A gentle hand on her shoulder dispelled visions of ancient vistas and returned her to the land of the waking. In her dreams, she had found a nameless breeze that once carried the spores and seeds of the early forests of Appalachia and the Scottish Highlands, which were one and the same before the continents had split. It showed her through its eyes the swaying canopies of those woods, so dense that the night lived eternal beneath them, and the jagged, wind-blasted peaks that towered above.
As she adjusted to the sterile light of a med bay, the dream faded. All Marina could recall was a feeling of satisfaction to have helped spread life across the land, and a longing to be known and named.
“Sorry to wake you,” said an elderly black man wearing a small smile. The name tag on his lab coat read, ‘Dr. Soto.’ “Or rather, sorry to not have woken you sooner. I didn’t realize you wanted to avoid your power-based healing; our system’s been unreliable. We’re right next to one of the pylons for the Forestry Service’s radar grid. I wasn’t able to access your files from the California database until a few minutes ago. Your metrics – the hyperoxemia and VO2 consumption – were well past the point where your records indicate I should have intervened, though I couldn’t say for how long you’ve been that way.”
Marina blinked off the haze and looked around confused, her brain split between piecing together her memories, trying to comprehend what she’d just been told, and cursing the infernal beeping of the monitors around her.
“Where am I?” she asked groggily.
“Camp Susquehanna Gold. How much do you remember?”
She rubbed at her eyes, wincing and hissing in pain as she touched her right one. “Ow, shit. I was in the helicopter…”
Dr. Soto nodded. “I’m not surprised; you had a pretty severe concussion. The soldiers you saved opted to let you rest instead of waking you for the landing. When you were still out of it after touching down, they brought you to me despite,” he added with a grin, “your insistence that you were fine. Your bruising was already going down by that point, so after checking you didn’t have any cerebral hemorrhaging, I put you under observation and let your body get to work. Again, sorry about that.” He paused, fighting against and losing to his curiosity as he said, “You opened all the windows and doors while you were unconscious...”
“Yeah. That’ll happen.”
“In the entire camp, as well as the checkpoints down the road.”
Marina frowned. “Huh. My bad.” Her injuries must have been worse than she thought.
She’d commanded her Breezes to not try and heal her, drilled it into their minds that they could do more harm than good, but spirits of Air were notoriously fickle, especially when roused by concern. Dr. Morris had told her that every time her powers put her back together, she became less human and more alien. Wind was not meant to cure or heal; it only worked for her because of her dual nature, and she still came out the other side of the experience a little wrong every time. Her eyes had been hazel once; now they were an almost crystalline shade of sky blue. But the real issue was the mood swings and insidious mental changes. Therapy had put a stop to the worst of those, but if she didn't want to end up as temperamental and flighty as your average Sylph, then Marina needed to rely on human medicine over elemental magic. In time, perhaps at the end of her natural lifespan, she might give in and shed her humanity, but until then, she wanted to live the life she'd been given.
“How long was I out?”
“Just under two and a half hours.”
“Should be fine, then.” She clenched her jaw as she scooted herself up to a sitting position. “Agh, that’s a broken rib.”
“That’s three broken ribs, Lift-Off, and a fractured hip.”
“Oh, great.” What a delightful topper to a truly miserable day. “Hey, the military’s got fancy medtech, right? Think I could hop in a sound pod or something?”
"As a matter of fact, I wanted to discuss that with you." Soto pulled up a chair and sat down next to her bed. "Ordinarily, I would give you an ointment for your hematomas and prescribe you a mix of oral steroids and immune-boosters to cut your recovery time in half. That's standard for any active-duty member. However, Colonel Swilling is currently working to add a Department of Defense Commendation to your LSR record. It should take a month or two to go through, but it'll be retroactively applied to today. That opens up options we keep in reserve for our Special Operations Forces."
"Like a sound pod?" She'd always wanted to try one of those, but they'd been outside her budget in LA. The side-effect-free stem cell growth they stimulated was considered the gold standard for skincare amongst celebrities.
