Survival Of The Fittest

The lapping of water against the hull of the ship was subtle, muffled as if by a long distance. It was easy enough to forget that they were at sea, especially when there were so very many other things going on that were harder to push out of mind.

Who she was waiting in this meeting room for, for one.

((Juliette Sargent continued from You'll Never Know Me, None Of You Will Ever See My Face]))

There were no windows. One closed door stood behind Juliette, and the other ahead of her. Also behind her stood two men, armed and decked out in combat gear. The taller of the pair had a long scar across his face, spanning the bridge of his nose. The shorter had unruly blonde hair and wore a perpetually smug expression.

Aside from them, and actually within her vision, there was a man who must have been pushing forty by now, but didn't look a day out of a Master's program. His square glasses, bulky hoodie, and messy ponytail did nothing to dispel the impression. He was at a right angle to Juliette, on her left, and it was he who had set the small coffee table. There were three saucers, each with a steaming teacup on it, and a platter of tastefully-arrayed crackers and cheeses. The man's chair was of the folding variety, while Juliette's and the one opposite her were large, plush armchairs.

It was just like she'd read, years ago. She knew, too, that the man in her field of vision wasn't some nameless flunky, whatever guise he chose to wear in this moment. He was, perhaps, more dangerous and important even than the final piece of the puzzle, the man whose absence weighed heavy on the atmosphere. If the whispers were to believed, she was already in the presence of the mastermind of this whole operation.

"Have some tea," the scruffy man said with a smile and a little welcoming gesture of his hand. "It's citrus. You can get a start on working off your vitamin deficiencies."

"Oh," Juliette said, "thanks."

She picked up the cup and felt its warmth seep into her hands, flow through her entire body. It was just like she'd always had at home, and when she took a sip that was pure home too. She didn't know what he was talking about with citrus. Maybe just the faintest hint was there, but what she really tasted was white tea with peach. Her favorite.

"Help yourself," he said again, nodding to the tray.

"Thanks."

The crackers and cheese were less home, more social function at the public library, but that was just as impossibly familiar. What had happened—What had happened?—was already no more than an impression of a distant memory, fading fast. Juliette chewed a piece of white cheddar and was taken aback by how strange it was to have solid, varied food again. If she'd known, would she have been to kill for it?

"We're just running a hair behind schedule," the man said. "He'll be here soon."

Juliette let her gaze drift around the room. It was oddly nondescript, aside from a painting hanging on the wall, an abstract series of shapes and colors. She hadn't noticed it before. An assault rifle was propped up under it.

She looked back just in time for the door to swing open and the man they were all waiting for to enter.

He was younger than the others, and not just faux-young like the man in the folding chair, but he carried himself with a clean, military precision that conveyed more maturity than anyone else in the room. His smile was easy and false, but only someone else who habitually wore the same kind would ever have noticed. He held his hand out to Juliette and she took it, shook. His skin was warm and smooth.

"Enchanté," he said, releasing her and sinking into his armchair. "Welcome. It's good to finally meet you in person."

His brow furrowed for a second as he considered something.

"Well, one-on-one. That whole thing at the start, that doesn't really count. Neither do our friends here, isn't that right, Jim?"

The man with the ponytail and the glasses took a long, needlessly slurping sip from his cup of tea, and nodded.

"It's," Juliette said, and then she found her mouth dry and had to cover with a quick sip of tea, "it's a pleasure. To be here and, uh, to meet you."

"No, no, the pleasure is all mine," Danya said. "Well, mostly mine. I hope you can appreciate the little things. Take a deep breath. Really feel it. Let it sink in."

Juliette did as instructed. The cold, damp, slightly swampy air flowed over her lips and filled her lungs, made her chest swell up and her head clear, and it was the most amazing thing she'd ever felt in her life. And she could tell from a glance that her host knew it, too.

"Wow," she said. Her smile was real. She almost replaced it with the practiced one anyways, just out of habit.

"So," Danya said, "I guess the question is, what now?"

As he spoke, he leaned forward, letting his right leg cross over his left and entwining his fingers around his knee. He seemed to be paying rapt attention to her, and Juliette felt her cheeks warming just a touch.

