Only sluggishly did her consciousness rise from the darkness that enveloped her like dreary sleep. Unconsciousness or a state of floating? Whatever it was, it still clung like sticky threads to the first thoughts. Then slowly a drone rose, followed by a whirring sound that vibrated her senses. Her eyelashes fluttered as bright light pierced through the darkness, tattering them and slowly sending her mind and perception back to the here and now.
"All status reports are in the green. Vital signs are normal. Core fusion complete." Sounded the voice of a woman who looked familiar to her.
'Simulation lead.' her mind answered her out of a fog with a memory she could not yet grasp, but was taking more shape with each increasing second. An image of a woman in a white suit came to her mind. Piercing blue eyes to raven black hair. Austere, cool, dry. A voice like a robot, matching the machines she loved to surround herself with.
Her head was heavy as she lifted it and her vision slowly cleared. The huge room was drenched in a mixture of gray and black tones. The massive floorboards possessed a dull tone, while countless cable runs stood out against it in a bluish glow. It was circular, and in capsule-shaped contraptions were more people with connections to machines. Screens glowed and lines traced across them. Statistics and values flickered on the screens in a luminescent glow that took over the entire room. In the reflection of the capsule she was in, she saw her own reflection.
A suit of dark gray metal protected her body like armor. With a hiss, a cable now detached itself from the area of her helmet, and at last, a sense of her body returned to her fingertips. As the pressure-sealed chamber opened and the glass pane opened accompanied by brief steam, she also pushed up the helmet's visor and took a deep breath.
"Link to simulation successfully severed." Continued the female voice and now another person slid into her field of vision.
A tall man with broad shoulders and hard features, he had his arms folded behind his back."Recruit S., I hope you have an explanation for this." The look in his dark eyes was hard and critical.
She didn't.
"Your performance was disappointing, to say the least. The maximum score was 41,000 per mission. Do you have any idea what their score was?" Although his voice remained cold and monotone, she could sense the simmering anger underneath.
Hissing, the other cable connections to her suit disconnected and Recruit S. reached for the edge of the capsule to climb out.
The man raised his hand and with a whirring sound, a display formed in the air. Like on a star map, the branches of the possible actions of each mission were shown there under angular system letters.
╔════𝖳𝖨𝖬𝖤 𝖠𝖦𝖤𝖭𝖢𝖸 𝖬𝖨𝖲𝖲𝖨𝖮𝖭 EXAMINATION STATUS════╗
╔════════════════════╗
CHECKPOINT ₁
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₁﹕ Leadership – ₁₀.₅₀₀ / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₂﹕ Recovery– ₁.₅₀₀ / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₃﹕ Negotiation﹣ ₄.₅₀₀ / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ SCORE ₁₆.₅₀₀ / ₁₂.₃₀₀ ]
╚════════════════════╝
╔════════════════════╗
CHECKPOINT ₂
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₄﹕ Melee – ₁.₅₀₀ / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₅﹕ Tactics – ₁.₅₀₀ / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₆﹕ Deescalation﹣ ₅₀₀ / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ SCORE ₃.₅₀₀ / ₁₂.₃₀₀]
╚════════════════════╝
╔════════════════════╗
CHECKPOINT ₃
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₇ ... / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₈ ... / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
[ Mɪssɪᴏɴ ₉ ... / ₄₁.₀₀₀ ]
- EVALUATION IN PROGRESS –
╚════════════════════╝
[ SCORE﹕ ₂₀.₀₀₀ / ₁₂₃.₀₀₀ ]
╚══════════════════════════════╝
"With these values, I should have her expelled from the academy!" he let her know, and the recruit could do no more than lower her eyes in shame. "Have you forgotten everything from their training?! We don't send them back to their different lives to make the same mistakes over and over again!" now the voice rumbled louder and Recruit S. saw the slim woman on the armchair in front of the control boards concentrating on the screens in an oppressed way.
S. pressed her lips together and felt her muscles tense under the suit as much as her nerves." Sir, with all due respect. It's anything but easy when you don't remember-" she began, but her instructor immediately raised her hand, silencing her.
"I don't want to hear any excuses!" he said, and the dark eyes settled heavily like a boulder from her shoulders. "The evaluation of the last checkpoint is pending. However, I doubt that you will be miraculously awarded the necessary points here to at least get to the average." He said seriously, wiping the smoldering screen aside as if it were nothing more than an annoying fly." You almost certainly failed Recruit S." he let her know, confirming her worst fears. "Obviously, this challenge was out of your league. A failure of this magnitude in a real mission would have dire consequences. Return to the training cells and do not return until you are up to the test to become a temporal agent." With that, he turned away. "You are dismissed."
Recruit S. pressed her lips together into a thin line. Then she turned back and strode toward the portal, whose heavy iron doors slid open sideways and let her flee the room.
"They just really let anyone into the academy. You'd think becoming a temporal agent would have some basic aptitude as a prerequisite.... not just the fact that your soul was strong enough to be reborn like a stubborn cockroach." A spiteful voice jeered, and S. turned his gaze to its source.
"Mind your own business." She hissed to her brother in the green Agency suit, who stood grinning against the wall with his arms folded.
"Curse me all you want. You've failed. Deal with it." Her brother uncrossed his arms and pushed himself off the wall. Heavy boots made a dull, heavy sound on the metal floor with each step. "Swallow your defeat... And give up already. We've been playing this game for far too long." he said, nudging her shoulder as he pushed past her.
★
By the time she reached her chamber, the frustration inside her was boiling over."Son of a bitch!" she cursed, ripping the Time Academy token from her chest and smashing it into the pillows of her bed with all her might. The plate of gold that had accompanied her into each of the missions as an amulet remained in the sheets. What kind of crap was that, too, that they couldn't get a reminder into those generated missions THAT they were time agents?! Argh!
Groaning, she dropped into bed next to it and stared at the gray ceiling for some time. Again and again, she played through the missions. She had done her best. The young woman ran her hands over her face to relieve the tension. Probably because of her, poor Zirze had now lost a bet with another team.... and that was only because she had pretty much managed to fail like a rookie despite Zirze's help in the simulation.
S. sighed and closed her eyes. She listened to the electric hum of the lights, the monotonous rhythm of the ventilation in the spaceship, and then turned her head to take a look at the scenery in front of the thick security glass. Endless expanses filled with brilliant stars, and beautiful galaxy nebulae. The pitch black darkness of space that they still had not fully explored despite the advanced technology of their age, though they were already bending the lines of time to their will...
Slowly but surely, a slight smirk seeped back into her bitterness like a drop of honey and showed in the lift of the corners of her mouth. She would just go back to training, go through all the exercises again and hone her skills. Everyone failed once or found hurdles that were not so easy to overcome. But challenges make you grow and each failure was one more experience. Well... at least one fact every single person who knew her could be sure of because it had been confirmed over and over again from all timelines and would not change now:
Giving up has never been an option for her.