Chapter Text
The first thing they teach you is not to ask questions.
Their method is, of course, both brutal and effective, and is responsible for 13% of the total loss of student life. (It’s officially grouped under ‘classroom accidents’, which is responsible for 52% of the total loss of student life, at least if you read the reports. This is rather incredible when you consider that classroom activity is only a third of the academic year.
I graduated, to my mother’s surprise, top of the class. She’d given me plenty of warning against my usual inquisitiveness, even going as far as to put stickers on my notebooks and (once) a stern ‘don’t do it’ on the toes of my socks. Truthfully, though, the only reason I had not become the example was my tardiness. I had barely uttered my apologies when a voice from the back of the room cried, “Why do we even have to learn this crap? My dad says that-”
The professor did not even blink when she threw that knife.
She didn’t let us move the body either, the blood drip, drip, dripping into a pool on the dark wood floor.
We lost three classmates that day.
Two the next.
It’s easy to become the top of a class that keeps killing its students.
***
“I heard you received your first assignment,” my mother says by way of greeting. She doesn’t look up from the revolver in her hands, her fingers spinning the cylinder absent-mindedly. “Do you know when you’re shipping out?”
I shrug a shoulder. “You know how it is. They’ll drag me out with no time to spare, with nothing, really, but a pat on the back and a new name.” I flop onto the bed next to her. “They don’t want us to think about it.”
“It’s better that you don’t.” She still doesn’t look at me, but her hand drops between us. The revolver’s barrel is cold against my leg. “Easier.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
She hums, a sound that is neither yes or no. The gun taps against my leg. “I wanted to know the why of it too, once, in the beginning. Why are we doing this? What did they do? How does it end? But none of that matters to me anymore.” Her head tilts to one side, eyes glancing down at me through the curtain of her hair. “I just wanted to come back home, to you.”
***
My mother has a 98.7% success rate.
The professors at school recognised her as something of a hero. The Demon Imposter.
I try to hold that image in my head as my mother brings our dinner in that evening, and trips over the table leg. The only part that fits is the red sauce, splattered across her cheeks like blood.
***
My assignment coordinator looks at me over the top of his visor, tapping his screen with the stylus. I’m told often how little I have of my mother in my features, that my face is both too stern, and too calculating, and the way his lips pinch as he stares at me lets me know he’s noting my flaws too. It’s a relief when my partner joins us, waving his ID card above his head.
“This better be a joke! Of all the colours you could have given me, I get lime? It looks like radiated vomit! I hope you got a shitty colour too, like brown or -” he reaches for my ID and I am only just fast enough to slip it up my sleeve. He clicks his tongue. “I just wanted a look.”
“You don’t have to touch for that,” I return, shifting my body away from him. My partner, I’ve been told, graduated three places behind me. I don’t remember sharing a class with him. I don’t remember him at all. “And they gave me red.”
He breathes harshly through his nose, a noise like a broken pipe. “Of course they did. I bet they won’t even credit me in the history books, either; it’ll be all about you and your - “
Our coordinator clears his throat. “I see you both read your briefs, so you’ll know, of course, that you will be rendezvousing with the rest of the crew on the drop ship, before heading to the Skeld. You’ll need to be suited up before entering the drop ship, and we have procured them for you al-”
“Actually,” I break in, “I wanted to know how we secured the suits.”
“Secured…” Our coordinator drags his visor up over his eyes. “I don’t see how that should matter.”
“I’m just curious. If we can secure two suits, why not secure the whole ship? And what happened to the original Red and Lime? Did they actually exist?”
I see my partner rub his hand over his face out of the corner of my eye. “That’s hardly important. We just go in, kill everyone, come home. Stop making it bigger than it is.”
“Right,” I say. “Just kill everyone.”