Don't Dream It's Over

They strip off her tac gear and shove her into the Chair, placing restraints on her right arm and ankles. A tech approaches, prying apart the plates on her upper arm to get at the hardware beneath.

She sits still, compliant, and tries to process the feelings rushing through her, the flashes of something hovering at the edges of her mind, just out of reach.

The man on the bridge had called her something. Becky, he’d said, and met her eyes with astonishment and… hope? Relief? Whatever it was, she’s never seen someone look at her with that expression before. It makes her uncomfortable, nervous. In her narrow world of blood and pain, she’s come to rely on the few things that seem constant: her cell, her gear, the feel of the sedatives in her veins. Her rifle, heavy and sure in her hands. The look of fear in the faces of her targets.

It unsettles her, the change in his expression when he saw her face.

Becky?

“Who the hell is Becky?” she’d said, but the name clutches at her now, and she can almost hear an echo of it, spoken by the same voice, in a different time.

Becky! The name screamed, over a vast distance, laden with fear and panic and anguish. The rush of wind in her ears, blank white rushing up to meet her. A pale face disappearing, turning into a little dot above her, whisked away before she can call out.

Sometimes, when she’s in her cell and they’ve turned the temperature down, drugs working through her system and turning everything hazy and slow, she’s bothered by the memory—the illusion—of snow.

White blanketing the world, heaped on grey, jagged rocks, so cold it burns like fire, like being jabbed with a million needles all at once.

“Help me,” she pleaded, repeated it in Pashto, in Dari, in Urdu, but they didn’t speak to her. They grabbed her legs and dragged her, dragged her through the snow.

A red streak followed her, blood from her mangled arm.

Her head throbs. Her throat feels tight and swollen. The man, she thinks. There’s something about him, but she can’t quite get it, can’t catch hold of it.

Strapped to a metal table, a rubber bit stuck between her teeth. The whir of a bone saw, agony so intense her vision whited out, and she realized that the broken screams tearing at her ears were her own.

She doesn’t know what’s going on, can’t understand what these—these images, are, and frustration wells up in her chest. She lashes out with her left arm, backhanding the tech halfway across the room.

There’s a chorus of clicks as the surrounding agents cock their guns, training their weapons on her chest. If she moves, they might shoot her.

Would I die? she wonders, and considers ripping at the restraints, just to see. If they shoot her, she won’t have to think about snow and Becky! and the man on the bridge.

God, it hurts, a throbbing ache in her chest like a cracked rib. She slumps over, breathing hard. Something is off, something is wrong; she can feel it, pressing under her skin, poking at her. It’s not the kind of pain she’s used to. She doesn’t know how to endure it, and it terrifies her.

There’s a commotion at the door, and someone says, “Sir, it’s not stable,” and someone else says, “Do I look like I care?”

She doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters except the ache in her ribs. Except.

Boots march across the concrete floor. A voice she recognizes says, “Attention, Soldier.”

It’s instinct to lift her head at that, to hold herself at attention, not meeting her handler’s eyes. It’s the dark-haired one. He looks angry.

Anger means punishment. Anger means pain.

She doesn’t know why he’s angry; she followed her orders. The targets were captured. But she’s long since learned that doing what she’s told doesn’t always allow her to escape punishment. Sometimes, there doesn’t have to be a reason—it’s just a reminder that her body doesn’t belong to her, any more than her mind does.

“Soldier,” he says. “Report.”

She knows how this goes. The protocol is drilled into her, the dull, concise statements adjusted for each mission. Target eliminated. Collateral damage. No witnesses.

The words won’t come. She stares at his boots, listening to the ringing in her ears.

Becky?

“Soldier. Report.”

“Soldier. Report.”

The slap comes as a surprise, her whole head jerking to hit the back of the Chair. She blinks up into his furious face, words slippery as blood in her mouth.

“Report,” he hisses.

She opens her mouth, but what comes out is, “The man… on the bridge. Who was he?”

The handler steps back, exchanging glances with one of the other agents. “It doesn’t matter. Make your report.”

“But…” and she knows better, she knows better than to do this, to argue—she hasn’t tried to argue in so long. She doesn’t even remember the last time, if it even happened at all. But she can’t seem to help it. Something is pushing from inside her, pushing the words out without her consent. “I knew him.”

The handler hesitates, then says, in a calmer tone, “He was involved with one of your missions earlier this week.”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t remember him from a mission. Nobody on a mission would say Becky! in that surprised tone of voice. Nobody else would… “I know him,” she repeats.

“We need you for another mission,” the handler says. “You need to focus.”

“He called me…” She licks her lips, something inside of her screaming to stop! Shut up now! She can’t help it. “He called me a name.”

“You don’t have a name.”

“Becky,” she whispers softly. “He called me Becky.”

This time, he hits her hard enough to break the skin. Blood trickles into her mouth, sticky and metallic. She knows she’s done something wrong, but she’s not sure what. Maybe the man on the bridge would know—but no, he was her target, wasn’t he? Maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk to him. Normally, she doesn’t speak on missions at all.

But this mission had been different from the start. She’s never exposed herself like that, fighting in a street in the light of day.

“Wipe it and put it through conditioning,” says the handler. “It’s clearly breaking down.”

“But, sir, the mission tomorrow—”

“Do you really think I’m going to send it out like this? Its conditioning is breaking down, I tell you.” The handler casts her a disgusted look.

She feels a hot prickle of shame. She’s let them down, somehow. She’s done something wrong, and let them down.

“Wipe it,” he repeats. “I’ll deal with this once Insight launches.”

The techs approach her cautiously, but she doesn’t fight them as they put on more restraints. She doesn’t fight as they tip her back, as they force the rubber between her teeth.

She doesn’t struggle, but her hands clench on the arms of the Chair, and she starts to hyperventilate as the metal pads come down, as they clamp around her head.

Becky! she thinks. They start the machine. White pain lances through her head, like hot lead pouring through her skull, and there is no room left in her mind for thought.

All she can do is scream.