Chapter I:
Reality Ensues

Three years earlier…
HE.12103.07.21, Gersthof, Vienna

A bright, jaunty chime dances through the air.
It severs Calliope's dream like a chainsaw.
She hates that noise so fucking much.
Her back hurts something fierce, the muscles over her shoulder blades feel hard as stone, and she wants nothing more than to be asleep again. But the ringing jingle won't relent, and groggily she digs through the mess of well-loved plush animals and sweat-soaked blankets.
She is alone in the bed.
Obviously.
How silly of her to expect anything else.
Her fumbling fingers find the thin stick of a communicator underneath a plush owl that had been white once upon a time but has long since turned gray.
On the fourth try, she finds the button that kills the incessant alarm.
Breathe.

Calliope sinks back into the worn mattress with a groan and a cough.
With the sheets soaked in this much sweat, her homely nest of a bed grosses her out as much as it provides comfort and shelter. Someone should probably put all this shit to wash.
Eventually.
When there's time, and energy, and water.
Hah.
Fat chance.

The second alarm goes off. The second of five. And whatever small vestiges of coziness her bed still holds are lost when the anxiety comes crashing through the last dam of drowsiness around her mind.
Fuck.
A bit over four hours.
That's more time than she's gotten in dreamland, after all the worries have kept her up for a restless eternity, but it can't be helped now. She could probably afford to take another hour of sleep or even two, it's really not that far. But she has staggered her alarms, she always does, and now that she's remembered what today holds, there's better odds that a cruise ship will make it up the Danube in July than that she'll manage to find any more sleep.
Already, the anxiety has her wired up.
She's wide awake, and there is nothing to be done about it now.
Nowhere to go but forward.

Calliope rises under protest of her aching spine, that cares no more to carry her full height than she does herself. She sucks the air in through her teeth as she waits out the dizzy spell that hits at the zenith of the motion to stand up.
C'mon, girl. Showtime. Get into gear.
The attic apartment, with its heavy, historic walls and double-pane glass windows tightly closed, is a kiln. It's also a right mess, a monument to life that has outgrown its boundaries but never quite managed to escape them.

Closets that no longer close from being overstuffed, a coatrack so full, the bulge of jackets seriously narrows the entryway. In more than one way, cause the jackets keep falling off the overburdened hooks. An Ikea armchair, ubiquitous relic of a bygone, capitalist era, utterly buried under a pile of crumpled laundry, wedged under the roof's slope. Bookshelves, aching under their load, that had made for a fine enough display once upon a time, when there'd only been a single neat row of spines and not a perilous Tetris game of literature and textbooks, wedged in wherever they will fit.

She plugs her comm into the little socket on the nightstand and lurches through the room. She pays the figure sprawled on the threadbare couch no mind, and her so-called partner is far too enthralled by some podcast or another to notice that Calliope is up.
There are no gestures of affection exchanged.
No 'love you,' not even a 'good morning.'
They are both far too busy and tired for that, in their own ways.

She lurches past the fridge and grabs a can of hydration gel. While looking the other way as best as she can because the mix of gaping emptiness and abandoned, spoiled remnants of last month's meal prep is too depressing. She should get on top of that, probably. Somebody should.
But it's hard, keeping up with cooking and cleaning.
Especially with the shortages.
She chokes down the gel - blueberry, according to the packaging at least, even if it tastes more like old bubblegum - and wedges herself past her partner's freestanding luggage, abandoned after a trip last year, still to be emptied. Across a minefield of dusty cleaning utensils and random crap, she finally makes it into the bathroom, where she discards the empty gel pack into the trash disposal - and then lets out a frustrated groan.

The little light on the meter next to the sink is shining bright in its usual, taciturn red.
Still no water.
Which is to be expected, perhaps. The droughts are getting worse every damn year, after all, but Gods know, she could have really used a shower today. The relaxation of the steaming wet, the rare comfort of actually feeling free of sweat for once.
Would have been nice.
But of course, no such luck.
Shouldn't have expected anything else, really.
This is how these things always go.
At least for her.

