This story takes place in the continuity established by the El
Hazard OAV series. It is in the same "continuity" as my earlier
El Hazard Earth series, but has no real relation to it.



El Hazard and characters therein were created by Hiroki Hayashi
and Ryoe Tsukimura, and brought to North America by Pioneer LDC.
All the normal fanfic disclaimers apply.  I'll give this one a
PG rating for violence and language content.



Ken Wolfe

kenwolfe@mts.net

September 2001





Prime Candidate



Aynia's eyes were everywhere, darting between her little brother
walking just ahead of her, the buyers towering over them, and
the food stalls they passed by. She noted with approval that he
was watching no less carefully. Only subtle signs gave him away,
like the way he avoided anyone who wasn't busy looking or
haggling. Good, he was learning what to watch out for.

She spotted the mark just as Peli walked by it. Aynia glanced at
the shopkeeper, made a split-second judgment and went for it.
The big yellow fruit standing at the edge of the grocer's
polished wood display box came within reach. With a
well-practiced motion that did not require her to even look she
had it in her had and under her cloak. Her body and Peli's hid
the transaction from just about any angle. It was impossible to
watch everywhere, you had to just make sure that most people
didn't even get a chance to see.

Peli coughed, and Aynia suppressed a frown. /Don't attract
attention, damn it/. But she could hardly blame him. The air had
been foul for days, the sun was barely visible as a wan patch of
brightness in the smoky brown sky, providing no warmth. Maybe
that stupid country on the other side of the continent was still
burning, like they said. Many people wore cloth masks over nose
and mouth, the richer ones in their silken robes had elegant
gold-trimmed glass rebreathers. There were quite a few of those,
in fact. This market was a bit more upscale than the ones they
were used to working. The two of them stood out a bit more here
than in the outer-city markets, and that made her nervous.

She poked her brother in the back. "Let's go." He nodded to
acknowledge the order, and made his way to the middle of the
wide market walkway. They walked side-by-side now. She was
starting to notice how few other children there were. People
here could afford adult servants to either do the shopping or to
mind the kids while they shopped themselves. Working this market
would be risky. But they hadn't eaten in three days and the
outer city markets were drying up, they had no-

The police had set up a checkpoint at the market entrance.

"Aynia?" Peli said nervously.

"Quiet," she whispered back. The two officers in their white
helmets and uniforms were just waving through each person
exiting the market. Just looking for somebody. "We go."

As they approached the checkpoint and she got a closer look,
Aynia's heart began to race. /Oh shit, robots./ She'd only ever
seen them a couple of times in outer city, from a distance, when
a whole squad of them would swarm in to arrest a dissident or
something. They looked like plain old guards until you saw them
move when they were in a hurry. People said you could tell easy
once you were up close that they're not human.

The one on the left brought up his hand in a gesture so smart
she could almost hear it whistle. Its two red eyes bore down on
her from under the smoked visor she had taken to be shades.
"Names?" it snapped in a clipped voice that suggested it came
from a metal throat.

"Aynia, sir. And my brother Peli."

"I will inspect your bags."

Their bags were not visible under their cloaks, or shouldn't
have been. "Yes sir." Both she and Peli flipped back their
cloaks, opened up their knapsacks and held them out for
inspection. Peli's was empty, hers had exactly one sample of
about twenty different gourmet foods. /They can't prove we stole
them/ she told herself.

The robot nodded curtly and they closed up their knapsacks.
"Address?"

/Shit./ She gave the address of a house she'd been eyeing for a
possible garden raid.

"You will wait." An antenna popped up from the helmet, and the
robot's bloodless lips moved without making a sound. He was
calling the house...

"Run!"

Aynia hadn't taken two steps when the shout of "Halt!" came from
behind them. Peli followed her lead, ducking around and behind a
startled family. Aristocratic looking, not even the robots would
shoot through them, not to get a couple of street urchins. All
they had to do was reach that alley.

The crack of thunder was loud enough to hurt her ears. Something
hot and wet splashed against her back and shot past her in a
torrent of red. She kept running.



----- ***** -----



It was easier to breathe today, though the sun was still a
feeble brown thing that made everything the color of dust. And
finally, Aynia was not crying anymore. It felt like there was
not enough water left in her body for tears. She could not even
swallow with her parched throat.

It was the third time she had lost her family. That was counting
her parents, whomever they might have been. In the orphanage,
she'd managed to latch onto an older girl who'd looked out for
her. In exchange for favors of course, nothing comes free. It
was stealing for her "big sister" that had got Aynia beat within
an inch of her life. And it was the older girl trying to
intervene that had got her beaten even worse and dragged away
bloody, never to be seen again. Probably dead. Just like Peli,
the kid she'd met up with after running away. Her third family.

She had spent the night here, her back propped against the low,
crumbling plaster wall that faced the gray rubble-strewn
alleyway, dozing on and off. Stupid, really. This part of outer
city had never been rebuilt after the last air-raid, it was
abandoned. But it was far from being empty or safe. She may have
nothing left to steal save her tunic now, but there were plenty
of rape gangs who would be more than happy even with a skinny
little waif with not even a single pubic hair to her name. She
didn't care. The knapsack had been lost somewhere in her mad
dash from the inner city, but the cloak she had abandoned. An
hour of scrubbing against wet rocks on the riverbank could not
remove the stench of Peli's innards. And in all that time, still
nothing to eat or drink.

A primal thirst too painful to ignore finally goaded her into
motion. She headed for the nearest beggars' alley. You needed to
be in the guild to beg. But if nothing else she could sell her
body to get in. Somehow with Peli gone that seemed like a real
option now. Some liked it with children, she had heard. The way
people described that adult stuff, it might not be so bad.

The beggars' alley was always noisy and crowded, but there was
something different about the commotion she found going on.
White-uniformed cops - just the plain old human ones - were
shouting about the government doing something good. There were
lots of people lined up. For some reason, every adult had at
least one kid with them. Then Aynia smelled the soup. She got in
line.

It took hours. She was swaying on her feet by the time she got
to where the policemen were standing. To her dismay, instead of
somebody ladling out soup she was confronted by a pretty,
smiling woman in a clean white coat. "Are you all alone, young
lady?" Aynia just nodded. "You can sit down over there." The
woman pointed to a strange chair where another smiling woman
beckoning her. There were other kids in similar chairs that had
been set up in two rows across the dusty little public
courtyard, each being examined or something by more of these
smiling women in white. But all Aynia cared about was that on
the other side she could see a guarded area where kids at tables
greedily slurped up soup. She went to the chair and sat down.

