,” you reply wryly. “Now go do more laps.”
“I take that back. I fucking hate you.”
Then you realise you start to love them, too. You love them unconditionally. Which is when you are given an ultimatum, you will fight for these people. The Reds, the Blues – you will. You stand there in blue and yellow armour, beside almost-aqua and beside standard-issue blue. What else could you do in the name of those lost? You begin to think now’s the time to move on. To maybe put these demons to rest—
You can’t, and don’t, because soon enough rocks are falling and you are the one that commanded them so, blocked off your lifeline like you are heroic, oh, so you’re the hero now?
You know what happens to heroes.
You are weak and unconscious then you are awake and the light is so blinding, and you have to break against those rocks—
There is Locus standing above you – you are not a hero, you are a soldier – and you are thrust back and back and back and back where you shoot Donut, you shoot yourself, you’re a soldier, you’ve shot yourself, you are David, you are Agent Washington, what are you? Who are you? Are you a monster or are you Icarus who flew too high? Are your wings burning?
You wonder how you came to this. How David enlisted and then suddenly one day he was in Project Freelancer. How you came to this.
There are so many ways to answer. So you do what you must and you listen to Doyle, you are in no man’s land now, you are finding a way out one way or another, you want answers, you want Lopez. Then there you are thrust back all the way again—
It’s a Thursday, it’s long before Agent Texas. You hear the aching and clanking of the ship, your feet against the floor, out of armour and your fierce blond hair free, your freckles standing out so in the light, your piercing grey eyes reflecting all the endless green and grey.
You see York with his left arm resting against a wall, hip pushed out, a Carolina with crossed arms and an unbelievable smile. That smile. It was a rare one, reserved for some, and it was always perfect, of course it was, Carolina was perfect.
You continue on and then there’s North, and he’s watching South win in a drinking contest against Maine, there’s Connie chanting ‘Go South! Go South!’ and then there’s Florida in a kitchen folding tea towels and Wyoming is trying to find the alcohol and then there’s—
(he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts)
It’s not a memory, it’s not Epsilon and it’s not you. It’s your imagination.
-
Then you find Tucker again and you’re wondering if you’re creating reality, too, if perhaps it’s shifting before your very eyes as though the laws of gravity were ever-changing, fluctuating. You wonder and wonder and wonder but, “I’m glad you made it.”
Defied the odds. That was all of them in a sentence. Little Agent Washington and big Agent Carolina were the only two that made it. You think of Maine’s body at the bottom of a cliff. Imagine the hollow look in all your friends’ – family‘s – faces, dead look in York, dead look in North, dead look in South, and you have to wonder what the fresh face of Caboose would look like. These people? You can’t lose them. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, not when you’ve come so far. Been here for so long.
You are longing for something. It is a feeling. A feeling that, at best, you are not familiar with voicing.
It all comes tumbling down, but at least he’s beside you. That’s enough. That should be enough. It’s just a shame you’re dying when you weren’t ready to.
Well, almost.
Of course she comes back then. Dramatic. You’ve never been more pleased to see her. At least you were right: your leader always returns.
The very least you can do then is voice what you wanted to, long before the laser is pointed at your head.
You whisper it, almost, just let him know.
Tucker shakes his head 'no', and Agent Washington, sometimes, when you tell people you love them, it’s not going to be accepted.
You nod your head and continue on with Carolina.
At least you got to tell him.
What a hero you are. And you know what happens to heroes, don't you?