"I, I'm not quite sure what you mean," she said. A pause, and then: "Isn't it your decision?"

"Well, yes," Danya admitted, with a glance towards the man he'd called Jim. "More or less, anyways. But you're the guest of honor. You get, at the least, a strong advisory preference in the proceedings."

"I see." Was he being genuine? Did it matter? "What do you mean, then?"

Danya chuckled. It was a pleasant, good-natured sound, but Juliette couldn't shake the sudden feeling that she'd tried his patience, and this was less an expression of mirth and more the rattle of a snake.

"I mean," he clarified, speaking a little slowly, "what do you want to happen? Shall we whisk you back to Tennessee? Deposit you on the steps of your school? Or might you prefer something a little more dramatic?"

His grin was now wide.

"Did you get to do the White House tour? Would you like to? We can arrange to drop you right on the lawn, if you'd like."

"Oh," Juliette said, "oh."

And then, a moment later, she recovered.

"You're forgetting something," she said, "aren't you?"

"Am I?"

The rattle sounded again, and Juliette swallowed, her throat tight and encircled by ice. This was it. This was it and he knew it, and he was challenging her, and the choice was hers and hers alone.

For an instant, only an instant, she considered giving up.

"You are." She nodded confidently, and then she took up her teacup again and took a long, leisurely sip. The corners of her lips lifted as she watched him over the rim, watched him as she made him wait. The warmth seemed to flow back into his features.

"You forgot to ask if I want to stay here."

"Ah," Danya said, with a shrug and a half-nod. "Got me there. Well, you would've, except I figured, you know, why spoil such a nice moment?"

He rolled his shoulders and leaned his head side to side, stretching his neck.

"How much have the ones before liked being asked if they want to stay?" he asked, glancing at Jim, who Juliette had somehow managed to forget and who was now playing around with a combat knife, stabbing little squares of cheese from off his wax paper Dixie plate.

"Not a lot," he deadpanned, without looking at them.

"Precisely," Danya said. "Mostly, it's a thing to throw in someone's face when they've gotten under our skin. And you, you've been just delightful. So why twist the knife?"

There was a twinkle in his eye, and he leaned further forward still, bent almost double, pulling himself by the grasp on his knee. Suddenly, Juliette realized what was unusual about him: his mannerisms were a dead ringer for one of her classmates who'd stayed home, a boy from track who had seemed to take just a little too much interest in Kylie.

"Unless..."

"Oh," Juliette said, "oh, right.

"Yes.

"Yes, uh, I... I would like to stay."

"Well," Danya exclaimed, springing to his feet, "there we go. There we have it, don't we, Jim?"

"Yep," Jim said around a mouthful of cheese.

"There we have it," Danya said again, a bundle of frenetic energy as he started to pace the room. "And I think that will work very well, won't it. Only..."

"Only?" Juliette had stood, now, too, but she was still holding her teacup. Her heart hammered so hard she could feel it, sweat trickling down her spine.

"Only," Danya said, "there is one little thing left: we have to make sure you'll be a good fit." He turned and paced towards the door he'd entered through, then paused at the threshold with his hand on the knob. Glancing back over his shoulder, he beckoned Juliette by making a circle with his chin.

"Come on," he said, "I'll show you around the place and you can decide for yourself."

---

When finally the door opened into the monitor room, enough time had passed for Juliette to be lulled into a false sense of complacency. Most of what they'd passed had been incredibly average offices and lounges, the sort of thing Juliette had mentally populated the larger buildings in downtown Chattanooga with, nothing about them to indicate they were situated inside a ship, or staffed by the most wanted fugitives in the world. There was even a cafeteria, which just about screamed high school.

