Nimue breathed deeply and tried to quiet her mind as the elevator bore her down into the tombs where Hoffman made his lair. She didn’t close her eyes, though the urge to do so was strong. Instead, she stared straight ahead and did her best to keep her heightened perception and enhanced cognitive abilities from picking up on all the ways the overhead lights flickered millisecond to millisecond and how the metal walls seemed to shrink and look more like wood grain as the seconds ticked by.
There was only so much she could do, however, aside from ripping the doors open and taking the express way down. That was no good. Though all security and surveillance equipment automatically shut down as she traveled through any Company facility, the CEO knew that no system was fool proof, and it would not do to let any of her employees see her lose her composure. Not now.
The blood scent seeped into her mind. It wasn't real. She knew that. Since when had that made any difference? The flickers were growing too frequent, entire eternities passing in darkness. The darkness was the worst of it. It made it all too easy to imagine herself locked in a storage cabinet, shivering and sweating, one hand clasped over her mouth and nose in an attempt to keep herself from crying out. The screams would start soon.
*Ding*
The clinically clean metal door slid aside, revealing a black hallway with blue-ish LEDs running along the bottom edges. Nimue shot out of the metal box and into the chilly basement, already back under control before a mundane human could blink. She powered ahead, not looking back as the doors slid back closed, taking the twists and turns of the halls at a respectable speed that said 'I have places to be.' She carried no ID card or digital marking of any kind that would let the building’s systems recognize her, but she didn’t need any guidance. B-10 didn’t use any spatial folding or obfuscation other than the mundane kind that Hoffman plied with the trainees, mostly darkness and banal uniformity. Plus, the emptiness of the floor made it easy to pick out the range where Camilla Johansen was currently going through her test. The woman’s aura, a healthy shade of red with swirling nebulas of violet, seemed to lash out in random directions, stretching and straining as stressed creatures tended to do to extend their survival in Hoffman’s little torture chamber.
Still fighting, no doubt after many deaths.
The girl's tenacity would have been admirable if she wasn’t wasting Nimue’s precious time lingering down here.
In a *woosh* of displaced air, Nimue was at the panel for the range and running her hand over the sensor. It flashed red, and a ghostly, DENIED, appeared on the smooth, black surface of the door.
"That's just petty, Master Hoffman," she muttered to the empty air.
She allowed some of the annoyance to creep onto her face and made an exaggerated wave over the sensor once again, brushing her fingers over it ever so gentlyh, just enough to put a single, ugly crack in the glassteel. The panel blinked red again, but for a different reason this time.
Unsurprisingly, the door now slid open to allow her entry into the 'range.' Apparently, today, it was a jungle made of hard light. To most people, all of the foliage and terrain that Hoffman could conjure looked and felt like the real thing, but to her, it was a flickering kaleidoscope of phantom colors, beautiful in its own right but empty, far from the splendor of the real thing and lacking the aura and spark that real, living breathing Earth had. The flashing and fading light zipped back and forth and collided with her skin to simulate solid matter, but she was far beyond any force the system could exert upon her. Even moving through the numerous tree trunks or boulders merely felt like passing through thin cobwebs.
If Johansen’s aura wasn’t so easily discernible from the lifeless background of the room, her shallow, tremulous breathing would have been Nimue's guide. She found the young liaison crouched down in a knot of leafy ferns, doing her best to stay hidden from whatever foe Hoffman had pitted her against. The simulation wouldn't allow the girl to see or hear anything outside the program, so the Company CEO took the opportunity to size Johansen up.
The girl was beautiful in a way that the simulated dirt and sweat matted hair had no chance of entirely concealing. Her face was angular with a narrow nose and graceful jawline that accentuated full lips, normally framed tastefully by bright blonde hair, though that was a mess thanks to her time in the scenario. Crouched down like she was, the girl seemed small and fragile, but Nimue’s practiced eye told her that Johansen was above average in height, well proportioned, and athletic.
The picture of purity and ambition. Good.
Johansen suddenly froze, holding her breath and letting her eyes slide through the jungle for a full thirty seconds. Satisfied by what she saw, she rose slightly and padded out of her hiding place, never extending to her full height but enough to move at a good pace. The simulation moved with her, the trees and terrain sliding by Nimue to keep the younger woman in frame and keep her from running into one of the sim’s walls. The program simply ignored the non-participant, allowing Nimue to stay with Johansen without needing to take a single step.
Her initial assessment done and growing tired of being kept waiting, Nimue glided until she was within arms reach of the girl and cleared her throat.
Johansen shot her.
