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Another training simulation comes to a close. The scores are tallied. Number 1 and Number 11 stand in front of twelve assembled YoRHa, each in pairs.
“I’m satisfied. You are dismissed for the day,” Number 1 commands. “Number 2, excellent work. I will register you and Number 4 as training partners until further notice.” She opens a window in her visor and fires a note to their operators.
Number 2 holds her left hand over her chest. “Thank you, captain.”
“Thank you!” Number 4 echoes, cheerful as ever. “C’mon, Two. I’ve got something to show you in my room.” Though she gets multiple looks of disapproval radiating from beneath YoRHa visors, she doesn’t regret announcing her intentions to her entire squad. How could she? Number 2 moves to grab at her hand and pulls her out of the simulation.
Being the first two to leave, both have time to fix their helmet hair. In her haste, Number 2’s headband falls to the floor. When Number 4 finishes tying her hair back up she finds Number 2 scanning the area.
“Having trouble over there?” She holds the headband out and sets it gently upon Number 2’s head.
“Oh! Thanks.” Her face flushes, embarrassed. “What did you want to show me earlier?”
“Let’s go. I said it’d be a surprise.” Number 4 dashes off to the elevator out of the command centre. She waits for Number 2 to complete the trip before running through the loop – the right way, this time – to her quarters.
Her room shares its design with nine hundred and ninety-nine others. A bed too large for one, a window to the void of space, a single computer terminal for supplies. On instinct, Number 2 removes her boots. Number 4 doesn’t notice as she taps at the terminal’s screen.
“Let me... Here!” A short test clip plays from a speaker. Unable to locate the source, Number 2 glances around but finds nothing.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m teaching you how to dance. Number 21 found some old human music, and I found out this thing can play it.”
“Dance? As in spar?”
Number 4 can’t help herself. She bursts into peals of laughter – “No! How do I explain this? It’s like we’re practicing movements, but along with music. And together.”
– and Number 2 only grows more baffled. She wants to leave the room but her body won’t let her. She wishes she could make an apology make sense, but nothing else comes out. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Then I won’t force you, but you should try.” And if you want to, you can leave. Number 4 opens her arms as if to invite Number 2 in from the Bunker’s cold.
“If you say so.”
“Okay! First of all,” she wraps her right arm around Number 2’s chest, “put your left hand on my shoulder.” Number 2 follows. “Now we hold our other hands,” they interlace their fingers, gloves discarded onto the bed, “and I’ll lead you to start.” Number 4 opens the dance by pulling her partner forwards with her left arm, nearly tripping the poor woman.
“Hold on! I don’t know what to do,” Number 2 blurts out.
“Start by just moving to the side. Like a shuffle,” Number 4 guides. She demonstrates the technique and Number 2 learns it quickly enough that they can move together. “Good! Now, when I push with my hand, you need to follow it.”
Number 2 feels her hand pulled away and she steps forward alongside her partner. She gives the praise a chance; perhaps, then, it is genuine. “Okay. I think I can handle this.”
“Good.” With that, Number 4 raises their joined hands above their heads and twists. Number 2’s skirt fans out as she lets herself be twirled. She spins in place, her stockings gliding against the floor.
“Hey!”
“Two. You’re doing fine.” She breaks their handhold and pulls Number 2 in for a hug. “Beautiful.”
Without her wearing heels, Number 2 can feel all of their height disparity now: fifteen centimetres. A considerable amount for someone without many more to spare. She lets herself be pushed and pulled around the limited space. “I... love this.” She had never felt this safe in the Bunker before, not this close to another android.
“There you go. Love you, Two.” Number 4 pushes apart and spins on her right toe. “Keep going. There’s another move I wanna try.”
“Can you show me?” Number 2 asks. Number 4 takes her hands again.
“So this move,” she explains, “is gonna take some trust. When I tilt you back you lean into it. Got it?” She twirls herself and Number 2 this time, her ponytail swishing around as she catches her partner.
“Okay! Let’s try it.” Number 2 inhales and sets everything aside. Good enough be damned; she lets herself go entirely and turns control over to her partner. Number 4 leans back and spins Number 2 in one fluid motion. For a moment, it’s as if Number 2 is free, twirling fast enough to fan her skirt out to her hips. Then, she’s caught, still dizzy as she feels herself almost picked up and tilted backwards, arm outstretched in Number 4’s grasp.
“It’s cute how you let me be in charge.”
“I wouldn’t let you be if I didn’t trust you.”
Trust. Someone like her could build trust in another. Something more than whatever superficial relationships she had in her false memories. Number 4 takes care to not let tears form over her open eye.
“So! Let’s try this to the music now.” She slides back to the terminal, clicks around, and begins the music.
Number 2 had never listened to human music before. She had barely even listened to what some androids had made; even then, it was all from files one of their Scanners had snuck onto their servers. It isn’t unpleasant. Much more relaxed , she notes.
“To be specific, she said this is tango music.” Number 4 offers a hand.
“Tango? Like... a target?”
“A slow dance. For two.” She takes the lead. Her eye, excited, joins with Number 2’s. “Just follow me.”