"And what's your name, young lady?" The squeak that came out of
Aynia's throat prompted the woman to pour a glass of water out
of a shining metal thermos. It was the coolest, sweetest water
she had ever tasted. She held out for four glasses before
answering. "Aynia."

"We're with the government Aynia, and we're just going to do
some tests to check out how healthy you are. It won't hurt a
bit."

Usually the people running these 'government programs' demanded
ID cards from everyone, which was why most people in outer city
didn't get any government programs. But this clean, smiling
young lady with her perfect black hair just went on casually
asking Aynia questions while she took blood out of Aynia's arm
and did other weird stuff. "Ten or eleven, I think... No, I
don't have any parents.... No, no other family... Just odd jobs
around the neighborhood... I sleep at the government shelter."
The woman must have known that last one was a lie, nobody went
to those places. You hear stories. But she just smiled and said
that was good.

Aynia could see that the woman was reacting to whatever she was
seeing on the dancing displays of her shiny machines with
something more than professional detachment. You learn to read
people, when you work the markets for as long as Aynia had.
Aynia started feeling tense. If she had some dangerous disease,
would they quarantine her or just get rid of her in the most
convenient way? But when the lady took the big shiny metal ring
with the wires off Aynia's head she just pointed to where they
was serving the soup. Aynia ran over and was about to belt some
stupid boy for trying to cut in when this smiling young lady
assured them there was plenty for everyone. There was. It was a
gigantic bowl of the thickest, most heavenly soup she had ever
eaten. She took it slowly, like you're supposed to when it's the
first food in days. Must have taken her an hour to finish, it
was that much. Right when she was done two more of the smiling
ladies came over to her and one bent over. "Miss Aynia?"

Nobody had ever called her that. "Yeah?"

"Have you ever taken a drive in a hovercar before?"



----- ***** -----



Everything is clean. It smells good. Everyone is smiling. Those
were the first things Aynia noticed about the 'training center'
the hovercar dropped her and the other three girls off at.

It had been amazing. There was an inner /inner/ city inside
inner city. None of the buildings were taller than the big wall,
that's why you couldn't see them from outside. But they still
made inner city look like outer city, scintillating like
towering jewels, even under that sullen, dusty sky. They'd gone
through all sorts of checkpoints and then had spiraled down long
tunnels deep underground. Yet everything here was so bright,
like the way the sun looked before that enemy country was
burned. And there were pretty plants everywhere.

She was given a bath... her /own/ bath, all to herself. It
numbed her mind, thinking of using this much fresh water just to
wash herself. The tunic they gave her was simple but pretty, and
oh so soft.

The ladies in white took her through another hallway, and
suddenly there were lots of other girls being led the same way.
They all sat down in a room with rows of little desks, sort of
like the way they said government schools look like. There was
another lady at the front, maybe a little older but no less
pretty. She smiled warmly at them. "Good morning children. I'm
Vaesa, and I will be taking care of you while you're in this
training center. You are here because the tests the nurses gave
you showed that you are all very smart, healthy young ladies who
can think quickly and act quickly. This makes you very
important, very special. Our country needs young ladies like
you. If you work hard and do as you're told, you will be given
very important jobs in the government, jobs even more important
than the /aristocrats/ have." She said that word with just a
hint of the sneer that people in outer city used with that word.
Then she smiled again. "Fun jobs that only you can do, because
you're so special."

"What kind of jobs?" one of the girls asked warily. Stupid girl,
she would get them mad, you never get people mad when they're
giving you stuff. Especially not government people.

But Vaesa just smiled. "You're going to help make great big
machines that will win our country the next war. It's very
secret, that's why we had to bring you here. After you've
completed your training, if you've been working very hard, we'll
tell you all about it."



----- ***** -----



The worst thing about running on a treadmill is that there's no
wind.

Vaesa coolly watched the colorful numbers and curves on the
monitor screen, a picture of calm repose right in front of
Aynia's madly pumping arms and legs. The tall, pale woman turned
her hazel eyes upon the girl furiously running in one place. "Do
you want to stop?"

Aynia's heart was ready to burst and her legs were about to fall
off. She gave one violent shake of her head and picked up the
pace even more. The treadmill compensated. Vaesa just turned her
head sharply back to the monitor, setting her straight, short
auburn hair bobbing across her ears, watching intently as if not
wanting to miss a thing. Aynia continued, daring the woman to
ask again whether she wanted to stop.

The sudden cramp was excruciating, almost making her stumble.
But she managed to stay on her feet, accepting defeat and
slowing down. As always, the treadmill stopped just as she did.
She bent forward, resting hands on knees and taking great gulps
of air as fast as she could. There was not enough air in all the
room to satisfy her lungs. Sweat still pored freely from her
whole body, soaking her shorts and sleeveless shirt.

After a moment, Vaesa walked over to her and gently put a hand
on her shoulder. Aynia managed not to flinch. She had a problem
being touched by people she didn't really trust yet. "Very good
Aynia, you may go sit down," she said gently, releasing her and
stepping away. "Next."

Aynia staggered over to the bench, passing by the next girl. She
took her water bottle and poured it all over her upturned face,
still breathing far too hard to think of drinking anything. It
was minutes before she stopped shaking. But her cramp was gone.
They were right about those pills, muscle pain went away a lot
quicker when you were taking them.

"You're a good runner."

Aynia turned to look at the girl sitting beside her. She'd
noticed this girl before. Just a bit taller than her, and slim,
with smooth chocolate skin and wavy black hair. She had the most
amazing green eyes. Her silky voice had been slightly accented.
Somebody from the southern provinces maybe, the ones that had
been annexed in the last war. And she was smiling. The girls
never smiled. They almost never talked to each other. Most were
like Aynia, formerly homeless and destitute. Street kids didn't
make friends unless they were joining a gang. So you were
careful who you talked to, and who you took compliments from.
The proper response was /So, you think maybe you're better/?

"Thanks." Well, maybe Aynia was just too tired to care if she
was being dissed.

"If your leg didn't cramp, you'd still be going I think."

Aynia's eyes narrowed. "How did you...?"

"We run races in the south. Children have to run five leagues.
You learn to judge when the girl in front of you is about to
fail, so that you can pace yourself and take her at the right
time."

"You didn't grow up in the capital?"

"No, I came here last month. Like you, I guess. They flew me."

Aynia's eyes went wide. "You /flew/?"

"Yes. In an aircar."

"Wow. What was that like?"

"You couldn't see much. The smoke was everywhere then."

It might still be, for all they knew. They never went outside or
got any news. "Was it the same down there? I mean, they took
your blood and stuff and gave you soup?"

