Chapter 37

The halls had quieted down into the mid-morning calm that followed breakfast but preceded lunch, and Jamie found it relaxing as she rubbed her bed-head and grabbed a bowl of fruit to tide her over until lunch. Claes was the only one still in the dining hall and she looked up at Jamie for a moment before returning to her book.
“Morning, Claes.”
“Good morning, Jamie. You’re waking up late today.”
“Heh, I guess so.” She settled into a seat across from the younger girl, biting into an apple. “I was with Michael pretty late last night.”
Claes blinked, unsure as to what Jamie was trying to achieve by revealing such knowledge. There were always rumors flying about in the dorms, there really wasn’t a way around it with girls, but the things that had been going around about the older two second-gen cyborgs and their respective handlers was something herself and Triela had been working to keep from the younger girls. They simply would not understand, really, and probably should not.
“Jamie, can I make a personal suggestion?” 
“Hm?” Jamie swallowed the bite of apple that she had been loudly crunching on. “Sure, go ahead.”
“You should really keep that kind of information to yourself. Rico and Henrietta really do not need to know about such things.”
A confused look was fired back from the other side of the table as Jamie thought about her comment and worked it around to figure out why Claes seemed upset about it. Her face darkened as she realized it the girl’s impression of her. Perhaps it was her own fault for not choosing her words more carefully, but the fact that it was taken in such a way made it clear what kind of person they thought she might be.
“Listen, Claes... I’m not sure what you have heard about Petra, and I really don’t care, but when you start thinking that she and I are the same way you show how ignorant you really are when it comes to such things.” 
The harsh words made Claes return Jamie’s glare, the insult of her intelligence having been a line suddenly crossed. Being straightforward was going to defuse the situation before it became too much to deal with.
“You deny that you and Michael are intimate?”
“Intimate? As in just being close?”
“As in sexual.”
Jamie turned red as her anger spiked inside and she had to draw from her deep reserves of patience to avoid punching the girl in her face. They could not understand what Petra and herself, and the other second-gens had to deal with on a daily basis regarding their handlers.
“We’re not like that. Last night was the closest we have ever been and it was nowhere near that level of intimacy. We watched movies until very early this morning, that’s it. And you can tell your busy-body friends that, too, in case they get the same idea as you.”
Jamie stood and picked up the bowl of fruit to take with her to her room.
“It’s not that I’m judging you, Jamie. I just think it might be wise to consider how your actions appear to others, especially the younger girls.” 
“I do as I please, Claes, and I take responsibility for those actions. That is the difference between being a girl and being a woman in this world.” She made her exit without a word further on the subject, leaving Claes to stare at her back.
“Why do you get so defensive if it’s nothing?”

The bowl was empty by the time Jamie made it back to her room. Her hands had occupied themselves by shoveling the fruit into her mouth as fast as she could swallow it and it was at times like this that she was thankful that being a cyborg negated the detriments of being a nervous eater.
Maria was in the room again, dressing from her morning workout with a few of the other girls. She glanced up at Jamie as she entered and noted the look on her face. It was a face she only made when someone had gone out of their way to upset her.
“Did you have some bad oatmeal for breakfast?”
“No,” Jamie said as she started pulling off her casual clothes to change into her khakis. “Bad conversation. Claes seems to think I’m playing fast and loose with Michael.”
“With Michael?” She bent down to tie her shoes. “As in lying to him?”
“As in biology.”
“Biology?” Her eyes lit up when the meaning hit her. She could understand why Jamie had become so unhappy with the comment. “Yes, I can see how that would make things a bit unsettling.”
Jamie pulled on a Remington t-shirt and tucked it into her pants, following it up with her tactical vest. 
“She accused me of not thinking about how my actions look to others.”
“Interesting, considering she gave no thought towards what kind of feelings you might have regarding such physical contact.” Maria finished dressing for her language class, straightening her blouse and smoothing out her skirt. “The fact that you can be as close as you are is certainly a sign of your own healing.”
“She couldn’t know what it’s like, so I really can’t blame her. If anyone ever touched me again, even Michael, I don’t think I would be able to live any longer. I cringe inside at the thought of it, and for her to say that I’m the type to flaunt it and give it away...”
Her friend wrapped her arms around her from behind and pulled tight, trying to be a comfort. “You’re not, and Michael knows what you have been through and what the boundaries are, so he’s not going to hurt you. Her words mean nothing.”
Jamie’s soft hand caressed the arms wrapped around her and the smile returned to her lips. She could not hope for better friends than the ones she had now.
