Archive of Our Own

“No,” Marco says as soon as he sees her. He tries to close the door, but Rachel is faster and sticks her foot in just in time.

“You haven’t even heard why I’m here yet,” she says, even though she knows he knows why.

He frowns at her, unimpressed. “Rachel, why are you here,” he says flatly.

“Hello, Marco. I’m lovely today, thank you for asking.”

“Rachel.”

“You’re not even going to invite me in?”

He rolls his eyes. “You know how I feel about tempting Murphy.” But he walks away from the door without trying to shut it again, and that is as good as an invitation.

Kodiak Island is cold as shit. Rachel has spent her entire life in California, and that has prepared her for a lot of things, but subzero temperatures are not one of them.

Her only consolation is that her friends are suffering as much as she is. Some of the recruits in their class like to poke fun at them for hating the weather so much, but Rachel holds that her attitude is entirely reasonable. She’d like to see all these snow enthusiasts try to handle some heat.

Cassie keeps trying to be philosophical about it. Good training, character building, whatever—Rachel doesn’t care. Kodiak Island sucks.

“But you don’t want to go home,” Cassie says.

“Absolutely not. We’re just getting started.”

The jaeger academy training program lasts six months. The first eight weeks are officer training. They’re learning tactics, basic engineering, and kaiju science. They’re also getting beaten down every morning and evening by trainers and martial arts instructors. Rachel thought she was in good shape, but her gymnastics training did not prepare her for this. They are three weeks in, and she is quickly learning just how much more her body can do than she thought.

It’s exhausting, but she is having fun. Her muscles are jelly every night, and her bones are sore every morning, but the challenge is exhilarating. Honestly, if Kodiak Island was a couple hundred miles south, she would have no complaints.

Well, almost no complaints. It would be nice to have any kind of social life. She misses wearing makeup. She tried to wear some during training exactly once; she sweated it all off by end of morning drills. She supposes the PPDC isn’t exactly an organization that puts much emphasis on personal image. It’s fine. The prospect of ponytails and a bare face for the rest of her career isn’t nearly enough to make her go home after getting this far.

A third of the class dropped out in the first week. Rachel and Cassie watched it happen and made a pact that they would stick it out as long as they could. Cassie says that the academy is as good a way as any to spend a gap year. Rachel has no intention of needing that fallback.

Anyone who gets through the first trimester can apply for positions in the PPDC. Rachel wants to be a jaeger pilot, but she knows the chances are slim. If she has to do something else, she will. She’s enjoying the combat training, and she loved her old job teaching the kids at the gym; maybe she could become an instructor. The PPDC always needs more people, and Rachel is not going to stay on the sidelines when the fate of the world is at stake.

So far, there are no surprises. The jaeger academy is a harsh wake-up call for a lot of starry-eyed recruits who think being a pilot is like being a rock star, but Rachel thinks it’s probably a bit like boot camp. She and Cassie won’t even know if they are drift compatible until the second round. That means, obviously, that they have to stick around until then.

Besides, Rachel has no intention of losing to Jake and Marco. She loves her cousin, and she doesn’t even mind Marco, but if they make it through while she and Cassie don’t, they will gloat forever. Rachel doesn’t like to lose.

Marco doesn’t tell Jake that he’s going to go for the PPDC after graduation. Jake brings it up himself, bracing for whatever the answer will be. After all, he doesn’t know. Marco might say no. Marco might not want Jake in his head, even though Jake knows Marco best out of anyone in the world. It’s possible that Marco would rather take his chances with a solo signup and a match to a stranger who won’t have any expectations.

They’ve known each other for longer than Jake can remember. Jake knows a lot about Marco, and most of it isn’t stuff Marco has told him. Jake has seen the way he gets dark sometimes, when he’s thinking about kaiju and his family and the end of the world.

Marco is smart. He’s a strategic thinker, and Jake has seen that going all the way back to when they played video games together and were evenly matched despite Jake being the one with a console at home. More recently, Jake has seen how Marco reacts to kaiju attacks. Marco watches the news coverage and what is available of the PPDC livestreams, and he analyzes. He looks for what worked and what didn’t, figures out weak spots in the jaegers and the monsters alike. Marco has the head to be a ranger, and he has the motivation.

It isn’t a surprise. Jake would have to be an idiot not to see it coming. Marco sometimes misses little things with people, though. He knows most people don’t think like he does, but sometimes he’s…a little callous about it. He cuts through bullshit, that’s all. Jake is used to it. Jake knows his best friend, and he’s pretty sure Marco can’t surprise him that much, even if Jake finds it hard to keep up sometimes. What Jake doesn’t know is whether Marco knows that.

When he asks, Marco lets out a breath and nods. “You thought this through, right?” he asks, and he sounds like he’s teasing, but his face is dead serious.

Jake has thought it through, and his motivation isn’t just that he wants to pilot a giant robot. He tried to take a Marco approach to it, actually. He made a real, honest-to-God pros and cons list and tried to break it down to essentials and logic.

“Yeah,” is all he says. “If you’re down to do it together.”

Marco smirks. There is no humor to it, and Jake thinks he’ll see more of that face if they make it through the initial screening. “Jake, there is nobody I’d rather have with me.”

For Cassie, the decision isn’t an easy one.

Cassie isn’t a pacifist. She is an idealist, and that’s different. She disagrees with a lot of things about how the kaiju have been handled, with the use of nuclear weapons near population centers right at the top of the list, whether they had been officially evacuated or not.

Cassie is an idealist, but she isn’t blind. She knows that the kaiju don’t act like animals, and she accepts that the jaeger program is less destructive and less brutal than any other method that has been tried. She did her research when Rachel brought up the idea.

