Chapter Text
In the city of Hector all the trillions of microorganisms that live there are responsible for keeping things running and standing, they are all born with one function already assigned because that is just how its supposed to work, the red cells are in charge of carrying oxygen to the blood and the white ones to fight diseases and infections and so with all the rest of inhabitants, everyone does their part to keep the other alive, thus living in a perfect system that ensures the well-being of everyone.
But as wonderful as that sounds, every system has flaws, and Cypher Cyto was one of them, she was like any working white cell in the city, she got up early in the morning to go to work at the police station in the lymph nodes, she had already finished the academy relatively recently and her training was just beginning, once she finished her last preparations she would officially be a part of the forces of immunity where she belonged.
She was paid minimum wage for her hard service as an apprentice, lived in a tiny apartment, did her taxes, did her grocery shopping, and she was only 13 years old, that was the flaw. While the other cells her age were studying in school and finishing developing properly, she had to give up that life just to live the life of a full and complete adult white cell. It was fine! it didn't bother her at all, of course not, or at least that was what she liked to tell herself and the few who cared to ask.
This was the life she had chosen on her own free will, no one forced her to do it but it's not like she had any other choice, she had nothing else to do with her life, she had no one to watch over her, Cypher had grown up alone on the streets with the uncertainty of knowing if she would wake up the next day or if she would have something to eat, all since she was just around 6 years old, right when her mother disappeared in strange circumstances.
Immunity couldn't get the slightest trace to follow and be able to find her mother's whereabouts, it was as if she had vanished or if she had never even existed.
She had chosen to become a part of immunity because this would allow her to have all the necessary tools and access to begin her investigation about her mother's disappearance; she had already started it, although she hasn't made much progress on it. Of course! She was also interested in being part of immunity to fulfill her goal in life, which was to protect the city and the defenseless organisms that inhabited the city as well and all of that, yes, that too.
Cypher liked to think that living on the streets hadn't been that bad, she encouraged herself by telling herself that having went through all of that would be worth it once she knew what had happened the day of the disappearance, besides, the skills she had learned while living on the streets were what helped her get through the admission test for the police academy, things like agility or sense of direction had given her the chance to be on the same level as the other cells at the time of taking the test.
She found a way to enter the academy, even though she was about to be expelled for lying on her registration form, it wasn't her fault she didn't remember her own personal information, it wasn't her fault she purposely forgot her age either, and it is that new recruits were only accepted from the age of 16 onwards, she clearly didn't meet the requirement, and certainly didn't look old enough for her lie to be credible, she barely looked her real age, living on the street It's a terrible lifestyle for a cell in development, she was a little smaller than the other cells her age, plus her poor development prevented her from doing some things that other cells could do, like stretching or changing her appearance using pliable cellular dynamics, and if that wasn’t enough she couldn't produce cytotoxins yet like her type of cell it's supposed to.
It didn't matter, after protesting and -kinda- explaining her situation to the chief, and using as an argument the fact that the mayor was the same age as her and had more responsibilities, he had agreed to grant her special permission to be part of the academy, It was not the first time that they made exceptions, although it had been a long time since they had accepted a new recruit this younger.
First the mayor had to give his approval, convincing him was difficult but he agreed anyway, of course everything was under very strict rules and conditions, she didn't care, at least she had already achieved what she wanted. After a few months she was assigned an apartment in a police neighborhood in the spleen and now that she had a roof over her head and the bare minimum conditions to live a decent life, she felt that now her life had improved exponentially more than it had ever been, this was the her rightful life, where she was supposed to be, after all she was a cytotoxic T cell, immunity was where she belonged. Or again, that was what she was told to believe.
Although Cypher denied it, there were days when she regretted everything she had achieved, she felt ungrateful doing it, it was all to fulfill her goal, but the life she led now was not as wonderful as she had thought it would be, things were so complicated and difficult that she didn't even know where to start, in the first place she had no friends, the cells of her age did not want to get together with her because she was already too "old" for them and the adults mostly only saw her with pity as a "little girl" who had no idea what she's doing, and it was true, very true, she didn't know what she was doing but she was trying her best.
Secondly, her mates from the academy and the other immunity cops enjoyed teasing her every day for being the youngest in the place, she was constantly the victim of some joke and she could only laugh with them to feel that they weren't really laughing at her, they constantly repeated to her that she was there out of pity or said things of that kind, of course there were exceptions, there were some of her mates who were much nicer to her, and the rest preferred to just ignore her completely as if she was like any other apprentice.
In third and last place, her biggest problem right now was her mentors, or rather one of them, someone had to teach her the art of protecting a body from those ugly viruses and germs and the people assigned for it were nothing more and nothing less than Osmosis Jones and his partner Drixenol Koldreliff. Technically they weren't cops exactly, they were private detectives but they had previously worked as immunity cops in another body, they are still a part of immunity so there’s no difference.
There was no one left who wanted to mentor apprentices, at least that's what they told her, the truth was that nobody wanted to take the risk of mentoring a "problematic" apprentice like her because everything could go very well or very very badly, and no one wanted to be responsible if everything went wrong. Ozzy and Drix had offered themselves to mentor whoever needed it, and precisely the only apprentice left without one was Cypher. At first it all seemed fantastic, she was very interested in the whole subject of investigations and everything related to it, it would be useful to help her continue with her mother's investigation, she had also heard wonders from both of them and about all the things they had achieved together in the other body in which they lived before, she felt that he had won the lottery with them.
