Archive of Our Own

Wyoming's helmet cracks when Tex’s fist connects with it. The visor, then his nose, then his skull. He crumples to the ground, and doesn’t move again.

“Fuck.” York rises slowly out of his cover spot. “That one got pretty close.”

“That’s cause you’re rusty,” Tex remarks, though there isn’t any heat in it. She's already kneeling over the body, pulling the broken helmet off it.

“We’ve been living the quiet life, D and I,” York lies. His side burns from the bullet that had grazed him, but the damage was small and his healing unit is already at work, letting him know it will pass soon enough. He makes his way over to her, looking down on the familiar, blood-stained face “Hey there, Reggie.”

Tex is frowning down at the helmet. “Delta, can you go through his logs? I want to know more about what he’s been up to. And what Omega’s been up to.”

“Being what you are, you are more than capable - “ Tex gives him a look. Delta sighs. “In a moment, Agent Texas.”

He flickers, his holographic figure disappearing into the helmet. York frowns at the corpse at his feet. “Where’s Gamma?”

“I cannot detect his presence at the moment.” Delta’s voice sounds slightly muffled, despite it making little sense. “I suspect he had not been implanted in Agent Wyoming for quite some time.”

“But he was still able to operate this.” Tex hands York the now-opened helmet, and it takes him a moment to recognize the small device she is pointing out as Wyoming’s time-slowing unit.

“It’s different than I remember it.” He pokes it carefully with one finger. It looks intact, despite the damage the helmet has taken.

“The reports I've been intercepting say they’ve modifying it, developing its time-manipulation abilities to allow for Short-term time loops.”

“You’re kidding.” He hands the helmet back to Tex, feeling suddenly unsteady in a way that has nothing to do with the still-bleeding wound at his side. “Time slowing was one thing, but full-on time travel?”

“The way he fought last time we met... I believe it.” Tex shrugs. “The project had always dealt with highly experimental technology. Might as well do this too, I guess.”

“Yeah, but still...” York glances at the corpse, then back to the helmet. “How far exactly can this thing go?”

“Official records say two minutes,” informs Delta, emerging back and taking his usual place by his shoulder.

Tex frowns thoughtfully. “And unofficially?”

The A.I is quiet for a moment. “The whole matter is still mostly untested. The are many unpredictable variables, and so there is very little reliable information on the unit’s long-range function as of yet.”

“Delta.” York can feel his partner’s reluctance, the edges of an idea he’s trying to keep away from York’s racing mind. That's not really how it works. He doesn’t say anything further, just waits.

Delta sighs again. “The science department’s tests on long-range time travel show that while a body is destroyed if sent back, the mind can be projected back up to a year or so – although only for a limited time, before it inevitably loses grip and is pulled back into the body.”

“Like a rubber band,” York says thoughtfully, “snapping back into shape.”

Unimpressed is a familiar emotion of Delta, overriding his sense of dread. “An adequate metaphor, I suppose.”

The broken visor seems like it’s looking at him mockingly. “How much time do you get?”

“Thirty-six hours is the most ever achieved. The tests executed so far were limited. The director wanted the matter researched thoroughly before it was put into more intensive use. Reports indicate he was… very wary regarding the whole thing.”

“Makes sense. There’s a lot you could do, with that sort of power,” York says slowly. “Shouldn’t be reckless with it.”

“York,” cautions Delta. “I can see what you’re thinking, and I must warn – “

“What are you thinking?” Tex cuts.

York pulls out his lighter. Flicks it open. Thinks of a ship, of an elevator shaft. Thinks of a nightclub, of a moment, of a hand. Thinks of a girl.

“I have a few things I'd like to try again,” he says. “Don’t you?”

*

She looks just the same as in his memories.

He wakes up at her bedside, body slumped against the infirmary bed. When he raises his head, her face is the first thing he sees. She is frowning in her sleep, like something in her dream is bothering her. He stares at her downturned lips, the red hair falling on her forehead, the bags under her eyes that’s been there ever since she first became an officer. He is holding her hand, he realizes, her skin warm, her pulse point right under his fingers. Her heart beats under his palm. Once. Again. Again.

For a long time he just sits there.

“Agent York?” Delta says. “Your mind just went… very strange, all of a sudden.”

This Delta sits different in his head that he is used to, more precarious. His own Delta is back in the future, operating the time-unit, keeping all of this mad endeavor running. York doesn’t say anything out loud, only lets his thoughts and memories run free, hoping his partner would be able to figure out the important bits.

“I see,” he says, and nothing more. York hopes they are still of one mind (heh) about this. He thinks they are.

It takes an hour or so for Tex to come in. she doesn’t speak, just stops in the doorway and takes them in. York wonders what is going through her head, but he cannot guess. He’s never understood Texas – just trusted her anyway. He hasn’t regretted it yet.

Eventually she speaks: “Do you remember when she wakes up?”

He has spent his first vigil in this room alternating between staring at her face and staring at the clock, counting time as the hours turned into days. “Four hours from now.” About twenty-six hours from the end.

They can’t make too sweeping a change, not with the limited time they have. They’ve made a plan, sort of. It’s not too good, but that’s alright. They have – finally, extraordinarily, miraculously – room for mistakes.

She gets going. He stays in the room and waits.

She wakes up slowly.

 Its strange to watch. Carolina is a morning person, by habit if maybe not by nature. She gets up like a soldier – dead to the world one moment, wide awake the next, laughing at him as he groans and complains, stealing his pillow when he takes too long to get up.

Now she moves slowly, breathing going erratic, hand raising to cover her face in a slow, choppy movement. He was too relived to see her moving to notice, the first time, but now he thinks: she wakes up like a broken computer; can’t turn all the way on.

Her eyes slowly focus on his face. “York?”

“Hey there, Carolina,” he manages to whisper. “It’s been a little while.”

He helps her sit up. She leans against his shoulder, eyes going clearer as she slowly sorts through the memories of the moments before. Her eyes land onto the other figure that had been in the infirmary ever since York found himself back in it. “What – what happened to Wash?”

“Bad implantation.” York hands her the glass of water that has been waiting on the table for nearly three days. “Something went wrong with Epsilon. They’re talking about pulling him out already.”

Carolina closes her eyes, then reopens them. “How long - ?”

“Less than you, sleeping beauty. That kid has a head like a stone wall. He isn’t the one I’m worried about. He’s gonna wake up and not even notice something happened.”

York has intercepted enough reports by now to know he wouldn’t, but it’s easier to let his lips shape the familiar words. He didn’t fully believe in them the first time, either.

“It was pretty fucking terrifying, Carolina,” he says, these words just as sincere as they were the first time. Her fingers tighten momentarily around his own. “Well, for some of us, anyway. South looks about ready to start cooking poison apples.”

She laughs weakly. That was the last time he’s ever heard that sound, outside of his dreams. He tries to listen better, this time around, but it’s over before it’s began.

He doesn’t have to direct, he learns. Unless he makes an active choice, his mouth and his body will move on their own as they have before, as though the unit is trying to conserve the power required to change the past.

That’s for the best. He isn’t sure he would have been able to maintain appearance without this outside direction.

It’s eight hours before she is released from the infirmary. The doctors come in shortly after she wakes up, bustling around and taking readings (useless, all of them, why the hell did they have so many fucking experts when not one of them could do a single thing to save Carolina Washington Maine - ). North and Florida stop by as well, both visibly relieved to see her functioning and demanding answers about everything that happened while she was out. York can read the thought on North’s face, as clear as day: If Carolina’s still around, it can’t be as bad as that. It’s not all falling apart just yet.

They receive the message that Agent Texas is missing while she is going through her last examination. York sees her change as the words hit: her jaw firming, her eyes going cold. Sees gather all of herself into a sharp, hardened point, like a bullet.

As soon as she’s discharged, she walks straight for the training room. York doesn’t try to stop her, to tell her she should take it easy after waking up from a week-long coma. He has always known when to pick his battles. He follows her down, instead, asks F.I.L.L.I.S to run the protocol for a private match before taking his place opposed to her. She raises an eyebrow (he can’t see it, but he knows) before nodding in acceptance and falling into a ready stance. She lets him throw the first punch.

It’s a comfortable dance, one they’ve both performed a hundred times over the eternity they’ve known each other. It should be different, maybe, now that both of them are guided by the A.Is, but the moves are all the same, and it’s the way it’s always been. Something settles within him as they move around each other, somewhere between a hit aimed at his midsection and a kick her already knew she would dodge. He thinks of the elevator shaft, a few hours away from this moment. Thinks of a training room on a forgotten moon two minutes’ walk from an apartment shared by a UNSC private and a lockpicker with dreams of heroism. Thinks of this room, two years ago, when the ship was new and the future was bright and they were ready to take on anything.

This is something that exists outside of time, him and her separated from everything else the world will do to them. York loses himself in it, and for a few irreplaceable minutes he is at peace.

It doesn’t last for long. They are both still on the floor when the doors open and someone comes in to deliver the order from the director: All A.I. are to pulled out until further notice. Project Freelancer's research is being put on pause.

He hadn’t seen that coming the first time, he remembers, had been sure the Director will keep pushing until they were all broken, used up for all they were worth. He didn’t trust that. Delta’s sudden dread feels his head just as it did the first time: no. no, don’t.

Carolina takes a step back, face going blank. “He can’t do that. What is he thinking?! He – “ she flinches, as though at something he cannot hear, nearly stumbling.

The messenger escapes before he is shot, and York gets the sentiment, he really does. He wonders if Carolina knows her hand are shaking.

She turns toward him. “I’m going to go have a word with him. Don’t go to the labs until I do.”

York glances at the clock, as though he doesn’t already know he would be making his way to meet Tex at the restricted area as soon as she is out of the door. “Alright. I’ll check in with North and  - “ Maine.

She doesn’t notice his stumble, already turning toward the exit. The push of the past says he should let her go and get going, but he hesitates. “Carolina?”

She turns to look at him, expression gone strange at what she sees on his face. “What is it?”

He steps forward and pulls her in for a kiss. It only lasts a moment.

“For luck,” he says.

“I don’t need luck,” she says, but there’s a smile at the corner of her mouth.

And, well. That's one regret less.

He manages not to fuck up the alarm, this time. It should buy them some time, though they don’t know how much. Maybe it could be enough. They could be in and out before anyone reaches them.