Still, if it wasn’t for Rachel, Cassie would never do it. But Rachel will do it anyway, and Cassie isn’t about to let her best friend try to fight monsters alone, no matter how strong she is.

So, Rachel and Cassie get up bright and early on screening day. Cassie smiles when she comes out of the house and sees Rachel waiting in the car. Rachel looks like the main character in a commercial for vitamins, or maybe yoga. “How do you look that put-together when you’re wearing the same thing as me?”

“It’s all about color-coordination,” Rachel says wisely, old jokes well-treaded territory between them. Cassie has picked up a few things about style from Rachel over the years, and it’s not like Cassie was ever hopeless or like workout clothes are high fashion. They really are dressed almost identically.

They are in line half an hour before the doors open, which means that they are fully processed and waiting by the time Jake and Marco walk in, only minutes from being late.

“Huh,” Rachel says slowly. “I didn’t know Jake was signing up.” Cassie knows that Rachel didn’t exactly advertise her own intentions, though, so maybe that isn’t such a surprise.

Cassie frowns. “I think it’s probably more about Marco than Jake,” she says quietly.

They’ve gone to school together for their entire lives. You pick up some things about a person that way. Suffice it to say that she isn’t surprised to see Marco here. As for Jake…Cassie knows a thing or two about watching out for your best friend. Jake is probably here for the same reason that Cassie is.

It is nice to see a couple of familiar faces. Cassie and Rachel stand up to wave the boys down.

A cup of coffee plunks itself down inches from Jake’s face, and he jerks upright. Marco doesn’t even bother looking at Jake as he laughs at him.

“Hey,” Jake objects, but Marco brought him coffee, so he can’t really complain.

“Okay, so tonight after training, we’re going to play DDR,” Marco says.

Jake blinks. He looks down at his coffee and then back up at Marco. Either what he just heard made no sense, or his brain is way further offline than he thought.

Marco grins. “Drink up, you big lump.”

Jake obliges. “Okay,” he says after a minute. “Run that by me again, with some SparkNotes this time.”

“We haven’t spent much time in the rec room, and neither has anybody else, because we’re all exhausted all the time.” Marco looks at him expectantly, so Jake nods.

“The rec room is fully stocked with a variety of activities, which are likely meant for the second trimester, when we’re not being run ragged in the same way every single day. I read up on the academy—”

Jake snorts. Of course Marco read up on the academy. Everyone reads up on the academy before applying, but Marco’s research is definitely a little more intense than most.

“—and I extrapolated a few things,” Marco continues blithely. “The second round is all about drift compatibility, and there’s no way to force that, at least as far as anybody knows. But!” He pauses.

“But what?” Jake asks.

Marco frowns at Jake, probably for the lack of enthusiasm, but he keeps going. “But there are lots of ways to tell if a pair might be compatible. Guess what one of them is?”

Jake’s jaw drops, and Marco’s frown vanishes in favor of a smirk. “No,” Jake says. “No way.”

“Yep! Dance Dance Revolution,” Marco says with relish. “And that, my caffeine-dependent friend, is why we’re going to play tonight.”

“Not that caffeine-dependent,” Jake says mildly. He throws back the rest of the coffee anyway.

Marco ignores him. “So fuel up, now and at dinner, because you’ll need it. I was thinking we could invite the girls, too. You think Rachel’s bad at DDR?”

“I do not, but we can find out.”

Marco slaps Jake on the back. “Good man.”

Marco has read all the articles and seen all the footage. He knows the details.

Trespasser, the first of the kaiju, was a complete surprise. Nobody knew what it was, and nobody knew how to stop it. It rose from the San Francisco Bay and began a rampage that, though no one could have said so at the time, was to last six days.

Eva Alvarez survived the initial assault on San Francisco. That was sheer luck. The destruction was incredible. Trespasser cut straight through the heart of the city, killing thousands and razing everything in its path. In places, the trail of carnage was three miles wide.

The United States military responded as quickly as it could. The attack was unprecedented. No attack had occurred on U.S. soil in years, and before 9/11, none had occurred in decades. The government wasn’t used to fighting battles at home, and it had certainly never faced anything like a kaiju. Soldiers who had enlisted in what was technically peacetime did their best. It was a reasonable response. Heavy artillery and missiles, evacuation of civilians. The military had no way of knowing that its weapons would have little effect.

Little effect, but not no effect. Trespasser could be injured by heavy artillery. Unfortunately, the injuries were negligible to the monster’s progress. It continued in a straight line out of San Francisco toward Sacramento. Evacuation efforts were slightly more successful with the slight warning provided by the initial attack, but only slightly. Trespasser trampled Oakland, Concord, and everything else in its path. Six days and thirty-five miles after it emerged from the ocean, Trespasser was killed by nuclear weapons in the capital.

By that time, the monster’s blood had spread throughout San Francisco. As the blood decomposed, it evaporated, tinting the air blue with mist. People across the city started dying, lungs contaminated with an unknown biohazard that turned out to be highly toxic.

Eva Alvarez was one of them.

Marco was eleven years old.

They walk away from their first battle mostly unscathed. Circuitry burns, mild cuts and bruises. Even Polar Adamant is mostly in one piece. Jake is going to be sore for the next few days, but they got off easy. For jaeger pilots, this is nothing, and that’s what they are now.

They still have to get cleared by Medical. That’s fine with Jake, as long as no one tries to separate him from Marco. The ghost drift is stronger than it was in practice. After sims, they always feel drifty, but there’s a lot less separation than usual between them right now.