Soto shook his head. “Unfortunately, this camp doesn’t have access to the breadth of medtech or contemporary Regenerative Agents that a larger base might have, however, I do have three bags of USAF-RA-17 on hand, maybe better known as,” he did finger quotes, “‘The Juice.’ Personally, having seen the nature of the Bulletin you’re responding to, I would recommend you allow me to administer a full bag. But I will warn you, the hours in which the IV is attached to you will be some of the worst of your life.”
She shrugged her left shoulder. “A kid’s missing; I don’t have much choice, do I?”
Dr. Soto put up a hand. "I tend to agree, but I must insist on explaining the side-effects before you make your decision. During the IV drip, every bone in your body is going to throb and itch intensely at about a nine on the pain scale, you will have a high fever and a migraine, you will feel an urgent and overwhelming need to urinate but will be totally incapable of doing so, and you will go blind. For twelve hours after that, you will suffer from a complete inability to sleep and an acute sensation of dread, the worst you will have ever felt. For three weeks, you will have a voracious appetite that you will have to indulge, or you will lose vital bone and muscle mass. Also, about half of patients report leafy greens tasting of ammonia for about three months after the dose, a quarter report being unable to enjoy music for ten months to a year, and five percent will continually forget their own names for years. The other symptoms are more or less guaranteed.”
“Jesus Christ, Doc. Tell me there are some positives too.”
The man chuckled. "It's great for your skin. You'd look three years younger if the stress of the treatment didn't age you by four. But in all seriousness, RA-17 is a total Regenerative Agent. By the time your vision returns, you'll be in fighting shape, and by the time you can sleep again, you'll be completely healed of any injury, even old ones. If you have any chronic pain now, you won't afterward."
She ran a hand down the left side of her face; the right side throbbed with pain. “I took the Bulletin, doctor. There’s no way I can be out of commission for the month the steroids would take. Give me the Juice, I guess.” A part of her felt that this was Karma rebalancing the scales in a way. Oh, you shirked your calling to do high-end pharmaceuticals in Los Angeles for six years? How about you sit in this one for twelve hours – something like that.
“Understandable; I admire your dedication to your mission. I’ll get the bag out of the freezer. Colonel Swilling will want to speak to you before we begin, as well.”
Ten minutes later, a squat man wearing fatigues with a horseshoe of thinning but well-groomed white hair strode through the door. He had a file under one arm and reminded her of the men in her grandfather’s generation, the kind who showed affection by not looking annoyed at your presence.
“Lift-Off.”
“Colonel Swilling?”
“Correct.” He nodded at the chair still at her bedside. “May I sit? I’ll be quick.”
She raised a brow. That was a level of respect she never thought she’d earn from a military man. “Of course, sir—”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“None of that.” He took the seat. “Call me Swilling, or Colonel if you must. You just saved my ass, as well as five soldiers’ lives and the American taxpayer a forty-million-dollar helicopter.”
“That’s the job. They made me do a lot of tests and paperwork for the privilege of working it.”
“No, ma’am, it is not.” He opened the folder he’d brought and fished out a pair of reading glasses from his front pocket. “You are a contractor. I believe your job at the moment is to explore a cave in Clinton County in pursuit of a missing teenager.”
“Yeah, well. Between you and me, Colonel, I needed the win.”
“Believe me, Lift-Off, I can relate. Which is why I came to ask if you’d allow me to retroactively contract you for the rescue services you performed today. You’d be doing me and, in my opinion, the American people a service.”
Marina furrowed her brow and tried to parse the request. “What…does that mean? What would I have to do?”
“Nothing. You’ve already done the job.”
“I don’t follow, Colonel.”
Swilling took a long breath and fished out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Smoke? They’re a supposedly non-addictive nicotine substitute. Grandson asked that I quit tobacco for his birthday, precocious brat.”
She eyed them warily. Part of the journey of self-discovery she was on felt like it demanded she leave her chemical vices in Los Angeles. “Probably shouldn’t…but yeah, alright.”
