Not-So-Imaginary Friend

[Sharei]

The boy blinked at her again.

"B3," he said. "Most handlers think the asset designation is too long, so they use the first letter and number together for shorthand. I am known by and called B3. I don't have a name."

[MP]

She angled her face to the side, still fixing him with a look. Skeptical, the expression clearly said. But if that was sufficient to get his attention, if he responded to it, that was what it would have to be.

"Very well," she said at last, each syllable enunciated.

She folded her hands in her lap, prim despite her weathered gear, and turned toward the window to watch.

[Sharei]

The silence that descended was comfortable, if awkward, and B3 was loathe to break it once he'd settled in to rest. But a nagging question on the back of his mind wouldn't let go.

"Ma'am," he said, glancing at her. "What do I call you?"

[MP]

The woman turned at the sound of his voice. Ma'am. She hadn't heard niceties like that in a long time. It was strange. Foreign to her now. Her lips parted, but the name never came.

Her posture was composed, her expression cool. But the emotions played one after the other behind her eyes and in the minute movements of her facial muscles. Authority to uncertainty. Uncertainty to confusion. Confusion to frustration. Frustration to realization. Realization to horror. Despair. All there and gone in the flicker of moments. She set her jaw and turned away, chin raised.

"It doesn't matter."

[Sharei]

"But-"

She'd turned away. B3 hesitated again, but this time he didn't fall into silence as all of her previous dismissals had done. Whatever had happened between them today had ended that awkward rift.

"Do you have a name?"

"I said it doesn't matter," the woman snapped back, a touch of the Horror in her voice. B3 slouched where he sat, stung.

"... Then, I'm going to call you Asha."

[MP]

She didn't dignify that with a look. There was no breath in those lungs to sigh, no blood in her veins to draw as her nails bit into her palms. The straight line of her shoulders had a tension to it - brittleness rather than strength. But she was listening. After a long few moments, she turned and fixed him with a sullen stare.

"I'm not that quiet."

[Sharei]

"What?"

B3 stared back in uncomprehending silence for a heavy second before he caught on to her meaning. That had been an unfortunate choice, but cycling through the list of possibilities at his disposal he still liked the sound of Asha.

"It's not Japanese," he said. "It's Hindi. In Hindi it means 'hope.' Since finding you gave me hope."

He tugged awkwardly at his pant leg. The clothing was in tatters and he'd need to get a new set once they got back. Shaun wouldn't like that.

"If you don't like it I'll use something else."

[MP]

She stared at him, mouth opening, closing again, the readied dismissal forgotten. In a convulsive movement, she jerked her chin around, looking away. She resettled herself, squared her shoulders, facing the window once more. Her figure was a proud, straight line against the outside light. The woman breathed in. Breathed out again, though not so much as a breath of air stirred the cabin. When she felt able to speak without her voice trembling, she spoke over her shoulder.

"Asha is fine."

[Sharei]

The matter of the name settled, B3 sat back in muted satisfaction to wait. It wasn't a very long before he was fidgeting again, however, turning back to Asha with a brighter expression than he'd been wearing before. The grey was still in his face and he must be hurting, but the boy seemed not to care much for the injuries now that he was sitting. In truth they screamed at him, but like any asset, he was good at ignoring it.

"Asha," he said, and reached across the space to her. He touched her briefly on the leg, a single bead of water dripping from the end of his finger and onto her clothes. "Here."

The water dried instantly.

"Now no one will be able to see or hear you, so you'll be safe."

[MP]

The woman recoiled from the touch, her skin blooming with rot. She didn’t seem to see it, but she had raised a hand as if to smack the touch away. Too late. His hand was already gone, and she was left with only a nameless, angry fright and a droplet of water sliding from the spot.

There was something of the corpse in her features as she looked down. She stared at the droplet, then her eyes tracked slowly up to him. The woman took a small step sideways and out of range, forcing the shudder of rage down. It was hard to think through it to know why she was so angry.

“What did you do?”

[Sharei]

B3 paused, his hand still raised. While he'd seen her turn into the corpse in the woods, he hadn't realized the cause. He stared at the spot the rot had bloomed from and felt his first touch of guilt.

Her adversity to touch was because of a physical element. No touching. Understood.

The boy shook himself out of his thoughts at her question and was grateful for the distraction it provided - even if it did mean going back to fibbing.

"I can't fight until I've gotten treatment," B3 explained. "No one should hurt you, but if something does happen and I can't protect you, I cast a spell that has made you invisible. No one will be able to see or hear you, so you'll be able to escape safely. You can be visible if you want to, though."

