Call Me CT

[liesdontfindyou]

The debriefing that followed her latest mistake in the field was nothing but a glorified dressing down, battering words masked under the guise of military discipline that would have stung, if Connie could bring herself to care. The blue light of the leaderboard cast the Director in a threatening silhouette, his shoulders squared, and his head tilted up, as if to look down at her from as high as a point as possible.

Connie tilted her own back to match.

“I expect better of an agent of Alpha Squad, Agent Connecticut,” he said, a hard stare hidden behind his impenetrable lenses. The admonishment was coming to its close. “Are you not an infiltration specialist? Is this not your area of expertise?”

“It is, sir,” she said, standing tall.

“Then how is it, agent, that you acted with such ineptitude?” Before she could open her mouth to answer, he snapped, “Such mistakes will not be tolerated. Consider your new rank a warning, Connecticut. A place amongst Alpha Squad is as easily revoked as it is granted.”

Swallowing the retort forming in the back of her throat, she nodded. “Understood, sir.”

His mouth pressed into that thin, tight line. “Dismissed.”

Connie was out of the door before the others even dropped out of attention.

The locker room had too many people in it, agents from the lower squads filtering in and out as sessions ended and begun. Connie blew past waves and a call of her name to find the quiet of the adjoining room, the one that looked out onto the hallway with the giant, six position leaderboard that hung over agents just trying to remove their gear.

No escape. The leaderboard was always there, everywhere you turned.

Wrenching off her helmet, she dropped onto the bench with her head in her hands.

Out of the Director’s sight, whatever front of bravado she’d put on crumbled.

The numbers didn’t matter, anymore. Whatever remaining weight she placed on her rank had died with the realisation that the Triplets had died for theirs. Her place in Alpha, however? That meant everything. The threat had hit closer to home than she was proud of, her heart racing a mile a minute in her chest and her nerves alight with something between fear and rage.

She couldn’t make mistakes like that. No matter what was happening here, if she was going to do anything (if, if) then she had to stay where she was.

She had to stay where she was.

Fingernails dug into her scalp. Deep breaths, Connie. Deep breaths.

She’d almost averted the borderline panic attack when the sound of armoured boots against the metal floor crashed through the silence.

“It wasn’t your fault, Connie,” Wash said, well-meaning and harmless and yet utterly, utterly infuriating.

“Easy for you to say,” she said. He was sitting pretty at number six, the middle of the pack, where he always was. “You didn’t drop the ball.” And he never rocked the boat.

“The ball got dropped. We were all there, it’s everyone’s responsibility.”

Connie tasted iron. “Dammit, why are you doing that?”

“What am I doing?” Wash said, and she could just imagine the stupid little raise of his hands in innocent confusion, even without looking at him.

“Making excuses for me. I’m not making excuses for myself. Why are you?”

“I’m trying to make you feel better.”

“Yeah? Great,” she bit, twisting to look back at him over her shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you go make Carolina feel better? Go pat Maine on the head? See how that works out for you.”

“We all make mistakes—”

“No! We don’t. That’s the point!” Suddenly on her feet and facing him, features twisted with rage, she snatched up her helmet with a horrible scraping noise that made them both flinch. “We don’t all make mistakes! Some of us very specifically make mistakes and others don’t seem to make any mistakes at all.”

How many ‘mistakes’ had the Triplets made, before their lives were deemed unimportant? How many had South made, before it was decided she was the twin who had to follow the other’s lead? How many other agents had the Project left to die or left to stagnate, because the Director was no longer satisfied with what they had to offer him?

“Connie, c’mon—” Wash said, taking a step towards her.

Connie turned away.

“That’s why they’re doing all this! These missions, the rankings! They’re drawing a line between us, Wash, and you’re either on one side of that line, or you’re on the other,” she said, bracing her hands against the wall, using it to support her weight as she slumped. “And it’s getting pretty goddamn clear which side I’m on.”

Pain radiated through her shoulder, a harmless but intruding hand grasping the muscle. “No one thinks like that,” Wash said. “We’re a team.”

Gritting her teeth, Connie shook the hand loose. “I’m not talking about you guys. I mean them,” she jerked her head towards the leaderboard. “Him.”

“The Director?” Wash asked, with innocent disbelief. “He’s given us everything. He’s helping us.”

It was all Connie could do not to laugh in his face.

She knew what he meant; she knew where the idea came from. None of them would be here without the Director, every agent on the ship would be in prison or worse if not for the Project. That was the problem. Loyalty was something the Director thought he could buy, and the worst thing was it had worked.

Washington, a man who had knocked a CO unconscious for putting soldiers’ lives on the line, now did little more than humour her questions. Even she’d been complacent, letting false promises of transparency and a way out of prison time become blinders to sense.

The blinders were off, now.

“Helping us?” she said. “Wake up, wake the fuck up. He’s filtering us. This is a selection process, Wash. I don’t know for what, but— if you’re not at the top of that board you’re not worth anything to him.”

“You’re just overreacting,” Wash said and this time, it was all she could do not to grab him, to shake him and make him listen, for once, really listen. “You’ve always been hard on yourself, Connie.”

“Not as hard as they are.” The sharp thunk of metal on metal filled the room as she slammed her helmet into his arms, his hands instinctively flying up to catch it. “Not nearly as hard as they’re going to be.”

A beat of heavy silence fell over the small room. Washington had nothing left to say, staring after her from behind the reflective visor as she turned her back on him, hiding the way her face fell.

“And don’t call me Connie,” she said, the words falling from her lips on a rage-filled whim. “Makes me sound like a fucking kid. Call me CT.”

The few steps it took to reach the hallway felt like a mile.

Wash was one of her best friends. She just wanted him, needed him, to understand. He questioned things, just like she did—he humoured her as a mask for his own concerns, she’d seen it—but the wave of panic was once again rapidly approaching and this conversation had to end, before she said something worse. Something else she’d regret.

“Oh and, that line that I talked about? You better hurry up and figure out what side you’re on, Agent Washington,” she said, swallowing the venom she wanted to spit. “Before they figure it out for you.”

She could feel his gaze burning a hole in her spine as she left.