"Yeah. They told my family they wanted to train me for a
government job. Lots more money than we ever made before, they
said."

Aynia felt a pang in her stomach. "You have a family?"

"Sure. Mom, dad and my big brother. You?"

Aynia just shook her head. "I ran away from an orphanage."
Neither her big sister nor Peli had been of her blood, so it
would have been cheap trying to claim them as family. "So they
didn't tell the grownups anything? I mean, about these jobs."

"No. They said it's very secret."

"Oh." This girl seemed pretty smart, and looked strong. Aynia
could use a new partner to watch her back. You never know when
you might need one. "I'm Aynia."

The girl smiled and nodded in a cautious, reserved way that
suggested she had the same understanding about their
expectations of each other. "Dwiren."



----- ***** -----



More of the girls actually played with each other during break
time now. Once they had figured out that everyone got food
regardless of how well they did in the gym or in school, they
didn't have to think of each other as potential enemies. Groups
of friends quickly formed. But no gangs were allowed, any
bullying was severely punished. When there was a flogging,
everybody had to line up and watch while the naked, screaming
girl had her back whipped raw by a robot. But it only happened a
few times. The rules were simple and clear, and everyone learned
to follow them.

Aynia and Dwiren were playing cards at one of the tables in the
gaily painted playroom. Neither of them knew any card games,
they had taught themselves from the books in the library. Dwiren
had actually gone to a little school for a couple of years back
home, so Aynia was still a bit behind her in reading.

Dwiren examined the hand that Aynia had just laid down. "You
can't play the Emperor card if you don't have a full trick."

Aynia's grin of triumph faded. "I can't?" She picked up the rule
book, flipped through it and frowned as she read the difficult
words. "Oh yeah. Damn. Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I did. You just forgot."

Aynia just looked away with a noncommittal grunt. She had no
doubt Dwiren was telling the truth. The girl would never cut you
any slack, but she was no cheater either. Aynia always had to be
on her toes, hanging out with this one. Which was all for the
good.

Dwiren gathered the cards into a neat pile, but didn't start
shuffling for a new game. "Say, Aynia?"

"Yeah?"

Her friend averted her emerald eyes for a moment before
continuing. "What sort of work do you think we'll be doing?"

Aynia shrugged. "I don't know. They make it sound like we'll be
making weapons."

"Why do we need strong legs to make weapons?"

That question took Aynia by surprise. "Well, they keep telling
us, healthy body and healthy mind, you know? Like those pills
that make us learn faster."

"It's something to do with the war. I wonder if we'll be
soldiers?"

"Girls can't be soldiers, didn't you know that? It's against the
law. That's why we can't go join the army." She grinned. "Hey,
maybe we get to train soldiers. That would be sort of fun. We
get to cane their little bums whenever they goof off."

Dwiren giggled. "Or maybe we'll be guards in the Emperor's
palace because they can't trust men to guard all his wives."

"I heard they got eunuchs for that."

"What's a eunuch?"

"A guy who's had his man-parts cut off. That way they can't...
you know."

"Oh..." Dwiren looked down at the table. Even with her dusky
complexion, you could sort of tell that she was blushing.

Aynia couldn't help but smile. "Girl, your mommy did tell you
about that stuff, didn't she?"

"Sure," she said quickly. "Hey, maybe we'll be spies."

"Yeah, that would be sort of cool. Maybe we'll get to sneak onto
the Eye of God and blow it up. You know, before they finish
building it."

Dwiren nodded enthusiastically, obviously liking that idea. "Or
maybe we get to go steal the plans for the enemy's new Demon
God."

By the time recess ended, they had thought up about a dozen
progressively sillier ideas.



----- ***** -----



Aynia had her first operation a year later. When she woke up it
hurt everywhere. She begged for them to make the pain stop, and
they gave her something that helped a little bit. They made her
get up and walk to eat her meals and go to the bathroom. She was
so weak, and moving was such agony. The first time she looked in
the mirror she screamed. Her head was shaved, and there was a
big scar across her scalp. Vaesa came and held her and patted
her as Aynia cried into her motherly bosom, patiently explaining
that the scars would disappear and her beautiful silvery hair
would grow back. Four days later Aynia felt up to taking a
shower, and got another shock. There were more scars all over
her body, though like her head they were quickly healing. She
noticed her body was changing in other ways too. She blushed.
They said that a good diet made you develop faster in that way.

The next day when Dwiren came into her room they just looked
slack-jawed at each other, and then they both rocked in helpless
laughter for a full minute. "You look like an egg!" Dwiren
gasped.

"You look like a rubber ball!"

When their second round of laughter ended, Dwiren dragged
herself over to the chair by Aynia's bed. Her hospital gown left
her arms bare, Aynia could see all the scars. And she was having
almost as much trouble moving as Aynia. "How long have you been
up?" Dwiren asked.

"Five days."

"Seven. I thought these implants were supposed to make us move
faster," Dwiren complained. "I doubt I could even jog right now."

"You're doing better than me. I haven't even been out of my
room."

"There's not much to see, just more hospital rooms. I hope we
don't have to be here much longer."

As it turned out, they didn't. Four days later they and about
half of their classmates were moved into a set of rooms they had
never seen before, and the real hell began. They slept four
hours a day, and other than a few very short breaks every waking
minute was spent is school or in the gym. There was not even any
free study time. They were expected to learn everything they
were taught, the first time, and never forget. Usually they did.
When one did forget, a teacher would touch a button on her
remote control and the girl would fall to the ground shrieking
in agony. Aynia had that done to her twice. After that, she
never forgot anything.

In a few weeks their physical condition was back to what it had
been before their operations. But the trainers demanded more.
And they got it. Aynia could maintain a dead run for an hour.
Then two. Then four. Then all day long. The trainers never told
them how far or how fast they ran on the treadmill, or how much
weight they were pulling on the exercise machines. But to Aynia
it felt like she could outrun a hovercar, catch it and pick it
up over her head if she wanted to. Dwiren just laughed at her
when she said that.

After the next operation, Aynia couldn't eat for a week. Then
they took her off the drip-feed needles, and told her to eat or
starve. Everything made her violently ill. It was another week
before she could keep a meal down. She paced herself, just as
she had to an eternity ago whenever the vagaries of street life
brought her from famine to feast. This was familiar territory,
her stomach had just forgotten how to take food and she had to
teach it over again.

Eventually she got enough strength back to stand and walk. It
was agony. /Gods, do we have to go through all this again?/ This
time it was her who came to visit Dwiren first. She stood and
stared at her friend in mute horror. "Oh, Dwiren..."