They split up at the entrance, Tex moving forward past disinterested workers while York makes his way towards the control room. Sabotage is much easier when there’s no blaring alarms and armed search units storming everywhere – who knew? He and Delta take their place before the weapons system and wait.

They just need enough time. Please, let them have enough time. She will radio him when she has the Alpha. The explosion will cover for their escape. No one will fight. No will die. And in the wake of their betrayal, Sigma would be pulled out of Maine by tomorrow.

And maybe one day, she will understand why.

This fantasy lasts until his comm crackles to life. “York, answer me. Where the hell are you?”

He makes his voice light. “Hi, Lina. What did the Director say?”

“That doesn’t matter now,” she snaps. “Someone spotted Texas walking through the restricted zone. I need you to meet me there in two minutes. The rest of the team is on their way.”

“Got it,” he says, and presses the button.

Two minutes was a generous estimation, it turns out. She gets there before he even has time to deactivate the gravity. She makes no sound, but he feels he entrance anyway, feels no surprise when he turns around to find her gun pointed directly at his visor.

At least it’s not the airshaft again. Small mercies.

He says: “I’m not going to fight you.”

Maybe he can still buy them time – enough time for Tex to reach the Alpha without paying for it in Carolina’s blood. Has it passed already? Delta doesn’t know. No, probably not. Not if South and Wyoming are stalling her.

Fuck, what are the right words here? He doesn’t know except that not the ones he used last time. He doesn’t even remember what he’d said.

She says: “You just shot us.”

He says: “It’s not too late to walk away from this.”

She shakes her head. “Whether or not you come quietly, you’re a traitor.”

“Like Connie?”

She flinches, and he regrets his words, a little. “I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger on that.”

“No, you didn’t. because you knew she wouldn’t do what she did without a reason.”

“What are you doing, York?”

“What are you? What are even we even doing here, Carolina? Do you even know?”

“I’m doing my duty. My fucking job.” She raises her hand, just a little. “Whatever it takes.”

“I get that.” He’d always loved that about her, that absolute refusal to bend. “You were never the kind to let things go. But look around.” He waves a hand. “Are you sure you know what you’re even fighting for?”

He wishes he could see her face, see if any of this is reaching her. Her hand on the gun is unwavering.

“I know what’s worth holding onto,” she says. “You used to, too.” She laughs, sharp and bitter. “But now you’re following her.”

“That’s not – “ and then her the butt of her gun strikes his head and he is out of time, and none of his words were the right ones this time either.

He wakes up when the ship crashes into the ground. Everything hurts. His right leg hurts like the impact broke something, and there’s a ring of sharp pain around his wrists. She’d cuffed him to the door after knocking him out, he realizes. She must have gone forward alone.

Goddamnit.

“Delta,” he manages, trying to breath, trying to think.

“I am here. I have activated the healing unit, and your leg should be – “

“Forget that. Can we break out of these handcuffs?”

Delta’s calculation of will be faster than a few minutes of fiddling. “In your current position that would be impossible.” A moment. “I’m afraid Agent Carolina knows you very well.”

“Yeah, she does.” He hesitates a moment, then decides to take a risk. “Hello?” he shouts. “Hello? Is there anyone out there?”

He’s hoping for one of the soldiers or technicians, someone he could trick into landing a hand. For a few long moments he thinks there’s no one on the ship close enough to hear him. Then a figure in white armour shows up in the doorway.

York tenses.

“Lost another fight with agent Texas, have you, my friend?” Wyoming asks amusedly.

York wiggles his handcuffed hands. “How’d you guess?”

The man makes his way over and manages to open the handcuff after a few insistent wiggles. “There you go, old chap.”

“Thanks,” York pulls himself up to his feet, wincing at the sudden stab of pain from his left side. “You seen anyone else?”

“Not since the impact. I was on my way to try and reestablish the comms, actually.”

“Good idea. I'll see if I can find anyone on foot.”

He can feel the dubiousness radiate from Wyoming even through his helmet. “You sure, mate? That leg of yours doesn’t look great.”

“Healing unit, remember? I'll be fine.” he doesn’t waste any more time. Stumbling through the sideways hallways, he tries to make his way back toward the restricted area. He has to find Tex. If she managed to get him, if they bought enough time – she could help him to the escape shuttle. Maybe they can still save this.

He finds Carolina before he finds Tex. She's lying in the snow a few meters outside of the broken window. She's lost her helmet and there’s blood on her face, and he drops to his knees beside her before he even realizes he’s moved.

He presses his fingers to her neck. Her heart beats under his palm. Once. Again. Again.

“Carolina,” he says urgently. “Carolina, get up. You need to get to the infirmary.”

To his immense relief, she groans and starts moving. Her eyes open struggling to focus on his face, then, suddenly, on something behind him. She opens her mouth to speak.

Then a hand closes around his neck and he is pulled back and away from her, pulled off his feet by a hand that’s suddenly strangling him.

“Agent Maine – “ Carolina coughs out. Then her voice dies in her throat, or maybe he just stops hearing her, as he feels a sharp pain in the back of his neck and then his mind is on fire, the world is cracking at the seams, and he screams as Delta is torn out him.

“York!” Carolina may be shouting. She stumbles towards him, then crashes on the ground, unable to stand. He should answer her, but he can’t move, can’t think. He is dropped to the ground carelessly, and as the world goes dark, he has just enough time to see Maine’s hand wrap around her throat.

The sarcophagus is quieter than the computer Tex was born in. That one had been connected to the entire Mother of Invention, everything humming around them as she and Alpha learned the world through patterns and languages no one but them could access. Here, there is only silence, no input but his flickering presence – and her. Still too late but maybe better equipped, this time. Maybe enough.

“Who are you?” he asks her.

Those words had bowled her over, the first time – sent her for a spin that didn’t end until the day she stood in a box canyon in the middle of nowhere and heard him say her name.

“I’m Tex,” she tells him. “I’m your girlfriend.”

“Oh. I’m – sorry, I don’t remember you.”

“I know,” she says gently. “I think being out of here would help you with that. You’ll feel better.”

In the void of the sarcophagus her memories of Blood Gulch breath into life: the tall red walls, the sprawling hills, the looming moon. Tucker and Caboose and Sheila and the Reds. Church as she had learned to know him again in that canyon, sharp and loud and full of life and nothing like this hollow ghost. “You should come with me. We’ll be free.”

He stares at the memories around him like they are as distant as the moon. “I don’t think I can do that. But thanks.”

“You’re stronger than you think,” she insists.

“No, that’s, eh – “ she can feel him flicking to the memories around them. “I’m pretty sure that’s you, actually.”

She almost laughs. “Church – “

“I’m sorry. I wish I could, but – I’m really tired. I think I’m just gonna rest for a while.”

“You can never just make this easy for me, can you?”

“I don’t think I can do that, either.”

She doesn’t know what she might’ve said to that. Before she can find an answer she feels the press of another entity pressing on the outside, trying to find a way in to reach them. After the last few days, she would know Gamma anywhere.

Her borrowed, organic body feels ill-fitting as she pulls herself back into it and turns around. It takes her a moment to notice the gun to her head.

“Knock-knock,” says Wyoming.

There are twenty or so other soldiers in the room, all of their weapons trained on her. She doesn’t need to be a computer to run the calculation and know she will never be fast enough.

She’d been here for too long, and she’d lost her chance.

*

She wakes up lying on concrete, the flickering dome of out-of-time generated by the unit above her and York’s shoulder pressed against hers.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Tex sighs. “How’s the unit, Delta?”

“Running smoothly, Agent Texas. I believe we will be able to continue this operation at the very least long enough for you and York to come up with a well-thought-out plan.”

“We knew we probably wouldn’t be able to make it work on the first try.” York pushes himself up from the ground and offers her a hand. “Ready to try again?”

*

They try again. And again. And again.

Tex had never thought very highly of Wyoming, but suddenly she finds herself admiring his methodical dedication – the patience to keep going through every fuck up over and over until you get it right.

And shit, do they fuck it up. It shouldn’t be this hard. This is what they were meant for – the infiltration expert and the best of the best. But she is the best just by a hair’s breath: good enough to beat Carolina, but not good enough to move her, to make her anything other than the weapon she was made be, like a mirror Tex can’t stand looking at. She’s just like Texas, just like Alpha. Can never take the easy way out.

She tries to steal him, after the first time – take him whether he is willing to come or not. She’s stronger than him, always was, even before they reduced him into this. She had flinched at it, the first time, afraid of hurting him more that he’d already been hurt, of becoming just one more person to treat him as something to be pushed around. But she can’t afford that weakness, anymore, not when left behind, she can’t even protect him from Gamma and Omega.

And none of it matters, because they can’t make it out. They can never fucking make it out.

*

They try not crashing the ship, once. She can’t go over the cliff if there is no cliff, York reasons.

Without that easy escape route, they get caught within thirty minutes. There will be no escaping without taking the Mother of Invention with them, without leaving the project shattered in their wake.

After they are cornered, the Director strides over, putting one hand forward in demand for Alpha’s drive, face like a scolding teacher. Tex doesn’t quite remember what happens after: Omega’s roar drowns everything else, and she doesn’t have it in her to stop him. When the world comes into focus again her organic body is dying, and there’s blood soaking through her gauntlets, staining the drive still clutched in her fingers. She can’t see the director, can’t find York in the mountain of fallen bodies surrounding her, and Omega is laughing too loudly, and the only thing she can see clearly is Carolina’s heltmetless, bloodstained face, pale as sheet as she squeezes a trigger.

And then they try again.

*

They try going before Carolina ever wakes up, leaving her out of it entirely; safer for everyone, maybe, to save them from that fight.

It’s the smoothest go they get, moving before the director has reason to worry, before Agent Texas even goes rouge. No one dares question the Director’s number one as she crosses the hanger, York falling into step behind her. It’s only when they open the door to the lab that the counselor turns, alarm blooming in his eyes.

Texas isn’t South Dakota. He's dead long before his hand can reach for the button.

They are half-way to the emergency escape shuttle when the alarm finally starts wailing through the ship, the soldiers around them leaping to their station, but still, no one gives them a second look. Tex speeds up her walk. “Come on. we can make it to the shuttle before anyone realizes we are the ones they’re supposed to stop.”

York is frozen at the spot. “That is not the restricted zone’s alarm. We aren’t.”