It was a fine shot too, considering the girl's target was invisible. The pistol in Johansen’s hand *Crack*ed and a bullet, made observable by Nimue's enhanced cognition, flickered and dissipated on her skin before passing through her and whizzing off into the jungle. The rookie liaison’s head twitched as her adrenaline fueled alertness forced her to check everywhere all at once for threats, and her face was a mix of confusion over tightly wound nerves.
Having established the girl's frame of mind, Nimue slid to the side again until she was on Johansen’s right and spoke softly. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to frighten you, Camila,” she lied, opting to use the girl’s formal first name like a distant and slightly disapproving parent. Her profile mentioned deep seated resentment and repressed need for approval as one of her primary motivators, and playing on might prove advantageous.
The girl’s head snapped over to look at Nimue, unfocused and searching, but from her perspective, she only saw trees. Her eyes never stopped scanning, however. To Johansen’s credit, she did not aim or fire her weapon again.
Good. She was listening but distracted.
A full minute later, Johansen seemed to be satisfied that the jungle around her was likely clear of visible threats for now. Nimue had waited through it, tapping her fingers on her leg but saying nothing, knowing how this dance needed to go.
“Uh. Hello?” Camila half-whispered.
Nimue’s circling had brought her behind the girl now, taking in how her posture changed as she adapted to the incongruous need to converse with someone and be present in a survival situation. “Hello, Camila. I am Nimue,” she replied in her most clinical voice. “It’s good to meet you, finally.” She did her best to keep her annoyance in check by the end of the sentence but failed. It wasn’t entirely Johansen’s fault Nimue was down here, but the elevator ride had put her on edge.
Predictably, the girl’s mouth dropped open at her name, and a little gasp escaped her mouth, cut short by either her survival instincts or the reactivation well practiced social skills. “Oh! Yes, ma’am. It’s nice to meet you too. I just-”
“You can’t see me. I know. Master Hoffman is quite strict about how his simulations work. The program will ignore what is not supposed to be here, myself included. Just continue on like you have been.”
“I- uh- Okay.” the younger woman said, looking slightly aghast at having the Company's CEO looking over her shoulder, but that didn't last long. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Do that and also answer my questions.”
Johansen rocked back and forth on her feet, alternating between wanting to slink off into the jungle and conduct the conversation politely. Again. This was good.
“I’ve seen plenty of people die in here, Camila. No need to be embarrassed if it happens in my presence,” Nimue added as faux encouragement.
“Yes, ma’am.” Johansen said, and, like a switch had been flipped, she resumed her stealthy trek through the jungle, stepping lightly through the underbrush and constantly panning her view for threats like her life depended on it.
“In what manner have you died so far, Camila?”
The girl hesitated, looking back to where Nimue's voice had come from. “I- Well, I’ve been shot, stabbed… uh crushed, strangled… But-” Johansen paused, swallowing slightly and unconsciously reaching up to rub her throat. “She tends to favor slitting my throat. That’s happened a lot.”
“And you’ve continued through all of that?” Nimue asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“I’m not allowed to quit.”
“True." Technically true, but Nimue knew it wasn’t so simple. Employees that asked to stop the test automatically failed, but while they were in this room, they were constantly being monitored for signs that they’d given up or checked out mentally. That was how one failed Hoffman’s stress test but passed to remain employed. Being beaten down allowed the Company to rebuild from the ground up, but if Johansen was still in here, she hadn’t exhibited any signs of defeat... aside from death at least. Was she stubborn or too dim to realize her situation? Time would tell.
Johansen stopped to crouch down next to the trunk of a moss covered tree and looked around as if to guess where she needed to address her question, but she ended up facing away from Nimue when she spoke, regardless. “May I ask a question, ma’am?”
“Please. Call me Nimue,” the super replied in a conversational tone that conveyed familiarity while incongruously reminding Johansen that she was speaking to one of the most powerful and influential people in the world. The technique worked in short interviews like this, but over time she'd need to switch tactics.
Having given up trying to pinpoint her benefactor's location, the rookie liaison was on the move again, walking and talking. “So, uh. Yes. Nimue, not that I’m complaining, but why are you here? Personally, I mean.”
Johansen came to a clearing, a little grass circle bathed in full sun, but instead of going through, she circumnavigated it, going in a full circle until the edge was deemed clear. Then she crouched down in the grass and waited.
“Oh, I take an interest in all of my promising employees,” Nimue lied.
The girl cleared her throat, gathering her courage. “Sorry if I’m out of line, ma’am, but I find that very hard to believe.”
Nimue smiled at that. “Why are you waiting here at this clearing? Would it not be better to keep moving?” She asked, disinterested but needing to show interest to build rapport. All roads led to failure in this place.