But the monitor room wasn't like that. It was exactly what she'd expected. A sprawling chamber, it was filled with computers and desks, forming a perimeter around the room with a central island containing yet more of the same. Everywhere there were technicians, identifiable not by their garb (there was clearly no uniform, though the security detail seemed to favor tight-fitting military gear as a rule) but by their anxious energy. Each and every screen in the room was a cascading wall of images and numbers and icons. Most of them showed tiled views from the many cameras recording the progress of the game, but others were predominantly occupied by text documents that Juliette couldn't make out from afar, and still others were running esoteric programs she couldn't begin to identify. In one far-off corner, there was one station blocked from view entirely by the four men and women huddled around it, but it was clearly the source of a single, piercing beep that cut through the general hubbub.

"Marvelous, isn't it?"

Danya stood beside her, and let his hand rest gently on her shoulder. It carried an irresistible weight, but it was not entirely uncomfortable.

"It's something," Juliette said, the awe in her voice nullifying the ambivalence of the words she chose.

"It's the heart of the operation," Danya said. "This is where all the decisions are made. The people here control life and death."

Juliette looked again, harder, taking in the fluorescent lighting, the cheap office carpet, the innumerable cans of energy drinks and mugs of tea scattered all about, the heaping recycling bins full of printouts.

"I love it," she said.

"Let's get a closer look."

Danya guided her forward, down a staircase and to the sunken floor of the room, and as soon as Juliette's feet touched the main surface it was as if a spell had been broken and all the assembled technicians realized en masse that there was a newcomer in their midst. They turned to her, one at a time and then in greater numbers, and after a few seconds the entire room was looking at her, except for the four in the corner whose attention was impossibly fixed on whatever was on their monitor, which issued another identical sound.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Danya said, the pitch perfect imitation of a middle manager at a big box retail store. "This is Juliette. She's here today because she's thinking of making this her career, and I thought it might be nice for her to see how things are really done."

He gave her a little push, and Juliette managed not to stumble as she took a step forward, aware of all the eyes trained upon her.

"Hi," she said. Her throat was tight again, that icy circle constricting her breathing, and she wasn't entirely sure why. This was what she was good at. Public speaking was one of her best skills, something she'd poured attention and effort into and hoped, a lifetime ago, to make the core of her future. Yet now, she was almost at a loss for words. She took a few slow breaths, forced herself to remember her tricks. Don't panic. Pause for effect instead of using filler words. Talk a little more slowly.

"It's nice to meet you all." She beamed at them and gave a demure wave. "I've admired your work for a long time, and it still seems impossible that I'm actually here."

The faces she looked over were not unfriendly. Unlike the guards, these weren't dour, scarred individuals who radiated danger. They looked like everyday people, people who could just as easily be working at a supermarket or an information desk. Their visages were human, welcoming. They could've been Juliette's classmates, a decade or so down the line, if they'd made it that far.

"I know that what you do here is difficult," she continued. It was likely true in more ways than she'd intended when she spoke, she realized. "I know it's not something I have much practice with, not something that comes naturally to me. But I want to learn."

"And you will." Danya was right there beside her, all cheer and encouragement, and taking her by the elbow he guided her into the maze of consoles as the techs turned back to their work.

The first workstation they came to was much like the ones Juliette had seen even from above, its screen occupied by a chessboard of camera feeds. The technician in front of it was a tall, lean man with wire-rimmed glasses, wearing slacks and a button-down; if it wasn't for the faint traces of muscle definition visible at the collar of his shirt, Juliette would have deemed him the kind of nerd they didn't make anymore.

"Most of what happens is like this," Danya explained, as the tech shoved off from the wall, propelling his rolling chair backwards with enough nervous energy that he rolled a little too quickly and far. It won a smile from Danya as the man sheepishly pulled himself forwards again.

"Right," said the tech, "right. Um, well, okay. You see, the island is full of cameras, to make sure we catch everything going on. There are the big ones, heh, those are the most obvious, but part of that's so that people pay attention to them."

As he spoke, Juliette's eyes traced back and forth from his face to his console. The sixteen different squares were such a chaotic mess of movement and color she couldn't begin to track what was happening on them, some showing what seemed to be different angles of the same event, others displaying entirely unrelated happenings, a situation not helped by the distracting noise from the corner recurring again.

"They also get the best picture," the man said, "but there are, you know, hidden cameras too. Can't have anyone killing themselves to make a blind spot." He suddenly became really interested in the wheels of his chair and mumbled a quiet, "Again."