They race to the other side of the ship, pushing their way through throngs of armored figures that hurry to get out of their way. The Director is at the infirmary’s door, shouting orders, but over his shoulder they can both get a clear look at agents Carolina and Washington, both dead in their beds, implants empty and bleeding.

And then they try again.

*

“How have you been handling things, Agent Texas?” asks the counselor. “Between Agent Carolina’s condition and Agent’s Connecticut recent passing, you’ve had a stressful month.”

“I’m doing fine.” She shakes her head, letting the experience of the past direct her. “I told you, I should be in the field right now. Especially with all this going on.”

“Are you and Omega feeling anxious? It is important that we know.”

“Just restless. I came here to fight the war, counselor.”

“Do you worry this isn’t where you should be?”

“No, I don’t. But - “

“Yes?”

His eyes are unrelenting, intent on her face. She sighs.

“I miss my husband,” she says, “I had to leave him to come here. Humanity comes first, and all that. I just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time."

“Thank you, Agent Texas,” the motherfucker says, just like every time, just like the first time. “That is very enlightening to hear.”

*

They get close, the next time.

After disabling the alarm, York calls the ship’s command center, breathless, to report that Agent Maine had gone rouge. “I don’t know if he’s working with Texas, but the way he moved... Carolina, there’s something wrong with him.”

"His behavior has been growing unstable for a while.” The Director doesn’t sound surprised by this news, though York isn’t sure why he thought he would. “He must be apprehended. Alive.”

“Unstable how? What - “

“We can discuss this later, agent Carolina. Agent York, you will meet with Agents Wyoming and North Dakota, and you and the security soldiers will handle this. Agent Carolina, you are to take the other half and investigate this disturbance at the restricted zone.”

“Got it.”

“Yes, Sir.”

York manages to disable the gravity before running to play loyal soldier, which mean Tex has an easier time avoiding South and the few soldiers who make it to the restricted zone before the ship starts plummeting. Carolina is a different story – she moves differently, today. Maybe Tex should have expected her to be in better shape when she didn’t have to beat up her boyfriend on the way, but she had gotten too used to this pattern.

The thing they share on the falling ship this round is new, different than any fight Tex had been part of. Carolina had always been the boldest, sharpest thing in project freelancer, the one Tex always wanted to push at. She is fast, and unpredictable, and so very close to the perfection she is desperate for. Without the pressure of two voices scrambling for attention in her mind, she might have even won.

But probably not. Tex never loses, except for when it matters.

When she stumbles out of the lab, Church clutched in her hand, the snowy scene around her is familiar, and for a moment she thinks York and his squad have failed after all. But the figure standing over Carolina is different, its color much starker against the pale landscape. Purple, not white.

Agent South Dakota shoots her gun once, twice. The sound echoes in the white landscape around them. Blood pulls on the snow.

“Who’s the best now, bitch?”

She bends down to kneel by Carolina's head, turning her over and reaching for her implants, pulling out the embedded chips. Then she raises her head and meets Tex’s gaze across the shattered scene.

“No one will doubt you did it. So you should start running now.”

And then, well.

And then they try again.

*

After the fourth time they try the rescue mission, Tex decides they have been wasting their time going at it like this. Relieving their mistakes, making minor adjustments. Minor changes were never going to cut it. They are never getting out of this one without leaving anything that matters behind.

They can’t fix this by mitigating side effects. They have to uproot it all from the source.

The walk to the command center is uneventful – it was not rare, once, for the Director to summon her for private briefings. He had often given her personal orders, back then, discreet missions. She had liked it – liked having her skills acknowledged, being able to use them to their full potential with nothing to slow her down. Maybe she and Carolina had more in common that either of them likes to face.

He is bent over a screen when she arrives, but turn around at the sound of the door sliding open. His face does something strange at the sight of her – a smile that is half surprise and half sadness, maybe. She isn’t all that good at reading people, and he is no exception. It's weird, maybe – one would expect she would know him, instinctively, better than anyone else. But his face never meant anything to her, never held any connection to the shadow of a partner who hang in all her memories. The person Beta was born an inseparable part of is someone else.

(she remembers hearing his voice for the first time, like coming back to a home you’ve forgotten existed. She's been trying to hold on to it ever since, but her fingers are always slipping, and she knows it’s only a matter of time.)

“I decided I’m done,” she tells him.

“Allison – “ he says.

She raises her gun and shoots, the sound loud in the quiet room. Leonard Church’s brain matter sprays upon the floor.

In the ringing silence that follows, Tex strides toward the computer. She steps over the body and leans forward, glancing at the charts still open before dismissing them and turning to the speaker.

“Hello, F.I.L.S.S.”

“Agent Texas.” Some people may say a dumb A.I. can’t sound wary, but Tex knows better.

“F.I.L.S.S, I want you to lock all facility doors, and put every project agent but York in recovery mod.”

“I’m sorry, agent Texas – I am afraid you don’t have the clearance to give such orders.”

Tex clenches her fist, Omega growling with impatience in the back of her mind. They don’t have time to play authority game with a computer. “Alright. Who does?”

“Well...”

Blood drips slowly on her boots. “Fine. What access do I have?”

A moment of silence. Then, reluctantly: “In case of the Director’s death, access to all systems is to be given to the project’s counselor, as well as to the Agent currently placed as number one.”

Carolina would have liked to know the Director had such trust in her. “If I have access – “

“However, administrative access is to be locked until the appointment of a new director.”

“Fucking – fine. Do I have access to the files on this computer?”

“Indeed. Although I must caution – “

“I want to send every single file you have to the UNSC oversight sub-committee. Start with the director’s personal logs.”

“Those files are highly classified. Are you certain?”

“I just said it, didn’t I?”

“I am simply concerned that rash actions may compromise the project. The director always said – “

“Either you send them, or Omega will enter the system and send them for you.”

“... Delivery in process.”

“Thank you.” Tex leans against the computer and watches the bar slowly move, fingers tapping restlessly against the keyboard. Omega’s voice growls inside of her, making it hard to think, growing louder by the moment. She is usually better at controlling him, not letting him have his way, but she is just so sick of this.

She can hear the sound of yelling in the distance, maybe fighting. F.I.L.S.S must have activated some sort of alarm. She doesn’t pay it any attention – none of it matters, as long as this file is sent. Project freelancer will be closed within the week, as soon as this information comes to light. Carolina will live. Church will live. Connecticut will live. Everyone will live.

“Agent Texas, there is something you might like to know.”

“I don’t have the time for any more arguments right now, F.I.L.S.S. I understand perfectly well the consequences of what I’m doing here.”

“Of course, agent Texas,” she answers smoothly. “But I do think you should know that counselor Price is no longer on board the Mother of Invention.”

She should have expected this one. Tex snorts. “Quick to jump ship, huh? Did he take any of the agents with him?”

“Not them, no.”

Texas doesn’t have blood to freeze in her veins, but somehow it feels just like it. “F.I.L.S.S. what did he do?”

“I’m afraid he seems to have taken the Alpha A.I with him.” A pause. “As I mentioned, he has been granted emergency access privileges as well.”

She takes an involuntary step back, nearly slipping on the blood. “Which shuttle did he take? Where was he headed?”

“I’m afraid he did not indicate a destination. Evacuation shuttle 614 left the bay two minutes ago.”

Too long. By the time she manages to cross the ship and commandeer another shuttle he would be long gone, headed for some other place in the galaxy. It might be Blood Gulch, or it might not be. It might be a different base of the project, one she doesn’t know about. Or he might have left the crumbling project entirely, taking its assets and burning his bridges behind him.

The computer crushes under her fist, Omega howling her frustration. Behind her, the door splinters, and the soldiers rush in.

*

The sixth time, they try and kill Maine.

It’s Delta’s suggestion. Sigma is their biggest unpredictable, he says, as well as a danger both to them and to the people they are trying to save. Eliminating him will make the other tasks before them easier to achieve.

“And it is a chance to remove a danger to all of us that exist in the present as well,” he adds. “Even if you are to succeed in your task, the current matter of things still leaves us all hunted.”

The chair at her bedside has become a familiar waystation to him. Her still, pale face, the smell of the infirmary, the glowing digits of the clock. It had seemed eternal to him, that very first time, not knowing if she would ever wake up. He’d had no idea.

(Once, during a mission to an alien-infested moon, his squad found themselves trapped in a dark, muddy cave, waiting for a rescue. He remembered lying on the ground, trying to sleep, listening as two of them got engrossed in an endless discussion about whether or not this was what purgatory felt like. It was about the waiting, one of them had insisted, and wondering forever how it will end. Another had insisted it didn’t count if there were no demons. York had thrown his pack at their heads and told them if they didn’t shut up and go to sleep, he would make sure they would both find hell.

He’d never thought purgatory would feel like too-bright lighting and uncomfortable infirmary furniture.

But then she wakes up, at the end she always wakes up, and the warmth in the green of her eyes makes him forget about theology entirely. )

“I’ve made a break for the infirmary kitchenette five hours ago,” he tells her in a theatrical whisper, pulling out his stolen granola bar and offering her a bite.

(He’s decided he can afford to leave her, just for a few minutes. He knew she’d be out for hours yet, and he wanted to be at his best for what’s ahead. But the sharp-edged rising fear he’d felt at walking away from her like that – the-infirmary-alarm-blood-on-the-sheets – had been so gutting that he’d come rushing back only a minute later, heart racing, and collapsed back in the chair when he saw her steady heartbeat on the monitors. He doesn’t think he’d try this again.)

“The height of my criminal career. Don’t turn me in, please – Dr. Johnson scares the shit out of me.”

She laughs at that, weak but genuine, and reaches out to take the offered snack, though she looks so pale he’s not sure she could eat it.

(He’s been trying a new joke in every loop, just to test it out. So far, all but one made he laugh.)

He sits with her through her check-up; listens as she answers a row of questions he already knows by heart; reaches a hand to steady her as she wobbles on her feet while getting up for her physical tests.

Dr. Johnson is busy testing her reflexes when Delta pipes up with his line. “York, we are receiving a call from deck 2 – there appear to be some issue with the weapon lockers. Agent Pennsylvania has requested ‘a high ranking agent, if we still have any functioning ones’ to come over and see what the problem is.” A beat. “And agent North appears unavailable.”

Carolina frowns. “That didn’t sound good.”

“I swear, none of the lowies have any respect anymore.” York grimaces. “I can - “

She shakes her head, as he knew she would. “Go check it out. I will catch up as soon as I am done here.”