Her mood is already in a right free fall when she begins her morning routine.
A valiant, if doomed, effort to cleanse herself, because in the small tile room directly under the roof, the heat is so smothering, she's sweating faster than she could towel it off, even if there was the space for her to actually move, and eventually she just resigns herself to the faint hope that enough perfume will do. Just like dry shampoo will have to suffice for her long, blonde hair.
Twice during the process, Calliope has to scramble back into the tiny apartment's main room. Because there's more staggered alarms going off on her comm, and she finds the noise every bit as grating and anxiety-inducing now that she's wide awake.
And because her phone is charging, it's back on the nightstand, and her partner, deafened by headphones, is not about to lift a finger, so the only options are to endure the ringing or to scramble over half naked, her head full of dry shampoo, and hit her knee on the fucking luggage.
Both times.

Then comes the worst part.
Picking up the razor and facing what looks back from the bathroom mirror.
Scraping six foot three, Calliope is much, much taller than she cares to be and has to contort herself a little under the roof's steep slope to even be able to face the mirror head-on.
Objectively speaking, compared to the disaster she so vividly remembers, the artificial hormones have performed a small miracle on her features. But the last, stubborn, thrice-cursed remnants of stubble just won't leave her be, and shaving is bad enough when there's water to rinse.
And with her nose all but pressed against the mirror to catch all of the small, nasty reminders dotting her chin and neck, dry razor scraping against her soft, pale skin, the anxiety and dysphoria won't let her see anything but a haggard, sweaty, slightly overweight ogress.
It goes like it always does.
Stubble evading the razor, time and again.
More and more frantic, angry motions that turn to ripping at her cheeks.
And eventually blood, and shame, and a coolant pack to seal the wound.
By the end, in spite of today's occasion, or perhaps because of all the anxiety it brings, Calliope is so frustrated, she decides, like many days before, that her face isn't worth the effort of putting on makeup.
Great start.
Great day.
Surely, it'll be all up from here.
Has to.
She'd really like to catch a break for once.

****

It gets a little better when she has finally made it outside.
A t-shirt two sizes too large, bearing the likeness of a long-dead revolutionary, a long, billowy gray skirt, tights, and light pink sneakers are just about as much fabric as she's willing to carry in this sweltering heat, and if nothing else, it is well ventilated.
Round pink sunglasses and a white hat with a bow to keep the sun at bay round out the outfit.
She's not nearly confident enough to feel pretty, but she doesn't hate it.
Not too much, anyway.

And the good thing about being up way too early is that she's got the time to walk, because in this weather public transport would be nothing short of miserable. Instead, she gets to enjoy the city at her own long-legged, striding pace, fast enough to feel just a little bit of air move past her.
Even now, and even though it's been almost a decade since she's moved here, Vienna remains one of the most beautiful places on earth in her estimation, one she'll never tire of.
Roads upon roads of hundreds of years' old architectural wonder, one precious sight chasing the next. And sure, like most major European settlements, it still bears the scars of the revolution that have swept through the continent some two decades ago - but if anything, the occasional reminders of how hard-won their freedom is fill her with a certain level of pride, even if she'd been just a child back then and can't really claim the victory as her own.

So what if one of the spires of the Votive Church that she passes by remains a burned-out skeleton?
If anything, given all the shortages strangling the world right now, isn't it proof that the Revolutionary Council has their priorities straight and spends their ever-strained resources on feeding and housing the population rather than on rebuilding the temples of a fading, barely still legal religion?

So between the motion, the thumping of bubbly music in her headphones, the fresh air - at least it's fresh compared to the stuffiness of her once cozy apartment - and the shade, once she's in the pedestrian areas where all the roads are covered by large photovoltaic sun sails, Calliope actually does begin to feel a little better about herself.

Today should be easy.
At least by job interview standards.
It better be, after a video call and three rounds of fifty-page online forms that had felt more like the kind of phony pseudoscience that the people of the previous century had used to try and measure intelligence. And then, of course, the pitchbook she had sent in.
Not her proudest work, even while she is trying to get less critical of her writing.
But they must have liked it to invite her to an in-person interview, right?
And really, the Arts Ministry's Writer's Guild probably knows what they are doing. So what if the entire application process has taken the better part of a month? She's so close! So close to making it, so close to writing for a real audience, stories that see print and get read in classrooms, not stories for a few dozen people in the more obscure folds of the government-approved message boards.
As long as today goes well.
As long as she does not fuck this up.
The Revolutionary Council's labor policies have taken most of the stress from the career selection process, certainly compared to the horrid before-times, when cruel oligarchs had seen to it that one's access to basic food and shelter and medical necessities, one's very existence depended on access to the handful of available jobs. Or so her elders keep reminding her. But as far as Calliope is concerned, it's still really fucking stressful, if only you care about your chosen vocation enough.
And just like that, she's sweating again.

