by TJ Ryan
He almost looked relieved. “A team of two? Really?”
It did sound ridiculous when he put it like that. “I was only here for a few days before I crash landed on Overwatch. I don’t know that many people.”
“You mean, you were only here for a few days before you destroyed your own defense pod.”
“Well, to be fair,” she pointed out, “my defense pod’s AI program was trying to sexually assault me.”
“Mmhmm,” he said, in a way that left her wondering if he believed her or not. “Fine. Who’s this second suit for?”
Her answer left Lieutenant Danvers speechless.
“Tyrese,” she said, watching with pleasure as his face turned a lovely shade of purple.
CHAPTER THREE
Bagging hell, Tara thought to herself. What did she get herself into?
Lieutenant Danvers brought them to another part of the complex after hearing her demands for the trip down to the Earth. She still couldn’t believe the words, even when she said them over and over in her own mind. Down to Earth. Down to the surface. That was insanity. It was suicide.
It was her only option.
The hallways they walked through now had been cleared of personnel, except for the security soldiers stationed at regular intervals, their reflective helmet screens in place over their faces. Even though she couldn’t see their eyes, Tara had the feeling that each of the men standing there in their black uniforms were watching her intently.
It was almost a relief when Danvers brought them into an anteroom made of the same white composite material as the rest of the complex, with padded benches on both sides of the small room. This was where he told her to wait while he went through the next door to the Overwatch medical section.
When Tara had told Danvers that she would only go down to the surface if Tyrese came with her, there had been another long silence. She’d been waiting for some confirmation that the other Defense Engineer was even still alive. Since landing here at Overwatch she hadn’t seen him once. Hadn’t heard from him once. He’d been injured in the battle that had brought them here, the one they got involved in after the probe pulled up that damned power cell. Why wouldn’t Danvers just tell her if he was alive or not? Why make her go through all of this silent waiting to find out?
She remembered when she had finally met Tyrese in person. At first, the two of them had only been voices across the comms. Defense Engineers weren’t supposed to meet each other. They spent their entire time stationed around Earth in their Pods, living their separate lives while they talked to each other every day and acted like friends and formed relationships that never amounted to more than a few words and a lot of lonely nights trying to work out some pent up desires.
He was an amazingly beautiful man, with curly dark hair and deep brown skin, and those amazing muscles in his arms and chest that flexed with every move of his hands. The fact that he had piloted his Pod from a wheelchair didn’t slow him down at all. His legs were atrophied and useless, but he didn’t let it stop him. Tara had never known anyone like him. There had been this immediate attraction that she felt for him. Not that they had any time to act on it.
Tara pushed up from her seat and began pacing. Six steps to the other side, six steps back. She was going crazy. As scared as she was about going down to the surface of homeworld, she was more scared about what might have happened to Tyrese. He’d been her only friend here. If he was dead…
She looked over to the door that Danvers had gone through half an hour or more ago. If Tyrese Gypsum was dead, that would almost have to mean that Tyrese was killed here, by the same people who were meant to be protecting her while on her trip to Earth. She was thinking very dark thoughts right now, about conspiracies and a military more concerned with power than people’s lives. Tyrese’s body had been broken, and imperfect, and if Overwatch saw him as more of a drain on their resources than a valuable person they might have killed him rather than fix up his injuries…
On her tenth circuit from one wall to the other the door to the medical section opened again and Lieutenant Danvers stepped out with a scowl on his face. “Just so you know,” he said, “I already regret this.”
“You’re not the only one, sir,” she muttered.
Her offhand comment earned her a smirk from him, and something like respect in his eyes. “You have spirit, Engineer Royce. Most people in your position would have gone back to the colonies with their… tails between their legs,” he told her, his eyes drifting over the loose pleats of her jumpsuit again, making her adjust it on her shoulders self-consciously. “You, on the other hand, have pushed onward even though you know the risks are greater than the rewards.”
“Er, thank you,” she said, her voice wavering under his intense stare.
“It wasn’t exactly a compliment,” he told her. “If you don’t have the sense that God gave a squitch then you’re either the perfect person to send on a suicide mission, or else you’re very, very dangerous.”
Taking steps closer to her, bridging the short distance that had been so comforting a moment ago, he caught and held Tara’s gaze. “Which are you?”
Her whole body tensed, much like a squitch. Those little worm things that lived in the rocky soil of the planet Gada were spineless and eyeless and seemed like easy prey until you knew they were deadly poisonous to anything that ate them. The other native species of Gada knew to avoid them. When humanity began multiplying again across the stars and found the squitch, dozens of people had died before the human race learned their lesson.
So, Lieutenant Danvers was asking her. Which was she? Was she poison, or was she someone who would help him promote his career?
She had to wonder if maybe both amounted to the same thing.
After a long moment while she was still debating the issue in her own mind Danvers huffed out a breath and gestured with his head for her to follow him. “I suppose,” he said, “we’ll find out soon enough.”
The door into the medical section was accessed by hand scanner just like every sensitive section of Overwatch. Tara knew her hand was not keyed for access to anything more than the bathroom or maybe the broom closet. If she ever tried to escape, she wouldn’t get very far.