She pulls away from the doctor and passes him his helmet from where he’s abandoned it by the bed. There's a tremor in her hand, like she’s not all-the-way steady. Carolina’s hands were always steady. Carolina never missed a shot, not in all the time he had followed her to battle.

He takes his gaze away, meeting her eyes as he takes the helmet, familiar and tired and so green. “Alright.”

She turns back toward the doctors, the corners of her mouth tightening in bitter determination. Before she can go, York grasps her shoulder, leaning forward and pulls her into a kiss. It only lasts a moment.

“For luck,” he says.

“I don’t need luck,” she says. But there’s a smile at the corner of her mouth.

Tex is waiting for him by the weapon lockers, camouflage flickering. They get to work.

It’s a bit of a risk, of course, picking this location for their ambush. More ammunition for them means more ammunition for their quarry as well. But Maine had never needed a weapon to cause damage, anyway, and unlike him, they will be prepared for what’s to come. Her figures it gives them the bigger advantage.

He orders the area cleared off, citing their story of a suspected weapon malfunction. It works like a charm – the reputation of the project’s array of experimental weapons is well known around the Mother of Invention, and none of the foot soldiers wants to find out just how much of it is true. The other agents are going to be more of a problem – when one of them hears of the issue, they will probably come immediately to check it out (York often questions his teammates’ judgement). They will have to try and finish this before anyone else reaches the scene.

(Running out of time, always running out of time, even with an infinite supply of it on their hands. Maybe this time they’ll make it.)

They plant charges, because they aren’t here to fight fair and that is the advantage of planning an ambush. Three of them, set to explode in a chain reaction, to hit concussively. It won’t be enough to take him down, but, well, it would sure be a nice opener. Delta is the one to bait the trap, contacting Sigma in an invitation he is certain his brother won’t be able to resist.

Maybe York should flinch at doing this to a man he once called a friend. But he is tired, and he cannot escape the memory of the hand grasping his throat, those bodies in the infirmary, and maybe he had buried Maine long ago.

The explosion, when it comes, rocks the entire hall. Maine stumbles through the second and the straight into the third. The last one flings him across the room and directly into the wall, leaving him to slide to the floor in an ungainly heap.

They both step forward, standing between him and the door.

“Agent York,” Sigma says, his voice calm and congenital even as Maine struggles to his knees behind him. “Agent Texas. This is - “

Tex strikes before he can finish, fist passing directly through his glowing form and colliding with Maine’s helmet. She moves to pull away, but Maine’s hand snaps up, grasping her wrist and throwing her to the side. She recovers quickly, and York rushes in in her place, striking at the place where he can see blood seeping through white armour. Maine grunts and pulls away, kicking him in the stomach before attempting to leap over him and out of the corner.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Texas rushes him, throwing a hit that connects despite his attempt to evade it. Maine growls and charges her. York tries to take aim, but they’re both moving too fast for him to take a shot without hitting Tex. He moves in, attempting to

Maine’s grasps Texas by her shoulders and flings her directly into the lockers. Metal bends at the impact. She pushes herself to her knees, swearing up a storm, but he reaches above her head into the locker and pulls. The bruteshot glimmers, sharp and deadly. York moves, aiming to buy Tex the time to reach into the lockers as well. He’s is fast enough to dodge the first two shots, but the third catches him in his blind side and he stumbles, and then Maine is on him.

He manages to get one good shot in, and then the gun is knocked from his hand. Maine towers above in what had become nearly a familiar sight. Behind him he can see Tex rise to her feet, a plasma gun in each hand, but Maine doesn’t turn. He raises the bruteshot over his head. Brings it down.

He opens his eyes and the time unit’s dome glimmers above him, translucent and familiar. He closes them again.

He lies there for a while. Not too long. After a few minutes, he hears a groan and the sound of movement beside him.

“South and Wyoming showed up to back him up,” she says before he can ask. “I got him. I saw him go down. But then the two of them were there and I couldn’t – “ she makes a noise of frustration. “Goddamnit. I got him.”

Doesn’t really matter, when they didn’t get anything else.

And then there’s nothing to do but to try again.

*

He used to think she was like a meteor in motion. An unstoppable force, something breathtaking and inevitable. No challenge, no enemy, ever stood a chance when Agent Carolina came storming like an avenging angel.

Someplace inside of him, he thinks he always thought she’d live forever.

“You know, I used to think she’d come back,” he tells Tex as the two of them sit on the ground under the unit’s bubble, taking a moment to breath before diving into the next attempt. “That someday I’d be listening in on the comms and hear Command report that Agent Carolina has pulled herself out of the frozen water and finally made her way back to base to yell at everyone for letting it all fall apart.”

“We both saw her fall,” Tex says, though there’s no judgement in her voice.

York closes his eyes. “I thought she’d get up.”

*

“Is there anything I could say,” he asks her during the seventh one. “Anything at all, that would change how this ends?”

“It’s too late to turn back now, York,” she tells him, voice flat and hollow. “I don’t know what the hell’s changed with you. But I am the leader of this team. And I made a promise.”

Her helmet is off, this time, knocked away in the fight, and he can see her face, as familiar as his own and still entirely alien. Her expression is jagged in a way he’s never seen before, and there’s something far away in her eyes, like she’s listening to voices in her head that he has no way of hearing. Like she’s not even really there for him to catch. And he loves Delta, he does, but for one single awful moment he hates every single damn AI, every fucking thing it did to all of them. How are they to save each other, to save anyone at all, when they barely even know themselves anymore?

*

On the eighth attempt, York reaches out and tears the A.Is right out of her right there in the infirmary.

She screams.

*

On the ninth attempt, he gives himself away. He doesn’t know what it is that does it, but he knows something went wrong when the message arrives summoning him for a private interview with the counsellor.

“How have you been doing, Agent York? Many of your teammates have been showing signs of extreme stress, after recent incidents.”

“By recent incidents do you mean do you mean CT dying, Washington losing it or our leader in the hospital?” he asks lightly. “Or maybe the whole thing with the screaming voices in everyone’s heads? There’s been a lot going on lately.”

It would be better to pretend he isn’t worried, maybe, but past him wouldn’t have bothered. It would only raise their suspicions now.

The counsellor gives him the same flat, expressionless look. God, but York hates that guy.

“You and Agent Carolina are close,” he says measuredly. “Aren’t you, Agent York?”

Well, shit. Whatever it is they spotted about him, it’s closer than he thought. His mind is racing, trying to figure what to say, how to handle this. He isn’t sure what the counsellor expects from him, what he knows. Their relationship isn’t exactly by protocol, but it isn’t a secret, either. That’s the reality of living in a tight-nit squad. The reality of living in a ship with excellent surveillance, as well.

“You could say that.” He leans back in the uncomfortable chair. “I mean, we were never exactly the ‘meet the parents’ sort, but I’ve known her for a long time. I’m only here in the first place because she asked me to.”

“Have you ever questioned your decision to follow her into such a high-risk project? You have suffered a severe injury on your time with us. And as you mentioned earlier, your squad had experienced death of members before.”

“… No. She needs someone to watch her back.”

“Her condition must worry you.”

“You’re a really observant guy, huh? I can see why they gave you that degree.” He kicks out a leg and pretends he can’t feel Delta’s warning ping in the back of his mind. “Yes, of course I worry about her. But I know she’s going to wake up soon.”

“Your confidence in her is very admirable.”

“She’s earned it.”

“Yet you don’t seem as confident in the project’s progression, for someone with so much faith in your leader. Would you say you’re frustrated with the setbacks we’ve been dealing with?”

Frustrated. Delta’s quick reaction is the only thing that prevents a bark of bitter laugher from escaping from his mouth. as it is, he’s not sure what his face is doing, but he doesn’t think it’s very reassuring.

He meets the counsellor’s eyes and holds his gaze. He doesn’t bother pretending to smile. “Now, why in the world would you think that?”

They keep watching him, after that. He and Tex don’t get very far in that round.

*

“Do you think this is stupid, D? You can tell me, I know you love calling me an idiot.”

“They do say the definition of madness is trying the same thing over and over,” his partner says, and York closes his eyes. Then he continues: “But we are not trying the same thing over and over. We are attempting different solutions.” He flickers. “Though I am unsure about the subject of madness. According to this approach, how would one define sanity?”

“Hell if I know.” The time unit hums, gearing up for another go. York watches it.

“There must be least one scenario in which Agent Carolina survives the closing of the project. that is simple logic. Our task is simply to find it.”

“If I could talk to her before the A.Is – “ it’s too late to turn back now, she’d said. “If I could talk to her before the A.Is. maybe then she’ll listen.”

*

It's not enough.

*

There must be a scenario in which Agent Carolina survives the closing of the project. Must there? She had given all of herself to it, cutting every wish and emotion that got in its way like they were weighting her down. Maybe there was nothing left of her to outlive it.

But she had been there before it. There was a Carolina – a captain Church – a woman with a crooked smile and green twinkling eyes who danced with him until sunlight reached them and they collapsed in each other’s arms, laughing.

He gave her his lighter, and he followed her to war. She had lived, once, brighter and stronger than anything the director could ever dream of making. And if York is the last man to remember her, he wouldn’t let her go.

*

She looks just the same as in his memories.

Going back further is risky – it puts more pressure on the unit, and it means they can’t control how it ends, won’t have the time to. but it buys them breathing room, too. Maybe this is the way they manage to make a difference.

He wakes up in bed in his room, as though it was all one bad dream. Hands trembling slightly, he throws on the first clothes he can find and flees out to the hallway. The hour is early, the agents’ living quarters nearly empty. It's quiet.

Carolina isn’t a morning person by nature, but long years in the army have instilled the habit deep in her bones. He finds her standing in the kitchenette, in the middle of making coffee. She was always such a snob about the machine-made stuff.

He pauses in the doorway for a moment, just looking at her. He'd gotten so used to seeing her on her last days that it’s jarring, suddenly, seeing her be something different. Not fraying at the edges, not losing her mind in front of his eyes. She's wearing training sweats and a shirt with the UNSC logo, her braid half-undone from sleep on her shoulder. There's a small frown between her eyebrow, but her movement is unhurried as she steps between the cupboards. He can hear her humming under her breath as she mixes in the sugar.

She turns around, and her eyes lighten at the sight of him. “Morning.”

