You’re pulling a double shift today as radio operator because the troll you’re supposed to be training got delayed by a couple of Imperial roadblocks and had to lay low for a couple days. Not that you mind, really, although lately it seems every second that you aren’t asleep or eating is spent in front of the massive monitors and old-school switchboards, constantly taking notes on possible troop movements and reports from the various military and civilian fronts. You bang out an abridged shorthand of an intercepted Crockercorp memo on your typewriter, pull it through, tuck it into one of the hundreds of manila folders on the table next to you, and stamp it [ENEMY INTEL][CLEARANCE THREE][PRIORITY YELLOW]. You pass it to one of the base runners, a 5-sweep old named Bharit. He hasn’t taken a secondary name yet, as is the tradition for trolls that grew up in the revolution. A rescue, like yourself, although you were old enough when Big Boss recruited you that you had a full name already. Bharit got orphaned when he was two sweeps, and since his caretakers were revolutionaries, the government couldn’t be trusted with his safety.
Rescues were perfect for data work, because they could be trusted perfectly not to leak any of it. Its not like most of them had ever known anything but the cause.
Its not like you had anything outside of it to go back to.
He runs off. The memo concerned a filed missings persons case for one Tavros Crocker, although it says the corp police suspected kidnapping, with ransom soon to follow. That wasn’t exactly news, just confirmation that Big Boss hadn’t up and died since his last transmission, although it could be part of a disinformation campaign to hunt down the leaker in the corp. Even you didn’t know who it was, because this was one of the most dangerous spy positions in the entire cause, but they had sent messages saying that they felt Crocker was catching on, which meant they were high up in the company hierarchy. The real piece of news was that Crocker was apparently *very* upset about Tavros’s disappearance, acting irrationally out of grief, and losing her composure in company meetings. That was new. Every report you got said no matter the injury or insult suffered, Crocker always kept composed. The analytical part of you wondered whether the war could have been brought to a head sooner if Tavros had been kidnapped for real years ago. You chased the thought out of your mind. The only reason you trusted the revolution in the first place was because no one fucked with kids.
You put your focus back to the endless beeping of the switchboard and the monitors, trying to get back in that sweet spot, where all the information in the world was at your fingertips. It makes you feel in control, when you were in the zone, juggling calls and dispatches and requests for help. Other operators had begun to coordinate military offenses, using more modern tech, but you had been an operator when the revolution had nothing except a switchboard and a typewriter and stamps, and you were going to stick to what you knew.
A crash sounds on the floor above you and you threw off your headset and whipped out the pistol you kept holstered under your desk, spinning around to face the door, heart pounding. Bharit stands in the doorway, fear in his young eyes. You feel awful as you lower the gun. It’s been almost as long as the kids been alive, and yet every time you hear a bump in the night you a part of you panics. You tuck the pistol back into its spot under the desk, and take a moment to breathe, listening to the soothing chirps and beeps of the switchboard. The base therapist’s voice sounds in your head. She hadn’t finished her degree before she’d been outed as a rebel sympathizer and had to go into hiding.
You let yourself step into the memory for a minute. There’s blood, so much of it, and a knife in your hands, and the house mother looking at you in shock. Terror in her eyes. A human soldier, dead at your feet, his neck ripped open, and his partner, slumped against the wall, bleeding out from the stab wounds you put in his chest. The grubsteak knife clatters to the ground. Your hands are covered in sticky, red, warm blood, and you don’t know how you got here. You don’t know when you lost control, turned into the beast that could have done this. The teenage beast that ripped open two grown men with a knife. You don’t know how much time passes with you standing there, staring at your hands, the man against the wall’s breath slowly becoming shallower and shallower, listening to him die in mute shock as the house mother runs around outside the room, trying to pack a bag for both of you, calming the other, younger children in the group home. She’s too scared of what you’ve become to comfort you.
Eventually, a tall, dark troll in an eyepatch and an urban camo suit walks in slowly, leans down in a crouch in front of you, wipes the blood off your hands, quietly says your name and makes you look at him, look at the pity in his hard eyes. He tells you, in a quiet, gruff voice, that you did a very difficult thing. That you saved a life by taking two others, the lives of two very bad men. That he’s sorry, that you had to, that he didn’t get here sooner, that he couldn’t carry this burden for you, but that he’s proud of you. That he wants you to come with him, because there’s nothing for you here anymore. That he has a home for people that can’t live in the regular world after what they’ve had to do. You, in the dream, nod mutely, a seven-sweep old that wouldn’t talk again for perigees. That learned to find comfort in the rhythm of information, in the beeping and the control that commanding a switchboard gave you. That joined a revolution and never left.
You breathe, and pull yourself back to the present, as you hear a familiar beep that means Big Boss is calling. The savior of trollkind, that gave you a purpose and a place and a way to live with what you’ve done. You move around some cords and slip back on your headset, feeling back in your place in the world. The flashbacks and the panic attacks happen less than they used to. You’re healing, even as the world gets worse.