“Normally, I would say yes, but this time-” Johansen whispered as if what hope she had for this life rested on what she was about to say, but before she could finish, the flash of a signal mirror could be seen on the opposite end of the clearing. When the girl saw it, her shoulders visibly relaxed and the muzzle of her pistol drooped to point straight down. She sighed as she stood up straight to allow herself to be seen, some of the exhaustion of constant fight or flight finally visible in how she stood.
A fireteam of four rough looking commandos materialized out of the jungle in full camouflage gear and face paint. Even Nimue had a hard time picking them out of the foliage, since they weren’t real and faded into the chaotic tepestry of hard light without the auras real people exuded.
The fireteam leader, a compact man with stubble and tiger stripe black paint on his face, clasped Johansen’s hand and frowned thoughtfully as he glared into her face.
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“Periscope,” he growled, his voice as gruff as his demeanor.
“Horizon.” Came Johansen’s countersign. The fireteam leader nodded and let go, gesturing for Johansen to follow him to his team.
Nimue sighed, knowing just how this was going to end. “So, this time you called for backup, Camila?”
“Uh. Yes, m- Nimue. I tried burning down the jungle with a flamethrower once, and the shapeshifter just shot me through the smoke. That made me want to bring in my own people with guns.” She looked back and forth between the faces of her supposed saviors, looking for some kind of reaction to her talking to thin air. Again, Johansen seemed to have a hard time transitioning between talking to her employer and participating in the sim simultaneously. When she spoke, it came out haltingly as she looked from man to man in her backup team to see if they had any sort of reaction. They didn’t.
“Relax, Camila, the simulation doesn’t think you are talking to yourself. It ignores your side of the conversation entirely.”
“I… see,” Johansen said, though she seemed dubious, walking amongst the men and shaking their hands and peering into their painted faces as she spoke. “So, you were saying how you don’t participate in most reprimands?”
Nimue nodded appreciatively. Johansen was showing some adjustment now, a little more quickly than anticipated. That was slightly out of the parameters set by her file, which showed her as inexperienced and an overthinker, but how quickly she was adapting was a nice surprise.
The girl deserved an answer, and it was about time Nimue got to the point of what brought her down here in an elevator in the first place. “No. I don’t," she said carefully. "I want to know how you find your assignment."
“You mean what I think of Firebreak?”
“Yes.," Nimue replied, drawing out the word and preparing herself for answers, finally. "How is he? Does he take care of himself? Does he have any friends? How well adjusted is he?” The questions left her mouth like water from a hose, and once they began, they were hard to stop. "How does he run his business? Does it involve dealing with people?" She kept her voice clinical, but inside she was anything but.
The fireteam leader, after a short conversation with Johansen and his second, communicated with his men while checking a GPS screen on his wrist, and the party set off into the jungle. The men seemed to want to keep Johansen in the middle of the team, putting her one slot up from the rear guard like a VIP.
The young woman considered for an agonizing handful of minutes as she was led away from the clearing before she replied. As Johansen spoke, she seemed to absent mindedly drift around from one position to another and even off into the bush before coming back. Perhaps she was more mentally exhausted than she'd let on. “As far as his mental state, it’s hard to say, ma’am. We only just met, and then I was called away. I can tell you that he doesn't trust us, but he might be willing to make exception on a case by case basis.”
The distrust was no surprise, an old wound that would never entirely heal. “I understand being unable to submit a full report, but I'm asking you about him now."
“If I had to sum it up, I’d say that Firebreak is well adjusted but… alone.”
Nimue’s heart tightened in her chest. “What makes you say that?”
“The way he talks and acts. It’s just an impression, but the way he handles situations like at the hospital seems so practiced, and the way he goes from ‘no, leave me alone’ to dragging me into the thick of things makes me think he doesn’t get all the social contact he needs. He's anti-social but kind. Then there’s the scars and how he hid from the evaluators.” Johansen spoke slowly, oddly hesitating between her words, drifting through the fireteam formation as they cut through the jungle. What was she playing at?
Nimue swallowed. It had been years since she'd seen the boy, and what an incredible time it had been. What had he been through? The subterfuge wasn't unexpected but how well he pulled it off was concerning. “I’m afraid we have his uncle to thank for that last part, unfortunately,” Nimue hypothesized with a frown. "Anti-social doesn't even begin to cover that man."
“You’ve met Wilhelm?”