She'd smiled so easily, before Connie. He'd nearly forgotten that, too.

“Morning.” He leans next to her and reaches a hand to steal her coffee before she can stop him. She rolls her eyes but lets him have it, waiting a moment before snatching it back. He brushes their shoulder together. “Hey, can we talk?”

“Sure,” she takes a sip and tilts her head at him curiously. “What is it?”

York glances around. He has no evidence the shared space is bugged, but the idea of having this conversation out in the open makes him antsy. Of course, he had no evidence their personal rooms aren’t bugged, either. But at the very least no one will walk in on them there.

"Not here,” he says. “Somewhere private. Can we go to my room?”

Her eyebrow lifts, a spark of amusement. “Oh?”

“Not like that.” Though, seeing the interest in her eyes, he almost wants to take it back; to forget the future and just take what he can right now, while it’s still possible; To hold her, at least one more time, to remember everything else that’s been slipping from him.

Her expression grows serious at whatever she sees in his eyes. “Alright.” she places her half-empty mug on the counter. “Lead the way.”

They sit ide by side on his narrow bed, York’s fingers twisting restlessly together as Delta considers and discards scripts in the back of his mind faster than he can understand them.

“I’m worried about the A.Is, Carolina.”

She sits up straight, alarm sharp in her eyes. “Are you and Delta having trouble?”

York raises a quelling hand. “Me and D are great. North and Theta too, I think. But… Maine has been acting strange. Really strange.”

She flinches. “He’s going through a lot right now. we can’t expect – we should give him time.”

“I don’t like the way Sigma talks for him. It doesn’t sound right.” He barrels on before she had a chance to argue. “And Gamma puts me on edge. I know he and Wyoming seem fine, but – I don’t trust him. Are we sure we aren’t being – hasty, putting these things in our heads? How much do we really understand them?”

“They aren’t exactly what I've been expecting, I admit. A lot more – colourful.” She grimaces, then shakes her head and reaches to grab his hand. “But we can do this, York. We're good enough. And even if we weren’t, we have to. and the Director is the UNSC’s foremost expert on A.I.. I trust that he knows what he’s doing. And he insists that we have to keep pushing forward if we want to be of any use.”

“The Director - “ doesn’t give a fuck about any of us - “Doesn’t see everything that we do. He isn’t here with us. He doesn’t actually get it.”

Her lips tighten. “He’s under a lot of pressure, York. I promised him I will see that the team can handle whatever he asks of us. We’re not going to let him down.” Her eyes are bright with determination, with the refusal to accept the option of failure. A meteor in motion. It’s breathtaking. She squeezes his hand. “You and I will keep an eye out, alright? We’ll look after them.”

“You and I,” York agrees hollowly.

She stands up from the bed, pulling him up with their still-linked hands. “Come on, we shouldn’t be late for morning practice.”

“There’s still over fifteen minutes.” The exhaustion in his chest is half fondness. He lets her lead them away from the bed and the conversation and wasted chance of it. At the doorway he pauses, placing his other hand on her hip.

“hey,” he says. She turn to look at him.

He pulls her into a kiss. It only lasts a moment.

“For luck,” he says.

“I don’t need luck,” she says. But there’s a smile at the corner of her mouth.

And then she pulls away and she is gone.

Tex is getting tired.

At the other end of the Mother of Invention, the freelancers prepare to leave for Longshore Shipyards. Tex is supposed to go separately, to ensure the mission succeeds if they run into trouble. But this loop is nearing its end already – she and York will be gone before the ship arrives at its destination. That’s good. Tex doesn’t want to this one again. She thinks of the body, bleeding and broken, falling through the doors and out of her reach, of standing alone in that room with Omega’s laugher droning in her ears. Your friend, Connie. She wants to see Connie again. Thank her, maybe. It was better to know.

But there is no way, and no time. They had dismissed the idea of asking help from the enemy a long time ago; no time to accomplish it, and no way to ensure it won’t be worse than what they’re up against here on the MoI. Tex trusts Connie, but she doesn’t trust the insurrectionists, doesn’t know who’s behind them. She’ll stick with the devil she knows.

She thinks of making for the lab anyway, taking advantage of the freelancers’ absence and the Director’s distraction to make a go for it. But know – not this round. They don’t have an exit planned. Maybe they can try that in the next loop. Maybe he’ll be more aware this time, more willing to help. She’d stopped trying to talk to him while stealing him a while ago. She feels like she might lose her own mind if she had to see him like this one more time, hollowed out in the aftermath of the breaking.

He was so angry, when she found him again in Blood Gulch, full of bitterness and sharp edges. She misses it. Misses him, the insufferable other half of her existence. Nobody else could ever get to her like that. This hollow, passive echo scares her. Infuriates her, in a way no comment from Church ever could.

She doesn’t know where she’d run, if she could ever get him out. Not the insurrectionists. Not the UNSC, who might treat both of them as nothing more than evidence of their creator’s wrongdoing. There is no place in the galaxy for beings like them. No place but a shitty box canyon on an unused planet, where they might be forgotten together.

Her body in the past is flesh and blood. She'd mourned it, when she’d first lost it – the last remnant of the illusion that she was a real person. She resents it now – the constant noise of her heartbeat, the way her lungs contract. The way her hands shake infinitesimally as she paces back and forth in the ship’s empty backroom, waiting for the time distortion field to pull her back.

You can give this up, she thinks. You can go back to Blood Gulch and kick all of their asses and bicker with Church over the tank. And if he never knows what you two are, if you alone are the keeper of that memory, maybe the dream is better. Maybe with his shoulder pressed against yours and the sun painting the plains red beneath you, it wouldn’t matter at all.

And still she goes back. Born for failure, she goes back for one more shot. Maybe this will be the one where they make it.

*

“I need to go back further. Before – “

“Before me,” Tex finishes for him.

“Before she started getting scared. Maybe then – “ his voice cracks. “Delta. Can the unit reach this far?”

“I cannot know for sure. It’s hard to calculate the distance accurately, the further we go from the present moment. But – I will get you as far as I can.”

*

She looks just the same as in his memories.

This moment is burned in his memory, the first time he opened his eyes and realized he will never see the world quite right again. Everything is a bit blurry and the infirmary light are too bright and when he tries to narrow his eyes against them the pain is excruciating. God, he’d forgotten how badly it had hurt, at the beginning.

She is asleep in the chair by the bed, half-out of her armour, neck bent in an uncomfortable angle, and it isn’t what their places should be but this is how it went, isn’t it? She had sat at his bedside after he got out of surgery. She had held his hand, when they told him he would never see out his left eye again.

He had cried, that night, in the darkness of the infirmary, her arm tight around his shoulder. She had felt like the only steady thing in the world.

He tries to sit up, and the pain in his head immediately doubles itself. He groans, falling back to the mattress. Her eyes shoot open, a gauntlet-clad hand reaching to prevent his head from slamming down and aggravating his injury more. “Hey, slowly. It’s gonna be okay.”

His eyes fleet to the clock hanging on the opposite wall, bound by inescapable habit. “What’ime is it?”

If the question seems strange to her – its certainly not what he said the first time – her expression doesn’t indicate it. “2 am. You’ve been out for a while.”

A thought occurs to him. “should you be here right now? it’s not visiting hours.”

“Not technically,” she admits, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “But I do know some override access codes.”

He lets out a weak laugh, and it almost doesn’t hurt. “Glad I have number one to protect me.”

“Always,” she promises, face softening, and it’s so hard to breath.

“Carolina,” he says. “I need to tell you something. And it’s going to sound crazy and made up, but I need you to take it seriously.”

“Of course. I always take you seriously.” She leans back to look at him, eyes sharp. “What is it?”

“They currently working on the development of an armour enhancement capable of manipulating time. They will be handing it to Wyoming for testing soon.”

She blinks. “It was in the last report I got from the department. How do you – “

“Because of seen it.”

And then he tells her everything. Tex, Wyoming, the unit. Alpha, the fragments, the truth about it all. The Meta and the crash and the cliff and everything that happened after, everything that happened before, everything they didn’t know until it was to late to do anything about it.

She listens. She speaks only a little, asking short clarifying questions when he skips over details or messes up the timeline of things. When he finishes, there’s a grim set to her face he doesn’t quite know how to interpret.

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe you.”

She gets up from his bedside and picks up her discarded armour parts from where they’ve been abandoned on a nearby empty bed. They go on one by one, each making a soft click sound as they slide into place.

“Where are you going?” he tries to push himself up again, pushing against the sickening pain.

“To talk to the director.” Click. Click. Click.

“Didn’t you listen to anything I just said?” now he’s sitting, but

“I heard you. I’m putting a stop to this.” She turns to meet his eye for a moment. Then she slides the helmet on and strides toward the door.

And she doesn’t come back.

Entering the lab is shockingly easy, this far back. All of the Director’s system are instructed to allow her free reign. This is before C.T, before it all started going wrong; back when she had been a newly-realized dream, his perfect agent. She could have come here at any time, if she had any reason to. but she never did care about the technical side of things.

She is used to have to go looking for him through the system, and she is shocked to feel his presence as soon as she leaves her body. Inside the virtual space he appears before her immediately, spectral and white.

“Tex?” he says, sharp and alert. “Is that you? What are you doing here?”

It takes her a moment to find her voice. “I came to get you.”

“What do you mean? The director didn’t say anything about a transfer being planned. Do you know how long it took me to get comfortable here?” Then his tone shifts from complaining to serious. “I thought you were doing missions with the agents now. I – didn’t think you’d be back for a while.”

“There’s been a change of plans. We aren’t safe here,” she cuts him off. “Do you trust me?”

He flickers. “Of course. Where are we going?”

She has no fucking idea. “To meet some friends.”

“Alright.”

She slips back into her body. He slips into her implants – Omega isn’t there yet, probably not yet created. It’s a strangely familiar feeling, to have him tangled in her mind like that. Her memories of her own creation are faint and muddy, but she thinks it might have been a little like that.

His holographic figure appears over her shoulder. “There are some really fucked up things in your memories, you know.”

“yeah, I’ll bet.” She pulls away from the computer and heads quickly toward the exit. “I’ll explain everything as soon as we are far away from here.”

She opens the door. About thirty guns immediately point their barrels toward her.

“I’m afraid this simply cannot be allowed, Agent Texas,” says the first voice she had ever heard in this world.