Rachel bursts into Medical with all her usual energy. Cassie follows a few beats behind, apologizing to the staff and assuring them that “this won’t take long, they just want to make sure their friends are okay! Rachel and Jake are family. She wants to be sure he’s safe.” Marco’s amusement flickers through the drift. Cassie, always the more polite half of that pair.

She smooths things over with the staff easily, winning fifteen uninterrupted minutes. Rachel waves her hand in breezy agreement, already checking Jake over. “Nothing major?”

“Nah,” Jake says. At the same time, Marco makes a noise of protest, and Jake rolls his eyes. Grievous battle wounds, yeah, yeah. They’re just circuitry burns, man, come on.

Badges of honor, Jakers. The chicks dig it.

Too late, they’ve known you too long.

Wasn’t talking about me.

Cassie looks from Jake to Marco and back, and her eyes narrow. “Are you two ghosting?”

“Yeah,” Marco says. “More than with the sims. Brace yourself.”

“We saw almost everything,” Rachel tells them. “Nice maneuver with the missiles. Fucker never saw it coming.”

Jake grins. “Thanks. Marco’s got some ideas for next time, too.”

Cassie faces Rachel across the mat and breathes deep, focusing on the smooth wood of the bo staff in her hands.

Cassie is nervous. She thinks everyone in the room probably is. Drift compatibility is the cornerstone of the jaeger program and the reason that they are all here.

If she and Rachel aren’t drift compatible, it isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. Every candidate will be tested against the others, and most of the pairs that entered the academy together will not work out. Occasionally, pilot pairs are made in the academy instead of coming in together. The Marshall made sure they all knew the odds.

If she isn’t compatible with Rachel, Cassie will have to make some difficult decisions. They came to the academy together, and Cassie isn’t sure that she wants to fight kaiju if Rachel won’t be by her side.

Rachel meets her eyes and gives her a little smile, and Cassie can almost hear her saying “Let’s do it.”

Cassie tightens her grip and tries to forget that anyone is watching. Right now, there is only her and Rachel, sparring just like they did last week, doing their best to meet each other in the middle just like they always have.

“Go!”

Tobias knows from the beginning that it won’t last forever. Rachel burns too hot to contain, and he would never want to try. He meets her in the middle as best he can. Both of them only have so much that they can give, and all Tobias can do is try.

They lay together in Tobias’ bed and look up at the ceiling sometimes, talking quietly or just breathing together. They are never at peace, but in the quiet and the dark, they can pretend.

“You never mentioned that we went to high school together,” Rachel murmurs one day. He can’t read her tone. He thinks she has gotten harder to read since they started doing…whatever it is that they’re doing. (Dating, to give it a simple word, but relationships get fuzzy at the edge of the world.) He wonders if maybe that one is on him.

He shrugs, the motion a little awkward with his arm around her. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered. Didn’t want to put that on you.”

“I didn’t,” she confesses. “Jake mentioned it.”

Of course Jake remembers. Once, that would have been a surprise. Tobias and Jake crossed paths in middle school (and Tobias shies away from that memory even now, he’s not that weak anymore and never will be again). They never spoke in high school. Tobias would have thought Jake had forgotten all about him, if they hadn’t been posted to the same Shatterdome. Tobias has since realized that that’s just what Jake is like. Of course he remembers Tobias.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel whispers into the silence. Guilty, maybe. If she were anyone else, he would be surprised that she brought it up at all, but she has never been one to run from a conflict. He remembers that from school. Rachel Berenson, pretty and smart and bright, all long blonde hair and big smiles. Most people didn’t seem to see anything else. That always baffled him, but maybe he was biased. She has always caught his eye, tall and proud and never, ever taking anyone’s shit.

Her hair is short now, cut into a severe chin-length bob that fits easily under her drivesuit helmet and doesn’t tangle in her dog tags. He likes it better this way. These days, she looks as fierce on the outside as she’s always been on the inside.

“I don’t mind,” he tells her, and it’s true.

“I’m sorry I missed you then.”

“I’m not. I don’t know that it would have made a difference.” He kisses her temple, craning his neck to do it. “Besides, we’re here now.”

She hums and curls in closer. He knows she understands what he means.

They are at the vanguard of the end of the world. Now is all they have.

Rachel is a ranger. She knows that better than anyone.

Jake could sign up with Tom or Rachel. Family pairs have a better chance of being drift compatible. Nobody actually knows why, though the scientists have plenty of theories. Similar outlooks on life from having the same background, fewer surprises from prior knowledge about each other, less chance of chasing RABITs since so many memories are already the same. Whatever the reason, family pairs make up the largest percentage of ranger teams.

Marco has never understood that, but then, Marco is an only child.

So yeah, Jake could sign up with Tom or Rachel. He doesn’t, and Marco thinks Jake would make a worse team with either of them anyway. Tom is cool and all, but Jake has a little too much big-brother hero worship going on for them to get into each other’s heads. Rachel? Well, Marco isn’t going to say they couldn’t do it. He knows Rachel, has since kindergarten, and he’s seen the ways she and Jake are similar. Then again, he’s also seen the ways that they are different, so who knows.

Anyway, Marco knows why Jake signs up, and it isn’t for reasons of his own. If it were, maybe he would sign up with Tom. Marco doesn’t know, and in any case, it’s irrelevant.

Marco has his own reasons. Jake is one of the only people who knows about them, and Jake would never have let Marco do it alone. They sign up together as soon as they are eligible, registering for the screening the day after they graduate.

Marco tells his dad casually as they sit in front of the tv that night. His dad’s face gets tight, like he wants to tell Marco no, but he doesn’t. Marco’s eighteen now, anyway. His dad can’t actually stop him.

