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It was cold.
The lab was always cold. Especially now, in the earliest hours of the morning, where the absence of any and all activity made the chill seep in deeper than usual. A hiss involuntarily escaped Yaz’s lips as she limped into and across the darkened space. Her muscles cramped up at the drop in temperature. She thought of calling for Caliban, who stood, inactive, at his charging station, to fetch her something for warmth, but decided against it. It was best not to leave any log of her presence.
The Doctor, evidently, had retired to his quarters this night, and she couldn’t parse whether she was grateful or disappointed with that fact. She’d heard it was entirely by his will that she was pulled from the MESA facility, that she’d been given any opportunity at all. He’d put his trust in her. Was he wrong? Right? Her chest felt tight.
A sharp ache pulsed through her leg, and, biting back a groan, she yanked one of the lab’s coolers open. It took a moment, shuffling through the various sample vials and mystery chemicals, before she fished out an ice pack, and sank down to the floor with a whine.
One of the stipulations of her involvement with the Vanguard was that she could not be armed or otherwise geared outside of her regulated training sessions and missions. She understood why. The Vanguard couldn’t take any chances. But still, she wished she’d been given something, anything, so she had a chance against those that meant her harm.
It was abundantly clear, from the very first moment she’d stepped onto the site a couple of weeks ago, that the number of people who weren’t hostile to the presence of a former union soldier was low, and some had no hesitancy in voicing this hostility. Never around Chase or Doctor Weller, of course, but regardless, it was loud and clear.
It started in the murmurs and glances. It wasn’t long before it had transformed into curses and even the occasional thrown object.
“Union scum!”
“Murderer!”
They weren’t wrong. None of them were. She was all those things, and if her retribution came in the form of bearing that knowledge while scrubbing half-rehydrated mashed potato out of her hair then, so be it.
But tonight, they’d followed her back to her quarters. They’d jeered as they attacked, kicking and spitting. Even then, she did her best not to react. She could handle it. She had to. What other option did she have.
She gingerly rolled up the right leg of her pants, a couple nasty bruises already forming where she’d been kicked. Two red splotches painted over her skin, one on her shin, and another just above her knee. Thankfully, it didn’t feel like anything was broken, but she’d definitely be purple and tender for a bit. At least she could hide those pretty easily. The same couldn’t be said about her eye.
She couldn’t see herself, but she knew, probably a bit too well, what a black eye felt like, and this would definitely be developing into one very soon, and with it would come questions, attention. Things she did not want, that she did not deserve. So she pressed the cold, biting ice pack against the throbbing pain, and curled in tighter around herself.
A shiver ran through her. Why’d it have to be so cold in here?
Lifting her head with a groan, she let her eyes dart around the space again, searching in vain for anything warm she’d missed the first time. Instead, she found herself drawn to a glow emanating from the other side of the lab.
Julian Chase, at least what remained of him, floated, suspended in his tank. He’d evidently fallen asleep sometime earlier, a rarity, she’d heard, and thankfully she hadn’t woken him with her shuffling.
He’d broken into a smile upon their introduction, spent downtime by her side, filled the silence she brought with horrible quips. His friendly demeanour felt like a shock, continuing to reverberate through her bones even now. Even if she knew nothing about the Vanguard pilot prior to her arrival, it wasn’t long before she’d learned of his heroism, his sacrifice. He had every reason to be wary of her, not the reverse. Yet it seemed the opposite was true.
Julian Chase was a hero. Is. Is a hero.
She, was most certainly not. Not by any definition.
After a moment longer, shivering in the dark, she pulled herself to her knees. At least in the light, she could inspect the bruising a little better. Leaning on her uninjured side to steady herself, and with the slimy remains of the ice pack clutched close, she slid, slowly, across the lab floor towards Chase’s tank, praying with every inch she covered that he wouldn’t wake. She must’ve looked horribly pathetic, small, weak, dragging herself across the room.
