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Something has changed, and Old Rosie doesn’t like it.
The Rose Reds have always been different from the halfs and the norms, by necessity. They’d be damn poor fighters if they weren’t. Even beyond the physical differences, they hold themselves differently; speak a little more bluntly; remember only war and whatever stolen half-memories they only admit to in painfully limited off-hours (even more limited, these days), under shelter of darkness and far from the judging ears of commanders and officers.
But these new ones that are being sent in… there’s no way around it, they give Rosie the creeps. Their eyes are blank, their movements stiff, and when she tries to clap one on the shoulder and welcome her to hell, she just stares at her until she backs off.
During drills, they respond almost robotically to every order, their movements just as precise as any Red but somehow devoid of meaning, and even when the commanders work them until they stagger their faces remain carefully neutral. Any question is answered to the letter, any comment or remark followed by a plain, “yes, sir.” Rosie is a soldier; she understands the importance of obedience, of precision and discipline, but she’d hate these Reds for kissing the commanders’ asses if she thought there was actually anything going on in their heads.
She hears rumors about why. A Rose Red went mad from the stress of battle and set the camp ablaze. Or a Rose Red shot her commander and disappeared. Or a Rose Red kissed a half and, when she was caught, flew into a murderous rage and could barely be terminated before she could get to a shuttle and escape to continue her rampage. Whatever the truth, the higher-ups clearly want more obedient Reds, and they’ve figured out how to make them.
The shells, as she starts thinking of them as, would probably scare her less, if the commanders didn’t obviously like them better. Even a while before they showed up, the norm officers started looking at Rosie and her sisters like they were live grenades. Since the shells arrived, she’s seen dozens of Rose Reds, proper ones who can fight like they mean it, be sent into the most dangerous battle zones and not return, or be disciplined for minor infractions in ways that injure them, weaken them and make them vulnerable when the time comes to fight. The shells don’t even seem to be capable of committing infractions. Rosie is beginning to harbor the suspicion that command is just waiting for all the real Reds to die so they can replace them with this new sort.
Old Rosie refuses to die. She’s the oldest Rose Red in her battalion, the most experienced, and that means something, damn it. The others look up to her, they ask her how she’s survived this long, they hope that if they emulate her, they’ll learn, somehow, how not to get blown up or shot or sliced open so their guts spill out onto the dirt or any of the other fates that eventually await all Rose Reds. They never do learn. She couldn’t count how many she’s seen die. She imparts what knowledge she can, but honestly? Deep down, she knows that whatever skill or talent she has is subordinate to sheer luck.
Still, this can’t be how she ends– just replaced with something newer and shinier and more eager to please. Not better. The shells may follow orders before a heartbeat can pass, but they fight with a strange detachment that’s almost laughable. They’re machines made of flesh, not warriors like Rosie and her generation. They don’t seem to feel the rage and terror and thrill of battle, don’t seem to care that those they fight want to destroy the peace the king has built. There’s no ferocity to the kind of war they wage, no heart in the blood they spill. They’re inferior. And honestly? She pities the hell out of them, as much as she fears them.
There are a few cases that are especially horrific. One is assigned to Rosie’s unit. She comes in just like the others, but it quickly becomes apparent that she won’t, or more likely can’t, eat or sleep without a direct order from an officer. Rosie tells her that the bells tell them when they’re meant to rest and take meals, but the shell just blinks at her. Two days later, she tries ordering the shell herself. Rose Reds take care of each other, when they can (even if they’re shitty Rose Reds), and this one is going to die if she doesn’t eat. She has no official authority, but hopes the shell won’t know the difference. She does. She doesn’t even respond to Rosie, but she goes straight to an actual officer and reports her for impersonating a commander. Rosie gets a sound beating out of it and goes without rations that night. That’s how she learns they’re hardwired to not only do no wrong, but report any wrongdoing they see.
The shell collapses three days later, and doesn’t get up again.
She sees another one cornered by a real Rose Red, right after they take their daily rations. At first, Rosie thinks the older one is bullying the newer one out of her rations, and cringes, already anticipating the horror when the commanders find out. But then she hears what the older Rose Red is saying.
“... fucking pathetic, what’s wrong with you? Are you stupid?”
The shell just stares at her. Her eyes are a little wide, maybe, but otherwise she shows no sign she’s even being spoken to.
The older one scoffs. “What kind of Rose Red even are you?”
That gets a reaction. “I am a good Rose Red.” There’s even a hint of emotion in her voice, and Rosie notices her fists clenched at her sides.
