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Los Angeles. 2042.
…
Dani couldn’t say how long she’d been standing there in that darkened outer room, looking in through a one-way mirror as if she were monitoring a dangerous test subject, as if it were some early-model Rev unit in there - a metal skeleton with flaming eyes strapped to a table and surrounded by lab-techs who were busily dismantling it piece by piece.
It said unflattering things about the state of humanity that augment surgery took place in the very same wing as the terminator dissections. Legion had been born out of such paranoia; a burning need the old world had for protection against all possible threats. Forcing the newly augmented to wake up in an environment like this? Well, the logic had been explained to her, but to Dani it simply felt as if humanity was hellbent on repeating its past mistakes.
No one should have to wake up in a room like this.
Of course, no one should have to wake up in a world like this either.
A drab laboratory encased in concrete, pipes in the ceiling betraying the existence of a failsafe mechanism which could fill the entire wing with molten steel in minutes, and two-hundred feet above it all: nothing but the shattered ruins of a half-forgotten civilization.
The table creaked as Dani slumped against it. At least this lab held none of the tension of a terminator dissection. There were no guards with weapons trained, no fitful looks at the subject’s eyes while the doctors worked. Even the metal bench with restraints had been swapped out for a marginally more comfortable looking examination bed complete with hygienic paper.
They were treating Grace like a doctor would treat their patient.
Hopefully, that wasn’t entirely because they knew their commander was observing their work for once.
As they remained crowded around Grace, performing their diagnostics, Dani’s attention wandered to the array of schematics and forms scattered around the room, most of which were as decipherable to her as last night’s meeting about the Time Field Generator and how, exactly, it was supposed to work.
A half-finished engineering degree from twenty years ago hadn’t quite prepared her for a lecture on temporal mechanics.
Dani slid one of the printouts a little closer. The top line read, ‘Subcutaneous Impact-Resistant Fiber,’ next to which was written, ‘no sign of host rejection.’ The dense technical readout the followed came complete with diagrams depicting how the synthetic fiber bonded with human tissue, as well as pictures of a human arm before and after.
The paper fell to the floor. God, she wanted to scream.
She knew that patch of skin. Those old scars were as effectively seared into Dani’s memory as they were to Grace’s body; testaments to a hundred combat actions against Legion’s forces – bullets and laser and shrapnel. Everyone had their share of them, but Dani had seen these particular scars every night for the past ten years.
You got used to surgeons patching you up, reaching into your body to pull out shrapnel, but to have every last bit of you pried open, as if you really were just a machine - replacing a piece here, connecting a wire there - how does a person deal with the aftereffects of something like that?
Sadly, she knew the answer to that question already: they didn’t. The augment program had been active for nearly a decade, but she couldn’t name a single person who had gone through the process and lived longer than a few months.
People weren’t augmented to stay hidden safely underground, after all.
And she already knew Grace’s life-expectancy down to the second.
Dani sighed, wishing she could shut her own intrusive memories off with a simple mental command as easily as an augment could.
In the other room, she couldn’t tell if Grace was sharing any of her thoughts. She was slumped forward on the examination table, hands in her lap and wearing one of those awful green smock things that lay open in the back and hung loosely even on her tall and muscular frame. At least the surgeries were long over, leaving behind nothing visible beyond a few thin white scars.
These final examinations were purely mental, and Grace was taking them all without complaint – no matter how pointless and stupid they must have seemed.
And they seemed pretty damn pointless and stupid to Dani.
“What does this color remind you of?” the lead doctor asked, his voice reaching the outer room through a small speaker mounted below the mirror.
“Eyes,” Grace said immediately.
Dani squinted. On the card was nothing but a red circle.
He jotted the answer down as impassively as Grace had answered. “Anything else?” The other techs in the room appeared to be busy monitoring her vital signs. Why this needed to happen while the lead doctor gave his quiz, Dani had no idea.
“Blood.”
Dani frowned in thought. She considered the question herself, but sadly, yes, blood and red electronic eyes were the first things to come to mind.
It went on like that for some time. Brown: dirt. Yellow: fire. Orange: also fire. Blue: very hot fire.
Presumably this had some kind of point beyond a simple test of the subject’s patience and Dani’s own.
She found herself opening and closing her fists. Since waking from her coma, Dani had spent the last several days brooding over this. What could she say to Grace that would ensure both Legion’s destruction and keep this timeline from repeating itself over and over again?
What could she say when they had so little time left together?
There was no answer, and if she hadn’t come up with anything in the last twenty-two years, she sure as fuck wasn’t going to suddenly think of the perfect thing to say in the next twenty-two minutes.
Meanwhile. the doctor had moved on to the next fascinating test: identifying the black and white splotches, which required another brief explanation before he held up a card.
“A Terminator arm,” Grace said blandly. “Rev model three, judging from the internal structure.”
Dani nodded. Yeah, she could see that too.
“Mm hmm. Anything else?”
Grace thought some more. It was the most emotion she’d seen from her since Dani had blacked out on the battlefield to the sound of frantic screams and the sensation of warm tears falling on her face. “A model NK-5 machine gun? Seen from above.” She pointed at a wide horizontal splotch on the card. “See, that’s the drum magazine. Sort of.”
“Okay,” was all the doctor said. There was no judgement in his voice. He did these tests all the time, not just for augments, but also to evaluate the mental health of the thousands of soldiers on base. Dani had taken the tests a few times herself. Her own answers tended along the same lines: blood, guns, and twisted wreckage.
She imagined it was a common association among her soldiers.
It might have even been funny if it weren’t so damn depressing.
There was certainly no humor in any of Grace’s replies - no irony, no sarcasm, none of the things that made Grace who she was. She betrayed no real emotion at all, not unless a general weariness with everything counted.
The desire to end this was very high. This woman was still Grace, no matter what the techs had plugged into her brain or how many tons she could now lift. But there were procedures in place for a reason. The techs needed to be convinced that all the new hardware was integrated seamlessly.
And then there was the other matter, the darker purpose behind the weeks of testing.
The sad fact was that attaching a human brain to circuit boards still carried a profound stigma among the Resistance. Pestering Grace with a deck of flash cards was merely a convoluted way to avoid biting the bullet and asking, ‘Well, now that you’re part machine, do you find yourself having any desire to ruthlessly eradicate humanity?’
The fact that she could vouch for Grace’s loyalty post-augmentation was something she kept to herself. There were enough people on base questioning her decisions as it was without her pointing out that she’d met Grace – this Grace – twenty-two years ago.
Dani sat up a little straighter when one of the techs wheeled over a small table holding a laptop. She knew what would come next; this was something different, something more personal.
The doctor handed Grace a contact-port which would connect her with the computer, and vice versa. Dani had often wondered what that must feel like; interfacing directly with a machine.