Chase looked, calm, but not peaceful, floating in place, bubbles lazily drifting through the fluid of his tank. Her stomach twisted in knots, watching him. She considered, for a split second, waking him, but she drowned that thought as quickly as it arose.
He was warm. Always warm. In his demeanour, his treatment of her, and She wanted, more than anything, to believe that it was true. That she wouldn’t turn the corner one day to find that warmth ripped away from his gaze. That he would one day stare at her with the same coldness that every other Vanguard soldier regarded her with. Maybe it was better not to reach for that warmth at all, than to have it ripped away.
Heat had spread beneath her palm before she’d recognised that she had moved. A sigh escaped her lips, her hand pressed to the glass. The difference in temperature felt heavenly in the chill of the lab, its tendrils fending off the shivers and aches from her body as it spread. She hardly registered it as the fatigue washed over her, and she found herself leaning into it. Maybe a little rest here, just quickly, wouldn’t be that bad. I’ll go back to my room a bit later. A sense of twisted comfort settled in her chest as she took one last glance up at Chase. She couldn’t place where it had originated from, nor why it was here, but nevertheless, she gave in, and let it lull her to rest.
It had all gone so wrong, so quickly, and it was playing over and over again in Chase’s head as he stared at the blank, clinical, off-white wall of one of RTASA’s conference rooms. The Anvil had fallen. They’d watched, helplessly, as everything and everyone they’d spent the last few months surrounded by went up in a cloud of biotechnological smoke. They’d been running on fumes, fumes of fumes for the last couple of days, running, hiding, escaping from that thing as it stalked them relentlessly. It had been him. Some twisted, tortured version of him, that was turned against everything he stood for.
Perhaps it was only by some cruel fate that the very people he couldn’t face anymore were the very people who put him here. The very people who’s horrified expressions kept flickering in and out of his memory. Dr. Weller. Colonel Marin. Miranda.
He shook his head vigorously. Not now. He couldn’t think of them, couldn’t let himself spiral. Not when his team needed him. Not when spiralling meant that he might be one step closer to becoming him.
With a flick, he brought up all the progress panels he’d minimised earlier, checking on all the prints and job queues that Cammie had set before letting herself be dragged off to bed. She’d given him explicit instructions not to look at the schematics for the parts, so Chase found himself simply checking that all the processes seemed to be running without errors, and queueing up the next few in the list, cross-referencing Cammie’s to-print list with her file stash. A more confusing task than he’d like to admit, considering most of the models seemed to be named with abbreviations he wasn’t familiar with. At least, he assumed they were abbreviations. He wouldn’t put it past the Scot to ignore naming conventions and label vital files with keysmashes.
It had been a couple hours since the rest of the team had supposedly retired for the night. He certainly hoped, with none of them having had much rest recently, that they’d all actually gone to rest, and weren't busying themselves with other matters. Especially Yaz. Being one of only two qualified pilots on the team, and the only one with enough limbs left to physically take the wheel, she'd dutifully spent nearly the entire time they’d been on the run sat at the helm of the cockpit. The few fleeting moments she’d had to rest, she’d spent them curled up on the floor next to the controls while he’d watched the autopilot for any discrepancies.
Chase took a quick glance at their digital statuses, and was somewhat reassured to see them all offline. Although, it was probably best to go check on them physically. He knew that Cammie, at least, would be proficient enough to hide her digital signatures if needed, even through RTASA’s stringent system protocol, which demanded transparency of activity from all personnel on base. If asked, she’d probably help mask the others’ too.
Doctor Jha had been gracious enough to place them in two empty personnel rooms in a less-trafficked wing of the base, and it had reassured Chase, brought him a sense of comfort even, to know that for the first time in the better part of a year, the team would not be forced to cram themselves into a singular claustrophobic space. However, upon phasing into what was supposed to be Cammie and Yaz’s room, he instead, found it empty. One of the beds left untouched, and the other, having been rustled about, was missing its pillow and blanket. Something tight coiled in his chest.