Of course, that was the whole point.
When the door opened, he led her inside into a room that seemed incredibly spacious after being locked up in that prison cell of hers for all this time. It was a complete medical ward, with two operating booths set up over to their left, and a well-lit area of glass cabinets a couple dozen feet to the right where vials and bottles of clear liquid medicine were stored in various colors. That left a padded section in the middle of the spacious room, underneath a ceiling where robotic arms dangled, sharp with needles and pincers and claws and other parts that Tara could not identify.
“Don’t worry,” Danvers told her sarcastically. “They only operate on the sick and injured. You’re neither.”
The way her stomach was trying to twist around on itself, Tara wasn’t so sure that she wasn’t going to be sick, actually. Where was Tyrese?
At the far side of the room, double doors slid aside on their tracks. The noise was only a soft whoosh but it made Tara jump all the same. She was wound so tightly that even that small noise set her on edge.
Two men in blue scrubs, from their booties to their paper-thin face masks, stepped through the doors as if on cue. They each took up a position on their side of the doors. Tara recognized the one on the left, a blonde with red splotches across his left temple. He was one of the med techs that had examined her for injury or mental illness when she first got to Overwatch. The mental illness interview had chaffed her ego, but considering that she had just destroyed her own Defense Pod, she understood why they felt the need.
It didn’t mean that she had to enjoy being “skin scanned” by those cold med tech hands. Necessary… maybe, but a girl liked to think of certain parts of her body as private. That guy didn’t seem to feel the same way. His eyes found hers, and he winked.
Instead of feeling embarrassed Tara wanted to laugh. You’d think these guys up here in Overwatch had never seen a girl before.
Clump. Clump.
The sound was mechanical and rhythmic, coming from the next room, through those sliding doors. The backlighting in there were so bright that Tara had to squint to see the dark shape approaching her. It was man-shaped, and taller than she was, and somehow she knew that it was coming for her…
Then the swaggering shape stepped out of the harsh glare of the lights and came into focus and her jaw dropped. Of all the things she thought she might see today, this one hadn’t even crossed her mind.
“Tyrese?” She reached out for him and he caught the hand she offered. She had to look up to look into his eyes.
“Quite a change from the wheelchair,” he said to her. “Isn’t it?”
That was an understatement. She had just gotten used to him being who he was - a man in a wheelchair unable to use his legs - and knowing that for him, it didn’t matter. He was more of a man confined to that wheelchair than most men were on their two feet. He was a better man than Lieutenant Danvers over there. More of a man half her academy instructors who thought she could do everything a man could do except for the really hard stuff because let’s face it, they said, men will always be stronger than women.
She’d shown them what strength looked like, and Tyrese had shown her in kind. In her monumentally short career so far as a Defense Engineer, she hadn’t met anyone she would trust as much as she trusted Tyrese.
In the time that she had been confined here on Overwatch, the med techs had obviously been busy with Tyrese. His waist was ringed by a thick plastic belt with heavy gauge wires trailing out from several protruding boxes. The wires led to the molded pieces, like ancient armor plates, that sheathed his thighs and knees and lower legs. Boots of the same black and gray plastic-ceramic material thumped against the floor with each step.
Exotech. Basically an electronic exoskeleton for people who had lost the use of their legs or arms. Cheaper than growing a cloned limb. Easier to control than complete bionic replacements. She’d learned about this technology at the Academy. The sectional parts above and below the knee would have been wired directly into his legs nerves. Tyrese’s own thoughts would control them as if they were his real legs by way of the control halo that he was wearing snug around his forehead.
In effect, they would be. For the rest of his life.
“You can walk again,” she said in amazement, barely keeping herself from stroking the hard plates of the exotech. In between the plates was a black mesh that covered his naked skin, and snugged tight around his groin, and Tara had to bite her lip to keep from commenting when her gaze got that far.
He smiled at her, his dark skin a few shades lighter than the black of his new legs or his long-sleeved shirt. “I haven’t walked for two years. Not since the accident. Now… I don’t want to stop. I’m faster than ever before. I’m stronger. I don’t remember it being this much fun just to get up off my ass.”
She laughed with him and for a moment, the universe was set to rights again.
Then the universe came crashing down on her again. A small gray light appeared on the halo, and a voice followed. “Pulse and respirations are at optimal, Tyrese.”
Tara extricated her hand from his. She remembered that voice. Tyrese’s AI program from his Defense Pod.
“Thank you, Claire,” he said, his eyes trying to look up at the halo and the embedded electronics. “You don’t have to keep monitoring me. I’m fine.”
“I worry about you,” Claire told him.
“How sweet.”
Tyrese’s lip twisted when he said it, finding humor in the situation that Tara was missing. She stepped back from him. Would she ever feel comfortable in the presence of an AI program again? They were such a part of modern life, but after what her own artificial intel program had done to her she couldn’t stand to be anywhere near one.
But Claire was confined to Tyrese’s new hardware. She couldn’t do anything to hurt Tara from in there.