It had been a long day, and change didn’t have to happen overnight, right?
The old warhorse lit them a pair of faux cigarettes, and she idly commanded a current to wick both the acrid smell and ash through an open window. Marina had never in her life imagined she'd be in a hospital bed sharing a smoke with a surly colonel, but it felt right in its novelty. This was precisely the sort of unpredictable twist she'd wanted out of her life when she'd dreamed of adventuring.
“If I told you that the country was in danger of Ottomanization, you would tell me,” he said, gesturing to her.
She smiled warily. “I’d probably try to politely extract myself from the conversation.”
“And if there was no need to be kind?”
“Then I’d tell you that the Cold War is over, old man.”
"Rightfully so. But let's ignore the connotations that the Cold War inflicted on that word for now. We don't need to discuss ideology or politics to discuss the process to which I'm referring. When I say the country is in danger of Ottomanization, I'm not slapping my desk, pointing to the camera, and demanding we oust sympathizers from our government and media – I'm telling you that there is a blueprint for the rise of an American Emperor that we must forever be wary of. It goes like this," Swilling started counting off on his fingers, "Balkanization – America splits into independent nation states – followed by various supers seizing control of cities and regions as feudal lords, and then finally the rise of a super capable uniting them under his or her banner. Would you agree with that assessment?"
She shrugged. “Sure, plenty of megalomaniacal lunatics in the world.”
"Exactly, you've cut to the heart of it. It doesn't matter if a super is actually capable of becoming said Emperor; all that matters is that they believe themselves to be, and they will inevitably work towards that goal. What's worse, in my mind, are those that are cunning enough to know that while they couldn't reign at the top, believe themselves capable of carving out a Satrapy in the ensuing civil wars."
Marina felt herself disassociating. She'd once told a disastrous first date that she would rather throw herself through glass than talk about politics, and she'd meant it.
“Colonel, with all due respect, I’ve got three broken ribs and still wouldn’t care about this if I didn’t. What does this have to do with me?” America was just somewhere Marina lived; her loyalty was, in order, to her family, her friends, and the Elemental Air.
“Fair enough. I did say I’d be quick. I have a proposal for you, Lift-Off. First, are you amenable to the rescue Bulletin I mentioned?”
“Getting paid to do something I already did and would have done anyway? Of course.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
Swilling handed her a sheath of papers from the folder and a pen. The pages were cramped full of legalese that she didn't know where to begin to engage with. It was daunting at first – normally, the agency handled all the paperwork for her – until she realized that since she'd already done everything in the contract, all she had to do was initial and sign. Still, it emphasized the importance of finding someone competent to replace Danielle; she didn't trust that bimbo with reading the back of a cereal box, let alone anything as dense as this.
At the end of the contract was a line-item report for what she would be paid. Her jaw dropped. “This…has to be a typo. A million dollars?”
Swilling wore the smug expression of a salesman who’d just hooked his prey. “Welcome to the wonderful world of military contracting, Lift-Off. There’s a high base pay, but the bulk is the percentage of the cost of the equipment you protected. We do that to incentivize against collateral damage. You know how some supers get.”
“This says I saved both helicopters.”
“It’s up to my discretion to decide what was and was not protected. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that both gunships were in imminent danger.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but doesn’t that leave a lot of room for corruption?”
“Again, welcome to the world of military contracting.” Swilling leaned forward. “Here’s my proposal. Our operations in Appalachia have been an experiment to solve what would typically be an LSR problem without the LSR system, half because of the lack of rural supers and half because there are elements within the government who have staked their reputations on being able to do so. I am strongly opposed to letting the latter get away with that – this mission has been a catastrophic waste of money from day one. If we had simply put a tenth of what we’ve spent hunting Big Momma on a bounty for her, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars, a dozen lives, and this would have been a wrap months ago.”
“Hence why you need me to sign this?” asked Marina, waving the stack of papers.