[MP]

A curse, she thought. Until he mentioned the last detail. Not completely erased, then. She could control it. She could be seen when she needed to.

She could resume the hunt with this.

The realization was like ice down her back. The woman’s head straightened. Her gaze flickered up to the boy's, and the first, smallest hint of a smile curved her lips. Not a curse, but a weapon. It was the first real chance she’d had in years.

[Sharei]

The spirit boy only smiled back, but the last of his strength was fading and he was beginning to flag. It didn't help that it soured B3's stomach a little to lie to Asha, lying got you into trouble, but he didn't know what else to do. Every time he tried broaching a subject that touched on her unnatural state something weird kept happening. It was best to keep to her narrative for now until he could think of something better, and if that meant fibbing a bit about the way she was, he supposed he'd have to do it.

B3 adjusted until he was as comfortable as his injuries would allow and then closed his eyes to rest. He didn't hear when Hawkins got into the helicopter, nor was he awake when the man cast him a look of utter disdain, carefully hidden from the pilot in the cockpit.

"Ready to go back there?" she called.

"Yeah," Shaun muttered. "Get us the hell outta here." 

The roar of the engine coming to life was the only warning anyone got before the helicopter began to rise. The suddenness of the propellers starting woke B3, who jerked awake long enough to realize there wasn't a threat and drifted back off again. 

It wasn't a long flight by chopper, but then they transitioned to a plane and that was a much longer trip. They were nearly two days in the air before the cargo plane touched down on a long, well-used runway.

From the airfield you could see the entire silhouette of the island of Yuugen, including the city that sat at the feet of the facility. Not that it was much of a city. Most if it was a military town for the families and relatives of Facility personnel - or the 'Complex', as the locals called it. After all, everyone that lived on the island was Zramek in some capacity, and it was only the need for some level of normalcy that had lead to the establishment of a residential district at all. The rest of the island was made almost entirely out of a low mountain range covered in trees and thick foliage, with little that resembled a sandy beach or easy slope. The compound was built directly into the rocky sides of the island, and what small area flat enough to accommodate homes had been built into the  city center. Pubs and restaurants made up the bulk of the commercial properties, with mom-and-pop stores filling the rest - there was no sign of any corporate stores here. Supplies were either grown on rooftop gardens atop the complex, brought in by boat, or fished from the sea. All and all, it made for a self-sustaining community.

They didn't have to walk through the city to get to the complex, thankfully. They were offloaded into a truck - with B3 in the bed of it, rather than a seat - and brought to the complex that way. Shaun, his pack slung under one arm, pointed a thin arm down a long hallway once they'd gotten inside.

"Get yourself patched up and get to class tomorrow," he said, then turned and walked away. B3 watched him go, but rather than say anything, he simply turned to do as he was bid. 

The complex housed the research and administration sections of the facility, and these areas reached far back into the rock. The rest of the building held training centers, education, the armories, even handler and R&D residential apartments. Any standalone building, such as the regular barracks, the soldier's canteen, and some of the secondary training facilities were considered outliers. They certainly didn't share the same matte black interior or cool glass and sleek metal, and they certainly weren't full of other assets.

They passed a lot of them in the corridors on the way to Medical, all as interestingly colored as B3. Some had red and black hair, some were blonde, some shared the same blue and white, and others were earth browns and blacks. Their ages varied too, from as young as B3 to young men and women just starting to touch adulthood. But they all shared two things in common - the same quiet, empty expression, as if there was nothing going on behind their eyes, and they were all accompanied by a handler.

Every single one.

B3 paid them little mind as he turned into a room marked 'Asset Medical', where a team of disinterested professionals patched his wounds and set his bones without so much as an aspirin. The break in his shin had meant a metal rod in his leg and a plaster cast to keep it all in place, and though they'd told him to try and stay off it, he simply walked off down the hall when they were done. He eventually came to a stop next to a reinforced door marked 'ballistics' and slid down the wall to sit next to it. He cast a glance down the hall first one way, then the other, his posture waiting.

[MP]

"They told you not to walk," the woman reminded him.

It was the first word she'd spoken since the flight, when she'd been practically plastered to the wall in shock. She'd taken in the strange sites of the island, buildings larger than any she'd seen before, in pale silence, following the spirit boy like a shadow.

But his gift had done its job, and not one of the island's inhabitants had glanced her way. Now that a measure of security was returning, her normal tone was reasserting itself. She stared from the waiting genasi to the door, disapproval obvious in her expression.

"Where are we going?"

[Sharei]

"Home," B3 said. He jerked his chin in the direction of the reinforced door, the yellow and black stripe cutting across its middle giving it the impression of danger.

"But I have to wait for someone to come along who will let me in."