Paid another visit to Bailey today.

The big man's been giving us in the bays more time off lately, and Bailey's in the home on the south side of town, so it's easy to get down there. Mantis didn't even ask me about the bag I walked out with, even though I knew her MAD sensors had to be going haywire. She understood. Sometimes she had to step out to go see Chicago's wreck in the Drone Lab, and we all conveniently chose to watch the doors when she did.

We take care of each other here at CEC Warren. I'm an engineer of some sort—I guess—and Lozano is a test driver and Mantis is a security guard. I'm a loser from Indiana with a Mark 3 and a bunch of holes in his head, Lozano is a Mark 2 with probably more time using those neurals in a Type 28 than anyone alive, and Mantis is a D8 who was built fourteen years ago in an old Chrysler plant downstate. We couldn't be more different, but we all end up doing the same sort of work. You just do what you have to.

I've always done what I had to, I guess. I didn't want to take active combat duty, but we were short on Ballista drivers. I didn't want to take a transfer to the 52nd, but they took as many casualties as they took sectors out east. I didn't want to be a data relay at—well, whatever.

The receptionist recognizes me these days. I choose to show up when it's enrichment time, and the home lets family and friends visit in that hour's-block. I'm not really either, but I knew Bailey, and the nurses say he does better after I visit so the administration doesn't mind, and I wear gloves when I walk through the door so the receptionist doesn't mind either. I smile thinly, waggle my head at the courtyard to the left, and they smile equally-thinly and gesture me to go ahead before looking back at their work. The receptionist doesn't really want to think about me, with my hands all torn up and my legs that still work and the odd light behind my eyes. That's fine. I don't really want to think about me either.

The pushbar on the door that leads to the courtyard clacks the latch back nearly silently. I stayed late to oil and tune the latch once a few months back when a nurse mentioned one of the tenants hated sharp noises. It's a nice place, really. Just a half-paved, half-landscaped square in the middle of the facility, but you can tell that the people who work here want it to be a pleasant space for the tenants. There's a couple butterflies lazily making their way between the flowers. Clouded sulphur, identifies a corner of my brain, and I ignore it.

Bailey's on the other side of the courtyard, in the corner that he likes. I take the long way around to visit Janey Ross, a tenant who's hunched over a stack of crosswords thicker than my forearm, rustle through my bag, and silently place a pack of pink Pentel highlighters within reach. Janey doesn't like eye contact, and isn't much for talking, but she agrees with me that Pentel highlighters are the best. I'm aware of her signing thank you out of the corner of my eye, and I sign back you're welcome over my shoulder as I continue my loop.

And then I'm sitting down in a wicker chair next to Bailey's chair, and the nurse is judiciously walking away, and my bag is on the wrought-iron table between us.

I like Bailey. I like visiting Bailey. I like this place. But all I can think about is how I can feel the paint on the wicker and how it's breaking down in the light of the sun and it feels wrong against my hands and there's a dust on everything that doesn't feel like something that I like and I want to go wash my hands RIGHT NOW and I HATE IT—

but Bailey looks over and sees me, and I see the light behind his eyes that's in my eyes as well. The latest nurse has been trying to get him to work on a jigsaw puzzle, it seems. Big chunky woodcut pieces with handles on each, that would end up making [a corner of my brain fills in the blanks before I can look away] a too-green field with too-white sheep and a too-happy shepherd. Good for a pair of hands that fight to track anything anymore, but it feels wrong like the UV-decaying paint under my hands that I'm choosing not to think about right now. It feels demeaning.

It's a puzzle for children. We said Bailey was "just a kid" when his Ballista shorted out under him ["shorted out" is inaccurate, TM.65554 "General Procedures of Neural Linkage, M1471 Ballista, Rev.2011," page 335, paragraph 2, line 6 notes that "full neural override by implants of Mark 3 and older confer effectively-zero-latency interface between operator, vehicle, and connected networks, though ANI Solutions, LLC. recommends full override only in emergency situations"] and I don't have to listen to technical manuals right now thank you, but he was an adult. Twenty years old. Young, I guess, in comparison, but old enough to get married and own a house and work a nine to five and clock into a job with an old D9 rigged for bomb disposal as a security guard like anyone else.