“Joey has always had a hard time with authority, so any way he can stick it to 'the man' so to speak is expected. When the boy lost his parents, his Uncle, despite his ghastly nature, was probably the best sort of guardian for him, given the circumstances. He didn’t pretend to have any sort of authority over the boy, more mentor than parent. Joseph’s isolation is most likely a product of that unconventional sort of home.”
“You speak like you know both of them well.”
“Wilhelm, no. I know of him and have met him once before I founded the Company. Joey, on the other hand, I know very well. Or at least I did a long time ago." Nimue replied, the trapped feeling in the storage cabinet creeping back into her mind. The scent of blood. The little screams. A predator running its claws across her door. She stopped, taking a deep, cleansing breath and blowing it out through her nose. Then she was back in the now. "We met when he was very young.”
The fireteam leader called a halt with a raised fist and everyone crouched down where they were. Ahead was the entrance to a bunker buried in the terrain, a half dome that seemed to rise out of nothing with two sliding security doors broken and bent to the side like a colossal hand had peeled them back like a sardine can.
“This is the place, Captain,” Johansen said as she joined the fireteam leader at the point of the group. “If we’re going to do anything, it’ll be in there.”
The commando nodded and issued a series of hand signals to his people, getting them into a T formation and approaching the mangled doors with Johansen bringing up the rear.
Nimue followed along, marking the idiosyncrasies of the fireteam and attempting to discern which one was the shapeshifter. It was nearly impossible to tell thanks to them not being real, but one of them stood out for how smoothly he moved and how little fatigue he showed despite the rough terrain. Of course, she kept this to herself. It would be useful to continue her evaluation of Johansen directly after she experienced neural disruption after a death. Perhaps that would shake some details loose from her brain.
It wasn't to be, though. Her curiosity about Joseph would need to wait until the girl got closer to him. Instead, it was time to go back to the subject of Camila Johansen. “Why do you want to work for us?”
“What? I-” the girl nearly tripped over a sheet of corrugated steel. “I- uh- want to do something good for people.”
“I know that’s what you told our recruiters, but I want to know why you are really here. You don’t need the money or the status.”
The young liaison blinked, delving into her own mind to dredge up an answer that would please her employer while avoiding cliches. “I want to do something that matters.”
Closer to the truth at least. “There are much easier and more thoroughly positive ways to do that. The Salvation Army comes to mind. Why the Company? Is it a desire to see your name in the headlines, if only under your super?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Perhaps that is not your primary motivation, but come on, Camila. I’ve seen women like you that crave that sort of status.”
“No. I mean, I wouldn't say no to recognition, but I really want to do something that matters,” Johansen replied a little defensively “It's just that I’m only human.”
There was that need to prove herself, Nimue had banked upon. Still, she had to go through the motions. “You’ve made no effort to apply to the Altered program. You say you are only human, but you don’t have a great desire to transcend your humanity.”
“I… don’t want to be a super.”
“Why not?” Nimue knew very well why not. With the girl's family situation and her personality type, she held a deep seated need to prove herself capable of greatness without outside help. No handouts. No favors. She'd been given those her entire life, and she'd seen where that road would take her. A naive outlook but one Nimue could understand.
“I want to be human and make a difference. I don’t want to cheat. So to speak.”
“You want to matter as you are. I had that same desire in the early days after the incident, but that wasn't to be.”
“Is that where you knew F- Uh. Joseph? The early days?”
Nimue paused, considering how much to say and still retain the woman’s loyalty. “Yes.”
“Can you give me any tips on… I don’t know. Getting through to him?”
“No.”
“Why not?” She asked with slight indignation.
Because the girl's interactions with him need to be natural. Men like Joseph were put off by insincerity and inauthenticity, even as they lied to everyone they knew. Nimue couldn't say that, however. Making the girl aware of her appeal would ruin the effect. “Experience is the best teacher. The journey is the goal.”
Johansen snorted.
“I know how it sounds, but I think you are just the kind of influence he needs to come out and join the rest of the world instead of rotting away in Gregory Basin his entire life.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say he’s been rotting, ma’am. He’s been doing hero work.” Johansen interjected, drifting to the side of the formation and kicking at a half-broken box. "Locally. In his town." Also, was that a note of defensiveness Nimue detected in the girl’s voice? For Joey? Promising.
After an initial narrowing, the path through the bunker became a series of ramps going down. Then the fireteam came to a flat platform elevator that ran on a track that angled down far below into the darkness.
“You mentioned scars earlier. Would you say that these scars are from this hero work or are they self-inflicted like the assessors believed?” Nimue asked, hovering around the man she suspected of being the shapeshifter. Nothing on his face indicated deception, but...