The other one actually laughs at that. “You don’t know shit. You know even less than a brand-new Rosie would. You’re not a Rose Red at all, you’re just a–” She doesn’t get through the rest of the sentence before the shell, with unexpected ferocity, punches her in the chest, hard enough to make her wheeze and stagger back.
The shell steps forward. “I,” she says, “am a Rose Red. I am a good Rose Red. They made me a good Rose Red!” She’s shouting, voice rising in pitch, and she grabs the older soldier’s coat. “Do not tell me I am not a Rose Red! I am a Rose Red!” The older Rosie tries to twist out of her grasp, but she throws her to the ground and starts kicking her, still shouting.
By now, a small crowd has gathered, proper Reds and shells alike all staring, not quite daring to intervene. They all still when they hear the commander shout, and they part for her– all but the shell, who hasn’t stopped screaming the same things over and over, or attacking the older one. By this point she’s just curled up on the ground, trying to protect her head. Judging by the blood coming from her nose, it hasn’t been working.
“Soldier, stand down!” the commander barks at the shell. She stops kicking the other Red and whirls to face the commander, but her eyes are wild.
“I am a good Rose Red!”
“Fucking defects,” the commander mutters. Then she draws her pistol and shoots the shell in the head. Rosie swears she hears, as the shell falls, her mouth slurring around one more insistence, before everything falls terribly still.
The commander turns to Rosie and the soldier next to her. “Take this one to the medical tent,” she orders, gesturing at the one still curled on the ground. Like good Rose Reds, they obey without a word.
As horrible as it is, it disturbs Rosie even more after she sees the third shell that is apparently a defective version of whatever it is they’re doing now. This one, like the one that wouldn’t eat or rest, is assigned to Rosie’s unit, and for a few days all seems perfectly fine, as much as it gets with shells. She doesn’t speak or respond to anyone but commanders, and is as unsettling as the rest, but by now, Rosie’s almost getting used to it.
Then they go to battle, and Rosie can’t focus on the shell if she doesn’t want to get her head blown off her shoulders (she’s seen it enough times. One of these days, any one now, she’s going to die, but she isn’t going to go like that. Not if she gets any say). It’s a vicious battle, with the enemy seeming to have endless reinforcements. Rosie is grazed in her good leg by a bullet as she has to reach down and take a new gun, one that still has bullets, off one of her dead sisters. The pain, sharp and sickening as it is, is the most familiar thing in the world by now, and she keeps fighting with grim perseverance until finally, the last of the enemies retreat and she is ordered to do the same.
The shell from her unit doesn’t retreat. She doesn’t advance, either, but just stands there, still holding her gun, pulling the trigger. She’s long out of bullets, but she doesn’t even seem to realize it. The commander is stalking towards her.
Rosie lingers at the edge of the camp, having technically followed orders (she should go to the medical tent; her leg is bleeding, but what’s the worst it will do, kill her? She’s had worse. It can wait), and watches.
“Soldier,” the commander calls, “I ordered you to retreat.”
“I know, sir,” the shell says. Rosie thinks she can hear a little fear in her voice. It’s the first time she has, from a shell.
“So what do you think you’re doing now?”
“I– I don’t know, sir. You told me to retreat, but I should fight. I should fight the enemy.”
The commander cuffs her upside the head, and she staggers, but keeps her gun up, still mechanically pulling the trigger. “Do you see a fucking enemy?”
“No, sir,” she says, and that’s definitely fear. “But I– I cannot– I should fight.”
“Put down your gun.”
The shell doesn’t move. After a moment, she says, “I cannot. I want to follow your orders, but I cannot. I don’t understand–” she cuts off with a cry as the commander tries to wrench the useless gun from her hands. “No!” The movement forces her to turn, and now Rosie can see her face, and just about make out tears streaming down it. “I have to fight!”
The commander swears, pulls out their own gun, and, like she did with the last one, shoots the shell in the head, sending fragments of her skull flying into the gore already covering the battleground. Rosie takes that as her cue to leave, and slips between the tents before the commander can notice her. Better not to dwell on it– she hasn’t survived this long by dwelling on it. Better to just go to the medical tent and grit her teeth and try not to scream as the medic burns her wound shut.
But she wonders, as she walks to the medical tent, gait uneven and staggering (because fuck, that hurts, now that the adrenaline is wearing off) if the other shell the commander shot, the one who died screaming that she was a good Rose Red, could have stopped, either.