She’d never had an opportunity to ask.
“Now,” the doctor began as the Resistance logo on the screen faded, “please tell me which of these memories are real, and which have been falsely implanted.”
A blurry video began to play, but Grace remained impassive. Dani thought she could make out the indistinct forms of children playing amongst vibrant green trees and bushes – a vague memory from early childhood perhaps - but Grace’s response was a blandly spoken, “Real.”
Dani let out a breath, trying to imagine what it would be like to relive vivid memories of Mexico City before it became a flooded graveyard of shattered concrete and rusted steel. What would it be like to hear her father and brother’s voices again, to hear a hundred conversations as she walked down a busy street, to taste the meals her mother prepared for her as a child?
Dani let out a long breath.
There was no doubt in her mind that Grace was stronger than her.
She just hoped for everyone’s sakes that the memories being shown weren’t too personal.
Next came a clip of a school dance – fake – then a scene at a bar where a generically handsome man was offering her a beer with a wedge of lemon stuck to the bottle – also fake. Evidently, they weren’t trying very hard with these. Grace was still a kid when the world had ended. She might not even remember what a lemon looked like.
The next video, at least, provoked a laugh: movie night at the base – some b-grade action film involving a giant snake and the Amazon River. Dani was groaning at the projection screen every time the lead American actor spouted off some particularly awful line of “Spanish”-accented dialogue. It brought a flush to her cheeks just how clear this memory was, and just how little Grace had evidently been paying attention to the movie, focusing instead on Dani’s laughter.
“Real,” she finally said, blushing a bit.
Dani smiled, her own cheeks feeling decidedly warm. This was a side of Grace few got to see.
Again, the screen when black for a moment. “This one?” he prompted.
That rare look of amusement vanished instantly as Grace swallowed again. “Real.”
Her heart sank. On the monitor was the world just after the end: Grace, and what must’ve been her father, and a plane falling out of the sky. Dani’s hand lingered over the intercom button. Imagine seeing in vivid clarity your life before the world fell to ruin. Imagine seeing the faces of friends you served with on the field, or family members who had died in those early chaotic days, people all now long dead. This wasn’t a test any longer. This was cruelty.
“And this one?” the doctor asked.
The monitor remained dark, but a rustling noise came from the speakers and there was the sound of heavy breathing. At first Dani thought it must be a night patrol or something, but Grace’s face went as red as that first flash card. “Uh…”
This was contrasted rather impressively by the sheet white faces of the other people in the room.
Oh god.
Granted, no one could actually see anything, but there was sound.
God was there ever sound.
And if anything was unsure of just who else was in the room with her, Grace’s eyes opened - vision somewhat impaired by strands of dark hair falling across her face – revealing a familiar room on the tiny screen.
Through heavy breaths, she whispered a familiar name.
After some hasty fumbling for the controls, the playback vanished. The horrified expression on everyone’s faces did not.
Sighing, Dani finally pressed the button – not the one that activated the lockdown and flooded the entire wing with molten steel, though that didn’t seem like such a particularly bad move at the moment. “I think that’s enough.”
Grace’s eyes shot up and, if anything, the assembled doctors grew somehow paler. The lead among them turned, addressing Dani unseen through the two-way mirror, “Uh, yes commander.”
Considering what they’d all just witnessed, Dani remained remarkably poised as they filed out, though she fixed each one with a stern look as they went by. Just because Grace had agreed to be augmented, it didn’t mean her memories were free to be toyed with and observed by anyone in a lab coat.
She would be insisting on a complete change of procedure before authorizing any more of these operations.
A moment later, Grace peered cautiously around the door, hands on the frame, staring down at Dani with those wide gray-blue eyes, still towering over her despite being barefoot. Her breathing was ragged, as if witnessing her commander rising from the dead.
The last time she had seen her in the flesh, Dani had been half-dead, partially buried under rubble. It was understandable.
Dani smiled, drawing herself up to her not-very-considerable height and putting a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “I’m fine,” she said to the unasked question. Grace knew this – in the lulls between operations, she wouldn’t stop asking about Dani’s condition - but Grace was still Grace apparently, extra processing power and superhuman strength be damned.
She worried about Dani.
A lot.
It was pretty much her default state.
“Or, rather, I’ll be fine in a few days.” That wasn’t exactly true either, but this was already going to be hard enough without Dani making it worse.
Those watchful eyes left hers for the merest fraction of a second, just long enough to acknowledge the cane in Dani’s left hand.
Dani pushed her, which again accomplished nothing. It was like trying to knock over a wall. “I said I’m fine. Stop staring at me like that.” ‘And while you’re at it,’ she wanted to add, ‘Stop being so self-sacrificing. Stop acting as if your entire life’s worth is but a tiny ember lost among a firestorm compared to my own.’ But no, she wouldn’t say any of that either. She’d tried before, countless times, but those eyes… Christ. “Just… Sit. Down.”
Grace complied without question, backing up and taking her former spot on the bed. Still, she wouldn’t look away, even as the expression in her eyes turned to hurt. Dani had seen that look a thousand times too. Grace reserved it for those moments when Dani had told her off for doing some stupid heroic thing: pushing her out of the way of a bullet or charging out of cover to give the enemy anything else to shoot at, as if she’d been hoping for a ruffle of the hair and a pat on the back for her bravery afterwards.
It made her so damn angry sometimes, just how quick Grace was to spring up and protect her, as if she wasn’t worth anything herself, as if she weren’t worth protecting.
But you try staying mad at those eyes.
“So… that last video…”
Grace swallowed.
Her attempts to sound serious failed. She laughed. “Real or fake?”
She let out a soft laugh. “Um… definitely real. July 3rd, 2031, to be precise.”
Dani blinked. “Was that-“
“The first time we…” the redness in her cheeks filled in the remainder of that sentence quite adequately. “Yeah.”
Dani pinched the bridge of her nose. Yes, she was going to have a word with those doctors. Several thousand words, in fact. A majority of them would be four letters long.
Still, she supposed it was a memory that would stick in a person’s mind.
And at least they hadn’t been having sex.
The molten steel might’ve been necessary in that case.
With some difficulty, Dani leaned her cane against a chair, stooped and pulled out the lower of the three steps attached to the table. It was a necessity if she wanted to be on a more equal eye level with Grace. Standing on it with her sore leg unaided took even more effort, but Grace helped steady her without needing to be asked.
She knew she was still putting things off, but for some time, Dani only stood there, astounded by how much Grace’s presence reminded her of those few terrifying days in 2020, a meeting this version of Grace didn’t yet know about. Cautiously, she did something that the Dani from twenty years ago never had the courage to: she tugged the hospital gown off Grace’s shoulders, letting it fall into her lap before slipping to the floor.
