Patching Up

“You’re a little banged up, but nothing to take you out of the field,” the doctor said to David Greene.

He was seated in a little clinic room in Square One Medical Center, getting his injuries from his encounter with the Anarakians checked. It had been a while, but that wasn’t uncommon. If minor injuries could be handled within a timeline, Time Peace’s Kappas preferred it that way. It helped manage the flow of patients and free up their resources. Still, eventually they’d have to evaluate their agents. David’s order to bring Kennedy to see the White Rabbit had provided a perfect opportunity to do just that.

And there was one other reason why David was here.

“To be young,” Commander Fia Florentine muttered wistfully. Time Peace’s second-in-command had accompanied the Hawk to Square One, though not to assist his mission.

“That’s why you keep me around, no?” David asked. His tone was uncharacteristically brittle. “Because I can bounce back so easily? What is the threshold of injury before we’d be put on restricted duty these days?”

“Are you requesting leave?” Commander Florentine replied coldly.

“No, I’m not,” David bit out. “Not that you’d grant it. I’m just saying—”

“Even on Iterant Point, the past is the past,” she said, softening her tone.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” David whispered.

“I’m not the Hawk.”

“No, you just signed off on his recruiting a fifteen-year-old boy.”

“Does that cause you stress?” Fia suddenly asked.

“Does it?” David snapped. “Does being pumped full of promises of false heroism only to be thrown to the jaws of a war machine cause me stress? You tell me!”

“Then I’ll call a Psi and have you evaluated for medical leave,” Fia said calmly, turning to the doctor.

“No, that’s not what I meant!” David protested even as she gave the doctor orders to summon an expert.

Turning back to him as the Kappa left, she reassured him, “There are other Delta teams on Aechyr.”

“With their hands full,” David reminded her. His recent mission had proved this. “You need me.”

“Funny,” she smiled. “That was the same rationale that led to your recruitment drive.”

David flinched. “Is that what this is?” he realized. “Regret? Atonement?”

“David,” the commander said as earnestly as her practiced steel would allow, “You know better than most that Time Peace has bent its rules on several occasions. It always seems necessary, but it always comes at a cost. I’m sorry you had to bear that cost.”

David made himself wait a couple of seconds. He took deep breaths to make his muscles relax. “Apology accepted,” he lied easily.

Commander Florentine examined him carefully, her own face masked. She nodded slowly, though didn’t relax entirely. “Then let’s talk about the situation on Aechyr.”

David noted that she hadn’t called off the Psi evaluation. He complied, waiting for a tell.

“Anarakia’s looking for something,” he said. “I don’t suppose Iterant Point’s past would be helpful here?”

“No reports from the White Rabbit,” Fia confirmed. “Our intel has always been spotty on Aechyr.”

“Always swarming with Anarakians,” David noted. “Like it is now.”

Commander Florentine caught the hint in David’s voice. “It’s never had a split,” she reminded him. “As usual, the Anarakians are their own worst enemy.”

“Is that from the last White Rabbit report?”

“That information—”

“I’m Level 3, Commander.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s what happened.”

“So Sainne’s here, plus at least one other Anarak’s agents,” David summarized.

Fia Florentine pursed her lips. “There’s a maxim in Temporal Mechanics,” she said. “It goes, ‘meet the new meta-timeline, same as the old meta-timeline. Meet the new Anarakia, a different beast entirely.’”

“Right. I suppose that setup with the time gate in the forest hasn’t paid off,” David guessed.

The commander frowned. “I don’t know—”

“Anarakia found it last time, didn’t they, commander?” he continued. “We were hoping to catch them in an ambush, right? But they didn’t actually repeat themselves.”

“No they didn’t,” Fia admitted. “We’re opening it up to travel—it’s too inconvenient otherwise. But there’s a small chance Anarakia could stumble into it unawares.”

“And while you wait for something that might not happen, you’ve got more units tied up,” David pressed.

“Thetas,” Fia reminded him. Before she could go on, the intercom beeped once. David glanced towards it, preparing to make his move. But before he could, Fia surprised him. She pressed the button and said, “Hold a moment.”

Commander Florentine looked over the young Delta one more time. “David,” she began, “to be frank, I would move to dissolve Dark Eye and promote you back to full operative. As I see it, it’s existence is the only real reason you haven’t been put into the field full time.”

