Human Soldiers

[Fairchild]

"Level 7A."

"Level 7 - Medical Bays," the AI voice inside the elevator announced the arrival to her destination. Jera left the lift and started walking through more of the numerous corridors of Atka. She had a new team. A team fully devoted to the goal she wagered her entire career on and pursued through the last third of her life.

She was almost at her destination when she hesitated. Her PAD clock showed she had already been late, but there was something she had to do first. The Corsair rarely visited the medbays - the last time she had been here was a few years ago when they installed her knee implant.

Jera turned right, then left, then right twice. She knew the way by heart, even though she hadn't been here for months. With every step, the pain in her knee was getting stronger. She hesitated before the door again.

Sigh.

A wave of her bracelet. A green light. The door opening with a slight hiss.

The room was small. Several cooling fans, vent grate and a table, with nothing on it. Everything covered with a smooth layer of dust. And in the centre, a vat. Inside the vat, a man.

Before, he had been bearded. Before, he had had smooth brown hair. Before, he had been smiling. Before, he had had limbs.

Now, there was little left of a man in him. A bald head with closed eyes, fractured chest with little left intact. Everything hooked up to tubes and drowning in regrowth fluids which were slowly rebuilding his tissues. He was alive, but was he conscious? Could he think? Could he dream? Or was it a useless state of vegetation, something he would never wake up from?

She walked closer and laid her hand on the transplas of the vat. She didn't know answers to those questions. She thought about Nagrebetskiy.

"Algiz," she whispered. "You don't have Vergil in you. I will never know how you feel now. Until you wake up. Or..." She didn't finish. Pushed the thought away.

They used to be partners. More than just partners. He was friendly, compassionate and reliable. They knew each other since the first day of training. A Bretonian from Cambridge and a Corsair from Crete. If it wasn't for the Division, they would probably have shot each other some day. Thanks to the Division, they didn't.

In the terrible shoot-out where she broke her knee, his escape pod failed to eject. When her cruise engines had already been charged, his ship exploded. A moment of fear and anger. She turned back, synapses firing like rounds of a flechette pistol and countermeasures burning like the tail of a comet, into the fray and picked up what was left of his ship. She prayed to Asha for the enemy cruise disruptors not to reach her ship and thankfully none did.

She saw him a week after that, after the medics had been done with setting up the environment for his convalescence and not once since then. What was he feeling now? Did he miss her?

Jera slid her hand down the transplas, closed her eyes and muttered a short prayer to Asha, in hopes that Algiz would be back. Deep down, she knew it was not going to happen but she did not want to accept it.

Just one last glance over at the fallen comrade. "Where are you now?" she whispered, looking into his dead eyes. She then looked away and directed her steps to where she had been meant to be fifteen minutes before.