“Yes. I need it on record that without an LSR, we would have lost ten lives and two gunships. But that isn't my proposal. How would you like to be paid to do an aetheric survey of this area for the next year at a similarly exorbitant rate? Let's say, a twelve-month seasonal aetheric survey of the Elemental Plane for the purpose of correlating cult activity at no less than two hundred thousand dollars a month."
“Sir, I have a high school diploma from a public school in Eugene, Oregon.”
Colonel Swilling chuckled. “You’d be assessing how the region’s connection to the Elemental Plane changes with the seasons.”
“Oh. You want to pay me to just hang around here for a year?”
"No, of course not, Lift-Off. Congress forbids such open-ended and do-nothing Special Response Bulletins. You would be doing a very academic-sounding job for hours a day—"
“Twenty-four hours a day, actually. I can literally do that in my sleep.”
“Is that right?” He made a note. “I can probably push that up to three-fifty a month, then.”
She blew out a long breath – Jesus. Four million dollars just to fly around and do nothing, talk about a come-up. And unlike with LA, it didn't feel like a trap either. There was no world in which the siren call of rural Pennsylvania ensnared her with its promises of glitz and glam, and what it did offer was not for her. She'd never cared for 4H club or any of that outdoorsy shit growing up. The horse girls at her school had bullied her out of it at an early age – autistic mean girls, every one of them.
But still, it felt wrong to take the job. She was meant to be getting her life together and finding meaning again. Taking advantage of military contracting for the tune of millions while doing fuck all was about as far from that as she could think of.
“It might sound silly, Colonel, and not to be too Hollywood, but I’m kind of on a journey for purpose right now.”
"There's nothing silly about that, young lady. It's commendable to see, especially from someone of your youth and power. But I'm not simply trying to enrich you as a reward for saving my soldiers. We're over budget, and the mission has been a black mark on our record – Our plan is to leave the region the moment Big Momma has been dealt with. If that happens on a Monday, then we will be gone by Wednesday. The Forestry Service's radar grid is working, even if it is making enemies out of everyone with satellite internet and television. Now that we can track her movements at night, and have confirmed that the Winchester Annihilators can harm her, I predict that the Helcat will be dead in under two weeks."
“Now,” he continued, “I could talk your ear off about how the failure of the LSR system in underpopulated areas of the country opens us up to autocratic expansions power, but I’m sure your head’s throbbing enough as is.”
“Sorry,” she said.
He waved her off, stamping out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe. "It's fine. What's relevant for you is that once we leave, every bad actor we've been suppressing with our presence is going to come out from the shadows like a hungry rat. I believe that simply having an LSR of your strength in the area might be enough to stem the worst of that tide. You will be in a dangerous position, but I'm willing to ensure you are compensated adequately. The Bulletin I'm suggesting will be paid quarterly. If you feel that after three months, you have had enough of Central Pennsylvania, you will be free to take what you've been paid and leave. In the meantime, there'll be plenty of opportunities for you to pick up other Bulletins in the area. One way or another, you'll be leaving PA with enough to allow you to engage in whatever charity, pro-bono work, or travel you desire without fear of financial difficulties. And, more importantly, you will be bringing hope to the hopeless. These people need help, Lift-Off; they need someone to believe in."
Marina wobbled her head back and forth. She knew he was trying to sell her on his idea, and was framing it in a way that he thought could get her to bite, but it sounded…ideal. Three months to clear her head and meditate on what she wanted out of life was probably called for, regardless of anything else. Was there a good reason not to spend those months somewhere with clean air and no noise pollution, while being paid to protect the underserved from a host of monsters and villains?
Before she could answer, Dr. Soto’s voice rang out loudly from the doorway. “Colonel Swilling, why does my patient have a cigarette?”
The colonel cleared his throat and stood up quickly. “Think about the offer, Lift-Off. We can speak tomorrow after you’ve come down from your treatment.” He smiled ruefully. “Your first time taking the Juice is a harrowing experience. I’ll leave you to it.”
