I slip into the room, but my attempt to quietly close the door behind me is blocked. I try not to swear much, but boy oh boy I am thinking that I going to master that skill very soon. “Sorry Frank, I did not realize you were coming in.” I don’t turn around to look at him. “If you don’t need anything I am going to lie down a bit and relax. Been a long day.”

He responds by grabbing my shoulder and turning me around. “I said to not be alone and I mean it. I will give you ten minutes but then we need to have a chat.” I internally sigh; I know I cannot avoid this but I still am dreading it. I quietly lay down on the bed and try not get myself in more trouble while I quietly watch Frank do something at the desk. There is something serene about watching him work; that gentle breathing imitation is quite pleasant in spite of its original intent. I end up getting lost in watching him calmly study something that he pulled out of the desk. “Ten minutes are up Kel,” he says after, almost surprisingly, ten minutes. “Let’s talk about shower etiquette. I understand that you may have had a new world forcibly opened up to you. Actually what do you know about that?”

“I just had downloaded some stuff to actually learn anything about it yesterday, just minutes before.” I am not sure I even want to read those files now.

“That is pretty awful; so this is definitely new to you. As I was saying you are probably quite curious right now about yourself and your fellow cyborgs. That actually happens a lot, so don’t worry about it.” That does not surprise but hardly relieves me. “Just don’t be giving your fellow soldiers the once over in the shower, okay? It is unprofessional. You should go over those downloaded files. I also have access to materials should you require them.” He seem dead serious about what he is saying.

“Not sure when I will have time. How urgent is it that I check?” The concept is unpleasant now, my earlier enthusiasm destroyed.

“No rookies right now, but I would say fairly. Not understanding issues the soldiers underneath you are likely to have is an easy way to get yourself in trouble. If you want I can be there to answer questions. I expect that our squad will have embarked and reached their quarters by now, Let’s go introduce ourselves then.” He gets up and glides out of the room with that same deadly grace as before. I wish I could unsee it.

As we leave our room he gestures to the two rooms next to us. “These are where the squad will stay, five to a room. We were fortunate in that I had an extra bed stored, otherwise one of us would be sleeping on the floor. Squad, ten-hut,” he suddenly bellows. Moments after the command I hear the thundering of quite a few heavy feet followed by the sudden emergence of 10 cyborgs, as massive as us, arranging themselves quickly in five rows of two, as the hallway would accommodate no wider. “Listen up,” his voice still booming, “I am Sergeant Jacobs for those of you who do not know me. This is Sergeant Kel; he will be working alongside us and answer only to me. Am I clear,” he questions, each phrase a bark more than anything else.

“Yes, Sergeant,” they blast in return.

“Introduce yourselves,” he blares out.

“Lance Corporal Higgins, Sergeants. Lance Corporal Smith, Sergeants. Private First Class Brown, Sergeants. Private First Class Jones, Sergeants. Private First Class Johnson, Sergeants. Private Martinez, Sergeants. Private Rodriquez, Sergeants. Private Davis, Sergeants. Private Miller, Sergeants. Private Wilson, Sergeants.” Each of them thunders their name out in turn. I quickly make a note of them in turn.

“I know Sergeant Kel looks different; he is special tech, government issue. I expect you to respect that and to not pry into government affairs. Understood?” His voice expels presence alongside its power.

“Yes, Sergeant,” they cry in unison.

“I will see you all at 0400. Until then dismissed.” They disperse back to their rooms. “You get their names, Sergeant?”

“Yes, Sergeant. I must ask, how do you differentiate them? The different voices work if they are speaking, but when silent and their names are not on them I do not want to make a fool of myself.” I have a lot to learn in very little time

“There are some programs we can do to help you out. Do you also need the ship’s schematic?” I like him a lot better when he talking evenly in the smooth baritone of his. “Follow me; I know a good hub to get them from.”

