Location : Fort Helsinki, Blumhagen Outpost.

For Iris, showering wasn’t really about getting clean. She didn’t even use soap. She wasn’t exactly sure what the chemical goop truly contained, but the point of rubbing down in hot water was stimulation of her synthetic skin. Not nearly as convenient as spray paint, like some full-body prostheses used, but it had the benefit of not looking like spray paint.

Sunlight was reflecting off the photovoltaic fields outside, old-tech that somehow still hadn’t broken. She tinted her windows with a thought while toweling her hair dry. With another thought, she turned on the news feed over the main tv. An advertisement leapt onto the screen, trying to sell her some kind of exercise dress with a stretchy, non-binding skirt that would look perfect at a cafe and yet also let her run. Whether it was bullshit or not, she had no idea. It was, however, the exact kind of bait that got her to put in an order for next day delivery just to see.

Not like she had much else to spend her pay on.

“Good morning, monster,” she said, leaning down to peer at the fish tank. It wasn’t really a fish tank, of course. It had steel plating on five of the six sides, and two inches of polycarbonate on the last, so she could see inside where she kept the torn off fragment of Fauxnir, as HQ had dubbed it. The leech-like creature didn’t react. It didn’t do anything but lay at the bottom of the tank. Iris was reasonably certain that if the sample she had given Holly was destroyed, her fragment would somehow know that it had become the largest remaining sample, and begin regenerating.

So far, it hadn’t happened. It hadn’t died either.

“Yesterday, near the sight of a downed airplane, of all things, a long lost, Soviet era missile silo was discovered in Siberia Sector 07.”

The voice of the news anchor from the tv made Iris stand up and pay attention. She slapped her wet towel over her shoulder and folded her arms.

Summer Lee and her co-anchor, Jack Forester, stared out of the television, seemingly right at Iris as they spoke. Whether it was a mere optical illusion, or another layer of so-called immersion, she couldn’t tell. The footage playing between them was all from the previous day’s mission though. The contrast between their nearly superhuman good looks and the bleak, grimy chase through the cabin and the tunnels was so jarring, Iris nearly rebooted her vision systems.

Blumhagen had downscaled the video taken from Iris’ feed before providing it to the media. There were pixels in all the shadows. When the scavenger opened fire on her, the exchange could hardly be seen. Just flashes and slashes. They added the sound of dropping bullet bits against the ground in post, a complete fabrication.

Then the media began their editorializing of it. “While securing the crash site in a known radiation zone, Kodiak operatives encountered armed resistance from local forces. They had been using the missile silo to hide an illegal drug operation, seemingly without knowledge that a colony of blighted had managed to survive right under their feet. Full sterilization of the area had to ensue.”

Jack Forester smiled and nodded. He folded his hands together and said, “The good news is that an inspection team is now onsite, to evaluate the soil conditions in the area. Some heavy logging will be needed, to clear the emergent forest, but it’s possible that automated farming may have the sector producing grain in as little as eight months.”

The footage cycled between various shots of the inferno, the captured prisoners, the RW-33’s leaping through the forest, stuff like that to reinforce their interpretation of events that neatly cut out how exactly Fauxnir had been destroyed and what kind of plane had been shot down. Then they played old footage of Iris at a cross-functionality training camp six months back.

It had been a great time, and she had been happy to work with the infantry. They were country boys, mostly, who had no idea what a full-body prosthesis was capable of. Most people didn’t even know what a HAB unit was, though she wrote that off as media misinformation, since they never explained it was just slang for Heart And Brain unit. It had been great.

However, the media was using the video from the marine exercises. That is, the video was of her in a swimsuit.

She rang up the responsible party. “Silvy, what the fuck?”

“Your message has been recorded successfully,” the machine responded.

Iris chucked her towel at the laundry chute and threw on some clothes. With her hair still soaked, she stormed out of her apartment and headed for the parking garage. Blumhagen had set her up well, in a building tall enough to still see over the seabreaks ringing the city. The ocean wasn’t much to look at, but it was better than the mosaic of solar panels and advertisements that the rest of the city was colored in.

Turning her back on the waves and riding her bike through the city was like channel surfing on hyperspeed. There were billboards, storefronts, and direct beam blasts to her eyes trying to sell her everything under the sun. Alcohol, vacations, designer drugs, designer gene therapy, limitless plastic surgery. One company offered to directly inject the revelations of Buddha to her brain so she could achieve enlightenment.

Iris clicked shut polarizing lenses for her eyes and most of the ads vanished. She focused on her bike, the feel of the metal thrumming with road vibrations. She knew full well it wasn’t the best way to get around, not when transit trams covered the city like cardiac lines, but she liked the retro toy cobbled together from last century designs and next century parts. The bike hauled and was just different enough from her that it didn’t feel like an extension of her body.

It bumped and twisted of its own accord. The accelerator lagged. It handled different after the tires warmed up. It nearly had a life of its own to prove that it was something in her grasp rather than just more of her robotic body. When she skidded to a stop in front of the Blumhagen office, it left a little vibration in her hands and legs, a tingle in her synthetic skin that was perfectly human.

