not_a_traitor | IC Inbox

"Theta. M-My name's Theta." He's kind of glad he doesn't introduce himself with a last name, too, he's never really sure what he's meant to say if he's meant to say his 'full' name. Dakota sounds weird, but is he allowed to pick Katina? It's easier to not have to pick or explain. "Were you military, too? W-We all were, so."

Like his odd eyes, Theta's name hardly registers as something strange. Maybe closer to a Viper jock callsign than something you'd name a kid, but...

Wait.

Gaeta pauses. He leans a little more weight on his cane as his eyebrows tug together. "Nice to meet you," he says, followed by a much more cautious, "Yeah, I'm military too. Um. What do you mean by we?"

Please, gods, don't drop a child soldier in his lap at ten in the morning, he needs a lot more caffeine before he can react to this appropriately.

"Oh, right. Uh. I-I always forget that sounds weird to people," he answers with an awkward little laugh. 'Weird' is maybe less accurate than 'worrying', but he only sort of understands the distinction in this context. Of course they don't put actual normal children into the war.

(Yeah, so about the Spartans...)

"I was part of Project Freelancer. With North and South and the rest? I was North's Artificial Intelligence unit. I don't usually have a body, this is new. I used to ride around in his neural implants, helping him with his equipment."

Gaeta stops in his tracks.

Theta's explanation keeps compounding into something worse. Project Freelancer ricochets into South, knocks into AI unit -- he will never forget CT explaining that to him, the unregulated, untested units implanted in some Freelancers' frakking skulls -- and sends his stomach plummeting like a stone dropped in an icy lake. He stares down at the kid. Just a kid, nervous and earnest and staring back up at him with those mismatched eyes that don't look human at all. A machine crafted for war wearing the costume of a human body.

(A kid's body.)

He feels sick. Disproportionately furious, because gods, this would have been the perfect ruse if the Cylons ever tried it; who wouldn't trust something that looked like Theta? Think of the damage that could be done before anyone caught on. Jaw tightening to keep the worst contained, he tears his eyes away on the pretense of searching the shelves for Theta's book.

Theta stalls a second after he does, blinking back at Gaeta, first clueless, and then... worried. He's only got so much data to go off when it comes to people's response to this information, but so far not a single datapoint includes silence. (Usually, it's more questions.)

Did— did he say something wrong? But he didn't explain it any differently than he usually does, except skipping some of the details because it sounded like he probably knew at least some of the others. So— why isn't he saying anything? Why does he look like that?

"...Mr. Felix? A-Are you okay?"

Gaeta doesn't look at him.

You don't throw patrons out of the library unless they're being disruptive. The kid (he's just a kid, all his senses keep insisting) has been perfectly polite the whole time he's been here. Gaeta can be, too: don't cause a scene, don't make a fuss, just -- figure out how to get the frak out of this situation. Monitor from afar. Whenever Theta becomes trouble, then... he'll deal with it then.

His voice stays level -- some would call it flat -- as he says, "I think you should talk to another librarian. I'll go find Lev."

The furrow in Theta's brow deepens. He doesn't understand. What did he do? "But— why? What's wrong? What did I say?"

Maybe the smart thing to do would be to just let him go and get this other librarian. But he doesn't get it. No one else has responded like this. Nervous curiosity outweighs sense.

"I just think," says Gaeta again, strain stretched under his professional veneer like a rubber band about to snap, "he'll be able to help you better."

He starts to turn away from Theta.

For all that Theta is what he is, he is also still a teenager—and a rather undersocialised one, at that. That gap in experience is all it takes to turn hyperintelligence into a blunder.

"That's not true, or you would've called him before! What did I say? How am I supposed to know what I did wrong if you won't tell me?"

He goes to tug Gaeta's sleeve.

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