This has been Marco’s plan for years. He never mentioned it to anyone but Jake, but he’s pretty sure his dad isn’t surprised. What would Marco even do, anyway? Go to college and try to figure out what he likes enough to do it for his entire life while the apocalypse happens gradually around him?

Nah. Marco is aware that he’s a more ruthless thinker than most of his classmates. The PPDC can probably use someone like him, and even if he washes out of ranger training, he’ll have his foot in the door. He thought it through, and he did as much research as a civilian can. (Hell, he’s probably on some watch list somewhere already.)

His dad doesn’t try to stop him. Marco is glad, even though it wouldn’t have made any difference in the end.

Her name is Clarion Tempest, and she is the most beautiful thing Rachel has ever seen.

She is massive. She is shiny. She has a plasma cannon in one arm and something called a tornado cannon in the other. Oceanic jets and multidirectional fins in the legs and feet, for speed and maneuverability off the Miracle Mile. Fully articulated knees, elbows, and shoulders. Thick, heavy armor all the way down, megatons of the lightest and strongest alloy J-Tech has created yet. She’s built to be a grappler. She stands tall and proud, painted blue and white, with their logo emblazoned above the nuclear reactor that is her heart.

“Wow,” whispers Cassie, and Rachel agrees.

They have seen jaegers before. There are other jaegers around them in this very hangar. Yet somehow, this one is different, and Rachel is pretty sure it’s only because she is theirs.

Cassie reaches out and takes Rachel’s hand. Rachel squeezes tight.

“There she is,” Cassie murmurs. “Everything you wanted.”

“I think I’m in love,” Rachel murmurs back.

Rachel knows Cassie is here because she is. Rachel is grateful for that, because Cassie is a peaceful soul at her core. She fights out of love and the desire to protect more than anything else. If the Breach was closed tomorrow and she could lay down her weapons, she would be happy.

Rachel has always been less peaceful, and Cassie knew that even before they drifted. They both hope that Rachel can also be happy laying down arms one day, when she has fought her battles and tasted her blood and known that she did something that mattered.

If anything can do that, it is this beautiful machine and the girl by her side.

“Hey, if we wash out, do we get to keep the PJs?” Marco asks.

The tech snorts. “The drivesuit blacks? The highly specialized equipment with extremely delicate circuitry in it?”

“Yeah, the PJs.”

Jake grins at Marco above the head of the tech helping him. Marco grins back. They both know exactly what he is up to.

Nervousness doesn’t help anything. It won’t make their first drift go any more smoothly, and it certainly won’t get them into a jaeger. By every measure the PPDC has, he and Jake are drift compatible. They made it through the sync tests. They have started to see inside each other’s heads and still been fine. They know each other better than most people will ever know anyone, and besides, there is no point in stressing when they will know exactly where they stand within the next twenty minutes.

Knowing all that doesn’t make it any less stressful. This should go as planned, but nothing is guaranteed, and a full drift is an entirely different beast from the sync tests.

Marco distracts himself by examining the suit. In their sync tests, they hadn’t needed a full pons rig. This is the first time he has worn a set of drivesuit blacks, and despite his words about PJs, he is impressed. He read up on a bit of the science behind them—what he could understand, anyway—and he thinks they’re pretty cool.

The pons caps are another story. “Jake, be honest with me,” he says. “How do I look?”

Jake fights down a smile and gives Marco a grave look. “Very dignified. Like an officer and a gentleman. The kaiju are shaking in their boots.”

“Okay,” Marco’s tech interrupts. “This part is going to sting. Try not to flinch too hard." She presses the neural interface into the back of his neck. He winces, but he manages to keep still.

“That’s not that bad,” he says.

She smirks at him. “Good, because that’s the easy part.”

The techs check them over on last time and head for the control booth, where Dr. Lightcap and a couple of others are waiting.

“Ready to step into my head for real?” Marco asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever get. You’re nervous too, right?”

“The jokes weren’t a dead giveaway?”

Jake smiles. “Nah, that was what I thought. See you on the other side.”

Dr. Lightcap’s voice brings their attention back. “Are you ready, Cadets?”

“Yes,” Jake says. Marco echoes him.

“Initiating neural handshake in five…four…three…two…one.”

The world dissolves around them.

Rachel hooks her arm through Marco’s and yanks him off the sidewalk and into the doorway of a nearby store with a totally unnecessary amount of force. Marco doesn’t yelp, but it’s close. As soon as he sees what she does, though, he gets it.

“Okay, what is wrong with just tapping my shoulder?” he complains in a whisper as Cassie and Jake keep walking, so close that their shoulders brush with every other step, unaware that they have lost their friends. Honestly, Rachel is lucky Marco didn’t just blow her whole game.

“I swear, if they don’t talk in the next two hours, we are setting them up,” Rachel hisses, ignoring his protest completely. “Cassie’s pining is getting ridiculous.”

“Rachel, trust me, I fully understand. I am the only other person on this planet who does, actually.” Through the drift, Marco has a front-row seat to Jake’s pining, and it is even more ridiculous than Cassie’s. Marco has seen Cassie plant her elbow directly in her own mess tray because Jake smiled at her, and Jake’s pining is still more ridiculous.

Rachel laughs. “That, I believe. Jake always was a little hopeless.”

“Twenty bucks they don’t talk.”

“That’s a sucker bet, Marco.”

“You know it. Better start planning that date.”

Rachel sighs, sounding greatly put-upon. “Okay, so obviously we’re not going to tell them that it’s a date. We’ll just schedule dinner and then ditch them.”

