Arknights | Not Even Into Another Eternity, Chapter 5

[veryroundbird]

Rating: Spicy
Chapter: 5/?
Words: 2704
Characters: Doctor (F), Kal'tsit, Amiya, guest star moments with W
Relationships: Doctor/Kal'tsit, Kal'tsit/Theresa, Theresa/Doctor
Summary: Signing on to Babel's mission, the Doctor finds herself returning to a lot of things she thought she'd left behind, and a chance to make something new. If only it wasn't all meant to end in tragedy.

You realize belatedly that either you spaced out entirely for Kal'tsit's response to your inquiry or she just didn't deign to answer, considering it an obvious no. Therefore it comes as something as a surprise when she drops a pile of lesson plans on your desk without preamble. After your next stop, you find a half-size violin in a case outside your door.

It both surprises you how easy it is, and at the same time not at all, how you fall into step. Kal'tsit, for all her implacability, is an excellent teacher, and, well—you can't help but be a little envious of how regularly Amiya regales you with what she learned from Dr. Kal'tsit.

When you mention as much to Theresa, she laughs. "You're so good at understanding others' cares, except when you're the subject of them," she says. "That girl loves you more than anything. It's hard not to see it."^[1]

Every week, Kal'tsit makes time to meet with you to discuss Amiya's progress—how she's making up on her vocabulary shortfalls, potential age-appropriate readings for you to approve.^[2]

Neither of you discuss your relationships to Theresa.^[3]

And business continues as usual. The cold season is starting to come around^[4] and you've taken aboard more mercenaries^[5] for the war effort. Some are even a bit of a surprise, like Ace, in that they're not Sarkaz but have their own reasons—including an impressively competent Liberi arts-user from Ursus who you mentally fast-track for promotions.

But things are getting harder. It's for the best that you delegated some of your personal responsibilities; these days, from the time you wake^[6] and the time you sleep,^[7] your mind is busy totaling all the advantages and disadvantages you have at your disposal, combing through plans for inefficiencies, shoring up weaknesses, weighing what you can risk and what you can't.

The Military Commission has too many of the Royal Court on its side, even if you can depend on the Banshees, and have the aid of a single heir to the Confessarii. It's not difficult to understand why; after eons of their home disappearing under their feet, it's natural to feel... some kind of way about it.^[8]

The Sanguinarch is the one you least like dealing with. Squeamishness is not a luxury you can afford^[9] and risk to Rhodes Island herself isn't something you take lightly, either.^[10] Until you find a way to neutralize him—

You're going to have to make a choice you don't like, eventually. You know, mathematically^[11] how close some of your margins are, with getting your forces out, and even then, there's casualties. Filed in your head is every one of their dossiers, with what little detail they could provide about their lives.^[12]

Kal'tsit never drops Amiya off at your shared dormitory herself, which is why you go find her, just before the end of Amiya's lessons for the day. You ruffle Amiya's hair, carefully crouching down to her level.

"Did you learn a lot, today?" you ask, giving your best smile.^[13]

She nods, vigorously. "I understand the maths a lot better, I think! And the literature reader Dr. Kal'tsit put together for me is..." Her lower lip worries a little bit. "...difficult, but I think it'll be really interesting, since she explained the context. Can I ask you about some of the words tonight?"

"Of course." It's easy to smile, for once. Maybe you've managed to do something really good. You glance at Kal'tsit, though. "I need to have a talk with Dr. Kal'tsit about work, though; I shouldn't be too long, if you head back. Not more than an hour."^[14]

Amiya looks at you, tilting her head to the side, quizzically, but smiles, glancing down at the books in her arms. "I'll see you soon, then."

You watch her as she scampers off. You're not really worried about her, even considering that this landship is full of singularly dangerous people—she's seen around with Theresa enough that no one would dare meddle. You just... worry.^[15]

"Well, then?" Kal'tsit says, reminding you that you were here with an intention.

"Right," you say. "It's about the Sanguinarch, and it's going to need… to be between the two of us. I have an idea that I need to run by you, about how we can deal with him."

She nods, crisply and perfectly, and motions for you to come in to the small library work room where she'd been meeting with Amiya. It's not as if anyone besides you and she and maybe the somber Confessarius called Shining uses the library at all, since this is no longer a research vessel, but it's about—

...well. The topic that only you and Kal'tsit can properly discuss.

"You're looking for any of the remaining technology from the former era," she says.

"There's ways we could turn nearly any of them into a weapon he can't deal with. Even if we can spook him from this level of participation in the war—that bastard's too old. Too much blood in his veins."