Danya was laughing openly by this point.

"Anyways," the man said, rallying and leaning forward, "What we've got is really neat. We can, you see, like so..."

He reached out and quickly dragged his fingers across the screen, which Juliette only now realized was touch-sensitive, reordering the squares so that after a few seconds all those showing the same scene were collected in the upper left corner.

"And so."

A pinching motion, and the four squares in that corner expanded to fill the screen, each now four times its prior size, with a corresponding jump in detail. A familiar blonde girl leveled a gun at another girl with frizzy black hair. The views were close and distant, one high resolution, the other three less.

"And so."

And with a final tap, the best picture, a side-view, filled the whole screen. A feed of data popped up along the righthand side, displaying rows and rows of text and numbers, and Juliette squinted, unsure if it pertained to the camera, the girls on the screen, or both.

"Oh. Oh, don't worry about that." The man hid it with a swipe. "That's, heh, that's stuff that you shouldn't see until, you know... you're committed."

"Right." Danya cut in, again taking Juliette by the shoulder. "Thank you, Dennis."

"My pleasure, boss."

He tapped the screen again, but what popped up was a game of solitaire, and as they walked away Juliette heard frantic scrambling at the console.

The next stop was not one of the myriad identical consoles, but a heftier desktop surrounded by a veritable wall of open cans. The thin woman slouching in a chair in front of it had long, greasy hair, narrow glasses, and yet another computer in her lap—a netbook that had an old-style text-only interface, lines of code or information or something. Juliette wasn't technologically literate enough to understand it.

"Another part of our work here," Danya explained, "is managing threats. These can be external—the CIA, Interpol, all kinds of spy networks you've probably never heard of—or internal."

"Oh yeah," the woman said. She reached over to one can among the pile, seemingly identical to all the others, but as she picked it up and took a swig it was clear she'd selected the one that was still partially full.

"Right," Juliette said, "of course."

Danger, right. It had occurred to her. How could it not have? But there was a difference between having an abstract understanding that what she was signing up for would make her the enemy of almost every person on earth, and confronting the reality that such things required careful, constant management, under pain of death or perpetual imprisonment and humiliation for failure.

"The question," the woman said, seemingly half-interested at best, "is: do you know what that means for you?"

"It means I have to keep my guard up," Juliette said. "You never know who might be planning something, even among our ranks."

"Nope. Wrong. Well, partial credit." She shrugged, squinting at the screen in her lap. Danya gave Juliette a conciliatory little squeeze of the shoulder.

"What it means," the woman continued, talking straight over the beep from the side, "is that you are a threat. Sure, right now you think it's all hunky dory. Probably. Maybe you're even now plotting. Maybe you're legit, but in a few months, a year, when the next batch of sorry suckers are out there losing their heads, maybe you find yourself doubting or changing your mind. Maybe you think you can help them and take your least favorite coworkers down a peg all at once."

She shook her head and scoffed.

"You'd be wrong," she continued, then took another drink. "You don't get to change your mind in a week or a month or three years. You get to change your mind at exactly one point, and that's right now. You keep going, you don't walk away? You're in it for life."

For life. It was a strange thought. For all Juliette had laid out plans for her life, she had never quite had a concrete idea of the weight and scope of life itself. True comprehension didn't materialize all of a sudden now. Maybe it was just too big and broad for her to ever fully get. She thought, perhaps, she understood the warning, but maybe she flattered herself.

"It's a big choice," Danya said. "And we won't be hurt if you decide it isn't right after all. You're helping us make our point no matter what you do."

Juliette was proud that she didn't shiver.

"I'm sure," she said.

"Well then, good for you," the woman replied, "you sound like I did. Aside from that, internal security is mostly making sure the troublemakers don't get to make actual trouble."

She took another sip and shook the can afterwards as if to judge its remaining contents before setting it back amidst its siblings.

"You don't want to mess with the imbeciles unless you really have to," she continued. "If someone isn't a threat, why bother? But of course, the clever ones know that and they want to take advantage, so you have to be on guard and not get tricked into letting someone get away with something. It's a game, really. Not one you'll play a lot, but you have to be aware."

