He advanced until he could see the entirety of the track, but remained in the shadows of the entry. As she crossed what would normally be the finish line, she picked up the pace to a near sprint: the last lap, probably.
She heals quickly. Tans nicely too; gold-bronze, despite the fair skin and light brown hair. Feet and hands so small that you could almost call them dainty. Torso proportionally long and flowing: shapely but lean.
But her shoulders and her pelvis were square and strong, her legs well-muscled, and she moved with a slight, forward-leaning tension: she was a spring coiled in readiness. It would be easy to miss those hints of an incongruous, even unexpected strength. Her dossier indicated that more than one adversary had underestimated her—either on a battlefield or in a briefing room—and she had been quick to capitalize on those mistakes. Good: that was part of what made her perfect for this assignment.
If only she embraced it. That, so far, had been the sticking point.
As Opal entered the last turn, her sandy bangs were wet at the fringes, her chin tucked down. Still pumping her arms, she leaned into the turn until she emerged onto the straight again, huffing through the last few meters and over her self-imposed finish line. Downing emerged from the archway—
But she had already turned around. “Do you approve of my training, Mr. Downing?”
He had watched her eyes as she ran; she had never looked over in his direction. Impressive peripheral vision. “Captain, I’m sorry if I surprised you—”
“You didn’t.” She was walking toward a towel hung over the spectator railing. “I’ve come to expect your scrutiny. Tell me: do you enjoy watching women exercise?”
“Captain—”
Rubbing her hair briskly, she laughed through the towel. “You fluster pretty easily. Must make it easy for your wife to keep you in line.”
He didn’t like her insolence; he liked the stinging accuracy of her insight even less. “I assume you’re finished with today’s PT.”
“Yep. About twenty minutes ago. Just putting in a little extra work: I need it. And I’ve got nothing better to do, since you won’t give me any reading materials.”
“That changes today.”
“So you’ve said.”
“It’s true.”
“That’ll be a first.”
Downing felt a thin line of heat along his brow. “I have not told you one lie about this assignment. Not one.”
“Okay. You haven’t lied about this assignment. But you’ve evaded. Declined to comment. Makes me feel real welcome here in the fabulous future.”
“I’m sorry its been such a—a disappointing beginning for you, Captain.”
“Yeah, I’m sure your heart is just bleeding for me.” She stopped adjusting her shoes, turned quickly. “I apologize: that was uncalled for.”
“No need for regrets, Captain. May I call you Opal?”
She thought for a second, looking off into the green scrub hills to the north. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet. Maybe never. We’ll have to see.”
“About what?”
She looked directly at him. “About whether you turn out to be someone I can trust. Downing, I might one day come to tolerate, even like you, but I’ll never like what you do. Oh, I know it’s necessary: I’m no idiot. There’s no way to get rid of the need for covert agencies and operatives: I’ve seen enough bad shit to know that well enough. And you might even be one of the good guys, the way you say you are. But you lie for a living. And now you want—you’re ordering—me to do the same.”
“I’m sorry you see it that way. You may find that it’s something you’d want to do anyway.”
“Yes, but I’m not free to find that out for myself.”
“True. You were also not free to choose which of your combat assignments you felt were justified and which weren’t.”
“Look: I volunteered to serve my country as a combat soldier, not a courtesan.”
“But it seemed as though you liked Caine—”
“So you tell me, but now I can’t even remember him. That whole first week is pretty much gone.”
“I’m not surprised. Emergency wake-ups are very hard on the nervous system, on brain chemistries. You can lose a lot—”
“Or it can be taken from me, as well.”
Oh, bloody hell. “I beg your pardon?”
Her eyes were an unblinking challenge. “I mean, if the wake-up memories are fragile, it must be particularly easy to erase them—if you wanted to. Maybe with drugs, or maybe that’s why I seem to recall shock therapy—”