“I don’t-” Johansen started to say but never finished. She whipped her pistol around and the *crack crack* of two rounds sounded in the dim light of the bunker, taking one of the commandos in the back. The man’s eyes widened in surprise and no small amount of pain, but before he could react to Johansen’s sudden betrayal, the girl finished him with a shot to the head.
The body collapsed to the floor, and chaos ensued.
The entire fireteam was on high alert, shouting at Johansen, advancing on her with rifles raised, fingers on triggers, ready to blow her away as the Captain took her down with an elbow to the face and a controlling hand on her gun arm, all the while, Johansen smiled hopefully. The shouting continued, everyone talking over one another. That is until the corpse seemed to liquify and shrink in on itself until it was a gray thing, vaguely female with overly long legs and arms.
The shapeshifter.
With that, the simulation faded away, leaving only the standard black range room and the slain super's corpse.
Nimue tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at the body. This was not the one she’d picked out of the group to be the shapeshifter, but there it was. I was just like Hoffman to program in a red herring.
“You’ve found a flaw in Hoffman’s scenario," she declared with a mix of amusement and annoyance.
“No, ma’am. Well, I- uh maybe," Camila floundered, seeming to not know what do do with her hands now that her simulated pistol was gone. "So, does that mean I’m the first to succeed? Do I pass?” She asked, still facing away from Nimue and bouncing on her toes as she stared down at her vanquished foe.
God, she was going to be insufferable if she was allowed to internalize this.
Nimue drummed her fingers on her leg again, a tell she normally didn’t need to control, but... “Again, there is no passing this test, Camila, but it’s one of the more interesting failures I’ve heard of,” she replied, forcing a smile onto her face and gesturing toward the door. “Go and get yourself cleaned up and get some rest. We’re done here. Consider yourself reprimanded and back on duty. Your AI will book you a flight to Montana the day after tomorrow, so I suggest whatever prep work you have to do for your assignment, you do it now. I also expect your reports promptly from now on, Liaison Johansen.”
“Ah- Yes, ma’am,” Johansen blurted, tears of relief in her eyes even as she beamed victoriously. She excused herself and hurriedly left the room, presumably to find a shower and a bunk somewhere.
Nimue was fairly sure Johansen was back on her assigned task for the time being, but how long would that last?
Once the girl was gone, Hoffman materialized in the corner of the black space, wearing dress pants, a button up white shirt with rolled sleeves. He slow clapped mockingly as he approached.
Nimue glared at him. “Explain it to me. How did she beat your program?” the head of the Company asked. She had her suspicions but didn’t necessarily want to voice them and give the Master at Arms more ammunition than he had.
“What the girl wanted to say but was too afraid to, is that you introduced a flaw into the simulation when you stepped into the room. The software is programmed to ignore all non-participants and their interactions with the trainees. The girl used your conversation to make her companions lose track of her momentarily and then guessed the imposter by who was most concerned with where she was and how she got there."
"Why did they lose track of her."
"Conversation is more than just words. It's body language and movement. The program has a hard time differentiating where non-verbal communication is aimed. The girl must have noticed it when she first met her team."
“A flaw.”
“My scenario doesn’t have flaws. There was an element introduced that wasn't meant to be there.”
“I was the flaw.”
“I wouldn’t dare say such a thing. What did you think of the girl before she broke the program?”
Nimue frowned at him, running through her observations she'd taken. “Hmm. She's a driven one, and that’s not necessarily a compliment in this case. We play our game on a world scale, Sean," she stated with some concern. "If the world is a chess board, and the Company is one of the players, when we reach for a piece we need to know what it is. If we reach for a pawn, it needs to behave like a pawn. A knight needs to behave like a knight.”
“And you are questioning her status as a pawn.”
She nodded. “I’m quite sure that her motivations and psych profile are correct, but she’s taken her experiences from the past few days and gone somewhere unexpected. She's diverged from the path we'd counted on. Whether this is a lasting change, only time will tell. If she wasn’t the best fit for her assignment, she would already be unemployed and crawling back to her old life.”
“That’s the thing about pawns isn’t it?" Hoffman asked, slipping his hands in his pockets and raising an eyebrow. "Push them far enough, and they can become all sorts of things. What makes her assignment so important to the Company, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“I do mind you asking.”
“Fine. I’m just saying that on the surface, he doesn’t look like a major player.”
“Who I recruit is my business, Sean. Get behind it or pack your things.”
“Hah. You’ve tried to get rid of me before, and where’d that get you?”
“In a cold basement, speaking with the ghost of the man I used to consider a friend.”
“That's fair. I’m a useful sort of dead man, though, aren’t I?”
“Incontrovertibly. Now, get back to work.”