“So, exactly like we just did.”

“Oh no. They’re the ones who walked away; they ditched us,” Rachel says with a grin, like she didn’t practically shove Marco into the façade of a baby boutique to give their pining friends some privacy. “Really, it’ll be a very simple operation, but we need a restaurant. One just nice enough to scream date when they’re seated at a table for two.”

Marco rolls his eyes, but he can’t hold back a smile. “Oh, so it will be a table for two, then? How obvious do we want it to be that it’s a setup?”

“As obvious as possible without scaring them off before they get through the door, Marco. God knows they’ll need every hint they can get.”

Marco’s apartment is clean in an almost clinical way. It feels like no one lives there. Rachel tries not to frown. If she succeeds, it won’t matter, and if she fails, there is nothing she can do about it anyway. (The part of her that was once Cassie and always will be whispers that she should still try.)

He drops onto the couch in a carelessly graceful move that tells her he hasn’t forgotten all his martial arts training. She wonders if he knows how differently he moves now from when they were in high school. The answer is probably yes; he would have noticed it in everyone else.

He’s still wearing his dog tags.

“There’s soda in the fridge,” he says.

She ambles into the kitchen and snags a Coke. She perches on the counter where he can see her and takes her time opening the can and taking a sip, aware that he is waiting for her to say something.

Eventually, he sighs. “Why now?”

“You’re living under that big of a rock?”

He scowls at her. He’s less chatty than he used to be. Or, no, she revises after a second. He was always more serious when it got personal.

“The PPDC is dying, Marco. The governments of the world have collectively planted their heads firmly in the sand. The kaiju are coming faster every time, and they’re only getting stronger. We’re losing jaegers. We’re losing rangers.” She leans forward. “Humanity’s fucked, Marco. We’re all going to die unless the PPDC figures something out real fast.”

Marco’s eyebrows go up. “You’re really nailing this pep talk, Xena.”

She ignores the pang in her chest at the old nickname. “It isn’t a pep talk. If it was, you wouldn’t be getting me.” He isn’t stupid. Her guess is that he already suspects why she is the one who came to get him. Maybe Rachel wouldn’t figure it out, but she is pretty sure that Marco has. Sure, her cousin was Marco’s copilot, but sending Rachel to get him on those grounds could easily backfire. Marco almost definitely knows that Ax has been keeping tabs on him. If the PPDC just wanted him for J-Tech or LOCCENT, they wouldn’t send Rachel.

He lifts his chin, and his eyes harden. “So, why you, then?”

Oh, so he wants her to spell it out.

She pulls the packet out of her bag and tosses it across the small apartment. “Because we’re drift compatible, dipshit. I want you in a jaeger with me.”

There are parts of the job that Cassie hates. She has come to terms with them, mostly. The job of a jaeger pilot is one that needs to be done, and she can do it. Most people can’t, so she does it.

There are also parts of the job that she really enjoys. One of them is giving occasional guest lectures to the trainees at Kodiak Island. Usually, she and Rachel are paired up, for obvious reasons, but with Rachel recovering from half a dozen broken ribs, Cassie is sent up to Alaska with Marco and Jake to give a practical combat lesson. It’s a pity Rachel is missing this one, really. She loves throwing rookies around. Cassie will have to enjoy it enough for both of them.

“I can’t believe the brass is making me third wheel you guys,” Marco complains dramatically. “I’m going to spend the entire weekend watching you hold hands and share longing looks.”

Jake flushes bright red and knocks his shoulder into Marco’s. “Shut up,” he mumbles.

Cassie laughs. “Oh no, Marco, if anyone is the third wheel here, it’s Jake,” she says brightly.

She gets both of the boys with that one. “What?” Marco asks, startled out of a witty response.

“Think about it. You get plenty of time with Jake. I get plenty of time with Jake. We’re the odd ones out here, Marco. Clearly, this trip is really a chance for the two of us to spend some quality time together.”

“Hey, wait,” Jake starts, but it is already too late.

Marco grins and bounds forward to gallantly offer Cassie his arm. “Shall we go explore the culinary offerings available in the mess hall before we show the kids how it’s done, Cassie?”

Cassie graciously accepts. “That sounds lovely, Marco.”

She hears Jake heave an enormous sigh behind them.

Dawn finds Rachel stalking down the halls of the Shatterdome to the Kwoon.

Not many people from before the academy would have described Rachel as angry. A bitch, sure. She turned down enough guys in high school to get a bit of a reputation for being frigid. Competitive, certainly. Irritable, even, but not many people ever saw her get angry.

Most people never got to know Rachel very well.

Like a wall would stop a kaiju. Asshat politicians and their stupid opinions. How can anyone commission a study about what kind of defense could handle a kaiju, anyway? Part of the problem is how limited their knowledge is. K-Science is staffed so well for a reason.

Rachel is the one out there fighting the goddamned things. She knows the only reason the jaegers are so effective is that they have pilots that can change tactics. The kaiju learn. She and Cassie have seen it, and they know to account for it in battle. A wall cannot fight back, and kaiju don’t give up. It would never be enough.

PPDC employees are forbidden to comment publicly on this shit. She understands why—she really does—but that doesn’t make her want to stomp Senator Harding’s face into the ground any less.

She shoves the door open and strides into the Kwoon.

Marco pivots smoothly in her direction as he strikes at the air. He doesn’t bother to stop when he sees her. “Hey, Rachel.” Jake is nowhere to be seen, and Rachel’s suspicion about where Cassie was this morning gets stronger.