Knowing it wasn’t helping her feel any safer though.
If Tyrese noticed how awkward the moment had gotten he didn’t say anything. Turning his smile back on Tara he took a few steps sideways, testing out his legs’ mobility. “Glad to see they finally let you out of that hole they were keeping you in, Tara. Must be a special occasion.”
“Kind of,” she told him, with a sidelong glance at Lieutenant Danvers.
“Well, it ain’t my birthday,” Tyrese told her. “Is it yours?”
“If it was,” she said, “this would be the worst birthday ever.” Sure, she was excited to see her homeplanet. Who wouldn’t be after all these years? But the knowledge that it was essentially a suicide mission made it hard to stay excited. The tiny seed in her pocket was the only thing keeping her from screaming. If, and it was a very strong if, there were more where it came from, perhaps the Earth wasn’t as toxic as they thought it to me. Maybe, just maybe, she would survive this.
He looked up, standing still for the first time since he’d come through that door. “Tara? What’s going on?”
Danvers cleared his throat, drawing their attention to him. “You’re a nice piece of work Tyrese. You look good in your new legs. You two,” he said to the med techs, “have done your job. Now. Go away.”
They scurried back through their sliding doors like mice escaping a rising tide. The doors closed again, leaving Tara alone with Tyrese and Lieutenant Danvers. Now it was her turn to shift her feet back and forth. She was about to drag Tyrese into something dangerous, deadly, and insane.
“Your girlfriend here volunteered you for a mission, Engineer Gypsum.”
“She’s uh…” Tyrese looked at Tara, and then purposefully closed his mouth.
Tara finished the sentence for him. “I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Whatever,” Danvers said. “She’s pulled you into her problems so I’d like to think she’s getting something out of it.”
“You’re out of line,” Tyrese growled.
Danvers turned to meet his gaze, lifting one eyebrow.
“Sir,” Tyrese hastily added.
“That’s right. I’m your superior. Now be quiet, and listen to what I’m going to tell you.”
Tyrese didn’t argue.
“We’re going down to the surface,” Danvers informed him. “And by we, I mean you and Tara. She can fill you in on the finer details, but that’s the long and the short of it.”
Underneath the halo control ring, Tyrese’s eyes went wide. “You’re insane. Sir.”
“The situation is… complicated,” the Lieutenant offered. “As I said, you can get the details from Tara.”
She folded her hands together to keep them from shaking. Maybe she didn’t have the right to force Tyrese to come along with her, but like she’d just been thinking there was no one else in this life that she could trust to do this with her. If it was selfish, then so be it. She needed him to be with her. Maybe… in more ways than one.
So all she needed to do now was find some way to make it up to him—
“Fine with me,” Tyrese said.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He’d just been told that Danvers was forcing him to go down to the dead surface of a broken world, with her, and all he had to say was let’s go. New body aside, he really was the man she thought he was.
“You understand what he said, right?” She needed to hear him say it. She needed to know that when it came right down to it he knew what he was getting himself into.
“I know what he said,” he told her, folding his arms. “We’re going down to Earth. We’re going to visit the dead planet we’ve sworn to protect.” Tara noticed a small grin beginning to form on his lips.
“It might be suicide,” Tara whispered. Her mind flashed from her seed to the landscapes on Danvers’ walls to the glimpse of green she saw through the atmosphere from her pod weeks ago. With any luck, it won’t be
.
Self-consciously, she put her hand down to the side pocket with the little container in it. She had barely had a chance to tell him the truth about what she had found in the probe last time they were together, as they were separated the moment they landed at Overwatch. She wanted to show him, but she knew that she really couldn’t do that with Danvers’ boss, General Ashton, standing right there. Everyone else was thinking of the fission fuel cell and what it would mean to get that working again. Tara knew the truth though. The Earth wasn’t quite as dead as everyone thought it was. At least, she hoped.
And now she and Tyrese were going there for themselves. Tyrese agreed to go with her, even without the knowledge of the seed or her hope for life on the planet. He had just agreed to a suicide mission with her. She didn’t quite know what to feel just then.
“Good,” Danvers said to them. “Then that’s settled. The two of you will begin prepping for the journey immediately. There’s an experimental drop ship that we’ve kept here at Overwatch, oh, just about since we started operations here. That will be your way down. I’ll give you a tour right after we meet the other two members of your team.”
“Wait, what?” Tara asked at the same time that Tyrese stuttered an objection.
“We don’t need anyone else,” he said. His eyes flicked to Tara quickly, and she knew what he was thinking. If there were secrets down there that Overwatch shouldn’t get their hands on, the only two people that could be trusted to keep those out of the hands of men like Lieutenant Danvers were themselves.
God, she loved how smart that man was. She didn’t even have to tell him what was on her mind, yet he already seemed to know. Two peas, one pod. Or however that old expression was supposed to go.
“Not a discussion,” Danvers reminded them. “You can’t pilot the drop ship safely with only two people. That takes a minimum of three, and a mission like this will have a much greater chance of succeeding if there’s four of you to watch each other’s backs. The two additional personnel are military.”