Her breath hitched. God, those scars… running from shoulder to palm, from her jaw to the tips of her toes. They really had cut open every part of her, hadn’t they? “What did they do to you?” she whispered, drawing fingers along Grace’s shoulder. In ten years she’d mapped every inch of this skin a thousand times over, and learned the location and history behind every wound, but now…
Some scars were new, others were completely erased.
Grace said nothing. It was a rhetorical question anyway.
Dani’s focus darted to the metal pole mounted next to the bed.
Near the top was fixed a solitary black video camera, its lens pointing straight down on the both of them, watching and recording.
With her bad knee, and her height, she’d never reach it, so Dani settled for grabbing the wires running up the pole and yanking them out. There was a surprisingly loud pop before the tiny red light went out and the wires clattered to the floor. Yes. Much better.
Grace had turned, body sharply tensing at the noise as if that Rev-7 from several weeks ago had dug its way hundreds of feet underground and broken through the wall to finally finish what it started.
In the distraction, Dani grabbed her neck, brought her close, and kissed her.
Hard.
Grace’s breath hitched in surprise before she reached out to embrace her. It did feel nice to surprise her for once.
Despite now having the ability to lift over ten times her body weight, Grace’s arms felt as they always had. There was nothing machine-like in the familiar and gentle way they wrapped around her back, and despite the residual pain in her leg, Dani allowed herself to be pulled into her lap.
All the lingering worries melted away - her worries about the future, the past, the –
Lips broke away and Grace breathed against her as Dani kissed the line of her jaw – bringing back memories of what they’d both relived on the computer screen.
God, it was hard to think about anything at all when Grace was tugging at her shirt collar like that, ineptly fumbling with the buttons in a way that was very much at odds with her new status as an augmented super-solider.
Then Dani drew her fingers up and down Grace’s muscular back, her nails digging in just a little…
In an instant all the buttons of her dress shirt went flying through the air and skittering along the floor. Dani pulled back, exasperated, her chest exposed to the cold air. “Grace.”
Grace looked at her own hand, as if it had betrayed her. “Y- You can borrow one of mine,” she quickly offered. “My clothes are on the table, right… over,” she trailed off.
Dani’s blank expression finally silenced her. “Like they’d fit me?”
She laughed nervously, a laugh that was again cut off by Dani’s lips. She supposed she could live with the looks people would give her.
Compared to the loss she’d soon suffer; a few rumors were hardly a concern.
Everyone probably knew anyway.
Grace returned her kisses, being noticeably more passive this time. It was hard to get comfortable with her bad leg dangling over the side of the bed, but Grace’s hand kept her from slipping over. Then that hand brushed her knee at exactly the wrong place, and Dani’s lips wrenched from Grace’s as she let out a cry of pain.
In one rapid motion, she was on her back, Grace on top of her, panting and searching her body for a non-existent wound. The room went utterly silent.
She really didn’t know her own strength yet, huh?
It was kind of cute.
Grace was always cute.
In a way.
“It’s my knee, dummy.”
“Oh,” she winced, delicately taking her hand away. “Sorry.”
God, it really was Grace, wasn’t it? This was the Grace that Dani remembered from those handful of terrifying days all those years ago: scarred, impossibly strong, yet somehow fragile in a way that defied any ability to define.
Dani stroked her arm, gasping, first at the heat – someone had told her once that augments ran at a significantly higher body temperature… very significant apparently – before realizing just how fast her pulse was pounding under that skin. “Are you okay?” And fuck, what a stupid and completely inadequate question. Your insides have been ripped out and replaced with titanium and circuit boards. You now have a life-expectancy that can be measured in hours instead of years. Are you okay?
Honestly… what the fuck?
“Yeah.”
More silence.
“Are you?”
Dani gestured vaguely. “See for yourself.”
Grace’s head tilted, and a faint glow suffused her newly augmented eyes as she looked Dani up and down, perhaps taking stock of all the metal replacements Dani herself had needed over the years. Four new ribs, a pieced together clavicle, two artificial eardrums…
Wouldn’t be surprising if there was some microscopic shrapnel in there too.
“One step closer to becoming a machine myself,” she joked.
The glow faded and Grace met her with a blank look. She did not find this funny. She seldom found things like that funny. Twenty years of ceaseless war against a race of sentient machines would do that to anyone’s sense of humor.
Still, her heart-rate calmed to something approaching normal.
For an augment.
Dani tried something else. “Are you using your newly enhanced vision to check me out?”
That finally did it. Grace looked at her incredulously for a moment then dropped her head to Dani’s chest and laughed. Dani smiled as she ruffled her hair, and action that, at least for her, sucked all the humor out of the moment. Grace was now exactly as she was when they first met in the factory twenty-two years ago, but just as before Dani would have little time to savor it.
When Grace finally moved to sit up, Dani held on to her shoulders. Even without the augments, Grace could’ve easily broken away if she wanted to, but evidently she didn’t want to. “I’m supposed to evaluate you.”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Um… what sort of evaluation is this?”
Dani smirked, conscious of her own semi-nudity. “No idea.”
Then Grace turned to her left, looking at the mirror reflecting their compromising position, eyes narrowing. “There’s another camera over there,” she said, raising her chin as if daring it to judge her.
“You can see through that?”
“Yes, but only at certain wavelengths. The camera emits signals at a frequency of -”
Dani let out a laugh. “Okay, okay, fine. Take care of it, would you?” The cameras in these offices were pointless anyway – repurposed relics of an age almost as paranoid as the present. The days of terminator dissections were long over, and her people had far better things to do with their time than act as voyeurs to augment surgery… or whatever you wanted to call what was going on right now. Augment sex-trials, maybe?
Reaching over to the metal side-table, Grace picked up a discarded otoscope, held it a moment, as if measuring its exact mass and aerodynamic characteristics, then chucked it through the window without even looking in that direction.
The camera clattered from its mount and shattered on the floor.
Dani failed to suppress a giggle.
Grace smiled down at her. It was always like this when they were alone together. Eyes following her wherever she went, observing, protecting, but also calm and adoring. It’s what Dani saw in her dreams instead of trees and birds - well, the good dreams anyway - the dreams that weren’t all fire and ash.
And sometimes even those dreams ended with Grace showing up just in time to save her.
Despite the years of accumulated scars, and the traumas of war, the augmentations, those eyes remained the same, even though she knew they weren’t – not really. Grace could see nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum with them now, for one thing, could read one of these incomprehensible medical printouts from a hundred yards away, and, thanks to other implants, probably even understand them far better than her own scientists could.
But the look in those eyes remained the same as ever: attentive and loyal. And after more than a decade on the lines together, Dani found she could see terrifying things staring back in them.