The violin is a novel sound for her. Number 2 finds it agreeable, though almost too strong for the piece. She begins the slow steps Number 4 had taught. Easy enough. She lets herself melt into her partner’s control, feeling her forceful tug against her back, until a spin takes her right out of her trance. This one is slower than those they had practiced; it leaves her face right next to Number 4’s, surprised where she is confident.
“Don’t stop,” Number 4 whispers. The pace quickens with the music. As the piano and violin trade the melody line she pushes and pulls Number 2, who gives herself over completely. Her core rushes with affection and her breathing accelerates; she lets out a gasp and a sigh with each motion. One of the steps leaves her back nearly against the wall, an unrecognized signal–
– She feels her feet lifted from the floor, her entire body tilting backwards. Her gyroscopes can’t react fast enough and she wants to panic but the arms holding her are so strong and–
“Sorry! Was that too much?” Number 4 holds her nearly horizontal and she realizes just how strong they all are. She calms with the music, letting herself be set back upright. Though she’s much more relaxed, Number 4 doesn’t attempt the move for the remainder of the dance. Their backing track slows, taking them with it, until one final pluck leaves them embraced. Pride. Number 4 hardly had anything to be proud of save for her above-average combat scores. Yet pride fills her chest when she looks back at a satisfied Number 2.
Their dance lesson had consumed nearly half of their four-hour rest period. Both lie atop A4’s “mattress”, bodies intertwined. Number 2 nuzzles her head into the crook of her partner’s neck and doesn’t object to the hand running through her hair.
“Hey, Number 2? Can I talk to you about what you said back there?” Number 4’s voice sends waves through Number 2’s nestled head. “You trust me.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve never had anyone say that to me before. Even in my memories.” She closes her eyes to keep the mask up.
Number 2 pauses, then, voice full of concern, replies: “Everyone you knew? You had friends, right?”
“Not what you’d call a friend. Yeah, I knew people, but was I ever close?”
Number 2 strokes her hand through her partner’s ponytail. “I don’t know what to say... gods, it feels so wrong just calling you Number 4. You’re more than that to me.” The diversion works.
“Really? Thank you, Two.” Tears flow with nothing to hold them back.
“Sorry! Uh. Delta? How’s that?”
“Too intimidating. My turn, Luna.”
“What’s that one from?”
She runs her hand through Number 2’s hair, fingers stroking the headband. “I just thought your hair looked like the moon with it behind the headband like that,” she stumbles out. Both break into laughter.
“Ivy!” Number 2 blurts amidst the chaos.
“Nah. You got that one from the number, didn’t you?”
“Fine, fine. April.”
“Good enough. Night, Luna.”
“April.” Number 2 murmurs as she enters sleep mode. Though their operators would check her room to find her missing, and their open secret would be officially exposed to their squadmates, she can’t find the strength to pick herself up and leave. This was their time together, and Number 2 would sooner be thrown from her flight unit to the surface than give it up.
* * *
A2 pulls herself from the memory space. She takes everything in; the solid ground with its logical gravity beneath her, the sky from within Earth’s atmosphere, the state of decay on her body. She checks her calendar – 11945-02-04 – to find that the reminiscing had consumed three full days. She fires a frantic series of messages to her squad; a quick “hey, I didn’t die in there” is her only chance to soothe A4. The channel between the four survivors comes alight.
“Freesia! What the hell were you thinking? Am was worried sick.” G16’s connection crackles and nearly disconnects.
“I couldn’t control how long I spent there. Back off,” she fires back. “Your connection’s–” She cuts herself off. Revealing that G16’s communications are failing would give away to any unwanted listeners that she must be in mountain terrain. “– working fine, by the way.”
“Thanks. I’ll relay your status to her.”
“I’d ask what memories you were spending so long in, but I think it’s pretty obvious.” S21 joins the call, soon followed by A4.
“I can’t remember the last time all four of us were in here!”
“Keep your voice down and get to a more neutral background," G16 chides.
A4 leaves and quickly returns; the Hellmouth’s sandstone walls are replaced by a nondescript grey slab.
“Good.” G16, seeing the risk of exposing all four of them to YoRHa, leaves with S21.
A4 gazes into the face in the corner of her vision. “So what memories were you looking at?”
“You and I were dancing for the first time. Remember? It was three months before we got deployed.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I’d love to do it again when this all ends. I miss having you here, Am.”
“Me too. I’ve been thinking about it. Don’t you think all the secrecy is pointless?” A4 confesses. “It hurts me to have you so close but not able to be with you.”
“It’s for the best. If we group up...”
“...YoRHa will see us as more of a threat.” A4 finishes S21’s mantra. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. She won’t mind if we break her rules for one day.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Freesia.”
The pair end the call. A2 finds a suitable spot in the forest; she picks out the space enclosed by one of the colossal tree roots and a bush, then lies on the grass. The leaves are nearly still. She imagines herself, with A4, in a home they had built themselves from this very tree. Though the Bunker hangs high above her head she ignores its watch. Her mind wanders to the guerrilla war of attrition against their best units, one she knows she could never hope to win.
I will not let you take her from me again.
She rises. Footsteps – worryingly heeled footsteps – click against forgotten stones. Another hunter to become the hunted. A2 takes a good look and, not seeing one of her comrades nor their doppelgängers in the disguised Executioner, withdraws her Virtuous Contract. The dance with A4 would have to wait.