VA-2
Thirty push-ups pressing concrete dust into the crevices of her nail beds. Thirty pull-ups making the pipe behind her bed creak. Thirty squats using the jug of moonshine brewing under the radiator as a weight. Thirty bobby pins holding her curls under a blue silk scarf. Vault goggles, vault boots, vault gloves. The new tasks pre-reboot begin today, and Pound pretends to be ready.
Approaching the K1 corridor, the murmur of crew supervisors and their new protocols echoes through the tunnels. Pankhurst, the VA-2 supervisor, doesn't do reassurance as well as he does rules. He waits for the crew to arrive. Pound clocks Presley already lingering in the shadows. Pavlov approaches with his usual smile, followed by Piccard, Pauli and Picasso. And finally, on the dot of the hour, Pontecorvo.
Pankhurst reads the new protocol -- fuse polarity, cable routing, the neutrino field's tolerance windows -- seven steps deep before Pound stops trying to hold any of it in her head at once. She starts watching the people instead. Piccard fidgets with his damned hat. Picasso's jaw is doing something unpleasant. Presley hasn't blinked for the past minute. Pontecorvo doesn't move at all.
Pankhurst explains the new anchoring protocol they need to memorise in case they mess up a sequence within the time dilation field. "If a person desyncs, the whole team runs the anchoring sequence backwards." Nobody asks the question everyone's thinking, which is some version of and if we get it wrong?
Pound does. "What happens if we fuck it up? Feels like we don't get that privilege." She looks around at the others, still frozen on the new anchoring protocol, brows furrowed as they try to memorise it backwards for when the neutrino wave rewinds time.
"Forget the whole sequence. Just listen for the person before you. Say your anchoring word after theirs. One step behind. Or ahead, perhaps. That's it."
They practice it for a few minutes, until Piccard settles his hat on a supply crate, Picasso relaxes his jaw and Presley allows himself a smile.
"All done with that? You'll need a coordinator," Pankhurst says, like it's obvious, like the crew hasn't just spent three minutes learning they don't understand their own jobs any more. Too many looks are exchanged in silence before Piccard mercifully raises his hand.
"Pound seems to know what she's doing."
So much for mercy. She looks at Ponte, arms crossed, and somehow this time he has no remark to share, so he simply nods.
"Alright, we don't have much time. Pound, take these." Pankhurst shoves the vault map and a bag of equipment in her hand before unceremoniously continuing. "Now, buddy system." It sounds almost gentle, which is how Pound knows it isn't. "If anchoring fails, whoever desynced needs their buddy to sync them back with the help of a memory. One sharp enough to hold onto when the mind's already gone looking for a handhold. It can get bad. So make it a clear one." He doesn't explain what a bad desync looks like. He doesn't have to. Everyone in this room has heard the stories, the ones about people who went down into the Vault and came back only technically.
Everyone seems to pair up immediately. Pontecorvo and Pound are left alone. Pankhurst is already adjusting his tools and prepping the radiation suits while the rest go over their sync memories with their buddies.
As they size each other up, Pontecorvo doesn't ask what Pound's memory is. She instinctively touches her neckerchief. He watches her fingers find it the way he's watched her do it so many times before, except this time he doesn't look away in contempt. He looks into her eyes.
"That one," he says. Not a question.
"That one," she agrees.
And in a heartbeat Pankhurst is already helping them put on the ratty radiation suits as they walk towards the decontamination chamber.
The shift is loud in the way the vaults are always loud: boots on broken concrete, metal on metal, Pankhurst's voice through the comms, and the peculiar quiet of seven people trying not to panic at once. By the second location, Pound is certain she doesn't fully understand the cable requirements or fuse box polarities. But she understands Piccard is screaming too earnestly to know what colour is the cable he is holding, so she gives him something he can do without thinking. She understands Presley's eyes darting towards the pitch-black mouth of the nearest tunnel, so she asks him to work on the farthest fuse box from the entrance while she stands between him and the darkness.
She hands the rest -- the sequencing, the actual math of it -- to Pontecorvo, and he takes it without comment, the way you'd take a tool someone's handing you mid-task. It just happens, the way things happen when they work. And in spite of the darkness, the dust, the radiation, and the bending-time bullshit, Ponte takes his damp report cards, a broken pencil, and nails every single sequence. By the end of it, the board reads 88% efficiency. Pankhurst reads the number out loud like it surprises even him.
Piccard is covered in soot, Pauli has gone completely silent, Pavlov is dissociating and Pound reeks of adrenaline. But they made it back in one piece and outperformed their own expectations. Ponte is the closest thing to giddy she's ever seen him. Joy looks strange on him, like a coat that doesn't fit yet. As everyone dissolves into the mass of citizens returning from their lifeline shifts, he pulls her aside and lets everyone else walk well ahead of them before speaking.
"Hey, if we're really doing this thing, we should go to the union commission as soon as we can, some time after lunch," he says, walking towards the food court as she struggles to keep up with the long gait of a person much taller than her. "You can still back out of this, by the way. You can say no. You proved yourself plenty in there." She knows she could say no. She has said no to much smaller things than this.
Instead, she hears herself say "Okay. Let's do this."
And somewhere underneath that verbal contract, quiet enough that she almost doesn't notice it herself, is the small, treacherous fact that today, for the first time, agreeing to this didn't feel entirely like duty. Pontecorvo's face betrays a smile for just a second before he adjusts himself and puts on his family leader voice.
"Great. I'll come by the Speakeasy between our shifts."
For once, Pound is not the only one performing.