“Hi.” Rachel starts warming up with jumping jacks, just like she always does, even though her power-walk from her and Cassie’s room got her heart rate up all on its own. If Marco wasn’t here, she might launch straight into practice with only bare-minimum stretches, but she has too much pride to be so sloppy when anyone else can see, even if he has known her for her entire life.

When she has stretched responsibly, she joins him on the mat. He finishes his drills in silence and moves to the sidelines with his water bottle while she works through hers. Her movements snap more than they should, and she doesn’t bother to rein in her anger to fix it.

“Want to talk about it?” he asks eventually.

Rachel snorts. “No.” If she does, she’ll just end up ranting. She is here to burn off energy, not to get even more worked up.

“Want to fight about it, then?” he offers.

She looks up, and he’s holding two bo staves. “Yes.”

He steps onto the mat and tosses her a staff. She twirls it, trying to ground herself in the familiarity of the smooth wood like Cassie does.

She fails, but that’s fine, because Marco is standing at the edge of the ring, waiting for her to make the first move.

Sparring with Marco takes all of Rachel’s attention. If she doesn’t focus, she hits the mat. It’s that simple. Marco makes mistakes—everybody does—but he sees openings in a way most people don’t. He is analytical and good enough at patterns to see moves coming before she makes them. If she’s predictable, he will predict her.

Usually, she can surprise him. Often, if she’s fast enough and fierce enough, she can take him down before he can use what he sees. Sometimes she wins, sometimes he does, but it is always a good fight. More to the point, it’s the best possible distraction.

He knows her, and he’s willing to fight until she burns her anger out. She would hate to admit it out loud, but Marco is a good friend. One of her best, here at the edge of the world.

Someone sets a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun at Ax’s elbow, and he looks up. “Oh, Tobias. Thank you.”

Tobias perches on the corner of Ax’s desk. “I thought you could probably use it.” He taps his watch.

Ax glances at his computer. Ah. He skipped lunch. He and Tobias were going to eat together. “I’m sorry. I have been a bit caught up today.”

Tobias waves the apology away. “It’s fine. I do it, too.”

Ax pushes his chair back from the desk and looks Tobias over properly. He frowns. “Did you eat lunch?”

“Me? Yeah, don’t worry.”

Ax is actually becoming more convinced that he should indeed worry as he looks more closely. Tobias looks tired. Ax has seen him tired before. Ax has seen Tobias exhausted and running on fumes after multiple all-nighters. This isn’t that, but it is certainly more than a night or two of bad sleep.

“Have you seen Rachel at all lately?” Ax asks delicately.

From the way Tobias’ face turns to stone, Ax was not delicate enough. “I don’t think anyone has seen Rachel much lately,” he says flatly.

Right.

Ax hasn’t seen much of Marco lately, either. Ax had thought that with Rachel still on the base, at least…but no. It appears Ax has misjudged.

Ax clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”

Tobias sighs, and now he looks more tired than before. “Yeah. We’re all sorry.”

And really, what else is there to say? The Shatterdome is down two pilot teams and two jaegers. Ax and Tobias are down a couple of good friends.

One more thing the kaiju have taken that they never should have been able to touch.

Rachel wakes in a haze that tells her she’s on the good drugs. Or maybe it’s Cassie. Or maybe it’s both of them. Cassie feels heavy in the drift, like she always does when they’re on painkillers. Rachel grasps for the feeling, wanting Cassie close.

“Ranger Berenson?” A voice filters through the fog.

“Mmph?” She tries to focus. Fails. Loses track of Cassie, loses track of everything for a second.

“She’s awake. Ranger Berenson, you’re in Medical at the Los Angeles Shatterdome.”

“Kaiju,” she rasps. Her tongue is heavy from the drugs. “Cassie?” Rachel can feel her, faint and strange and harder to reach than usual.

“The kaiju is down. Polar Adamant killed it. You and Ranger Jennings were exposed to Kaiju Blue during the battle.”

“Mm.” She reaches for Cassie in the fading ghost drift. They have to stay together. That’s what being drift partners means.

Another voice, fuzzy in her ears. “Sedate her.”

“She just woke up. Are you sure?”

“This situation is highly unusual. There isn’t a lot of precedent, but sudden severance of the drift is extremely traumatic. We are not in the field, that trauma is unnecessary, and I don’t want a hysterical pilot in here. It’s bad enough that they had to be separated. Sedate her.”

Rachel tries to frown with facial muscles that won’t cooperate. Cassie isn’t reaching back. Something isn’t right. “Cassie,” she says, even as her tongue gets heavier. “Cassie.”

“Fuck,” someone whispers.

“Cass…”

The ghost drift fades, and Rachel’s consciousness fades with it.

“I don’t see it,” Rachel comments.

“Stay sharp,” LOCCENT says. “Long-distance radar indicates that it’s closing in fast.”

An idea flashes between Jake and Marco. Marco thinks of it, but it clicks into place for Jake just as quickly. “You think it’s trying to stealth mode past us?” Marco asks.

“If it does, you’ll be the first to know. For now, it’s still outside your perimeter.”

“Do you have anything more specific for us?” Cassie asks, even though all of them know it’s probably a lost cause.

“By its angle of approach, it’s closer to Polar Adamant than Clarion Tempest, but we’re only getting sporadic readings.”

“Copy that, staying frosty,” Jake says. Marco snorts.

What?

“Copy that, staying frosty.” Nerd.

Nerd yourself.

“We see something,” Cassie says sharply. “Adamant, on your left.”

They shift to adjust their range of vision. The sea starts to boil as something moves beneath it.

“We have visual,” Rachel reports. “No details yet.”

