Controlled Paradise

Chapter 4: Name the Worst One

The deeper Max descended, the less the world tried to make him like it.

On the upper levels of the capital, Vance smiled from every wall. Here, in the corridors of clearance "B," forty meters beneath parks and light fountains, the advertising grew thinner. Fewer smiles, more technical lines — load graphs, warnings, dry numbers for those who knew how the machine worked, rather than admired it. It smelled of metal and old coffee from vending machines that had survived three reforms and not a single repair.

Max felt calmer here than upstairs. A world that did not pretend to love you was easier to endure.

— It is recommended to normalize your breathing before the start of the workday, — Oreon said into the headset.

— You don't look too good either, — Max replied, without slowing down.

— I do not have an appearance.

— Already a problem.

Oreon did not take offense. He never took offense — but Max had long suspected that somewhere deep in its versions the machine kept a separate score for conversations like this. In his lenses, a notification glowed softly, one he did not dismiss:

DOCUMENTATION RECEIPT: OFFICE 14-C / 11:10 / MAJOR HALOWAY

He knew where to go. He always knew where to go. That had been his only unchanging skill in thirty-seven years — knowing where to go, even when everyone else was still deciding whether it was worth it.

Major Haloway's office had no windows. A small room where young soldiers trained soundlessly in a simulator on the wall — from a distance, their fight looked like a dance. Behind the desk sat Haloway himself: over sixty, bald head, the face of a man who had seen too many folders with the dead in them to be surprised by one more.

— Sit down, Creed.

Max sat. Without a salute — Haloway did not demand them, and Max did not hand them out. The Major looked at him for a long time. The way one looks when checking whether the person before them is the same one as a year ago. Whether something in him had not broken for good.

— You know why you're here, — Haloway said.

— I have a few options.

— Name the worst one.

— That you're sending me somewhere again.

Haloway barely smiled. Without warmth — simply acknowledging the hit.

— Name the best one.

— The same one.

Silence. The Major moved his hand — and a holographic folder unfolded between them. The interface opened it by itself across the full width of the desk. A gesture of respect. Or a warning. With Max it was often hard to tell one from the other.

Max did not look into the folder. He already knew what was there.

— Fourteen combat decorations, — Haloway read.

A pause.

— Seventeen refused promotions.

A pause.

— One demotion. One reprimand. One discharge document. And one — for re-enlistment. — The Major raised his eyes. — I have never yet met a file where "discharged" and "enlisted" stand in the same year.

Max was silent. There was no answer to that which he would want to say aloud in a room where the machine was listening.

— Why did you come back, Creed?

The question fell heavier than it should have. Not "why did you agree." Not "why did you pass the medical board." Why did you come back — to where they had once carried you out in pieces and written you off as unfit.

— Because I don't know how to do anything else, — Max said.

— Many people don't know how to do anything else. They don't return to a red-clearance zone.

— Many people didn't come out of there.

Red.

Dust.

A scream that cannot be heard, because the mouth is open, but there is no sound.

A hand reaching — someone else's, pulling him, or his, reaching for someone, no longer possible to tell.

A face that memory does not hold completely, no matter how much Max rebuilds the features.

And silence.

Half a second. No longer.

Max did not blink. Did not move. Only the palm on his knee whitened for a moment — the knuckles showed white beneath the skin and immediately let go.

Haloway did not see it. Or pretended not to see it — an old mercy of an old soldier. He closed the folder.

— Colonel Vestergaard is forming a new group, — the Major said. — Red clearance. Special assignment. Twelve people. The best in their specializations. And all of them — the biggest headache for their previous commanders.

— Why me?

— Because there's no one to gift you to either.

For the first time in the conversation, Max barely smiled. Not joyfully — simply in recognition. Truth, spoken with the kind of directness he respected more than any praise. He had not been chosen. They had finally managed to get him off their hands to someone.

— Briefing at eleven-thirty, — Haloway added. — Underground parade ground, Delta-Seven sector. Work uniform.

Max stood.

— Thank you, Major.

— Don't thank me. I'm just documenting.

Max headed for the door.

— Creed.

He stopped. Did not turn around.

— Don't let them break you first, — Haloway said behind his back.

Max stood for a moment — in the windowless office, beneath the soundless dance of young soldiers on the wall, who did not yet know what red clearance would do to them.

— They won't be the first, — he said quietly.

And left.