Context: During an earlier op in book 3 - A.T.X.D. Stealth Angel - Corporal Laney Davidson and her close friend Cassandra "Cassy" Wayne were pursuing the main antagonist - superhuman terrorist Hannah Robinson from the SIGA Syndicate. Laney has an implant that gives her superhuman senses and a greater ability to respond and take out threats, but she doesn't know until this critical moment in the climax that it is actually a misaligned implant forcibly installed in her as a three-year-old by SIGA, although she has no memory of it. In fact, up until the below scene, Laney doesn't know what the true purpose of her implant is. This is the critical moment where her Team Leader, Captain Ashley Miller, tells her the truth.
>>>>>>>THE FOLLOWING DAY<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>A.T.X.D. HEADQUARTERS<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>TRAINING CENTER<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>1:13 PM<<<<<<<
Were it not for the angry grunting that caught her attention, Ashley would’ve thought the Training Center seemed oddly empty and eerily quiet as she arrived in her t-shirt, shorts, and Winflo trainers for her afternoon workout. But when she entered the space, at least one station was occupied.
Laney was working out with one of the dummies, having fully recovered from her anesthesia, but the Corporal’s behavior seemed peculiar in a worrisome sense. Normally, Ashley had seen Laney use all kinds of quick knockout moves on the dummies like her flash, jump, or roundhouse kicks and her gut puncher. But today, the Corporal was acting more like an angry kid, delivering hard punches and grappling knee-drives into the dummy at a relatively quick pace while letting out small aggressive grunts as she threw blow after blow into the target. Only when Ashley approached her did Laney calm down and stop smashing her fists and driving her knees into the dummy. It also disturbed the Captain to see that her Corporal wasn’t wearing gloves or even wrapping around her hands, so the young officer’s knuckles in particular were starting to look raw and discolored to a vaguely gross degree.
“Everything alright, Corporal?” Ashley inquired, trying to be polite while maintaining some authority.
“Yeah,” Laney exhaled.
“Truthfully, Laney,” Ashley prodded empathically, then repeated, “Are you alright?”
With a louder exhale this time and another anger-driven punch to the dummy’s kisser area, Laney finally admitted, “I can’t get over losing Cassy. I’m the reason she’s gone. God fucking dammit, I should not have let her follow me after Hannah or…”
“Hey, calm down, Laney,” Ashley tried to encourage. “None of this is your fault, Corporal. You were out for the count due to a seizure. Our intel suggests that Cassy was abducted after you were W.I.A., in a sense.”
“Then why else am I on Base Duty, ma’am? What other reason would you have to pull me out of the field other than to punish me for my failure?”
“Because Laney,” Ashley reinforced, placing her arm on the dummy’s shoulder for support, “I am not taking the risk of losing another operative. The after-action medical scan….indicated that you almost died from that seizure. And if there’s one thing that hurts me more than having one of my own killed, it’s watching a teammate and a friend suffer in pain and agony beforehand.”
Despite this being part of the truth, Ashley was inclined to withhold the other half: that Laney was being confined to the base until Doctor Scollay could figure out how to counter the implant’s effects on the Corporal’s brain. Given that Laney was apparently suffering from survivor’s guilt but she likely didn’t know the true purpose of her implant, Ashley didn’t want to risk her Corporal becoming an even worse emotional wreck than she already was.
“Like Cassy probably is right now,” Laney muttered. “Yang told us at the Hotel del Monique that this SIGA freak show isn’t known for treating their prisoners gently or even keeping them alive for long.”
“First off, Laney,” Ashley replied, “Cassy’s not gone. As far as we know, she’s still alive. And while we cannot track her, we will use every resource at our disposal to rescue her. Secondly, your Base Duty assignment is not permanent: since the seizure was apparently caused by your implant, I’m consulting with SIO to determine a way to keep it from interfering with your ability to carry out your duties in the field. And with the expert minds we have at work, it may only be a day or two before they discover a solution.”
Laney just exhaled somberly through her teeth in response, calming down a little but still not feeling any relief. She then drawled softly, “I guess I should’ve expected things like this to happen.”
“What do you mean, Corporal?”
“In war,” Laney replied with cold simplicity. “You make friends, but sometimes, you lose them. They’re either captured or killed in action, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.”
“But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get those bonds started. Without the bonds, there is no team. Without the team, there is no effort. And without that pfft you can’t possibly hope to win a battle much less a fucking war.”
