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[never_francesca]

You’ve reached Commander Cook. Leave a message and I will respond shortly.

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Re: Strange Appetites breach

[madaboutit]

Harkin is prompt in his delivery, taking it by after the end of his shift. He doesn't want the letter to get lost or stuck in a pile, only to be forgotten.

Standing at the door, he takes a slow breath before rapping three times.

Notifications are never easy.

[never_francesca]

She's in the middle of the paperwork when he arrives. The moment he's in the door, she knows exactly what it is. She takes it, calmly enough. And in the moment, she becomes lost - not even thinking to dismiss him before she reads it.

They'd never talked, had they? No, it hadn't been...the time had never been... What had been the point, when death hung over them every day? Though the truth was that there hadn't been anyone else, for her. She liked to tell herself it was that she was just un-trusting, but in truth, it just wasn't her nature.

Sameen had been the only one. The only escape from... The only one who...

And now she was gone. Another stupid, pointless death, because leadership of the Guardians didn't even try to maintain control outside the walls. Because they had no imagination, no fire, no drive. She could have cleared the lands surrounding Seattle and patrolled them with a few hundred soldiers - which she'd told them.

We don't have the guns for it, and besides, if we conscripted that many the underground would have a field day.

The damned fools. The infected could be handled better by goddamned pikemen - a handful of rifles and a few hundred pikemen and she could clear to the freshwater at Chelan, reclaim Olympia and its port...

And Sameen was dead. The one bright spot in her life, the one beautiful thing. A good person, who did good things. And it was pointless. Meaningless. The world kept spinning, but in her grief...

Sameen would be the last. No more of this, no more lack of vision. No more lack of direction. And if the Underground screamed, then let them. There were ways to deal with them, too, if they couldn't be made to see.

Time for a coup. She had the officers on her side. The leadership council hardly minted loyalty. It was just a matter of planning, wasn't it?

She sighed, the only outward sign of any of this a twitch at her eye, a tightening of one of her hands. Pas devant le gendarme, right? Never let them see you bleed.

She looked up at Harkin, and nodded.

"You've discharged your duty," she said, a bit thickly. "You'll understand if I don't thank you. Dismissed."

And she'll wait until he's out of the door to weep.

[madaboutit]

There's no way Harkin could have deduced that something addressed with the familiarity of 'Franky' could ever refer to the Colonel, so when he finds himself facing her, his body tenses at attention. He stands there frozen until dismissed. Her words are answered with a tight nod.

"Yes, ma'am."

He swivels on his heel and promptly fucks off.