Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Side Sim- Blue Is The Color Of My… (Tag Wyatt, Faye)

Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Side Sim- Blue Is The Color Of My… (Tag Wyatt, Faye)

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Side Sim- Blue Is The Color Of My… (Tag Wyatt, Faye)

(snip)

She pressed the tips of her fingers into the bridge of her nose. “Stop telling me to calm down,” she said in a low and dangerous voice. “You don’t think I don’t understand the stakes? I have looked at the footage of that damned ship everyday. Everyday I was in the build phase, when I questioned the need for all this secrecy, I replayed the footage and reminded myself what could happen to this ship. To its crew.” Faye dropped her hands and looked up at him. “I get that some people were worried about security, and I get that part of my assignment. But it was rendered obsolete a year ago. Hell, it was rendered obsolete within days of Cochrane boarding. I’m in the brig, Leroy. I should be in my lab double checking the new system. Monitoring it. No one is doing that right now. Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Faye got up and moved over to the forcefield, standing in front of him. Her features softened and she smiled. No, grinned. “It works! It’s beautiful. I’ve spent no less than a thousand hours building it from scratch, by myself. I could have had heaps of help and we could have been way farther along.” She shrugged her shoulders. “If people actually care about saving lives and protecting this and other ships, then someone needs to trust me and let me do my job. Dammit Leroy, I can’t stay in here any longer! You keep telling me to calm down, but I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin. I’m not okay,” she said softly, letting herself touch that tenuous feeling from earlier. The one where she knew she was on the edge and it wouldn’t take much to push her over.

~Faye Calloway, Prisoner

Blue watched her and as she moved to the forcefield, he took a involuntary half-step backwards. ” I know you aren’t okay, Faye. I do. But until you can… get composed… I can’t let you out. You have two watch dogs on the other side of that door. And while I can keep them from hearing what we say, I can’t drop this field till I know you are ready… all right?”

Calloway scowled at him. For her it was a perfectly reasonable reaction, and given how she was dressed all in black and had composed herself for this little “mission”, he could be certain that Faye was dangerous in her own right. But even though they had joked about her right hook on numerous occasions, never once had he ever shown any indication of actually being afraid of her. And now? They had been through too much together. That one small movement had solidified everything she needed to know, confirmed the one nagging suspicion in the back of her mind.

He took a deep breath and shifted his weight. “Ok… so the program works. No one knows your real purpose for being here. And you are ready to sign off that the program will be ready for other ships soon, right? That sum it up?”

Blue

This one wasn’t entirely quick, was he? Hmmm. “Soon, yes. If I can get a few things tweaked. I’ve made a lot of modifications on the fly, which all need to be taken into account.” In short, at this very moment she was the sole person of the entire operation who knew exactly how it worked, why and what the potential issues were. Others could try to duplicate it, but they would inevitably fail.

Faye watched him for a moment and then shook her head slightly. “You know the one thing about me that most people miss? It’s not that my brain is super intelligent and good at processing information. Or that I have a nearly eidetic memory. But that I’ve had very valid reasons to dislike people. And sure, my disorder makes social interactions complicated, but once someone gets on the same page with me, and I them, it usually gets easier. Usually,” she said with a smirk.

Studying this man before her, who looked like her one true friend, Faye’s expression saddened. “I just have one question for you, and I’d like a really honest answer. Is Commander Leroy Strickland actually still alive? I’m guessing the answer is no, because that would be a stupid risk to take and a strange liability to hold onto given these extraordinary circumstances you’ve crafted. But humour me? Tell me yes or no,” she said nonchalantly.

~Faye Calloway, Prisoner

Blue looked at her for a long moment and then a tear welled up in one of his eyes. “Faye… I don’t even know what to say to that.” and his head cocked slightly to the side. “This was the point, then, wasn’t it? I told them you weren’t ready for another assignment…” and his voice trailed off and he turned from the forcefield and paced slowly, shaking his head. When he spoke, it was as if he was speaking to himself. “I told them you weren’t ready. I did. I said ‘You do this and you may break her, dammit.’ I told them to give you more time to recover… but they didn’t listen.” and he stopped pacing and looked at the forcefield, tears in both eyes.

“They’ve gone and broke you, haven’t they, Faye? I… I’m so sorry…” and his voice trailed off.

Blue