She nods. "I've met him before, though in a much different time. The world was quite different, then."^[16] But she makes a light hmph noise. "Should those ideas and principles truly be brought into contact with this world, though?"

Kal'tsit phrases it in a teacher's tone, as if expecting a student from the lecture audience to raise their hand for discussion, and you hold up a hand for a pause. "I know, I know," you say. "But in this case... maybe we can remove some of them from this place."

You glance sideways, a little guiltily. "Was Facility 8 ever liquidated?"

"No," she says—

—and then looks at you sharply. "You intend to set a trap with that."

"Well..." You shrug, pressing your mouth into a thin line. "Any actual samples down there are almost certainly long dead from when we abandoned the facility. At this point, it's a bunch of junk equipment, burnt-out refrigerators, and a very large, high-temperature bomb. And for the latter, we just need to get into the admin controls."

She makes a light tsk sound. "I don't have access, if that's what you're wondering."

It was worth a shot. "I figured as much. But there's a backup controller for all of them, per the site burial regulations. It's just some coordinate math."

She makes a moderately skeptical face. "I have to say, this was not… the solution I was expecting from you, Zhanchi."

"I'm not excited about it.^[17] But it's the best thing I can come up with, and believe me, I've been coming up with a lot of plans. This one has the highest chance of success, if I can figure out how to break the encryption on the site controls. They didn't expect me to need access."

"Fine." She breathes out through her nose. "We'll talk again once you've solved that issue. Put time on my schedule once you've got a concrete plan of action and we'll discuss it." She pauses. "And—before we adjourn—Amiya shouldn't fret too much about her assignments. She's a quick study—"

Another, longer pause, as she keeps her gaze unnervingly fixed on your face. "Truly, you didn't do too poorly on your own."^[18]

You laugh, sheepishly, turning to look away at the digital whiteboard and twisting your hands together. "Well. I'm glad I didn't manage to screw it up, somehow. I'd best be going, though—I promised her I'd be prompt."

Kal'tsit nods again, with that same perfect crispness, although—you could have sworn there was just a little extra pause right before.

[1] You don't know what to say to that, so you bury your face against her neck as she smooths her hands over your back.

[2] You're not sure if she might be overambitious or not with some of them; the subject matter is already creeping above grade-level, but she's not one to operate on wishful thinking. One of the reasons you took up her request to be here.

[3] Theresa never brings it up, either; she might have assumed you'd work it out, somehow. Sometimes you think she has too much faith.

[4] …which puts you in mind of Amiya's birthday, at the tail end of the year. This year, at least, you'll be able to offer her a little better than higher-quality rations.

[5] Cynically playing to the desire for indoor berths and guaranteed meals, but they know that and you know that.

[6] Two hours earlier than you'd like

[7] Two hours later than you'd like

[8] This is merely an impersonal observation, nothing borne of personal experience.

[9] Unfortunately, because you are actually quite squeamish.

[10] Her, Theresa, the guiding light; her, Kal'tsit, any of the last tenuous connections you have to your life as it was.

[11] And with PRTS's meticulous precision, for that matter.

[12] A former baker from Kazdel, moniker Slice. A newspaper columnist who said her name was Alyssum. The list goes on.

[13] And trying not to look too exhausted, which is maybe a lost cause.

[14] PRTS helpfully starts a countdown in the back of your head. This is a little stressful, actually.

[15] She looks so small, at the distant end of the hall.

[16] Yeah, that hardly surprises you.

[17] In fact, your stomach twists, thinking about it—thinking about what you could retrieve from there, if you tried; whose effects someone thought they were going to be able to go back for.

[18] Something about that makes your face feel warm.

---

Of course, it's easier said than done. So in the meantime, you send out scouting teams to look for the Site 8 controls, sleep fitfully, and try and keep the war under control.^[19] You're needed in the field, you're needed in the war room, you're needed on the bridge, and you're also needed for… this.

You don't like seeing blood at all, which back in the day was more than once the subject of playful ribbing from colleagues—after all, you chose your profession, but also you went into neurology for a reason. Which is to say, you're seeing way too much blood, these days.

Gingerly, you wipe the smudge off your face mask.^[20] "Well," you say, for lack of anything else in your head, "duly noted for the next time we try and examine any of their bodies."

There's an all-around silence for several beats and you think you may have given some of your subordinates the impression that you're insane or possibly a serial killer.^[21]

You pause, and then start giving orders for cleanup.