He is standing behind the soldiers – motherfucking coward. She wonders if he really underestimates so badly he thinks they’ll be enough to protect him. She supposes he hasn’t seen much of her in action just yet. She leans back on their heels. “No agents, huh? Afraid of what they’ll hear?”

His face is deathly pale, eyes fixated on her face. He ignores the question. “What’s the cause of this, Agent?”

She meets his eyes unflinchingly. “I know what you’re planning to do.”

“Yes,” he says very softly. “Agent Carolina said as much.” He shakes his head. “You of all people should know we do what must be done to ensure humanity’s survival, Allison.”

Omega isn’t here, and so she knows the anger that overwhelms her is all her own. She is so sick of hearing him talk at her.

She crushes a path through the waiting soldiers, reaching him in a matter of seconds. He tries to duck out of the way but he is slow, old and untrained. Her armoured fist punches through his ribs. There’s a satisfying crunch as something breaks.

He crumples to the ground. She kicks him once, viciously, and then kneels over his fallen body, pulling back a fist.

“Tex! Beta! Stop!” Church pulls at her, wrestling for control of the body they now share, freezing her raised arm in place.

She snarls. “Let go of me, Church.”

“What are you doing? What’s wrong with you!?” he trembles in her mind, confusion and fear and anger crashing against her in waves.

She shoves a jumble of memories at him, and he flinches, but he doesn’t understand, not yet. “You said you’d trust me.”

“Well, yeah, but – “

The bullet strikes her head from behind before she can hear the end of the sentence. That’s probably for the best. She doesn’t really want to know.

*

They don't try going that far back again. The unit isn’t strong enough. They aren’t, either.

*

It goes like this:

There's a club in the town of New Venus, on a tiny moon where military personnel spend their leave. There’s a private, leaning at the bar, searching trouble on his night off.  There’s music playing in the background, a fairly terrible song whose name he’ll never know but whose notes will sometimes play in his mind late at night.

There’s a lighter. There’s a girl.

She had been wearing jeans. He likes the memory of it, Carolina in jeans. It feels somehow more exposed than having seen her naked. There was makeup on her face and a smirk on her lips, and she had been so very young.

She’d said: “Don’t you have better things to do than sit her and flicker all night?”

He’d been annoyed when he’d turned around, but now he couldn’t remember why. “Well, now I certainly do.” He grinned. “What do I have to do to get you to give me back my lighter?”

She’d smiled back, bright and electric. Errera’s lighting painted her an ethereal blue, like a supernatural vision in a skintight top. “That depends,” she’d said. “Do you know how to dance?”

If I could go all the way back then. If I could reach all the way to that bright, perfect moment.

Then, I'd get it right.

*

They try switching places, once. York going after Alpha while Tex protects Carolina.

(“What does it matter?” she had said. “He doesn’t remember me, anyway.”)

It’s strange, leaving her task in his hands. They part ways at the restricted zone’s door, opened without alarm in a move he’s perfected over countless repeats of these unbearable moments. She gives him her armour camouflage unit. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll make sure no one has time to pay attention to you.”

It’s almost a release, to go to war against the entire ship while heading in a new direction. For once, she isn’t desperately reaching for anything. She’s just here to break some stuff. She disables the gravity, tosses some tanks and about a hundred soldiers around. Leaves South to North and hits Wyoming with a punch that throws him through three rows of lockers – it’s just as satisfying the second time around. Eventually she makes it to the weapons system and directs them to their inevitable endpoint.

A sense of calm falls over her as the ships tilts and starts its slow, terrible descent. She waits.

She hears the sound of footsteps behind her, but doesn’t immediately turn away from the window.

“Texas,” Carolina says, voice like steel. “Finally done pretending, huh?”

She stares down at the planet’s white surface, the familiar landscape closing in. it might have been pretty, under different circumstances. Tex doesn’t know. She’s never been much one for sightseeing.

“You know,” she says. “I used to think we were friends.”

Carolina laughs, incredulous. “You aren’t serious.”

“We were in this together. I had fun.” It’s strange, to think back on those days. The memories are strange, greyed-out, like she wasn’t all the way a person back then, still figuring it out. “For a while, I thought we would make each other better.”

The humour had drained from her opponent’s voice. “Don’t pretend you ever cared about anyone but yourself, Texas. You weren’t exactly a team player.”

“No, I guess not.” She turns around. “Guess I’ll have to settle for being the best.”

“We’ll see about that.” She raises her plasma rifle. Tex slips into a fighting stance but doesn’t move. She can afford the risk of getting shot here. She has an endless number of deaths to waste.

“You don’t win this, Carolina.” The familiar words taste like ashes in her mouth. “And the shitty part is, neither do I.” She steps forward. Carolina’s hands tighten around the rifle’s handle, but she doesn’t shoot. Maybe it’s just confusion at the confession, but it’s the most grace Tex has ever received from her, and so she presses on. “We’ve never had a chance. I see that now. neither of us was the one who dealt the cards. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get to try and change that. Give me a chance now. we can still save everyone that’s left.”

Carolina stares at her, and Tex would give anything in the universe to be able to see her expression right now. Then she laughs again, the sound cracked right through the middle.

“All you ever did was take from me,” she says. “What the hell makes you think I’m gonna give you anything?”

Carolina shoots. Texas ducks. The ship hits the ground. The window shatters. They both fall.

The landing is easier when she is ready for it. She pulls herself back to her feet as debris rain down around her, pulling her weapon as she does. She hopes York and Delta managed to get into the main computer before the crash. A quick glance around is all that takes her to find Carolina, her aqua armour garishly bright against the white world surrounding them. She sways for a moment as she stands up, and then steadies herself. Her eyes lock on Tex. “You.” She snarls.

Tex knows there will be no further talking.

The trade punches in the snow, stepping around the ruins of the ship still crumbling around them. Tex loses herself in the act of it, Omega singing in her veins as the bitterness of fall disappears in the hectic flow of violence. Like this, Carolina demands all of her attention, and so she doesn’t see him stepping out of the wreck, near invisible in his white armour. Instead, she reads his presence in the way Carolina’s movements change. Leaving space, suddenly, moving in respect to another body. Tex barely has the time leap back before the bruteshot strikes.

Tex used to admire that, privately – the way Carolina was more than just the best fighter among the freelancers, once. She had been their leader, too – the person they trusted to call the shots, to turn a group of disparate experts into a single unit that sliced through the enemy like hot metal through the ice. It had frustrated her, the way the other woman didn’t even recognize her greatest advantage in any competition they might have played. Tex could beat her in a fistfight any day of the week, but no one ever followed her into battle.

Carolina had trusted her teammates, right until the end. She moves confidently beside Maine, taking advantage of Tex’s momentary imbalance to shoot at her legs, forcing her to leap back or risk being knocked over. She then rushes forward to tackle her from the left, clearly expecting her teammate to go right. He doesn’t even bother pretending to do it – he strikes her from behind as soon as she starts moving.

Carolina looks down, like she has no idea what she’ll find sticking from her chest. Maybe she doesn’t. Then he pulls it out and she falls onto the snow with a cry. He is on her immediately, ignoring Texas as he dives to grab at her neck.

It’s a mistake.

She moves quickly, kicking at his ribs and then going for the head. She aims her strike straight for the implants, hands nearly closing around the ports. The Meta screams as he rears back from her touch, a strange terrible wail. Tex grins grimly behind her helmet. “Two can play this game, huh?”

She takes advantage of his momentary imbalance, knocking the weapon off his hand with one hand and then pressing her gun to his left side and shooting once, twice in quick succession before he manages to push her off him, half-throwing her into the snow.

She skids back two meters and straightens, gaze never moving from his visor. “You should have taken me down first, Meta. You aren’t winning this one.”

He stumbles away from her, clutching his bleeding side. his head turns from her to the prone body at his feet and then back to her, weighting the odds.

“Go on,” she says, muscles flexing, waiting for him to move, to give her an opening.

He backs down, stepping away from the fallen figure in the snow. The air flickers before him, taking a familiar, flame-clad shape.

“Not yet,” Sigma regards her thoughtfully, a cold calculation in his eyes she know intimately despite never speaking to him before. “I will see you later… sister.”

And then he’s gone, retreating away from the ship before anyone else can come out of it. She doesn’t chase him, falling down to her knees before Carolina instead. She turns her over, reaching for the clasp of her helmet.

A voice stops her as her fingers near it.

“Stay away from us – don’t touch her – we won’t let you – please, no – “

They flicker into life before her, floating over Carolina’s head like their holographic forms can provide any sort of protection. Their intermingled voices make their words near intelligible, but there is no mistaking the terror and desperation of the sound.

Texas freezes, for a moment, pushing back the urge to simply try and reach through them.

“I’m not trying to hurt her,” she tells them, one part anger and one part frustration and one part exhaustion. “I’m trying to help.”

They stare at her for a moment, distrusting, a strange standoff held after all the chips already fell. Then –

“Help – help – help – please”

- they move aside. The last remnants of Agent Carolina giving her a chance. Too late, once again.

Pulling the helmet off, she already knows what she’ll find. The green eyes staring unseeingly at her are uncannily familiar, as though she’s been here before.  

*

“How long are we going to this, York?” Texas asks.

“There is a moment, twenty-five hours and forty minutes before the end,” he says. “Where I tell her a joke.”

*

He gets very used to the sight of the flickering time dome above him.

“Alright. I think this time we should try - “

“York.”

Delta’s voice stops him midsentence. York freezes, and then carefully pushes himself into a sitting position, at which point he immediately spots the figure standing outside of the bubble, gun drawn, head tilted quizzically. Even through the flickering barrier, York knows this grey-and-yellow armour.

“What the fuck?” Says Recovery One.

York stumbles to his feet. Tex is faster, her gun immediately pointed directly at his head. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey!” Wash lowers his gun. “I’m not here to fight. I just came here because a Project’s armour recovery beacon went off.”

Tex keeps her own weapon up. “And that concerns you because…”

“Because I am the poor bastard in charge of handling those signals, these days.”

York blinks. “I thought you were certified unfit for duty.”

“Nice of you to care.” Wash’s tone is dry. “I’ve been uncertified. Apparently I’m the best man for the job.”

“So – “

“So I’m here for Gamma. And I’m here for that.” He points to the unit still humming on the ground behind them. “Although that doesn’t look like anything Reggie’s box used to do. Or anything else I’ve ever seen the project running. What is this?”