Aynia had seen people on the street who had died from
starvation. Dwiren looked worse. Very slowly, she grinned,
making her look even more like a hideous death-mask. She croaked
out one word with each slow, labored breath. "First.... meal...
today... kept... it... down."

Aynia came and fed her every day, giving her just the right
amounts at the right time, no more and no less, the way she had
taught herself. When the trainers told her they had to walk to
their new classrooms on their own power, Dwiren was just barely
able to do it.

They and three of their emaciated classmates began the new round
of training. As before, it was a grueling regimen of exercise,
acrobatics and study. The study was becoming a bit more focused
now, they were put through never-ending games and scenarios
where they had to root out each other's deceptions. Maybe Dwiren
had been right, and they were going to be spies. Aynia was
beginning to see how well she had chosen her companion. They
managed to temper each others' dangerous tendencies. Dwiren
often calmed Aynia when her temper was about to get the better
of her, and Aynia in turn had to give Dwiren a subtle poke or
word whenever she started asking questions the instructors
didn't like. Insubordination and curiosity could both be very
unhealthy.

But there was one time they both nearly got into big trouble.
Their weight trainer was a stupid cow, a big brassy blonde who
would use her remote control on them at the drop of a hat. Her
favorite game was getting two of the girls in a tug-of-war and
zapping the loser. One day, with a subtle gesture Dwiren pointed
out where the link between the cable they used and the grip on
one end was badly stretched. The idea was agreed upon by both of
them with nothing more than a glance and a nod.

The cow laughed louder than ever as she watched Aynia and Dwiren
grunting and straining against each other at opposite ends of
the thick steel cable. She stepped closer in between them. "Come
on girls, give it all you've got now. If I think you're slacking
on me I'll zap the both of you."

Aynia heard and felt the bad link on Dwiren's side giving way
and sidestepped slightly towards the instructor. The cable
exploded out at her and Aynia twisted it savagely to one side as
she was thrown back down onto the floor. She heard a scream.
Both she and Dwiren were on their feet in an instant. "Teacher!"
they cried out in unison, putting all their heart and soul into
it. She was writhing on the ground, still screaming, her hands
covering her face. Those hands were already covered with blood,
as was the floor below her head. Aynia glanced over to the other
end of the cable she had dropped, and felt a chill of dread. The
strands of the cable were flayed out like a fan, they must have
been like that when they hit her. She hadn't been expecting it
to be this bad...

Aynia and Dwiren leaped over and crouched over her just on time
for the medics to burst into the room. At their sharp command
the two girls stood up and backed off. They watched silently as
the three white-clad doctors held the screaming instructor down,
rudely jabbing her with injector guns and trying to get some
dressing over her torn face. Within a minute, some combination
of the injections and the pain made the instructor pass out.
When the doctors stood up and wheeled her out on the emergency
bed, Aynia thought it may have been the loss of blood that had
made her pass out, they were all covered in it.

The only other person who had come into the room was Vaesa. She
had said nothing, but Aynia had been painfully aware of her
presence. She approached closer to the two of them, glancing
from one to the other. Her expression was stern but calm. "Go to
your rooms," she said quietly. With a mumbled "Yes, ma'am," they
both did so.

Aynia paced her spacious quarters nervously. Damn, this was bad.
What a stupid thing to do, just when they thought things were
going well. Despite the harsh training they were being treated a
lot better now, with nice quarters and everything. She really
had thought the worst was over, and now this. Hurting an
instructor was the one thing they told you would get you death
by impaling. She thought furiously, trying to think if there was
anything they had done that would indicate this was anything
more than an accident. Maybe it would still be okay.

She was ready to start climbing the walls by the time Vaesa
came. Aynia came to attention, but Vaesa waved her into one of
the comfortable chairs. She took the other. "I've been reviewing
archive video," she said mildly. "We saw Dwiren very clearly
giving the end of the cable a close examination yesterday when
she thought nobody was looking. The damaged end. It's clear it
had been stretched out dangerously long before it snapped. She
must have known it was ready to break, that it would be
dangerous. Did she mention this to you, Aynia?"

/Damn, the stupid girl gave herself away/. "No, ma'am."

Vaesa raised an eyebrow. "Really? Well, today's video clearly
shows her pointing it out to you."

They couldn't prove anything if she stuck to her story. "I
thought she was just challenging me to a tug-of-war. I accepted."

"That is not Dwiren's interpretation of events. She said she had
told you about the damaged cable, and that using it to get back
at your instructor was your idea."

Aynia reminded herself it didn't matter whether Dwiren had
really said that. "I didn't know about the damaged cable, so I
couldn't have spoken to her about it."

"Are you saying that she is lying?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Vaesa just eyed her silently for a full minute. Aynia met her
gaze without flinching. She refused to be broken.

"Do you know why I was put in charge of this place, Aynia?"

She was surprised by the question. But she did not hesitate. "I
assume because you're the best one for the job, ma'am."

Vaesa nodded. "That's right. It's not often that women get such
senior positions in military projects. But this project is
unique. We need to find just the right people for the jobs we
want you to do. For rather obscure technical reasons, women are
best qualified. It has to do with how our brains are wired. And
we need your training to start early. So they needed somebody
with the technical background, and who knows how to deal with
girls. And I know how to deal with girls, Aynia. I can read them
like a book, I know what they're thinking even before they know
it themselves. I've had my eye on you for some time know, and
I'm pretty sure I've got you pegged. You hold grudges, and you
don't forget. Revenge would taste just as sweet to you served
cold or piping hot. I think you took revenge today, and if you
deny it I'm pretty sure I can prove you're lying. So be very
careful how you answer my next question. Did you know about the
damaged cable?"

"No, ma'am."

Expecting further interrogation, Aynia was surprised when Vaesa
suddenly stood up. She did likewise. The woman walked slowly
over to her. Somehow, her step was more buoyant, as if she were
enjoying herself. The cool face that looked down at her also
seemed more animated, or maybe it was just the lack of cold
detachment she was used to seeing there. "I think it would be
best if we treat what happened today as an unfortunate
accident," she said. Shockingly, she put a gentle hand to
Aynia's cheek and smiled. "Why don't you take the rest of the
day off? Report to morning class tomorrow at the usual time."

Nobody ever mentioned it again. Aynia never found out what
Dwiren had said to Vaesa, or whether they had even actually
spoken. She never asked. As the days passed, she was able to
convince herself that they had gotten away with it. Nothing
really changed, as far as she could see. Nothing, except that
now Vaesa seemed to look upon the two of them with something
like approval. Aynia spent many a sleepless night puzzling over
why that might be. But at least that stupid blonde cow had now
been replaced by somebody halfway decent, so something positive
had come from this little episode.

