Iris had thought it sucked to have several hours of her weekend sucked up by grueling disciplinary training that left her sweaty, sore and completely exhausted. The fresh batch of now-daily mandatory training was sucking her entire soul out.

All because some civvie had decided to harass one of their partner platoon’s members.

She took a shower in the locker room after each of these training sessions. The water was as hot or as cold as she wanted it and it felt nice, but still those deeper aches and pains couldn’t be chased out of her system so easily.

It was already dark out when she finally got out of the training building and walked down the paved road back to the quarters. All of the buildings here were quite stark and utilitarian but they did use a liberal amount of windows on the upper levels. Something about mental health justifying the cost of two-inch bulletproof glass that looked like obsidian from the outside but was perfectly transparent from the inside. In them, the orange street lights reflected back almost red-colored.

The outside world was so different to this clean, facilitarian structure. The Quarter Building, at least, was a little more grounded. The halls were painted pure white and the floor was white-ish linoleum and each door felt like a carbon copy of the next (minus the arial-type name plaques on each), but past those doors, there was some personality.

Iris’s quarters were clean. Always. Because that was what they were trained to do. But even with being clean, there was still a small vase of fake irises on her nightstand and a neat stack of books on her shelf next to a tiny fake aquarium where plastic jellyfish floated on an invisible breeze. 

It was clean, and stark, but it was also hers.

She gave her damp hair a thorough brushing before blow drying the remaining water out, pulling it straight in the process so it would be smooth and silky even after getting slept on.

Somewhere in her process of getting ready to sleep, there was a familiar knock on the door. With a pang of guilt, she considered not answering, her bed sounding so incredibly wonderful at the moment and her bones were still aching, but the love overpowered the thought, and she opened the door for Jaz.

The other girl smiled and held up a pint of protein-powder branded ice cream. “Want some recovery sweets?” she asked, trying to be cheery about it.

Iris let her in, almost too tired to even acknowledge the other, so she faceplanted on the bed instead of trying to talk.

Jaz sat next to her, rubbing her back for a moment. “How many weeks?” she asked softly.

“Her hur hurm,” Iris said into the comforter. The words were muffled so much she didn’t expect Jaz to understand them but the other girl nodded and gave her another comforting rub.

“I suppose this means we don’t get to do our date for a while,” Jaz sighed. “It seems harsh. It’s not like you’ve ever had to kill another person before. Was it really that unreasonable that you hesitated?” she asked.

Iris picked her head up to speak. “This is our lives,” she said. “We’re just dogs who get punished if we don’t do the little tricks our master wants us to.”

“Dogs don’t kill other dogs and walk away with a healthy relationship to humans or canines.”

“Our health isn’t the point here,” Iris said. “It’s our utility.” Her face planted itself back into the comforter.

Jaz let out another sigh. She knew Iris was right about this. At the end of the day, they were tracked by their numbers, not their names, and their performance was monitored so closely that even their average blood-oxygen level was on-file. In case they ever needed that kind of thing for some study.

They were just products. Calling them assets was probably generous as their entire lives were… disposable. Once something in their weird worm-ridden systems failed well… there had been quite a few more worm-children when they were little kids.

Jaz shifted and finally cracked open the ice cream pint and stretched to grab a couple spoons out of Iris’s desk drawer. 

“Here,” she said. “Let’s just drown our sorrows in caloric density.”

Iris pushed herself upright, slowly as some of her body did its absolute best to stay limp as long as possible. After an unusual amount of effort, she sat on the edge of the bed with her girlfriend, who presented her with a spoon.

The ice cream had a strange taste to it. These protein products always did but Iris knew she’d feel like crap for a while, and increasing her protein intake would probably help at least a bit. She’d probably hit up the convenience store just off the facility grounds to acquire some sports drinks, too. Replace her lost electrolytes…

She sighed. Jaz wrapped an arm around her comfortingly and continued to urge the sweet, slightly gritty and aftertaste-ridden ice cream into her.