From the outside, the building isn't very much to look at.
Certainly not by Vienna's picturesque standards. A plain five-story townhouse in a row with a hundred others like it. Barely any stucco, and no statues or murals. No signage at all, except for the black-and-red rose and chevron that designate a government building.
Only a single doorbell.
Perhaps she shouldn't be surprised by that, but the Guild is such a grand institution, at least in Calliope's passion-struck estimation. Who else could be more deserving of making use of all the palaces of old? But then, modesty is a virtue too, and it's the fantastic work happening inside that matters, isn't it?

Also, in rather typical fashion, she is well over an hour early, even after she's called the summons up on her comm screen and quadruple-checked that she is at the right address. Because anxiety and excitement have pushed her out of the house far, far too early. Because she's planned around a dozen eventualities and worst-case scenarios that never actually happen.
So now she's standing here, awkward and alone on a quiet street.

She can't very well ring already, can she?
That'd look too… what? Desperate? Unprofessional? On the other hand, there can't be that much wrong with being eager, right? Not with an opportunity of this magnitude, certainly they would understand?

Calliope has spent a good fifteen minutes of anxious pacing, up and down the shaded half of the sidewalk, when the patrol comes upon her. Out of nowhere. Five of them, in the long gray uniforms that she truly does not envy in this weather.
Security officers from the Council's Commissariat.
For a paranoid second, she genuinely wonders if she's missed some paper she needed to file, or if maybe her partner has messed something up and gotten in trouble, or… but obviously that's not it. She's just spent a quarter of an hour pacing in front of a government office, and she's probably looking out-of-her-wits nervous.
Of course someone is going to approach her and ask for papers.
She greets them calmly, and with an awkward smile, hands visible by her sides.
Like you're supposed to.
The last thing she needs is to mess this up now.

"Ma'am, state your purpose, please!" the man in the middle commands, his eyes taxing her.
He's calm at least and polite. He's just doing his duty, a regular check, nothing more, and Calliope tries her very best to banish all the ridiculous rumors of people getting disappeared by the Commissariat that just will not stop spreading online.
"Yes, of course!" she tries to respond, tries and fails to keep herself from babbling. "I'm so sorry, I'm just a little bit nervous on account of I've got an appoint…"
"Hat and glasses off, please." He interrupts her explanation with stern, dispassionate routine, and Calliope complies promptly, of course. Why wouldn't she? Fishes her sunglasses from her nose and plucks the sun hat from her hair. She does not get to make a second attempt at explaining herself.
The last thing Calliope Tanova feels as a free woman is the little prick when a needle enters the side of her neck, strong hands seizing her shoulders, and the confusion of a black hood being pulled over her head. The drug does its work too quickly to leave time for incredulity or even anxiety.
And the hopeful storyteller is out like a candle in a storm.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ****

HE.12103.07.2?, ????

Calliope Tanova has no earthly clue where she is.
Or what happened.
Or why.
She feels starved and parched. Drained. Weak. Freezing too, because she's dressed for a sweltering day, and wherever she's sitting now is bitterly cold.
Her head is still spinning something fierce. It's almost a mercy she cannot see a thing underneath the fabric of the hood. It's a bigger mercy that whatever sedative put her to sleep must still be in her system, because her head feels sluggish and like it's unbearably heavy, and if she wasn't still drugged, Calliope would expect to have a panic attack just about now.
Instead, she just groans.
Tries to shift a little.
Finds an explanation for why her wrists are aching in the form of the tight, cold, heavy metal manacles that pin her arms to a table of some kind. Finds her ankles similarly held in place, and when she tries to move at all, she can also feel straps around her shoulders and chest, just above and below her breasts, that must be what is holding her upright in a rather uncomfortable chair.