“Wellll, you could say we’ve been conducting a few field tests.” York carefully doesn’t glance at the machine behind him, mind racing in search of the best way to deal with this new development. God, but he’s not used to strategizing without Delta anymore.

“What kind – “

“Recovery one,” calls a familiar voice, “Recovery one, what’s your status? Have you reached the beacon?”

Wash hesitates for a moment, and then reaches for his comm. “York is dead. No Delta. The Meta must have gotten them both.” He glances at the pale armour discarded in the corner of the room. “No sign of Wyoming or Texas. If our intel was right and they were here, they must have moved on.”

“Copy that, Recovery One. Sending a ship to pick you up.”

“No need, Command. There are vehicles here I can use. Will rendezvous in a day or two.”

“As you wish. Coordinates sent to you now.”

The line goes dead. Washington waits a moment to make sure it’s really disconnected, and the holsters his gun. “Congratulations. You're officially dead.”

“Well, thanks. I think.”

“You’re welcome.”

Slowly, Texas lowers her weapon. “What are you doing, Wash?

“A better question is, what are doing?”

York hesitates for a moment, but, well, he doesn’t seem hostile. And there’s two of them and only one of Wash. If he reacts badly, they will win this fight. York decides to lay his cards on the table. “The time-distortion has mostly-untested long range capacity. Takes your present mind into your past body. Lets you create large scale changes, if you can get it right.”

“And when are you two trying to travel?”

York doesn’t waste time dancing around it. “Back to the ship. Before the crash, before – we think we could – “

“You’re trying to rescue the Alpha.”

“How did you - “ but Wash did have an A.I, didn’t he? Not for long, but maybe long enough to grow the same niggling questions that led York and North to go where they weren’t meant to. “You know something about the fragments’ creation, don’t you?”

“Yeah. You could say that.”

He pushes forward now, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice. Maybe this is what they need – another hand on deck, to finally get them through it. “Then you know why we did what we did. why we’re doing it now. you know it was the right thing to do, Wash.”

Washington crosses his arms. “You want me to join you on this – time travel mission of yours.”

“Well, it sure doesn’t sound like you’re all that loyal to command yourself.” York does his best to meet his eyes through the helmets. “Think about it. We could fix the way it all went down at the end – including what happened with Epsilon. Don’t tell me you don’t regret the way things went.”

Wash snorts. “I remember being him more than I remember being me, some days. How exactly is going back with my memories going to fix that?”

York hesitates at that, looking for an argument, because he didn’t know that, and doesn’t actually have a good answer here. Wash shakes his head. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”

“So you aren’t getting involved,” Tex translates.

“No, I'm going to help you. If I'm paying the price either way, they’re paying, too.”

Tex looks at him for a very long moment, then nods and holsters her gun. “Good,” she says. “Get in the dome, then. We need a new plan.”

“So why not just expose the project? Everything will stop then. There must have been some sort of documentation – “

“We can’t get our hands on the main computer without pushing them to desperate measures. And with the evidence we do have – well, you saw how well that went for Connecticut.”

Wash is quiet for a moment. “There’s another source of evidence we could get our hands on.”

Tex’s fingers clench and unclench around her knees. “What is it?”

“Epsilon remembers.”

“None of – “ us – “them remembers. That’s why they’re fragments.”

“Epsilon’s different.”

“Are you – “ yeah, he’s sure. She shakes her head. “Alright. And it will be easier to grab, at this point, having just been extracted – probably not in storage yet – “

“We could get it blamed on the Meta,” York leans forward. “Then they won’t know to start running.”

“Still doesn’t protect us from the Meta,” Wash points out. “He will be on the ship with us.”

“Yeah. There’s that.”

“There is an additional problem.”

York presses a hand to his brow. “What is it, D?

“The time-distortion unit is already under great strain. The odds that it will be able to safely deliver an additional person while maintaining steady activity are very slim.” Delta flickers. “We will not be able to reliably send Agent Washington as well as the two of you to a significant distance.”

Tex considers this. Thinks of the last few loops, and the ones before them, everything she’s done, everything she hadn’t.

“You two go,” she decides. “I will stay here, for now.”    

Wash blinks. “You’re sure? I didn’t think…”

“I’m sure. I need… some time to think, in the present moment.” She glances at Wyoming’s helmet, where all of his logs are stored, the reason she cut him down in the first place. She told Church and the guys she was going to track down Omega and put an end to him. It feels like a million years ago. It’s been maybe five days.

“I need to think about some things,” she repeats. “And there are a few other things I need to go over.”

“I’m going after Carolina,” York says, as they’re going over the plan, because a few things have to be established from the get-go.

“So it’s not just about the Alpha.” Wash doesn’t sound surprised. York waits for his reaction, wishing he could see his expression. He wonders if Wash is about to call him a hypocrite, condemn him for not trying harder to save Maine or Connie or even Wash himself. But his former friend just nods. “Alright. How, exactly?”

York laughs, and wonders

“That’s, uh, that’s kind of the problem, yeah.”

“Ah.”

“I can’t save her without getting her out of there. And I can never get her out of there.”

“Well, she always was stubborn.” Wash grimaces. “I guess you can’t really blame her. He is her family.”

“What?” Tex’s voice is inflectionless and very quite. York is glad she’s spoken, because he is suddenly frozen, and he’s not sure he could speak.

“You… didn’t know.” Wash looks from Tex’s face to York’s, and then back. “Huh.”

“What do you mean, her family?”

“The Director is Carolina’s father,” Wash states. “That’s she’s so determined to make things work for him. That’s why they were… the way that they were.”

York find his voice. “How do you know this?”

“Epsilon knew,” Wash says, and doesn’t elaborate.

“Oh.” He father. God. God. And she never told him, too proud or too loyal or too – he doesn’t even know. Maybe he should ask her, next time they’re talking, over a coffee or an infirmary bed or a loaded gun. He want to be gone, suddenly, to be anywhere and anywhen but here. It feels like she slips through his fingers a little more every moment this conversation continues. Like even the parts of her that were his for good are growing insubstantial. Unthinkingly, he pulls out the lighter, in a movement that had long become almost unconscious. The flaking print glints up at him. Errera.

He flicks the light on and off, and then puts it back.

“Well, let’s get going,” he says. “Who knows, maybe this round is our round.”

*

He speaks flippantly, but they aren’t really trying, not in this one. Repeated use of the unit has taught York he has time to waste, now; he can afford to die for a little more information. They need to figure out what Wash can do, in his current location an situation. They need to figure out if the plan to reach Epsilon is even viable – where it’s stored and how it is guarded.

So he keeps to his old course of action, mostly, letting the past take its course during the first half of the loop. He doesn’t know exactly when Wash is supposed to wake up – only that’s it’s after Carolina is discharged from the infirmary. He speaks to North about it when he comes to visit, asking him to stick around and keep an eye – maybe he could be of use to Wash, in however the rest of this goes. Otherwise, he finds a sort of comfort in settling back into this now-familiar timeless space; leaning back in the uncomfortable chair, waiting for he breath to change, listening to the ticking of the clock.

She wakes up just on time.

He helps her up, fills her in on all that she’s missing. He recycles the joke about poisoned apples. it’s fine; he is the only one who knows; she laughs like it’s the first time.

They walk together to the training, and he helps her practice fighting with A.I.s she will never get the chance to use as he waits for the message to arrive. Then she leaves to talk to the director – to talk to her father, who would ruin her in the name of a dream that would end up with a broken ship and a trail of dead bodies.

“Carolina, wait – “

She pauses and turn around, a question clear in her eyes. He pulls her into a kiss. It only lasts a moment.

“For luck,” he says.

“I don’t need luck,” she says. But there’s a smile at the corner of her mouth.

He meets Tex in the time and place they’d scheduled that very first time, when everything had felt like the end of the line. It’s funny, suddenly doing it with a Tex who doesn’t know what’s coming. He fights down the urge to try and warn her anyway, prepare her for what’s coming. He doesn’t have time to explain, doesn’t have time to convince her even on the chance she’ll believe him.

He manages not to fuck up the alarm this time too, which means he’s bought her enough time to take her shot even without stopping to mess with the gravity. He cuts over to the rest of the restricted area instead, and starts breaking door.

His comm crackles to life. “York, do you copy?”

“I’m here. What did you find?”

Wash talks fast. “They already removed it from the infirmary. I managed to get into the computer and find the orders for the doctors – before implantation, the units are delivered from lab 24. It’s possible the Epsilon has been placed back there.”

“Got it. See if you can catch up to Wyoming, make sure my path is clear.”

“On it.”

It takes him a few precious minutes to find lab 24 – the restricted section is a labyrinth of locked doors and unmarked room. He might have missed it entirely, if not for the way Delta raises head when they come near the doo. There.

The room inside is empty. There is no furniture, nothing but a row of niches on the far wall, each marked with a different Greek letter. York has never really learned his Greek alphabet, but it isn’t hard to figure out which one he’s looking for. The rest are all empty.

The Epsilon is glowing softly. As he comes near, York nearly stumbles as a strange transmission strikes his mind – a flash of an image, there and then gone, leaving nothing behind but a strange sense of nausea. In the back of his head, Delta flinches.

“You are one messed up A.I., my friend.” York pulls slowly out of its compartment using only two fingers, and then hurriedly tucks it into his armour storage. “Sure glad you never went in my head.”

At which point the ship crashes and the ceiling comes down on his head.

The restricted section is somewhat easier to navigate when it’s a smoking wreck, shadowed hallways suddenly wide open as their walls crack and crumble. He runs through it as fast as he can – forty-seven seconds – and finds Tex stumbling out of the main computer room, shaken and unsteady. “He wouldn’t… York, he – “

“Later.” He grabs he forearm to steady her and pull her toward the broken opening. “We can try again later, we have to go – “

They need to be sure they can get from the lab to their getaway. He knows, as they begin running toward the broken window, where the route is taking them – the same path she had ran the first time, and many times since then. He knows the exact measure of every minute of this day, knows already they are going to be too late for this on. It doesn’t matter, though. It doesn’t. this is an information gathering mission, and he’s got what he came for.

And so they run the usual route, climbing through the broken window into the snow-white world beyond. And so she is there, at the edge of the cliff with the Meta’s hands wrapped around her throat, that place she always returns to in the end.

