Skyborn The Divine

17: Pressure

The throaty hummm of the Black Swan's engines was the perfect white noise. It drowned out most of the sound of Alice's wet sobs as the cargo plane trudged eastward, taking Meta Team home again after their business in North Korea was complete.

Alice's hands gripped the sides of the steel basin in the cramped aircraft bathroom, crying so hard it felt like there would be nothing left inside her when she was through. The things she'd seen at the ruins of the Ryungyong hotel danced in her mind, refusing to be subdued or quieted. Despite her best attempts to think of other things, to conjure up happier memories of her home, her mother, her father before he died, those images of broken bodies and smears of blood sank hooks in her mind and refused to budge.

How could such horrible things happen to innocent people?

There was a gentle knock on the door.

"Alice," Athena called through the door, "I'd like to have a word with you."

Alice looked in the steel mirror. Her face and hair were dirty and disheveled. Smudges of dirt and dust seemed to age her, adding false wrinkles and graying her hair. Her red eyes were puffy and wet.

She ran the water in the sink and splashed it onto her face. She watched streaks of gray, dirty water swirl into the drain. She calmed her breathing as best she could, trying again to not feel, to not think. Neither worked.

She opened the door.

Athena stood on the other side, looking just as dirty in her dark uniform and equipment harness. Alice saw that Athena had removed all her equipment from the mission, including her combat rig, making her look a lot smaller than she had looked for the last ten hours.

Alice realized it must be difficult to be a normal human being and to carry all that gear. The comms equipment, the weaponry, the medical kits, all of the things normal ORIGIN operators carried with them into the field had to feel oppressively heavy. The combat rigs helped, of course. Each one made the person wearing it stronger and more agile than ten men, but operating them wasn't effortless. Athena had expended herself, pushed herself to her own limits and beyond in that mission. They all had. Even the combat rig didn't save Priscilla from breaking her leg in the dangerous, shifting mountain of debris.

So why, if she was built so much stronger on the outside, was Alice the only one reacting this way to things they'd seen as they cleared away the concrete, glass, and steel from the wreckage of the hotel?

Why am I the only one crying like a child?

"We should talk," Athena said. "Come with me, please."

Alice followed Athena to a compartment separate from the one where her team members now sat in plush seats and sipped bottled water. This compartment looked like an office, and held a desk with a computer, switched off, and a couple of chairs.

As Alice tried to take her seat, the plane lurched, and she remembered again that she hated flying in machines. She slumped into the chair.

"You've had a hard day today," said Athena. It wasn't a question.

It had been a hard day. After Alice overcame her shock at the indescribable human suffering she witnessed, after she'd wiped the vomit from her grimy lips and stood from where she'd been huddled and rocking and crying, she only saw more of it. It seemed to Alice that the deeper and deeper she dug into the rubble of the Ryugyong Hotel, the more and more likely she was to find a corpse instead of a survivor. She'd seen so many dead she eventually felt like she'd become one of them, a shambling, broken shell that was once a human being. She knew she wasn't past feeling. No, somewhere deep down, in her soul, she was sure, Alice felt things tearing. But the pain didn't reach the surface. Since Priscilla gave her what Alice was sure was the worst pep talk ever, Alice had been able to avoid having another emotional breakdown. Not until they finally finished.