Under different circumstances, this might be kind of hot.

Calliope clears her throat. Banishes the insane thought from her mind. She blames the drugs, whatever they have dosed her with. For the thought, and for the stirring in her tightly tucked panties too.
Fuck.
Think, girl.
Think.
The Commissariat doesn't grab people off the streets randomly. That's just American propaganda and misinformation. That sort of thing doesn't actually happen in real life. There must be a good reason, there has got to be, and maybe if she can just get her sluggish thoughts to move at normal speed… maybe this is just some kind of misunderstanding? With any luck… gods, so damn lightheaded… is that an IV stuck in her arm? With any luck there is going to be a simple explanation, and she'll be able to clear this all up, and soon enough it'll just be a silly, scary story to tell.
She just needs to talk to someone.
Surely, once they realize they've made a mistake…

"H-hello?" Her voice sounds like a parched, raspy groan, one that she might have found upsetting if she wasn't so damned groggy.
She gets a chuckle in response.
From just a few feet away.
Across the table?
And then she hears the voice.

"Rise and shine. Good morning, Dr. Tanova." A woman's voice, snide and accustomed to command, yet warm and effortlessly sultry, in ways that send a shiver down Calliope's spine that's got nothing to do with the frigid cold of the room. Instinctively, she tries to turn her face toward the speaker, clears her throat again, and mumbles a drowsy "Not yet."

Silence follows, silence that drags on just long enough to start weighing on her, which really isn't very long at all, shackled and with a sack over her head, so Calliope rambles on: "I'm not a PhD, not yet. The… the disputation is in September."
That draws another chuckle.
Strangely, it sounds like genuine amusement, rather than mockery.
"Well," the voice muses, "I understand why you didn't mention that part in your application. But I understand these sorts of things are just formalities, aren't they?"
"They shouldn't be." Calliope blurts it out before her sluggish thoughts catch up.
Before she can realize that she's made her own lie worse by admission, and before she can process any kind of concern for the fact that she has lied on a government application, and the fact that the woman with the voice made of warm honey knows it.
There's probably smarter, more cautious ways to navigate this subject.
But Calliope is wildly out of it from the chemicals in her system. And she earnestly believes that these sorts of academic rites of passage shouldn't be a pure matter of course, and she's never been good at shutting up about matters of principle, even while she's sober.
Her pouting, inebriated sincerity earns her a bout of laughter, bright and genuine and from the chest.

"Oh, I like you, Pup." The voice muses and sounds almost sincere. And then all the warmth drains from the words, and the speech becomes colder and sharper than the biting air: "It's a shame that you are going to be found a dissident, Calliope Tanova."

The way the stranger pronounces that name is so full of judgment, to Calliope, in her helpless state, it feels like a whiplash. An accusation that demands an answer, icy enough of a shock that for a moment, even in her addled state, panic grips a hold of her, and she starts rambling into the cloth on her face, "That's not… that can't be! There's got to be a mistake, I'm not a rebel, I would never! I'm loyal! To the Council and the Revolution and…"

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
The woman across the table clicks her tongue calmly and somehow manages to make it a noise so sharp and imposing that it shuts Calliope right up. The stranger's voice is still calm, but she has lost nothing of the steel: "I have it on good authority that you're the author of a frankly… impressively sound plan for an attack on the bi-annual Rio summits. You've been a bad girl, haven't you, Calliope?"

Fuck. The pitch book. But that was…

As though she can read the thoughts bouncing around the shackled, panicking writer's skull, the woman continues to speak. The honey returns, the dizzying, almost raspy warmth that makes even an interrogation sound like a more than pleasant conversation: "Now sure, you'll probably claim that you were applying for a writing gig. That a government employee asked you to come up with that. But I'm so sorry to say that message no longer exists in your terminal. Or any trace of the application process. And without proof, do you really think any judicial panel is going to believe your story, hmm?"

What the fuck?