“Thank you, Maria. I always know in my heart that you’ll understand me.”
“I can’t help it. I have to listen to you all night and day.” She released the older girl and picked up her backpack from beside her bed. “I’m going to class now, Jamie. I’ll see you this evening, so try not to get too angry about things.”
“I won’t. She just caught me off-guard. Have fun in class.”
The door closed, leaving Jamie alone again with her thoughts. She sat down on the bed and hugged herself to shield her heart from a cold chill that swept through her body. It was all she could do to hold in the tears she felt would burst forth. 
There was a confliction within her heart, one that seemed so incredibly impossible to resolve. She could feel love for Michael, the desire to be with him forever and to give her all to him. But a part of her said that she could never be one with him in the way that a woman should be. The damage to her mind from that night in Paris was not something that could be removed by drugs or prosthetics, and as much as she wanted to rise above and move past that pain, she could not see or feel any way that it was possible. When they had violated her, it had been an act that could never be forgotten, and would forever come between her and whoever she chose to love.
That thought was enough to release her bottled-up tears, and she cried for several long minutes as a mix of emotions surged through her. Sadness that she would constantly have to remember it, fear that she might be rejected because of it, and anger at having to continue to be a victim of it. The pain and fear of dying that night had long been recovered from, but this was something that she felt with absolute certainty would follow her until her dying breath.
There could be no amount of vengeance that would bring back what she had lost. Not her friends, not her body, nor her soul. It was a cold, sobering reality that she had been steadfastly ignoring, the same as Michael had been, but it was reality all the same.
The only legitimate reason to go on was to rid the world of a cancerous lump of flesh, one that caused painful death to many and spread its poisonous cells to as many as possible. In Amherst’s death, justice could be found for so many that have been, and even more that would be.
Her body had the strength to fight once again, and since fighting was going to be the means to justice, she pulled her rifle case from beneath the bed and started down the stairs. She had to meet up with the only person who understood, and together they would live to exact justice.

Michael sat on the sandbags that made up the firing line for the thousand yard range and watched Rico practice with her Dragunov, her shots being made at a rhythmic pace that was offset by the sound of the steel-tips hitting the target plate at six-hundred. Jean watched her accuracy through a large pair of binoculars and occasionally mentioned Rico’s variance from the center of the plate.
Jamie walked up just as Rico got to her feet to reload her magazines, and the young girls smiled broadly at Jamie.
“Hi, Jamie!”
“Hello, Rico. How’s the wind today?” She set her own case down and slipped the pack from her shoulder.
“Variable to the right. About five knots in the gusts, but averages around three.”
“Easy day today, I guess.”
Michael smiled at her, feeling warmed somewhat by Jamie’s kinship with the other girls. In a different time and place, the conversation would likely be very different in subject, but the same in enthusiasm and warmth.
“Hi.” Jamie stopped when her eyes met his- her heart beating a touch faster as she remembered the kiss last night. She brushed the hair from her eyes and silently cursed herself for not taking the time to primp a bit.
“Hi, Jamie. It’s an easy day today. You just need to sight in your new scope and prove that you can hit stuff with it.” He pulled shoe-box sized hard-case from his backpack and handed it to her, as if it were a Christmas or birthday gift. She gladly accepted and popped it open to get a look at her new toy. 
It was identical to her old one in every way, but somehow it seemed new and exciting. Maybe as a sniper, the union between a sighted scope and the rifle was the defining point, so anything that broke that union was foreign in nature. It was something to think about later.
She had her rifle out in a few seconds and the scope fitted onto the rail. The bolt came out of the rifle and she settled it onto several sandbags before looking down the length of the barrel at a paper target mounted at one-hundred meters. A few adjustments of the bags had the bore on target and she switched to sighting through the scope, pleased to see that her hawk-like vision had almost centered it.
“How long to sight it in?”
“A few groups, I think. It’s pretty spot on now.” 
She inserted the bolt again and loaded a magazine with her favorite load, inserting it into the rifle and working the action into battery. Jamie adjusted until she was comfortable and settled behind the glass to take aim at the incredibly easy shot she had before her. In calm, practiced moves she fired off a five-shot group, taking a second after each to endure she was aimed in exactly the same spot. The hole in the paper was only slightly larger than the actual bullet diameter, meaning every shot had gone though the hole made by the first.
“Hmm...” The point of impact was a touch too low though, so she gave it a few clicks to adjust it out and loaded the fresh magazine that Michael handed her before taking aim at the six-hundred meter target. The sights should be low at one hundred meters and be dead-on zeroed at six-hundred. Everything else was compensation on her part.