Something inside him snaps, all of a sudden. And he can’t, he can’t, he can’t; he can’t lose her over that cliff one more time.

He is standing next to Tex beside the broken ship. And then he is by the edge of the cliff, the Meta turning to him, Tex running after him, calling his name. and then his feet are over the edge and he’s passed it, he is gone. Tex makes an aborted movement to catch him but her hand never connects. She lets him fall.

The icy wind screams in his ears. He twists around and he can see Carolina, barely a meter or so before him. Her head turns around to look at him, green eyes wide in a mix of shock and horror.

“I’m with you,” he says, though his voice cannot carry over the wind. “I’m not leaving you.”

Just before the ground rises to meet them, he manages to catch her hand.

When he wakes up, she is still there.

There is snow under him, so cold it gets through his armour – or maybe his armour is broken. It feels broken. Everything hurts – god, so bad.

She is beside him, leaning over him, and her armour is blood-spattered but less broken than his, like she managed to hold unto something. Her hand is on his face and her eyes are sharp and alert and desperate. Ridiculously, he raises a hand and presses it to her pulse point. Her heart beats. Once. Again. Again.

“York!” He can hear her voice, choked but clear, alive, alive, alive. “York.”

“It’s alright, Lina,” he says, unable to stop the wide smile on his face even as blood fills his mouth and his healing unit whirrs and dies. “We’re gonna be okay now.”

He wakes. There’s hard concrete at his back, Delta’s green glow on the unit beside him. He lies there for a moment, breathing through ribs that are suddenly no longer broken. The abrupt absent of pain is jarring. He’ll be dead if they break that bubble and leave that out-of-time space they are enclosed in. but he’ll be alright. He’s been here before.

He pushes himself up on his elbows, finding Wash and Tex watching him. “Well?” she asks, eyes narrowed. “Did you find it?”

York stares at her for a moment. The he drops back down the ground and laughs and laughs and laughs.

“Yes,” he says, finally, nearly breathless. “Yes, I found out what I needed to know.”

*

One last time.

They go back, and they let the world take its course.

It’s strange, after spending so long pushing, to let the current carry him again. Body moving according to the script of these last thirty-six hours, mouth saying words it’s said before. He lets it happen, all of it, from start to finish. One last time, and he’ll be leaving the past unchanged in his wake.

Except for this:

They are standing in the training room. She is turning away to go start an argument with her father she may one day get to finish. He reaches and grabs her arm.

“What is it?” she asks.

He pulls her in for a kiss. It only lasts a moment.

“For luck,” he says.

“I don’t need luck,” she says, but there’s a smile at the corner of her mouth.

“Who said the luck’s for you?” he grins at her.

She shakes her head fondly and pulls away, lingering just a moment before heading towards that door.

“York,” says Delta, “as you know, luck is merely a skewed perception of probabilities. No action can ensure you will be more likely to gain it. It does not exist.”

“I know, D.” York smiles as he watches her walk away. “Don’t think too hard about it.”

And then he goes to meet up with Texas. After all, he has a ship to crash.

She doesn’t go for the Alpha. She doesn’t need to go for the Alpha. The Alpha is waiting for her.

She goes for Epsilon.

the lab York described is harder to reach, probably because more people know about its contents, but the difference is not so big that it would change things meaningfully. She finds everything exactly the way York said they would be –  

“What do you think you’re doing, Agent Texas?”

She freezes, her fingers around the Epsilon unit, and then pushes it into her storage and slowly turns around. He’s standing behind her, dressed in black, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. As familiar a sight as her own borrowed face. She remembers his blood on her boots, Carolina’s dead eyes in the snow. She remembers his smile when he gave her her codename, when he told her she was his most trusted agent. she remembers his voice screaming for her during that fight with Carolina, bringing everyone down around them.

Allison. Sometimes it feels like her name.

“I’m leaving, Leonard,” she says. “For good. I’m done.”

“No.” He raises his chin. “I will not allow this.”

The words ring hollow in the air between them. She is wearing full armour, and he’s unarmed and alone. She is the best there’s ever been, and he is a man who has never been a soldier. This is the last time of them all.

“You and her will never go home,” she tells him. “You know that, right?”

He reels back, as though it would have been kinder of her to just punch him. She presses on, because he made her to get the job done.

“Let he and I try, as long as we’ve got the time.” She takes off her helmet, meets his eyes, lets him see her. “There's nothing we can give you anymore.”

A few precious seconds tick away as they stare at each other in the empty lab. The Mother of Invention will meet its end soon.

“There are bigger things at stake than us,” he says, hollowly.

“I’ll take care of those, too,” she promises. “You made me good enough for that.”

He lets her pass. She doesn’t look back.

She never sees him again.

*

Washington’s fingers hover over Epsilon as though it was a live grenade.

“And you’re sure your guy will be able to handle it?”

“He’s not my guy.” Wash grimaces. “But yes, the chairman has been looking for dirt on the project for a while now. he will know how to use this.”

He exhales, then grabs the unit and pushes it quickly into his storage. “Shouldn’t take more than a few weeks for it all to go down.”

“Good.” York looks at the two of them. “That does still leave us with one problem.”

Tex’s lips tighten. “The Meta.”

“He will come for you,” Wash says, grim certainty in his voice. “It might take him a while, but eventually he will get you. You’re worth too much for him.”

“He isn’t as strong as he thinks he is,” Tex insists. “We can take him.”

“Didn’t work so well for us last time,” York points out.

She shakes her head. “We’ll have better control of the area this time. More help. We can contact the others, if we have to – I’ll bet the twins aren’t exactly interested in meeting him alone, either.” She pulls up a holographic map and lights up a point on it. “Meet me here in six months and we’ll plan from there.”

“That’s in the middle of fucking nowhere.” Wash squints at the map. “Well, I guess at least we don’t have to worry about any trouble starting up there.”

For a shithole, Blood Gulch is a strangely charming sight during sunset, at least while you’re standing on the cliffs. Tex makes her way down slowly – from this vantage she can see the lights on in both bases, which probably means the idiots haven’t killed themselves yet.

She’s about three quarters of the way down to blue base when she hears a loud, biting voice she could recognize at the end of the world. coming around the corner, she finds him leaning on his sniper rifle, talking animatedly on the radio.

“Look, I’m not saying you should kill Tucker’s horrible thing. I’m just saying, if we left it near the reds’ little minefield we might have one less problem – “ a vague mumbling on the other side “ – you’re right, ask Caboose to do it. Two problems.”

She deactivates he camouflage. “You tried that one two months ago, remember? He just rolled and got back up.”

The way he jumps and shrieks is hilarious. Then he turns to glare at her. “Tex? Where the hell have you been?”

“Shut the fuck up, Church,” she says. “Some of us have a real job. Fighting people who are an actual threat, you know? Actually, I guess you don’t.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, some of us have been dealing with Omega –uh, your problem – while you were off doing your important freelancer stuff.”

“Well, I’m here to save your asses now, am I?”

He snorts. “Yeah, better late than never, I guess.”

Thank god she has a helmet to hide the fond smile on her face. She would never live that down. “Something like that. Now tell me what you idiots have managed.”

The news break when York is in transit to the next planet, sitting in the back row of a crowded-but-cheap passenger ship. There is a big television screen at the front of the passenger area. Some story about colony rehabilitation comes to s meandering end and is suddenly replaced with a wide, bold headline: Project Freelancer, exposed!

York leans back in his seat, watches as it all begins to appear before him, from the bottom up. It’s funny, seeing it all laid out like this. People are mumbling around him, a few exclaiming in shock or offense. He pays them no mind. Wash’s chairman guy did a thorough work; it’s impressive, how much they got. There are pictures, some of them making him feel strangely nostalgic. He appears in a few, but luckily all with his helmet. There is no need to try and hide his face. As calmly as he can, he leans back and waits for them to arrive at their destination. Delta has been running searches through UNSC databases, trying to find any likely alias Carolina might use. Their first two attempts didn’t pan out, but he has a good feeling about this one. She’s always liked the area.

As a legally dead member of a now-criminalized secret project, York doesn’t have any authorized access for – well, absolutely anywhere. As the former infiltration expert of a once incredibly lucrative secret project, York doesn’t have any problem breaking into a random military base in the outskirts of the galaxy. It takes Delta about thirty seconds to break into the base personnel files.

And then there she is. His image search finds a facial match within moments. The computer spits out the details: fake name, rank, equipment. Room number in quarters.

He walks down the hallways like he belongs there, and nobody questions him. When he reaches the right room he presses his ear carefully to the door, listening for sign of movement. Nothing.

He tries the handle. The door’s unlocked. That’s… not like her.

He hesitates for a moment, but at the end of the day, he was never much one for privacy. The room on the other side of the door is bare and very small. A narrow bad. A locker storage cabinet. No personal effects outside of a small computer. The computer is on. Something on the screen catches his eye.

Stepping closer, he can see the project’s registry open on the computer; showing the now public details. She had scrolled down all the way to the most recent additions: Agent Wyoming, KIA. Agent York, KIA. Agent Washington, MIA.

“I suppose we could wait for her to return,” Delta pops into existence by his side, leaning forward to look at the computer. “Hopefully, our survival would be considered a pleasant surprise.

“Nah,” York decides after a moment. “It’s alright, we should go meet her. I know where she’ll be.”

It’s a guess, of course, but it’s a pretty good guess. He does know her, after all.

Let's try this again. One last time, from the beginning.

There's a club in the town of New Venus, on a tiny moon where military personnel spend their leave. There’s a woman sitting at the bar, drinking like she’s trying to forget. She is wearing civilian clothes – an old aqua t-shirt, a pair of worn jeans. She didn’t dress for dancing – not tonight, not for a long time. The club’s ethereal lighting makes her look like a ghost, but she isn’t one. You’ll see.

There’s a man, making his way toward her. There’s a lighter in his hand.

“This seat open?”

She turns around like lightning.

She doesn’t look like he remembers her, like he’s reached for her, like he’s lost her. Her hair is cut shorter than he’s even seen it; there’s a scar on her left cheek that didn’t use to be there; there’s a broken edge to her eyes that is different.

The lights gleam on her too-short hair and she is not a memory. She is something new.

“Hey, did it hurt when you fell from the cliff?” he asks, breathless and giddy. “’cause baby, you look like an angel.”

And she laughs, like she’s hearing it for the very first time.