A frenetic sense of alarm rushed through him, and, almost instinctively, he flickered into the adjacent room. There were three distinct shapes huddled together on one of the beds, pressed up against the back wall of the room. He could just make out Cammie’s smaller shape in the dark, clutching the missing pillow and sandwiched securely between the two other pilots; Kazu, with his back firmly planted to the wall, an arm draped securely over the others, and Valentina, who was curled around the Scot with their back to the door, body obscured by their cloak and hood. He glided ever so slightly closer, pixels chiming softly with his movement, willing the last of the anxiety away as he watched their chests rise and fall.
They’re here. They’re safe.
He deflated, sighing in relief, only to then glance back up and jump out of his digital skin as his gaze met glowing violet.
“Va-”
“Shhh!” He could just make out their stern expression in the dim light, the dull glow of their implanted lenses giving their cool grey eyes an otherworldly, piercing purple tint. “Would it kill you to knock?”
“Sorry!” He whispered back, holding his hands up in surrender. “Just came to check in.” They’d turned towards him ever so slightly, and he’d caught a glint of metal; one of their throwing knives, clutched tightly under their cloak. They had always been a light sleeper, but especially now, he couldn’t blame them for opting to keep their weapons on hand.
An acrid taste bubbled up his throat.
Valentina looked as if they were about to throw another snappy retort his way when a small, pained noise eeked out of a still-asleep Cammie, and they instead, turned their attention to the girl, running a hand through her hair in soothing motions.
“We’re okay.”
Chase nodded. He felt like throwing up, even if there was no possible way he could.
He found himself battling another wave of swelling heaviness that came with the realisation that the monster that had been haunting Cammie’s dreams, that had driven her to near-psychosis, had been him.
He shoved that thought down. Not right now.
“Yaz?” The other bed in the room was empty still, and he’d realised that there had been no sign that the Persian pilot had ever retired to rest at all, at least not in these rooms.
Valentina shook their head, a couple strands of dark hair falling across their face.
“Haven’t seen her since dinner.”
“Alright, rest up.” He didn’t wait for a response, phasing his avatar back into the hallway, where the fluorescent lights made him feel like even more of a lab rat than he already was.
Where would she have gone?
Knowing that the rest of the team were safe and sound reassured him somewhat. At least that meant Yaz was probably also safe and sound somewhere, but it seemed that his nerves refused to settle before he figured out where she’d hidden herself away.
It took a couple moments for the idea to reach him, but not a second more to phase into the hangar where their holons were stowed. There, curled up in just the right position, so that he’d nearly missed her, was Yaz, asleep against Chaser’s battered heel, swaddled in the missing blanket. She’d specifically taken Cammie’s blanket.
The tightness in Chase’s chest gripped tighter.
Yaz had a habit, one she’d developed all those years ago when she’d first joined the program, when the two of them were the program. He would wake from restless half-sleeps to find her passed out at the foot of his tank. The first couple instances had scared him. He’d flagged for Weller on multiple occasions, at first worried that she’d suffered some kind of medical emergency, and then, after drawing the lines between her inexplicable bruising and avoidance of certain personnel, to let him know it happened again. It broke something in him, to know that his teammate was afraid to even retire to her own space alone, and it hurt more knowing there wasn’t much he could do. He was a ghost. A science project. A code branch. He’d failed to protect her then, and he felt like he was failing her again now.
And yet, Yasamin Madrani, who all those years ago, wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, who kept her head down and herself closed off, that Yasamin Madrani had left the cockpit midair, and crept into the holding compartment of their hornbill to sit with him while he spiralled. She’d reached out, not pulled back, at the revelation that he was the horror pursuing them. She’d pushed through exhaustion, sleep deprivation, distrust, death and destruction to stand with him as their world had crumbled around them, refusing to show any sign of weakness. At least, none where others could see them.
Maybe that was her strength, or maybe her curse.
Because here she was, right back to how she’d been during those first few weeks, curled up on concrete, at the foot of someone who could not physically reach back out to her. The thought had brought with it a flood of emotions that rendered him breathless.
