#ctex

She doesn’t feel the way her body collides with the floor, she doesn’t feel the way the armor crunches against her body, keeping her from folding up entirely.

What she does feel is the cold. It starts in her fingers and begins to dampen her cheeks.

Fuck. How’d this happen. How’d she let herself get talked into this situation. Why didn’t anyone believe her when she begged them to go.

Her vision is blurry and she’s not cognizant enough to decipher if it’s from the tears catching in her eyelashes or from the end racing toward her so quickly she can hardly catch her breath.

There’s a crisp, sticky taste in the back of her throat, rising up from the splitting pain.

A lung. Did it cut her lung?

She coughs and it hurts. Maybe.

Not knowing what else to do, she lies still and lets the world blur. Someone steps near her and she thinks, fleetingly, that she should reach out for them. Tell them she’s alive that way, let everyone know that she can be saved. Because she can be, can’t she?

Can’t…

The foot moves away as quickly as it came and she thinks, well, that’s it. They must already think of her as dead, lying there with splitting pain and fading clarity.

At least, that’s what she has to believe, because the idea that anyone would leave her knowing otherwise is a cruelty she’s not sure how to process even in the face of death.

Life continues to fade right before her, moving across a gradient from sharp and loud toward a dull emptiness that is terrifying in its lack of sensation.

She thinks it’s surely over when her body lifts against its own accord and she finds herself traveling through blurry space. Foggy. Inconsequential. Numb. Until something pulls.

The sharpness and pain comes rushing back and she screams out in response before the world around her is swallowed up — not in dull light this time, but to a dark and uncertain darkness.

When her eyes open again, the pain is there, sharp in spots and dull all over.

Her eyes are focused on the ceiling and her body is sprawled out uncomfortably. But she feels and she sees and the sensations that come back with the rest of living are dwarfed by those two large ones.

“I’m not dead,” is the first thing that escapes her dried and crackling throat.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she processes what this could possibly mean, then opens them again with more control and focus.

She’s in a small, dank room on a medical cot. That part is simple enough. There’s either no movement around her or she’s on a ship with decent buffers to keep her velocity somewhat hidden.

Outside of the stabbing pain in her back, her body is full of aches, like it hasn’t been moved in a decent length of time.

Then her attention carries her far enough to realize she’s not alone.

Sitting across from her cot is a haunting, familiar visage.

Black as coal, sharp on every corner in ways that are inhuman no matter the shape her form takes. It’s almost immediately obvious to her that across the room is Agent Texas.

The one who put that knife in her back to begin with.

“Here to finish the job?” CT gathers up enough strength to growl at the computer program posing as a human and comrade.

“If you mean the job of taking care of your sorry butt and patching you up then. Yeah. Guilty as charged, I guess,” Texas says darkly.

“You can’t take credit for saving someone you tried to kill,” CT snarls before coughing, a burning pain in her lungs.

“Oh, don’t get caught up on minor details,” Tex admonishes before crossing the small distance that was still between them. “Want me to help you sit up?”

“No,” CT gasps. “I’m fine. I’m perfectly—“

Tex reaches over her and begins to help anyway.

“What the fuck is this?” CT demands, her heart pounding. Her lung stretch and burn to keep up. “What are you doing? Did you… why did you…”

The emotionless helmet stares back at CT. She can see her own reflection in the shinning HUD of the helmet, see the dark bruises under her eyes and the untrimmed disaster that is now her hair. She looks weak and feeble in her reflection. She hates to see what this monster must be seeing of her. Weakness and humanity that the great Agent Texas will always lack.

“You said you knew the truth about me,” Texas answers coldly. “It was good for pissing me off, I’ll give you that. But it was better at… well. It was better at making me ask questions.”

“In that order?” CT attempts to joke.

“Pretty much,” Texas answers before moving down toward the end of the cot. The mechanical masterpiece then sits before her, looking at her with an unblinking gaze. “I’ve got questions. You claimed you had answers.”

“I do have answers,” CT mutters. “Didn’t you check your locker?”

“My what?” Texas asks blankly.

“Your… fuck it was a stupid idea anyway,” CT huffs, weakly bring up a hand to her face and rubbing her tired eyes gingerly. “Yes. I know what you are. I know… Fuck, I know everything about Freelancer. The shit they wouldn’t tell us. The… The awful things that were being done there. I don’t… I don’t know what to do to get the information out there. To stop it all from continuing…”

“Yeah, sounds interesting,” Texas huffs almost in mimic of CT. “Get back to what this has to do with me.”

“Why? You’re just taking me back to Freelancer. I’m sure your precious Director will let you torture it out of me,” CT sneers in return.

Texas snorts. “Does this look like Freelancer tech to you?”

Taking a breath, CT begins to glance around the walls around her. The room is small, gross. Industrial, even. And the equipment is basically nothing to call home about. It almost reminds CT of the apartment she grew up in. Almost. Somehow even less comfortable, though.

“What is this?” CT demands.

“Freedom. Maybe,” Texas answers with a shrug. “I wouldn’t know, apparently. Now talk. Or will lose that little freedom we have for now.”

CT realizes that Texas is serious — she wants to know her own deal. That she is desperate enough to runaway for it, to question everything she’s ever known for it — to save CT for it.

And she might just be desperate enough for more than even that.

“Can you get me, alive, to a UNSC embassy?” CT asks.

“I’m Agent Fucking Texas, I can do anything,” Texas shrugs in return. “What of it?”

CT feels herself straighten up, ignoring the stabs of pain. Pain caused by the robot before her. “If you get me to the safety of the UNSC, travel with me, and help me show them what I discovered about Project Freelancer… I’ll answer any and all questions you have along the way.”

Texas tilts her head almost curiously. “Do you really think you’re in a position to make demands here?”

Slowly and deliberately, CT shakes her head and smirks confidently. “No, Agent Texas. I’m not making demands. I’m just telling you how this is going to be.”

Texas stares long and hard at her for a moment before letting out what sounds uncannily like a deep breath. Even though CT knows it can’t be. “Okay, fine. I can do that. If you don’t die on me or anything. Flesh bag.”

“Alright then, Tin Can,” CT fires back, reaching out a hand. “Let’s shake on it.”

After looking over the hand, Texas finally shakes. “Feels like this is the start of something. Some beautiful hateship or something.”

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