She knew without a doubt that Grace would drag herself one-handed over a field of fire and shredded bone if it would get her a few inches closer to Dani.
And if Dani ordered her to stay, ordered her to guard this compound by herself while everyone else evacuated to safety. Well, she would do that too.
She would do it without question.
It was flattering, but it also made her heart race with the sort of terror she hadn’t felt since the lights went off and the world collapsed.
To have that kind of utter devotion staring back at you, waiting for orders and asking for absolutely nothing in return. Well, it might’ve been 2020 all over again for how breathless it left her, and years of command hadn’t made it any easier to deal with.
“Dammit,” she said aloud, much to Grace’s confusion. Beckoning Grace to move aside, Dani slid off the table, and with amazing reflexes, Grace just managed to catch her before her feet hit the floor, saving her commander from considerable pain and embarrassment. She shook her head and stomped off… well, limped off.
Blue eyes followed Dani as she shuffled slowly around the room. She hated to finally begin this: the moment she knew was coming all those years ago. It was impossible to even look at her. “I take it you’ve been briefed on the mission?” She focused her gaze on one of the x-rays hanging from the light panel, trying to identify the various synthetic components squeezed in between biological organs.
“Yes,” Grace replied evenly. “The Resistance’s coordinated attacks against facilities in Oak Ridge, Tianjin, and Alameda are going better than expected. Legion is evidently worried. Growing electromagnetic interference over the ruins of Pasadena is consistent with an impending temporal jump. According to the data you brought back, the intended destination is eight months before Judgement Day, somewhere in the Valley of Mexico, most likely Mexico City. They will send their most advanced terminator. There can be only one logical target.”
Dani nodded. The Resistance was a global effort with only limited communication possible between cells as distant as Alaska and Angola. There had been countless men and women across the world thrown into the same position as her, but for some reason she remained Legion’s obsession.
Perhaps Legion was as tangled in this loop as she was.
Grace continued, “Your techs believe that with the schematics you brought back, and with sufficient power, they can duplicate this temporal event in a lab. In seventy-two hours, sixteen minutes, I will be sent back. My mission is to protect you.”
Feeling just a tiny bit stupid, Dani limped back over to Grace. She brushed her bare shoulder, frowning at the white scars, trying not picture the doctors cutting her up like an autopsy patient. They were so lucky Dani was unconscious for the worst of it. “Protect me, huh?” she repeated softly, ruffling that soft hair some more. “What else is new?” It had only been Grace’s mission for the past twenty years, after all.
Grace leaned into her touch. “I’m the only logical choice,” she said.
“Yes… you are.” Not for a lack of trying on Dani’s end. She’d spent years looking for alternatives, evaluating other soldiers, going over all the places and times a person might be sent. But she wasn’t a machine, she couldn’t run a trillion varied simulations to find the best outcome. There was only one plan that guaranteed success, because, as she was uniquely positioned to know, it had been a success.
Well, she thought, picturing the world above their heads, remembering Grace’s inevitable death in a hydroelectric plant twenty-two years ago. Success was a relative thing.
She sighed, hands distractedly admiring the contours of Grace’s arm. “You know, I almost think you could take on a Rev-9 without all this science shit in your body.”
Grace rolled her eyes. A weird look for a cybernetic super-soldier, for sure.
“Also, you’re old enough to remember how the world used to be. It will help you to navigate it.”
At that she nodded almost imperceptibly, still watching Dani closely. “It was so long ago. Kind of feels like a dream now.”
“Yeah.” Dani swallowed. They all had those dreams; the ones where you remember a quiet sandy beach, or a lazy night watching a movie on a plush couch with friends long dead, or the simple way the leaves used to rustle as a flock of sparrows flew into the air as you walked by.
Then your eyes would open and you’d find yourself surrounded by the drab concrete walls of the barracks, hearing the distant pounding of bombs, feeling the ground shake, and smelling the stale, dry air and scent of unwashed bodies…
Even twenty years on there were times when one of her soldiers would wake up after a dream like that and found they just couldn’t go on.
Now they were asking Grace to go back there - to a world that was no longer hers, to a world that would lock her up in a lab very much like this and strip her of parts if they had even an inkling of what was inside her.
And they’d inevitably use that technology to make Legion even more powerful.
The fuckers.
“I know I didn’t survive long back there,” Grace said. “I can see it when you look at me.”
Dani froze, feeling as if her stomach had just thrown itself into a well. “What?”
Grace shrugged, as if the revelation wasn’t Earth-shattering. “Would you tell me if I’ve done this before?”
“I-“
She smiled. “You don’t have to say anything. I get it.”
Dani let out a long breath.
Dammit. She knew.
She already knew.
Presumably, there was someone on this base that actually understood the full ramifications of time-travel, but whoever it was, it wasn’t her. Twenty years on and the whole business still gave her a headache. “Yes… I met you back in Mexico.” She poked Grace in her rock-hard chest. “This you. I’m not sure how much I should say. If there’s any way to change...” She shook her head. There was always the possibility she would give Grace the wrong advice, betrayed as Dani was by increasingly fuzzy memories of a few terrifying days.
Grace would take anything Dani said to heart.
Against a Rev-9, one wrong movement - a twist to the right instead of the left during the heat of battle - could well mean the deaths of them all.
The wrong advice would literally kill her.
Grace nodded. Maybe she understood all that without being told. Maybe she simply felt that Dani knew best.
From her left pocket, Dani pulled out a card and handed it to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, head tilting slightly.
“A list of programmers who worked on Legion’s software. Addresses for government contractors. Locations of labs and databanks.” She sighed, wondering just how many times she had given this very list to her. Grace hadn’t mentioned it back in Mexico.
She cupped the card in her hand. In just a few seconds, the information was stored in her brain. If she survived, if she destroyed the Rev-9 in the past, this would be her new purpose: to stop Judgement Day.
No pressure. Just fix all of humanity’s mistakes.
And the fucked-up thing was that Grace would try. The near certain odds of failure wouldn’t matter to her. The fact that even if she succeeded, the world would never thank her for it.
Even with the possibility that changing the future could easily mean that Dani might never fall in love with her, she’d still do it, all because Dani – some lost incarnation of Dani – had instructed her to.
Grace held the card against her chest. “This time I’ll get it right.”
“Hey,” Dani cupped Grace’s face between her hands, “don’t you dare talk like that.”
It took a few silent moments, but she finally nodded.
The card fell forgotten to the floor.
Satisfied, Dani attempted to climb back onto the bed. Again, she needed help. Again, her knee throbbed, but she slid over until she and Grace were side by side, and an impossibly warm and strong arm wrapped itself around her back.
In the comfortable silence, she let her good leg kick Grace’s. “When this is over, when you save me and create a world where Legion never existed, what do you think you’ll do?”