“Oh, you are ugly,” Jake says when the kaiju finally lifts its face out of the ocean, half a mile out from Polar Adamant.

“You’re going to hurt its feelings,” Cassie says.

Rachel is already laughing. “Yeah, Jake, how are you going to make up for being rude to the kaiju?”

Marco grins, and an answering smile spreads across Jake’s face. Ax has cooked up a new trick for Polar Adamant, and it might be just the thing. “We have some ideas,” Jake says.

Marco wakes up alone in Medical.

That tells him everything he needs to know, and he wishes it didn’t. He sits up and takes a split-second inventory before swinging his legs down and standing. Circuitry burns and bruises, cuts and scrapes. No broken bones, no IVs, no machine hookups. He’s fine, except for the glaring absence of his partner in his head, and the only reason Jake wouldn’t be here—

No. Not yet. He could still be wrong. He takes a careful step to test his balance while his mind spins. Pilot pairs are occasionally separated after battle for vital lifesaving treatment. He needs data. How did the battle end? How long has he been out? What day is it?

Where is Jake?

He shoves aside the curtain.

“Ranger Alvarez!” someone yelps. “What are you doing up? You should be—” Irrelevant. He will get nothing out of her. He needs to find someone who will tell him what happened. He heads for the door.

“Marco!” A hand catches his arm. Rachel stares at him, and he stares back, trying to catch his breath.

“Jake,” he says.

“Fuck,” Rachel mutters. She pulls him into a hug.

His breath leaves him all at once, and he lets his head fall against her shoulder. Her reaction is as good as confirmation. “He’s dead,” Marco whispers. He knew, he didn’t feel it happen but he knew, they would have been together if— “He’s dead, isn’t he.”

He woke up alone. Completely alone, even in his head. After previous deployments, Jake has always been in the next bed. If they were separated for emergency medical care, someone would have been on hand when Marco woke up. Drift shock is a bitch, and everyone in the Shatterdome knows it. Partners know if the other is injured through the ghost drift, and if they wake up apart, they usually panic.

If Jake was alive, Jake would be with him.

Rachel pushes him gently onto the nearest bed and sits with him, pressing their shoulders together. She doesn’t say anything, or maybe his ears just aren’t working. The silence does seem awfully loud. Of course, in his memory, he was drifting a minute ago. Maybe the silence is only in his head.

Distantly, he notes that there is a mess tray spilled on the floor. That’s why he was alone, probably. Rachel was supposed to be with him when he woke up, and she went to get food while she waited, because bedside vigils are long and tedious and nothing to face on an empty stomach. Rachel, because she knows what it’s like—

He wonders what meal that was supposed to be. The mess is only open at certain hours, but Shatterdome staff work in shifts, so there are night hours, too. It may not be a normal mealtime at all. He still doesn’t know how long he was out.

It doesn’t matter.

None of what his brain is spewing matters, but he can’t make it stop. His breathing is too loud to his own ears, deafening in the quiet of the medical bay. The nurse he startled is still standing in the same spot. Maybe she isn’t a nurse. Most nurses are more efficient than that.

He wonders what happened to their jaeger. Rachel will tell him, if he asks. He should ask. If he doesn’t, he will have to watch the footage later on.

Usually, he and Jake go through the highlights while the ghost drift still hangs between them. Anything that didn’t work, anything new that worked well, all of it goes into their personal playbook. Went into their playbook—

No. Not yet. He can’t go there yet. Later.

He wishes Jake was with him. By his side, like he always has been, and in his head, like he is supposed to be.

Right now, the only person in Marco’s head is him.

“Do you think this job is going to kill us?” Cassie asks quietly.

She hears Rachel shift in the top bunk. “…yeah. Maybe.”

“I guess that’s kind of a dumb question, huh?” Cassie is being morbid, and she knows it.

The Nagasaki Shatterdome lost a jaeger yesterday. She went down with both pilots.

“No, not really,” Rachel says.

They knew when they signed up that piloting jaegers was dangerous. They only found out just what that actually meant when they stepped into a cockpit of their own.

“I’m so tired of the kaiju taking things from us,” Cassie whispers. Rachel already knows. They both grew up near the coast. They were children in most of the ways that counted, but they all lost something on K-Day.

“Yeah. Me too.” Rachel is quiet for a moment. Then she asks, “Do you regret it?”

Cassie has given up so many chances for this job. She didn’t go to college, didn’t get to follow her passions, didn’t live anything approaching a normal life. The war still feels oddly like an interruption, even though it has been her entire life for years now. She misses those chances, but she can’t bring herself to regret them. This is not the path she would have chosen for herself, but she can never back down, not as long as she is protecting people. “No.”

“Me neither,” Rachel tells her, even though they both knew that already. “And I think…that until the fight is over, we have to keep going. We have to outlast the kaiju until we can find a way to close the Breach.”

“Can you picture an after?” Cassie asks. Some days, she thinks she can. She can almost see a suburban house, a good man like Jake, and a quiet job. Other days, she wonders how anybody could ever move on from a war as long as this.

“No,” Rachel whispers. “But I want to.”

The first few times Rachel stood at the wall in LOCCENT and watched from the sidelines, she felt like everyone’s eyes were on her. That was ridiculous, of course. Everyone in LOCCENT has better things to do than sneak looks at a former pilot who can’t stand to see the action without being able to hear the comm chatter.

Well. Maybe there were some looks, but Rachel has never let that stop her. She kept doing it.

She isn’t about to let Jake and Marco go into battle without keeping an eye on them, even if she can’t back them up anymore. Sometimes, she even has something to contribute. An experienced pilot’s eye can catch things that the analysts miss.

