Dead By A Hair

[Five]

All they did was cut their hair.
I want to question why are they on their knees with a firing squad, but I know the penalty for body modifications.

I'm standing here. Safe, along a line with half my teammates, and somehow I'm supposed to be fine watching the other half get executed, by the captain nonetheless.
Everyone's hands are behind their backs. Mine in standard formation and theirs in cuffs, which isn't making me feel better.

Maybe there's an exception I can leverage? Some edge case I can bluff my way through? Their hair was burning from blown-up device. They had to trim it...
My vision splits, this training room in my left eye, the database interface ghosting over my right.
Good. I still have my usual access. Glad they unlocked the wireless connections; risking to use my screen is not an option when I'm supposed to stand like a statue.

Any precedents? My keywords return nothing.
Different rule for accidents? No.
A dozen rounds over the regulations are enough; I need to find another source. Reports? There aren't many to search through, I made sure of that, at least until now...
Classified data? I still have some spare "excuses".

Unit Alpha No.05 | Recon | Female
Access Granted
Nothing...
Production logs, costs, failure percentages...
The entire production pipeline that produces and scraps us on its whims; nothing new since I last checked.

There's only ever been one penalty. It doesn't matter what we did.

There's a shiver in the captain's hands. He's right behind them, assigned to fire. The shiver's too subtle for cameras. But I'm a recon. I see the micro-expressions, the furrow he's fighting to tame, the way he shifts, trying to aim away from the memory region.

Still, there's sixteen of them. Most of which are months old. I could argue the cost efficiency of training?

Cost efficiency...

I can glance aside. I can see her, right next to me. She's breathing out mist again. The woman I argued cost efficiency for.
It still feels uncanny to see her in one piece; her pieces are what I often see, they're for me to rush into maintenance before her lights die out and her memory fades.
My argument about her was very convincing. Her combat data had more variety than a standard unit, something never seen before and they might not be able to replicate.

So now they're throwing her from maintenance to combat simulations until she breaks, extracting all the data they can, while I race her back to maintenance.

I'm not sure I can stomach looking at her, not when I feel weirded out from seeing her whole, when I traded her life for her agency, and gave them an excuse to break her over and over.
She's looking at me now. It's hard to escape the reflexes of an assault unit, let alone the Ace of the squad. She carries the designation 07 but can overcome 06, 04 and 02 at the same time.
She can do all that thanks to my argument about cost efficiency...

My jacket hides my shivering hand from the cameras, but I struggle to keep it away from her radars.
"Five?" she mouths. She times it so the passing superior covers her from the cameras.
I shake my head as he's passing. She's already soothing herself with the mist and that's not her gesture for a casual day.
She doesn't need to worry about me; I'm not in the execution line.

Do I want to use that argument? Can I? Unlike them, Seven didn't violate any regulations back then. She merely lost most of her body after a month-long simulation, and was more expensive to repair than rebuild.
That was the fate they were trying to avoid. The burning hair was messing up with their sensors. Some veterans could get around it, but most couldn't risk getting too damaged to repair.

I'd love it if I can sigh right now...

A warm pressure floods my arm. I can sense her adjusting her posture, making sure I feel the full weight. I can't understand that weight...
Why am I being comforted? Why am I standing in safety while you guys are...

The superior is facing the captain now. "Any problems?"
"Core or head, sir?"
"Head. Easier to recycle."

Sometimes I just want to hack a vehicle and flee with the team down to Earth.
I would've done it already if the surface wasn't infested with mutants. But then again, the military wouldn't exist without the mutants. We might not have existed without the military.

Resources are scarce; we are expensive to build.

I really wish I could ask why... but I can't complain because I know the answers.

And I still have sixteen teammates to save. The captain's finger rests on the trigger, and I realize I already know which one of the sixteen will die first.

I heard them in the hallway hours ago. It's the guy who asked the captain for personal training. He admired the captain for how he always kept the team safe.
"JUST DO IT!" He startles the entire execution hall with his shout. The captain manages to hold his reflexes before the trigger is fully pressed. But there is another echo.
"MAKE IT QUICK!" His head snaps up. "YOU HEAPING PILE OF JUN-"
The captain flinches. It's small, a twitch of the shoulder, a re-calibration of the grip, but it's enough. The shot fires early. The sound fills the room and empties it at the same time, leaving a ringing silence, one that my audio processors struggle to filter.

The silence of units switching back to standby. The idling of processors after a spike.
Thirteen remain on their knees. Twelve. Eleven. The superior doesn't bark again. He doesn't need to. The captain, Unit No.01 finds his rhythm. His hands stop shaking.

The last BANG settles into the walls and then it's done.

The quiet is fading. I can register the noise again, the faint sizzle of burning hair, the whir of her own radiator kicking into overdrive, the soft click of the captain's rifle clearing the round.

Four seconds pass, and an echo of footsteps marks the captain's leave, another echo, twice the density, and now two of my teammates are by the door, four, nine... the room clears from every functional unit, except for me.

Are there any memory regions left intact?...

The smell of burn is fleeting away, my eyes trace the scorch marks on the floor, where the device blew. The machine sits in the corner, and is still showering the floor with sparks; no one's bothered to shut it down.

The power supply is right next to it. I can reach over.
The sparks die in the darkness.