Grace took no time to think about it. “I’ll find you. I’ll pick flowers for you every day until you fall in love with me. Then I’ll build you a cabin, far out in the woods away from machines, and guns, and explosions. And I’ll plant you a garden.”
Dani laughed. Grace sounded so confident, even knowing the little she knew about her prospects. It was almost possible to believe it could happen. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen so much as a dandelion out here?”
Grace continued, “Also, I’ll learn how to cook.”
She smiled sadly as she leaned against Grace’s shoulder. That honestly sounded… perfect. “You’ve clearly given this some thought.”
“And I’ll learn how to grow mangoes too.”
God, she also hadn’t tasted a mango in nearly twenty years. “How do you remember all that anyway?”
"Remember what?"
"All the things I like."
She shrugged. “I remember everything you say.”
Dani snorted. “Except when I tell you not to take unnecessary risks.”
“Every risk I take for you is necessary,” Grace replied immediately, squeezing her.
Her eyes narrowed. “Even that time you disappeared for half a day and we found you trapped in the ruins of an old music store?”
“I…” Grace looked away, cheeks red, “I was just a kid.”
“You were twenty-three.”
“Oh… right.” Her lip quirked. “But you kissed me afterwards, so I consider that a win.”
A decade later and Dani still vividly remembered dragging Grace into her bedroom and demanding to know exactly what was so damn important that she had risked her life among the HK patrols and mortar shells. Sulking like someone half her age, Grace pulled off her pack and dumped its contents on the table. Dani had expected to see food, or pieces of salvaged tech, or weapons, or something. Instead, what fell out were dozens of old compact disks bearing the faces of artists like Pedro Vargas and Vincente Fernandez. Like she’d just found the 'Latin' section of the store and grabbed CDs at random.
And Dani tried… she really, really tried to keep a straight face, but god, it was impossible. She’d known Grace had a crush on her but honestly.
In desperation, she’d covered her mouth, looked away from Grace’s big sad eyes and laughed harder than she could ever remember.
And, yeah, a moment later she turned around and kissed her full on the lips.
“And then I made you do KP for two months,” Dani replied. Mostly because it kept her inside the base and out of danger because obviously the woman couldn’t be trusted.
Grace smiled. “Still worth it.”
She patted her back. For her sake, Dani Ramos would be taking at least one secret to the grave: those CDs Grace salvaged from that ancient music store? Well, they were all a little before her time.
Okay, way before her time.
Her abuela would’ve loved them though.
And at least there were one or two Gloria Estefan CDs mixed in there too.
Still, in time, Dani came to enjoy them. Hearing those old love songs; a reminder of her lost family and a reminder of Grace all rolled into one.
It kept her going.
“I wanted to lock you up forever,” Dani admitted. ‘You can’t put yourself in danger like that,’ she’d said at the time, half laughing and half crying, clinging tightly to Grace’s fatigues, suddenly remembering just when and where she’d first heard those words. ‘Dammit, Grace, you’re too important.’
What really hurt was just how little Grace seemed to believe it.
She’d spent the next decade trying to convince her otherwise, but the only thing thicker than Grace’s skull was a terminator’s skeleton.
Sometimes the only thing that worked was the boot-camp approach, i.e.: repetition, repetition, repetition. Give Grace another twenty years and maybe she’d finally get it. “You’re too important,” Dani said, stroking the back of her neck. After a second’s hesitation, Grace leaned into the touch and for once in her life didn’t protest. “I just wish there was more I could do for you.”
“I don’t want anything more than what I have at this moment.”
She scoffed.
“What?”
It slipped out before she had a chance to fully realize what she was saying. “Where were you when I was growing up? None of the guys I dated had lines half as good as yours.”
Grace smiled, evidently pleased with herself.
If only this moment could truly last forever, Dani thought, expression falling.
Unfortunately, all this talk of the past reminded her of something else she needed to do, and she reached into one of her cargo pockets and fished out a tattoo pen she’d borrowed from one of her lieutenants. “I do have one important message to give you, something I need you not to forget.”
Grace stared at the pen dubiously. “You couldn’t just tell me?” She tapped the side of her head, where her brain now shared space with a complicated array of wires and flash drives. “It’s not like I can’t remember shit.”
Dani laughed to herself, remembering similar words from a long time ago. “Humor me? I’d just like to write it myself, if that’s okay.” Dani wondered if the younger version of herself would even recognize the handwriting. She couldn’t remember having done so, but she had been a wee bit traumatized at the time.
“Okay,” Grace said, without even giving it a second’s thought. She lay back against the bed, hands against her side. “What are you going to write?”
Gingerly dangling her wounded knee over the bed, Dani’s hand shook as she held the pen and brought the tip against impossibly warm skin. She remembered these coordinates perfectly. For twenty-two long years she’d waited for them to turn up again somewhere. How would they appear? Would Carl leave something behind in Laredo? Would a message arrive when the time was right?
She’d long waited for something to come, but nothing had.
Nothing at all.
A decade ago she’d even sent people to Texas to look, but they came back empty handed.
The only source for these coordinates was Sarah and Carl, which meant that this loop of Grace going back must’ve happened more than once. There must’ve been an instance where Grace went back in time without them, and it surely made a difference somehow, but there was no way to know exactly what that difference was.
Dani couldn’t escape the feeling that the Rev-9 would’ve caught them earlier, that Grace might have died before they even reached Laredo. Was there a timeline out there where something like that happened?
It was distressing not to know for sure, to have no way of verifying whether her attempts to save Grace were making things better or worse for her.
Still, there was a comfort in knowing that she’d done this before, that previous incarnations of Dani Ramos had cared enough about Grace to do this over and over again for God knew how long.
Dani’s voice betrayed none of the uncertainty she felt. “It’s just a note for anyone who finds you: ‘If lost, return to Dani Ramos.’”
There was a momentary silence, before Grace sighed. “Funny.” Dani patted her leg in commiseration.
It didn’t take long. Grace remained perfectly still beneath her – supernaturally still, even - and Dani already had some practice doing this. Most of the troops were tattooed in some way. It helped them remember the people they lost, the things they were fighting for, and the families they had created together. It could be so easy to forget in a world like this.
This particular tattoo would help Grace live – at least for a little while longer - so the intent was the same.
Finally, she sat up and allowed Grace to admire her handiwork. The dark numbers stood out sharply against the red irritated skin. “Coordinates?” she asked, nose wrinkling. “I don’t get it.”
“A safe house.” Dani slid the pen back into her pocket, sighing at the look Grace was giving her, “If I tell you exactly what will happen, it won’t happen.”
Grace nodded, but the confusion didn’t go away. “You can’t tell me anything more?”
“Only that if you find something that will destroy the Rev-9, you should keep it safe until you’re ready to use it.”