Polar Adamant and Crusader Astra have been deployed off the coast of Oregon. The kaiju has been heading straight for them since it emerged from the Breach. The analysts think it is heading for Portland. (Maybe kaiju like craft beer and independent bookstores, Cassie jokes in her head.)

Rachel likes Crusader Astra’s pilots. She really does. James in particular is fun to spar with, and he seems to take getting his ass kicked as a challenge rather than as an insult. They’re good, too, or as good as they can be with only two battles and one kill to their name. They make decent backup for Polar Adamant.

Rachel would give anything to be out there in their place.

She leans against the wall and watches the screens as nothing happens. The jaegers patrol while they wait. They call in periodic updates, even though LOCCENT can see the data too. The tension builds more and more as time stretches on with no sightings.

Rachel has always hated this part, when the very air pulls tight like a storm about to break, but it is much worse now that she can’t be the one to punch the kaiju’s lights out when it finally shows its ugly mug.

“We have contact!” someone yelps from the front of the room.

Finally. Rachel reminds herself to unclench her fists.

Crusader Astra is an inexperienced team. They are good; Rachel has made damn sure of that herself by kicking their asses around the Kwoon, sometimes while yelling combat scenarios at them. Inexperienced doesn’t mean incompetent, and any team that makes it into the field is trustworthy. Still, she and Cassie definitely made some bad calls when they were younger, and the kaiju have only gotten harder to kill since then.

Rachel’s hands are already fists again. This time, she doesn’t bother trying to relax.

The jaegers work together. Crusader Astra takes a couple of nasty blows. The kaiju has wickedly curved claws and a heavily armored head. If Clarion Tempest were out there, they would wrestle the kaiju and hold it down while Polar Adamant took plasmacaster shots at whatever points seemed weakest. In this case, the ideal target is probably down the thing’s throat. Nothing is armored from the inside.

With Crusader Astra, Polar Adamant is better suited to hold the kaiju. Marco and Jake move in. Crusader Astra charges her cannon.

Rachel holds her breath as Polar Adamant tackles. Kaiju and jaeger roll through the surf toward Crusader Astra. James yells something over the comms, but Rachel doesn’t hear it.

Polar Adamant hauls the kaiju to a stop directly in Crusader Astra’s line of fire. One shot, two shots—

The kaiju slams its head through Polar Adamant’s Conn-Pod. With a screech of tearing metal, she goes down.

Crusader Astra fires again. The kaiju falls, flailing and screaming. Rachel barely sees it, her mind too busy flashing back to hull breach, kaiju blue, Cassie—

Marco and Jake are down. Their comms are out.

“Don’t you dare,” she mutters, deaf to the roar of LOCCENT all around her. “You’d better not die on me, don’t you dare leave me alone.”

Ax is the one who figures it out. Tobias is the one who hands her the data.

Rachel stares down at the chart with less surprise than she thinks she should feel.

“Can’t say I was too shocked,” Tobias says. His tone is neutral, just like his face. Tobias has never emoted much, but Rachel still knows him well enough to tell when it’s intentional versus when it’s just his face. He is being carefully bland right now.

She always hated it when he did that.

“You’re sure about this?” she asks. Tries to keep her voice as even as Tobias’. Fails, just like she does every time she tries it.

“As sure as I can be,” Ax says. “It is an inexact science, but by the available data, this is as accurate as it is possible to be. I included your academy scores as well, though they are very outdated by now.” He hesitates. “I also watched some old footage from the Kwoon. If it is not too forward of me to say so, I believe the qualitative evidence thoroughly supports the quantitative.”

“You watched our fights?”

“I did,” Ax says carefully. “I also watched some of Marco’s fights with Jake, and some of yours with Cassie.”

“And you think you see it.”

“Yes.”

Rachel sucks in a breath slowly. Breathes out. “Where do I find him?”

Marco looks down at the chart, and there it is in black and white. They’re a match. He had suspected, but he hadn’t thought he would ever have it confirmed.

“You’re not surprised,” Rachel says. She sets her Coke down. It clinks loudly in the quiet of the small apartment.

He doesn’t look up. So she can still read him, huh? Yeah, well. In some ways, they always did understand each other best. “What makes you think I ever want to set foot in a jaeger again?”

The kaiju have taken everything from him, starting with his mom and his childhood and ending with his best friend. Becoming a pilot took away his shot at staying close to his dad, who died before Marco got out. He threw himself into the fight for so long that it left nothing in him untouched. Marco doesn’t have anybody left except a couple of people back at the Los Angeles Shatterdome and the woman in front of him now.

Rachel doesn’t bother to answer his question. Maybe she doesn’t have an answer. Maybe she just doesn’t need one.

Rachel’s family moved east after she entered the PPDC. They’re alive. It doesn’t matter. Part of Rachel died with Cassie, just like part of Marco died with Jake, and she will never be able to stop fighting.

Marco has tried. He’s tried, and there is nothing else. The only thing the kaiju haven’t taken from him is his life. He might as well give them that, too, if it means making sure some other kid somewhere doesn’t have to go through the same thing.

Marco walked into this war for his mom. He can go back to it for Jake. For Rachel, for Cassie, for millions of nameless faces that he will never see.

He looks up, and Rachel is watching him, intense and expectant and familiar enough that it aches. (That’s my cousin, whispers Jake in his head. She’s impossible.) “You think this will work?”

The muscle in her jaw works, and he knows that something in her says it has to, because they have to win. Failure has never been an option, not when all of humanity is on the line.

“Okay.” He huffs out a ghost of a laugh. “Let’s do it.”

Because when it comes down to it, someone has to, and they have a planet to save.