Pride in how she kept things together, kept it all moving, despite everything.
Ache in the way her eyes were now puffy and red, face still damp.
A guilt-ridden comfort which came with the knowledge that she’d let herself crash and burn in some way instead of bottling it up, but, still after all this time, alone, in the pseudo-company of his body, but not his companionship.
He supposed it wasn’t any more or less real than calling out to a ghost, and probably far less horrifying, given the circumstances now.
Slowly, he crouched down. The soft glissando of pixels shifting accompanying him as he reached out, and gently ran the back of his hand across her cheek, as if he could wipe away the tears there. She stirred slightly under the touch, murmuring, but didn’t wake.
He felt it reverberate through his code.
It had been a little over a year since the battle of Chicago, since he’d left his physical body permanently, and Chase had become very accustomed to the intricacies of the mindframe’s signals. How every line of code run, every sub-program executed, had its own sensations and frequency. So he knew, even without checking, that one of his teammates had just slipped into the system.
“Mind explaining what you’re doing, uploading at 2am in the morning?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Yaz called back, her voice tinged with mirth, “thought you might like the company.”
“Well, I can’t say it’s not welcome,” he minimised his paperwork to meet her gaze, “I just wasn’t expecting you of all people.”
“Who were you expecting?” She gave him a smirk, orienting herself as she floated down to his eye level. “Cammie with some late night patches?”
“Was hoping it was her, actually. Would've been far less awkward than Val and Kazu.” She rolled her eyes at that, still smiling.
“Shookhi nakon, are they still doing that?”
“I wish they weren’t!” She laughed at that, the sound echoing slightly through the vast virtual expanse, the very strings that comprised it humming momentarily.
It struck him, in this moment, how peaceful the mindscape felt. How the space, usually either bursting with anxious energy, or on the other end of the spectrum, hollow with isolation, for once, felt calm. Dr Weller had said that Gen:Lock, before it was turned into a weapon, was meant for communication, understanding, for connection. He supposed this is what it was built for all along.
“Yaz?”
“Hmm?”
Five years. Five years, of which he’d spent the majority of the first three fighting for his life, then the next one fighting for the lives of those he loved. And now, the union was losing territory fast. The number of rescue and infrastructure related missions seemed to swell more and more each week, while the number of combat deployments dropped. It was working. All of it was slowly coming to a head, but it left them with more time, more energy, more headspace to process, and Chase wasn’t sure if it was a fully welcome change. He’d been running at a hundred and ten percent for so long, now that he had the opportunity to slow down and let it all catch up to him, he didn’t have the slightest clue what to do when it all did.
And now, as he looked at Yaz, her expression melting slowly from mirth to concern, the mess of emotions that he’d kept shoved down to the soles of his boots swelled through him so strongly, he was almost certain he would’ve broken down into tears, if that were still a possibility.
“Chase?”
He felt her grab him gently, the bounds of her consciousness brushing up against his, pulling forth each individual emotions from within the tangled, suffocating mess. She was good at doing that. He’d gotten better too, in the last year especially. He supposed it would be hard not to, after all this time, and all the times they’d blurred the lines between ‘her’ and ‘him.’ He’d find himself reaching for his neck and biting his lip in the same ways she did. It brought him comfort knowing how and when he could comfort her, how he still could, even without a physical body. He could finally be there for her the way she’d tried to be there for him- how she was there for him, all this time. It wasn’t perfect. There were still things unsaid between them, he knew, but they’d get around to those eventually if they needed.
He took a moment to gather his rambling thoughts, and pull the errant code strings of his feelings back into order.
“I’m just…glad you’re here,” He settled on.
Yaz just smiled again, and gently, opened a request, just a shallow one. It still wasn’t often he took these, especially out of combat, but tonight, perhaps, he’d let himself be held in the ways that he still could be held.
He took it, and the warmth flooded through him.
So am I Chase, So am I.