Chapter 10: Public Regression
The microdose wore off not with a jolt, but with a slow, creeping return of sensation. Nova woke to the insistent pulse of her neural alarm, the phantom smell of vanilla from the blanket now cloying. The quiet peace was gone. In its place was a low-grade hum of dread, centered on the collar still locked around her neck. Its weight had become part of her in the night.
Rysia was already up, dressed in crisp fatigues. She held out Nova’s own uniform. “Up. Dress. Thirty minutes to mess hall.”
The routine was mechanical. Nova pulled on the black bodysuit, the fabric sliding over skin that felt too sensitive. The collar sat snug against the high neckline, a black declaration. She avoided the mirror.
“Here.” Rysia didn’t hand her the usual ration bar. Instead, she held a small insulated bag. “Commander’s orders. You eat a full meal before the op. Publicly.”
Nova froze, one arm in her jacket sleeve. “Why?”
“To establish the new normal. To show the cohort that your… accommodations… are integrated, operational, and non-negotiable.” Rysia’s tone was flat, reciting protocol. But her eyes held a flicker of something else. A shared grimace.
The walk to the officer’s mess was a gauntlet. The collar drew looks, but it was the insulated bag in Rysia’s hand that sparked whispers. Nova kept her eyes forward, her spine rigid, trying to channel the woman who’d piloted a Razorfalcon to three confirmed kills in the Seraphim Debris Field. That woman felt like a ghost.
The mess hall was cavernous, loud with the clatter of trays and the low rumble of a hundred conversations. The air was thick with the smell of fried synth-protein and stale coffee. Maps of contested sectors glowed on the walls, a stark reminder of the war waiting beyond the station’s hull.
Commander Petrova sat at a central table with a few senior Lieutenants, including Jax. Her steely gaze tracked Nova and Rysia’s entrance. A silent command.
Rysia guided them to an empty table, not in a corner, but squarely in the middle of the room. “Sit.”
Nova sat, the plastisteel chair cold through her uniform. Rysia placed the insulated bag on the table and unzipped it. The sounds were absurdly loud in Nova’s ears.
First, Rysia pulled out a large, waterproof bib. It wasn’t plain. It was a soft, wipeable plastic in a pale blue, with a faint, patterned border of smiling gears and tiny wrenches—militarized infantilization. A murmur rippled through the nearby tables.
“No,” Nova said, the word out before she could stop it, low and vehement.
“Yes.” Rysia’s voice left no room. She shook the bib open with a snap. “Your fine motor control is the first thing to degrade under pre-op anxiety. And your system is still acclimating to the new nutrient mix. Spills are likely.”
Nova’s hands gripped the edge of the table. She saw Jax smirk from across the room. She saw Petrova watching, expressionless, taking a sip of coffee. This was the demonstration.
“Lift your chin,” Rysia instructed.
Nova didn’t move. A last, futile stand.
Rysia didn’t repeat herself. She simply reached down, her hands strong and implacable, and unbuckled something from beneath the table. It was a secondary seat, a highchair attachment, stored there for station children during family visits. With a series of efficient clicks, she secured it to Nova’s chair.
The entire section of the mess hall had gone quiet. Cutlery hung in mid-air.
Rysia looked at Nova. “You can put the bib on yourself, or I will buckle you in and put it on for you. Your choice influences the rest of your day. Decide.”
The option was poison. Doing it herself was complicity. Letting Rysia do it was absolute surrender. Under the weight of a hundred staring eyes, complicity felt fractionally less annihilating.
Her fingers trembled as she took the bib. The plastic was cool, shameful. She ducked her head and looped the neck strap over her collar, fumbling with the clasp behind her neck. It wouldn’t catch. Her breaths were coming short, whistling slightly. The numbers on her biometrics would be spiking. She imagined the collar gauges ticking upward.
Rysia’s hands came around, gently pushing hers aside. She fastened the clasp with a soft click. The bib settled over Nova’s chest and lap, a giant, telling flag.
Next came the sippy cup. Rysia pulled it from the bag. It was a sturdy, no-spill model, also pale blue. “Electrolyte blend. Drink half before you start on the solids.”
Nova took it. The spout was silicone, like the gag. She put it to her lips and sucked. The liquid was tart, cold. The action of sucking, here, in public, behind a bib, burned her from the inside out. Tears of pure, rageful humiliation pricked at her eyes. She blinked them back furiously, focusing on a streak of carbon scoring on the far wall.
Rysia then produced a segmented plastic plate and a spoon with a thick, easy-grip handle. The food was a simple scramble of eggs and nutrient-fortified mash. It smelled fine. It looked like fuel. It tasted like ashes.