The office doors automatically unlocking because the security systems could scan her internals and did all the identification handshakes in a few microseconds only slightly dampened that feeling in her. Just a small reminder that she had a computer processor where her stomach should have been.

“Silvy!” Iris barked as she marched into the communication center.

Her Overwatch was sprawled out over a reclined massage chair, her lithe body getting all the knots and tweaks worked out. She wasn’t sleeping though, she had a multi-feed strapped onto her head, pumping at least a dozen video feeds into her brain for simultaneous processing. It took her a moment to shut off the flow and pull the headset off. She rose, as groggy as if she had been dead asleep, and about as grumpy.

Iris snatched the medicinal bottle off Silvy’s desk and held it out to her. “Drink,” she ordered. It was mostly water, some electrolytes, and some patented catalyst that would flush out the neural uppers from Silvy’s head and take her back down to human levels. She had been genetically engineered for it, but the tweaks weren’t without drawbacks.

Once the redhead– another genetic tweak– blinked the fog from her eyes, she looked around and finally recognized Iris. “Oh! … shit. What time is it?”

“Nine fifteen.”

“You saw the news then, didn’t you?” Silvy asked, and got a glare as a response. “I’m sorry! Commander Mendel told me to send over the folder of sympathetic videos we had of you. He’s the one who picked that shot and sent it over for release. It wasn’t me, I swear.”

“You just had me in my bikini on the morning news! How was that in the sympathy file?”

Silvy pouted and twiddled her fingers. She couldn’t make eye contact with her. “Well, you know, we have different filters set up based on the local culture. These things are complicated. Some places see that as body positivity while others will see it as objectification. I think it was even marked for use as cultural oppression in certain theocracies, if we were to move in on them. I think what’s important is that you looked good!”

Iris took a deep breath and said, loudly, “My tits are not a war asset.”

“I’m sorry,” Silvy said, her shoulders slumping. Even her twintails seemed to sag more beneath Iris’ glare.

She couldn’t keep up the anger. She let it out and sat down on Silvy’s desk. “Alright, look, I know you didn’t do it on purpose. But what was that about it being a Soviet missile silo? What century do they think this is?”

Silvy perked up and frowned. “I mean, it was Soviet. You think the Russians went and rebuilt those mega structures or something?”

“Russia hasn’t been a thing in almost two hundred years. The soviets even longer. Like, yeah, concrete takes a long time to break and stuff, but that doesn’t mean mutated blighted are just going to spring up in there! It was a hole in the ground, nothing more. Someone had to put that thing there, so who was it?”

Silvy sucked down the last of her drink and shrugged. “We passed the info up the chain to Kodiak. We’re not responsible for tracking those kinds of bio-weapons.”

Iris snorted, a noise she was delighted she could still make. “So who cooked up that story? Kodiak?”

“Who else? It’s the contract holder’s responsibility to manage the PR, so long as we give them the tools to do so. Aren’t you glad they kicked in to cover your skin rebuild?”

“Speaking of which, shouldn’t I have gotten injury pay or something? I’d love some extra pay. There’s this crazy roleplaying experience cruise ship murder mystery thing I saw, where every one dresses up like they’re on the Titanic and you have to find the killer before they get you!”

Silvy scratched the back of her head. “As much as I’d love to see you in a ballgown, you didn’t get injured.”

“A regular person would have been killed. I think that warrants some compensation that I don’t need to be thankful for, don’t you think?”

Commander Mendel popped up on Silvy’s main display screen. “Miss Haber, that’s a ridiculous standard. That’s like saying anyone who gets shot in the leg should be treated like their artery blew out.” He then slurped his coffee and stared at them without taking his sunglasses off. They were display integrated and had a legitimate purpose, but they still annoyed Iris. There just wasn’t anything about the man that said soldier about the man, except his musculature. He even kept his hair in dreads.

Iris glared over her shoulder at the office security camera her boss had been using, but turned back to his image. “Boss, you don’t even give me time for psych eval.”

“Maybe if you needed one, I would. I’m not going to have pity for someone who keeps stuffing their hands into someone else’s mess. Now pack your bags, you’re going for a flight.”

“What? I haven’t even had a full day’s break yet. My skin is still numb and sticky!”

“Don’t want to hear it, Miss Haber, you’re going to the Jian Line to find these smugglers you caught wind of. You’re the one who found the BISON company chemicals. Take some responsibility for it. If you bust a smuggling op like that, we’re all getting bonuses.” Silvy tried to hide her smirk as Iris sagged. “You too, Miss Bosch. You’ll be providing local support, not sitting around at HQ.”

Silvy leapt to her feet and slammed her hands on the desk. “What? Why?”

Commander Mendel huffed. “Because I ain’t paying to get your signal all the way through UAAF jamming, that’s why! Pack your bags, the both of you.”