David came up short. She wasn’t lying. And that was the brilliance of the trap.

“I…” he said, for once lost for words. He swallowed. Finally, he managed to say, “I’m not going to sell my teammates short to get what I want.”

“You truly want to be in the field?”

“You need me. And my team. That’s why it hasn’t been disbanded.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I have a duty. And Time Peace needs me.”

“May I remind you that the Aechrian timeline has never split,” Fia said a little sternly.

“And we all know there are no guarantees,” David countered.

“No, but there’s a reason it’s considered relatively secure for training purposes.”

“Not a reason, a pattern,” David asserted. “A pattern without an actual explanation. It could be related to the unusual Anarakian activity. Time Peace could use all the eyes it can get to get to the bottom of this.”

“Why are you so insistent on keeping Frost and Anthony on board?” Commander Florentine asked, genuinely perplexed. “We can let them go. They don’t have to go through what you did.”

“It’s not the same. They’re eighteen.”

“But are they ready? To be Deltas? We didn’t ask them to do that.”

“They have potential,” David said defensively.

“Potential can be difficult to tap,” Fia countered.

“I thought the Hawk had a mission for us,” David suddenly said. “With the Crystal Ball.”

“We can find alternates. It would be more difficult, but they’d be more trained.”

“You’re shorthanded.”

“David, this again?”

“Look, the basilica is an important Aechrian monument. It’s old. It could have a clue as to why Aechyr is so unique.”

“David…”

“Heck, it’s got some underground passages, like the dig at the fort. It’s a stretch, but it could—”

“David!” Fia finally cut him short. “You asked me before if I was trying to make up for the past. Are you?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” David snapped suddenly. He actually looked angry. Ruffled.

“No, you didn’t,” she agreed sincerely.

David didn’t seem calmed. He glanced aside and snorted. He tried to force calm into his muscles, but they didn’t cooperate.

“I almost did,” he confessed. Fia waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

“This war is complicated. Obviously. You need Deltas that can deal with that sort of thing. And no one really knows what it’s like until they’ve been through it. I can’t make them understand, but I can give them fair warning.”

“Even if they continue on their Delta training, you don’t have to be the one to do that.”

“They’d be in serious trouble with someone else. The kind of trouble you want. Not you personally, but the organization. Necessity demands it. That they respect and admire their teacher. The fearless Delta who’s been in the field. Who’s seen the enemy. They’re not young, but they’re too eager. They’d cling on to his every word. If he’s any good, they’d wind up worshipping him.”

“Like you did?” Fia guessed.

“Yes,” David admitted. “You don’t know how tempted I was to take him up on his offer. I very nearly left Time Peace. Because I had stars in my eyes and ambition without sense. He nearly took me with him.”

“Is that the real reason you want into the field?” the commander asked delicately. “Because of what Anarakia took from you. To get revenge on them?”

“Anarakia is just a bunch of people,” David insisted, shaking his head.

“So too is Time Peace,” she reminded him.

“So don’t change that.” The words came bursting from David before he knew it. Getting control over himself, he continued emphatically, “They’re people, Fia. Not just mistakes on a spreadsheet. Not bullets in the magazine. Not machines to be programmed. They feel. They think. Don’t use the former to strip the latter.”

Fia looked into his eyes for several seconds.

She stood up and tapped a button on the intercom. “Cancel the eval,” she said. David couldn’t entirely suppress his surprise.

Fia Florentine turned back to him. “You’re medically cleared for duty,” she said.

David gaped at her, not quite able to believe what had just happened. To his surmounting shock, he was the one who asked, “Are you sure?” And he realized that he wasn’t.

“I don’t like the existence of your unit,” Fia replied, the familiar firmness returning to her voice. “My opinions haven’t changed in that matter, but policy is just as unlikely to change. Given the circumstances…” she paused for just a moment at the door. “I’d rather give them the best chance at reform.”

She glanced back one more time at David. Nodding, she concluded, “It’s a million to one shot. Good luck.”

And she left the room.

David pondered her odd decision for several minutes before another buzzer broke the silence. Kennedy’s own meeting had ended. He looked down at his hands for a moment, but the room felt real again. The familiar composure washed over him.

With the doubts buried, he stood up. Once again, he was only left with the mission. The mission, and a team that still needed molding.