“I just hope we can retrieve Cassy before SIGA executes her or subjects her to an even worse fate, ma’am,” Laney replied, turning a worried expression to Ashley. “I just don’t know what’ll happen to me if she dies.”
“Y’know Laney,” Ashley said, looking off to the side in thought, “Something tells me Cassy’s too important a prize for SIGA’s henchmen; for Ms. Turner. Therefore, I’d guess they’re not likely to dispose of her immediately. But I do share your concern and pray that she’s still alive when we get to her.”
As Ashley left Laney to relax or beat her hands numb again, the combatively distraught Corporal asked gently, “Captain, this report you’ve told me about: the one filed twenty years ago about my childhood. Would you be able to give me a copy?”
“I’m not sure it’s something…,” Ashley began to reply with unease.
“Ma’am, with all due respect, I need to know what it is with my head. I don’t have a history of epilepsy. I’ve never once had a seizure until that night. And then there’s still all that gray area about my life: how I have these super senses, why I’m so prone to emotional outbursts? Captain, I need to know what you guys found out about me all those years ago, and what bearing it has on the rest of my life.”
Ashley was still not inclined to reveal the full truth, but Laney made a good point. And then the Captain had to recall when she was in such a situation not more than a year ago: suffering from her war trauma with the Kronosians. But instead of just letting it progressively ease over while her own emotional sanity decayed, Ashley had to abruptly come to terms with her trauma on more than one occasion. And when she remembered how Richard was almost unafraid to recount his own struggle to face his past in Syria, Ashley knew it wouldn’t do Laney any good to leave her in the dark. So after a few seconds of deliberation, Ashley made her decision.
“Corporal, if you’re that determined to know the truth, I suggest we talk somewhere private. Your barrack, probably?”
“Ma’am, please, you can tell me here,” Laney politely denied, and she did seem a little more calm now.
Oh fuck it. What am I thinking? She’s right, Ashley cursed in her mind, but beckoned Laney over to one of the nearby benches on the other side of the gym before she began.
“Corporal Davidson, the report from twenty years ago was inconclusive. A.T.X.D. didn’t have the resources and intelligence at the time to determine what the implanted genetic material in your head was for. But we do now, and I also cross-referenced some other mission data from around that time.”
“Other data? You mean I wasn’t the only one?” Laney was surprised. It almost seemed like a blessing that there may be other humans out there like her whom she could relate to. But when she saw the somberly serious look in her TL’s eyes, Laney could tell that what was to come was going to be tragic.
“It seems that some kind of extraterrestrial cell which has since become the core organization of SIGA was stalking the Earth about twenty years ago, scooping up potential subjects quietly but indiscriminately. Some of them were extraterrestrial, some of them were human: you and your biological parents were among the kidnapped subjects.”
“What were they doing with us?”
“We don’t know the exact details of what went on during the experiments, but we know following a corresponding investigation with DESA and the Autavian Security Forces that the research was abandoned. We still had no clue what the purpose of the research was, or what actually happened to your parents, Laney. But somehow, you ended up back at your infanthood residence, just in time for the A.T.X.D. team led by Lieutenant Bergstrom to find you. And then just yesterday, we uh…”
Ashley cringed a little bit, recalling the memories of her own humanoid experience that were triggered upon hearing Scollay’s deduction. Laney picked up on that quickly and probed, “What? What did you learn?”
“One of our lead scientists at SIO discovered what your implant was intended for.” Ashley paused to look at her Corporal with a deeply worried face. “Laney….it’s a sleeper chip.”
Laney’s eyes widened, and she exhaled a cold and shaky breath before trying to contemplate this. “....uh…you’re….you’re joking, right? You mean like those conspiracy theories about governments planting chips in people’s minds to turn them into weapons?”
“That’s what the confirmation is,” Ashley replied with a slow nod.
“So….so all this time….the tantrums, the super senses, everything…it was all just programmed into me. And now I’m just a walking weapon, just….just a disposa….oh fuck me.”
Laney dropped her face into her palm and began to huff quietly, trying to suppress the urge to cry. Ashley would have continued, but she felt at this point that Laney had now reached a breaking point and it was best to leave her alone. When Laney quietly nodded to Ashley to communicate her need for some solitude, the Captain left her to it, feeling that familiar heartache and stiff gut sense as she recalled being in Laney’s boots not that long ago.