"Right," Juliette said, and it was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? The power over others, to control their fates, to decide how far was too far, and how much could be permitted?

"Cool, cool, that's the basics." The woman waved her hand is dismissal. "I've got to make sure nothing goes wrong. Have fun with whatever you're doing."

"We will," Danya said, as he walked Juliette back towards the door, accompanied yet again by the tone from the distant console.

It took a few seconds before it dawned on Juliette that they were leaving.

"Wait," she said, "wait."

"Hm?" Danya paused, but he released her. "I think we've seen everything we need to."

"Not quite," Juliette said, staring at the corner. "Not yet."

"Ah." She met Danya's gaze as he uttered the syllable, but he merely shrugged. "Suit yourself."

And so, Juliette turned and made her way back across the floor to the corner, feeling the eyes of the room upon her once more as she did. The four figures blocking the final terminal parted before her, without turning or acknowledging her. The computer they were clustered around was old, obsolete. It was hard for Juliette to make out what she was looking at, not because it was unclear, but because she didn't quite grasp the meaning. There was a wire-frame map, its shape familiar, with some areas marked off in red, and on it a few dozen dots faintly pulsed. Some moved, while others remained stationary.

Only one dot was in a red area. It was moving when first Juliette glanced, but then it stopped, at the very edge of the map. The console let out an ear-piercing beep.

"What is this?" she said.

"Ah." Danya was behind her once more, without seeming to have crossed the space between there and where he'd been a moment before. Juliette had probably just not been paying attention. "This is a map of our operation. It tells us what's going on, where everyone is. Good information, if a bit less... personal than the cameras."

"So why is it beeping?" Juliette asked. She squinted. The dot was labeled with a letter and some numbers, but she couldn't make them out. In front of the monitor, she now realized, was a keyboard, but appended to it where the number pad would be was instead a single large, round black button.

"We have rules," Danya explained. "You know them. You remember them. There are places you can go, and places you can't. And right now, someone's in one of the places you're not supposed to go."

Juliette pressed her lips together, thin and tight.

"Why?"

"I can't say." She didn't have to look at Danya to know he was shrugging.

"Who is she?"

"A promising girl." Once again, Danya rested his hand on Juliette's shoulder, but this time there was no crushing weight. It was just comfort, a sort she hadn't felt in a long time.

"She started out with a bang," Danya continued. "Tapered off a little, but we were pretty sure she was just laying low. Waiting it out, playing it smart. Tactical. But something happened, something went wrong, and it shook her. And now she's here."

"So..." Juliette blinked. Her throat was cold and hurting, and it felt like she was going to cry, but she didn't let herself. "So what happens to her now?"

"That," Danya said, "is your decision."

"What?" Juliette spun and looked at him, but he had the same mild smile, and gave a big, exaggerated lift of the shoulders.

"You're the guest," he explained. "Consider it a test, or... not something so pass/fail, a personality quiz maybe. Something like that."

He smiled.

"If we give her more time, maybe she turns around. Maybe she realizes what went wrong, and comes up with a plan, and goes back in with a vengeance. Maybe we end up talking with her.

"But...

"But that wouldn't be playing by the rules. It would be tipping our hand, playing favorites. Oh, nothing's truly objective—just look at how we spin the kills. But there are hard lines, and letting this go would cross one."

Juliette's gaze snapped back and forth, from Danya's face to the monitor, again and again. The others who had surrounded it still pressed close, but still she had no eyes for their features.

"You understand," Danya said. "Now choose."

Juliette paused, and closed her eyes, and took as deep a breath as she could, the salty, humid air filling her lungs and stretching her chest.

When she opened her eyes again, she gave a sad shake of her head.

"No exceptions," she said. "The rules are the rules, and power means nothing if you' lack the will to use it."

"Good." Danya positively beamed with approval, and Juliette found herself smiling too, not her fake smile, but the widest, most sincere one she'd possibly ever worn.

"Then," he said, "you know what has to be done."

And Juliette nodded, and she turned, and she reached out and pressed the button.