Jamie counted the number of clicks she dialed in carefully, catching Jean and Rico watching her from the edge of her vision. Rico was good, there was no doubt about it, but Jamie was the best sniper in the agency and knew it. She would gladly help Rico along if she wanted the help.
“Got it?”
“Yeah... I should be right on, maybe a touch high.” She settled in again and took aim at the distant target while Michael took his place at the spotting scope.
“Three-shot group...”
Rifle roared and the bullet streaked downrange, ripping a hole in the target about two inches high and almost centered on the bulls-eye.
“Two inches high, a quarter left.”
“I allowed the wind to slack on that one, sorry.”
“I wasn’t complaining, Jamie.”
Rico stepped back onto the line and started shooting, the noise drowning out Michael and Jamie’s conversation from outsiders.
“Michael.” Her next shot went wide as she lost her concentration.
“Hm?”
“There’s something I need to talk about.” 
She fired her last round and removed the magazine to reload it. Michael looked at her from his place on the spotting scope and knew at a glance that it was something serious.
“You know you can always talk to me about anything, so what’s wrong?”
“Claes said something to me this morning and it brought up a question I’ve been avoiding.” Her hands started shaking as she thumbed the cartridge into the magazine and Michael knelt down beside her to hold them steady in a gesture of support. For some reason, his strength always made it easier to talk about things, and so she continued.
“She said that it looks like you and I are sexually involved, and that I should not be...making it so obvious.”
In another circumstance Michael might have laughed at the absurdity of it, but the hurt look in her eyes said that it was something that really bothered her.
“You told her that we weren’t like that?”
“Yes, but who knows whether she believes it. I don’t really care whether she does or not anyway, but it made me start to question things about myself, and us, and I don’t have the answers.”
“Like what?” He sat down beside her and leaned against the sandbags.
“Like whether I can actually do the things a normal woman can.”
It was something he had been told about, but did not really care to know the details of. By all real definitions, she was a woman, though the damage and injuries done to her made the more maternal aspects impossible.
“From what the lab-guys have said, you can do almost everything if you chose to.”
“It goes beyond the physical, though. I guess what has me upset is that the idea of that sort of contact makes me uncomfortable. In my mind, I want no one to touch me because the thought of it makes me remember.”
“I see...” Sometimes it was hard to keep in mind that she still had a form of PTSD, not unlike that woman in the base hospital.
“So... Even if I loved someone, and wanted to be with them in every way a woman can be, I still can’t do it because of this. So, as a man, could you love someone who could not share that with you? Or would you leave her?”
She was asking him such a serious question, one that spoke of her heart’s pains, yet there were no tears. She had already shed plenty of them over the question, and now she just wanted an answer. His answer would shape the woman next to him for the rest of her life, and it was this heavy burden that made him decide to answer as if it were not the two of them in question.
“Look over there, Jamie.” He nodded his head towards Jean and Rico, and waited for her to get a long look. “Believe it or not, there is love there. In spite of the rough treatment, the harsh words, and the seeming lack of empathy, Jean loves Rico like no one else. He’s piss-poor at showing it but it’s there, and she knows that he loves her.”
Jamie looked down, trying to get a handle on what he was saying.
“What that shows is that there are lots of types of love out there. If it really is a true love, be it as a lover or a friend or a mentor, it really doesn’t matter what the details are. You ask if not being able to fulfill the physical needs of a person will result in a loss of love, and I can say for certain that such an item won’t matter if the person really loves you. They’ll understand the pain and frustration you have and be supportive whether you choose to leave things that way or not.”
She smiled softly, feeling the sharp edge taken off of her worries. “You always know what to say, don’t you?”
“Most of the time,” he said with a smile. “The rest of it is trying my best to avoid making things worse.”
Rico finished her drill and stepped off of the line again, giving Michael a cue to steer Jamie back in line.
“I picked up something the other day that I thought you might like.”
“Oh?” She stood with him and set her rifle down gently, forcing her worries to the back of her mind.
“I think you’ll like it.” 
He pulled a gun case from under the bench and settled it on top. The locks popped open and he opened the case to reveal an old bolt-action rifle with a scope. The wooden stock was worn a bit with dings and nicks, but the luster of the wood and finish captivated Jamie.
“A Mosin Nagant?”
“Yep. An authentic, sniper-rigged 91/30.  This little lady has more than fifty confirmed Nazi kills to its barrel, mostly officers if the guy selling it wasn’t lying.”