I follow him through the ship, out of the cyborg barracks I suppose and through a rec area into a small room. The moment he opened the door to that room I noticed a blast of net access that continued as we entered and he shut the door behind us. “Rooms like this are meant for rapid and massive downloads for us but can easily interfere with other communications due to their strength, so we isolate them. They are also supposed to be shut down when not in active use so give me a moment to see who I need to bust for this.” He places his hand near a blank screen which flares to life and reacts as he manipulates the space before it. “Gotcha Corporal Johnson,” he mutters. He looks at me without moving his hand. “I will just send a message to his superior to speak with him about this. Problem solved I hope. You will also be responsible for keeping on top of stuff like this as well. I am going to teach you though. Do you know how to use one of these screens?” I shake my head; I have seen them used by rich people with robot hands but never got near one myself. Don’t want to burden him with trivia though. “Fair enough,” he says.

He does some more mucking around with the screen. “I will teach you a bit later, but let’s just add a tutorial onto this list of files.” Once he stops moving his hand he turns towards me again, “ready for the download? Just accept when it is sent to you.” Shortly after a download pops up and I just mentally tap “yes.”

Bright hole in black shining. “Youth, things move ever forward. Ponder the question. Even one hundred billion light-years away I will always be there to guide you as I did your ancient ancestors.” I reach toward the destroyer of darkness but my taint causes me with withdraw my hand. “The Youth is dirty.” A strange rattling noise around me. “I cannot clean the Youth; only the Youth can do that.” Words made of bone and suffering holding stick. “I understand.” More rattling. “Tell him about this. We will cannot allow this to proceed.” The shining shimmers gently. “We cannot move the Tower. This mocks Energy. This most be solved.” Now, the wings and arms and light again. “The Youth is as we were.” Looks at me. “The pain can be cleansed; it is easy.” Left hand reaches out, holding something. I reach back. Sand pours into my hand. “Just fall, my Youth. It is that easy.” I see only dark ocean and sand. The foam touches my feet; I run.

“Sergeant, can you hear me?” Frank’s voice sounds concerned. It’s nice; I should just relax more. “No, Sergeant, Kel, come on. Give me a sign. The corpsman will be here soon I just need you to wake up.” Ugh, it’s so warm here. I don’t want to. I feel a hand, his I think, on my face. I instinctively pull away and make a noise. “Kel, I am not filling out the paperwork for you doing on me so start talking.” I turn and look at him. He is studying me carefully; I wish I knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Not a funny joke. I got that too much when I worked at the corps. Too expensive to die, too much work if I die.” As soon as he is certain I am responding he relaxes.

“It is a lot of paperwork if you die though. Besides the comment is a great way to hide how much it hurts losing one of your men. Black humor I think it’s called?” He has a hand on my chest and is, wait is my shirt off? I reach to try to cover myself but he uses his other hand to push me away. “I am keeping an eye on your heart Kel. The moment that download started you collapsed. Big boom too. Your heart felt pretty dicey for a bit. Just hold still and wait for the corpsman.”

I just mutter a bit to that. I am really not in the mood for this right now. His hand is nice though. Okay, I need to not think about that right now. Just need to stay focused. I internally search for the files and they appear to have downloaded; I will parse them later. The shock seems to have shut off the music though so I just will it to start back up and go from there. It takes a moment to fire up before it fires up some weird spoken word thing; I don’t remember this. The music is odd and changes over time and a woman’s voice is talking quietly, something about connections, things I cannot quite hear, something about control? I am trying to change it but the auto play seems damaged.

“Kel, what’s wrong?” How is he so perceptive? “How about we talk out loud, so we can hear each other and I can tell if something changes more easily.” He is worried.

“You are too worried. I am too valuable to not have something built in to prevent me from becoming a pile of scrap.” The words comfort me even though I have no idea if they are true.

“You are under my command. I am worried exactly enough Sergeant and I expect you to learn that lesson quickly. I cannot save everyone and I have, and will again, put people under my command in lethal situations. That does not mean I will not do everything in my power to keep them safe when I can and remember them when I cannot..” The strange music makes it hard not to relax overly much.