Unfortunately, having them as mentors had not turned out as well as she had hoped, any slightest tiniest mistake was pointed out by Jones over and over again, if she was aiming the gun wrong, or why she didn't know the risk of doing such and such, he made her feel useless, and she couldn't complain, she wasn't allowed to, she didn't have the authority or character to do so anyway.
It 's ok! she gets it, it's his job to correct her and all but, something in her head gets altered whenever she hears someone scolding her or telling her she was wrong. Every single thing she did was wrong or never good enough for Jones's standards, ugh there was no need for him to be so mean and annoying, to her consolation, at least Drix was a little gentler with his corrections.
But it was obvious that she didn't know how to do most of the things she was asked to do, it was precisely the job of those two to teach her everything she needed to know and Jones worked with a 70% corrections and 30% teaching method, at the same time, she was embarrassed to have to ask for things to be explained twice, she didn't want to ask for help no matter how much she needed it, that would show her uselessness even more in front of Jones and she wasn't going to accept that.
The training was just not working out, every time they put her skills to the test, everything would invariably go wrong, she would freeze, hesitate, never really sure what to do, she knew it was all her fault, but blaming someone else was always easier, right? Maybe she should have settled for doing paperwork.
Every day she tried to convince herself not to give up yet, that she had just had a bad day and the next one would be better.
But as day after day passed, Cypher sadly realized that things weren't getting any better, no matter how hard she tried. She had almost nothing left of her initial optimism, she was tired of the same routine every week, she was tired of immunity, of her mentors, of herself, specially of herself, she was tired of having nothing to do on her days off, she felt that in any moment she would invariably explode in desperation.
But that was her life now, she could only resign herself and fold her arms because it could be worse. She couldn't give up, her only motivation was to think that she would one day find her mother on her own without anyone's help.
She woke up that wednesday morning with a great heaviness, again she hadn't gotten the sleep she should have, she really didn't want to go and face another day of the same, she could barely set foot behind from the other to walk, she dressed and fed as best she could feeling totally devastated, the only thing that brightened her days a little was her amazing germ-shaped backpack.
She had forgotten to mention that much of the teasing she received daily was because of that damn backpack, it was so quaint and out of place with the serious and rigid atmosphere of the police station, but Cypher insisted on wearing it every day, it was the only thing that made her happy, she loved that stupid germ character too much, every time she could buy more merchandising of that character she did, she didn't know why she liked it so much, she just liked it, it was everywhere in her room.
Going back to Cypher's horrible routine, she always took the bus at 7:00 on the dot, if there was one thing she had learned living as an "adult" it was that it was of the utmost importance to get to work early, not because of responsibility to her work obligations, but because they deduct money from her meager salary if she was late. She always sat at the back of the bus to go unnoticed, and she never fell asleep, the last time she did it she ended up completely disoriented on the feet.
She liked to look out the window at the other cells who had to got up early to work like her, she tried to look away when the bus passed a school, she would die before admitting it, but she was envious of the students, she would have liked to be able to go to school, but that life was no longer for her, she had decided to work and she could not back down now… “whatever” She shook her head, once again she was letting her thoughts overwhelm her, she got off the bus right in front of the police station, she stayed for a few seconds looking at the building, she had to cheer herself up, maybe that day would be better, maybe something would happen that would change things for the better.
She went to look for the chief, he had requested her presence in his office immediately, her day was definitely not starting well, she was afraid of what he was going to say, the feeling that it would be something bad terrified her and she didn't want to receive bad news. She walked through the corridors of the building receiving a few sarcastic “nice backpack!” from her coworkers. Once she was outside of the chief's office she knocked on the door softly and when she heard the chief's voice saying "come in !" she timidly opened the door.
"Good morning Cyto, I guess you can imagine why I called you here..."
Seeing that the cell did not respond, he continued his speech.
“I called you here because this morning I received all the apprentice’s reports, and according to Jones and the pill, your mentors, you haven't made any significant progress in your training, can you explain that Cyto? when you took the admission test you were so good and now... nothing! Maybe I had too much faith in you"
This last he said as if to himself, it was almost inaudible.
Cypher felt her nucleus paralyze, she was feeling so many things that moment and she didn't know how to process any of them, she wanted to scream and run. Had all her effort meant nothing? Had she really made no progress at all? Was she a hopeless case? She had a lot of questions piling up, yet no word or complaint came out of her mouth. She had to choose very well what she would say, she didn't want to be even more embarrassed and humiliated.
He just sighed in frustration, he couldn't believe that he had given such a great opportunity to this cell in front of him, he felt sorry for her, it must have been difficult to adapt to living a life so different from the one she knew, but he didn't want to excuse her lack of discipline and progress, he had to be firm, this was about the future of a cell who was going to be a part of something important for the entire body.
"Listen to me, I'll give you a second chance, but it will be the last, if by the next delivery of reports you haven't improved enough, I'll have to expel you from the academy, remember that you're not just any apprentice, you're here under strict conditions, understood? ”
“Really?! I mean… Thank you sir I won’t let you down” Cypher's expression brightened, after all it seemed that her day wasn't going so badly, she thanked the chief over and over again, he was always so understanding even though he didn't seem to be. She left the office happy without knowing that in reality all apprentices were given a second chance.