My left hand, the one that once ran the throttle and keyed microadjustments into each footfall of my Ballista, which felt tens of thousands of miles underfoot through the neural link, gripped the wicker chair as tight as it could manage. I thought about how it felt to step on the horrible horrible splintering wood of dried-out cargo pallets when it and I weighed forty tons and maybe it wasn't as bad to hold onto this horrible creaking wicker. Some part of me felt a control-moment gyro ease against its mounts, not having to work so hard to keep our collective bulk upright when we walked and talked and fought as one incredible machine.

My right hand, the one which [yawed my turret and cued my cannon to

no, that's the machine. My right hand, which once held a very elaborate control column and cued in networking commands to an army of drones and satellites, quickly shoved away the children's block puzzle. Bailey's eyes flicked over to it and then back to me. Lightning-fast.

I unzipped my bag and produced my prize. A bolted-together stack of three circuit boards, trailing interface wires hastily cut from a new wrecker towed into the bays, but with its iconic chiclet keyboard [TM.3055061 "CEC Walking Tank Interface Systems, 21st Century, Part 55: IRST Manual Controls" page 31, paragraph 6, line 1 notes "...the keyboard may be used to set a desired bearing, elevation, and range for IRST systems to 'focus' for target acquisition in lieu of using the included joystick for cueing..."] (and everyone knows the IRST joystick broke the first time you slapped it over trying to lock up a surprise helicopter popping over a ridgeline) still intact. None of the keys had been caved in from too-aggressive typing, which was rare even back in the day. I set it out on the table between us. Against the black of the table, it almost looked like it was sitting in its housing over on the right shoulder of the cockpit, where I spent so much time. Where Bailey spent so much time.

His eyes flicked over the keys. The nurses wouldn't ever see the recognition in his eyes, the thoughts that were woven between every near-random glance between the HDG and ELEV and RNG entry banks.

Bailey's right hand raised, slightly, from his chair. Each finger tapped out a staccato rhythm, independent of each other, against the plastic armrest. I knew how that felt. I slid the keypad off the table with my right hand, cradled its loose wiring with my left, felt the comforting resilience of the silicon and nylon as a reprieve from the fragility and decay of the chair and the table and the courtyard, and held it underneath Bailey's tapping fingers.

I knew the sequence. Some part of me did, even if I hadn't read it consciously. It was burned into the back of my head on Iron Hill just like so many other things. He keyed out data and I followed along.

HDG 051 ELEV 002 RNG 212 First contact, a Walker Bulldog rounding the corner around a dollar store, its poorly-maintained engine blowing black smoke. Easy lock. One TOW put it down. HDG 311 ELEV 011 RNG 133 An anti-tank team on top of a bank. They weren't expecting a Ballista to make that kind of speed overland and their shot went wide. One hundred thirty-six HEDP rounds from the cannon made sure they didn't get a second. HDG 000 ELEV 006 RNG 95 A hijacked Scorpio standing guard along the main drag. Its left leg was half-crumpled underneath it, but it still had a full rack of missiles. The APS ate the first two shots, but the third went through. Bailey's turret ate the hit, but jerked fifty degrees to the left under the impact. The fourth was out-of-angle for the APS and hit the right hip flexor dead on. HDG --- ELEV 0000068 RNG 11232 Mistyping. Panic. Bailey was on his side in the middle of this street, his Ballista's—his—gyros screaming to upright the hull enough to avoid gimbal lock. A Scorpio carries six TOWs, and the last two would be enough to punch a hole through his cockpit. A Ballista carries—we carried—sixteen, but they're useless unless the targeting pod under our turret can get a lock. The town is afire. Smoke fills the air. It needs a manual IRST cue to lock on. HDG 6629710 Bailey is typing into the wrong interface. Trying to reach the general-band radio, a little further over our shoulder, trying to call for an airstrike, but too far given the bulk of our body crushing down the operator in a wounded walker.