When they had their strength back to what it had been before,
their trainers started them on the really weird stuff.



----- ***** -----



Aynia spun around in midair, catching the robot in its midriff
with her extended leg. It blew in half, sending a shower of
parts across the battlefield. She landed and shot up in the air
just on time to avoid a bolt from the overhead robot. Aynia's
path was about to intersect the wall. /Fly or rebound?/ Flying
would give her more control, but rebounding was more fun. Her
legs absorbed the impact and immediately launched her on an
intercept course. She somersaulted over its next energy blast
and locked her knees, slamming both feet into its head. The
headless body went tumbling to the ground, not far from where
she made an elegant landing with feet together and arms extended
like she did on balance bar training.

The battlefield vanished. SIMULATION OVER. Aynia braced for the
vertigo of delinking, and suddenly her body was no longer
standing on an abstract grid pattern, but reclined on a sculpted
black couch. She removed the sim helmet and grinned. /Piece of
cake/.

She was happy to see that Vaesa had joined her combat instructor
up in the control booth, wearing her trademark half-smile of
approval. Aynia and Dwiren had been seeing a lot more of the
Director lately. That's what the other trainers called her, when
talking amongst themselves. Aynia was sure by now that she was
the most important person down here in the center. She had
treated Vaesa with respect right from the start, that just made
good sense. But these days she made a point of being nice to the
Director. Catching her eye was the best way to get ahead here,
as far as Aynia could see.

When she was dismissed, Aynia got a couple of canned drinks from
the machine and went to Dwiren's room. She rang the buzzer and
juggled the cans as she waited in the corridor. A moment later
the door slid open. "Come on in!" she heard being called from
inside.

Dwiren was in her bedroom, just slipping on her mauve bodysuit,
the same kind that Aynia was wearing in their off-hours. She
hadn't been growing quite as fast as Aynia, so they were just
about of a height now. Aynia grinned. "Hey, girlfriend." She
whipped one drink at Dwiren, who managed to pull her hand into
the bodysuit glove just on time to snatch the shiny can out of
the air. "How'd you do?"

Dwiren sniffed, and zipped up the front of her suit. "Aced it,
of course." Dwiren had been on the other simulator today, the
one where you did weird stuff like flying through this
ridiculously huge maze of a building, looking for the prizes.
"Vaesa showed up to watch. She looked happy."

"I saw her too." Good news all around. Aynia did an impromptu
back flip and landed spread-eagled on Dwiren's bed. "Ah, I'm
still restless! I love the sims, but they don't work your body
like gym does."

"Nothing really gets me tired anymore," Dwiren said in a
reserved tone.

"So, is that bad?"

"No."

Aynia sat up cross-legged. "Hey, what's got you down all of a
sudden?"

Dwiren put her drink on the fancy wood dresser, went over and
sat on the edge of the bed. "Aynia, have you had your first
blood yet?"

"Huh? Oh, that. No. Oh, don't tell me..."

Dwiren shook her head. "We're both sixteen now. It's odd that
neither of us have."

"So?" Aynia thumbed open her drink, took a good swig and put it
on the bed stand. "Maybe the stuff they give us is making us
late bloomers. We may not be stacked like Vaesa but we sure
aren't kids anymore either." She reached over and poked one of
her friend's assets playfully with her finger. "Boop!"

Dwiren just flinched a little and smiled shyly. "Have you
noticed we look a lot alike now?" Aynia followed her gaze to the
big mirror on the wall over the dresser. They were in fact built
very much alike. Dwiren's skin tone had become a lot lighter,
and Aynia's darker... a side-effect of the implants, they had
been told. As was the slate gray hair that had grown out after
Dwiren's last operation, a pretty good match for Aynia's
platinum blonde. Now that Aynia looked closely, it seemed like
their faces had changed a bit, they were more alike now.

"Yeah, I've noticed," Aynia lied casually. "We look like sisters
now. You know, I bet we could disguise as each other. Maybe you
were right about us being spies."

"I don't think so. I've found out other things."

Aynia didn't like where this was going. Dwiren asked too many
questions. They both knew by now that they were being monitored
at all times. "What, like your piss is a different color? They
explained that..."

"No, other things."

Aynia really needed to get her off this track. Dwiren had got in
trouble before, for asking the wrong questions. "Girl, you
always go looking for stuff to worry about. Look!" She swept her
arm to encompass Dwiren's big, sumptuous bedroom. "We've made
it, okay? They don't push us nearly as hard as they did last
year. We get whole /days/ off where we can do what we like. You
know what that means? They're not trying to break us anymore.
We've proven that we can do this stuff. Next year we both come
of age, and I bet that's when we get our nice jobs and start
raking it in."

Dwiren didn't answer. Instead, she reached over to her bed stand
and opened the drawer. To Aynia's surprise, she pulled out a
small knife. She knew the type, very sharp for cutting open sea
clams. They made good weapons for muggers and gangs. "Dwiren,
where did... Hey!" Aynia reacted instantly when Dwiren moved to
cut her own throat, knowing it would not be on time. She grabbed
Dwiren's wrist and pulled it away violently. Aynia waited for
the torrent of blood to gush out at her but there was nothing.
Dwiren's throat was not even marked. But she had felt the
knife's pressure against the girl's throat as she pulled it
away. "Damn it, what the hell are you doing? Are you trying to
scare me to death?"

"Try it yourself," Dwiren said in a tremulous, haunted voice.
The whites of her eyes showed all around her pupils, giving her
a demented appearance. "Try it anywhere. As hard as you like.
That's a ceramic knife, it cuts through bone but it can't even
mark our skin. Can training do that? Can drugs do that? Can
little implants do that?"

She dropped the knife. Aynia looked down at it. "What sort of
trick are-"

"It's no trick!" Dwiren shouted, yanking her hand away and
jumping to her feet. "Hit yourself with a hammer as hard as you
like, anywhere! Nothing broken, nothing even bruised! We're not
human anymore, we're robots!"

"What the hell are you talking about!" Aynia shouted back.
"Robots are just machines, everyone knows that! We eat and sleep
just like before! I took a shit this morning! Do robots do that?"

Dwiren giggled hysterically, running a hand down the side of her
face. "I guess we do."

"Don't be stupid!"

"How do you know what robots do?" Dwiren asked. "We just know
what people tell us."

"Robots are all men!" Or at least they looked like men. People
said they were just machines, but maybe... "They've got those
red eyes and everything!"