“That’s you,” she replied in all seriousness.
Dani rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
Grace smiled. “I do. But I won’t do anything that jeopardizes your chances of survival.”
“I know,” she sighed. Damn it all, she knew. “You always find a way to save me.” No matter what it does to you.
“Only because you taught me everything I know.”
It was futile to fight her on this point. Grace would remain Grace, no matter Dani’s orders, and she didn’t want their last few hours in this time taken up with decades old arguments. “You don’t have to keep complementing me. You’ve already gotten me naked.”
“Well,” Grace gestured to her camo pants, a smile forming on her lips, “not completely.”
Dani smirked. “Take care of that for me, would you?”
…
Sadly, their time alone was short lived. Endless tests followed for Grace, and endless strategizing for Dani, leaving them with little time together except for that one final night when Dani felt so miserable that all she could do was curl up against Grace’s chest and try to sleep, or, at least try not to cry.
But finally, even the time for that had passed and Dani found herself at the door to another lab, watching through cameras as Grace entered the enormous room where the temporal displacement equipment the Resistance had stolen was housed.
The techs were directing her to a crude circle marked out on the floor. From it, thousands of wires radiated out to a hundred different machines scattered across the room. A digital countdown clock high on the far wall indicated fourteen minutes before activation. The calculations themselves had taken weeks.
If Grace didn’t go at the appointed time, they’d have to start all over. Blasts from the surface far above shook the floor. Legion knew what the Resistance was planning, Dani was sure of it. As soon as the machines were turned on, the bombs began to fly. There could be no delay.
One of the techs was performing last minute checks, asking Grace questions and entering data on a pad as she answered, but all eyes turned when heavy door swung open and Dani limped in, this time without a cane.
The techs took the hint and left the two of them alone. This would be Grace’s last glimpse of 2042, unless she survived her upcoming ordeal and came to it again as a fifty-year-old.
Dani surely hoped so. She hoped Grace would get her wish of living in a cabin somewhere, just as much as she hoped that the Dani of the past would be smart enough to know a good thing when she saw it.
She didn’t bother to look away as Grace folded her clothes and left them on the bench. Clothing wouldn’t survive the journey and the jump was easier to calibrate without them. A slight deviation of a few grams of weight could mean the difference between materializing with your feet on the ground or materializing with your feet twenty yards above it. It was a crucial thing to get right.
Especially since you couldn’t bring a parachute with you.
This was the Grace she had fallen in love with more than twenty years ago, and she had long since given up on thinking that was odd. If Sarah could fall in love with someone she’d known for a day, so could Dani.
A blue light traveled up and down Grace’s body when she stood in the circle, and a weight and mass measurement appeared on one of the nearby monitors. This data would determine just how much power was required for the jump.
The measurement was accurate down to thousandths of a gram.
Grace stood with her hands clasped behind her back. Every jump back resulted in slightly different outcomes. Each one came with the risk that this time perhaps Dani wouldn’t fall in love with her. But to see Grace there…
In the flesh, so to speak.
And nothing else.
Well, it did seem rather unlikely.
Just… something in the eyes. Even naked as she was now, the eyes were what Dani noticed.
Her steps sounded softly on the concrete floor and she tried to smile as she took Grace’s hands. Yeah, definitely something in the eyes.
Because Grace was so tall, she had to twine a hand around her back and coax her down until their lips met.
“That’s to keep you going until I fall in love with you again,” Dani said when their lips parted. ‘And if somehow I don’t,’ she thought, ‘I’m sorry.’
Grace nodded, letting out a ragged breath.
For Dani, this would be their last meeting and still so many things were going unsaid. It looked as though Grace had just as many things on her mind.
Long seconds passed before Grace’s eyes flashed and before she knew it Dani was being lifted into the air and their lips were meeting all over again. Fighting it didn’t even cross her mind as her legs wrapped themselves around that strong back as they had done a thousand times before.
And just as suddenly, Grace’s lips wrenched away, and she breathed heavily into Dani’s neck. “We… we shouldn’t.” It was a statement somewhat undercut by the tightness of her grasp.
The timer on the wall gave them another nine minutes. “Why not?” she asked, trying to blink away the tears she felt building in her eyes.
Grace’s breath was ragged, her heart pounding. “I’m sweating,” she whispered. And indeed, she was. Beads of sweat were already dripping down her forehead. “It could throw off the mass calculations.”
“Oh. Shit.” For a split second, Dani tried to pull back, but considering Grace was still holding her up... She let out a laugh that didn’t quite sound like one. She’d always wanted to be with Grace in this state, but there wasn’t any time. “You’ll have to put me down first.”
“Okay.” Grace swallowed but didn’t move.
Neither did Dani. Grace was something like ten, maybe twenty, times stronger than before – the exact values were on a spreadsheet somewhere - and now Grace was about six or seven hours away from meeting Dani Ramos as a young woman.
Yeah, it still made her want to scream.
Minutes passed before Dani was finally set gently back on the floor, but she continued to hold onto her, and Dani let herself be held, her face pressed against Grace’s breasts. She wished she’d had the power to give Grace the things she deserved; a life free of endless war and suffering.
Instead, all she could offer was yet another dangerous mission and the tiny possibility that maybe at the end of it all, she’d get that cabin in the woods.
But, she supposed, Dani would be there come what may, and that’s all Grace wanted.
Dani could at least give her that.
Finally, a red-light flashed above their heads. “General,” came a hesitant voice over the intercom, “four minutes and thirty seconds until activation. You need to vacate.”
She let out a long breath. “Understood.” Dani backed away slowly until her back hit the still open door. Grace never stopped watching her.
“I love you,” she said, hoping it would not be the last time Grace would hear those words.
There was a hint of a smile on Grace’s lips when she replied, “Te amo, mi vida.”
Dani waited until the door was firmly shut before allowing herself to cry.
The ensuing rush of activity provided no opportunity to pull herself together, but the techs gave her space as they milled about the machines in the outer room.
From her completely inadequate monitor, Dani watched in silence as the machines wound up, sparks flew, and the love of her life was surrounded in a blue magnetic field. Her short hair rose, as if gravity had vacated the room, and soon her entire body followed suit until she was levitating several feet above the ground.
Even then, nothing shown on her face except a look of stoic determination, of a woman on mission to protect the one she loved. It was beautiful.
It did nothing to stop Dani’s tears from flowing.
Finally, the noise reached a crescendo, and a bright flash knocked out the camera, leaving nothing but static on the screen.
…
Slowly, she unlocked the door and depressed the handle. Ice cracked around the frame as she struggled to push the door in. Inside, the walls and floor were covered with a thick sheen of ice, and sickles ran down every wire and instrument, sparkling like jewels from the few overhead lights that survived the surge of power. The spot where Grace had once stood was now marked only by an ice-free circle.