Nova picked up the spoon. Her hand shook. A glob of yellow mash missed her mouth and landed with a soft plop on the bib, right over a smiling wrench. A snort of laughter came from Jax’s table.
Something in Nova fractured.
She slammed the spoon down. It clattered on the plate. “I’m done.” She went to stand, to rip the bib off.
Rysia’s hand planted firmly on her shoulder, pushing her back down into the seat. Not a harsh blow, but an irresistible force, like a hydraulic press.
“You are not done.” Rysia’s voice was calm, but it carried. “You will eat seventy-five percent of that plate. Or I will feed you. And then you will sit here, in this chair, for the duration of the mess hall’s breakfast service. Do you understand?”
Nova looked up at her. The look in Rysia’s eyes wasn’t anger. It was certainty. A wall. This would happen. The only variable was how much of herself Nova had to sacrifice to get through it.
The silent standoff stretched. The mess hall was utterly silent now, every eye glued to the spectacle. The Coalition’s most feral Mechwarrior, bibbed, collared, and trapped in a highchair.
Nova’s defiance bled out, leaving a cold, hollow ache. She picked up the spoon again. Her movements were stiff, robotic. She ate. Each mouthful was a defeat. She focused on the mechanics: chew, swallow, repeat. She did not look up. She did not see Petrova’s slight, satisfied nod. She did not see the varied reactions of her peers—some pitying, some disgusted, some calculating.
She just ate, the bib a crumb-filled testament to her submission.
When the food was mostly gone, Rysia finally moved. She uncoupled the highchair attachment with those same efficient clicks and stowed it away. She took the bib, wiped Nova’s mouth with it in a brisk, impersonal motion, then folded it away. She recapped the sippy cup and placed it back in the bag.
“Good,” Rysia said, the word devoid of warmth, a simple acknowledgement of completed task. “Now we proceed to the simulator bay. The op briefing is in fifteen.”
Nova stood. Her legs held. She walked out of the mess hall beside Rysia, feeling the stares like physical heat on her skin. The clatter of cutlery and conversation resumed behind them, louder now, charged with gossip.
In the sterile, empty corridor outside, Nova stopped. She leaned against the cold wall, her forehead pressing into the polished metal.
“Breathe,” Rysia said, standing beside her, not touching her. “It’s done.”
“Why?” Nova asked, her voice a raw scrape. “Why did she need that… theater?”
“Because fear is a tool,” Rysia said, her voice low. “She needs the others to see you as managed. As a controlled weapon, not a loose cannon. The bib and the chair are just… visual aids. It solidifies the chain of command in their minds. It’s not about you. It’s about their perception of control.”
“It felt like it was about me,” Nova whispered.
Rysia was silent for a moment. “I know.” Then, “The simulator now. Your Razorfalcon is waiting. That part is still yours. Remember that.”
But as they walked towards the bay, the ghost of the highchair’s buckle clicked in time with Nova’s steps, and the collar around her throat felt less like an anchor and more like the only thing holding the shattered pieces of her pride together.
The simulator bay was a cathedral of war-games, silent and cold. Banks of dormant pods lined the walls like upright coffins. Rysia’s boots echoed on the grated floor, the sound a stark contrast to the muffled humiliation of the mess hall.
She stopped at Pod Seven, Nova’s assigned rig. “Key it up.”
Nova pressed her palm to the bio-lock. The pod door hissed open, revealing the cramped cockpit within. The familiar smell hit her: stale recirculated air, hot electronics, and the faint, metallic scent of the neural interface gel. It was the smell of home.
Her hands stopped trembling.
Stepping into the pod was crossing a threshold into a different self. Here, the collar wasn’t a mark of control. It was just another piece of gear, its leads plugging into the simulator’s dummy port. The padded seat embraced her, conforming to the shape she wore when she was whole.
Rysia leaned in the doorway, blocking the light from the bay. “Listen. The sim will run the new protocols. The damper, the collar, the voice-link. It’s all active. Your first surge will trigger the hypnotics. Don’t fight it.”
“What’s the point if I’m just… passive?” Nova’s fingers danced over the startup sequence, initiating systems without looking.
“The point is to keep you from burning your brain out before the real fight. To make you a lasting weapon, not a single-shot grenade.” Rysia’s voice softened, almost imperceptibly. “The Razorfalcon is yours. Let the system handle the noise. You just fly.”
She handed Nova the EI-dampening pacifier gag. The biometric sensors along its strap glowed a soft, waiting blue.