Dwiren bumped into the wall she had been backing towards. She
clutched at her chest. "Maybe they're not done with us yet," she
whispered. "There's only you and me now. What happened to all
the other girls?"

"They just didn't make the cut, okay?" It was hard to
concentrate on what she was saying, Aynia's mind was in such
turmoil. This had to be wrong, it had to be.

Dwiren shook her head slowly. "It's always after those horrible
operations. There are fewer of us each time. And now the
Director spends all her time with us. Are we the only ones left
alive?"

"Yes, you are."

Vaesa stood in the doorway, her fist resting over her wide hip.
She looked mildly annoyed. "I wanted to do one more evaluation,
but you're both such promising candidates I think we can safely
dispense with that." She pressed something on the remote she
held in the other hand. Aynia was abruptly dislocated from her
body like just before going into a sim. But the horror of the
blackness did not segue into the sim, it just continued to
envelop her. She was as a disembodied head with no face. She
could not even feel her heartbeat. It was beyond being blind and
deaf and numb, she was a disembodied consciousness floating in
emptiness.

Was this death?

Hours or days later, when the hallucinations her mind was
drawing from the darkness were starting to look real to her,
they were suddenly wiped out and her body came back.

Fighting vertigo, she tried to get her bearings, but what she
saw made no sense. She was looking down at her body, strapped to
a thin, shiny X-shaped table, naked and spread-eagle... no, she
was looking /up/, at the big mirror in the ceiling. Robots with
little shiny knives for hands stood all around her. Aynia's eyes
darted wildly from one place to the other. There were shining
trays with all sorts of incomprehensible little machines within
reach of the robots. Everything was still, there was no sound
save the gentle hum and whisper of idling machinery.

"I'm sorry Aynia," came Vaesa's voice from a speaker somewhere.
"But you're going to have to be awake for this one." In all her
years here, it was the first time Vaesa had ever apologized to
her. That scared her more than anything, and she whimpered
feebly.

The robots all moved at once. They sank the tips of their little
knives into half a dozen spots on her body. She tried to
struggle, but nothing below her neck would move. The cage and
straps around her head prevented her from doing more than moving
her jaw. She was struck dumb with morbid fascination as she
watched the robots run their little knives along her skin. It
didn't exactly hurt, it felt more like being unzipped than cut.
Incredibly, there was no blood. If she could feel her guts she
was sure she would be retching violently. "Stop. Oh, please
stop," she begged.

The more skin they peeled back, the less what was underneath
looked like meat. By the time they had exposed all her
glistening, gray organs and muscle-things, she was screaming
with every breath.

A shock at her neck stunned her to silence. "Now Aynia, we're
going to be installing the last of your implants. You know how
in the sims you could fly and absorb energy attacks and flow
into enemy robots like water to attack them from inside? Well,
these implants will let you do all that for real. The difference
is, now we have to connect them directly into your nervous
system instead of just using nerve stimulation." As Vaesa's calm
voice droned on, Aynia watched the robots peel back the top of
the shiny hollow tube where her left thigh bone had been. "We
won't know we have it correctly done until the nerves send the
feedback to the proper place in your brain." The robots began
lowering a black tube that looked like it would fit nicely into
the middle of her leg bone.

"So, Aynia, you're going to have to tell us when it hurts."



----- ***** -----



They unceremoniously dumped her in a big room that somehow
looked familiar. After the hours of careful, painstaking,
methodical work they had done on her that seemed like a strange
thing to do. But maybe not. Why be careful with something that's
indestructible?

Some parts of it she had seen, in fact they had compelled her to
watch, some parts she had just felt. There was no pain now,
absolutely none. But the memory was enough to leave her shaking.
And she felt so heavy. Did all those new implants really weigh
that much? She tried getting up, and after much effort managed
to prop herself up on one elbow. There was no way she was going
to be standing. She gave it up and flopped down onto her back.
Something went /click/ against the floor. /Oh Gods what now?/
She rolled over onto her side and slowly slid a hand across the
small of her back. Something metal was attached to her back,
something...

No, not attached. Her finger slid straight into the cold metal
slot, straight into the empty space where the bottom of her
spine should have been.

She curled up and convulsed, picturing the shiny gray guts under
her skin being racked by dry heaves. "What is this?" she
shrieked. "Take it out! Take it out!" She struck the cold floor
impotently, clenching her eyes shut and sobbing. Why did they
bother giving her this perfect, monstrous body if it just hurt
in all the same stupid ways that her old one had? All they were
doing was giving her new sorts of pain to experience.

Aynia heard footsteps. She turned her head to see a guard-robot
wheel an operating table into the room. She immediately knew
what was going to happen, watched it transpire exactly as she
had just pictured it in her mind's eye. The robot threw the
sheet aside to reveal the nude body of a girl just slightly
darker than Aynia. With no further ado the robot used both hands
to roll the body over the edge of the padded table. Aynia saw a
glint of metal on Dwiren's back just before she hit the floor
hard. Without a word, the robot wheeled the table back around
the corner of the big gray building that occupied one part of
the cavernous room. Whatever door it used was hidden, everything
was the same gray pained in a wide grid of white lines.

A moment later, Dwiren moved feebly. Knowing her friend was
alive and conscious, Aynia's mind looped numbly around a strange
attractor between relief and pity.

Aynia forced herself to her hands and knees. Knowing that was
the best she could manage, she slowly crawled towards her
friend. Don't you dare die on me, she commanded. You see, you
and I, we have a supreme act of revenge to enact, someday,
somehow. Next to what they did to us, rape would be a
benediction. There are some affronts even the least of slaves
can't be expected to endure.

Maybe halfway there, Aynia heard more footsteps echoing through
the cavernous room. She raised her head to find that somebody
was blocking her path. Beyond caring, her lips curled back from
her teeth and her whole face tightened and twisted into an
inhuman mask of hate. Her voice rasped out as a long, loud
whisper. "Bitch...!"

Vaesa's impassive face softened, and her lips curled in that
trademark smile. "Yes, and you shall join us. Two more little
bitches to help us with our little project." She rhythmically
slapped the long, white rod she held into the open palm of her
free hand.

Aynia struggled to gain her feet. "Kill... you..."