The ground here was still warm even as her breath clouded the cold air. “Status?” she asked, her voice raw.
“No anomalies to report, General.”
Rumblings sounded from above. Legion had detected the power surge, but even its strongest weapons wouldn’t penetrate this far into the earth.
From her pocket, Dani removed a sheet of paper and unfolded it. On it was printed a diagram of a standard Augment power source, and behind that, to the left, where one of Grace’s kidneys used to be, was a second.
A backup power source designed to remain dormant unless something happened to the primary one.
Grace didn’t need to know about it, and even her internal diagnostics would only identify it as an auxiliary heat-sink. Something completely beneath her notice. Twenty years, and it was the best solution Dani could come up with.
She slumped on the floor, hugging her knees. It wouldn’t change this future, but just maybe Grace would live to enjoy the future she so much deserved.
Location Unknown. 2020.
…
It was done. Somehow, it was done. The Rev-9 went tumbling into the pit with Carl and Dani had watched from the edge as Grace’s power source fried the machine’s insides and its ever-questing eyes finally went dark.
She’d taken no time to savor the moment before crawling back to Grace’s broken body, burying her face in her neck and crying. Moments later she felt a warm hand on her shoulder and jerked away to find Grace staring up at her, wide eyes showing almost as much disbelief as Dani felt at that moment.
“I… seem to be alive,” she said. Grace’s hand gingerly patted her gaping chest wound and she winced. “How?”
Dani had to laugh even as she wiped away her tears. “I’ve been asking you that for days now. Do – do you have some kind of backup power source or something?”
Grace’s eyes went unfocused, as if lost in thought, or perhaps, scanning her systems. “There is no backup.”
Sarah had appeared from somewhere, looking almost as beaten up as the two women currently entangled on the floor. “I don’t see a plug,” she asked, nudging Grace’s shoulder with her boot. “You sure you don’t have an extra one of those cores in you somewhere?”
Dani winced as she inspected Grace’s stomach. She was not about to reach into that gaping wound again to check.
Grace only stared up blankly, as if focusing on something a million miles away.
Dani called out her name, leaning closer. She waved a hand in front of those eerily unblinking eyes. She shook her. Still nothing. “Grace?”
Sarah knelt beside them, still cradling her wounded shoulder. She squinted at Grace before taking her arm. “Jesus.”
“What?”
“Never let a doctor take her pulse.” She frowned, only now seeming to notice the extent of Grace’s injuries, the way her synthetic components peeked through broken skin; glints of silver among flesh and blood. “In fact, keep her away from doctors entirely.”
Dani nodded, only marginally reassured to know that Grace’s heart was still beating. She was breathing too, in quick breaths. She certainly didn’t look dead, even if she should’ve been. Again, Dani tried shaking her, feeling utterly helpless. “Grace? Grace? Please say something.”
Finally, Grace blinked.
Oh, thank god. “Grace? Are you-“
She sat up so fast it nearly knocked her over. Shock and disbelief radiated from Grace as she stared into Dani’s eyes. Sarah tensed, hand unconsciously reaching for her empty holster.
“What?”
And then, to her very great surprise, Grace kissed her, and Dani surprised herself even more by just how ardently she kissed back.
Strong arms pulled her close. So much strength, and yet so very gentle at the same time. Dani was distinctly aware that she was whimpering.
Then that strength pulled their lips apart just as abruptly. “Grace,” she gasped, feeling the woman’s hot breath on her skin. Dani was relieved yet also vaguely concerned to see Grace laughing – another first. “What?”
Grace only laughed harder and held onto her more tightly.
After perhaps a minute of this, Sarah was nudging their entwined bodies with the tip of her boot, a sly smile on her lips as heat blown ash fell on them like snow. “Okay, lovebirds, come on. We need to get the fuck out of here.”
Hostotipaquillo, Mexico. December 2022.
…
The sound of several voices speaking at once drew her outside. “And what about this one?”
“50 caliber bullet.”
“And this?” another voice asked.
“Shrapnel from an airplane explosion.”
And another, “And this one?”
“Impaled by a metal spike.”
Dani smiled to herself as she rounded the corner of the house. Grace was sitting on the picnic table with three of Dani’s young cousins practically climbing all over her, picking at her shirt and examining her seemingly endless variety of scars. The one she’d earned deflecting a steel rod received the most interest of all.
“Wow, look at this one!” Dani’s niece said. “How’d you get it?”
“I deflected a flying piece of rebar with my arm,” Grace said, still with an air of complete nonchalance.
There was a chorus of wow’s from her preteen audience.
“Yeah,” Dani interjected, amused at just how much her girlfriend flinched to find her standing there. “Just like Wonder Woman.”
“Wonder Woman isn’t real though,” the youngest shot back.
“Sure, she’s real.” She met those blue-gray eyes with a level stare, “Grace on the other hand…”
The children giggled.
Grace rolled her eyes, then was yanked roughly on the arm by Dani’s nephew Miguel. “Come on, show Aunt Dani the trick!”
Dani crossed her arms, and Grace cringed. “Um…” She had her phone in one hand. Knowing Grace, she was probably using it to scan for temporal anomalies, all despite the fact that none had been detected since the day she and the Rev-9 dropped into Mexico City over two years ago.
“Yeah, Grace,” Dani drawled, “Show Aunt Dani the trick.”
She sighed, putting the phone down and easily catching the tennis ball Maria tossed at her. Grace looked up at the darkening sky, already filling with stars. The children couldn’t see from where they were sitting, but Dani could just make out a faint hint of color in Grace’s eyes as she scanned the air above their heads for wind speed and barometric pressure. Then, without looking further, she tossed the ball far above their heads.
As if bored, she held out her hand while the ball soared high in the air, disappearing into the dark. Many seconds later it came back, landing perfectly in that outstretched hand.
Another chorus of wow’s followed.
“See, I bet Wonder Woman couldn’t do that.”
“Could too!” Maria shot back.
Dani snatched the ball away. Grace had a look in her eyes like she was about to get in trouble, and if she tried this trick in front of grown-ups, she would have. Instead, Dani only sighed. “Wonder Woman couldn’t do that, but Xena could. Come on guys, the match starts in five minutes.”
In a flash, all three kids darted for the house, but Maria lingered at the door.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“We’ll be there in a bit. Save us a spot.”
Dani Ramos - in one timeline a respected Resistance leader, in this timeline a respected babysitter. Her aunt and uncle had no idea how lucky they were to acquire her services.
She crossed her arms.
“You told me to keep them distracted,” Grace said, eyes on the grass at her feet.
Dani bit her tongue. This was true enough. “Try to keep your feats of strength to a more non-enhanced human-level from now on, okay?”