She hardly sees the halfs anymore, let alone interacts with them. She occasionally catches a glimpse of the funny half with the trilling voice she once would have called… she doesn’t know. She liked it, appreciated its bizarre cheerfulness in the midst of all this, and it seemed to like her too, in its own way. They had a rapport she hasn’t been able to find anywhere else, a rhythm of speaking to each other that just felt natural. Once, she spots it being dragged away from the Red barracks, being berated– “They’re Rose Reds, not your goddamn friends; get a grip.”
She wonders what it thinks of the shells. In some ways, they remind her of it. The oddly mechanical movements, the way it, too, used to seem to not hear her at all, or have half of what she said bypass it entirely while the other half was perfectly understood. It’s not like them, though. Despite its mannerisms, it was always bright, undeniably full of life. The shells don’t look all that different as corpses than they do alive.
Rose Reds aren’t allowed to go to bars anymore, can’t leave the camp unless under orders, and even the time not spent fighting or drilling or resting is much more regimented than it was. The shells don’t seem to care any more than they care about anything, but it’s driving Rosie crazy. She’s fought for the crown for more years than she can keep track of by now. She’s made her share of mistakes, sure, but far fewer than a Norm soldier would. She’s fought countless battles and killed countless enemies, and her body is covered in scars from the wounds she’s kept walking through. She’s given everything, including one of her legs, to the fight. The least they could do is trust her to handle herself. She’s never been like the norms, never been on the same footing as the weaker soldiers with their own faces, but more and more lately she feels like a dog with the way she’s ordered around. She hates it.
More and more shells come in, replacing the real Rosies that die. Old Rosie sees one that’s so empty of everything but obedience she doesn’t even seem to know how to hold a gun. She dies in the first battle she sees. Another one gets beaten for, as far as Rosie can tell, following orders too eagerly and irritating the commander. But the ones that have these kinds of errors in the new kind of moulding grow fewer and farther between. As more time passes, most of the shells have a hollow perfection to them. Like clockwork, they follow orders and take their rations and sleep. They run drills and do their assigned tasks around camp. And when it’s time to attack or defend, they fight without passion and retreat without pride. Rosie can’t respect them as soldiers, but they’re near perfect fighters.
Rosie herself honestly shouldn’t have made it this long. Most Rose Reds only last two years or so, and she knows she’s made it several times that. Lines have just started to form around her eyes, and when all of them line up to have their heads shaved again a few of the hairs that fall to rest on her shoulders and the ground have lightened to gray. Her body isn’t as old as any of the commanders, or even some of the normsoldiers, but for a Rose Red, she’s ancient, and she knows it’s only a matter of time, if a bullet doesn’t catch her first, before her body betrays her. She’s only worth anything as long as she can fight, and once she starts to slow, once she doesn’t meet the standards of a Rose Red, she’ll be terminated, and replaced with a newer, more efficient shell.
She’s always known her fate. Rose Reds don’t retire, no matter how brave, strong, or tough they are. They keep fighting until they can’t, and when that happens, they end. She’d been at peace with it when she was younger, before she knew how good she was, to make it so long, and more importantly before her replacement would have been barely more than a machine. She may only be a Rose Red, but she deserves more than being replaced by a hollow imitation of all her talent, and one that her commanders call an improvement.
She’s stood arm-in-arm with death too often to fear it. But the disrespect that would follow it makes her gut twist. She cannot allow that. She fucking refuses. So she has to make it a little longer. She has to make certain that, whenever something finally manages to kill her, it’s obvious to everyone what the army has lost in her.
Rosie will never end like the normsoldiers do. There will be no coffin, no honors, no home or family to send her corpse to. The Reds she once considered her sisters are long dead (and even if the commanders would allow it there’s no chance of forging new connections with the shells; the one that reported her for trying to help her eat proved that). She harbors no delusions that she is anything but what she is– a soldier, a tool, a weapon for the king to wield to protect his people. When she dies, there will be no grave.
But hell if they won’t remember her. Hell if the commanders don’t look back on Rosie and her generation and miss the fire they brought to their purpose. They can keep making the shells, and maybe they can even perfect them, but they can’t truly replace her with them.
She’ll ignore the emptiness behind their eyes. She’ll ignore the way she feels like she lives in a camp full of breathing ghosts. She’ll ignore the disdain her commanders look at her with, and ignore the hint of fear, and she’ll pick up her gun and serve her king well. She’s a good soldier, and she knows it. She wouldn’t have lived this long if she wasn’t. Eventually, maybe even soon, she will die, but first she’s going to show them just how good she can be. She’s going to show them what a real Rose Red is capable of, and make them regret ever thinking those mindless drones are progress.
Once, Old Rosie was known as the best in her battalion. She isn’t going to let herself die until they see her that way again.