"Indeed? Well, there's one thing I'll have to do for you before
you can do that." The click of Vaesa's heels echoed through the
chamber as she walked quickly behind Aynia. In an awkward
half-kneel, her limbs still feeling like lead, she could not
even turn to face her tormentor. Expecting a blow from the club
she instead felt a savage kick against her back and went
sprawling on her stomach, her wind knocked out as a loud
exclamation of frustrated rage. "I'll have to power you up." She
felt a foot upon her back and then something else. /Gods, she's
stuck something into that.../

White fire surged through her body. It touched and woke up every
nerve, every muscle, until she felt weightless. It dove deeper
still, awakening new and wondrous things that had not been there
before, yet were familiar. All in a flash she realized where she
was. This was the battlefield from the simulations. But now it
was real and so were those magical powers that she could use
there, that she had thought were just part of the game.

So utterly astonished was Aynia that she just rose to her knees
and looked at her body as if seeing it for the first time. She
really was weightless, or nearly so. The merest push against the
ground would send her sailing, she was sure. But she dare not
try it, the idea was just too surreal.

Vaesa had already walked over to Dwiren. "You too, little
bitch." She kicked Dwiren in the side, rolling her onto her
stomach. With both hands, she pushed the sharp end of the long
white club into the socket in the girl's back. The globe at the
end of the staff glowed brightly, and Dwiren's body shivered.
Vaesa removed the staff and took a couple of steps back. Dwiren
rose to a sitting position. Aynia saw reflected in her eyes the
same awe at the impossible things she was feeling.

Vaesa looked from one to the other. "So? What are you waiting
for?"

The two girls exchanged a look and a nod of understanding.
Dwiren looked back at Vaesa. "You'll just paralyze us with that."

"This?" Vaesa unclipped the remote control from her belt and
tossed it, sending it skidding across the floor. "It doesn't
work on you anymore."

It was just another ruse of course, somebody else had their
finger on the button. /Oh to hell with it/. By the power of
will, Aynia rose up above the gray floor with its wide grid
pattern. It really was just like in the sim, she could move
through the air as she willed. She caught movement at the corner
of her eye... no, she /sensed/ the movement, just as she could
in the sims. Dwiren rose up and floated beside her. /Good girl,
you figured it out too/. They exchanged another meaningful
glance. They had to at least try. As one they extended their
arms down towards their tormentor, a firing squad of two. The
rush of power quickly surged through her body, flowing out to
her hand, which was already crackling with the familiar static
power that preceded her incineration of the simulated robots.
/Maybe we really can.../

NO.

It was neither heard nor seen, it was not even a command per se.
It was simply an irrefutable realization that she did not want
to do this. The energy at her hand fizzled and bled away, and
her arm came back down. So, they had locked down her new weapons
somehow. Well, let's see them stop her from doing this... she
angled her body and dove down at the smiling woman, fingers of
one hand locked together and extended, generating the field that
would cut through flesh or metal or anything like it was air.
Even if they managed to switch off the wind shear building in
front of her hand, her fingers would be more than adequate for
the job of sending that smiling face bouncing across the floor.

NO.

She stopped, her hand hardly a yard from her target's throat.
Vaesa had not even blinked. "It looks like the obedience
circuits have been very finely tuned, perhaps just a bit too
finely. But that can be adjusted."

Aynia willed her levitation to cut out and she dropped hard onto
the balls of her feet, now back to her full weight. She snarled
in rage. Fists that so wanted to pummel that smile into the
floor shook at her sides.

"Let me make this simple for both of you. There is a rather
clever little sentry sitting at the base of your brains,
watching every move you make. It recognizes me, and everything
in this training center, as something that it must protect. It
will not let you do anything to harm us. It won't even let you
spit on the floor.

"Are..." Aynia heard Dwiren's quavering voice from behind and
slightly to the side. She had sensed the girl dropping softly to
the ground behind her. "Are we Demon-Gods?"

Vaesa chuckled. "Oh no, you are something much more special than
that. One of you is going to get that job we've mentioned."

Aynia shifted slightly to one side, placing herself between her
friend and this grinning monster. "One of us?"

"Yes."

Aynia found the answer she was looking for in Vaesa's eye. While
she still had the resolve Aynia spun right around, crouched, and
charged straight at Dwiren. The girl's eyes went wide like
saucers and her arm shot up in a reflex move that could not be
stopped. /Full levitation/. Aynia's lower body angled up behind
her outstretched arm just as Dwiren's energy bolt sailed under
her, its penumbra roasting her abdomen and inner thighs
painfully. Aynia's hand was now the tip of an unstoppable
missile, already sailing over Dwiren's body. Under her head. The
deed done, Aynia just let herself sail in a ballistic path down
to the floor, bouncing and rolling limply until she hit the
wall. Inhuman senses confirmed two other bodies dropping to the
ground as hers did.

She lay there quivering for minutes, her mind numbed by the
ecstatic release that fell from this supreme act of
consummation. Slowly she uncurled herself and rose to her knees.
It lay just a few feet away. Aynia crawled over and picked it up
in her two trembling hands. She sat there looking down into
those sightless, accusing eyes.

"No,  please," she begged in a thin, cracking voice. "Please,
don't look at me that way. It was the only way. It had to be a
killing blow, don't you see? A really fast one, so that you
couldn't get your shield up. You'd try and shoot me through the
heart, without even thinking about it." She giggled. "You're a
good shot, but you just don't think ahead do you? That's why I
knew you'd miss me." She brought the head up to her lips and
kissed it between the bulging eyes. "Sleep tight. I knew I would
lose you, the moment I started to like you. Just like I lost my
big sister... I never told you about her, I know. Just like I
lost little Peli. You all try and take care of me, but you all
die. Well, this time we got them back, didn't we? We've done it,
girlfriend. We've done it."

The opposite wall lit up. "Bravo."

Aynia jumped at the familiar voice, now amplified and resonating
through the vast chamber. She looked up to see a ridiculously
large projection of that face... "No." She forced herself to
look down, past Dwiren's headless body, to where her real target
lay. The great gaping hole in its chest spewed shattered gray
organs, and leaked out liquids of various colors and viscosity.
None of them red. "Oh, no."

"The transceiver in my doppleganger's head isn't set to transmit
pain signals, just for your information," Vaesa said mildly. "It
didn't even hurt."

The head dropped from Aynia's limp hands, rolled to a stop in
front of her. Tears streamed down both of her cheeks as she
looked up at her tormentor, forever out of reach. "Why?" she
whined.

"We were expecting to watch you two fight to the death, but this
is so much better. They didn't think either of you would figure
it out, that you could use your friend's ingrained battle
instinct to strike at me. We had a bet going in the office. My
money was on you, I'm really going to clean up. Oh, we can
probably revive her brain but why bother? We have our prime
candidate." Her smile became different now. It was like seeing a
mask dissolve to reveal what was really beneath. The hazel eyes
bore down on her with mockery so sincere it made Aynia shiver.
"Feeling frustrated? Being held down? What is it you'd really
like to do, Aynia? Tell me."