For a moment, the voice is so persuasive, Calliope actually believes her that she's sorry, which really does not help with finding mental footing. What the fuck is this?
A setup of some kind?
Why?
Calliope is nobody, as far as she can tell, a third-rate writer and fourth-rate academic. There's no one that is more painfully aware of that than her. Why would anybody bother to set her up like this?
What is happening here? What the fuck…?
The blood in her veins has turned to ice from the raw, confused fear she feels, but the other woman gives Calliope no time to catch her bearings and keeps talking like this is just an idle chat.
Fuck, she sounds almost flirty.

"But before you're sentenced to help clear mines off of a Portuguese beach for the next ten years, I thought we could have a quick chat, you and I." The voice briefly dips a little closer, and the hood is ripped from Calliope's head. She also feels the briefest touch on top of her shackled hands, like they're being petted in place of a handshake, as her interrogator leans back again and introduces herself.

"A pleasure to finally meet you, Pup. I am Dr. Tannit Vanth, Director of the Lupercal Program."

Calliope is frantically blinking into the sudden, painful brightness of a small interrogation room, little more than a windowless steel box with a steel table and a pair of steel chairs, and a woman lounging across from her and…
Fuck.

Dr. Vanth is not at all what one might expect from a member of the Commissariat.
She really is lounging, for one, spotlessly polished black combat boots on the table, just inches from Calliope's hands, seemingly perfectly at ease in this harsh environment.
For another, the shiny black longcoat probably isn't standard issue, nor the tightly corseted shirt of dark silk. Certainly the fingerless leather gloves aren't, nor the long nails that look sharpened to a razor point, emblazoned with symbols she can't quite make out at this distance.
But it's the face that's truly taking Calliope's breath away.
A wolf-cut crown of black dreadlocks frames dark-skinned features of ageless radiance.
Thin round spectacles, white-gold circles that draw toward the eyes.
Two spheres of vibrant hazel, burning with a light of their own, that seem to stare right into Calliope's head, seem to pierce her thoughts one by one and freeze them in amber with sheer, natural authority.

Her mouth had been dry before, and now she can taste the desert, and stunned between fear and awe, all the response she can manage to stammer out is "Call…iope. Tanova."

That elicits another chuckle from Dr. Vanth, who seems to be confidently aware of the effect she's having. Her teeth look sharp. Like she has wolf canines. And makes a point of flashing them before she speaks:
"I know that, silly Pup. But before you get… processed, I've got a couple of questions for you. And I'd like you to answer them to the best of your abilities, okay? So we'll see if maybe we can't find a better place for you than a penal detachment."

It takes Calliope conscious effort to rip herself free from the Dr.'s gaze, to look to the side and nod, still desperately swallowing, trying to wet her mouth, trying to get order into her thoughts, but even mockery or lecturing sounds different from Dr. Vanth's perfect dark lips. And besides, whether the friendliness is sincere or not, whatever mad game is being played here, disappointing the only person that has shown Calliope any kindness so far, that seems altogether unwise, doesn't it?

"First question, Pup." Why does she keep calling me that? Some affectation, or… "Why is it that virtually every modern military has placed mech suits at the center of their combat doctrine?"

Calliope stumbles a little, her thoughts still caught up on trying to process the strange address, and this is hardly the subject matter she would have expected to be interrogated about, but at least the question is easy enough that she has to suppress the impulse to shrug.
Or maybe it's the restraints doing that.
She still wishes her mouth wasn't so damned dry, but at least she can give an answer promptly: "Mobility. Survivability. Everybody's spent most of the last century coming up with ways to kill drones and other low-flying stuff. With all the atmospheric distortions and solar flares, nobody's crazy enough to fly high altitude. That just leaves ground warfare. Mechs are infinitely more mobile than tanks. And since the invention of the Landsberg generators, size isn't really an issue anymore, right?"
So she's read anyway. Calliope has only ever seen mech suits in movies.

But from what she can tell from the corner of her eye, the answer seems to satisfy Dr. Vanth, who clicks her tongue once more - Gods, did I just flinch? - and then, in the tone of a content schoolmistress, asks, "And why are we all still using human pilots? Why not have computers go to war for us or use remote controls? Look at me when you answer, Pup."