There are no vampires on Rhodes Island; most of them have either rallied to their lordship or have generally preferred not to get involved.^[22] It'd help if you had more samples to analyze for intel, but you'll have to make do with their personal effects.

At least the Prince of Blood makes sure his people are literate, which means there's a paper trail; you've got at least one small personal tablet to go over. Which is how you find something interesting—or rather it finds you.

The second you connect the tablet up to power, you get a warning from PRTS about an attempted intrusion; after a moment, you find a portable battery pack and hook it up to that instead.^[23]

You get what you expected on the tablet's contents—pretty standard encryption, the sort of thing that makes sense to give to the rank and file without terribly much top secret information. When you plug in a flash stick with some intrusion and file copying tools, and then plug that into your computer, you get the intrusion attempt warning again.

Interesting. A program that copied itself silently to the flash stick and then attempted to copy to another device... probably intended to spread as far as possible. If PRTS didn't have as powerful of computing capabilities, it might have gotten through.

The logs turn out to be... informational. Especially since you probably don't have the chops to crack the protection on the site controls—but now you might have a lead on someone who does.

Some other strategists might say that they don't believe in coincidences; you definitely do, on account of on the battlefield there are in fact infinitely many things no one could ever plan for. But if you're getting one in your favor, you'll take it.

[19] It is not remotely under control.

[20] You really don't like it when corpses explode into a lot of toothy worms, which is maybe one of the few traits you have that you could say are normal.

[21] You probably are insane, just not like that. When you don't know what to say sometimes words just come out of your mouth.

[22] The well-known Dr. Blood, writer of medical textbooks, has never admitted to being a vampire, but you matched the writing style to 99% confidence with a network post castigating the folly of both sides in the war, in fact.

[23] A trap...? If so, not a very good one—which leads you to think it isn't one.

---

"The hacker known as 'Closure' is known to have been active for five years or so, give or take," says Kal'tsit, briskly, at the briefing once you've exchanged information and finished gathering more over the course of several sleepless nights.^[24] "They've pulled off some impressive feats somewhat difficult for a single individual, spanning known corners of Terra, which has led some to speculate that Closure is a group working together. Our recent information, however, suggests that this is in fact incorrect."

She taps her pointer against the screen, and it moves to the next slide, showing a map of the greater Kazdel area. "Having secured a copy of Closure's main attack vector tooling and analyzed infected systems in a sandbox environment, we can confidently trace their location to a relatively narrow radius near Kazdel. I'd anticipate that a skilled hacker of this caliber would have additional layers covering their tracks, which implies working with a limited toolset. Possibly, someone quite young. Our psychological profile suggests curiosity over malice, in a situation that evokes boredom, and a rebellious streak."

You provided the latter assessment; you weren't that kind of nerd, but you knew the type, back in the day. "And," you add, finally cutting in, "I… think we could make them a job offer."

Theresa smiles. "Well! If she's amenable, I'd be happy to have her. This is just the kind of forward-thinking young person Babel needs."

Both you and Kal'tsit pause. Kal'tsit says it first. "Theresa—do you know this person?"

"Well..." Theresa hums quietly. "I have a sense for these things, sometimes. Just a feeling. But, oh... it'd be nice, wouldn't it? I'm sure someone like that would do well, here, and it's some help we could really use."

Something in her eyes looks faraway, like she's thinking back to a memory.^[25] You nod, jerkily. "We'll need to run a small team, since that's part of the Court of Blood, and doing a potential extraction will need us to run lightweight."

"Oh, I'll come along," says Theresa, pleasantly, and both you and Kal'tsit make the same distressed expression at once. "I think I'd like to meet her. I ought to, don't you think?"

Kal'tsit's frowning deeply. "Theresa..."

She smiles at Kal'tsit^[26]. "As long as you're my combat support, I'm sure I'll be all right."

"Yes, but—" you start to stammer.

"I'm sure you can pick a suitable team to support the three of us, Zhanchi," she adds, reaching over to pat you on the hand, and, well, fuck.

You take a deep breath.^[27] "I'm sure I can."

Not least because if anything goes wrong Kal'tsit will be right there to kill you.

---

[24] You are vibrating at a barely-perceptible speed due to the sheer amount of coffee you've consumed, which is among the many reasons you are not being the primary presenter. Kal'tsit has had an insane amount of coffee and seems fine. If you weren't already aware that she wasn't human, that would have been the tip-off.

[25] Which she might very well be doing—just not one of her own memories.

[26] You know immediately that Kal'tsit is toast.

[27] You don't drag your hands down your face like you want to.