resync

Personnel File, Trinity Hopeland, Psychopomp Network Central Archive

Pilot’s Quarters, UCFS Rumsfeld, low-earth orbit, UCF 03/31/454, 0111 hours

“Soooooo, Flechette…” Trinity is sitting cross-legged on his bunk, slightly bouncing up and down as he watches Flechette with intent, who, in turn, is filling out a transmission to Seraph, requesting a meeting for the morning.

“No ‘sir’ anymore? That’s a relief,” Flechette responds dryly.

“Flechette, I gotta ask — is it true you took the VENUS to Mach 10 during the Kunlun op?” Trinity’s eyes are bright and wide and blazing green, like barium flames.

Flechette pauses in filling out her meeting request form. She glances at her new cross-trainee, tensely.

“That’s classified.” It is.

“Awwwwww, no fun. You know, I probably have higher clearance than you.”

“Yeah? How do you figure that?” Flechette snorts, re-engrossed in her file.

“I’m rated SANCTUM-3 clearance. Can get access to just about any datablock I want, short of the Rapture private archives. So, what’s your clearance?”

At this, Flechette puts down her datapad, turning to look across the room at Trinity, incredulous.

“You really love your jokes, huh?”

“No, I’m serious. SANCTUM-3! You can check my personnel file. You probably shouldn’t though. Might intimidate you.” Trinity giggles.

“Okay. Say I believe you. At that point, wouldn’t you already know the answer to that question?”

“Well, yeah. But I want to hear you say it.”

“Uh huh.”

Trin grins. This kid is too damn happy.

“Okay. Sure. Yes, I took the VENUS to Mach 10. Only once though.”

“Righteous.” Trinity rolls over onto his back, kicks his legs in the air.

Silence fills a precious few moments while Flechette returns to her form.

“Hey, Flechette.” God, what now.

“What.” Why are these forms so damn long?

“What’s a sync-fail?”

Flechette stops cold, but maintains her composure, outwardly offering nothing but a careful disinterest.

“…Dunno. Where’d you hear that? Probably something to do with THRONE sync rates.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere. I think I read it in a paper… Something about system anomalies. I figured you might know, since you’re basically the resident expert on sync rates, I guess.”

Flechette, accepting that her attempts to fill out this form will probably be frustrated until this conversation is over, turns to her new trainee charge.

“What makes me an expert on sync rates, Trinity?”

“I mean, you’re like, the all-star, aren’t you? The cream of the crop? I read your logs from the Kunlun op. 300% sync? What’s your secret sauce? C’moooon, you gotta tell me.”

At this, Flechette’s face turns cold.

“I did what I had to do for the mission. And to protect my cross.”

“So you did the impossible?”

“The mission demanded improbable performance. I performed adequately for the conditions.”

“Uh huh. Hey, c’mere, I gotta show you something.”

“What?”

Trinity hops over to Flechette’s bunk, and plops himself down on her bed.

“Wh— Trinity, what are you doing.”

“Whaaaat, we’re gonna be brothers-in-arms, right? Fated by the judgement of High Command to fight to the death to protect each other? You gotta get used to a little, like, skinship or whatever. Y’know, between comrades.” Trinity bops Flechette on the arm playfully.

“Skinship.”

“Yeah!”

“Okay. Whatever. What did you need to show me.”

“Oh! Right! Just this.”

He pulls up a document. It’s… It’s an output from the rite of induction. From Flechette’s induction. Scattered across the garbled code jargon on the screen, there are countless warnings of “ERROR: ESOALG HANDSHAKE REJECT” and “SIGSEGV” and, finally, “SYNCHRONIZATION FAILURE.”

Flechette looks up at Trinity in horror, their faces uncomfortably — terrifyingly — close.

Trinity leans in, and whispers so quietly that Flechette can barely hear him.

“I know what you are…”