Calliope swallows, squeezes her eyes shut just to buy herself a few seconds, and then obeys.
She tries to keep herself from looking too far up, but staring at the Dr.'s lips is barely better than looking her in the eyes, and whether it's her fear or the beauty on display or the drugs in her system, Calliope is seeing spots of unlight at the corners of her vision as she answers, grateful at least that she's researched these things so thoroughly before writing about them: "Processing power. And lag. The Control Link transmits so much data, there would be seconds' worth of lag to transmit all that remotely, never mind the vulnerabilities, to weather outages of signal disruption. And as for computers, well, the folks of the last century have wasted so many years trying to make artificial intelligence happen, and it all turned out to be a gigantic waste of a dud, didn't it? Meanwhile, the human brain has got the processing power of a supercomputer, at least if you tap into it. Make use of our innate ability to multitask. And as long as the mech suit is close enough to human-shaped that the brain feels comfortable in it, a human can pilot at the speed of thought, and that's much faster than any computer that could fit into the frame, and you get all the benefits a human intelligence has over an algorithm."

Calliope dares to look up for just a fraction of a second, just to see if the interrogator found her answer pleasing, and immediately her eyes are spellbound once more. Like butterflies nailed to a board. Does Dr. Vanth even blink? The spots in her vision intensify. Dance almost in sync with the smooth, harmonious up and down of the Dr.'s voice.

"Correct. Hooked up to a Control Link, a human brain is going to outperform a machine every time. Except there's a problem with that. You know what that is? Why we're losing the war?"

We are? What the fuck? And how the fuck is she to know that? Calliope is reeling. All it ever says on the news is 'front frozen' or 'developing situation' or stuff like that. But perhaps it makes sense that the Revolutionary Army wouldn't put it on the news if they were getting their ass kicked, right?
Is this some kind of test? An interrogation technique meant to make her admit that she knows more than she should? Dr. Vanth's eyes keep burrowing into her own, and Calliope wants to come up with some kind of answer, because disappointing the expectation lurking in that gaze seems like an altogether terrible idea. Worse than whatever guilt she's being accused of. But making something up would mean lying to a ranking member of the Commissariat, and that seems even worse, and so she meekly concedes, "I dunno," and breathes a sigh of relief that the darkly radiant woman across from her does not seem disappointed and instead seems perfectly content to lecture.

"Two words, Pup. Neural load. The magnitude of data that needs processing and the dysmorphia of getting used to a second, not quite human body… it turns out people just don't have the necessary neuroplasticity to endure that for very long. After the bare minimum required training hours, a good, resilient pilot with an exceptional sense of self lasts four or maybe five sorties before they become… permanently ineffective."
The way she enunciates that phrase creeps Calliope right out.
But then Dr. Vanth swings her boots off the table. Leans forward, her perfectly manicured hands folded under her chin, by some miracle of manual dexterity does not break the mesmerizing eye contact once in the process, and Calliope's concerns are drowned in the depth of those brown eyes.

"Now, most of the power blocs have tried to solve this one way or another. Making the frames simpler or the training cycles shorter. Putting multiple pilots into one frame to try and share the burden. But that sort of thing makes a very, very precious war machine worse at its role, or it concentrates precious pilots in one place, and we can't afford that kind of waste. Down south, there's programs that have tried to use religious indoctrination or threats and hostages to fortify a pilot's sense of self and motivate them, and across the Atlantic, the Americans drill kids from birth in complete isolation. hoping that if you just build a personality from so much puritan discipline and patriotism, it'll make their pilots last."

Dr. Vanth sneers and shrugs in obvious disapproval.
"A fool's errand, of course. A lot of effort to wring another sortie or two out of their pilots. And a dogmatic pilot will always lose to one with more… mental acuity. Now here, in the SEU, we do it like the Americans used to do with fighter pilots, all the way back in World War Two. No more than four sorties before the pilot gets to…"

"Retire on a nice farm in Finland?" Calliope can't even tell why she blurts it out like that - perhaps to show that she's listening, perhaps to demonstrate some level of wit, or perhaps it is some ill-advised impulse of defiance. But whatever the reason, she regrets interrupting immediately. And anxiously searches the hazel stare pinning her for a reaction.
Dr. Vanth certainly doesn't like to be interrupted, that much is clear by the faint little twitch at the corner of her lips. Her eyes are… not inscrutable exactly. Calliope can tell there is something there, flaring up for just a second. It's not anger. It's… interest? Somehow, that is scarier than if the woman were to blow up.