Nova stared at it. She took it. The silicone was cool. She fitted it between her teeth, the familiar pressure a bizarre comfort. She secured the strap behind her head herself. The act felt less like surrender here, in the dark.
“Comms check.” Rysia’s voice crackled in her ear, both through the pod’s speakers and directly via the neural link, a warm, doubled presence.
“Loud and clear,” Nova mumbled around the gag, the words slightly distorted.
“Good girl. Initiate sequence. I’ll be on the controller dais.”
The pod door sealed with a final, hollow thud. Total darkness. Then, screens flickered to life in a panoramic cascade. The simulation resolved into the jagged, purple-hued canyons of the Vertigo Wastes, a common training ground. Her Razorfalcon’s diagnostics scrolled green on her left. Her own vitals, including the damper’s readout and the collar’s stress-level gauge, glowed ominously on her right.
She settled her hands on the controls. The phantom weight of eighty tons settled into her muscles through the haptic feedback suit. She breathed out. Here, she was Nova of the Razorfalcon. Here, she was in control.
A proximity alarm screamed.
Two blips surged over the canyon ridge—training drones, configured as light enemy scouts. Adrenaline, sharp and clean, fired her blood. Her grip tightened. She stomped on a pedal, her mech spinning with a grace that belied its mass, bringing its medium lasers to bear.
The first surge of the EI interface hit. It wasn’t pain. It was a screaming tinnitus of data, a flood of positional information, thermal readings, and trajectory calculations that bypassed her eyes and seared directly into her cortex. It was brilliance and madness in equal measure.
Her stress gauge spiked from yellow into brilliant, pulsing red.
A cold, chemical wave flooded her system from the collar. The world didn’t go dark. It went quiet. The screaming data became a distant whisper. Her aggressive turn faltered, her muscles turning to warm liquid.
“Easy.” Rysia’s voice was the only clear thing in the void, a anchor line. “You’re surging. Let it pass. Hold position.”
Nova tried to curse. The gag muffled it into a groan. Her ‘mech stood still, vulnerable, as the drone targets circled.
The hypnotic wave receded, leaving her fuzzy-headed but her own. The red light on her collar blinked a warning. One more spike would flood her again.
“They’re flanking you, Nova. Right canyon wall. Breathe. Then move.”
The command was permission. Nova breathed in, the scent of the gag now mixed with her own fear-sweat. She moved. Not with her earlier reckless speed, but with a calculated, deliberate pivot. She saw the drone, painted it with her targeting reticle, and fired.
One laser scored a glancing hit. The other missed entirely, chewing rock.
“You’re hesitant. You’re fighting the damper. Don’t. Flow with it.” Rysia’s commentary was calm, a co-pilot in her head.
Another drone streaked in. Her instinct was to alpha strike, to overwhelm it with everything she had. That instinct was pure, unfiltered EI-aggression. It would spike her collar again. She clamped down on it, physically shuddering in the harness.
She took the hit on her left arm armor, the sim pod shuddering around her. The impact was a jarring slam against her ribs.
“Return fire. Controlled bursts. Now.”
Nova fired a single laser. It connected. The drone’s icon winked out on her screen. A low, steady thrill built in her chest. It was a clumsy kill. But it was her kill, managed through the storm.
The second drone came straight on. She saw its weapon charge. Her heart hammered. The gauge flickered toward red. She let Rysia’s voice in first.
“Left thirty degrees. Present your angled armor. Do it.”
She did it. The simulated particle beam scored a glowing line across her ‘mech’s shoulder instead of piercing the cockpit. She returned fire, a focused double-tap. The drone evaporated into pixels.
Silence in the canyon. Her breath was loud in the sealed pod. Her vitals settled into a high, but stable, yellow. The collar’s light held a steady, ominous amber.
“Simulation complete. Baseline established.” The automated voice was tinny.
The canopy hissed open. Light flooded in, harsh and real. Nova pulled the gag from her mouth, sucking in deep lungfuls of the bay’s cold air. Her body felt wrung out, used.
Rysia was there, offering a water bulb with a sippy straw. A different kind of test. Nova took it without comment, drinking deeply.
“You see?” Rysia said, her voice low. “You’re still in there. The machine just… turns the volume down.”
Nova handed back the bulb, her eyes on the still-glowing screens. For the first time since the med lab, she didn’t feel just broken. She felt conflicted. The kill had been messy, slow, inelegant. But she’d survived the surge without shattering. The shame of the highchair and the weird, quiet triumph of the sim warred inside her, a new and confusing battlefield.
Rysia placed a hand on her shoulder. “Again in one hour. The brain needs to learn the new pathways.”