"I want to kill you!" Aynia wailed. "All of you! Not just you
smiling bitches but all those patrician silk-stocking bastards
in that city up there, them and all their whores and lapdogs!
And all the mobs of stupid people everywhere who just lie down
at your feet and look up and say please rape me too, please! You
make everything ugly because you just can't stand looking at
anything that isn't as ugly as you! I just want to kill you all!"

Vaesa's face glowed with pride. "Good, Aynia. That's very good.
Now, let's talk about this job you're going to be doing for us."



----- ***** -----



"So, this is the Trigger of Destruction?"

"Hardly," the Vaesa-doppleganger standing beside her said. "This
will be your resting place."

It was a chamber almost as big as the simulation room, but much
darker. It would be hard to see anything, were the lights not
dimmed in the little observation room on this side of the glass.
In the center of the chamber, far away, was a vast circular
platform like the top of a butte rising from the black floor far
below. Something like a monstrous, smooth, truncated stalactite
came down from the ceiling lost in the darkness above, a
circular ceiling that mirrored the platform floor, leaving just
a narrow space in between, level with the window through which
they viewed the chamber. But on this scale the narrow space was
more than enough to hold the translucent cylindrical hibernation
chamber at its center.

"It looks rather bare right now. We still have to put in all the
defense mechanisms," Vaesa was explaining. "They will be very
scary looking and will put on a good show, but they will be
designed to fail. Any idiot will be able to find you."

"So what's the point?"

"The point is to make it look like we /didn't/ want them to find
you and activate you. Once they do, your sensors will be able to
locate the Trigger of Destruction. Naturally we've put defense
mechanisms in and around the Trigger. Only your training in the
sims will allow you to activate it."

"I mean what's the point of all this?" Aynia asked. She still
didn't trust them, this could be just a new game they were
playing with her. "If your enemy does use the Eye of God and
your stupid country gets leveled, why not just turn on the
Trigger of Destruction yourselves?"

"Because our bosses are weak. They might not even have the guts
to give the order themselves. They might be stubborn enough to
make us fight to the last little kid with a gun, leaving nobody
left to even give the order. Or they might break down and
surrender. At any rate, if somebody who isn't us makes it down
here to our most secret place it will mean we've lost
everything. We want you to make sure everybody else loses
everything."

"You people really are pathetic."

"Does this mean you don't want the job?"

"I'll do anything to get this job. Do more operations, go find
my mother and make me kill her by inches, I can take whatever
you throw at me."

"Why do you want the job so badly?"

Aynia's nose wrinkled in disgust. "Why do I want it?" She
pointed her finger like a gun. "Because if you've all been
vaporized then whoever is left alive has got to be worse than
you. I'd love to be the one who gives them the same. I want to
be there to pull the trigger."

Vaesa's doppleganger smiled. "That's the spirit!"

Aynia turned and tapped the window impatiently. "So you're
putting me in there now?"

"Not quite. There are some more skills we'd like you to learn
first. After you're activated, there may be obstacles on your
path to the Trigger. New obstacles we didn't anticipate, or
maybe ones at the Trigger itself that our paranoid bosses
haven't told me about. You'll have to be able to use your wits,
your charm, maybe even..." she reached over and squeezed Aynia's
rump. "your pert little body."

Aynia jumped away and spun to face her. "Keep your filthy hands
off me, you cunt!" She had found that the sentry inside her did
not stop her from cursing her masters. They never punished her,
no matter how she provoked them. It was like they enjoyed rubbing
her nose into the obedience circuit.

"And we'll have to do something about that temper of yours."
Vaesa crooked her finger, beckoning. Aynia took just a moment to
calm herself, then marched up right in front of Vaesa. The
taller woman took Aynia's chin in her hand and smiled down at
her. "I'm still head of this project, and you only get this job
by my say-so. Now, give me a nice smile, little bitch."

Aynia gave her a nice smile. /Yes, we both know why they made
you head of this project, don't we? It's so that you could find
a true kindred spirit, a girl just like you. But we also know
what else you were looking for. You had to find somebody
stronger than you, better than you, worse than you, somebody
with the nerve to do the job you can't do yourself./

Vaesa nodded in approval and gave Aynia's cheek a little pat.
"Very good. I think we're ready for the next stage of Project
Kalia."

"Project Kalia?"

"The code-name for this elaborate little contingency plan. It is
now your name. You're our last resort, in case our enemy really
works up the nerve to use their ultimate weapon. But in the
meantime the war goes on. You will be helping us here, to make
some different sorts of weapons, similar to you. For mundane
chores like leveling cities. It will help build those skills
you're going to need to pull the wool over the eyes of anyone
who activates you. It might just let you work off some of those
frustrations you've got boiling behind your pretty eyes. And who
knows, if you're a good girl, we may let you go out and do some
field work of your own as a warm-up. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Kalia returned her new mentor's wolf-grin. "Well then, I'm all
yours."



----- ***** -----



The woman in white stood quietly at the front of the small
classroom, waiting for the new group of freshly scrubbed
candidates to get to their desks and settle down. She walked up
to the lectern and smiled warmly. "Good morning, girls. My name
is Kalia, and I'll be looking after you while you're here at the
training center..."



The End



Author's Comments

If you are recruiting for people who are going to have their
fingers on the trigger of your doomsday weapon, you have two
choices. First, you can look for disciplined professionals who
will maintain their cool and obey orders without fail. This is,
we are told, the approach taken by all the world powers who
currently deploy large numbers of thermonuclear-tipped
intercontinental ballistic missiles. This works fine as long as
these professionals are operating within the context of their
chain of command. But if you are expecting them to carry out
their task long after their commanders and their very country
are gone, you need to consider the second option. You need to
find people who would not pause to consider whether there was
any point in carrying out their orders, people who would be only
too happy to push the button that sends them and everyone else
to oblivion. You need to find somebody whose loathing of
everyone and everything around them knows no bounds. You need to
find somebody like Kalia. Failing that, you need to create and
nurture somebody like Kalia. And finally, you need to lock her
up somewhere and make sure nobody can find her until after
you're dead and gone. When trying to think of a reason why a
certified sociopath like Kalia was given the key to a doomsday
weapon, this was the only one that made any sense to me.

I would like to thank Shazorn for suggesting the story idea. I
would also like to thank Mark Engels for his invaluable and
detailed commentary on my first drafts. This story would not
have been nearly as good without his help.