She shrugged. “No one believes kids anyway.”
Again, true enough.
Sadly.
And to be honest, if her relatives ever learned about the criminal record Dani had acquired over the last two years, they’d probably be more frightened of her than they would ever be of Grace. Especially since Grace obeyed every order Dani gave her – barring the one about not taking unnecessary risks.
They’d need to talk about that sometime.
Again.
Grace stretched, shirt riding up her chest and, uh, well… Dani immediately lost her train of thought. A smirk crossed her lips when she caught Dani in the act.
At least she rallied quickly enough. “I’m surprised they didn’t notice that scar.”
It was easily the most terrifying in Grace’s substantial collection. A jagged vertical mark right in the middle of her chest where her original power source used to be.
Again, Grace shrugged.
Dani sat down on the table beside her.
The last hints of dusk silhouetted the peaks of the Sierra Madre far in the distance as a chill wind began to pick up. Fortunately, Dani’s cybernetic super-soldier girlfriend from the future also doubled as a space-heater. “No big deal, huh?”
Grace hugged her side. “You’ve got some scary scars of your own now, you know?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “But they’re nothing like yours.”
Muscular arms rubbed Dani’s shoulder, and she sighed at the protective warmth. Grace had offered to show her the future; the old future – she could do it as easily as picking up that phone of hers and interfacing with it, using the screen to project memories directly from her brain – but Dani has passed.
Her verbal descriptions alone were enough to give her nightmares.
The world had just dodged that particular future – but there would be a thousand more battles to fight to see that nothing as horrible ever came to pass.
And that was almost certainly a low-ball estimate.
It would be nice if a first-round football match was the greatest conflict this timeline would ever face.
It wasn’t, and there remained the sad fact that simply averting Legion’s development would not keep humanity from destroying themselves. A cursory look at the news was enough to show that.
But tonight, at least, they could sit down and watch a game.
Oh, and that reminded her… “Come on,” Dani said. “It’s time to watch Mexico kick America’s butt.”
Grace only smiled. Admittedly, ribbing her on the perpetual mediocrity of what was technically Grace’s home team never really had much of an effect.
Firstly, she was a kid when the United States ceased to exist.
Secondly, Grace took Dani’s side on everything.
With the aforementioned exception of that standing ‘don’t take any unnecessary risks’ order.
To be honest, their dangerous secret missions aside, the only thing Grace didn’t agree with her on was the subject of music. In their rare moments of alone-time, Grace could always be found listening to – and this was the bizarre thing – Mexican music from half a century ago, if not more.
She’d never explained why. Grace certainly didn’t pick it up from before the apocalypse, and it was hard to imagine her picking it up from Dani in that now lost future. Dani’s own preferences had always been much more modern.
Yeah, there was no way she learned it from her.
And seriously, with her girlfriend’s penchant for opening doors for Dani wherever they went, all she’d need to do is paint a mustache on Grace and put her in a pleated shirt and there would be legitimate worries about her abuela trying to steal her away.
Grace remained as immovable as a rock when Dani insistently tugged on her arm. She was surprised to find she had a phone in her hand again.
“What are you doing?” she asked, peering at the screen. It was filled with diagrams and numbers rushing by so fast they were nearly a blur.
“Sorry. Routine diagnostic. I keep forgetting to do them, and the kids interrupted me last time.”
Dani’s head tilted. “You keep forgetting?”
Grace smiled. “It’s… distracting… being around you.”
“Is it now?” She grinned. “Hmm.”
She nodded, humming in agreement. “There were things I always dreamed of having… and now I have them. It’s a lot to take in.”
Dani sat back down, rubbing Grace’s back. “I’m surprised you need a phone for this. Can’t you just scan yourself inside your own head or something?”
Grace nodded again. “Yes. Everything except my power source.”
Oh. Weird. “Why not?”
“It was intended to be hidden from me.”
She blinked. “Why?”
“I think… in order to keep me from being reckless.” She snorted at the expression on Dani’s face. “More reckless – whatever – it was just better to not realize it was there, I guess.”
Hmm, future-Dani was a pretty devious woman. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to learn a little more about her someday.
“And I think it was a gift from you.”
“Huh. How can you be sure? Wouldn’t it make sense to give augments an extra power source… considering…” She trailed off. Even now, Dani hated thinking about the Rev-9 - and they’d only fought one of the things. She couldn’t imagine fighting an entire army of them.
Instead of answering, Grace tapped a few buttons on her phone. The avalanche of data slowed to something Dani could almost read, if not understand. The text was still in future computer jargon, and the numbers in base-16. Perhaps when things slowed down a little more, Dani might take a few courses in computer science.
Or she’d have Grace teach her.
She was sure Grace would like that.
To be honest, if Dani asked her to, Grace would carry her around and feed her grapes one at a time like a decadent Roman emperor.
A wire diagram appeared on the screen, and Dani recognized the outline easily enough as Grace’s power source: a thorium micro-reactor. It was identical in shape to the old one.
“Surprising that could fit inside you.” Really, it was surprising that half the stuff Grace had in her body could fit.
“It’s a newer model,” Grace said. “Smaller, but just as powerful. Still, I had to give up a kidney to make space for it.”
“Oh," she cringed. "Sorry.” From what Grace had told her about the augmentation process, there was little say for the subject involved.
Little as in none at all.
Grace only gave her a wry smile. “I wasn’t that attached to it.”
Dani rolled her eyes and bumped her shoulder – well, arm. Oww. Like a rock.
With some more taps, a bubble filled the bottom of the screen, this time with text she could actually understand. It was a complete diagnostic - power capacity, efficiency, and on and on, line after line. Grace scrolled through it all and somehow took the information in. Whatever she made of it didn’t seem to disturb her.
Everything must've been working nominally.
“Here,” she finished, “at the bottom.” Grace tilted the phone so she could see.
Dani read it aloud. “Hmm. X-5 Power Module - class 12 – version 1.1007. Copyright: NXRE - November 2041." Then one last line at the very bottom, "If lost, return to Dani Ramos.” She put a hand over her mouth to stop her laughter. “Oh my god.”
Grace squeezed her shoulder.
Cheers erupted from the living room of the cabin; three young voices shouting, ‘Goal!’ in unison.
Dani shook her head. "Guess I really must've loved you, huh?"
"Yeah. Looks that way."
"Well," Dani ruffled that short blond hair. "I've got that much in common with that great Resistance general of yours, it seems."
Grace smiled, and before they could get too distracted with the kissing that followed, Dani gently took her hand. “Come on," she said, "A reasonably quiet night together. No guns, no terminators, no rampaging AIs. You deserve it.”
Still smiling, Grace slid off the table, maintaining her hold on Dani's hand. "Yeah. Sounds perfect.”