Nova just nodded, her gaze fixed on the jagged, pixelated canyon slowly fading to black on the screens. The path forward was there, in that electronic wasteland. It was just narrower than she’d ever imagined, with walls made of her own limitations.
It was just narrower than she'd ever imagined, with walls made of her own limitations. The amber light on the collar blinked a slow, patient rhythm against her throat.
Commander Petrova observed from the control dais, her eyes narrowed at the biometric feed scrolling across a secondary screen. The stress spikes were lower, yes. But the response lag was unacceptable. The girl was still fighting the chemical imperative, still costing them milliseconds in a live simulation.
"That won't fly in the Trenches," Petrova said, her voice cutting through the low hum of the bay. She jerked her chin at Rysia. "A word."
Rysia gave Nova’s shoulder a final, faint squeeze before following the Commander into a sound-baffled alcove lined with wire conduits. The door hissed shut. Nova watched them through the pod's canopy, the water bulb held forgotten in her hand. Their body language was all business, Petrova gesturing sharply at a datapad.
"Her synaptic resistance is still too high," Petrova stated, tapping the screen. "She's adapting to the current dosage. Using it as a baseline, not a ceiling. She's compartmentalizing the hypnotic effect the way she compartmentalizes pain."
"She's functioning within parameters," Rysia countered, her tone even.
"Barely. I need her submerged. I need that EI-feral edge gone until the very second we unleash her. The current chemical profile leaves her too much... interior space." Petrova’s gaze was flint. "I'm authorizing a seventy percent increase in the neuro-inhibitor's payload. Effective immediately. Base use only."
Rysia went very still. "Seventy? Commander, that dosage is—"
"Is what the situation demands," Petrova finished. "We are not running therapy, Lieutenant. We are running proactive maximum neurological control. I need her mind soft, pliable, and utterly receptive to a single external point of guidance. Yours. The training simulation today proved its efficacy. We're doubling down."
"She will be practically catatonic without constant vocal anchoring."
"That's the point. She's a weapon system. You are the failsafe, the sight, and the trigger. On base, her waking world should be your voice. Nothing else. Am I understood?"
Rysia's jaw tightened. She looked past Petrova’s shoulder to where Nova sat, slowly wiping neural interface gel from her temples. "Understood."
"Administer the new regimen after her post-sim med-scan. Frame it as protocol. Iteration. Whatever keeps her compliant."
Back in the bay, Nova was out of the pod, leaning against its warm hull. "Trouble?"
"Just a debrief," Rysia said, smoothing her expression into its usual calm mask. "Med-scan first. Then another sim session."
The med-bay was colder than she remembered. The padded table felt like a slab. Rysia’s movements were precise, almost too quick, as she attached the sensor leads to Nova’s temples, her wrists, the base of her spine. The machines whirred, painting her insides in lurid color on overhead monitors.
"This is just a new calibration scan," Rysia murmured, her fingers brushing the lock on the neural inhibitor collar. There was a soft, definitive click. "For the next phase."
A port opened on the collar's side, revealing a tiny injector port. Rysia connected a slim, auto-injector cartridge from a sealed med-kit. The cartridge was marked with a stark, black 'Ω'.
Nova’s skin prickled. "That's new."
"It is." Rysia didn't meet her eyes, focusing on the connection. "The simulation data was excellent. Better than Command hoped. You demonstrated significant adaptive capacity within the controlled parameters."
"So?" The 'so' hung in the sterile air, charged with dread.
"So the good news is they're accelerating the therapy. Fuller integration. Faster results." The lie tasted acidic, but Rysia sold it with a placid, professional smile. "The next phase uses a more potent mixture. It will help quiet the neural static even further, give you more... peace. You'll be more relaxed on base. More focused."
"More relaxed," Nova echoed flatly. The highchair, the bib, the sippy cup flashed in her mind. Relaxed meant pliable. Relaxed meant no more messy resistance in the mess hall.
"The trade-off is a slight dampening of environmental stimuli. A mild dissociation. It's temporary, and entirely confined to your off-duty hours on station." Rysia’s thumb hovered over the injector’s actuator. "Your voice will be the anchor. My commands will cut through the fog. Everything else will just... matter less. It will make the transition to your operational clarity even sharper."
Nova understood then. The afternoon's simulation had been a test. She hadn't just passed. She’d validated their worst, or best, ideas. They were turning the key again.
Nova looked. Rysia’s gaze was steady, a fixed point in the white room.
“My voice. Only my voice. It will be clearer than anything. Nod if you understand.”
After a long moment, Nova gave a single, stiff nod. It felt like signing a contract in blood.
Rysia pressed the actuator.