“Ever seen a titan Sergeant?” I only heard bits and pieces of the Titan War but am desperate for a topic change. Mainstream media was keeping that under tight wraps.

“Yes, but it is not good conversation. That was a brief, brutal, and terrible fight. I do not even understand how it started, but that is not my job thankfully. I just fight and lead.” Okay, so bad topic change.

“Sorry, I did not mean to make things worse. How long will I be down here?” I want to stand up, but there is something making me just want to sit and listen to my mind.

“Hopefully not long. The ship is still in a bit of disarray from getting every aboard and prepared. Official cast off is not for another two hours.” I just nod and listen to the talking. A quiet bell, I think, is that is playing. Okay, there is a woman’s voice talking about things happening at the right time; that seems overly optimistic.

“Hey!” Sergeant Jacobs flicks my face to wake me up. Unfortunately to smacks right on one of those carved lines and my whole body jumps from the sudden sharp pain.

“Watch it,” I shriek at him. My rage denies under a gentle chant though. “Sorry Sergeant,” I whisper apologetically. “Those are sensitive.” His body tenses in anger at my response.

“Do not yell at me Sergeant Kel. I am your superior and you will respect that, got it?” The frustration comes through in his voice in an almost venomous whisper. He distracts himself by touching those lines more gently. “What are those?”

His hands are warm and hard and I shudder and pull my head away. “Please don’t Sergeant. That… that feels good. They are new; I got them installed all over by Lieutenant Kies. They are part of an advanced sensor net he installed.”

At that point Frank does what I could only describe as melt. “He knew and he taught you didn’t he?” His voice is a lot more quiet now. I hope the corpsman comes soon. This awful week is just on a rampage.

“Yes, Frank. I never stood a chance.” Why is today profound music file? These days are the opposite of profound I would say.

“You’re trying not to think about it and that’s okay, Sergeant. Also I’ll let that informality slide this time, but keep a lid on it in general.” I wish I knew and understood him better. I wish I had his awesome level of perception. I will just have to learn though; maybe once this sensor net is maxed out I can learn more.

Our conversation is ultimately interrupted by the corpsman coming through the door. He is meat flanked by two medical cyborgs, likely needed to help move me. I can see equipment out of the corner of my eyes but don’t want to turn my head to figure out what it is. He and Frank start talking about what happened, but his, Frank’s, hand is still on my chest. The corpsman places a sensor of some kind of my chest and Sergeant Jacobs finally removes his hand. I am going to miss it. The corpsman starts reading something on a small pad and asks Sergeant Jacobs for a copy of the heart monitoring he took. He apparently does not want to move me until he is sure that my heart won’t suffer some issue first. I am just laying down here trying not to make more of a mess. The Captain and Captain Salazar are not going to be happy. The corpsman frowns and reaches for one of the lines on my chest, stroking gently with those warm-hards cyborg hands. Like lightning Sergeant Jacobs is on me trying to hold me down. I did not even realize I was in the middle of taking a swing at the medical guy.

“Sorry, Staff Sergeant. Don’t know much about those but they are sensitive and apparently mis-calibrated. Touching them causes him to go berserk briefly.” I force myself to calm down but I feel so disgusting again; it was right above my heart.

The corpsman nods calmly. “They seem to be the problem. It looks like they were fully activated briefly and he blacked out as defense to prevent damage to his heart. I will need to see if there is anything about his body on file. Otherwise I want him taken to the medical bay and examined for a few hours, possibly overnight. Send two of your men in case he has another outburst.” He seems oddly calm about the fact I made a reasonable attempt at pasting his head. I suppose I should be grateful. The two medical cyborgs load me onto a stretcher, part of that equipment I see, and starting wheeling me away. I just keep quiet and still, but I do receive a message from Sergeant Jacobs as I am wheeled away. “Keep in touch tonight. You are not alone.” He also is not mad at me for taking a swing at the corpsman, so that at least makes me feel better about today.