"Something like that" is the only acknowledgment that Dr. Vanth has to spare before continuing: "What's left of the pilot at that point, anyway. And while our glorious Revolutionary Council is right that this is the most ethical of the solutions that have been explored, it's not exactly practical to spend three to five years of simulator training and psychiatric coaching on an asset that frequently gets used up in under a week, given the realities of the frontline. So it's hardly surprising that we are losing ground."

The nonchalance with which the woman is talking about state secrets is… more than a little concerning. And Calliope wants to ask why. What all of this has to do with her, or with being set up through a phony job offer. But she hasn't been asked a question, and after witnessing the smallest spark of anger, she is going to bite her tongue off before interrupting once more.

"Now all that being said, tell me, Pup. What do you think makes the deadliest pilots?" She's raised a single slender brown finger into view, the crimson nail point an underline to her piercing gaze, and this time she leaves no doubt that this question is a test.
Only Calliope has no idea what the test is for, and she certainly hasn't studied for it. Thank the gods she's too full of drugs to wilt under the pressure entirely, and the smartest thing she can do is just answer to the best of what she can think of, right?
If only her brain was working a little better.

"Well, if I understand it correctly, you've said it yourself, Dr. Vanth. Mental acuity. Processing speed. Mental flexibility. Swift, sound, and creative decision-making under pressure, I suppose. But I guess if everyone is trying to fortify personalities, then flexibility could become kind of a liability in terms of pilot burnout… right?"

Tannit Vanth's lips part into a wide, wolfish grin. "Very, very good, Pup. You've been paying attention." The praise is a smokey, honeyed purr that makes Calliope shiver. "Now, in light of recent battlefield woes, the Council has finally sanctioned the Lupercal program. The culmination of years of my research. A different kind of pilot training regimen." She holds the thought, gives Calliope's overwhelmed mind time to catch up, while her grin takes on something altogether predatory.

The director of the Lupercal program seems pleased to finally find understanding in the drugged girl's eyes. Pages upon pages upon pages of personality tests. Asking her to write up a pitch book, a plan… for mech combat. This entire elaborate trap of a job offer.
It can only mean one thing, can't it?

Calliope speaks the thought into being, incredulous at the absurdity of it: "You want me to be a mech pilot?" Cause that's the only thing that fits, the only way this charade makes sense, but if Dr. Vanth is trying to hire her for a different job, talking about all the ways that being in a mech apparently fucks you up, never mind the 'going to war' and 'getting fucking shot at' bits, definitely does not make for a great sales pitch, does it?

And then Dr. Vanth rises, in a single, fluid motion, and all of a sudden she is very close, all of a sudden it's impossible to look anywhere but at her face, and her hand is under Calliope's chin.
The leather of the gloves is so much softer than it looks.
The nails feel sharp as blades, cupping Calliope's cheeks.
But it's the scent that gets to her most.
Lilac and juniper and moorland heath.
Sweetness, soft and noble, carried on sharp, citrusy briskness that burrows straight into her head, each new rapid breath another intoxicating dash into the folds of her brain, it practically feels like she is getting high on fast forward.
It's all too much, and the young woman's mind can barely hold onto the words when Dr. Vanth whispers, with all the conviction of a clear-eyed evangelist, "No, Pup, I don't want you to be a pilot. Calliope. I am going to turn you into the best pilot in the world. I'm going to turn you into a hero."

Several hundred years ago, a Prussian philosopher had asserted that 'genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.' Calliope is captivated by the light brown maelstroms in Dr. Vanth's eyes, and for a moment Calliope can see the world that Dr. Vanth is talking about and cannot tell if it is madness or genius or both that govern it.
For a moment, Calliope almost believes that she could be a pilot or a hero.
Wants to live in that world even. If not to escape the legal trouble she's in, then because scent and touch and beauty and praise are all forming a snare around her mind.

But Calliope is not so drugged up, not so far gone that there isn't a part of her mind screaming in horror. Whether reason or spite, whether fear of combat or petulant anger at the unfairness of the trap she had been lured into, it's that small part of her that compels her to speak words that she will come to regret so bitterly in the following months:

"And what if I don't want to?"